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SEEING AND BEING 
 
SEEING AND BEING 
 
 PERCEPTION AND CHARACTER 
 
 BY 
 
 H. CLAY TRUMBULL 
 
 JOHN D. WATTLES, Publisher 
 1889 
 
.^V 1 
 
 Copyright, 1889 
 
 BY 
 
 H. CLAY TRUMBULL 
 
 '2-9'fHf 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Lessons from one man's experiences and 
 observations will not be of value to all. But 
 lessons from any man's experiences and ob- 
 servations will be of value to some. No man 
 stands, in his feelings and sympathies, for his 
 entire race. But every man, in his sympa- 
 thies and feelings, stands for a class. 
 
 Hence it is, that whatever truths have made 
 a profound impression on a man in the prog- 
 ress of his life-course are likely to make a 
 correspondent impression on others who are 
 like him, if he can bring those truths with 
 any vividness before them. And when a 
 series of related truths have excited interest 
 in their detached separateness, they will 
 hardly fail to excite fresh interest in their 
 exhibited relation to one another and to a 
 common central truth. 
 
 5 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 The essays in this volume are an outcome 
 of their writer's observings and experien- 
 cings in his varied life-course. They were 
 received with interest as editorial contribu- 
 tions in the pages of The Sunday School 
 Times, while appearing there, one by one, 
 during a term of ten years or more; and 
 their republication has been urged by many 
 who desire them for preservation in a per- 
 manent form. They are now presented in a 
 new light, in a logical order for the elucida- 
 tion and emphasis of a truth which is com- 
 mon to them all. 
 
 The gaining of the thoughts of this vol- 
 ume has not been without cost to its writer. 
 His hope is that the considering of them 
 will not be without stimulus and profit to 
 its readers. 
 
 H. C. T. 
 
 Philadelphia, 
 
 August 14, 1889. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. PAGB 
 
 Seeing, and Seeing 9 
 
 II. 
 Seeing More and More 17 
 
 III. 
 What We See Shows What We Are 27 
 
 IV. 
 Perceiving Beauty 37 
 
 V. 
 Recognizing Nobleness . , 51 
 
 VI. 
 
 Discerning Character at a Glimpse 59 
 
 VII. 
 The Poetic Sense in Seeing 69 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Unseen as a Charm of the Seen 83 
 
 IX. 
 
 Seeing the Signs of Cost 93 
 
 7 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 X. PAGE 
 
 Sympathy as a Means of Insight 103 
 
 XI. 
 
 Seeing Through Another's Eyes 115 
 
 XII. 
 The Light-Shedding Power of a Shade .... 125 
 
 XIII. 
 The Softening Light of Reflection 131 
 
 XIV. 
 Having an Eye for Trifles 137 
 
 XV. 
 We Cannot See Ourselves 147 
 
 XVI. 
 The Gain of a Twofold View .^ 159 
 
 XVII. 
 Striving in the Direction of Our Best Seeing . 169 
 
 XVIII. 
 The Power of a Remembered Vision 177 
 
 XIX. 
 The Transforming Power of a Gaze 187 
 
 XX. 
 
 The Cost of a Mountain Outlook 195 
 
I. 
 
 SEEING, AND SEEING. 
 
 " Blessed are your eyes, for they see," said 
 our Lord to his favored disciples. And in 
 saying this Jesus made a sharp contrast 
 between his keen-eyed followers and those 
 about them in whom was fulfilled the saying 
 of the prophet, " Seeing ye shall see, and 
 shall not perceive." There are eyes, and 
 there are eyes. There are eyes which see, 
 and there are eyes which do not see. Now, 
 as in the days of our Lord, it is a blessed 
 thing to have seeing eyes. 
 
 " Our sight," says Addison, " is the most 
 perfect and most delightful of our senses. It 
 fills the mind with the largest variety of ideas, 
 converses with objects at the greatest dis- 
 tance, and continues longest in action with- 
 out being tired or satiated with its proper 
 enjoyments." But there is seeing, and there 
 
 9 
 
IO SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 is seeing ; there is a seeing that sees, and 
 there is a seeing that does not see. A dog 
 can see a fine painting or a piece of faultless 
 sculpture ; but what is a dog's sight of either 
 colored canvas or glowing marble ? A cow 
 can look upon a cathedral, or a bird upon a 
 landscape, but what can cow or bird see of the 
 real or of the ideal in landscape or cathedral ? 
 Many a man gains no more from his seeing 
 a thing of beauty or a scene of grandeur than 
 if he were a dog, a cow, or a bird. There 
 must be soul in the seeing to have enjoyment 
 in the sight. 
 
 "You would be surprised,' , said the intel- 
 ligent proprietor of one of our most attrac- 
 tive mountain resorts, "to know how few 
 persons there are, even among our summer 
 guests, who appreciate fine scenery. Many 
 who come here come for the pure air or the 
 retired location; they have no eye for the 
 scenery." Then he told of a morning scene 
 of rarest beauty, when the fogs from the river 
 valley were rising like waves of molten silver 
 up along the verdant hillsides, while the 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 1 
 
 mountains on every hand towered grandly 
 above the sea of sun-lit vapor. In his en- 
 thusiasm over the sight he had called to it the 
 attention of one of his city guests, with the 
 exclamation, "Isn't that beautiful !" The 
 unexpected response of his prosaic and dull- 
 eyed companion was, "Why, no. I don't 
 think it is beautiful. I think it is a pretty 
 rough country.' , Sahara would have been 
 a pleasanter region than the Yosemite for 
 that man's eyes to rest on. The trouble in 
 his case was not with the scenery, but with 
 the seer. 
 
 Nor is such a man a rare exception among 
 men. " The difference between landscape and 
 landscape is small," says Emerson ; " but 
 there is great difference in the beholders." 
 " The stars at night stoop down over the 
 brownest, homeliest common with all the 
 spiritual magnificence which they shed on 
 the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of 
 Egypt. The uprolled clouds and the colors 
 of morning and evening will transfigure ma- 
 ples and alders " — to the eye which is blessed 
 
12 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 with the power of seeing the transfigured. As 
 
 Dante tells us : 
 
 "All 
 Are blessed, even as their sight descends 
 Deeper into the truth, wherein rest is 
 For every mind. Thus happiness hath root 
 In seeing, not in loving — which of sight 
 Is aftergrowth." 
 
 One man, looking out from the ocean 
 shore, sees before him only a trackless waste 
 of wild waters. Another sees there a fathom- 
 less deep, a restrained immensity, a type of 
 infinitude ; what Byron calls, 
 
 " [A] glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form 
 Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time, 
 Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm, 
 Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime 
 Dark-heaving ; — boundless, endless, and sublime — 
 The image of Eternity — the throne 
 Of the Invisible." 
 
 One man sees, in the mountain range which 
 stretches athwart his sight, nothing more 
 than a rough barrier to vision and to prog- 
 ress. Another sees in every mountain peak 
 the " meeting place of earth and heaven, the 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 3 
 
 place where the bending skies meet the 
 aspiring planet, the place where the sunshine 
 and the cloud keep closest company with the 
 granite and the grass ; " or, to him the moun- 
 tains are, as Longfellow suggests, " the great 
 watch-towers " of earth, which "lift their 
 heads far up into the sky, and gaze upward 
 and around to see if the Judge of the world 
 comes not ! " 
 
 One sees merely the signs of a foreshad- 
 owed harvest in the green fields about him, 
 or the tokens of the next day's weather as 
 he scans the evening sky. Another sees 
 beauty and life on every side, and grandeur 
 and glory in the upward view. He sees the 
 evidences of God's handiwork in leaf and 
 flower and moth and bird, as also in cloud 
 and star and moon. His eye, as Cowper 
 
 ' ' "Discerns 
 
 A ray of heavenly light, gilding all forms : — 
 
 The unambiguous footsteps of the God 
 
 Who gives its luster to an insect's wing, 
 
 And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds." 
 
 One sees in a passing throng only an undis- 
 
14 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 tinguishable mass of humanity. Another 
 sees in every man of that throng the pos- 
 sessor of a unique personality, with its own 
 history, its own character, its own hopes and 
 fears, its own eternal destiny; a man still 
 retaining some vestige of the Divine image 
 in which his nature was first created, and still 
 the object of the infinite love of God. The 
 dizzy whirl of human life is seen by one and 
 by another as in Wordsworth's London Fair : 
 
 " O blank confusion ! true epitome 
 Of what the mighty City is herself, 
 To thousands upon thousands of her sons, 
 Living amid the same perpetual whirl 
 Of trivial objects melted and reduced 
 To one identity, by differences 
 That have no meaning, and no end, — 
 Oppression under which even highest minds 
 Must labor, whence the strongest are not free. 
 But though the picture weary out the eye, 
 By nature an unmanageable sight, 
 It is not wholly so to him who looks 
 In steadiness, who hath among least things 
 An under sense of greatest ; sees the parts 
 As parts, but with a feeling of the whole." 
 
 And so it is in all the range of human sight; 
 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 5 
 
 one sees, and another sees. The sight is the 
 same; but how different the seeing! 
 
 Thomas Starr King quotes a little German 
 poem which tells in beautiful simplicity how 
 differently different eyes look upon the things 
 of nature. " Two men had gone up from the 
 city to the summit of one of the Alps. They 
 returned, and their kindred pressed about 
 them to know what visions they had enjoyed. 
 
 " 'Twas a buzz of questions on every side, 
 1 And what have you seen ? Do tell ! ' they cried. 
 
 " The one with yawning made reply, 
 'What have we seen? Not much have I ! 
 Trees, mountains, meadows, groves, and streams, 
 Blue sky, and clouds, and sunny gleams.* 
 
 " The other, smiling, said the same ; 
 But with face transfigured, and eyes of flame : 
 'Trees, meadows, mountains, groves, and streams, 
 Blue sky, and clouds, and sunny gleams.' " 
 
 The one had eyes which saw; the other, 
 seeing, saw not. 
 
 Ruskin says : " Hundreds of people can 
 talk for one who can think, but thousands 
 can think for one who can see. To see 
 
1 6 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — 
 all in one." And Browning's claim is : 
 
 " In the seeing soul, all worth lies, I assert.*' 
 
 Blessed are those eyes which see. 
 
II. 
 
 SEEING MORE AND MORE. 
 
 No one can see at the first glimpse all that 
 is to be seen in anything that is worth see- 
 ing. In many an object of sight, hardly an 
 appreciable portion of its distinctively note- 
 worthy points of interest can be perceived at 
 the first looking ; and, in every case, there is 
 more to be seen than shows itself to a casual 
 observer. Only he who sees more and more 
 in his seeing and observing, really sees that 
 which is best worth seeing in this world ; and 
 how to see more and more in one's seeing 
 and observing, is one of the things in this 
 world that is well worth knowing. 
 
 If you would train a child to enjoy looking 
 at pictures, you must train him to see more 
 and more in each picture at which he looks. 
 A child's first impulse in looking at a book 
 of colored pictures, is to glance at one pic- 
 2 17 
 
1 8 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 ture, and then turn over the pages until he 
 finds another ; and so on through the book, 
 over and over again. In this way he would 
 soon know each picture as a whole, or by 
 one of its central features, but not in its minor 
 details. If, however, you ask a child to point 
 to a man in a picture at which he is looking, 
 and then to point out the man's face, and the 
 man's eye, and then to point out a dog, or a 
 tree, or a bird, in the same picture, you give 
 to that child an added interest in his picture- 
 looking, and you enable him to see more and 
 more in that at which he looks. It is much 
 the same in training a child to look at a 
 flower, or a bird, or a tree, or a house, or at 
 a landscape or a sunset. You must help 
 him to see more and more in everything at 
 which he looks, by looking for more and 
 more; and in doing this, you are adding 
 to his powers of observation, and increasing 
 his possibilities of enjoyment by means of 
 his eyes. 
 
 Most persons have not been so trained, 
 while children, to look for more and more in 
 
SEEIXG AXD BEIXG. 1 9 
 
 their seeing, as to be able to see more and 
 more in their looking; hence most per- 
 sons go through the world as an untrained 
 child goes through his colored picture-book, 
 glancing at one picture after another as it 
 passes before the eyes, without seeing more 
 of it than stands out on the surface. He who 
 sees more and more in his looking is an 
 exception among his fellows, and he has 
 exceptional power and exceptional enjoy- 
 ment in consequence. 
 
 One man often sees more than another in 
 one line of looking, because his eye has been 
 trained in that particular line ; but rarely does 
 a man continue to see more and more in the 
 line of his most careful seeing, because, in 
 most cases, a man does not expect to see more 
 in that direction, after he has attained to a cer- 
 tain measure of perception. Yet he who sees 
 most in any one line of seeing might see more 
 and more in that very line, if only he realized 
 his possibilities of such seeing ; for in this 
 sphere, as in every other, it is true that " who- 
 soever hath, to him shall be given," and that 
 
20 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 added progress is a privilege that accompa- 
 nies added possession. 
 
 A dog-fancier can see more than most men 
 see of the special points of a dog ; a lover of 
 horses can see more than most men see of 
 the peculiar characteristics of a horse; a 
 woodman, a farmer, a cotton-dealer, an engi- 
 neer, a sailor, can see more than others see 
 in the objects of his particular interest as an 
 observer. But all these men are likely to 
 limit their seeing, and their expectation of 
 seeing in their line of observing, to those 
 points and characteristics which are essential 
 to an understanding of the case from their 
 purely professional point of view, leaving out 
 of thought all that which might be seen in 
 realms beyond their present sphere of per- 
 sonal interest. The dog-fancier, for example, 
 can quickly see the points in a dog which 
 indicate his breed and quality and age and 
 relative value, and even his disposition ; but 
 he is not likely to see those distinctive signs 
 of a dog's measure of intelligence which tend 
 to define the line, if line there be, between 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 21 
 
 what we call instinct and what we call intel- 
 lect; yet just here a wise observer might 
 see more and more, indefinitely. 
 
 A cotton-dealer can see the relative fineness 
 and strength of the fiber he " staples," and can 
 perceive its possibilities for the market and 
 for the factory ; but he is not likely to see 
 the wonderful beauties of the cotton fiber as 
 disclosed by the microscope, and as judged 
 by the eye of the naturalist and the artist; 
 although there is more and more to be seen 
 in this direction, continually, to those who 
 are tireless in their search for new disclosures 
 of the vegetable world. And so it is all the 
 way along in this matter of seeing. He who 
 seems to see most, might see more and more 
 if he were ready to see it. 
 
 Many a traveler expects to see " all that is 
 worth seeing " in a city that he visits for the 
 first time, in a few hours or a few days, by 
 driving through its principal streets, and by 
 looking in upon its public buildings, includ- 
 ing its galleries and its museums. Another 
 traveler, visiting that same city, sees more and 
 
22 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 more to be observed in the peculiarities of 
 the people, their dress, their manners, their 
 appearance, at every step of his way ; and a 
 single hour in one of its galleries or museums 
 convinces him that he could see more and 
 more to interest and profit him in that one 
 place if he could pass several hours of every 
 day there for months or years to come. 
 
 It is much the same in observing beauties 
 of natural scenery. One man expects to see 
 Niagara, or the Yosemite, or the Yellowstone 
 Park, or the Alps, or the Nile, as pointed out 
 to him by the personal-conductor of a tour- 
 ists' agency, in the schedule time of the con- 
 ventional tour, without missing anything that 
 other tourists have seen at the same point of 
 observation ; while another is sure, from his 
 first glimpse of what is before him, that he 
 should be seeing more and more that is 
 worth his seeing, for days and weeks to 
 come, if only he could continue looking 
 from that point, and from other points avail- 
 able to him. 
 
 And as it is to the tourist, so is it to the 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 23 
 
 expectant and observant seer in his own 
 home, in town or country. He may think 
 that he has seen all that is to be seen to 
 advantage in the streets he passes daily, in the 
 fields upon which his home windows look 
 out, or in the ocean, the mountains, or the 
 skies, visible in the distance from those win- 
 dows. Or, again, he may realize that there 
 is more and more for him to see just there, 
 or in just that direction, so long as he lives 
 there. And according to his belief, so it will 
 be unto him, in his seeing and seeing. 
 
 The soul-power which enables the eyes to 
 see more and more continually is a matter of 
 growth and cultivation, rather than of inborn 
 possession. He who understands that his 
 eyes are given him not only to see with but 
 to search with, has already learned the alpha- 
 bet of observation by which all the discov- 
 eries of taste and knowledge in the realm of 
 nature are disclosed and described to the 
 world. Only he can see more and more 
 with his eyes, who has more and more in his 
 mind that he is looking to find outside. 
 
24 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 As John Burroughs says of woodcraft- 
 seeing : " You must have the bird in your 
 heart before you can find it in the bush. The 
 eye must have purpose and aim. No one 
 ever yet found the walking fern who did not 
 have the walking fern in his mind. A person 
 whose eye is full of Indian relics picks them 
 up in every field he walks through." Or as 
 old Matthew Henry phrases this truth in its 
 application to another sphere : " He who 
 would observe God's providences, shall have 
 God's providences to observe." 
 
 Quite as much as in God's book of nature, 
 is expectant looking of value and impor- 
 tance in God's book of revelation. Says old 
 Thomas Fuller, " Lord, this morning I read 
 a chapter in the Bible, and therein observed 
 a memorable passage whereof I never took 
 notice before. Why now, and no sooner, did 
 I see it ? Formerly my eyes were as open, 
 and the letters as legible. Is there not a thin 
 veil laid over thy word, which is more rarefied 
 by reading, and at last wholly worn away ? " 
 Only he who sees more and more in the 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 25 
 
 Bible, and who expects to see more and more 
 there, can ever see what is in the Bible, or 
 have any comprehension of its truths and 
 its beauties. 
 
 As it is in seeing with the natural eye, so 
 is it in the realm of mental and of spiritual 
 vision. One man sees all that he cares to 
 see, because he sees all that he supposes 
 there is to be seen, in the direction of knowl- 
 edge or of faith, at his first looking in that 
 direction. Another man is sure that, because 
 he has seen something as he looked thither, 
 there must be a great deal more there for 
 him to see, if only he will continue to look 
 expectantly ; for there is always more to be 
 seen, in any and every direction, by him who 
 expects to see more and more. Just here, 
 indeed, is the line of marked distinction be- 
 tween the true scholar and the vain pedant. 
 The one sees; the other supposes he has 
 seen. The one sees more and more; the 
 other saw it all the first time he looked. The 
 one will make progress in knowledge and in 
 faith as long as he lives ; the other reached 
 
26 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 the limit of his progress when he opened his 
 eyes to the light of day. The one has no 
 conception of any light or sight beyond that 
 which was his at the earliest hour of his life's 
 morning ; the other is always in that path- 
 way of " the light of dawn that shineth more 
 and more unto the perfect day/' 
 
III. 
 
 WHAT WE SEE SHOWS WHAT 
 WE ARE. 
 
 A keen-eyed New England observer, of a 
 
 generation ago, in telling of the drinking 
 
 customs which prevailed in his earlier days, 
 
 spoke of the frequency, in those times, of 
 
 delirium tremens even among persons of the 
 
 " better class" in the community. As an 
 
 illustration in this line, he mentioned a father 
 
 and a son, living next door to him, who were 
 
 often thus carried away by their appetites, 
 
 and whom he was sometimes called to assist 
 
 in controlling, when the members of their 
 
 family were unable to manage them. " And 
 
 it was veiy singular," he said, " to note the 
 
 difference in the two men, when they had the 
 
 1 horrors/ The father was a genial, jolly 
 
 man; and he always saw monkeys in his 
 
 visions. He would laugh till the tears ran 
 
 27 
 
28 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 down his cheeks, as he pointed out the 
 dancing monkeys with their cornstalk fiddles, 
 which were all about him in his visions. 
 On the other hand, the son was morose and 
 sullen ; and when his brain was excited he 
 always saw Spaniards coming to murder 
 him, and devils ready to torture him. Each 
 of the men showed what was in him by 
 what he saw at such a time." And in that 
 discriminating suggestion the New England 
 observer declared a truth that has its appli- 
 cations in other realms than that of visions 
 and dreams. In all that one sees as he looks 
 about him in the world as it is, there is more 
 or less of an indication of what the observer 
 is, in his character, his characteristics, his 
 tastes, and his aspirations. 
 
 Three men were accidental companions in 
 a journey along the Pacific coast, including a 
 visit to the Yosemite Valley. All three had 
 the same scenery before them, but no two of 
 them saw the same things as they looked out 
 on that scenery. One of them seemed to 
 see nothing but sheep pasturage, or its lack. 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 29 
 
 He was all the time talking of the possibili- 
 ties of raising sheep on the hill-sides and on 
 the plains traversed by the party. He proved 
 to be a Pennsylvania wool-grower. A second 
 one was mentally measuring the big trees, 
 and was indulging in calculations as to the 
 amount of timber which one of the red- wood 
 forests would supply, and as to the time and 
 cost necessary to bring that timber to a mar- 
 ket. He was found to be a lumberman from 
 Michigan. The third man was constantly 
 drawn away from the attractions of the scen- 
 ery by the observed peculiarities of his travel- 
 ing companions, and of their guide, and of 
 the persons whom they met in their journey- 
 ing. Nothing in inanimate nature could 
 command his sustained interest, in compari- 
 son with human beings. He was a Christian 
 worker from the East, who cared more for 
 persons than for things. 
 
 Yet farther on in their journeyings those 
 three tourists met two other travelers, who 
 again had other sights to see in that which 
 was common to all, yet which was singular to 
 
SO SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 each. One of the two new observers saw only- 
 beauty in the natural scenery, and picturesque- 
 ness in any group of living personalities ; the 
 other was on the lookout for signs of former 
 life, and of ancient days, and of natural 
 changes in the country about him. The one 
 was an artist ; the other was a scientist. 
 
 And just what was observable in those five 
 observers on the Pacific coast at that time, 
 might have been then noted among other 
 observers elsewhere; as, indeed, it could be 
 noted everywhere at all times, where men 
 who observe are intelligently observed. The 
 desert Arab sees nothing of natural beauty 
 in the natural landscape within sight of him. 
 To him a mountain is only a barrier to be 
 surmounted tediously in his journeying, and 
 a spring of water has attractiveness only be- 
 cause of its value in thirst-quenching. The 
 African hunter in a weird jungle loses sight 
 of everything about him except that which 
 gives him a sign of his game, or of the helps 
 or hindrances to its capture. And the aver- 
 age woman in America, in Europe, in Asia, 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 3 1 
 
 or in Africa, will see another woman's dress, 
 be it much or little, when that dress merely 
 as a dress would hardly be observed by sheep- 
 grower, lumberman, Christian worker, artist, 
 scientist, desert guide, or jungle hunter. In 
 one sphere, as in all spheres, what one sees 
 shows more or less of what one is; or, in 
 other words, the observer's personality is un- 
 consciously projected into the object which 
 commands his attention and interest as an 
 observer. 
 
 It is true that not every person would be 
 limited, as an observer, to a single aspect of 
 the scene before him, as in the case of the 
 persons already cited in illustration of this 
 truth ; for unquestionably there are those 
 who would at one and the same time see 
 beauty as with the eye of an artist, facts as 
 with the eye of a scientist, persons as with 
 the eye of a lover of his fellows, while having, 
 also, an eye to the practical bearings of their 
 surroundings. Yet such persons would, just 
 as surely as if they were men of one idea, 
 show what is in them by what they see out- 
 
32 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 side of themselves. Their many-sided seeing 
 shows their many-sided being. Not every 
 man is so absorbed with a single conception 
 that it possesses his entire personality, nor 
 yet to that extent that it is his prevailing con- 
 ception in life. But whether a man be swayed 
 by one thought or by many thoughts, by a 
 single purpose or by conflicting purposes, 
 his thought and his purpose, or his thoughts 
 and his purposes, will be shown outside of 
 himself in what he sees beyond himself, and 
 in his estimates of the chief thing or things 
 which are noteworthy in that which he 
 observes. 
 
 In the field of character, as in the field of 
 natural scenery, what one sees is an indica- 
 tion of what one is. If a man, in looking 
 upon his fellows, sees only signs of selfish- 
 ness, or of impurity, or of dishonest courses, 
 he discloses the coloring of his mental and 
 moral vision, through which he looks upon 
 others. If a man says that there is no such 
 thing as absolute unselfishness in friendship 
 or in other loving devotedness, but that 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 33 
 
 everybody is influenced in his affections by 
 his personal interests, it is clear that that man 
 gives proof that his own inner experience 
 supplies him with no reason for supposing 
 that others are actuated by self-forgetful 
 fidelity to any object of their truest and 
 tenderest regard. If a business man insists 
 that strict and unswerving truth and honesty 
 are incompatible with business enterprise in 
 times like these, he practically announces 
 that he is not trying to carry on his business 
 in a way which would be hopelessly imprac- 
 ticable. He who is always suspicious of 
 others gives just ground for suspicion of 
 himself. He who is sure that everybody is 
 worse below the surface than above it, thereby 
 speaks out concerning his surface and sub- 
 surface characteristics. 
 
 And so it is all through the range of char- 
 acter-seeing. A loving spirit shows itself in 
 loving estimates of others ; or, in other words, 
 he who at heart is lovely shows his loveliness 
 in his recognition of a lovely side in every- 
 body whom he has occasion to observe. He 
 3 
 
34 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 who sees trustworthiness in others, shows 
 that he is a man worthy to be trusted. And 
 just in proportion as a man is hearty and 
 enthusiastic in his rejoicing over the high 
 and admirable qualities which, to his mind's 
 eye, stand out in the character of a friend to 
 whom he looks up as the embodiment of a 
 lofty ideal, does that man give evidence of a 
 correspondence in his own character of high 
 and admirable instincts and aspirings in the 
 direction of those which he sees and rejoices 
 over beyond himself. 
 
 This truth has a certain recognition in the 
 popular estimate of writers, as they disclose 
 themselves in their writings. Whether it be 
 the cynic like Rochefoucauld, the humorist 
 like Charles Lamb, the genial satirist like 
 Thackeray, the lover of nature like Words- 
 worth, or the lover of his fellows like Whittier, 
 the writer shows what he is in his personal 
 character, by what he sees as worthy of a 
 record when he looks out upon the world 
 about him. And if, indeed, it be said that 
 the personality of so great a writer as Shake- 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 35 
 
 speare is not disclosed in his writings, that is 
 only another way of saying that Shakespeare's 
 many-sidedness of character is so unique 
 that no single reader is capable of fully com- 
 prehending that character, and hence of per- 
 ceiving it in its faithful record. 
 
 Looking out upon the wider sphere of the 
 universe as a whole, with its exhibit of God's 
 plan and its suggestings of God's character, 
 an observer shows what he is by what he 
 sees. One man sees much to grieve over 
 and much to be regretted ; another man sees 
 much to rejoice over and much to delight in. 
 To one the outlook is chiefly a dark one, 
 with only here and there a fitful gleam of 
 lurid light to make the darkness gloomier. 
 To the other, the light is the chief thing 
 observable; and the very darkness is but as 
 a shadow to bring out the brightness into 
 more admirable relief. The difference be- 
 tween the two views is not in the moral 
 landscape, but in the moral nature of the 
 observer. The cause of hopeless discontent 
 on the one hand, and of restful contentment 
 
36 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 on the other hand, is in the person who sees, 
 not in the scenery which is seen. 
 
 It is this truth which is the point of the 
 well-known Eastern parable of the dead dog. 
 A dead dog lay in the streets of an Eastern 
 city. One and another of the passers-by 
 gave expression to their estimate of the 
 sight, as they came and went near it. One 
 said, "What a disgusting sight!" Another 
 said, "How that fouls the air!" Yet another 
 said, " Why don't the authorities remove that 
 nuisance ? " But by and by there came one of 
 majestic mien and of gentle manner, who, as 
 he looked in passing, said, " How very white 
 are his teeth ! " Then all agreed, " That must 
 be Jesus of Nazareth; for only he could see 
 beauty in a dead dog." If only there were 
 more of the spirit of Jesus in us, we should 
 see more than we do of purity and of beauty 
 in God's world about us here. 
 
IV. 
 
 PERCEIVING BEAUTY. 
 
 Everybody admires the beautiful. That 
 is, everybody admires that which he deems 
 the beautiful. But not everybody has the 
 same standard of beauty; not everybody 
 perceives beauty with like readiness in that 
 which one or another admires as beautiful. 
 In fact, beauty depends quite as much on the 
 spirit and perception of the observer, as on 
 the form and substance of the thing ob- 
 served. The eye alone cannot perceive 
 beauty. It is the soul back of the eye which 
 gives the possibility of beauty to be perceived 
 by the eye. 
 
 Among all the various definitions of beauty, 
 none has seemed more satisfactory than that 
 of Principal Shairp, the philosophic lover of 
 the beautiful. He has suggested that as 
 sound " is not a purely objective entity, but 
 
 37 
 
38 SEEING AND BEING, 
 
 is a result that requires to its production the 
 meeting of an outward vibration with a hear- 
 ing mind," so, also, " beauty, neither wholly 
 without nor wholly within us, is a product 
 resulting from the meeting of certain quali- 
 ties of the outward world with a sensitive 
 and imaginative soul." Beauty is a result 
 rather than a cause of an admiring mind. It 
 is in the seer rather than in the thing seen. 
 
 Whether or not, for example, there be 
 beauty in a gathering storm on the seacoast 
 depends on the fact of that storm being 
 observed, on the one hand by an artist or 
 a poet, or on the other hand by a terror- 
 stricken woman, or an old sailor with his 
 mind full of anxiety for comrades whom he 
 knows to be nearing a lee shore. And so in 
 all the range of nature's realm; the attitude 
 of mind, as well as the qualities of char- 
 acter, in the individual observer, has much 
 to do with giving to the thing observed the 
 essential elements of beauty. 
 
 It is much the same in the realm of litera- 
 ture as it is in the sphere of nature. One man 
 
SEEIXG AXD BEING. 39 
 
 sees only an unintelligible series of strange 
 characters on a printed page. Another per- 
 ceives there all the beauties of thought and 
 expression in the masterpieces of Homer. 
 The difference is not in the thing seen, but in 
 the observer's capacity of perceiving. Even 
 if he can read the poetry with the same ease 
 as another, one does not, necessarily, perceive 
 there the beauty which is present to the 
 other's eye. 
 
 Frederick W. Robertson shows his insight 
 of this practical truth when he says, " I 
 fancy character may be measured, both in 
 depth and quality, by the poet who is the 
 chosen favorite. He [the favorite poet] is a 
 kind of Nilometer to mark the depth at differ- 
 ent distances on the river." And all of us 
 judge not the poet, but the reader, when we 
 hear one express his estimate of the beauty 
 to be found in Shakespeare or Milton, in 
 Shelley or Keats, in Wordsworth or Brown- 
 ing, in Tennyson or Longfellow, in Lowell 
 or Whittier. The question in our minds is 
 not as to the beauty in the poetry, but rather 
 
40 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 as to the observer's capacity for the percep- 
 tion of the beautiful. 
 
 So it is, again, in the sphere of painting and 
 sculpture. One man sees only a confused 
 mass of color, or an inexpressive marble 
 figure, where another sees a thing of beauty, 
 because of his clearer perception of the pur- 
 pose of the artist, and of the practical real- 
 ization of that purpose. And the beauty 
 which is once perceived, can be so pointed 
 out and defined by the superior observer, or 
 be so apprehended by him who grows to it, 
 as to become a reality where before it had 
 no existence. Thus Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 tells of how long it took him to perceive the 
 true beauty of Raphael's frescoes in the 
 Loggia of the Vatican ; not because of any 
 lack of beauty in those frescoes, but because 
 of the need of further study of the elements 
 of that beauty on the part of their artist- 
 observer. When, however, he had perceived 
 the full beauty of those great works, he was 
 able to be a guide to others in the percep- 
 tion of their artistic value. 
 
SEEIXG AXD BEING. 4 1 
 
 The gorgeous paintings of Turner were, 
 through the teachings of Ruskin, changed, to 
 the public sense, from objects of derision or 
 wonderment, to objects of admiration and de- 
 light. And Raskin himself could come to 
 see beauty in the pictures of Kate Greenaway, 
 which at first he passed by with a sneer. 
 New beauty has been continually showing 
 itself in Millet's delicious paintings, since 
 the all-pervading spirit and sentiment of 
 those paintings have been more widely and 
 more clearly recognized. 
 
 You can, in a sense, measure the character 
 and the capacity of an ordinary observer in 
 the great art galleries of Europe, by learn- 
 ing whether he finds more beauty in the 
 gross realism of Titian, in the unreal spirit- 
 uality of Fra Angelica, or in Raphael's ex- 
 alted union of body, soul, and spirit; whether 
 his eves have delight in the mere graceful 
 lines of the Venus de Medici and the Apollo 
 Belvedere, or in the soul-filled face and the 
 faith-poised figure of the matchless David of 
 Michael Angelo. The measure of admira- 
 
42 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 tion marks not the work of art, but the soul 
 of him who observes the artist's work. 
 
 " Set a golden statue by Phidias before a 
 child," says Thomas Starr King, " and it sees 
 a mass of brilliant color; before an avari- 
 cious eye, and it gloats over the stately em- 
 bodiment of so much cash ; before a devotee 
 of anatomy, and he finds a revelation of so 
 much bodily proportion; before a mineral- 
 ogist, and he perceives so much chemical 
 and mineral truth; before an artist, and he 
 gazes upon so much skill and beauty; before 
 a man of moral insight, and he discerns the 
 grandeur of a God transfusing its substance, 
 pouring over the brightness of its limbs, 
 controlling its symmetry, breathing in un- 
 drainable suggestiveness from its face. Each 
 eye lights upon a truth; but the last one 
 pierces to the finest, highest, all-penetrating, 
 all-dominating truth. So it is in the world. 
 The senses simply stare at nature; the mind 
 looks, and finds law; the taste combines, and 
 enjoys art; the soul reads, and gains the per- 
 meating wisdom." 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 43 
 
 And so men see beauty according to their 
 capacity for its perception. That at which 
 they gaze does not change, but a change in 
 them would give it another reality as well as 
 another appearance. 
 
 Yet more marked is all this in what is 
 spoken of as personal beauty. There is no 
 such thing as one who is " beautiful to all 
 eyes." In Morocco, as in some of the South 
 Sea islands, " corpulency is the most infalli- 
 ble mark of beauty;" and every possible 
 means is made use of by young women to 
 increase their corpulency. Even in the lands 
 of the highest Christian civilization, the same 
 differences exist in the standards of personal 
 beauty as in the estimate of the works of 
 art which have been referred to. On every 
 side there are seen pictures of those who 
 pose as " professional beauties," which, while 
 admired by very many, have no more of per- 
 sonal attractiveness in them, no more sugges- 
 tion of even personal beauty in the originals, 
 on the one hand, to many a man of the most 
 refined taste and of the keenest perception 
 
44 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 of the beautiful, than, on the other hand, 
 they would have to an African or South Sea 
 native, whose standard of womanly beauty 
 is gross corpulency. In this case, that which 
 is called exceptionally beautiful by the Eng- 
 lishman or American of average cultivation 
 and of average character and taste, is as far 
 below the highest standard of true beauty, 
 as it is above the lowest standard. 
 
 The highest type of personal beauty is 
 clearly never of mere feature and outline and 
 color. There must be both mind and soul 
 showing in and through all these to give 
 them their greatest possible attractiveness. 
 This is the thought of Spenser, when he 
 says: 
 
 "For of the soul the body form doth take; 
 For soul is form, and doth the body make." 
 
 Addison tells of the added loveliness of a 
 woman's " innocence, piety, good-humor, and 
 truth ; virtues which add a new softness to her 
 sex, and even beautify her beauty." Young 
 asks: 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 45 
 
 "What's female beauty but an air divine 
 Through which the mind's all gentle graces shine ? " 
 
 Pope adds : 
 
 " Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, 
 But the joint force and full result of all." 
 
 "To form a finished human beauty, and to 
 give it its full influence," says Bacon, "the 
 face must be expressive of such gentle and 
 amiable qualities as correspond with the 
 smoothness and delicacy of the outward 
 form." Milton's description of the first and 
 most beautiful of women is : 
 
 "Grace was in all her steps, heav'n in her eye, 
 In every gesture dignity and love." 
 
 Even Byron recognizes this essential of 
 beauty when he sings of one who " walks in 
 beauty" because she lives in goodness: 
 
 "And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, 
 
 So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, 
 The smiles that win, the tints that glow, 
 
 But tell of days in goodness spent, 
 A mind at peace with all below, 
 
 A heart whose love is innocent." 
 
46 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 Shakespeare states it yet more clearly : 
 
 "Oh, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem 
 By that sweet ornament which truth doth give ! 
 The rose looks fair, but fairer it we deem 
 For that sweet odor which doth in it live." 
 
 To perceive the beauty of mind and soul 
 below the surface of the features, and back 
 of and within the outer form, and to recog- 
 nize the illuminating and transfiguring power 
 of these inner and essential elements of 
 beauty, is a result and an evidence of supe- 
 rior capacity of seeing on the part of the 
 observer of the beautiful. Here again it is, 
 that what one sees shows what he is. 
 
 This perception of the soul as the source 
 and measure of personal beauty gives the 
 peculiar power and charm to the remarkable 
 paintings of Millet, already mentioned. An 
 art-critic says of this " greatest painter of 
 humanity" in recent times: "To him, the 
 human body, with all its exquisite forms and 
 retreating curves, delicate grays and reds, 
 and soft palpitating flesh, was but a casket, 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 47 
 
 beautiful indeed, but enclosing a still more 
 wonderful and beautiful soul, that speaks its 
 volitions and thoughts, its emotions and 
 sensations, with every movement of those 
 limbs, with every parting of those lips, and 
 every glance of those eyes — to whose elo- 
 quent and infinite radiance the opals of the 
 Ural or the diamonds of Golconda are but 
 inert matter in comparison. Such was hu- 
 manity to the searching, divining spirit of 
 Millet." And such is humanity to every real 
 discerner of the beautiful. 
 
 " A man shall see faces," says Bacon, "that, 
 if you examine them part by part, you shall 
 find never a good; and yet all together do 
 well." There are persons who would not be 
 named as beautiful by the standard of pro- 
 fessional beauties of to-day, who yet are 
 counted as of exceptional beauty by those 
 whose standard of beauty is highest, and who 
 are sufficiently familiar with the characters 
 of those persons to perceive the constant 
 irradiation of their faces and forms from the 
 light of the soul within. Nor is it partiality 
 
48 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 which makes such persons appear beautiful 
 to some who know them best. It is rather 
 the superior perception of true beauty which 
 gives to these observers the ability to recog- 
 nize it here. The beauty in such cases may 
 be as the beauty of a poem rather than as the 
 beauty of a picture ; yet it is a real beauty, 
 which is sure to be perceived alike by all 
 whose nature and training give them a simi- 
 lar sense of the beautiful, however much the 
 knowledge of this fact might surprise the 
 unconscious possessors of such beauty. 
 
 And as it is true that all recognition of the 
 beautiful in nature and in art and in humanity 
 is dependent not so much upon the object of 
 sight, as upon the character and spirit of the 
 seer, much more is this the case in the realm 
 of spiritual vision. Spiritual things are spir- 
 itually discerned. He who was himself the 
 perfection of spiritual beauty, who was "the 
 chiefest among ten thousand," and the one 
 "altogether lovely," came down into this 
 world of ours, and showed himself among 
 the sons of men, and behold, he was despised 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 49 
 
 and rejected of men. He had no form nor 
 comeliness, and when men saw him there was 
 in him no beauty that they should desire 
 him. So also, we may believe, it would be 
 again to-day. If Jesus Christ should re- 
 appear upon the earth, as he was and as he is, 
 he would not gratify the taste nor command 
 the admiration and approval of the sons of 
 men generally. Neither in his personal pres- 
 ence and appearance, in his conduct, nor in 
 his spirit, would he be deemed lovely by 
 many of those who call themselves by his 
 name, but who lack the capacity to perceive 
 true spiritual beauty in Christ, or in the re- 
 flection of Christ. While they are what they 
 are, Christ could never seem beautiful to 
 them, he being what he is. 
 
 As the perception of beauty outside of 
 one's self can never precede the existence 
 within one's self of a measure of correspond- 
 ence with the ideal thus recognized; as a 
 certain degree of likeness to, or at least of 
 sympathy with, the object admired, is essen- 
 tial to the perception of beauty in that ob- 
 4 
 
50 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 ject; so is it unmistakably true that until 
 Christ is formed within us as our loved and 
 adored spiritual ideal, we can never hope to 
 recognize the true spiritual beauty of Christ. 
 If we are to have our desire of seeing the 
 beauty of the Lord, the beauty of the Lord 
 must first be upon us — through being within 
 us. It is not until we are like him that we 
 can see him as he is. 
 
V. 
 
 RECOGNIZING NOBLENESS. 
 
 Next to being noble is the ability to recog- 
 nize nobleness in others. In fact, the ability 
 to recognize nobleness in others indicates a 
 measure of nobleness in one's self; the recog- 
 nition is a proof of kinship. It is in this as 
 it is in every other line of observation and of 
 outreaching: one's perceptions and attrac- 
 tions and repulsions are the truest test of 
 one's personal character. 
 
 There is a sense in which we always meas- 
 ure a man by his own standards of measure- 
 ment, even if we do not always agree with a 
 man's measurement of himself. When we 
 are told that the Arabs of the desert have 
 absolutely no apprehension of the beauties 
 of natural scenery, that they see nothing in 
 a mountain but a barrier to easy travel, and 
 nothing in a sunset across the sea except a 
 
 5i 
 
52 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 sign that it is almost time for sleep, that does 
 not lower our estimate of the scenery, but 
 it does of the Arabs. The little boy who, 
 when asked whom he should wish to see first 
 in heaven, answered promptly "Golia'h," 
 showed convincingly that size and muscle 
 made up his standard of greatness. And he 
 who proclaims as his ideal hero a military 
 chieftain, or a successful explorer, or a man 
 of large riches, or a shrewd schemer, or an 
 unselfish patriot, or a devoted missionary, in 
 thus passing judgment on others gives to 
 others the material for a proper judgment of 
 himself. So, also, in pointing out the beauties 
 or the flaws of a work of literature or of art, 
 or of a human career, any man shows what 
 he is by showing what he approves. His 
 measure of criticism is so far the measure of 
 himself. 
 
 Our Lord did not hesitate to adopt this 
 method of judgment when he was on earth. 
 When he found a scribe looking through the 
 mere letter of the law, and recognizing its 
 inner spirit of love, Jesus said unto him, 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 53 
 
 " Thou art not far from the kingdom of 
 God." What the scribe recognized in the 
 law, proved what w r as in the scribe. It was 
 because the poor Syrophenician mother rec- 
 ognized in Jesus more of sympathy and 
 tenderness and readiness to give her help 
 than showed on the surface in his word and 
 manner at the first, that Jesus commended 
 her spirit and granted her request. What 
 any one recognizes in Jesus is the test — not 
 of Jesus, but of the one who observes Jesus. 
 When Jesus seemed to the scoffing throng 
 at Calvary only a condemned felon, the 
 Roman centurion, who had charge of the 
 executioners, perceived enough below and 
 beyond the surface to cry out, " Truly this 
 was the Son of God;" and in that recog- 
 nition of the Messiah the centurion won the 
 world's recognition of his personal nobleness 
 and worth. 
 
 No act of royal David ever showed more 
 of his innate nobleness of character than his 
 quick recognition of nobleness in the three 
 mighty men who were glad to risk their 
 
 . 
 
54 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 lives to bring a drink of refreshing to their 
 loved and honored leader. "And David was 
 then in the hold [of the cave of Adullam] ; 
 and the garrison of the Philistines was then 
 in Bethlehem. And David longed, and said, 
 ' Oh that one would give me water to drink 
 of the well of Bethlehem, [the old home-well 
 of Bethlehem,] which is by the gate ! ' And 
 the three mighty men [moved by that cry of 
 longing] brake through the host of the Phi- 
 listines, and drew water out of the well of 
 Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and took 
 it, and brought it to David. But he [touched 
 by their loving fidelity] would not drink 
 thereof, but poured it out unto the Lord. 
 And he said, ' Be it far from me, O Lord, 
 that I should do this. Shall I drink the blood 
 of the men that went in jeopardy of their 
 lives?' Therefore he would not drink it." 
 
 An ordinary Oriental chieftain would count 
 it but an ordinary matter for three of his 
 soldiers to risk their lives in order to give 
 him comfort ; but it was the superior noble- 
 ness in David that made him recognize the 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 55 
 
 peculiar nobleness in that exhibit of self- 
 sacrificing devotedness to him, on the part 
 of those brave and generous-minded men. 
 
 It is the nobler men of the world to-day 
 who recognize the surpassing nobleness of 
 the character of George Washington. It is 
 the man who has no vestige of true nobleness 
 in his own character, who thinks that Wash- 
 ington has been greatly overrated. It is the 
 nobler qualities in the character of a man 
 like Gladstone that cause him to look up to 
 Washington as noble beyond comparison; 
 just as it is the higher military ability of a 
 man like General Sherman that enables him 
 to. see, and to bear testimony to, the great 
 military wisdom and skill of Washington. 
 It is because the average man is so far be- 
 low Gladstone or Sherman, that he confesses 
 himself unable to see wherein the special 
 greatness of Washington as a soldier or as a 
 statesman is to be found. 
 
 Emerson reminds us that "it was a tra- 
 dition of the ancient world, that no meta- 
 morphosis could hide a god from a god; 
 
56 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 and there is a Greek verse which runs, — 
 
 * The gods are to each other not unknown/ " 
 
 It is a Hindoo saying, that, "among emi- 
 nent persons, . . . the superior qualities open 
 quick communication. The moment the bees 
 smell the fragrance of the Ketaki, they instinc- 
 tively fly for it." Carlyle suggests that true 
 hero-worship is possible only to men who 
 are themselves of such heroic mind that they 
 can recognize the presence of nobleness in 
 those above them. And this truth of the 
 ages it is that brings Emerson to say : " I 
 do not forgive in my friends the failure to 
 know a fine character." Even if one were 
 forgiven by others for such a failure, he ought 
 not to forgive himself, for it is not in his judg- 
 ment, but in himself, that his failure lies. 
 
 In every character that we observe, and in 
 every thought or thing that is brought to 
 our notice, there is sure to be something of 
 good and something of evil. It always re- 
 quires less ability, and a lower measure of 
 worth, to detect a flaw when the good pre- 
 
SEEING AND BEING. $7 
 
 dominates, than to perceive that which is 
 admirable under an unlovely exterior. In 
 perceiving that which is noble, we prove our 
 own nobleness, and we promote it also; for 
 all good grows and gains by its exercise. In 
 giving prominence to any recognized fault or 
 lack, we show our own littleness, and we lose 
 another opportunity of uplifting ourselves 
 and others ; for when we gain in character, 
 others are gainers through our attainment 
 
 "Be noble: and the nobleness that lies 
 In other men, sleeping but never dead, 
 Will rise in majesty to meet thine own." 
 
 There is an educating power in the study 
 of noble attributes. And noble attributes 
 are sure to be found in every human char- 
 acter which has won the world's love and 
 honor; even though in every such character 
 there is something also which might fairly 
 be censured or ridiculed, if that were taken 
 by itself. Our duty is to look at the nobler 
 aspects of men and women about us who are 
 evidently doing a good work, or who are 
 
58 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 commanding public confidence and respect, 
 in spite of faults or follies which all can see 
 and sneer at. In such study it is that prog- 
 ress is made toward a likeness of the more 
 attractive attributes exhibited in the charac- 
 ters we observe, and away from all which 
 mars their beauty. 
 
 The next thing to being manly, is to recog- 
 nize and honor manliness in another. The 
 next thing to being unselfish, is to recognize 
 and honor unselfishness in another. The 
 next thing to being pure, is to recognize and 
 honor purity in another. And the next thing 
 to being Christ-like, is to perceive the like- 
 ness of Christ; indeed, to perceive Christ's 
 likeness is in itself to be Christ-like. 
 
VI. 
 
 DISCERNING CHARACTER AT 
 A GLIMPSE, 
 
 On the road to the Yosemite Valley, by 
 what is known as the Mariposa trail, is a 
 remarkable outlook, appropriately called In- 
 spiration Point, from which is obtained the 
 first distinct view of the wonderful valley. 
 The lessons of that outlook have their appli- 
 cation to many a sphere besides that of land- 
 scape viewing. 
 
 It was after a dreary ride, through a dismal 
 snow-storm, on a gloomy day, without agree- 
 able companionship, that the writer reached 
 that point, and, leaving his horse with an 
 attendant on the rough mountain road, found 
 his way through the wet shrubbery to a 
 position on a jutting rock of the eminence, 
 said to be favorable to a commanding view, 
 and there looked in the direction indicated 
 
 59 
 
60 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 by the guide. A dense mist shut out every- 
 thing from sight, beyond a few rods at the 
 farthest. But, as he looked, the storm was 
 over, the clouds parted, the setting sun came 
 out, huge masses of vapor lifted themselves 
 like a rolling curtain from the depths beyond, 
 and the valley below was suddenly exposed 
 to full view. 
 
 There at the left stood El Capitan, with 
 its sheer walls of granite, like a massive cube 
 of rock, rising from the green valley to an 
 elevation fifteen times as high as Bunker Hill 
 monument; while beyond at the right and 
 left rose a dozen or more other granite walls, 
 and towering peaks, and lofty domes, some 
 of them as high above El Capitan as five, 
 ten, or fifteen Bunker Hill monuments piled 
 above the first fifteen. The beautiful cata- 
 ract of Po-ho-no was pouring its vibratory 
 waters over a height three times as great as 
 Niagara, while other falls yet three times as 
 high as Po-ho-no were shimmering in the 
 sunlight. There, in the compass of a view 
 three miles by fifteen, were clustered such 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 6 1 
 
 bewildering sights of grandeur and beauty 
 as overwhelmed the gazer with a sense of 
 their majesty and vastness, and put at fault 
 in an instant every standard of mountain 
 measurement and every ideal of natural 
 scenery he had ever conceived. 
 
 It was but for a moment. The clouds re- 
 turned. The lifted veil was dropped. All 
 again was mist and gloom. But that one 
 glimpse was sufficient, to him who gazed, to 
 reveal beyond doubt or question the wonder- 
 ful beauty of the Yosemite Valley. Had no 
 other view of it ever been given him, he 
 would have known as truly as if he had seen 
 it every day from childhood, that it was im- 
 pressive and lovely and awe-inspiring beyond 
 description. 
 
 Nor is it in natural scenery alone that a 
 single glimpse suffices for a disclosure of 
 essential characteristics, and fixes for all time 
 an estimate of that which is thus observed. 
 You enter a room in some city or country 
 home, with whose inmates you are quite un- 
 acquainted. You see unexpected signs of 
 
62 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 refinement and taste there. The furnishing 
 is neither elegant nor costly; but it is distinc- 
 tively admirable. Grace and delicacy show 
 themselves on every side. Good taste and 
 cultivation are apparent in the appointments 
 and adornings of the room; in single pieces 
 of furniture; in the style of the curtains, or 
 the colors of the carpet; in the corner brack- 
 ets, or a few simple mantel ornaments; in 
 pictures on the wall, or books on the table; 
 in the selection and arrangement of flowers 
 or vines. The less expensive all these are, 
 the more they disclose of real character. 
 One glance settles the question in your mind 
 concerning the taste and refinement of the 
 person responsible for the appointments of 
 that room. You cannot be mistaken thus 
 far. No money can purchase these signs of 
 refinement. No deception can make poor 
 taste stand for good. You are sure that all 
 further acquaintance would only give added 
 evidence of the accuracy of your instant 
 judgment on this point. 
 
 So also in matters of personal conduct. 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 63 
 
 In a railway car or on a steamboat you see 
 a gentleman leave his seat to give a bit of 
 candy to the crying child of a poor overtaxed 
 mother, with a look of kindliness on his face 
 that could not be simulated. You feel sure 
 of his goodness of heart, if you never saw 
 anything of him but this. One glimpse is 
 sufficient. You would not be afraid to trust 
 your child in that man's care at any time. 
 Or again you see a richly dressed lady jerk 
 the arm of her little girl with an ill-natured 
 snap; and you hear the impatient tones of 
 her unmotherly rebuke of the child. One 
 glimpse is sufficient. You need nothing 
 more to satisfy you that she is not the per- 
 son to have charge of the infant-class in your 
 Sunday-school. 
 
 A neighbor's boy is often judged by you, 
 once for all, by a single show of meanness 
 or of generosity, of ill-nature or of sweetness 
 of temper, of modesty or of impurity. An 
 applicant for a place in your office, or shop, 
 or kitchen, or on your farm, in many a case 
 satisfies you concerning his character by the 
 
64 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 way in which he bears himself in his first 
 interview with you. And no subsequent dis- 
 closure is likely to reverse a conviction based 
 on the one glimpse which fairly opens to view 
 the distinguishing traits of any person's na- 
 ture. The conclusion arrived at is as fixed 
 as it is prompt. 
 
 You meet some faces which repel you at a 
 glimpse. You know that they are not to be 
 trusted. You see selfishness, or lust, or 
 malignity, or cunning and deceit, written in 
 every line, and exhibited in the expression 
 as a whole. You do not want to hear argu- 
 ment on the subject. You know that those 
 persons are unworthy of confidence and re- 
 spect. Again, you see in faces such evi- 
 dences of sincerity and uprightness, that you 
 give your confidence unreservedly to their 
 possessor at the very start. You look into a 
 face of refinement and delicacy and saintli- 
 ness ; you see there the signs of quick per- 
 ceptions, of keen sensitiveness, of purity of 
 motive and conduct, of a high-strung nature 
 in close control, of attainment in godliness 
 
SEEING AND BEING, 65 
 
 through sanctified suffering. You are as sure 
 at the first glimpse as you ever could be, of 
 the superiority of that character in its sphere. 
 You give it your reverent admiration from 
 the beginning, without a fear that you could 
 ever find yourself mistaken in its predomi- 
 nant qualities. Or again, in some hour of 
 need, you see a face which shows manly 
 independence and vigor, to be trusted un- 
 waveringly alike in every emergency. One 
 glimpse is sufficient. That man can always 
 be depended on. 
 
 It is often true that a glance, under certain 
 circumstances, exhibits one's character by its 
 disclosure of feeling, even more clearly than 
 the ordinary expression of face. There are 
 single looks of affection which are treasured 
 as the choicer memories of a life-time. One 
 look of sympathy in a moment of need has 
 told so much that it was thenceforward, un- 
 failingly, a help and a comfort to a sorely 
 burdened heart. There have been sterner 
 rebukes in a look than in the bitterest words 
 which were ever spoken. "And the Lord 
 5 
 
66 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter 
 remembered the word of the Lord, how he 
 had said unto him, Before the cock crow this 
 day, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he 
 went out and wept bitterly." And many a 
 child weeps bitterly, even after he has come 
 to full manhood, as he remembers some 
 unloving or ungrateful word which long 
 ago was rebuked by a mother's never-to- 
 be-forgotten look of sad and heart-sick re- 
 proach. 
 
 Even a glimpse of a face in its passing on 
 the crowded street may be to us as a gleam 
 of light from within the golden gates, to give 
 us assurance that the realm beyond is an un- 
 mistakable reality. It is of such a glimpse 
 that Robert Leighton tells : 
 
 " I know the face of him who with the sphere 
 Of unseen presences communion keeps : 
 His eyes retain its wonders in their clear 
 
 Unfathomable depths. 
 He brings the thought that gives to earthly things 
 
 Eternal meaning ; brings the living faith 
 That, even now, puts on the immortal wings, 
 And clears the shadow, Death. 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 67 
 
 This in his face I see ; and, when we meet, 
 
 My earthliness is shamed by him ; but yet 
 Takes hope, to think that in the unholy street, 
 Such men are to be met." 
 
 Or the passing glimpse may give its dis- 
 closure of such torture of soul and such 
 familiarity with evil, as to bring a conviction 
 akin to that which prompted the women of 
 Verona to say of the gloomy-faced Dante: 
 "That man has been in hell !" 
 
 He who would be judged favorably at a 
 glimpse, must have a character that deserves 
 a favorable judgment at all times. It is of 
 no use for one to be on the watch for oppor- 
 tunities to make the abiding impression in 
 the hope that just then one can shape it 
 desirably. That which shows one conclu- 
 sively comes out from within; it cannot be 
 put on. No forced smile or designing words 
 of kindly tone, no pretense of integrity, of 
 refinement, of independence and manly vigor, 
 can be a substitute for that which is unaf- 
 fected and sincere. What we are, not what 
 we assume to be, is settled by the single 
 
68 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 glimpse of us which discloses our real selves 
 to those whose opinion is worth having. This 
 truth it is that gives force to the injunction 
 of Solomon : " Keep thy heart [thine inner 
 self] with all diligence [or, above all that 
 thou guardest] ; for out of it are the issues 
 of life; " and out of it are, also, the uncon- 
 scious and inevitable disclosures of personal 
 character. 
 
VII 
 THE POETIC SENSE IN SEEING. 
 
 It is the poetic sense which perceives beauty 
 in the things of the natural world, where the 
 purely prosaic mind would see nothing to 
 attract or impress. What we call " the poetry 
 of nature" is, in fact, that view of nature 
 which is in the eye of the poet-observer. 
 The multiplied " Poems of Places," for ex- 
 ample, which Longfellow has gathered and 
 classified, are proofs of the poet spirit in 
 those who saw, rather than of the poem- 
 inspirings of that which was Seen. 
 
 "Sure there are poets which did never dream 
 Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream 
 Of Helicon : we therefore may suppose 
 Those made not poets, but the poets those." 
 
 Principal Shairp has, indeed, claimed that 
 poetry itself is as true a form of thinking as 
 
 69 
 
70 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 is science in its estimate of external nature; 
 and that the place of poetry in the present 
 order of things in our universe was not made 
 by the conceit of man, but was intended by 
 the Maker of this order. He is sure that, as 
 Wordsworth claims, poetry is "the breath 
 and finer spirit of all knowledge," and " im- 
 mortal as the mind of man." Yet, in this 
 view of the case, it is none the less true that 
 the poetry of nature is not in nature itself, 
 but rather in the poet-observer of nature; 
 and that it is mainly by the power of asso- 
 ciation that the poetic teachings of nature 
 are revealed to the observer who is possessed 
 of the poetic spirit. " No eye can see deeply 
 into the meaning of nature unless it has also 
 looked as deeply into the recesses of the hu- 
 man heart, and felt the full gravity of man's 
 life and destiny. It is only when seen over 
 against these, that nature renders back her 
 profounder tones." 
 
 The poetic spirit is that spirit which invests 
 the things of nature with the emotions of 
 the human heart; which looks down through 
 
SEEING AND BEING 7 1 
 
 that which is seen into that which is thought 
 and felt: 
 
 "And as imagination bodies forth 
 The form of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name." 
 
 But there are many who have the poet's soul 
 who lack the poet's pen; and to them it is 
 that the truest " poems of places " are the 
 unwritten associations of the scenery upon 
 which they look. 
 
 The poetic sense will invest all scenery 
 with such associations of fact or of fancy as to 
 make every place a place of poems. Ruskin 
 bears testimony to this truth out of his own 
 experience even as a child. Speaking of his 
 intense and joyous love of natural scenery, 
 he says : " It was never independent of as- 
 sociated thought. Almost as soon as I could 
 see or hear, I had got reading enough to give 
 me associations with all kinds of scenery ; 
 and mountains, in particular, were always 
 partly confused with those of my favorite 
 book, Scott's "Monastery;" so that Glenfarg 
 
72 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 and all other glens were more or less en> 
 chanted to me; filled with forms of hesitat- 
 ing creed about Christie of the Clint Hill, 
 and the monk Eustace; and with a general 
 presence of White Lady every where/' So 
 it is, in a lesser or larger degree, with every 
 lover of nature; his perception of beauty in 
 nature is dependent chiefly on the associa- 
 tions with which his poetic sense invests the 
 place of his observing. 
 
 There are associations of scenery which 
 grow out of the lessons of history; and just 
 in proportion as the man of poetic soul is 
 informed in these lessons is the scenery about 
 him transfused with their glory and imbued 
 with their inspirations. The arid wastes of 
 desolated Egypt have fullest meaning to him 
 who reads in the mighty monuments which 
 tower above those wastes, the story of the 
 Pharaohs and the shepherd kings; of the 
 priests of Isis and Osiris; 
 
 "Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam, 
 That laughing queen that caught the world's great 
 hands; " 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 73 
 
 of all the legendary rulers of the land of 
 Mizraim from Menes to the Ptolemies: 
 
 "Till back upon his awestruck soul 
 A thousand ages seem to roll." 
 
 The fields of Marathon and of Marston Moor 
 and of Waterloo have a meaning in the light 
 of their history which makes, the scenery 
 about them vocal with the praise of noble 
 deeds. And who could look upon the scen- 
 ery of Palestine but in the glow of its sacred 
 history — 
 
 "Those holy fields 
 Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, 
 Which eighteen hundred years ago were nailed, 
 For our advantage, on the bitter cross" ? 
 
 Nor is it alone in the great events of the 
 ages that local scenery has acquired its more 
 precious historic associations. There are few 
 places even here in our own new country 
 which have not some neighborhood tradition 
 to illumine them, or which have not been 
 brightened or shaded by the pen of a well- 
 known writer. This it is which gives an 
 
74 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 added value to the " Poems of Places," the 
 " Nooks and Corners of the New England 
 Coast," "Across the Continent/' "The Great 
 South," and the various hand-books of travel, 
 which have clustered the historic, the legen- 
 dary, and the other poetic associations of dif- 
 ferent American localities. He indeed is 
 poorly fitted for the truest enjoyments of 
 summer or of winter travel who is unfamiliar 
 with those records of facts and fancies which 
 combine to irradiate the scenery of his route 
 and of his resting-places. 
 
 But history is never so dear to us as mem- 
 ory. No associations with those t>f whom 
 we know only in story can so vocalize the 
 poetry of our surroundings as do the recol- 
 lections of our own former days of joy or 
 sadness in that locality, and of our fellow- 
 ship there with those whom we loved, and 
 from whom we are now separated. 
 
 "Glad sight whenever new with old 
 
 Is joined, through some dear home-born tie ! 
 The life of all that we behold 
 Depends upon that mystery. 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 7$ 
 
 Vain is the glory of the sky, 
 
 The beauty vain of field and grove, 
 
 Unless, while with admiring eye 
 We gaze, we also learn to love." 
 
 It is because that strip of low sandy beach 
 just over the bay yonder, with the vast ocean 
 stretching beyond it, was in the line of our 
 childhood's vision as we looked toward the 
 rising sun, morning after morning, that its 
 every glistening atom has now a separate 
 story for us on our occasional return to its 
 neighborhood. It is for what we remember 
 out of the past, rather than for what we see in 
 the present, that there is such a halo of pre- 
 ciousness around the revisited homestead : — 
 
 " The orchard, the meadow, the deep tangled wild- 
 wood; 
 And every loved spot which our infancy knew." 
 
 Nor is it from childhood only that there 
 come memories which pervade the surround- 
 ing scenery with hallowed associations. 
 
 "The spot where love's first links were wound, 
 That ne'er are riven, 
 Is hallowed down to earth's profound, 
 And up to heaven ! " 
 
76 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 And no sorrow's shade can wholly shut out 
 light from the place where our joys were 
 multiplied by being shared. 
 
 4 'All along the valley, where thy waters flow, 
 I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago. 
 All along the valley, while I walked to-day, 
 The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls 
 
 away; 
 For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed 
 Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the 
 
 dead ; 
 And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree, 
 The voice of the dead was a living voice to me." 
 
 That sail upon the river; that opening in 
 the woods; that pathway under the cliffs; 
 that sweep of mountain landscape in its 
 ever-changing light and shade; that brook- 
 side walk; that moss-hung and fern-carpeted 
 grotto; that elm-studded meadow, — how re- 
 fulgent is each with the light of other days ; 
 how each recalls presences and voices which 
 we remember with gladness. 
 
 " In spots like this it is, we prize 
 Our memory, feel that she hath eyes." 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 77 
 
 There are associated memories in the scen- 
 ery of places we have never visited before. 
 The likeness to other scenery calls up the 
 kindred recollections of those localities. 
 These mountains are so like those we used 
 to sit and watch under the drifting clouds. 
 That is almost the same meadow view which 
 stretched away from our home window. It 
 was on just such a shore as this that we 
 looked out upon the ocean with a never-to- 
 be-forgotten companion. 
 
 " Break, break, break, 
 
 At the foot of thy crags, O sea ! 
 But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
 Will never come back to me." 
 
 And if nothing else is familiar, the sky 
 above us is the same as always. That sunset 
 in its gorgeousness seems the very one that 
 our happy party looked at together so long 
 ago, when we helped each other to its enjoy- 
 ment. And that full moon, with its fleeting 
 silver clouds, lights us back to the war-time 
 nights we passed with a friend who was 
 dearer far than life, as we lay together on the 
 
78 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 open field looking up into the blue sky, and 
 talking of to-morrow's hopes and fears. Even 
 the crowded city has this bit of scenery, with 
 its varied and yet unvarying associations. 
 
 " O blue sky ! it mindeth me 
 Of places where I used to see 
 Its vast unbroken circle, thrown 
 From the far pale-peaked hill 
 Out to the last verge of ocean — 
 As by God's arm it were done 
 Then for the first time ; with the emotion 
 Of that first impulse on it still." 
 
 But, after all, the best associations of natu- 
 ral scenery are the associations of truth; 
 the associations not of history nor of mem- 
 ory merely, but of truth — of immutable truth 
 that takes hold of the past, the present, and 
 the future. There is truth pictured in all 
 nature, even in the commonest phases of na- 
 ture; and poetry is the heart's view of truth. 
 
 Good Dr. Bushnell writing to a daughter 
 away from home, in an unattractive region, 
 for a winter's visit, urged her to invest the 
 common things about her with the associa- 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 79 
 
 tions of truth. " Learn how," he said, "to 
 extort enjoyments and pleasures out of com- 
 mon-places. You have to put on all your 
 screws of pressure, and make the meager 
 things give out their riches ; — on the weather, 
 just as various and lively in a dull country 
 as anywhere, whistling to keep its courage 
 up ; on the trees, stripping naked and stiffen- 
 ing their muscle to fight the winter out; on 
 the stumps of the stumpy fields, — good sym- 
 bols of written history, hiding its roots, and 
 dead and gone as to its tops; on the river, 
 meandering most where it has the dullest 
 motion, — just as lazy people go farthest be- 
 cause they are going nowhere ; ... on the 
 chickens, pecking their food with the same 
 tool they fight with, just as silly mankind 
 bipeds make their purveyings and economies 
 the same thing as the great fight of life; on 
 the pigs' tails, spiraling in the curl always 
 one way, — showing one more evidence of 
 the uniformity of law; or, if they have been 
 cut off, how the lines of beauty once gone 
 can never be restored. . . . Stir up, touch 
 
80 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 off, dramatize, and make alive everything. 
 The very poverty of your rights and condi- 
 tions will thus become your riches. There 
 is even a landscape in a quagmire, if only we 
 had eyes to see it. And it is a great thing 
 to have eyes! A winter spent in getting 
 eyes will be worth more than all the hundred 
 eyes of Argus filled gratis with pretty sights." 
 If there are associations of truth in the 
 winter scenery of a farm-yard and a quag- 
 mire, who shall fail to find the associations 
 of truth in his resting-place at the seaside or 
 in the country, in the midsummer? Such 
 observing it is which 
 
 " Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 
 
 The truest poetry in the observing and in- 
 vesting of nature is that poetry which 
 
 " Looks through nature up to nature's God." 
 
 This was the earlier poetry of the race, which 
 showed us how — 
 
 " The morning stars sang together, 
 And all the sons of God shouted for joy." 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 8 1 
 
 This it was which caused the Psalmist to 
 sing:— 
 
 " The heavens declare the glory of God ; 
 And the firmament sheweth his handy work ; " 
 
 "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy 
 fingers, 
 The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained ; 
 What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? 
 And the son of man, that thou visitest him ?" 
 
 " The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; 
 The world, and they that dwell therein." 
 
 " His foundation is in the holy mountains." 
 
 " In his hand are the deep places of the earth ; 
 The heights of the mountains are his also. 
 The sea is his, and he made it ; 
 And his hands formed the dry land." 
 
 The mountains uplift the thoughts toward 
 God. The sea gives a suggestion of his in- 
 finity. "The sky is distant, but the sea is 
 near. We can walk down to the shore and 
 lay our hands upon its waters; and when we 
 do so, we feel as if we touched the feet of 
 
 Jehovah ; as if we saw the very fields of im- 
 6 
 
82 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 mensity and eternity, and held within our 
 grasp the lines that bind us to another life." 
 There are associations of God's presence 
 with every phase of natural scenery; and he 
 who looks at mountain, or forest, or ocean, or 
 plain, without recognizing and rejoicing over 
 these associations, lacks the true poet's soul 
 and the true poet's eye. On the contrary, 
 he who notes and heeds them finds comfort, 
 as well as poetry, in them everywhere. 
 
 " Listen alone beside the sea, 
 
 Listen among the woods ; 
 
 Those voices of twin solitudes 
 Shall have one sound alike to thee. 
 
 Hark where the murmurs of thronged men 
 
 Surge and sink back, and surge again, — 
 Still the one voice of wave and tree." 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE UNSEEN AS A CHARM OF 
 THE SEEN 
 
 " Nothing can be true which is either com- 
 plete or vacant/' says Ruskin, in his com- 
 ments on art; "every touch is false which 
 does not suggest more than it represents, 
 and every space is false which represents 
 nothing." William M. Hunt once gave as a 
 reason for the "charming" and "poetic" 
 character of a painting by Corot, " It is be- 
 cause it is not what people call a finished 
 painting. There is room for imagination in 
 it. It is poetic. Finish up, as they call it, 
 make everything out clear and distinct, and 
 anybody sees all there is, in about a minute. 
 A minute is enough for a picture of that sort, 
 and you never want to look at it again." 
 
 Here is a truth which is applicable not only 
 to the realm of art, but to the whole range 
 
 83 
 
84 SEEING AND BEING, 
 
 of material and mental vision. That which 
 is best and worthiest always has in it some- 
 thing to command instant attention, together 
 with a suggestion of something beyond. 
 "That is the best part of beauty," says Lord 
 Bacon, "which apicture cannot express; no, 
 nor the first sight of the life." 
 
 It is, in fact, our ability to conceive that 
 which is beyond the immediate representa- 
 tion given to us of a thing or a thought, that 
 marks our superiority to the brute creation. 
 Show to a dog, for example, a finished paint- 
 ing of another dog, or of a cat, or of a bird, 
 and he will recognize the likeness as readily 
 as a man could. But show to that dog a 
 simple charcoal outline of a dog's figure, on 
 a canvas, and it would have no meaning to 
 him, while a little child would instantly see 
 for what the sketch was intended, and would 
 call it "a bow-wow." Why this difference? 
 The child has the power of imagination, 
 which the dog lacks. The dog recognizes a 
 resemblance just so far as it is disclosed to 
 him. The child recognizes it by its sugges- 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 85 
 
 tions. He sees something beyond the mere 
 drawing, and mentally fills in the outline with 
 a completed figure. The dog not only sees, 
 but thinks. He understands that the picture 
 is a picture. He will, perhaps, even give 
 play to his fancy, and act as if he thought 
 the pictured dog were alive, just as a cat will 
 play with a ball as though it were a mouse; 
 but neither dog nor cat can imagine any- 
 thing, — can conceive anything beyond the 
 realm of sense. 
 
 Here is where man has pre-eminence; 
 for the exercise of the imagination is vastly 
 above all mere play of fancy. " Fancy/' says 
 Wordsworth, "is given to quicken and be- 
 guile the temporal part of our nature; imagi- 
 nation, to incite and to support the eternal." 
 " Put a moss-rose to the nostrils of a hound," 
 says Starr King, "and see if it will awaken, 
 through his keen scent, any emotions of 
 poetic delight. The senses of an animal re- 
 port all that senses themselves can catch ; " 
 but there is no possibility, to the mere ani- 
 mal, of the reach of imagination into the 
 
86 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 realm of the infinite; and it is the suggestion 
 of the infinite which gives limitless power to 
 a man's thought of something beyond all 
 that is seen or defined. 
 
 It is this suggestion of the infinite, which 
 makes the line of the far horizon — seen over 
 land or sea — so much more impressive than 
 the beauties of any limited landscape. " The 
 health of the eye seems to demand a hori- 
 zon/' says Emerson. "We are never tired, 
 so long as we can see far enough." No en- 
 closed garden or circumscribed forest or lake 
 can uplift and enlarge the soul like the on- 
 reaching stretch of the mighty ocean, or of 
 a boundless plain. 
 
 "I am willing to let it rest," says Rus- 
 kin, "on the determination of every reader, 
 whether the pleasure which he has received 
 from these effects of calm and luminous 
 distance be not the most singular and 
 memorable of which he has been conscious ; 
 whether all that is dazzling in color, perfect 
 in form, gladdening in expression, be not of 
 evanescent and shallow appealing, when com- 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 87 
 
 pared with the still, small voice of the level 
 twilight behind purple hills, or the scarlet 
 arch of dawn over the dark, troublous-edged 
 sea. . . . There is one thing it has, or sug- 
 gests, which no other object of sight suggests 
 in equal degree, and that is — infinity. It is 
 of all visible things the least material, the 
 least finite, the farthest withdrawn from the 
 earth prison-house, the most typical of the na- 
 ture of God, the most suggestive of the glory 
 of his dwelling-place." 
 
 " We know that if the earthly house of our 
 tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building 
 from God, a house not made with hands, 
 eternal, in the heavens." Toward that eternal 
 dwelling-place of the soul the mind's ima- 
 ginings go out with curious longings; and 
 whither shall we look more hopefully than 
 toward the horizon, with its suggestions of 
 infinity beyond? 
 
 " The city's shining towers we may not see 
 With our dim earthly vision ; 
 For death, the silent warder, keeps the key 
 That opes those gates Elysian. 
 
88 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 " But sometimes, when adown the western sky 
 The fiery sunset lingers, 
 Its golden gates swing inward noiselessly, 
 Unlocked by silent fingers ; 
 
 " And while they stand a moment half ajar, 
 Gleams from the inner glory 
 Stream brightly through the azure vault afar, 
 And half reveal the story." 
 
 A sermon is never so satisfactory as when 
 it leaves us unsatisfied. If its subject seems 
 exhausted by the preacher, we feel exhausted 
 also. It is the sermon that sets us a think- 
 ing, that we prize most in the long run. A 
 book, or an essay, is valuable as an intellec- 
 tual stimulus only in proportion as it quickens 
 our thoughts into regions yet untracked by 
 us — or by the writer. The dullest reading in 
 the world is a series of axioms. The power 
 of poetry is in its suggestiveness ; never in its 
 definitions. The man whose mind and heart 
 have control over our minds and hearts, is 
 the man who evidently feels all that he says 
 — and a great deal more. Unless there is in 
 his words a suggestion of thought and feel- 
 
 U 
 
 V) 
 { 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 89 
 
 ing beyond the possibility of expression in 
 words, his influence over us is limited to the 
 mere measure of his baldest truisms. 
 
 44 Thought is deeper than all speech; 
 Feeling deeper than all thought ; 
 Souls to souls can never teach 
 
 What unto themselves was taught." 
 
 He who obviously can fully express himself, 
 has comparatively little in him that is worthy 
 of expression. 
 
 44 Of every noble work the silent part is best: 
 Of all expressions, that which cannot be expressed." 
 
 And it is in character, as it is in speech ; 
 the something beyond all that can be seen 
 and known is that which attracts and most 
 delights us in those toward whom our hearts 
 are drawn in love and confidence. 
 
 It is, indeed, the finding out at the last 
 that there is nothing below the surface, noth- 
 ing beyond the obvious, in a character which 
 for a time seemed to us full of glorious pos- 
 sibilities, that makes the bitterest disappoint- 
 ment in many an acquaintanceship, and that 
 
90 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 finally destroys the charm of many an an- 
 ticipated friendship. When there is real 
 depth of character; when there are true and 
 noble thoughts and feelings beyond the fath- 
 oming of the ordinary acquaintance, — then 
 it is that a friend will be more and more 
 loved and prized with the passing years, be- 
 cause of the ever-fresh disclosures of that 
 character and those thoughts and feelings, 
 and the ever-renewed intimations of some- 
 thing better beyond. 
 
 Lucy Larcom beautifully expresses this 
 idea in the imagery of a brook — as a per- 
 sonal friend — flashing through the woods 
 and hills the suggestions of its yet undis- 
 closed attractions. 
 
 "Friend Brook, I hold thee dearest yet for what I do 
 
 not know 
 Of thy pure secret things afar, the mystery of thy 
 
 flow 
 Out of the mountain caverns, hid by tangled briar 
 
 and fern : 
 A friend is most a friend of whom the best remains 
 
 to learn. 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 9 1 
 
 " New-born each moment, flashing light through 
 
 worn, accustomed ways, 
 With gentle hindrance, gay surprise, sweet hurry- 
 
 ings and delays, — 
 Spirit that issuest forth from wells of life unguessed, 
 
 unseen, 
 A revelation thou of all that holiest friendships 
 
 mean." 
 
 It was of this charm in the character of 
 good John Bright that Mr. Gladstone spoke, 
 when, after delineating his intellectual great- 
 ness, and paying a high tribute to his won- 
 derful eloquence, he said, in his splendid 
 eulogy of his dead friend : " But his character 
 lies deeper than intellect, deeper than elo- 
 quence, deeper than anything that can be 
 seen upon the surface." And it is always the 
 unseen which is the charm of charms in any 
 character which unfailingly holds the admira- 
 tion, and which unceasingly grows upon the 
 affection, of those whom it impresses. 
 
 One of Dr. Bushnell's thought-suggesting 
 essays, is entitled " Our Gospel a Gift to the 
 Imagination." The idea of it is, that with 
 the existing limitations of the human intel- 
 
92 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 lect it is quite impossible for us to compre- 
 hend spiritual truths in all their fulness ; 
 hence the best that God can do for us in this 
 line, while we are still in the flesh, is to point 
 to us the direction of these truths, and give 
 suggestions of them to our sanctified ima- 
 ginings. And it is in the exercise of these 
 sanctified imaginings that we can gain 
 strength for all our duties, under all our 
 trials. " Wherefore we faint not ; but though 
 our outward man is decaying, yet our inward 
 man is renewed day by day. For our light 
 affliction, which is for the moment, worketh 
 for us more and more exceedingly an eter- 
 nal weight of glory ; while we look not at 
 the things which are seen, but at the things 
 which are not seen : for the things which are 
 seen are temporal ; but the things which are 
 not seen are eternal." 
 
XX. 
 
 SEEING THE SIGNS OF COST. 
 
 Whenever we see anything above ground 
 that is worth admiring, and that has any 
 true stability or hope of permanence, we 
 may be sure that there is a great deal below 
 the surface just there, as the foundation of 
 that which makes so goodly a show before 
 our eyes. That which is seen is a sign of 
 that which is out of sight, a sign of already 
 expended labor and cost. 
 
 Whether it is in the world of nature, or of 
 art, or of intellectual attainment, or of per- 
 sonal character, or of spiritual life, it is not 
 all on the surface, not all in plain sight; nor 
 is its full cost to be measured by that which 
 is disclosed to view. If it is a graceful elm 
 or a wide-spreading oak, you may be sure it 
 has roots running down and reaching out 
 into the earth below, to give strength and 
 
 93 
 
94 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 security to its sturdy trunk and its swaying 
 boughs. And it has been at the cost of sum- 
 mer suns and winter rains, of striving and 
 enduring through long years of slow prog- 
 ress, that those roots have attained their 
 present hold, and are firm and sure for their 
 mission of to-day. 
 
 If it is a majestic mountain rising in gran- 
 deur to the clouds, it rests on no quicksands, 
 but has a basis broad and firm, and deep as 
 the globe's center. And only God can know 
 the cost of that mountain's final fixing where 
 it stands. The eternal hills were made with- 
 out hands, but not without cost. 
 
 If it is a towering monument, or a massive 
 pile of buildings, or a bridge spanning river 
 and marsh with vast and lofty arches, there ' 
 must have been a preliminary sinking of 
 shafts, and laying of strong foundations, and 
 slow uprearing of subterranean walls, before 
 the mighty structure which now commands 
 attention began its upward stretch above the 
 surface. Beyond the cost of all that is seen, 
 there is a suggestion of a former cost, in 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 95 
 
 making ready a basis for that which is up- 
 lifted into sight. 
 
 If it is the finished work of a scholar 
 in history or science; if it is a marvel of 
 gracefulness and beauty in the sphere of lit- 
 erature — poetry or prose; if it is a triumph 
 of power in the pulpit, at the bar, on the 
 tribune, or in the realm of applied science or 
 of professional skill, — all that is shown and 
 seen indicates a former outlay, at the cost of 
 which this exhibit is before the eyes. The 
 success which is attained above the surface 
 cannot be accounted for, but by the fact that 
 a great deal of preparation for this was made 
 below the surface. There must have been a 
 cost correspondent with the value of that 
 which commands admiration for its worth. 
 
 If, indeed, it be a noble character or a 
 saintly life, — a character of strength and 
 beauty, of heroic courage and of sublime 
 endurance, or a life of holiness and of radi- 
 ating sweetness and purity, — it did not come 
 by chance, nor was it " reached at a single 
 bound ;" it was a matter of growth as well 
 
96 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 as of grace ; and the best and the most of 
 that which is noted of good in the conduct 
 or the countenance of the one admired and 
 revered, was wrought silently and slowly, 
 out of sight and below the surface. There 
 is no greater cost in the universe than the 
 cost of a finished character, and the exhibit 
 of such a character is a suggestion of such 
 a cost. 
 
 Every once in a while some young man 
 will be deluded with the idea that he can do as 
 good work above ground as those who have 
 gone before him, without being at the trouble 
 and the delay of all their work below the sur- 
 face, that he can have the results of cost with- 
 out the cost. He can write smooth-flowing 
 rhymes ; why should he not at once be a poet ? 
 He has a vivid imagination and a pleasing 
 style ; what is there to hinder his now begin- 
 ning the preparation of romances that shall 
 give him fortune and fame? He finds no 
 difficulty in leading a college prayer-meeting, 
 or in holding a popular audience with an off- 
 hand discourse on some religious theme 
 
SEEING AND BEING. g? 
 
 which is familiar to him ; is there any reason 
 why he should wait and toil for years before 
 entering on the work of the gospel ministry ? 
 And so in the one sphere or another a young 
 man begins his work on the surface — and 
 quickly finishes it there; he exhibits what 
 has cost him nothing, and it proves to be 
 worth — what it cost. As Lord Jeffrey says 
 of such unprepared and surface workers: 
 "They who begin by effect without labor, 
 will end by labor without effect." 
 
 Dr. Holmes, writing of the slow develop- 
 ment of Motley's peculiar talents as a his- 
 torical writer, says : " It took many years to 
 train the as yet undisciplined powers into 
 orderly obedience, and to bring the unar- 
 ranged materials into the organic connection 
 which was needed in the construction of a 
 work which should endure. ... It was 
 already the high noon of life with him be- 
 fore his genius had truly shown itself; if he 
 had not lived beyond this period, he would 
 have left nothing to give him a lasting name." 
 And of those writers who are unwilling to 
 7 
 
98 SEEING AND BEING, 
 
 do the needful work below the surface, and 
 to meet its cost, before they venture upon 
 pretentious work above ground, this biog- 
 rapher adds: "Too many brilliant young 
 novel-readers and lovers of poetry, excused 
 by their admirers for their shortcomings on 
 the strength of their supposed birthright of 
 ' genius/ have ended where they began; flat- 
 tered into the vain belief that they were men 
 at eighteen or twenty, and finding out at fifty 
 that they were, and always had been, nothing 
 more than boys." 
 
 Many an author, or artist, or preacher, is 
 a conspicuous failure in his maturity because 
 he was not willing to be an inconspicuous 
 toiler in his immaturity; because he was not 
 ready to pay the cost of preparation for a 
 work that should be worth exhibiting. There 
 is wisdom in the counsel of one of the keen- 
 est of our satirical writers, when he says to 
 the average young man of to-day: "I don't 
 want to see you try to build a six-story house 
 on a one-story foundation." It is not the 
 question of the style of the superstructure, 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 99 
 
 but of the character of the foundation, that 
 decides the capability of the building to stand 
 in all weather; and a good foundation always 
 represents a corresponding cost. 
 
 The lines of expression in every strongly 
 marked face, the keenness of glance in every 
 speaking eye, and the evidences of manly 
 vigor or of womanly tenderness in every 
 countenance that commands admiration, are 
 always the signs of a cost that cannot be 
 evaded in the formation of a noble or a lovely 
 character. The truest beauty of the human 
 face is never in the red and white of a fair 
 complexion or in the clear outlines of sym- 
 metrical features ; but it is ever and always 
 in the lines of character which disclose the 
 improved struggles of a soul within, with all 
 the cost that such struggles involve. The 
 face is the reflex of character. While the 
 character is unformed, the face is incomplete. 
 Every step of progress in character leaves 
 its impress on the countenance — an impress 
 which can come only through progress. 
 
 In the soldier's uniform there is one thing 
 
IOO SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 that cannot be bought. It is the " service- 
 chevron," — the little strip of lace upon the 
 sleeve of a veteran, which shows the comple- 
 tion of a full term of service. Gold cannot 
 purchase it. No favor of friends can secure 
 it. Not even the power of the government 
 can bestow it. It is gained only at the cost 
 of enlistment, of campaigning, and of endu- 
 rance unto the end. Hence there is no truer 
 or prouder mark of the real soldier than the 
 two, three, five, or more service - chevrons 
 which mark the veteran of as many periods 
 of enlistment. Every line of well-won care 
 in the human face is a service-chevron. 
 
 " Every wrinkled, care-worn brow 
 
 Bears the record ' Something done ; ' 
 Some time, somewhere, then or now, 
 Battles lost, or battles won." 
 
 It was not until Moses had been at the cost 
 of forty years' living in the palace, and forty 
 years' living in the desert, and of forty days' 
 fasting in sacred communion with God in the 
 mount, that his face shone with the reflected 
 effulgence of the Divine glory, and that his 
 
SEEING AND BEING. IOI 
 
 very countenance proclaimed the beauty and 
 the holiness of the Lord's presence. When 
 any of us have had somewhat more than 
 now of such preliminary training as w T as thus 
 secured to Moses, we may have somewhat 
 more in our countenances of the divine light 
 which illumined his. Whenever we see an 
 approach to that light on a child of God's 
 countenance, we may be sure that there has 
 been something of this training going on in 
 his mind and character. 
 
 The severest toil of all well-doing, and the 
 greatest cost of all well-being, must ever be 
 below the surface, and out of sight. And 
 that which has power or beauty above must 
 ever depend on that w T hich has been slowly 
 and painfully performed or endured below, 
 even, perhaps, at the price of life as well as 
 of ease and comfort. "You remember," says 
 one, " how corals grow. The reef is not a 
 building constructed by them; it is their own 
 life that crystallizes within them, and it is 
 left behind them as they climb upward to- 
 ward the light. And as they climb, the sea- 
 
102 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 bottom sinks beneath them, and the surface 
 seems, perhaps, unattainable to their patient 
 labors. Yet by and by it is gained, though 
 the coral-makers die in reaching it, and over 
 the records of their ceaseless toil appear at 
 length the verdant fields and fruitful palms of 
 islands that lie like gems upon the bosom 
 of the sea." 
 
 Whatever of strength or beauty we see or 
 show, represents a cost that is commensurate 
 with its admirableness. In the light of this 
 truth, we ought neither to begrudge the cost 
 which must be paid for any fitting exhibit of 
 good before the world, nor fail to give honor 
 to those who show that they have already 
 paid that cost. 
 
SYMPATHY AS A MEANS OF 
 INSIGHT. 
 
 " Read him again and again," say the edit- 
 ors of one of the more important editions of 
 Shakespeare's completed works; "and then 
 if you do not like him, surely you are in 
 some manifest danger not to understand 
 him. ,, And that declaration involves a truth 
 of very wide application. Unless you really 
 like a person, of any intense or profound 
 personality, you will not be likely to under- 
 stand his words or himself. Without the 
 insight which sympathy gives, you cannot 
 penetrate the recesses of his mind and char- 
 acter so as to know him as he is, and to un- 
 derstand his sayings and his doings as he 
 intends them. 
 
 The common thought is that, in order to 
 
 to come into sympathy with a man, and to 
 
 103 
 
 
104 SEEING AND BEING, 
 
 like him heartily, you must first know him 
 thoroughly and understand him as he is; but 
 the truer truth is, that in many a case the 
 sympathy and liking must precede the un- 
 derstanding; and that the worthier one is of 
 being loved and honored, the more difficulty 
 there is of understanding him until you do 
 love him, or until in some way you come 
 to have a fellow-feeling with him. "You 
 must love him, ere to you he will seem wor- 
 thy of your love, ,, is a paradox applied by 
 Frederick D. Maurice to the method of know- 
 ing a friend as you ought to know him. 
 
 There are persons, to be sure, who show 
 themselves at the best on the surface, who in 
 fact have nothing but surface to show. See- 
 ing them once, you know them as well as you 
 could know them if you were to see them a 
 thousand times. There is nothing to be won- 
 dered at or questioned over in their case; 
 there is no mystery there; no need of the 
 insight of sympathy to give you an under- 
 standing of them, and of their sayings and 
 doings. You like them or you dislike them 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 105 
 
 — or you have no sense of either like or dis- 
 like in their case — at the start; and you have 
 never a reason, afterward, to change your 
 opinion of them; for you can never have any 
 different basis of opinion. 
 
 But, again, there are other persons who 
 show very little of themselves on the surface, 
 who have depths of character not to be fath- 
 omed at a glance. You are conscious that 
 you do not understand them fully to begin 
 with; and the more you see of them, and 
 study them, the less confident you are of your 
 real acquaintance with their main character- 
 istics, or their methods of thought and habits 
 of feeling; the surer you are that there is a 
 great deal yet to be learned about them before 
 you can know them thoroughly. 
 
 They may be exceedingly winsome in their 
 manners and bearing, yet they are unap- 
 proachable beyond a certain point. Or, they 
 may be in a measure repellent to you, and yet 
 you are held to their persistent study by an 
 undefined sense of their hidden power. These 
 are the sort of persons who can never be un- 
 
106 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 derstood except through the insight of sym- 
 pathy, who must be thoroughly appreciated 
 before they can even be studied to advantage. 
 Unless you come to be at one with them in 
 feeling, if not in thought, you can never know 
 them at their best, or know them as they are. 
 
 It is not the coarser, but the finer, fiber of 
 the soul that is covered over from the outer 
 gaze. It is the gentler, lovelier side of a 
 refined nature that shrinks from exposure to 
 every eye. There are hearts that ache for 
 love and sympathy that cannot ask for either 
 love or sympathy. Timid and sensitive, with 
 all their longing for friendship and fellowship 
 of soul, they cannot give a single look or 
 word of personal interest or attachment where 
 affection for and sympathy with them is not 
 already manifest. Even when their hearts 
 are full to bursting of kindly feeling, they 
 cannot give it such expression in formal 
 words as will make it plain to the unsympa- 
 thetic ear: 
 
 " For words, like nature, half reveal 
 And half conceal the soul within." 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 107 
 
 The wealth of affection and the depth of 
 tenderness in their warm hearts can never 
 be recognized except through the insight of 
 sympathy. 
 
 And there are heart struggles in some 
 strong natures which mark the outer man 
 with a forbidding ruggedness that turns away 
 all thought of tenderness as a possibility in 
 him, and that even shuts out from the ordinary 
 observer the idea of his being one to confide 
 in trustfully. Only the insight of sympathy 
 can give an understanding of that man as he 
 is; but that insight would change distrust 
 into confidence, and suspicion into pitying 
 admiration. 
 
 " The workings of his brain, 
 And of his heart, thou canst not see. 
 What looks to thy dim eyes a stain, 
 
 In God's pure light may only be 
 A scar brought from some well-won field 
 Where thou wouldst only faint and yield. 
 
 " The look, the air, that frets thy sight, 
 May be a token that, below, 
 The soul has closed in deadly fight 
 With some infernal, fiery foe, 
 
1 08 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 Whose glance would scorch thy smiling grace, 
 And cast thee shuddering on thy face." 
 
 As it is in these extreme cases, of the ex- 
 ceedingly sensitive and the sorely beset heart, 
 so it is in a greater or lesser degree with the 
 best phase and the larger wealth of every 
 nature. The more there is to be known in a 
 character, or to be understood in a career, 
 the smaller is the share of it that can be 
 known at the start. It is the depths of a 
 soul that are necessarily farthest from the 
 surface. It is that which is best worth hav- 
 ing that is not proffered with an open hand 
 to everybody. And the larger measure, the 
 deeper depths, the richer treasures, of every 
 character, are to be discerned only through the 
 insight of sympathy. Not until we are fairly 
 alongside of such a nature, having a fellow- 
 feeling with it, and judging it with a kindly 
 and even partial interest, can we know it 
 as it is. 
 
 " No soul can ever clearly see 
 
 Another's highest, noblest part, 
 Save through the sweet philosophy 
 
 And loving wisdom of the heart." 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 09 
 
 It is sympathy, not mere affection, that has 
 the discerning insight which makes clear to 
 the observer that which others cannot under- 
 stand in the character he notes or studies. 
 To love another is not necessarily to under- 
 stand the nature and the moods and methods 
 of the object of one's affection. But sym- 
 pathy perceives at a glance the full meaning 
 of that which is a mystery to even a loving 
 eye. Yet where there is entire sympathy 
 there will also be a certain liking, as an ac- 
 companiment or consequence of that sympa- 
 thy ; although, on the other hand, the sincerest 
 love does not, as a matter of course, secure 
 sympathy. There may be love without sym- 
 pathy; but where there is sympathy there 
 will be love. It is the lack of sympathy 
 w T hich makes so much of unhappiness be- 
 tween some who love one another dearly. 
 
 No one but a mother, for example, can 
 really understand a mother's thoughts and 
 hopes and anxieties. But a true mother can 
 understand every other true mother, within 
 the sphere of truest motherhood. She knows 
 
I IO SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 just what that mother as a mother does, or 
 wants to do, and w r hy. It is not their like 
 experiences that give her this understanding; 
 for she may have never been in precisely the 
 same circumstances as the other; but it is 
 their common basis of feeling, their heart- 
 likeness — not their heart-oneness — that gives 
 her this insight. 
 
 So, also, it is with a veteran soldier. He 
 alone can fully understand the thoughts and 
 natural conduct of a man under fire, of a 
 man bracing himself up to face death with 
 seeming unconcern while every nerve is on 
 a quiver. So, again, it is with a person of 
 extreme sensibility, of exceeding tenderness 
 of conscience; seeing in another that which 
 might even be judged as affectation or sheer 
 folly, he perceives it to be the most natural 
 and unavoidable thing in the world, although 
 he never did or thought of doing such a 
 thing himself. He understands it all, not 
 because he has been through it all, but be- 
 cause he is, by his very nature, in sym- 
 pathy with the sufferer, and realizes that, 
 
SEEIXG AND BEING. 1 1 1 
 
 in like circumstances, he might feel and do 
 the same. 
 
 We know just why that man is so quick to 
 take offense, on an occasion when some 
 might think there was no need of being ruf- 
 fled. We know why that other man twists 
 and writhes with annoyance under that non- 
 sense in the pulpit or that discord in the 
 choir. We know what that shrinking shy- 
 ness means, on the part of one who might 
 be boldly confident in that company. We 
 know the significance of that pale face and 
 those compressed lips, or of that enforced 
 gayety and show of indifference, when to 
 others there seems nothing to be explained. 
 We know what is implied by those uncon- 
 scious references to the bitterness of life, or 
 the losses greater than those from death. 
 We know how much of fixity of purpose 
 underlies those apparent varying moods, and 
 we even read the causes of many a special 
 mood. 
 
 How do we know all these things? Not 
 from our study of the cases under obser- 
 
1 1 2 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 vation, but from our fellow-feeling, at that 
 particular point, with the persons observed. 
 It is the insight of sympathy just there which 
 shows to us more than others know, more 
 than close study could possibly have revealed 
 to us. 
 
 How often has it proved, that one whose 
 course has been to us a contradiction and a 
 bewilderment stands out before us, all at 
 once, in simple consistency, through our 
 coming into sympathy with him by being 
 brought unexpectedly to his stand-point of 
 observation, and to his plane of feeling. We 
 may have studied him with untiring interest 
 before this,; we may have been sincerely at- 
 tached to him ; but neither our study nor our 
 affection gave us an understanding of him. 
 Being brought, however, into sympathy with 
 him, coming to feel with him — or to perceive 
 just how he feels — all that has before been a 
 mystery is resolved as by an instant blaze of 
 light from heaven. Sympathy of feeling 
 makes clear what neither word nor thought 
 could convey or comprehend. So it is always ; 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 1 3 
 
 in order to learn most about another, we must 
 come to feel with him, rather than to study 
 about him. 
 
 What then ? Can we never know a person 
 until we are in full sympathy with him ? Must 
 our hearts always go out in loving interest 
 toward another before our minds can be fully 
 informed as to his qualifications and worthi- 
 ness? Not quite this; for there are very 
 many who have no hidden nature, and whom 
 we can understand as well as we need to 
 know them, without any special insight of 
 sympathy. But it is important for us to 
 realize that there is no key to the treasures 
 of another's soul like sympathy, and that 
 some whom we now think lightly of would 
 be honored and admired by us, and might 
 even be our prized companions or our valued 
 helpers, if we could but learn their worth and 
 acquire their confidence through the insight 
 and the attractiveness of our sympathy. 
 
 Of one thing we may be sure, that that 
 which can be known of another's soul, and 
 of another's character, and which can be 
 
1 14 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 understood of another's conduct and man- 
 ners, and methods of speech and thought 
 and feeling, only through the insight of sym- 
 pathy, is better worth knowing than all that 
 appears on the surface. It is the best as well 
 as the deepest life of another that is to be 
 known through the insight of sympathy. 
 
 And after all, in the study of that which is 
 best and noblest and grandest in life or in 
 truth, the heart is worth more than the head. 
 The insight of sympathy gives more of knowl- 
 edge in that realm than the insight of cold 
 scholarship. " If any man willeth to do his 
 will, he shall know of the teaching," says 
 Jesus, of those who would understand the 
 mysteries which angels look into wonder- 
 ingly. To come into sympathy of purpose 
 with the great heart of the loving Saviour is 
 to be in the way of knowing even as we are 
 known. "Then shall we know if we follow 
 on to know the Lord" — as we never can 
 know unless we are the Lord's followers. 
 
XL 
 
 SEEING THROUGH ANOTHER'S 
 EYES. 
 
 Many a word or act of another which now 
 seems strange or uncalled for would seem 
 the most natural thing in the world, — the 
 very thing to be said or done, — if only we 
 could see the case as the other sees it, if 
 only we could look at it through his eyes. 
 And many a word or act of ours would have 
 a very different look to others, if they could 
 see the case through our eyes. 
 
 A fair judgment of our fellows is not com- 
 mon, nor is it easily arrived at, because of 
 our habit of looking at their course from our 
 standpoint instead of from theirs. And for 
 the same reason we are misunderstood and 
 judged unfairly by them. It seems to us 
 very foolish, for example, for a little boy to 
 cry his eyes out because his mother wants 
 
 "5 
 
1 1 6 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 him to wear fancy stockings, or a plaid cloth 
 cap; but if we could know the public senti- 
 ment on those points in the world of boy- 
 hood outside of his home, we might see that 
 actual martyrdom would require hardly more 
 of courageous independence and self-abnega- 
 tion than would be necessary for that boy's 
 standing out in such a matter against the 
 opinions of those whose commendation he is 
 desirous of securing. 
 
 The dash of bitterness with which some 
 excellent persons in humble life will at times 
 speak of what are called "the best circles " 
 in society, may seem to us to indicate an 
 unlovely or an unchristian spirit But if 
 only we were made to realize the sense of 
 desolateness which comes to one of innate 
 refinement, and of noblest aspirations, who 
 is shut out by the accident of birth, or 
 through the fluctuations of business, from 
 those associations and companionships for 
 which that person is pre-eminently fitted in 
 mind and heart; if only we understood what 
 the sense of injustice must be to one who is 
 
SEEING AND BEING. WJ 
 
 pushed aside and actually looked down upon 
 by inferiors, — we should not wonder at any 
 show of strong feeling against such misfor- 
 tune and unfairness. 
 
 And so all the way along in life. If, on 
 the one hand, the man of capital could see 
 the laborer's case as the laborer sees it; if, 
 on the other hand, the laborer could see the 
 capitalist's position as it appears to the capi- 
 talist; if the Northern man could borrow the 
 Southerner's eyes for but a single glance at 
 the Southern question; or if the Southerner 
 could but once see social and political ques- 
 tions as the Northerner sees them ; if men of 
 opposite parties, or of different theological 
 views, could look at the truth as their oppo- 
 nents look at it; if men and women of clash- 
 ing opinions could only change eyes for a 
 little time, — how much easier it would be for 
 all to be fair in their judgments of others, 
 how much more there would be of kindly 
 and charitable judging! 
 
 In their conduct as well as in their opin- 
 ions, others are misjudged by us because of 
 
1 1 8 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 our not seeing through their eyes; and simi- 
 larly we are misjudged by them. We may 
 wonder that a friend does not speak out his 
 feelings more heartily, and that if he loves 
 us he does not say so. Our emotions play 
 visibly on our faces. Our likes and dislikes 
 find instant and emphatic expression in words. 
 Why is it not so with him ? If we but knew 
 the warmth and depth of that friend's affec- 
 tion, and the causes which repress its utter- 
 ance, we should never ask such a question 
 as that; we should never think of calling 
 him cold and unresponsive. 
 
 He, on the other hand, may wonder that 
 we are so intense and demonstrative, and 
 may even question if our feelings can be as 
 profound and controlling as his own. If he 
 understood the pressure that is on us from 
 our very innermost nature, he would never 
 think of saying that we show more than we 
 feel, or that we are intentionally too free and 
 outspoken. 
 
 There are hearts which ache almost to 
 breaking because they cannot speak, know- 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 1 9 
 
 ing all the time that they are counted lacking 
 in real warmth and true tenderness because 
 of their enforced silence. And there are 
 hearts which grieve because they cannot be 
 silent when their unavoidable outbursts of 
 feeling are sure to be misunderstood, and to 
 give discomfort to dearly loved ones. Oh, if 
 these different natures could but change eyes 
 while passing judgment on each other! 
 
 A certain view of a question of duty 
 prompts one person to words and actions 
 toward a friend, which are most untimely as 
 that friend sees the case, but which are the 
 only wise and proper course as the person 
 himself sees it. A harsh judgment follows, 
 where heartiest approval would be given if 
 only the offended one could see through the 
 eyes of the unintentional offender. One per- 
 son has doubts which another person cannot 
 conceive of as possible. One has temptations 
 unknown to his immediate fellow. One has 
 fears to which another is a stranger. One 
 magnifies dangers which another brushes 
 away with contempt. One is familiar with 
 
120 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 important facts bearing on the case in ques- 
 tion, while another knows nothing about 
 those facts. If in every case of misunder- 
 standing between two persons, or of mis- 
 judging of one by another, each person could 
 see the environment, the difficulties, the per- 
 plexities, and the influencing thoughts and 
 opinions, of the other, how much of injustice 
 would be obviated; how much of pain and 
 regret would be relieved or removed! 
 
 Did your husband's course this morning, 
 as he left the house, appear regardless of 
 your comfort or feelings ? Do you think that 
 he really intended to be neglectful or unkind? 
 If you could look at the whole thing just as 
 he saw it, or as it is now seen by him, would 
 it not probably be plain that it was his mo- 
 mentary absorption in thought which made 
 him seem to disregard your welfare; or that 
 the words he spoke were taken by you in a 
 very different sense from what he intended, 
 and that already he regrets his unfortunate 
 speech more than you do? Ought the mat- 
 ter then to weigh with you, as if it indicated 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 121 
 
 your husband's estrangement? Possibly it 
 seems to you that you were slighted at the 
 house of an acquaintance when last you 
 called there. It may even appear that you 
 were rudely treated. After all, do you think 
 that this looked so to the acquaintance whose 
 conduct gave you offense? Do you suppose 
 she purposed an affront? If not, then take 
 it all as you believe she designed it, rather 
 than as it might have seemed on its face. 
 
 Was a certain remark or action of your 
 friend on a recent occasion capable of being 
 understood as indicating another estimate of 
 you from that which he has in many ways 
 evidenced? Did it look as if he were less 
 considerate of your known preferences and 
 convictions, and of your interests and feel- 
 ings, than you have always counted him? 
 Before you pass judgment on that remark or 
 action, try to look at it through the eyes of 
 your friend. Remember all that you have 
 known of him as your friend, and ask if it is 
 to be supposed that he would intend to do 
 what this thing taken by itself would seem to 
 
122 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 mean. Unless you believe that you have 
 been mistaken in him hitherto, and that he 
 is now unworthy of your confidence, pity 
 him for his blundering, and be sure that he 
 is groaning over it as he recalls its possible 
 misinterpretation by you. How much trouble 
 among friends and acquaintances would be 
 saved, by this looking through one another's 
 eyes, in the process of judgment! 
 
 That which another has done, we ought 
 always to seek to see as it probably appears 
 to him, rather than as it might appear to us. 
 And it is another's duty to look at that which 
 we have done as it would appear in our sight, 
 rather than as it would naturally appear in 
 his sight. Each observer is to see the other's 
 doings through the other's eyes. By such a 
 method of seeing, all danger of injustice in 
 judging one another in this world would 
 practically be abrogated. 
 
 The surest cure of a habit of unjust judg- 
 ing is a sense of personal and loving respon- 
 sibility for those who are under judgment. 
 A true mother can, for instance, judge her 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 23 
 
 own child without harshness; for she not 
 only loves him, but she feels a responsibility 
 for him. If he is wrong, she cannot but suf- 
 fer for it. A true husband will not judge his 
 wife harshly; for she is one with himself, 
 "and no man ever yet hated his own flesh." 
 He " nourisheth and cherisheth it. ,, He looks 
 at his wife, as at himself, through charitable 
 eyes. He is sure to put a favorable con- 
 struction on her words and deeds, as on his 
 own. Jonathan could look at the things of 
 David through the eyes of David; for "he 
 loved him as his own soul," and their inter- 
 ests were identical through love. So always 
 with the truest and best of friends. So it 
 ought to be among all who are the followers 
 of a common Saviour. Not only are they to 
 "love one another," but they are to "bear 
 one another's burdens," and to count them- 
 selves "members one of another." 
 
 If a Christian brother or a Christian friend 
 is at fault, we who are one with him are at 
 fault also. Let this thought prompt us to 
 judge him always with that Christian love 
 
124 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 which taketh not account of evil, which be- 
 lieveth all things to be good, which hopeth all 
 things to be good, and which rejoiceth not in 
 unrighteousness. Let us look at his course 
 through his eyes, and so take as favorable a 
 view of it as he could. 
 
XII. 
 
 THE LIGHT-SHEDDING POWER OF 
 A SHADE. 
 
 The practical value of a light is never at 
 its best when it shines directly into the eyes 
 of those who need its help, or when it is 
 without the gain of some accompanying or 
 intervening shade. To look at the sun is 
 to bring darkness to the eyes. To face a 
 glare of light in the night is to be blinded 
 to all else. 
 
 One instinctively shields his eyes with his 
 hand, as he looks out over a landscape at 
 noonday; or as he enters a brilliantly lighted 
 hall in the evening, where he would sweep 
 his gaze over the whole house in order to 
 comprehend the audience as an entirety. A 
 shaded light is, indeed, a more helpfully 
 illuminating light, as well as a more grateful 
 light, to human eyes as they are; and so it 
 
 125 
 
126 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 is that we find the light-shedding power of 
 a shade. 
 
 It is not that a shade really increases the 
 light; for in fact it lessens it. But it is that 
 a shade increases the value of the light by- 
 improving its available quality, and by mak- 
 ing the observer the more sensible of its ad- 
 vantages. Persons put translucent curtains, 
 or shades, before their windows, with the idea 
 that they thereby have more light — that is a 
 better light — in the room. Lamps and gas- 
 jets in a library, or in a sitting-room, are sur- 
 rounded by ground-glass or porcelain globes, 
 or shades, in order that their light may be 
 softened and diffused for the greater benefit 
 of those who see by it. 
 
 It is for utility as w r ell as for beauty that 
 the windows of a church, or of a cathedral, 
 are stained, or tinted, or shaded, so as to pre- 
 vent the full glare of the sunlight pouring in 
 through them, to dazzle the eyes of those on 
 whom it shines directly; for there, as every- 
 where, the light needs the shading which shall 
 be a means of its wise shedding or diffusing. 
 
SEEING AND BEING, \2J 
 
 It is in the mental, the moral, and the spir- 
 itual realm, as it is in the material, that the 
 light-shedding power of a shade is mani- 
 fested. The man whose knowledge of any 
 subject of which he treats is not shaded by 
 a modest distrust of his own attainments, 
 gives no such helpful light on that subject as 
 is diffused by the more cautious and discrimi- 
 nating statements of one who knows so much 
 about it that he realizes how much there is 
 for him yet to learn concerning it. 
 
 If you ask a young doctor, a young lawyer, 
 a young artist, a young scientist, a question 
 in any department of his profession, the 
 quick and confident way in which he will 
 glare the light of his knowledge upon you, 
 tends to dazzle your eyes and hinder your 
 seeing. Whereas if you were to refer that 
 same subject to a master in its line, he would 
 be likely to treat it as presenting an open 
 question; and the shaded light of his greater 
 knowledge turned upon it with gradually dis- 
 closing power would enable you to see it 
 almost as he saw it. And so in all the realm 
 
128 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 of intellect, an unshaded light will dazzle or 
 repel, where a shaded light will shed an 
 illuminating radiance. 
 
 Any good trait or virtue loses illuminating 
 power through its unshaded glaring. Cour- 
 age is a repellent rather than a winsome trait 
 if it lack the shade of a certain tremulous 
 self-questioning. The preacher, the orator, 
 the singer, who comes before a large audi- 
 ence with the light of unhesitating assurance 
 in his face and bearing, fails to beam in upon 
 the very hearts of those who* hear him, as 
 he might through the refining shade of a 
 reverent timidity. 
 
 Diana, standing out as an electric light of 
 chastity, sheds no such glow of womanly 
 modesty, in all her sphere, as radiates from 
 the true woman, whose many virtues shade 
 one another, and diffuse illumination without 
 making its focal center dazzlingly eye-smiting. 
 Justice, honesty, frankness, enthusiasm, sin- 
 cerity, needs, each, some shade of a balancing 
 quality, to soften and mellow its light so that 
 it shall glow without glaring. 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 29 
 
 Even the choicest spiritual graces shine 
 clearest and most attractively through, or 
 from under, a shade. Faith cannot seem 
 faith except in one who knows something of 
 doubt. Hope beams brightest when it is 
 hope against hopelessness. Love grows in 
 its pre-eminence in shedding its rays unstint- 
 edly on the unloving. Self-sacrifice must be 
 seen through the shade of the thanklessness 
 and ingratitude of its recipients, in order to 
 be seen at its best. Christian joy and Chris- 
 tian cheerfulness can never give such light, 
 when unshaded, as they give when the shade 
 of sanctified sorrow and of saintly sadness 
 is over them. The very light of the Divine 
 Presence had to be shaded in the Incarna- 
 tion, that it might illumine instead of blind 
 the natural eye. 
 
 " As one who entereth by night a room 
 Where sufferers lie 
 Shadeth his lamp to suit the languid eye; 
 So doth the Christ draw nigh 
 Unto our world of gloom. 
 The light of life he beareth, and doth stand 
 Shading it tenderly with pierced hand, 
 9 
 
1 30 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 Lest the full glare 
 Should cause not to see, but stare. 
 Yet through the nail-prints some sweet rays Divine 
 Will gently shine ; — 
 Dawn which doth for the day prepare." 
 
 Do you wonder, sometimes, that just when 
 and where you would fain be a means of 
 light to others, you are yourself brought into 
 the shadow, so that the light you might have 
 given is dimmed or covered? That may be 
 God's way of increasing your light-power in 
 the direction of your purposes and your 
 prayers in his service. God's strength is 
 made perfect in weakness. God's light shines 
 clearest in and through the shadow. In 
 thanking God for the privilege of letting 
 your light shine as he has commanded, fail 
 not to recognize the blessing he has bestowed 
 upon you in the light-shedding shade where- 
 with he has covered you. 
 
XIII. 
 
 THE SOFTENING LIGHT OF 
 REFLECTION, 
 
 Did yoa ever sit by the hour and look at 
 the beauties of a landscape as shown in a 
 " Claude Lorraine" glass? If so, you may 
 have wondered why it was that the reflection 
 of that landscape seemed more vivid and 
 more lovely than the landscape itself. If 
 you will consider the peculiarities of such a 
 glass, the reason of its power will be appar- 
 ent to you. 
 
 A Claude Lorraine glass is a small rec- 
 tangular glass plate, say six inches by eight, 
 with a convex surface, and the under side 
 blackened. It is ordinarily enclosed, or 
 framed, in a folding case, with a black lining 
 to the cover, to shield it from the light's full 
 glare. To use it, one must stand with his 
 back to the landscape, and in the open glass 
 
 131 
 
132 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 before him see the reflection of the points of 
 interest he would observe. This turning 
 away of the face, together with the limiting 
 framework of the case, fixes the looker's at- 
 tention on the special bit of scenery under 
 examination, and shuts away all competing 
 attractions. The convex surface reduces 
 and intensifies the reflection. The dark 
 background and the shielding cover soften 
 it without destroying its colors. The result 
 is, that one has before him, in such a glass, 
 a little picture of more surpassing loveliness 
 than the hand of man ever painted. 
 
 Looking into such a glass one is surprised 
 indeed to find how much of beauty he has just 
 turned his back on. It may be a bit of lake 
 or mountain scenery, or of cloud effect, which 
 now seems too beautiful for reality. Or it is a 
 turn of the country road which the observer 
 is passing; an opening in the woods; a little 
 wayside mill with its rustic surroundings. 
 Perhaps it is only the front yard, with its 
 pretty shrubbery, of his own home; or the 
 rear of his house, with its barn and sheds 
 
SEEING A ND BEING. 1 3 3 
 
 and meadow lots beyond. Whatever it is, it 
 seems transfigured in that glass. There is a 
 delicacy of outline, a softness of surface, an 
 intensity of color, a picturesqueness of ar- 
 rangement, and a delightful harmony of all 
 the details there, never perceived until now. 
 It does not take long for one who uses the 
 Claude Lorraine glass to come to the con- 
 clusion that without its help it is impossible 
 to realize the fullest beauties of the simpler 
 and more home-like landscape — however one 
 may do without it in his study of grander 
 and more imposing scenery. 
 
 There is a lesson in this transfiguring 
 power of the Claude Lorraine glass. As 
 we stand face to face with the world, in the 
 full glare of its dazzling light, we hardly stop 
 to study any of its pictures in their separate 
 distinctness. Forms flit confusedly before 
 our eyes. The very multitude and variety 
 of sights are bewildering. Scenes most famil- 
 iar to us are by their very commonness least 
 noted. No one thing is pre-eminent and of 
 absorbing interest. But we are called in 
 
1 34 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 some way to turn our back on what we have 
 looked at thus carelessly. New surround- 
 ings shut us in more closely than before, and 
 limit the range of our thoughts and feelings. 
 There is a darkened background to our mental 
 vision. The dazzling light is gone. Perhaps 
 the trial or sorrow bulges up before us from 
 some surface plane of our observation, and 
 changes the focal center of the reflections we 
 study. How different then the social scenery 
 with which we thought ourselves familiar! 
 The persons, the places, the associations, of 
 our immediate sphere in life, how changed ! 
 
 A loving son away at school, or a newly 
 married daughter at a distance from father 
 and mother, wonders that the old home could 
 really have been as lovely as it now appears 
 in the softened light of the mental Claude 
 Lorraine in which its reflections are viewed. 
 And even when through a great bereavement 
 we are compelled to turn our faces away 
 from some sacred friendship, which we prized 
 dearly while we looked upon it directly, and 
 all our attention is newly centered on those re- 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 35 
 
 flections of its delightsomeness which are now 
 limited without possibility of change or ex- 
 tension, and we look down into the glass of 
 memory with its darkened background and 
 its shading cover and its intensifying focal 
 power, — that transfigured friendship seems 
 more beautiful, more precious, more wonder- 
 ful, than we had conceived ; and our tempta- 
 tion is to start up and turn about and reach 
 forward, to take as our own again that which 
 we had never appreciated at its fullest worth 
 while it was before us face to face. Then, 
 realizing the hopelessness of such endeavor, 
 we sit down once more with a feeling of calm 
 satisfaction that the beautiful reflection of 
 that friendship is ours for all time to come; 
 and that in the truest sense the friendship 
 also is ours more really and more unchan- 
 gingly than it could have been before we saw 
 its highest attractiveness in the Claude Lor- 
 raine of the heart. 
 
 And as there are granted unto us transfig- 
 ured reflections of earthly things of beauty 
 and value, so there are of things heavenly. 
 
1 36 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 Here, while we stand with our faces away 
 from the celestial city, with its delights of 
 
 " Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, 
 And which entered not into the heart of man, 
 Whatsoever things God prepared for them that 
 love him;" 
 
 God by his Spirit reveals unto us, in the per- 
 son of his Son, and in the teachings of his 
 word, the "shadow [or reflection] of good 
 things to come/' with the assurance that 
 although now we see them as in a glass 
 darkly, we shall yet see them face to face. 
 
XIV. 
 HA VING AN EYE FOR TRIFLES. 
 
 When Christiana was in the house of the 
 Interpreter, she saw in one of the rooms "a 
 man that could look no way but downwards, 
 with a muck-rake in his hand. There stood 
 also One over his head with a celestial crown 
 in his hand, and proffered him that crown for 
 his muck-rake; but the man did neither look 
 up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, 
 the small sticks, and dust of the floor." When 
 the meaning of this figure had been explained 
 to her, "then said Christiana, ' Oh, deliver me 
 from this muck-rake! ' That prayer, said the 
 Interpreter, has lain by till it is almost rusty. 
 . . . Straws, and sticks, and dust, with most, 
 are the great things now looked after." That 
 rusty old prayer is worth taking out and oil- 
 ing up for fresh use in these days, — Lord, 
 deliver us from the muck-rake ! 
 
 i37 
 
138 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 This muck-rake using, in preference to 
 crown-seeking, has its illustrations in the 
 things exclusively of this life, quite as clearly 
 as in the things of earth in contrast with 
 those of heaven. It is not alone the man 
 who lives for money, or for pleasure, or for 
 station, or for fame, forgetful of his spiritual 
 needs and possibilities, who may be said to 
 give more prominence to a muck-rake than 
 to a shining crown. Many a man loses the 
 best things of his immediate sphere of earthly 
 endeavor by just such folly as this; and it is 
 in matters of every-day duty and pursuit that 
 all of us have reason to pray, Lord, deliver 
 us from this muck-rake ! 
 
 Even in money-getting itself, many a man 
 misses the crown by too close attention to 
 trifles. It is less than a half-truth to say, 
 "Take care of the pence; and the pounds 
 will take care of themselves." The absurdity 
 of that adage was shown in one of the comic 
 periodicals, by the picture of a banker sitting 
 at his desk in a draught of air, intent on 
 holding his loose pennies while the wind was 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 39 
 
 blowing away all his bank-notes. Pennies 
 must often be counted as straws or dust, by 
 him who is after the pounds. He who can 
 "look no way but downwards," and who ex- 
 pects to gather his treasure from " the straws, 
 the small sticks, and dust of the floor/' will 
 never gain the crown of pre-eminence as a 
 man of wealth or of business capacity. The 
 power of letting the muck-rake alone, of being 
 above an absorbed occupation with minor 
 and unimportant details, is indispensable to 
 successful crown-seeking in all extensive 
 business operations. 
 
 This truth is hardly less applicable to small 
 spheres than to great ones. There may be 
 such a thing as too much attention to scrub- 
 bing and sweeping in a household, in com- 
 parison with the higher welfare of the family. 
 It may be the mother's duty to leave straws 
 and sticks ungathered from the floor, instead 
 of turning to this service from a sick child's 
 bedside, with its crown of reward to a 
 mother's faithfulness there. Many of the 
 great missionary and philanthropic enter- 
 
140 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 prises of the day fail of their • best attain- 
 able results because of the muck-rake policy 
 which prevails in all their management — 
 from the employment of their representative 
 agents to the scale of their outreaching un- 
 dertakings. They are more intent on saving 
 straws than on spending freely for the crown. 
 "The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by 
 liberal things shall he stand/' And the eye 
 of the liberal looks upward at the crown, 
 rather than downward at the muck-rake. 
 
 It is not less true in the pursuit of pleasure 
 than in that of gain, that the muck-rake is a 
 common hindrance to crown-winning. There 
 are summer tourists who are so intent on 
 the lesser aids to comfort, or taste, or con- 
 venience, that they miss utterly the larger 
 results of their journeying. The straws of a 
 good seat, or of sufficient shade, or of dry 
 walking, or of freedom from dust, or of the 
 possibility of full dress, so absorb their atten- 
 tion, that they fail of getting fine views of 
 the mountain, or of the ocean, or of the 
 prairie, or of the forest; or of enjoying those 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 141 
 
 views if they get them. And there is quite 
 as much danger indoors as out, in this direc- 
 tion. Trying to be always cool, or always 
 warm, always free from flies, or always with 
 just enough light; trying never to be off 
 dignity in a romp with the children; and 
 never to be too natural or familiar with visiting 
 acquaintances, — will keep one's eyes down- 
 ward, and away from the crown. Whether 
 we stay at home or go abroad, even if we 
 have no desire above that of solid enjoyment 
 for the hour, we have need to pray, Lord, 
 deliver us from the muck-rake! 
 
 Peculiarly is it true that in the seeking of 
 reputation and honor the muck-rake is a 
 peril to any man. If we are looking down- 
 ward, and gathering the straws and small 
 sticks and dust of contemporary criticism, 
 we can never win the crown that awaits those 
 who are looking upward and moving forward. 
 If we would please those of our own day, 
 those immediately about us, we must neces- 
 sarily adapt our words and works to their 
 standard; and by that very course shut our- 
 
142 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 selves off from reforming our fellows or of 
 improving their standards. But if we would 
 have high repute in the future, as reformers, 
 or discoverers, or advanced thinkers, it is in- 
 evitable that we now leave the straws of popu- 
 lar applause, or the sticks and dust of popular 
 censure, for some one to gather who prefers 
 the acquisitions of the muck-rake to the re- 
 ward of the shining crown. 
 
 Here is the difference between the time- 
 serving politician and the large-minded state- 
 man ; between the man who writes or speaks 
 to carry the crowd, and the writer or speaker 
 of profound convictions and of ennobled pur- 
 pose. Here is the difference between the ar- 
 tist who paints or who chisels for immortality, 
 and the man who covers the canvas or cuts 
 the marble to meet the market, and to win 
 ephemeral praise. If a man had no thought 
 of reward, or of honor, or of desired attain- 
 ment, beyond the life that now is, and from 
 his fellow-men, his cry ought to be, Lord, 
 deliver me from this muck-rake! 
 
 Even when we have recognized the supe- 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 43 
 
 rior worth of the shining crown, in compari- 
 son with the straws and small sticks and dust 
 of the floor, and have set ourselves to strive 
 for that crown, it requires courage and deter- 
 mination and grace to let alone the muck- 
 rake and its accumulations. We are tempted 
 continually to turn from the crown that we 
 may scratch with the rake. 
 
 When we ought to be writing, or teaching, 
 or studying, or painting, or sewing, or visit- 
 ing, in the line of our mission, and for the 
 good of others, we find ourselves all absorbed 
 in worrying over the fear that we blundered 
 or bungled in our last interview with a friend; 
 in thinking over some unkind word that was 
 said of us, or to us; in analyzing the pos- 
 sible cause of the seeming coldness or es- 
 trangement of an acquaintance; in wondering 
 how we came to make such a mistake as now 
 stands out in our memory; in distorting and 
 magnifying the difficulties of success in the 
 work which is before us ; and in other ways 
 giving the first place in our thoughts to that 
 which is unworthy of any place there. Mean- 
 
144 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 time, the sermon is unfinished, the magazine 
 article is unwritten, the lesson is unstudied, 
 the child is neglected or poorly taught, the 
 gift for a friend or the adornment of a room 
 is incomplete, the money we might have 
 earned is lost, the service we owed is unpaid, 
 the sick or the needy representative of Christ 
 is unvisited, the impenitent sinner is un- 
 warned, — all because of our bending down 
 over the floor, busy with the muck-rake, 
 when our eyes ought to have been uplifted 
 to the shining crown, and our whole soul 
 absorbed in its winning, or absorbed in the 
 work for which that crown is the reward. 
 Ah! it is while we are avowedly crown- 
 seeking, as well as before we had a sight or a 
 thought of the crown, that our prayer needs 
 to be, Lord, deliver us from the muck-rake! 
 Lord, deliver us from the muck-rake! 
 
 But, after all, it is chiefly in the light in 
 which Bunyan looked at this figure, that the 
 life of the man with the muck-rake ought to 
 be an object of real dread to us. "This is a 
 figure of a man of this world," says the 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 45 
 
 Dreamer, "and his muck-rake doth show 
 his carnal mind. And whereas thou seest 
 him rather give heed to rake up straws, and 
 sticks, and the dust of the floor, than to do 
 what He says that calls to him from above, 
 with the celestial crown in his hand; it is 
 to show that heaven is but a fable to some, 
 and that things here are counted the only 
 things substantial. Now, whereas it was also 
 showed thee that the man could look no 
 way but downwards, it is to let thee know 
 that earthly things, when they are with power 
 upon men's minds, quite carry their hearts 
 away from God." 
 
 The crown and the muck-rake are in com- 
 petition in this life. If we would devote our- 
 selves to the one, we must pray against the 
 other. Unless we determinedly look upward, 
 we shall be looking downward. We must 
 be absorbed in contemplation of that which 
 is worth living for, and worth dying for; or 
 we are likely to be absorbed in that which 
 has no value to us whether we live or die. 
 
 Paul recognized this truth long before 
 10 
 
146 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 Bunyan did. He gave up the muck-rake, 
 and all it had brought to him, in exchange 
 for the proffered crown. "What things were 
 gain to me, these have I counted loss for 
 Christ. Yea, verily, and I count all things 
 to be loss for the excellency of the knowl- 
 edge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I 
 suffered the loss of all things, and do count 
 them but muck, that I may gain Christ/* 
 And rejoicing in his exchange, at the end of 
 his course, Paul said, "I have fought the 
 good fight, I have finished the course, I have 
 kept the faith : henceforth there is laid up for 
 me the crown of righteousness, which the 
 Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give to me 
 at that day : and not only to me, but also to 
 all them that have loved his appearing." 
 
XV. 
 
 WE CANNOT SEE OURSELVES. 
 
 However sharp-sighted a man may be, or 
 however skilled in the use of his eyes, he 
 cannot see himself. In order to be seen, an 
 object must be before the eyes; and no man 
 can be before his own eyes. This is cer- 
 tainly true of physical sight; and it is even 
 truer of mental and spiritual sight. What- 
 ever else a man can have directly before his 
 eyes for intelligent and discriminating study, 
 he cannot have himself there. 
 
 A man may, indeed, see a reflection, or 
 image, of himself in a mirror, and may study 
 for the time being the face and features and 
 form there outlined; but that study of his 
 image thus presented will fail to give to a 
 man a well-defined mental picture of himself, 
 which will abide clearly in his memory, as 
 would a mental picture of another person 
 
 H7 
 
148 SEEING AND BEING, 
 
 whom he had similarly studied. This pecu- 
 liarity of human nature it is that was referred 
 to by the apostle James, when he said of a 
 forgetful hearer of God's word : " He is like 
 unto a man beholding his natural face in a 
 mirror: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth 
 away, and straightway forgetteth what man- 
 ner of man he was." 
 
 Many an artist has painted his own por- 
 trait from a reflection of himself in a mirror, 
 and has in this way made an accurate like- 
 ness of himself; but this is simply copying 
 the image which the mirror holds before him 
 as he paints. But who ever heard of an artist 
 painting his own portrait from memory, as 
 many a good portrait has been painted by 
 artists ? Or, who will say that he can bring 
 himself before his own mind's eye, even with 
 all the aids to memory which his mirror has 
 supplied to him? It is doubtful, indeed, 
 whether any one of us would recognize him- 
 self, if he were to meet himself on the street, 
 in the absence of any peculiarity of dress to 
 attract special attention. 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 49 
 
 How surprised we are, for example, to be 
 told by one and another that we resemble 
 closely a person whom we know well ! In 
 some instances this is a discomforting sug- 
 gestion, and, again, it is a very gratifying 
 one. We may have supposed that we were 
 better looking than that person, or we may 
 not have supposed that we appeared as well 
 as he. And even when we have this clew to 
 our looks, we are quite likely to imagine 
 that there are differences between him and 
 ourselves just at the point where the resem- 
 blances are strongest, or that there are re- 
 semblances where the differences are most 
 marked. 
 
 Of course, when it comes to passing upon 
 particular features, or well-defined peculiar- 
 ities of outline, we can know that a resem- 
 blance or difference exists in a given case; 
 but that is only like knowing the letters of 
 the alphabet out of which a sentence before 
 us is constructed. To see that the nose is of 
 a Roman or a Grecian type, that the eyes 
 are dark or light, that the cheek-bones are 
 
ISO SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 high or low, that the hair or beard is worn 
 in this way or that, is not to give even the 
 faintest suggestion of the effect of the com- 
 position of a face as a whole, or of the ex- 
 pression which gives to that face its distinctive 
 individuality. And only as a man is able to 
 discern impartially the true characteristics of 
 a countenance before him, — as he could not 
 impartially discern the true characteristics of 
 his own countenance even if he were to see 
 it as his own, — can a man truly see a face as 
 it is, whether in reality or in reflection. 
 
 When it comes to the seeing of our mental 
 and spiritual personalities, there are added 
 difficulties in the way of our seeing ourselves 
 clearly, beyond all those which hinder our 
 sight of our faces and forms as they are. 
 At the best we are dependent upon mirrors 
 to give us any mental or spiritual image of 
 our real selves; and the mirrors which we 
 are likely to count most trustworthy in such 
 a matter are, perhaps, those which give only 
 a distorted reflection of that which is brought 
 before them. 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 5 I 
 
 Whether, for instance, we have a good 
 memory, or a correct musical ear, or a dis- 
 cerning eye, or a logical mind, or keen sensi- 
 bilities, or a refined taste, or a generous spirit, 
 is a question that can be settled only by our 
 accurate comparison of ourselves so far with 
 an absolute standard of measurement; or, 
 again, by the judgment and testimony of 
 others, who are thoroughly competent to pass 
 upon the question. Such a standard, and 
 such helpers to a correct judgment, may not 
 be available to us ; or they may not be recog- 
 nized by us as trustworthy, even if they are 
 available. 
 
 What we think about ourselves in any one 
 of these lines may be right, or it may be 
 wrong. If, however, we are pretty sure that 
 our judgment is right, we are not over ready 
 to admit that a person who tells us that we 
 are wrong just there is better qualified than 
 we are to decide the question at issue. Yet 
 he may be correct, or he may be incorrect. 
 His disagreeing with us does not prove he is 
 wrong; nor, indeed, does it prove he is right. 
 
152 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 The question is still an open one, whether, 
 indeed, we think it ought to be closed in our 
 favor or are willing to submit it to others for 
 further discussion. 
 
 It is not always that we have too high an 
 estimate of ourselves, for we may underesti- 
 mate our abilities or attainments in one direc- 
 tion or another; but it is that the element of 
 our personal interest in the question, and of 
 our personal prejudice in favor of our own 
 opinion, unfits us to see the facts as they are 
 with an impartial eye; or, in other words, 
 forbids our seeing ourselves at all. 
 
 As a matter of fact, whether we can explain 
 it or not,. it is evident to every intelligent ob- 
 server of his fellows, that on every side men 
 are proving their inability to see themselves, 
 by their obviously wrong estimate of them- 
 selves. The man who is known to all as a 
 close-fisted money-lover is calmly confident 
 that he would never be suspected of lacking 
 an open-handed readiness to give whenever 
 and wherever it is his duty to give. He who 
 is full of vanity and egotism feels sure that 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 53 
 
 he would never have a higher estimate of 
 himself than simple justice, in his case, calls 
 for. The uncharitable man is glad that he 
 always weighs his fellows with considerate- 
 ness and accuracy. The man of a suspicious 
 nature is afraid that he is hardly watchful 
 enough of others to avoid being imposed on. 
 He who cares most for the opinion of others, 
 js thankful that it makes no difference to him 
 what people think about him and his ways. 
 Ill-natured men speak of their kindly spirit. 
 Men of a sluggish nature tell of their strug- 
 gle with a quick temper. And so all the 
 way along in the list of personal peculiar- 
 ities. Men show that they do not see them- 
 selves by sincerely claiming qualities which 
 they do not possess, and by indicating no 
 perception on their part of the very charac- 
 teristics which peculiarly distinguish them. 
 
 All of us see that this is the case with 
 others ; but most of us are unready to admit 
 that it is probably also the case with our- 
 selves. It does not seem to us possible that 
 we can be vain, or overbearing, or unchar- 
 
154 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 itable, or ill-natured, or mean, or self-seeking, 
 or unduly desirous of praise, without sus- 
 pecting the fact. Yet why should we think 
 that others are self-deceived in this direction, 
 while we are not likely to be so ? Is it not 
 evident that the very possession of one of 
 these faults in a large degree would practi- 
 cally unfit its possessor to judge of its rela- 
 tive prominence in his character? 
 
 For example, if a man were extremely 
 egotistical, would he not, by his very ego- 
 tism, be led to suppose that his view of him- 
 self was only a natural and just recognition 
 of his personal worth and ability? How, 
 then, could he see that his egotism was any- 
 thing more than a simple consciousness of 
 the plain facts in the case? If, again, a man 
 were slavishly in bondage to the opinions of 
 others, would not his very estimate of the 
 opinions of others cause him to feel that he 
 desired merely to give fitting respect to pub- 
 lic sentiment, and that his final decision to 
 act in accordance with that sentiment would 
 be his own independent judgment in favor of 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 55 
 
 such action? How, in fact, could a man ever 
 see that his marked peculiarity of character 
 is anything more than a normal exhibit of 
 right character at that particular point? 
 
 We say, and we say honestly, that we want 
 to see ourselves as we are, and that we should 
 be glad to have others tell us in kindly frank- 
 ness just what are our faults, in order that 
 we may be able to correct them. But when 
 others tell us, no matter how wisely or how 
 kindly, that our chief faults are those which 
 we have never seen in ourselves, and which 
 we never could see there, simply because 
 they are our faults, and therefore are invisi- 
 ble to us, we are likely to feel sure that we 
 can never get any help from persons who 
 misunderstand us as much as these persons 
 do. And so it is that while we are unable 
 to see ourselves as we are, we are unwilling 
 to believe that others can see us more clearly 
 than we can see ourselves. And so it is true, 
 that we can never see ourselves as we can 
 see others, nor see ourselves as others can 
 see us. 
 
156 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 At the best, our sight of ourselves must 
 be by means of the reflected images of our- 
 selves in the mirrors of other minds than our 
 own. We must know what we are by seeing 
 how we are seen in those mirrors. It is a 
 proverb of the ages, in recognition of this 
 truth, that "the best mirror is a faithful 
 friend." But there is a gain in also seeing 
 ourselves as we are reflected in the minds of 
 those who have no love for us. Hence it is 
 that Pope gives counsel: 
 
 " Trust not yourselves ; but your defects to know, 
 Make use of every friend, and — every foe." 
 
 It is not that every friend's estimate of us is 
 a correct one because it is the estimate of a 
 friend ; nor yet that every enemy's estimate 
 of us is either correct or incorrect simply 
 because it is the estimate of an enemy. But 
 it is that our only approximately correct 
 knowledge of ourselves must come to us 
 through a wise weighing of the varying and 
 multiplied estimates of us and of our course 
 by friends and foes ; we knowing all the time 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 57 
 
 that both friend and foe can see us more 
 clearly than we can ever see ourselves, and 
 that therefore we must not accept our own 
 estimate of ourselves as sure to be more 
 accurate than the estimate of either friend 
 or foe. 
 
 Inasmuch as we cannot see ourselves, we 
 must get on in life without the help, or the 
 hindrance, which would come to us through 
 our seeing ourselves. Inasmuch as others 
 can see us, we ought to make the best use 
 possible of the various views of ourselves 
 which others put at our disposal. 
 
 If those whose judgment we value, and in 
 whose sense of fairness we have confidence, 
 assure us sincerely that they see in us qualities 
 and characteristics which we had never sup- 
 posed were ours, and which we regret to learn 
 are a part of ourselves, we ought to accept this 
 view of us as probably more accurate than our 
 own opinion of ourselves, and set ourselves at 
 battling against the evil thus disclosed in us. 
 If, on the other hand, those whose judgment 
 we value, and in whose sense of fairness we 
 
158 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 have confidence, show us that, in all sincerity, 
 they honor us more highly and trust us more 
 fully than we suppose ourselves to deserve, 
 it is for us to be grateful for this result of 
 their seeing us as we cannot see ourselves, 
 and to struggle on determinedly in the effort 
 not to prove unworthy of such favor as is 
 thereby shown to us. In either event, it is 
 not for us to say that we can see ourselves 
 more clearly than others can see us ; for that 
 is an impossibility. 
 
XVI. 
 
 THE GAIN OF A TWOFOLD VIEW. 
 
 Two eyes are better than one; but two 
 eyes are of service only as they act together 
 for the giving of a twofold view of one and 
 the same thing. One eye is not enough to 
 enable a man to see one thing to the best 
 advantage. Two eyes would be more than 
 enough if they could not work together so 
 as to bring out one object into greater dis- 
 tinctness. Here is the difference, and it is a 
 great difference, between having eyes that 
 are single and having a single eye. 
 
 It is by the combined operation of our two 
 eyes, in their independent and co-operative 
 working, that we judge of the position and 
 form of the simplest objects within range of 
 our vision. He who is deprived of one eye 
 is liable to misjudge both distance and form 
 in looking at objects near or remote; and it 
 
 159 
 
160 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 is only by his becoming intelligently familiar 
 with the consequences of his defect that he 
 is enabled to overcome them in a measure by 
 making due allowance for them. 
 
 A young man who lost an eye by an acci- 
 dent found, as he returned to his desk, that 
 when he attempted to dip his pen into the ink- 
 stand he was liable to miss his aim, and to fall 
 short of or to reach beyond the inkstand's 
 mouth. Only by repeated experiments did 
 he learn how to gauge his action correspond- 
 ingly with his imperfect — and so misleading 
 — sight. Children sometimes gain a practi- 
 cal knowledge of this truth by experiment- 
 ing in its line. They will, for example, set a 
 small cork on a ledge before them, and, with 
 one eye closed, will attempt to knock it off 
 from the ledge. In most cases they will fail 
 to hit the cork on the first trial, because they 
 use but one eye in looking at it, whereas a 
 twofold view is essential to its locating in 
 their mental vision. If, indeed, they had the 
 power of turning their two eyes in opposite 
 directions so as to look at two corks at the 
 
SEEING AND BEING, l6l 
 
 same time, the case would be no better with 
 them; for one eye is not enough to give a 
 full and fair view of one thing. It is the two 
 eyes turned separately, from their two points 
 of view, at one and the same thing, that 
 bring out to their possessor a clear and in- 
 telligent sight of that which he looks at. 
 
 A familiar illustration of this truth is found 
 in the photographic stereograph, which is a 
 unified twofold view of the object photo- 
 graphed. The primitive photographic cam- 
 era has but one eye; hence, of course, it 
 gives a one-eyed view of that at which it is 
 directed. That one-eyed view, like every 
 other one-eyed view, is flat and partial. Now, 
 merely to multiply eyes to a photographic 
 camera, unless those eyes were to work to- 
 gether in bringing out one and the same 
 view, would only multiply flat and partial 
 views, as reproduced by that camera. But 
 when, as in the stereoscopic camera, two pho- 
 tographic lenses are brought to bear on the 
 same object at different angles corresponding 
 
 to the visual angles of the two eyes of a man, 
 ii 
 
1 62 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 two separate yet correspondent views are re- 
 produced ; which, when looked at by the two 
 eyes of the same person, through two sepa- 
 rate yet correspondent lenses, stand out in 
 raised vividness as a thing of reality, instead 
 of as a flat and partial picture. 
 
 In many a case it is true that two pairs of 
 eyes are needful to that twofold vision which 
 is essential to a correct mental view of an 
 object of sight. The two sides of the shield 
 must be looked at from opposite directions, 
 at one and the same time, in order to their 
 intelligent observing in their separate dis- 
 tinctness; and it takes two persons, seeing 
 separately yet seeing co-operatively, to secure 
 that twofold view of the two-sided shield 
 without which the shield cannot be seen and 
 known in its diversified completeness. It is 
 not enough that the two pairs' of eyes be di- 
 rected at the same shield; if they be directed 
 from the same standpoint, they are but dupli- 
 cates of each other. Nor is it enough that 
 they be directed at the same shield from dif- 
 ferent standpoints; if their separate observa- 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 63 
 
 tions be not brought together, they are two 
 different and apparently contradictory views. 
 The two views must be unified as one twofold 
 view, or they give no advantage over the one 
 partial view, or over the two views which 
 seem irreconcilable. 
 
 It is by this bringing together of different 
 but correspondent views of the same heavenly 
 bodies, from co-operating observers at differ- 
 ent earthly standpoints, that the distances 
 and the size and the movements of the stars 
 are computed intelligently. No one pair of 
 eyes could compass this. Nor would any 
 number of pairs of eyes tend to its compass- 
 ing if they merely looked in their isolation, 
 without any relation to the lookings of others. 
 When the transit of Venus is to be calcu- 
 lated, one party of observers goes to the 
 ends of the earth in one direction, and another 
 party goes to the opposite ends of the earth. 
 From their different standpoints these parties 
 observe the planet independently; and after 
 this they come together to compare the re- 
 sults of their separate observings, in order 
 
1 64 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 to secure a unified view of the differing yet 
 corresponding observations. And only in 
 some such way as this does any one person 
 obtain for himself a knowledge of the heavens 
 he looks at, beyond the possibility of his own 
 unaided seeing. 
 
 In applying this principle to the realm of 
 intellectual vision, there are two main errors 
 to be guarded against. It being obvious that 
 two pairs of eyes are better than one pair, it 
 is important to bear in mind, on the one 
 hand, that each pair of eyes must have its 
 own point of vision ; and, on the other hand, 
 that the two pairs of eyes, seeing indepen- 
 dently, must be directed at the same object 
 with a desire to aid, and to be aided by, the 
 other pair of eyes, in bringing out that ob- 
 ject in unmistakable distinctness. Not two 
 views which are identical, nor yet two views 
 which are deemed each complete in itself, 
 but two views which complement each other, 
 and which together make the unified twofold 
 view, — these are the views of truth which 
 are the perfection of human truth-seeing. 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 65 
 
 There are persons who want others, espe- 
 cially their immediate friends, to see all truth 
 just as they see it. They expect others to 
 have their standpoint and their angle of vis- 
 ion, and hence to perceive no more than they 
 would perceive if they were the only observ- 
 ers in all the world. To such persons there 
 is duplicated vision, but there is no twofold 
 vision. They would never know more than 
 one pair of eyes could show them. 
 
 Again, there are persons who want to see 
 by themselves and for themselves whatever 
 they look at, just as they can see it; and who, 
 because they want others to do the same 
 thing, would have their view and the view 
 of others recognized as different views, with- 
 out any attempt to reconcile their differings. 
 And this they think is having and allowing 
 independence of mental vision. Such per- 
 sons have no gain through the observations 
 of other eyes than their own. The one par- 
 tial view which they obtain from their own 
 single standpoint of vision is the only view 
 they ever secure, however wide is the circle 
 
1 66 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 of their keen-eyed friends and acquaintances. 
 And these two classes of observers comprise 
 by far the larger part of all the observers in 
 the realm of mental vision. 
 
 In order to secure the full advantage of a 
 twofold view of truth, a man must look at 
 the subject independently from his own point 
 of mental vision, while a correspondent ob- 
 server looks at the same subject indepen- 
 dently from his point of mental vision ; and 
 then the two views must be looked at as two 
 independent and correspondent views through 
 the lenses of a mental stereoscope, by means 
 of which the two views will seem as one 
 view, even while they have more value than 
 two views. It is not always, however, an 
 easy matter to unify two corresponding 
 mental views by bringing them into mental 
 focus. Sometimes, indeed, on looking into 
 an accurate stereoscope, one sees the two 
 views beneath it as conflicting views, lacking 
 even the distinctness of a single flat view. 
 The trouble, in such a case, is not in the 
 view, but is in the looker's eyes, which, for 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 6/ 
 
 the time, are not working together. As, 
 however, the looker persistently looks and 
 looks, with a confident desire to see the unity 
 of the different impressions, the lines grow 
 clear to his eyes, and the picture rises up be- 
 fore him in its vivid prominence. 
 
 So it sometimes is in the effort to find the 
 unity of the two views of truth presented by 
 two lenses of a mental stereoscope. There 
 must be a patient and a confident looking 
 for that focal view which shall unify the 
 two impressions, so that their result shall 
 be an advance on any single impression. 
 And when that focal view is attained to, the 
 effort that it has cost is counted the wisest 
 of outlays. 
 
 Thg possibility of such sight-seeing as this, 
 in the realm of mental vision, pivots on the 
 coming together, in persistent co-operation, 
 of two independent and correspondent sight- 
 seers. It is a rare and blessed privilege to 
 find two eyes that match our own, while they 
 are wholly independent of them. It is to the 
 power of this twofold vision that Sidney 
 
1 68 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 Lanier pays tribute, when he says of his gain 
 from his double self: 
 
 " By the more height of thy sweet stature grown, 
 Twice-eyed with thy gray vision set in mine, 
 I ken fair lands to wifeless men unknown, 
 
 I compass stars for one-sexed eyes too fine. 
 No text on sea-horizons cloudly writ, 
 
 No maxim vaguely starred in fields or skies, 
 But this wise thou-in-me deciphers it : 
 Oh, thou'rt the Height of heights, the Eye of 
 eyes! M 
 
 Let no one be satisfied with his own par- 
 tial and imperfect view of truth, however 
 clearly it may stand out before his mental 
 vision, when he can secure as its vivifying 
 complement that other view from another 
 self, which shall transform the part into a 
 whole, and the flat picture into a •well- 
 rounded reality! He who has never seen 
 more than one pair of eyes can show him, is 
 to be pitied. He who refuses the help of a 
 second pair of eyes, when he could have them, 
 is deserving not of pity, but of blame. 
 
XVII. 
 
 STRIVING IN THE DIRECTION OF 
 OUR BEST SEEING. 
 
 One's best seeing is not of that which is 
 already the real, but of that which is yet the 
 ideal. And one's best work is in the en- 
 deavor to make real his ideals. Every man 
 has his ideals ; that is, every man who is not 
 a mere groveler in life has his* ideals ; for if 
 it were not for his ideals a man would be 
 sure to be a groveler. He who is without 
 an ideal is contented with his muck-rake and 
 the sticks and straws which that rake enables 
 him to gather into a heap. He who looks 
 up to an imaginary shining crown above him 
 as a possible attainment, is by that very ideal 
 lifted above the limitations of the muck-rake. 
 
 An ideal is necessarily altogether of the 
 
 imagination, but an ideal is not necessarily 
 
 altogether imaginary. An ideal is always an 
 
 169 
 
170 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 object of the imagination, but it is not always 
 a creation of the imagination. Because a 
 thing is in itself unreal, it is not therefore 
 beyond the possibility of realization; because 
 as yet unattained, it is not as a matter of 
 course unattainable. An ideal is that which 
 at the present exists in thought, in conception, 
 in imagination ; it is a fancied, but not there- 
 fore a fanciful, standard or model, beyond the 
 ordinary or the commonplace in actual real- 
 ization or attainment. 
 
 An ideal is that which is above and before 
 a man in all his thinking and in all his feel- 
 ing, when his thoughts or his feelings are 
 beyond his lower selfish interests, and beyond 
 the mere realm of sense. But a man's high- 
 est ideal may be — indeed it often is — within 
 the limits of possible realization; within the 
 record of another's actual attainment or pos- 
 session. Hence it is that the ideal is some- 
 times the most truly real ; that that which the 
 imagination pictures is that which the eye 
 may see, which the hand may clasp, which 
 the mind may enter into. And this jit is 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 171 
 
 which gives the ideal its chiefest practical 
 value in life. 
 
 An ideal is a well-defined idea of what 
 should be, of what may be, or of what is — 
 as best and truest in the sphere of its ima- 
 gining. There are ideals of duty, ideals of 
 character, ideals of beauty, ideals of perform- 
 ance. Every man has his ideals in one or 
 another of these spheres, or in them all. But 
 not every man makes the same use of his 
 ideals, or gains the same measure of benefit 
 from them. What to do with one's ideal, is 
 an important question as bearing upon one's 
 usefulness, one's progress, and one's possi- 
 bilities in life. 
 
 The poorest use of an ideal is to make it 
 an object of dreamy, passive enjoyment; yet 
 this is one of the commonest uses of an ideal. 
 Building castles in the air js one of the most 
 unremunerative of real-estate speculations; 
 although seeing castles in the air may be an 
 important preliminary to fortifying one's posi- 
 tion in this matter-of-fact world. There is 
 very little gain in merely admiring a high 
 
172 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 standard in any sphere, without being in- 
 spired to struggle for attainment in the di- 
 rection of that standard. Yet admiration of 
 an ideal standard is essential to inspiration 
 toward that standard. 
 
 Michael Angelo, as a youth, had his ideals 
 as a sculptor. It is said that the headless and 
 limbless trunk of an antique Greek statue 
 became to him such an ideal of sculptured 
 beauty that he would stand before it for hours 
 in admiration of its grace and power, until 
 his loving hands, in their admiring caresses, 
 had actually worn their impress on the mar- 
 ble itself. Yet that was not the chief use of 
 that ideal — or of the ideals which it sug- 
 gested — in the mind of Michael Angelo. He 
 set himself to realize the ideal ; and the im- 
 press of his hands came to be more clearly 
 seen in the forms of his Moses and his David 
 than on that Torso Belvedere which had in- 
 spired him. And here is the best and truest 
 use of an ideal in any sphere. 
 
 Even though the inspiration be not to im- 
 mediate achievement in the direction of the 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 73 
 
 ideal itself, the contemplation of an ideal 
 ought to be a means of our uplifting and 
 development. To recognize ideal beauty in 
 a statue, in a painting, in a cathedral, or in a 
 landscape, ought not to tempt us to slothful 
 indulgence of its selfish admiration, or, yet 
 worse, to selfish craving for its possession ; 
 but it ought to inspire us to finer perceptions 
 of the beautiful, to greater gratitude to the 
 Author of all beauty, and to nobler endeav- 
 ors to high thinking, and to grander doing 
 and being. 
 
 It is the same in conduct and in character 
 as in the sphere of material beauty ; an ideal 
 ought to be a source of stimulus and inspi- 
 ration to him who recognizes that ideal. If 
 we see, in another, elements of character, 
 standards of conduct, graces of person or of 
 manner, which conform to our ideals of ex- 
 cellence, — and the most impressive ideals of 
 conduct and character are commonly found 
 impersonated before the eyes, — that ideal 
 ought to be to us a continual reminder of 
 what is attainable in being and doing, and a 
 
174 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 continual incentive to holy struggling in the 
 direction of such attainment. 
 
 When Moses was on the mountain summit 
 at Horeb, face to face with God, there was 
 given to him an ideal view of an earthly- 
 sanctuary, and of material aids to worship, 
 such as the world had never seen. That was 
 a rare and wonderful privilege to Moses. But 
 Moses was not to rest satisfied with the con- 
 templation, and the memories, of his moun- 
 tain vision. God told him what to do with 
 his ideal. His duty was to prepare a taber- 
 nacle and its furnishings, for the realization 
 of that ideal. 
 
 "According to all that I shew thee," said 
 the Lord, " the pattern of the tabernacle, and 
 the pattern of all the furniture thereof, even 
 so shall ye make it." The ark, and the altars, 
 and the table of showbread, and the candle- 
 stick, and the flagons and the bowls, and 
 even the tongs and the snuffers, as well as 
 the tent and the hangings and the cover- 
 ings, and the boards and the staves and the 
 bars, and the rings and the loops and the 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 175 
 
 clasps, and the pins, all were to be conformed 
 to the divinely inspired ideal. " And see that 
 thou make them after their pattern which hath 
 been shewed thee in the mount." So the 
 ideal became the real, and all the people of 
 God, in all the ages since, have been the 
 gainers by the use which Moses made of his 
 ideal in the direction of the earthly worship 
 of God. 
 
 So with us all, when we have had some 
 entrancing ideal vision on a mountain sum- 
 mit of personal privilege. We may have 
 seemed to come, as it were, face to face with 
 God, in our studies, in our imaginings, or in 
 our hallowed intercourse with some delight- 
 ful representative of God. Our very faces 
 may shine with the reflected light of our 
 mountain visions, or of our spiritual com- 
 munings. The thought of our ideal may so 
 fill our minds, that the temptation to us is to 
 give ourselves up to its passive and selfish 
 enjoyment. But we have a duty with our 
 ideal beyond its contemplation. Coming 
 down from the mountain to the plain below, 
 
176 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 we must set ourselves at making real the 
 best conceptions of our God-given ideal. 
 
 In the earthly tabernacle of our own im- 
 mortal spirits we must bring into being the 
 forms of use and beauty which have been 
 shown to us in the conceptions of song and 
 story, or in the conduct and the character of 
 those who have commanded our loving and 
 reverent admiration; and at every stage in 
 our toil and in our struggling, we must hear 
 and heed the divine injunction, "See that 
 thou make all things according to the pat- 
 tern that was shewed thee in the mount." 
 
 " Do noble things, not dream them, all day long; 
 And so make life, death, and the vast forever, 
 One grand, sweet song." 
 
XVIII. 
 
 THE POWER OF A REMEMBERED 
 VISION. 
 
 Our best and highest conceptions of that 
 which may be or which is to be, are depend- 
 ent on our personal experiences or observa- 
 tions of that which is or which has been. In 
 other words, our ideals are limited by our 
 perceptions of the actual. We cannot, in- 
 deed, conceive of any goodness or bright- 
 ness or admirableness, of any grandeur or 
 glory or majesty, which is not included in or 
 indicated by that which we have seen for 
 ourselves, or which we have been made to 
 see by the descriptions of those who have 
 seen it. Moreover, others can convey to us 
 an idea of what they have seen, only by means 
 of a reference to what we have seen. It is, 
 in fact, true, in a fuller sense than we are ac- 
 customed to consider it, that "the lamp of 
 12 177 
 
178 SEEING AND BEING, 
 
 the body is the eye;" and that in proportion 
 as the eye perceives bright visions or gazes 
 into shadows, is there light or darkness in 
 the inner man. 
 
 When we speak of the vivid imaginings of 
 the poet, the painter, the sculptor, the archi- 
 tect, we are inclined to forget that no one of 
 these can have in his mind any creation of 
 fancy which is more than a combination or an 
 elaboration of beauties which he has looked 
 upon with his natural eye; and that he can 
 never enable us to see the result of his ima- 
 ginings except by means of our eyes of 
 sense. If the poet were to employ words 
 which are not figurative of our perceptions 
 and experiences, his verse would be but 
 senseless jargon to us. Even the inspired 
 seer, in an attempt to convey to us a picture 
 of the home of the redeemed, must speak of 
 streets of gold and gates of pearl, and a sea 
 of glass, and a great white throne, and of 
 palms and harps and crowns, as a help to our 
 conception of richness and splendor and re- 
 joicing and victory. 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 79 
 
 Raphael's Sistine Madonna can at its best 
 represent no more than he and we have seen, 
 or now see, in an exhibit of saintly, sacred 
 womanhood, and of holy, winsome child- 
 hood. Neither Phidias nor Michael Angelo 
 could carve an impressive representation of 
 Minerva, or of Moses, except by bringing 
 out into clear prominence those traits of wis- 
 dom, and of probity, and of holy boldness in 
 faith, which have already been seen in the 
 forms and faces and the conduct of the best 
 of the human race. From the temples of 
 Karnak in Upper Egypt, to the Taj Mahal in 
 Agra, and to Giotto's Tower in Florence, 
 every stately or graceful form in architecture 
 took its conception from some visible beauty 
 in nature, such as the lotus, the acanthus, 
 the palm, the vine, the inter-arching branches 
 of the trees, the tracery of frost-work, the 
 towering walls and peaks of mountain heights, 
 and the vaulted dome of the skies. 
 
 Everywhere and always he who sees with 
 the mind is limited in his possibilities of per- 
 ception by that which he has seen, or which 
 
180 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 he now sees, with his eyes. The best that is 
 before him in aspiration is inevitably condi- 
 tioned on the best that is yet his, in present 
 or remembered visions. 
 
 One of the chiefest proofs of the veritable- 
 ness of the gospel history is the fact that no 
 character like that of Jesus of Nazareth 
 could have been conceived in the mind of 
 man if it had not been an actuality before 
 the eyes of men. In all the religious books 
 of the ages no such character is either pic- 
 tured or suggested. No divinity of the 
 Greeks or Romans, no deity or sage or saint 
 of the Oriental world, no model teacher rep- 
 resented in the rabbinical writings, approaches 
 that standard of a Perfect Man which is real- 
 ized in the gospel portraiture of Jesus. The 
 best attempts of the early Christians to im- 
 prove on, or to add to, the inspired repre- 
 sentation of the character of Jesus, are only 
 an added evidence of the impossibility of 
 gaining a worthy ideal of character except 
 by a sight of the real in such a character. 
 
 Even now that the character of Jesus is 
 
SEEING AND BEING. l8l 
 
 clearly pictured to the world, its choicest 
 traits can be perceived in their surpassing 
 beauty only by those who are enabled to see 
 some measure of these traits reproduced in 
 the followers and representatives of Jesus. 
 His witnesses must present, in their own 
 lives, a lofty ideal before those to whom they 
 tell of One infinitely worthier and nobler and 
 holier than themselves; for none of us can 
 have in our brightest imaginings a concep- 
 tion of Christ-likeness that is not based on 
 some vision of Christ-likeness which has 
 been before our natural eyes. In this sense 
 it may be said that our best ideals are not 
 before us, but behind us; that our highest 
 hopes are of realizing at the fullest the good 
 of which we have already had a gleam, and 
 of which the memory abides with us as an 
 inspiration and an incentive. 
 
 When the prophet Elisha would have the 
 confidence and courage of his terror-smitten 
 servant restored to him, at Dothan, and found 
 his own words of cheer unavailing to this 
 end, he besought God to grant to that young 
 
1 82 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 man a glimpse of the Divine provisions for 
 the protection of God's earthly servants. 
 "And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray 
 thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And 
 the Lord opened the eyes of the young man ; 
 and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was 
 full of horses and chariots of fire round about 
 Elisha. ,, In the light of that remembered 
 vision, earth's dangers seemed very different 
 to Elisha's servant from that hour onward. 
 The memory of what he had seen forbade his 
 having anxiety over what was to come. 
 
 When, again, the Lord would have the 
 Apostle to the Gentiles achieve such a work 
 as no man had achieved before, and endure 
 such trials and hardships as no man had en- 
 dured before, the Lord granted a vision to 
 Paul to encourage him in his doing and en- 
 during unto the end. Just what that vision 
 was Paul could not tell to others; for the 
 realities of no vision can be disclosed except 
 to those who have had corresponding visions 
 of realities. But Paul could refer to his re- 
 membered vision from time to time, and 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 83 
 
 could give indications of the power over him 
 of its ideal realities. " I will come to visions 
 and revelations of the Lord," he said. " I 
 know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago 
 (whether in the body, I know not; or whether 
 out of the body, I know not; God knoweth), 
 such a one caught up even to the third heaven. 
 And I know such a man (whether in the body, 
 or apart from the body, I know not; God 
 knoweth), how that he was caught up into 
 Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, 
 which it is not lawful for a man to utter." 
 
 But for that remembered vision, the mis- 
 sion of Paul might have been a failure, and 
 the triumphs of Christianity would not have 
 been what we now rejoice over. So it is with 
 many another remembered vision ; as a real- 
 ity of the past it is an ideal for the future, 
 toward the realizing of which the seer looks 
 forward with longing and hope, and unto 
 which he strives with faith-filled courage. 
 
 A remembered vision of good is a precious 
 possession. He who can recall a scene of 
 beauty, of grandeur, of holiness, of peace, 
 
1 84 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 or who has before his mind's eye a character 
 of rare attractiveness and worth, which was 
 known by him in the recent or the earlier 
 past, has an ideal reality to look forward to, 
 and to strive after, as no one without such a 
 memory can have. Only he whose child- 
 hood's home was a home of delight, has in 
 advance any true conception of what his 
 manhood's home ought to be. Only he who 
 has lived in an atmosphere of Christian love 
 and of Christian faith, can conceive of the pre- 
 eminent joys of such as atmosphere. Only 
 he who has looked into the face, and who has 
 heard the words, and who has felt the heart- 
 throbbings, of a true woman's best woman- 
 hood, as mother, or sister, or wife, or friend, 
 can conceive of a true woman's truest power 
 and realest worth. Only he can conceive any 
 measure of that which God has in store for 
 his loved ones, who has had his eyes opened 
 to perceive some measure of that which God 
 has already given to his loved ones. 
 
 Even though a remembered vision be as a 
 momentary gleam of light in the darkness, 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 85 
 
 its power in uplifting an ideal before the mind 
 is a permanent power. Elisha's servant could 
 never again have as vague or as low a con- 
 ception of God's care of his loved ones after 
 that glimpse which was given him, at Dothan, 
 of the encircling host of heaven, as was pos- 
 sible to him before then. If the man who 
 was born blind, and whom Jesus restored to 
 sight in Jerusalem, had been put back into 
 blindness after once opening his eyes on this 
 world of light and beauty, he could never be 
 in the same state as in all his life before. 
 The remembered vision of life and loveliness 
 would have abided with him as an ideal and 
 an inspiration to the day of his death; and 
 heaven itself would have had added attrac- 
 tions to him in the light of that vision. 
 
 The best that we have seen of happiness 
 or of character gives shape to our ideals of 
 happiness and character; and if indeed we 
 are granted but a single glimpse of a higher 
 plane of happiness, or of a worthier and a 
 more admirable character, than we have seen 
 before, at once the best of our former ideals 
 
1 86 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 of happiness or of character are distanced by 
 the new ideal, and henceforward the higher 
 ideal is ours, with its nobler incentives to 
 striving and aspiring. It is not, as we are 
 accustomed to say, that our ideals are vision- 
 ary, but rather that our visions of the real 
 form our ideals, and that the best that we 
 have seen and known is the lowest line of 
 our conceptions of attainable good. 
 
 Let us thank God for the visions he has 
 granted to us of happiness and holiness and 
 true loveliness, in the characters of those who 
 have held before us the highest standards 
 which we have yet seen, of being and doing ! 
 Let us see to it that these remembered visions 
 are as inspiring ideals to us of performance 
 and of attainment in God's service! Let us 
 pray God that our own being and doing may, 
 by his grace, be an inspiration and an incite- 
 ment to those upon whose sight our charac- 
 ters and our conduct may gleam as the basis 
 of a remembered vision ! 
 
XIX, 
 
 THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF 
 A GAZE. 
 
 Our realest selves are our innermost selves. 
 Not our bodies, but our spirits, are our true 
 personality. There is wisdom in the sugges- 
 tion that we ought not to say that we have 
 souls, but rather that we are souls, and that 
 we have bodies. Yet while we have bodies, 
 which for the time being imprison our souls, 
 our souls are dependent upon our bodies for 
 the means of knowledge, and for helps to 
 the attainment of character. It is through 
 our bodily senses that we communicate with 
 the world about us, and it is through our 
 bodily senses that all influences for good or 
 for ill come in upon our innermost being, 
 and aid in shaping its very structure and 
 destiny. 
 
 What we eat and drink has its part in re- 
 
 187 
 
1 88 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 fining or in debasing both the outer and the 
 inner man, because through the outer man it 
 reaches and affects the man within. Gross- 
 ness of diet tends to grossness of nature. 
 The stupefying or the exciting of the brain 
 by means of narcotics and stimulants, deadens 
 or destroys the finer qualities of one's being, 
 or arouses and inflames its worst qualities. 
 
 What we hear, or what we read, or what we 
 see, that is elevating in tone, is an incitement 
 and a help to the elevation of our natures; 
 while there is a shaping power for evil over 
 our natures in those teachings and prompt- 
 ings of evil which reach us day by day 
 through the avenue of our ears and eyes. 
 But peculiarly is it true that that on which 
 we deliberately, or with consent, fix our vis- 
 ual and mental gaze, becomes a shaping and 
 transforming power over our innermost being ; 
 so that, as it is true in one sense that what 
 we see shows what we are, in another sense 
 it is true that what we gaze at decides what 
 we shall be. 
 
 He who deliberately fixes his gaze on things 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 89 
 
 foul and loathsome, delighting himself in their 
 attractions, will be found to lower himself 
 steadily toward the level of the foul and 
 loathsome; while he whose gaze is con- 
 stantly fixed on things lovely and admirable 
 is thereby helped toward the standard of 
 the lovely and admirable. The street scav- 
 enger's tastes, trained through his persistent 
 looking for refuse, must be more and more 
 away from the tastes of the purposeful stu- 
 dent of the beautiful and the elevating in art. 
 And he w T ho seeks his delight in the grosser 
 appeals of art and literature to the natural 
 eye and ear, will become so conformed to 
 that which he thus makes his ideal, that he 
 will no longer aspire to a higher attainment 
 than that which is found in his present en- 
 joyment. 
 
 He whose gaze is fastened on wealth, or 
 station, or popularity, or the pleasures of 
 appetite or passion, as the delight of his eyes, 
 is likely to become conformed in his inner 
 man to the image which through his gaze 
 has come to be the delight of his mind. The 
 
190 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 admiring gaze attracts and centers, and grad- 
 ually shapes, the longings and endeavors of 
 the gazer's entire being, until he lives for that 
 which has held him in thrall, and which is, 
 in fact, the embodiment of his supremest 
 aspirations. 
 
 In classic fable, he who looked into the 
 face of the frightful Gorgon became thereby 
 transformed into stone ; and because of this 
 transforming power of that face, the face itself 
 was set into the shield of Minerva, the god- 
 dess of wisdom, as a means of petrifying 
 every enemy of the goddess who turned his 
 gaze against her. In sacred story it is de- 
 clared that no mere mortal, while still in the 
 flesh, can abide the effulgence of the Divine 
 presence, or resist the effect of a gaze at 
 the Divine glory. " Thou canst not see my 
 face," says the Lord to Moses: "for man 
 shall not see me and live." And thus it is 
 that both fact and fable emphasize and illus- 
 trate the truth that there is a transforming 
 power in a gaze, whether that gaze be toward 
 the good or the evil. 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 191 
 
 The face or the personal character which 
 holds our gaze fixedly, is likely to be a trans- 
 forming power in our lives. We gradually 
 come to be like those whom we like, the 
 traits and the characteristics which we most 
 admire in them being developed in ourselves 
 through our very delight in those indications 
 and exhibits of character. A child's expres- 
 sion of face, and his modes of speech and 
 conduct, are shaped more by the person on 
 whom his young gaze is fixed with loving ad- 
 miration than by any inherited tendencies. 
 All the way along in life the admiring gaze 
 is a large factor in the character-shaping of 
 the gazer; and one of God's choicest gifts to 
 any man is the exhibit before him of a win- 
 some and noble character, that shall fix and 
 hold his gaze, as an object of his affectionate 
 interest. 
 
 When two persons of widely different 
 grades of character are brought into union, 
 the question whether they shall finally be one 
 on the higher plane, or on the lower, is 
 largely dependent on the relative fixedness 
 
192 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 of gaze of the one party or of the other. If 
 the gaze of the superior is fixed with greater 
 admiration on the inferior, the tendency of 
 that gazing will be toward the lower plane; 
 but if the more earnest gaze be of the infe- 
 rior toward the superior, it will be a means of 
 bringing the two together on the higher 
 plane. It is as though the attraction which 
 held the gaze drew toward the object of at- 
 traction all the inner life of the gazer, until 
 that gazer's very being was transformed into 
 the likeness of that at which he gazed. 
 
 Peculiarly is it true that he whose gaze is 
 fixed on things beyond the realm of sense is 
 transformed into the likeness of the spiritual 
 realm. He who is always looking above the 
 stars is sure to have that "far-away look" 
 that tells of his communings with the infinite. 
 Moses, it is said, gave up the pleasures of a 
 royal palace, and made his home in the desert, 
 without complaining or reluctance; "for he 
 endured as seeing Him who is invisible." 
 And after Moses had been gazing into the 
 very face of Him who is invisible, his own 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 93 
 
 face shone with the preternatural light that 
 came of his added likeness to the object of 
 his gazing. 
 
 The inspired writer, urging the Christian 
 to lay aside every hindrance to success in the 
 race of his earthly life course, enjoins it upon 
 him to be "looking unto Jesus, the author 
 and perfecter of our faith;" and the beloved 
 disciple assures us that, if we will but keep 
 our loving gaze on Him who is invisible, 
 then, " if he shall be manifested, we shall be 
 like him; for we shall see him even as he is; " 
 or, in other words, to see him as he is, is 
 equivalent to being in his likeness, trans- 
 formed through our loving looking tow- 
 ard him. 
 
 And now as a practical question the in- 
 quiry comes home to us, At what are we 
 gazing with loving admiration? Is it the 
 things of the lower nature, or the things of 
 the higher? Is it the things of sense, or the 
 things of spirit? Are we looking intently at 
 the things which give pleasure for the moment, 
 and will then pass away, or at the things 
 13 
 
194 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 which shall endure eternally? Is our gaze 
 toward Jesus, with a simple purpose of com- 
 ing nearer to him, and becoming more like 
 him, or do our eyes turn hither and thither 
 listlessly, or with momentary longings after 
 enjoyments and occupations that would hin- 
 der our onward and upward progress ? Ac- 
 cording as our gaze is fixed, so our characters 
 will become. If our gaze is earthward, our 
 likeness shall be of the earth, earthy. If our 
 gaze is on the Lord, then "we all, with un- 
 veiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory 
 of the Lord, are transformed into the same 
 image from glory to glory, even as from the 
 Lord the Spirit." 
 
XX. 
 
 THE COST OF A MOUNTAIN- 
 OUTLOOK. 
 
 If you should find a man lying prone and 
 wounded at the base of a cliff, or groping his 
 way cautiously along the bed of a rocky ra- 
 vine, you might think it possible that he had 
 fallen there, or that he had been thrown, from 
 the eminence above. A slip of the foot as 
 he walked the perilous brink, a moment's 
 sleep as he sat there in restfulness, a push 
 from a playful companion or from a vindic- 
 tive foe, could have been the means of bring- 
 ing him to the depths in which he now suffers 
 or wanders. But if you should see the out- 
 line figure of a man against the sky on a lofty 
 hill-top or on a mountain crag, or if you 
 should hear the call of one thus far above 
 you on some summit outlook, you would 
 know that that man neither slipped nor was 
 
 195 
 
196 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 thrown to his present altitude; that it was 
 by no careless misstep, and during no mo- 
 ment of unconscious passivity, that he found 
 his way to his present plane of standing and 
 of observation. 
 
 No man ever falls up hill. No man ever 
 slips from a lower to a higher plane. No 
 man is thrown by his fellow-man, either in 
 playfulness or in enmity, to a lofty eminence 
 above their common standpoint and its sur- 
 roundings. A cost of purpose, of effort, of 
 struggle, of endurance, is involved in every 
 high attaining; and a mountain-outlook 
 always represents aspiring mountain-climb- 
 ing as the unavoidable precedent of the in- 
 spiring mountain-vision. 
 
 From his mountain-outlook on Pisgah, 
 Moses saw stretched before his preternatural 
 gaze all the Land of Promise into which the 
 Lord's people were about to enter, with the 
 beauties and the possibilities of that land as 
 they were opening before that people in the 
 loving plan of God. But before Moses had 
 obtained this view he had been compelled to 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 97 
 
 pass forty years of study in the foremost 
 schools of human wisdom, forty years of 
 training in the life of a desert shepherd, and 
 yet forty years more of administrative and 
 executive life as the leader of God's people 
 on their toilsome journey toward that land. 
 The privileges of such a mountain-outlook as 
 that of Pisgah it is easy for all to recognize; 
 but the cost of such a foothold for wide- 
 reaching natural and spiritual vision is too 
 often lost sight of — except by him of whom 
 that cost has been required. 
 
 When De Balboa finally stood on the Peak 
 in Darien, and swept his glad gaze out over 
 the newly discovered Pacific Ocean, he had a 
 realizing sense of the fearful cost at which 
 that mountain-outlook was at last secured to 
 him; and the memory of that cost added 
 fervency to his grateful thanksgiving to God, 
 as he kneeled there in acknowledgment of 
 the blessing now accorded him in compensa- 
 tion for that cost. Many a traveler, in these 
 later days, has lost his life in a struggle to- 
 ward the ice-capped summit of Mount Blanc; 
 
198 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 and no traveler has ever reached that sum- 
 mit without an expenditure of strength and 
 endurance which came but little short of the 
 cost of life itself. 
 
 As it is with the natural mountain-tops, so 
 it is with all the mental and moral summits 
 from which men may have a wide-extending 
 outlook: — no lofty point of vision is ever 
 gained without a larger cost than is neces- 
 sary for a foothold on a lower plane. If a 
 man stands high above his fellows in his com- 
 prehension of truths in any realm of fact or 
 thought or fancy, or in his power to see or 
 to foresee spiritual forces and their involvings, 
 that man's altitude has cost him dearly; and 
 no other man can fully share his outlook with- 
 out a corresponding outlay. There is no up- 
 ward progress save by upward struggling, 
 and every added uplift is at the cost of a new 
 outgoing of anxious and aspiring endeavor. 
 
 "We have not wings, we cannot soar; 
 But we have feet to scale and climb 
 By slow degrees, by more and more, 
 The cloudy summits of our time. 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 1 99 
 
 " The heights by great men reached and kept 
 Were not attained by sudden flight, 
 But they, while their companions slept, 
 Were toiling upward in the night." 
 
 The way to a mountain summit is continu- 
 ously, but not uniformly, upward. Every 
 mountain path has its trying and dishearten- 
 ing irregularities and depressions. It seems 
 at times, indeed, to lead downward for the 
 moment, and then the very peak itself which 
 is the object of endeavor is lost sight of. 
 All this discouragement is in the cost of 
 mountain-climbing. Again, each added stage 
 of progress only shows yet other stages to 
 be surmounted; and one cost of upward 
 struggling is the ever-growing thought in 
 the mind of the toiler, that the summit of 
 his longing is farther away than he dreamed 
 of. It has been said with truth, that the 
 higher a man ascends on the slopes of the 
 mountain of knowledge, the vaster is the 
 horizon of ignorance open to his vision. 
 And every struggling toiler upward, as he 
 reaches some momentarily restful table-land 
 
200 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 of observation, is but readier than before 
 to say: 
 
 " Far, far above 
 This easy slope I gained, a mountain shines 
 And darkens skyward with its crags and pines ; 
 And upward slow I move ; 
 
 " Because I know 
 There is no level where I can pause, and say, 
 'This is sure gain.' It is too steep a way 
 For mortal foot to go. 
 
 " There is no end 
 Of things to learn, and books to cram the brain ; 
 They who know all, still hunger to attain. 
 What boots it that they spend 
 
 " Long toiling years 
 To gain horizons dim and limitless ? 
 The higher up, the more the soul's distress 
 In alien atmospheres." 
 
 And this also is in the cost of a mountain- 
 outlook. 
 
 He who exhibits a high standard of thought 
 or of knowledge in his speech or in his writ- 
 ings has toiled long before attaining to that 
 standard. Many are desirous of having the 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 201 
 
 results of such outlay in study and reflec- 
 tion, who would not be willing to make the 
 outlay which is essential to those results. 
 Many, indeed, have no thought of the cost 
 involved in all high intellectual attainment; 
 and their wonder is that they rise to no higher 
 plane than that which they occupied long 
 ago, while some who were with them then are 
 now so far above them. They think, per- 
 chance, that it is circumstances, rather than 
 personal endeavor, that has caused this dif- 
 ference of status. They fail to see, that, 
 without the cost of hard mountain-climbing, 
 no man has the gains of a mountain-outlook 
 — for himself or for his fellows ; and that he 
 who has not climbed has no need to wonder 
 that his plane is lower than his fellow's who 
 has done so. 
 
 Peculiarly is it true that no man can bring 
 a message from the heights of Pisgah, or the 
 peaks of Darien, for the spiritual comfort 
 and inspiration of his fellows, without the 
 preliminary cost to himself of the years of 
 struggle which preceded that mountain-out- 
 
202 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 look, and which culminated there. The ten- 
 derness of sympathy and the clearness of 
 moral insight which mark his messages of 
 counsel or of encouragement are in the re- 
 membrance, it may be, of long-gone soul- 
 visions from some toil-won mountain-summit, 
 where for a time he was face to face with 
 God, and whence he looked out upon the 
 vast and boundless ocean of God's love and 
 truth. Those visions had their bloody cost, 
 and the memory of them has chastened and 
 subdued all subsequent views of life and char- 
 acter in the mind of him who was granted 
 them. Others may have no suspicion of the 
 cost at which he won his power of helpful 
 ministry in love; but with him it is an ever- 
 present, ever-potent consciousness. 
 
 If it is personal ease that one desires for him- 
 self, the plain below, rather than the moun- 
 tain above, is the station for him. If it is 
 opportunity and privileges for himself and in 
 behalf of others that one aspires to, it is the 
 mountain top to which he should look, and 
 toward which he should strive. And even 
 
SEEING AND BEING. 203 
 
 when one has decided to give up personal 
 ease on the plain below in order to make 
 progress skyward, he will find his strivings 
 more and more toilsome, and his ascent more 
 and more of a tax upon all his powers. 
 Wordsworth tells us truly : 
 
 " Tis, by comparison, an easy task 
 Earth to despise ; but to converse with Heaven, 
 This is not easy. To relinquish all 
 We have, or hope, of happiness or joy, 
 And stand in freedom loosened from the world, 
 I deem not arduous ; but must needs confess 
 That 'tis a thing impossible, to frame 
 Conceptions equal to the soul's desires; 
 And the most difficult of tasks to keep 
 Heights which the soul is competent to gain/* 
 
 There is gain in a mountain-outlook of 
 observation, of thought, and of feeling, — 
 gain for one's self, and gain for one's fellows ; 
 but he who would have that gain must know 
 that it can be obtained only through the cost 
 of trial and struggle and endurance; and un- 
 less he is ready to meet that cost he cannot 
 hope for the outlook. He also who has 
 gained a mountain-summit of knowledge or 
 
204 SEEING AND BEING. 
 
 of character, ought not to wonder over, or to 
 regret, the cost of his being there. Without 
 that cost, he could never have reached his 
 present high plane, never have seen what is 
 now in his scope of vision, never have been 
 able to speak the words whereby he now in- 
 structs, or warns, or cheers, his fellows around 
 or below him. 
 
 Would you gain a mountain-outlook? and 
 are you willing to meet its cost? Then nerve 
 yourself for the struggle, and count the full- 
 est outlay but the fitting expenditure: 
 
 " And lay thine up-hill shoulder to the wheel, 
 And climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou 
 Look higher, then — perchance — thou mayest be- 
 yond 
 A hundred ever-rising mountain lines, 
 And past the range of Night and Shadow — see 
 The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day 
 Strike on the Mount of Vision ! 
 
 So, Farewell."