Palmer Self-Cultivat
ion
In
English
1917
808
B 944,870
P17

Number 249

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sa
RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES
MEET
SELF-CULTIVATION
IN ENGLISH
AND
THE GLORY OF
THE IMPERFECT
BY
GEORGE HERBERT PALMER
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO
The Riverside Press Cambridge
W
>
RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES
1. Longfellow's Evangeline.
2. Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish.
3. Dramatization of Miles Standish.
4. Whittier's Snow-Bound, etc.
5. Whittier's Mabel Martin.
6. Holmes's Grandmother's Story.
7, 8, 9. Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair.
10. Hawthorne's Biographical Series.
11. Longfellow's Children's Hour, etc.
12. Outlines
Lowell.
Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes,
13, 14. Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha.
15. Lowell's Under the Old Elm, etc.
16. Bayard Taylor's Lars.
17, 18. Hawthorne's Wonder-Book.
19, 20. Franklin's Autobiography.
21. Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac, etc.
22, 23. Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales.
24. Washington's Farewell Addresses, etc.
25, 26. Longfellow's Golden Legend.
27. Thoreau's Forest Trees, etc.
28. Burroughs's Birds and Bees.
29. Hawthorne's Little Daffydowndilly, etc.
30. Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal, etc.
31. Holmes's My Hunt after the Captain, etc.
32. Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech, etc.
33-35. Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn.
36. Burroughs's Sharp Eyes, etc.
37. Warner's A-Hunting of the Deer, etc.
38. Longfellow's Building of the Ship, etc.
39. Lowell's Books and Libraries, etc.
40. Hawthorne's Tales of the White Hills.
41. Whittier's Tent on the Beach, etc.
42. Emerson's Fortune of the Republic, etc.
43. Bryant's Ulysses among the Phæacians.
44. Edgeworth's Waste not, Want not, etc.
45. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome.
46. Old Testament Stories.
47, 48. Scudder's Fables and Folk Stories.
49, 50. Andersen's Stories.
51. Irving's Rip Van Winkle, etc.
52. Irving's The Voyage, etc.
53. Scott's Lady of the Lake.
54. Bryant's Thanatopsis, etc.
55. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.
56. Webster's First Bunker Hill Oration.
57. Dickens's Christmas Carol.
58. Dickens's Cricket on the Hearth.
59. Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading.
60, 61. The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers.
62. Fiske's War of Independence.
63. Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride, etc.
64-66. Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare.
67. Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar.
68. Goldsmith's Deserted Village, etc.
69. Hawthorne's The Old Manse, etc.
70, 71. Selection from Whittier's Child Life.
72. Milton's Minor Poems.
73. Tennyson's Enoch Arden, etc.
74. Gray's Elegy; Cowper's John Gilpin.
75. Scudder's George Washington.
76. Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality.
77. Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night, etc.
78. Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield.
79. Lamb's Old China, etc.
80. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner; Campbell's
Lochiel's Warning, etc.
81. Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.
82. Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales.
83. Eliot's Silas Marner.
84. Dana's Two Years Before the Mast.
85. Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days.
86. Scott's Ivanhoe.
87. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.
88. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
89, 90. Swift's Gulliver's Voyages.
91. Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables.
92. Burroughs's A Bunch of Herbs, etc.
93. Shakespeare's As You Like It.
94. Milton's Paradise Lost. Books I-III.
95-98. Cooper's Last of the Mohicans.
99. Tennyson's Coming of Arthur, etc.
100. Burke's Conciliation with the Colonies.
101. Pope's Iliad. Books I, VI, XXII, XXIV.
102. Macaulay's Johnson and Goldsmith.
103. Macaulay's Milton.
104. Macaulay's Addison.
105. Carlyle's Essay on Burns.
106. Shakespeare's Macbeth.
107, 108. Grimms' Tales.
109. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.
110. De Quincey's Flight of a Tartar Tribe.
111. Tennyson's Princess.
112. Cranch's Æneid. Books I-III.
113. Poems from Emerson.
114. Peabody's Old Greek Folk Stories.
115. Browning's Pied Piper of Hamelin, etc.
116. Shakespeare's Hamlet.
117, 118. Stories from the Arabian Nights.
119, 120. Poe's Poems and Tales.
121. Speech by Hayne on Foote's Resolution.
122. Speech by Webster in Reply to Hayne.
123. Lowell's Democracy, etc.
124. Aldrich's The Cruise of the Dolphin.
125. Dryden's Palamon and Arcite.
126. Ruskin's King of the Golden River, etc.
127. Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, etc.
128. Byron's Prisoner of Chillon, etc.
129. Plato's Judgment of Socrates.
130. Emerson's The Superlative, etc.
131. Emerson's Nature, etc.
132. Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum, etc.
133. Schurz's Abraham Lincoln.
134 Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel.
135. Chaucer's Prologue.
136. Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, etc.
137. Bryant's Iliad. Bks. I, VI, XXII, XXIV.
138. Hawthorne's The Custom House, etc.
139. Howells's Doorstep Acquaintance, etc.
140. Thackeray's Henry Esmond.
141. Higginson's Three Outdoor Papers.
142. Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies.
143. Plutarch's Alexander the Great.
144. Scudder's The Book of Legends.
145. Hawthorne's The Gentle Boy, etc.
146. Longfellow's Giles Corev.
(See also back covers.)
(74)
The Riverside Literature Series
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
AND
THE GLORY OF THE
IMPERFECT
BY
GEORGE HERBERT PALMER
ALFORD PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY EMERITUS,
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Cout
bien ou
rien
The Riverside Press
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1908 AND 1917, BY GEORGE HERBERT PALMER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
U S. A
4 НигоЕ, S.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
זן
5
11
45
INTRODUCTION
Books on education are usually addressed to
teachers, as those on sight to opticians. Common
people have eyes as truly as scientists; they look out
of them as often, but more rarely look into them.
If they attempt examination, they find they have
not the knowledge which would make what they see
significant. Just so minds that are to be educated
can reach but a limited comprehension of the prob-
lems and processes of education. They may know
when they are badly taught; but when the teaching
is good, their attention will be absorbed in the sub-
ject and they will hardly notice the agencies which
bring it before them. Accordingly, in writing on
education, I have hitherto usually addressed my
fellow teachers, summoning them to enjoy and ex-
plore our glorious and intricate art, relating my own
experiences in it, and sketching the partial conclu-
sions I have reached as regards what can and can-
not be done.
The present papers have an altogether different
aim. Here I talk with learners rather than with
teachers, and try to show beginners what is their
6
INTRODUCTION
part in the gradual process which turns them from
boys and girls into men and women. Education is
not a mere operation; it is a coöperation. Two are
required for its enriching bargain. On the pupil's
side there must be preparedness. He must desire
the country for which he sets out, and be ener-
getic in the use of his legs, while leaving the puz-
zling routes to the selection of his more experienced
guides.
The second of these papers has the wider scope.
Originally prepared for the Woman's College of
Western Reserve University, it tries to aid the
student in fashioning his ideals and describes what
the daily attitude of his mind should be. The first, an
address at a Michigan University Commencement,
is but an application to a particular field of the ideals
thus determined. The first is more practical, probably
therefore more easy to understand; the second more
theoretic and fundamental. In any discussion of
the pair this latter would logically precede. Yet it
requires, after all, only a few words of explanation.
Whoever enters on a course of discipline with a
view to development should assure himself of two
things: his actual smallness and his possible large-
ness. Conviction of either alone spells ruin. The
graduate of a college, for example, on entering busi-
ness must often remind himself that he is no longer
a Senior. He is a Freshman once more
a little,
INTRODUCTION
7
half-made person, with the ignorance, awkwardness,
and discomfort of a beginner. But this is not the
whole story. Easy skill lies right ahead, if he will
only take the diligent steps to reach it. If because
such skill is possible he assumes it his already, he
dooms himself to inferiority. But hardly less dis-
astrous is the exclusive sense of incompetence. The
two considerations should go together, the belief in
a possible largeness illuminating the actual small-
ness, the smallness quietly acknowledged in contem-
plating the possible largeness.
"A grain of glory mixed with humbleness
Cures both a fever and lethargicness,'
says George Herbert. The mixture is the important
matter. Shame and conceit are thus alike avoided.
Dignity is attained; for when imperfection is viewed:
as but a stage in a process of development, on it falls
the glory of its ultimate goal. Such glory of the im-
perfect, so necessary for the young person to under-
stand, is the subject of my second paper.
Probably in few departments of life is the sense of
smallness and the desire for largeness so oppressive
and so generally confessed as in speech; for language
is our chief means of connecting ourselves with
others. Detached from them, we feel ourselves
helpless. In our times of utmost dependence, there-
fore, in our first three years, the acquisition of lan-
8
INTRODUCTION
་
guage is our chief business and goes on at a prodi-
gious pace. But as soon as a stock of words is gained
just sufficient to establish a rough connection with
our fellows, we are apt lazily to pause. To increase
the complexity of our ties so as to be able to approach
one another in all the subtle shades of our thought
and feeling is not at any moment an urgent neces-
sity. In general we feel our feebleness and wish it
removed. Why will not some one give us control
of our tongue? To gain it ourselves is apt to seem
too heavy a task.
Now in the paper here placed first I have wished.
to show how dull is life so long as these conjunctions
with our fellow men yes, with our own minds too
- remain imperfect. And then, since most of us
are already pretty well aware of this dismal fact,
and are crippled by it, I devote the substance of
the paper to showing the means of escape. Small as
we are, a large linguistic power is within the reach
of every one. Only it cannot be handed over by
somebody else. While a sympathetic teacher can
do much in the way of encouragement, example, the
correction of errors, and the suggestion of promising
lines of effort, the mastery of the tongue must chiefly
come from him who owns it. For there is always
something original and creative in speech. It is an
art that must be felt after, not a science to be
learned. The value of what we say is in its expres-
INTRODUCTION
9
sion of an individual temperament. Accordingly, our
path of advance runs again through the unteachable
and spontaneous methods of our first three years.
Taking ourselves in charge, we must-as then —
have eager interests, swiftly observe, lay hold on all
we hear, and be restless until we have conveyed to
others that and that only which we have precisely
seen and felt. Self-cultivation, in short, must direct
the enlargment of our speech.
But there is nothing singular in this. In all
knowledge, there is an artistic, a creative, element
which education is learning every year to prize more
highly. The old mechanical curriculum, where the
same studies were presented to all minds, is gone.
We now see that some sort of personal response is a
condition of vital learning. Laboratory and experi-
mental methods, where the student sees truth for
himself, are taking the place of book learning. And
what does the blundering cry of Original Research
mean except that the pupil is to discover by his
own means what he desires to know? This impor-
tance of self-cultivation in education the Greeks
understood long ago. Their word for "I teach" is
didáσko; but when they wish to say "I learn,"
they merely turn the verb for teaching into its
middle voice and say didáσкoμal, "I teach myself."
Self-cultivation! That is the only permanently valu-
able learning. May the readers of my little book be
10
INTRODUCTION
impelled to set about it in seeking that which is a
condition of most other success
their own speech.
CAMBRIDGE, December 23, 1916.
the mastery of
G. H. PALMER.
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
ENGLISH study has four aims: the mastery of our
language as a science, as a history, as a joy, and as
a tool. I am concerned with but one, the mastery of
it as a tool. Philology and grammar present it as a
science; the one attempting to follow its words, the
other its sentences, through all the intricacies of their
growth, and so to manifest laws which lie hidden in
these airy products no less than in the moving stars
or the myriad flowers of spring. Fascinating and im-
portant as all this is, I do not recommend it here.
For I want to call attention only to that sort of Eng-
lish study which can be carried on without any large
apparatus of books. For a reason similar, though
less cogent, I do not urge historical study. Probably
the current of English literature is more attractive
through its continuity than that of any other nation.
Notable works in verse and prose have appeared in
long succession, and without gaps intervening, in a
way that would be hard to parallel in any other lan-
guage known to man. A bounteous endowment this
for every English speaker, and one which should
stimulate us to trace the marvellous and close-linked
12 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
progress from the times of the Saxons to those of
Tennyson and Kipling. Literature too has this ad-
vantage over every other species of art study, that
everybody can examine the original masterpieces
and not depend on reproductions, as in the cases of
painting, sculpture, and architecture; or on interme-
diate interpretation, as in the case of music. To-day
most of these masterpieces can be bought for a trifle,
and even a poor man can follow through centuries the
thoughts of his ancestors. But even so, ready of ac-
cess as it is, English can be studied as a history only
at the cost of solid time and continuous attention,
much more time than the majority of those for whom
I am writing can afford. By most of us our mighty
literature cannot be taken in its continuous current,
the later stretches proving interesting through relation
with the earlier. It must be taken fragmentarily, if
at all, the attention delaying on those parts only which
offer the greatest beauty or promise the best exhila-
ration. In other words, English may be possible as a
joy where it is not possible as a history. In the end-
less wealth which our poetry, story, essay, and drama
afford, every disposition may find its appropriate nu-
triment, correction, or solace. He is unwise, however
busy, who does not have his loved authors, veritable
friends with whom he takes refuge in the intervals
of work and by whose intimacy he enlarges, refines,
sweetens, and emboldens his own limited existence.
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 13
Yet the fact that English as a joy must largely be con-
ditioned by individual taste prevents me from offering
general rules for its pursuit. The road which leads
one man straight to this joy leads another to tedium.
In all literary enjoyment there is something incalcula-
ble, something wayward, eluding the precision of
rule, and rendering inexact the precepts of him who
would point out the path to it. While I believe that
many suggestions may be made, useful to the young
enjoyer and promotive of his wise vagrancy, I shall
not undertake here the complicated task of offering
them. Let enjoyment go, let history go, let scienc
go, and still English remains - English as a tool.
Every hour our language is an engine for communi-
cating with others, every instant for fashioning the
thoughts of our own minds. I want to call attention
to the means of mastering this curious and essential
tool, and to lead every one who reads me to become
discontented with his employment of it.
The importance of literary power needs no long
argument. Everybody acknowledges it, and sees that
without it all other human faculties are maimed.
Shakespeare says that death-bringing time "insults
o'er dull and speechless tribes." It and all who live in
it insult over the speechless person. So mutually de-
pendent are we that on our swift and full communica-
tion with one another is staked the success of almost
every scheme we form. He who can explain himself
14 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
may command what he wants. He who cannot is left
to the poverty of individual resource; for men do what
we desire only when persuaded. The persuasive and
explanatory tongue is, therefore, one of the chief
levers of life. Its leverage is felt within us as well as
without, for expression and thought are integrally
bound together. We do not first possess completed
thoughts and then express them. The very forma-
tion of the outward product extends, sharpens, en-
riches the mind which produces, so that he who gives
forth little after a time is likely enough to discover
that he has little to give forth. By expression too we
may carry our benefits and our names to a far gen-
eration. This durable character of fragile language
puts a wide difference of worth between it and some
of the other great objects of desire, health, wealth,
and beauty, for example. These are notoriously liable
to accident. We tremble while we have them. But
literary power, once ours, is more likely than any
other possession to be ours always. It perpetuates
and enlarges itself by the very fact of its existence
and perishes only with the decay of the man himself.
For this reason, because more than health, wealth,
and beauty, literary style may be called the man, good
judges have found in it the final test of culture and
have said that he, and he alone, is a well-educated per-
son who uses his language with power and beauty.
The supreme and ultimate product of civilization, it
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 15
has well been said, is two or three persons talking
together in a room. Between ourselves and our lan-
guage there accordingly springs up an association
peculiarly close. We are as sensitive to criticism
of our speech as of our manners. The young man
looks up with awe to him who has written a book, as
already half divine; and the graceful speaker is a
universal object of envy.
But the very fact that literary endowment is im-
mediately recognized and eagerly envied has induced
a strange illusion in regard to it. It is supposed to
be something mysterious, innate in him who pos-
sesses it and quite out of the reach of him who has it
not. The very contrary is the fact. No human em-
ployment is more free and calculable than the win-
ning of language. Undoubtedly there are natural
aptitudes for it, as there are for farming, seaman-
ship, or being a good husband. But nowhere is
straight work more effective. Persistence, care, dis-
criminating observation, ingenuity, refusal to lose
heart, traits which in every other occupation tend
toward excellence, - tend toward it here with special
security. Whoever goes to his grave with bad Eng-
lish in his mouth has no one to blame but himself for
the disagreeable taste; for if faulty speech can be in-
herited, it can be exterminated too. I hope to point
out some of the methods of substituting good English
for bad. And since my space is brief, and I wish to
16 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
be remembered, I throw what I have to say into the
form of four simple precepts which, if pertinaciously
obeyed, will, I believe, give anybody effective mastery
of English as a tool.
First then, "Look well to your speech." It is
commonly supposed that when a man seeks literary
power he goes to his room and plans an article for
the press. But this is to begin literary culture at
the wrong end. We speak a hundred times for every
once we write. The busiest writer produces little
more than a volume a year, not so much as his talk
would amount to in a week. Consequently through
speech it is usually decided whether a man is to have
command of his language or not. If he is slovenly
in his ninety-nine cases of talking, he can seldom
pull himself up to strength and exactitude in the
hundredth case of writing. A person is made in one
piece, and the same being runs through a multitude
of performances. Whether words are uttered on
paper or to the air, the effect on the utterer is the
same. Vigor or feebleness results according as energy
or slackness has been in command. I know that
certain adaptations to a new field are often necessary.
A good speaker may find awkwardnesses in himself
when he comes to write, a good writer when he
speaks. And certainly cases occur where a man ex-
hibits distinct strength in one of the two, speaking
or writing, and not in the other. But such cases are
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 17
rare. As a rule, language once within our control
can be employed for oral or for written purposes.
And since the opportunities for oral practice enor-
mously outbalance those for written, it is the oral
which are chiefly significant in the development of
literary power. We rightly say of the accomplished
writer that he shows a mastery of his own tongue.
This predominant influence of speech marks nearly
all great epochs of literature. The Homeric poems.
are addressed to the ear, not to the eye. It is doubt-
ful if Homer knew writing, certain that he knew
profoundly every quality of the tongue, — veracity,
vividness, shortness of sentence, simplicity of thought,
obligation to insure swift apprehension. Writing and
rigidity are apt to go together. In Homer's smooth-
slipping verses one catches everywhere the voice. So
too the aphorisms of Hesiod might naturally pass
from mouth to mouth, and the stories of Herodotus
be told by an old man at the fireside. Early Greek lit-
erature is plastic and garrulous. Its distinctive glory
is that it contains no literary note; that it gives forth
human feeling not in conventional arrangement, but
with apparent spontaneity in short, that it is speech
literature, not book literature. And the same ten-
dency continued long among the Greeks. At the cul-
mination of their power the drama was their chief
literary form, the drama, which is but speech en-
nobled, connected, clarified. Plato too, following the
18 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
he
dramatic precedent and the precedent of his talking
master, accepted conversation as his medium for phi-
losophy and imparted to it the vivacity, ease, way-
wardness even, which the best conversation exhibits.
Nor was the experience of the Greeks peculiar. Our
literature shows a similar tendency. Its bookish times
are its decadent times, its talking times its glory.
Chaucer, like Herodotus, is a story-teller, and follows
the lead of those who on the Continent entertained
courtly circles with pleasant tales. Shakespeare and
his fellows in the spacious times of great Elizabeth
did not concern themselves with publication. Mar-
ston in one of his prefaces thinks it necessary to
apologize for putting his piece in print, and says
would not have done such a thing if unscrupulous
persons, hearing the play at the theatre, had not
already printed corrupt versions of it. Even the
Queen Anne's men, far removed though they are
from anything dramatic, still shape their ideals of
literature by demands of speech. The essays of the
Spectator, the poems of Pope, are the remarks of
a cultivated gentleman at an evening party. Here
is the brevity, the good taste, the light touch, the
neat epigram, the avoidance of whatever might stir
passion, controversy, or laborious thought, which
characterize the conversation of a well-bred man. In-
deed it is hard to see how any literature can be long
vital which is based on the thought of a book and
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 19
not on that of living utterance. Unless the speech
notion is uppermost, words will not run swiftly to
their mark. They delay in delicate phrasings while
naturalness and a sense of reality disappear. Women
are the best talkers. I sometimes please myself with
noticing that three of the greatest periods of English
literature coincide with the reigns of the three Eng-
lish queens.
Fortunate it is, then, that self-cultivation in the
use of English must chiefly come through speech; be-
cause we are always speaking, whatever else we do.
In opportunities for acquiring a mastery of language
the poorest and busiest are at no large disadvantage
as compared with the leisured rich. It is true the
strong impulse which comes from the suggestion and
approval of society may in some cases be absent, but
this can be compensated by the sturdy purpose of the
learner. A recognition of the beauty of well-ordered
words, a strong desire, patience under discourage-
ments, and promptness in counting every occasion
as of consequence, - these are the simple agencies
which sweep one on to power. Watch your speech
then. That is all which is needed. Only it is desir-
able to know what qualities of speech to watch for.
I find three, accuracy, audacity, and range,
I will say a few words about each.
and
Our
Obviously, good English is exact English.
words should fit our thoughts like a glove and be
20 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
neither too wide nor too tight. If too wide, they will
include much vacuity beside the intended matter. If
too tight, they will check the strong grasp. Of the
two dangers, looseness is by far the greater. There
are people who say what they mean with such a naked
precision that nobody not familiar with the subject
can quickly catch the sense. George Herbert and
Emerson strain the attention of many. But niggardly
and angular speakers are rare. Too frequently words
signify nothing in particular. They are merely thrown
out in a certain direction to report a vague and unde-
termined meaning or even a general emotion. The
first business of every one who would train himself
in language is to articulate his thought, to know defi-
nitely what he wishes to say, and then to pick those
words which compel the hearer to think of this and
only this. For such a purpose two words are often
better than three. The fewer the words, the more
pungent the impression. Brevity is the soul, not
simply of a jest, but of wit in its finer sense where
it is identical with wisdom. He who can put a great
deal into a little is the master. Since firm texture is
what is wanted, not embroidery or superposed orna-
ment, beauty has been well defined as the purgation
of superfluities. And certainly many a paragraph
might have its beauty brightened by letting quiet
words take the place of its loud words, omitting its
"verys," and striking out its purple patches of fine
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 21
writing. Here is Ben Jonson's description of Bacon's
language: "There happened in my time one noble
speaker who was full of gravity in his speech. No
man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more
weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in
what he uttered. No member of his speech but con-
sisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough
or look aside without loss. He commanded when he
spoke, and had his judges angry or pleased at his dis-
cretion." Such are the men who command, men who
speak "neatly and pressly." But to gain such pre-
cision is toilsome business. While we are in training
for it, no word must unpermittedly pass the portal of
the teeth. Something like what we mean must never
be counted equivalent to what we mean. And if we
are not sure of our meaning or of our word, we must
pause until we are sure. Accuracy does not come of
itself. For persons who can use several languages,
capital practice in acquiring it can be had by trans-
lating from one language to another and seeing that
the entire sense is carried over. Those who have
only their native speech will find it profitable often
to attempt definitions of the common words they use.
Inaccuracy will not stand up against the habit of defi-
nition. Dante boasted that no rhythmic exigency
had ever made him say what he did not mean. We
heedless and unintending speakers, under no exigency
of rhyme or reason, say what we mean but seldom,
22 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
and still more seldom mean what we say. To hold
our thoughts and words in significant adjustment re-
quires unceasing consciousness, a perpetual determi-
nation not to tell lies; for of course every inaccuracy
is a bit of untruthfulness. We have something in
mind, yet convey something else to our hearer. And
no moral purpose will save us from this untruthful-
ness unless that purpose is sufficient to inspire the
daily drill which brings the power to be true. Again
and again we are shut up to evil because we have not
acquired the ability of goodness.
But after all, I hope that nobody who hears me
will quite agree. There is something enervating in
conscious care. Necessary as it is in shaping our pur-
poses, if allowed too direct and exclusive control con-
sciousness breeds hesitation and feebleness. Action
is not excellent, at least, until spontaneous. In piano-
playing we begin by picking out each separate note;
but we do not call the result music until we play our
notes by the handful, heedless how each is formed.
And so it is everywhere. Consciously selective con-
duct is elementary and inferior. People distrust it, or
rather they distrust him who exhibits it. If anybody
talking to us visibly studies his words, we turn away.
What he says may be well enough as school exercise,
but it is not conversation. Accordingly, if we would
have our speech forcible, we shall need to put into it
quite as much of audacity as we do of precision, terse-
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 23
ness, or simplicity. Accuracy alone is not a thing to
be sought, but accuracy and dash. It was said of
Fox, the English orator and statesman, that he was
accustomed to throw himself headlong into the middle
of a sentence, trusting to God Almighty to get him
out. So must we speak. We must not before begin-
ning a sentence decide what the end shall be; for if we
do, nobody will care to hear that end. At the begin-
ning, it is the beginning which claims the attention
of both speaker and listener, and trepidation about
going on will mar all. We must give our thought its
head, and not drive it with too tight a rein, nor grow
timid when it begins to prance a bit. Of course we
must retain coolness in courage, applying the results
of our previous discipline in accuracy; but we need
not move so slowly as to become formal. Pedantry
is worse than blundering. If we care for grace and
flexible beauty of language, we must learn to let our
thought run. Would it, then, be too much of an Irish
bull to say that in acquiring English we need to cul-
tivate spontaneity? The uncultivated kind is not
worth much; it is wild and haphazard stuff, unad-
justed to its uses. On the other hand no speech is of
much account, however just, which lacks the element
of courage. Accuracy and dash, then, the combina-
tion of the two, must be our difficult aim; and we
must not rest satisfied so long as either dwells with
us alone.
24 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
But are the two so hostile as they at first appear?
Or can, indeed, the first be obtained without the aid
of the second? Supposing we are convinced that
words possess no value in themselves, and are correct
or incorrect only as they truly report experience, we
shall feel ourselves impelled in the mere interest of
accuracy to choose them freshly and to put them to-
gether in ways in which they never coöperated before,
so as to set forth with distinctness that which just
we, not other people, have seen or felt. The reason
why we do not naturally have this daring exacti-
tude is probably twofold. We let our experiences be
blurred, not observing sharply, nor knowing with any
minuteness what we are thinking about; and so there
is no individuality in our language. And then, be-
sides, we are terrorized by custom and inclined to
adjust what we would say to what others have said
before. The cure for the first of these troubles is to
keep our eye on our object, instead of on our listener
or ourselves; and for the second, to learn to rate the
expressiveness of language more highly than its cor-
rectness. The opposite of this, the disposition to
set correctness above expressiveness, produces that
peculiarly vulgar diction known as "school-ma'am
English," in which for the sake of a dull accord with
usage all the picturesque, imaginative and forceful
employment of words is sacrificed. Of course we
must use words so that people can understand them,
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 25
and understand them too with ease; but this once
granted, let our language be our own, obedient to our
special needs. "Whenever," says Thomas Jefferson,
"by small grammatical negligences the energy of an
idea can be condensed, or a word be made to stand
for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt."
“Young man,” said Henry Ward Beecher to one who
was pointing out grammatical errors in a sermon of
his, "when the English language gets in my way, it
does n't stand a chance." No man can be convincing,
writer or speaker, who is afraid to send his words
wherever they may best follow his meaning, and this
with but little regard to whether any other person's
words have ever been there before. In assessing
merit let us not stupefy ourselves with using nega-
tive standards. What stamps a man as great is not
freedom from faults, but abundance of powers.
Such audacious accuracy, however, distinguishing
as it does noble speech from commonplace speech,
can be practised only by him who has a wide range
of words. Our ordinary range is absurdly narrow.
It is important, therefore, for anybody who would
cultivate himself in English to make strenuous and
systematic efforts to enlarge his vocabulary. Our
dictionaries contain more than a hundred thousand
words. The average speaker employs about three
thousand. Is this because ordinary people have only
three or four thousand things to say? Not at all.
26 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
It is simply due to dulness. Listen to the average
schoolboy. He has a dozen or two nouns, half a
dozen verbs, three or four adjectives, and enough
conjunctions and prepositions to stick the conglom-
erate together. This ordinary speech deserves the
description which Hobbes gave to his "State of Na-
ture,” that “it is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and
short." The fact is, we fall into the way of thinking
that the wealthy words are for others and that they
do not belong to us. We are like those who have
received a vast inheritance, but who persist in the
inconveniences of hard beds, scanty food, rude cloth-
ing, who never travel, and who limit their purchases
to the bleak necessities of life. Ask such people
why they endure niggardly living while wealth in
plenty is lying in the bank, and they can only an-
swer that they have never learned how to spend. But
this is worth learning. Milton used eight thousand
words, Shakespeare fifteen thousand. We have all
the subjects to talk about that these early speakers
had; and in addition we have bicycles and sciences.
and strikes and political combinations and all the
complicated living of the modern world.
Why then do we hesitate to swell our words to
meet our needs? It is a nonsense question. There
is no reason. We are simply lazy, too lazy to make
ourselves comfortable. We let our vocabularies be
limited and get along rawly without the refinements
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 27
of human intercourse, without refinements in our own
thoughts; for thoughts are almost as dependent
on words as words on thoughts. For example, all
exasperations we lump together as "aggravating,"
not considering whether they may not rather be dis-
pleasing, annoying, offensive, disgusting, irritating,
or even maddening; and without observing too that
in our reckless usage we have burned up a word
which might be convenient when we should need to
mark some shading of the word "increase." Like
the bad cook, we seize the frying-pan whenever we
need to fry, broil, roast, or stew, and then we won-
der why all our dishes taste alike while in the next
house the food is appetizing. It is all unnecessary.
Enlarge the vocabulary. Let any one who wants to
see himself grow resolve to adopt two new words
each week. It will not be long before the endless
and enchanting variety of the world will begin to re-
flect itself in his speech, and in his mind as well. I
know that when we use a word for the first time we
are startled, as if a fire-cracker went off in our neigh-
borhood. We look about hastily to see if any one
has noticed. But finding that no one has, we may be
emboldened. A word used three times slips off the
tongue with entire naturalness. Then it is ours for-
ever, and with it some phase of life which had been
lacking hitherto. For each word presents its own
point of view, discloses a special aspect of things, re-
28
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
ports some little importance not otherwise conveyed,
and so contributes its small emancipation to our
tied-up minds and tongues.
But a brief warning may be necessary to make my
meaning clear. In urging the addition of new words
to our present poverty-stricken stock I am far from
suggesting that we should seek out strange, technical
or inflated expressions, which do not appear in or-
dinary conversation. The very opposite is my aim.
I would put every man who is now employing a dic-
tion merely local and personal in command of the
approved resources of the English language. Our
poverty usually comes through provinciality, through
accepting without criticism the habits of our special
set. My family, my immediate friends, have a dic-
tion of their own. Plenty of other words, recognized
as sound, are known to be current in books and to be
employed by modest and intelligent speakers, only we
do not use them. Our set has never said diction,"
or "current," or "scope," or "scanty," or "hitherto,
or "convey," or "lack." Far from unusual as these
words are, to adopt them might seem to set me apart
from those whose intellectual habits I share. From
this I shrink. I do not like to wear clothes suitable
enough for others, but not in the style of my own
plain circle. Yet if each one of that circle does the
same, the general shabbiness is increased. The talk
of all is made narrow enough to fit the thinnest there.
66
"
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 29
What we should seek is to contribute to each of the
little companies with which our life is bound up a
gently enlarging influence, such impulses as will not
startle or create detachment, but which may save from
humdrum, routine and dreary usualness. We cannot
be really kind without being a little venturesome.
The small shocks of our increasing vocabulary will in
all probability be as helpful to our friends as to our-
selves.
Such then are the excellences of speech. If we
would cultivate ourselves in the use of English, we
must make our daily talk accurate, daring and full.
I have insisted on these points the more because in
my judgment all literary power, especially that of
busy men, is rooted in sound speech. But though the
roots are here, the growth is also elsewhere. And I
pass to my later precepts, which, if the earlier one
has been laid well to heart, will require only brief
discussion.
Secondly, "Welcome every opportunity for writ-
ing." Important as I have shown speech to be, there
is much that it cannot do. Seldom can it teach struc-
ture. Its space is too small. Talking moves in sen-
tences, and rarely demands a paragraph. I make my
little remark, a dozen or two words, then wait for
my friend to hand me back as many more. This gen-
tle exchange continues by the hour; but either of us
would feel himself unmannerly if he should grasp an
30 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
entire five minutes and make it uninterruptedly his.
That would not be speaking, but rather speech-mak-
ing. The brief groupings of words which make up
our talk furnish capital practice in precision, boldness
and variety; but they do not contain room enough for
exercising our constructive faculties. Considerable
length is necessary if we are to learn how to set forth
B in right relation to A on the one hand and to C on
the other; and while keeping each a distinct part, are
to be able through their smooth progression to weld
all the parts together into a compacted whole. Such
wholeness is what we mean by literary form. Lack-
ing it, any piece of writing is a failure; because in
truth it is not a piece, but pieces. For ease of read-
ing, or for the attainment of an intended effect, unity
is essential the multitude of statements, anecdotes,
quotations, arguings, gay sportings and appeals, all
'bending one way their gracious influence." And
this dominant unity of the entire piece obliges unity
also in the subordinate parts. Not enough has been
done when we have huddled together a lot of wan-
dering sentences and penned them in a paragraph,
or even when we have linked them together by the
frail ties of “and, and." A sentence must be com-
pelled to say a single thing; a paragraph, a single
thing; an essay, a single thing. Each part is to be a
preliminary whole and the total a finished whole.
But the ability to construct one thing out of many
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 31
does not come by nature. It implies fecundity, re-
straint, an eye for effects, the forecast of finish while
we are still working in the rough, obedience to the
demands of development and a deaf ear to whatever
calls us into the by-paths of caprice; in short it im-
plies that the good writer is to be an artist.
Now something of this large requirement which
composition makes, the young writer instinctively
feels, and he is terrified. He knows how ill-fitted he
is to direct “toil coöperant to an end"; and when
he sits down to the desk and sees the white sheet of
paper before him, he shivers. Let him know that the
shiver is a suitable part of the performance. I well
remember the pleasure with which, as a young man, I
heard my venerable and practised professor of rheto-
ric say that he supposed there was no work known
to man more difficult than writing. Up to that time
I had supposed its severities peculiar to myself. It
cheered me, and gave me courage to try again, to
learn that I had all mankind for my fellow sufferers.
Where this is not understood, writing is avoided.
From such avoidance I would save the young writer
by my precept to seek every opportunity to write.
For most of us this is a new way of confronting com-
position — treating it as an opportunity, a chance, and
not as a burden or compulsion. It saves from slavish-
ness and takes away the drudgery of writing, to view
each piece of it as a precious and necessary step in
32 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
the pathway to power. To those engaged in bread-
winning employments these opportunities will be few.
Spring forward to them, then, using them to the full.
Severe they will be because so few, for only practice
breeds ease; but on that very account let no one of
them pass with merely a second-best performance.
If a letter is to be written to a friend, a report to an
employer, a communication to a newspaper, see that
it has a beginning, a middle and an end. The ma-
jority of writings are without these pleasing adorn-
ments. Only the great pieces possess them. Bear
this in mind and win the way to artistic composition
by noticing what should be said first, what second
and what third.
I cannot leave this subject, however, without con-
gratulating the present generation on its advantages
over mine. Children are brought up to-day, in happy
contrast with my compeers, to feel that the pencil is
no instrument of torture, hardly indeed to distinguish
it from the tongue. About the time they leave their
mother's arms they take their pen in hand. On paper
they are encouraged to describe their interesting
birds, friends, adventures. Their written lessons are
almost as frequent as their oral, and they learn to
write compositions while not yet quite understanding
what they are about. Some of these fortunate ones
will, I hope, find the language I have sadly used about
the difficulty of writing extravagant. And let me say
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 33
too that since frequency has more to do with ease of
writing than anything else, I count the newspaper
men lucky because they are writing all the time, and I
do not think so meanly of their product as the present
popular disparagement would seem to require. It
is hasty work undoubtedly and bears the marks of
haste. But in my judgment, at no period of the Eng-
lish language has there been so high an average of
sensible, vivacious and informing sentences written as
appears in our daily press. With both good and evil
results, the distinction between book literature and
speech literature is breaking down. Everybody is
writing, apparently in verse and prose; and if the
higher graces of style do not often appear, neither on
the other hand do the ruder awkwardnesses and
obscurities. A certain straightforward English is be-
coming established. A whole nation is learning the
use of its mother tongue. Under such circumstances
it is doubly necessary that any one who is conscious of
feebleness in his command of English should promptly
and earnestly begin the cultivation of it.
My third precept shall be, "Remember the other
person." I have been urging self-cultivation in Eng-
lish as if it concerned one person alone, ourself.
But every utterance really concerns two. Its aim
is social. Its object is communication; and while
unquestionably prompted halfway by the desire to
ease our mind through self-expression, it still finds
34 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
its only justification in the advantage somebody else
will draw from what is said. Speaking or writing
is, therefore, everywhere a double-ended process. It
springs from me, it penetrates him; and both of these
ends need watching. Is what I say precisely what
I mean? That is an important question. Is what I
say so shaped that it can readily be assimilated by
him who hears? This is a question of quite as great
consequence and much more likely to be forgotten.
We are so full of ourselves that we do not remember
the other person. Helter-skelter we pour forth our
unaimed words merely for our personal relief, heed-
less whether they help or hinder him whom they still
purport to address. For most of us are grievously
lacking in imagination, which is the ability to go out-
side ourselves and take on the conditions of another
mind. Yet this is what the literary artist is always
doing. He has at once the ability to see for himself
and the ability to see himself as others see him. He
can lead two lives as easily as one life; or rather, he
has trained himself to consider that other life as of
more importance than his, and to reckon his com-
fort, likings and labors as quite subordinated to the
service of that other. All serious literary work con-
tains within it this readiness to bear another's burden.
I must write with pains, that he may read with ease.
I must
Find out men's wants and wills,
And meet them there.
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
35
As I write, I must unceasingly study what is the line
of least intellectual resistance along which my thought
may enter the differently constituted mind; and to
that line I must subtly adjust, without enfeebling,
my meaning. Will this combination of words or that
make the meaning clear? Will this order of presen-
tation facilitate swiftness of apprehension, or will it
clog the movement? What temperamental perversi-
ties in me must be set aside in order to render my
reader's approach to what I would tell him pleasant?
What temperamental perversities in him must be ac-
cepted by me as fixed facts, conditioning all I say?
These are the questions the skilful writer is always
asking.
And these questions, as will have been perceived
already, are moral questions no less than literary.
That golden rule of generous service by which we
do for others what we would have them do for us is
a rule of writing too. Every writer who knows his
trade perceives that he is a servant, that it is his
business to endure hardship if only his reader may
win freedom from toil, that no impediment to that
reader's understanding is too slight to deserve dili-
gent attention, that he has consequently no right to
let a single sentence slip from him unsocialized — I
mean, a sentence which cannot become as naturally
another's possession as his own. In the very act of
asserting himself he lays aside what is distinctively
36 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
his. And because these qualifications of the writer
are moral qualifications they can never be com-
pletely fulfilled so long as we live and write. We
may continually approximate them more nearly, but
there will still always be possible an alluring refine-
ment of exercise beyond. The world of the literary
artist and the moral man is interesting through its
inexhaustibility; and he who serves his fellows by
writing or by speech is artist and moral man in one.
Writing a letter is a simple matter, but it is a moral
matter and an artistic; for it may be done either
with imagination or with raw self-centredness. What
things will my correspondent wish to know? How
can I transport him out of his properly alien sur-
roundings into the vivid impressions which now are
mine? How can I tell all I long to tell and still be
sure the telling will be for him as lucid and delight-
ful as for me? Remember the other person, I say.
Do not become absorbed in yourself. Your interests
cover only the half of any piece of writing; the other
man's less visible half is necessary to complete yours.
And if I have here discussed writing more than speech,
that is merely because when we speak we utter our
first thoughts, but when we write, our second, — or
better still, our fourth; and in the greater deliberation
which writing affords I have felt that the demands of
morality and art, which are universally imbedded in
language, could be more distinctly perceived. Yet
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 37
none the less truly do we need to talk for the other
person than to write for him.
But there remains a fourth weighty precept, and
one not altogether detachable from the third. It
is this: "Lean upon the subject." We have seen
how the user of language, whether in writing or in
speaking, works for himself; how he works for an-
other individual too; but there is one more for whom
his work is performed, one of greater consequence
than any person, and that is his subject. From this
comes his primary call. Those who in their utter-
ance fix their thoughts on themselves, or on other
selves, never reach power. That resides in the sub-
ject. There we must dwell with it and be content
to have no other strength than its. When the fright-
ened schoolboy sits down to write about Spring, he
cannot imagine where the thoughts which are to make
up his piece are to come from. He cudgels his brain
for ideas. He examines his pen-point, the curtains,
his inkstand, to see if perhaps ideas may not be had
from these. He wonders what his teacher will wish
him to say and he tries to recall how the passage
sounded in the Third Reader. In every direction but
one he turns, and that is the direction where lies the
prime mover of his toil, his subject. Of that he is
afraid. Now, what I want to make evident is that
this subject is not in reality the foe, but the friend.
It is his only helper. His composition is not to be,
38 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
as he seems to suppose, a mass of his laborious inven-
tions, but it is to be made up exclusively of what the
subject dictates. He has only to attend. At present
he stands in his own way, making such a din with
his private anxieties that he cannot hear the rich sug-
gestions of the subject. He is bothered with consid-
ering how he feels, or what he or somebody else will
like to see on his paper. This is debilitating busi-
ness. He must lean on his subject, if he would have
his writing strong, and busy himself with what it
says rather than with what he would say. Matthew
Arnold, in the important preface to his poems of 1853,
contrasting the artistic methods of Greek poetry and
modern poetry, sums up the teaching of the Greeks
in these words: "All depends upon the subject;
choose a fitting action, penetrate yourself with the
feeling of its situations; this done, everything else
will follow." And he calls attention to the self-as-
sertive and scatter-brained habits of our time. “How
different a way of thinking from this is ours! We
can hardly at the present day understand what Me-
nander meant when he told a man who inquired as
to the progress of his comedy that he had finished it,
not having yet written a single line, because he had
constructed the action of it in his mind. A modern
critic would have assured him that the merit of his
piece depended on the brilliant things which arose
under his pen as he went along. I verily think that
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 39
the majority of us do not in our hearts believe that
there is such a thing as a total-impression to be de-
rived from a poem or to be demanded from a poet.
We permit the poet to select any action he pleases
and to suffer that action to go as it will, provided
he gratifies us with occasional bursts of fine writing
and with a shower of isolated thoughts and images.
Great writers put themselves and their personal im-
aginings out of sight. Their writing becomes a kind
of transparent window on which reality is reflected,
and through which people see, not them, but that of
which they write. How much we know of Shake-
speare's characters! How little of Shakespeare! Of
him that might almost be said which Isaiah said of
God, "He hideth himself." The best writer is the
best mental listener, the one who peers farthest into
his matter and most fully heeds its behests. Pre-
eminently obedient is such a writer, -refinedly,
energetically obedient. I once spent a day with a
great novelist when the book which subsequently
proved his masterpiece was only half written. I
praised his mighty hero, but said I should think the
life of an author would be miserable who, having cre-
ated a character so huge, now had him in hand and
must find something for him to do. My friend seemed
puzzled by my remark, but after a moment's pause
said, "I don't think you know how we work. I have
40 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
nothing to do with the character. Now that he is
created he will act as he will."
And such docility must be cultivated by every one
who would write well, such strenuous docility. Of
course there must be energy in plenty; the imagina-
tion which I described in my third section, the pas-
sion for solid form as in my second, the disciplined
and daring powers as in my first; but all these must
be ready at a moment's notice to move where the
matter calls and to acknowledge that all their worth
is to be drawn from it. Religion is only enlarged
good sense, and the words of Jesus apply as well
to the things of earth as of heaven. I do not know
where we could find a more compendious statement of
what is most important for one to learn who would
cultivate himself in English than the saying in which
Jesus announces the source of his power, "The
word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's
which sent me." Whoever can use such words will
be a noble speaker indeed.
These then are the fundamental precepts which
every one must heed who would command our beauti-
ful English language. There is of course a fifth. I
hardly need name it; for it always follows after,
whatever others precede. It is that we should do the
work, and not think about it; do it day after day and
not grow weary in bad doing. Early and often we
must be busy and be satisfied to have a great deal of
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 41
labor produce but a small result. I am told that early
in life John Morley, wishing to engage in journal-
ism, wrote an editorial and sent it to a paper every
day for nearly a year before he succeeded in getting
one accepted. We all know what a power he became
in London journalism. I will not vouch for the truth
of this story, but I am sure an ambitious author is
wise who writes a weekly essay for his stove. Publi-
cation is of little consequence so long as one is getting
one's self hammered into shape.
But before I close this paper let me acknowledge
that in it I have neglected a whole class of helpful
influences, probably quite as important as any I have
discussed. Purposely I have passed them by. Be-
cause I wished to show what we can do for ourselves,
I have everywhere assumed that our cultivation in
English is to be effected by naked volition and a kind
of dead lift. These are mighty agencies, but seldom in
this interlocked world do they work well alone. They
are strongest when backed by social suggestion and
unconscious custom. Ordinarily the good speaker is
he who keeps good company, but increases the helpful
influence of that company by constant watchfulness
along the lines I have marked out. So supplemented,
my teaching is true. By itself it is not true. It
needs the supplementation of others. Let him who
would speak or write well seek out good speakers
and writers. Let him live in their society, for the
42 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
society of the greatest writers is open to the most
secluded, let him feel the ease of their excellence,
the ingenuity, grace and scope of their diction, and he
will soon find in himself capacities whose development
may be aided by the precepts I have given. Most
of us catch better than we learn. We take up uncon-
sciously from our surroundings what we cannot alto-
gether create. All this should be remembered, and
we should keep ourselves exposed to the wholesome
words of our fellow men. Yet our own exertions will
not on that account be rendered less important. We
may largely choose the influences to which we submit;
we may exercise a selective attention among these in-
fluences; we may enjoy, oppose, modify, or diligently
ingraft what is conveyed to us, and for doing any
one of these things rationally we must be guided by
some clear aim. Such aims, altogether essential even
if subsidiary, I have sought to supply; and I would
reiterate that he who holds them fast may become
superior to linguistic fortune and be the wise director
of his sluggish and obstinate tongue. It is as certain
as anything can be that faithful endeavor will bring
expertness in the use of English. If we are watchful
of our speech, making our words continually more
minutely true, free and resourceful; if we look upon
our occasions of writing as opportunities for the de-
liberate work of unified construction; if in all our
utterances we think of him who hears as well as of
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 43
him who speaks; and above all, if we fix the attention
of ourselves and our hearers on the matter we talk
about and so let ourselves be supported by our subject
we shall make a daily advance not only in Eng-
lish study, but in personal power, in general service-
ableness and in consequent delight.
!
1
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT ¹
A FEW years ago Matthew Arnold, after travelling
in this country and revising the somewhat unfavor-
able opinion of us which he had formed earlier and at
a distance, still wrote in his last paper on Civiliza-
tion in the United States that America, in spite of
its excellences, is an uninteresting land. He thought
our institutions remarkable. He pointed out how
close a fit exists between them and the character of
the citizens, a fit so close as is hardly to be found
in other countries. He saw much that is of promise
in our future. But after all, he declares that no man
will live here if he can live elsewhere, because Amer-
ica is an uninteresting land.
This remark of Mr. Arnold's is one which we may
well ponder. As I consider how many of you are
preparing to go forth from college and establish
yourselves in this country, I ask myself whether
you must find your days uninteresting. You cer-
tainly have not been finding them uninteresting here.
Where were college days ever dull? It is a beauti-
ful circumstance that, the world over, the period of
¹ Delivered at the first commencement of the Woman's College
of Western Reserve University.
46 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
education is the period of romance. No such thing
was ever heard of as a college student who did not
enjoy himself, a college student who was not full of
hope. And if this has been the case with us prosaic
males of the past, what must be the experience of
your own hopeful sex? I am sure you are looking for-
ward with eagerness to your intended work. Is it
to be blighted? Are you to find life dull? It might
seem from the remark of Mr. Arnold that it would
probably be so, for you must live in an uninteresting
land.
When this remark of Mr. Arnold's was first made
a multitude of voices in all parts of our country de-
clared that Mr. Arnold did not know what he was
talking about. As a stupid Englishman he had come
here and had failed to see what our land contains.
In reality every corner of it is stuffed with that
beauty and distinction which he denied. For that
was the offensive feature of his statement: he had
said in substance the chief sources of interest are
beauty and distinction. America is not beautiful.
Its scenery, its people, its past, are not distinguished.
It is impossible, therefore, for an intelligent and cul-
tivated man to find permanent interests here.
The ordinary reply to these unpleasant sayings was,
"America is beautiful, America is distinguished."
But on the face of the matter this reply might well
be distrusted. Mr. Arnold is not a man likely to
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
47
make such a mistake. He is a trained observer.
His life has been passed in criticism, and criticism of
an extremely delicate sort. It seems to me it must be
rather his standards than his facts which are at
fault. Many of us would be slow to believe our
teacher had made an error in observation; for to
many of us he has been a very great teacher indeed.
Through him we have learned the charm of sim-
plicity, the refinement of exactitude, the strength of
finished form; we have learned calmness in trial too,
the patience of duty, ability to wait when in doubt;
in short, we have learned dignity, and he who teaches
us dignity is not a man lightly to be forgotten or dis-
paraged. I say, therefore, that this answer to Mr.
Arnold, that he was in error, is one which on its face
might prudently be distrusted.
But for other than prudential reasons I incline to
agree with Mr. Arnold's opinion. Even though I
were not naturally disposed to credit his judgment,
I should be obliged to acknowledge that my own
observations largely coincide with his. In Europe I
think I find beauty more abundant than in America.
Certainly the distinguished objects, the distinguished
persons, whom I go there to see, are more numerous
than those I might by searching find here. I cannot
think this portion of Mr. Arnold's statement can be
impugned. And must we then accept his conclusion
and agree that your lives, while sheltered in this in-
48 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
teresting college, are themselves interesting; but that
when you go forth the romance is to pass away?
I do not believe it, because I question the standard
which Mr. Arnold employs. He tells us that the
sources of the interesting are beauty and distinction.
I doubt it. However much delight and refreshment
these may contribute to our lives, I do not believe
they predominantly constitute our interests.
Evidently Mr. Arnold cannot have reached his
opinion through observation, for the commonest facts
of experience confute him. There is in every com-
munity a certain class of persons whose business it
is to discover what people regard as interesting.
These are the newspaper editors; they are paid to
find out for us interesting matters every day. There
is nothing they like better than to get hold of some-
thing interesting which has not been observed before.
Are they then searchers for beauty and distinction?
I should say not. Here are the subjects which these
seekers after interesting things discussed in my
morning paper. There is an account of disturb-
ances in South America. There is a statement about
Mr. Blaine's health. There is a report of a prize
fight. There are speculations about the next general
election. There is a description of a fashionable wed-
ding. These things interest me, and I suspect they
interest the majority of the readers of that paper;
though they can hardly be called beautiful or distin-
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
49
guished. Obviously, therefore, if Mr. Arnold had
inspected the actual interests of to-day, he would
have been obliged to recognize some other basis for
them than beauty and distinction.
Yet I suppose all will feel it would be better if
the trivial matters which excite our interest in the
morning journal were of a more beautiful, of a more
distinguished sort. Our interests would be more hon-
orable then. These things interest merely because
they are facts, not because they are beautiful. A fact
is interesting through being a fact, and this common-
est and most basal of interests Mr. Arnold has over-
looked. He has not perceived that life itself is its
own unceasing interest.
Before we can decide, however, whether he has
overlooked anything more, we must determine what
is meant by beauty. Let us analyze the matter a
little. Let us see if we can detect why the beauti-
ful and the distinguished are interesting, and still
how we can provide a place for the other interests
which are omitted in his statement. If we should
look at a tree and ask ourselves why this tree is
more beautiful than another, we should probably
find we had thought it so on some such grounds as
these: the total bunch of branches and leaves, that
exquisite green mass sunning itself, is no larger than
can well be supported on the brown trunk. It is
large enough; there is nothing lacking. If it were
50
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
smaller, the office of the trunk would hardly be ful-
filled. If larger, the trunk would be overpowered.
Those branches which extend themselves to the right
adequately balance those which are extended to the
left. Scrutinizing it, we find every leaf in order,
each one ready to aërate its little sap and so con-
duce to the life of the whole. There is no decay,
no broken branch. Nothing is deficient, but at the
same time there is nothing superfluous. Each part
ministers to every part. In all parts the tree is pro-
portionate beautiful, intrinsically beautiful, be-
cause it is unsuperfluous, unlacking.
And when we turn to other larger, more intricately
beautiful objects, we find the same principle involved.
Fulness of relations among the parts, perfection of
organism, absence of incongruity, constitute the
beauty of the object. Were you ever in Wiltshire
in England, and did you visit the splendid seat of
the Earls of Pembroke, Wilton House? It is a mag-
nificent pile, designed by Holbein the painter, erected
before Elizabeth began to reign. Its green lawns,
prepared ages ago, were adapted to their positions
originally and perform their ancient offices to-day.
Time has changed its gardens only by making them
more lovely than when they were planned. So har-
monious with one another are grounds and castle
that, looking on the stately dwelling, one imagines
that the Creator himself must have had it in mind in
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
51
his design of the spot. And when you enter, all is
equally congruous. Around the central court runs
the cloistered statuary gallery, out of which open
the several halls. Passing through these, you notice.
the portraits not only of past members of the family
- men who have been among the most distinguished
of England's worthies but also portraits of the
eminent friends of the Pembrokes, painted by nota-
ble artists who were often themselves also friends
of the family. In the library is shown Sidney's
'Arcadia," written in this very garden, with a lock
of Elizabeth's hair inclosed. In the chief hall a play
of Shakespeare's is reported to have been performed
by his company. Half a dozen names that shine in
literature lend intellectual glory to the place. But
as you walk from room to room, amazed at the accu-
mulation of wealth and proud tradition, you perceive
how each casual object makes its separate contri-
bution to the general impression of stateliness. A
glance from a window discloses an enchanting view:
in the distance, past the cedars, rises the spire of
Salisbury Cathedral, one of the most peaceful and
aspiring in England. All parts -scenery, buildings,
rich possessions, historic heritages-minister to parts.
Romantic imagination is stirred. It is beautiful,
beautiful beyond anything America can show.
And if we turn to that region where beauty is
most subtly embodied, if we turn to human character,
52 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
we find the conditions not dissimilar. The character
which impresses us most is that which has fully or-
ganized its powers, so that every ability finds its
appropriate place without prominence; one with no
false humility and without self-assertion; a character
which cannot be overthrown by petty circumstance,
but, steadfast in itself, no part lacking, no part su-
perfluous, easily lets its ample functions assist one
another in all that they are summoned to perform.
When we behold a man like this, we say, "This is
what I would be. Here is the goal toward which I
would tend. This man, like Wilton House, like the
beautiful tree, is a finished thing." It is true when
we turn our attention back and once more criticise,
we see that it is not so. No human character can be
finished. It is its glory that it cannot be. It must
ever press forward; each step reached is but the
vantage-ground for a further step. There is no com-
pleteness in human character — in human character
save one.
And must we then consider human character unin-
teresting? According to Mr. Arnold's standard per-
haps we ought to do so. But through this very case
the narrowness of that standard becomes apparent.
Mr. Arnold rightly perceives that beauty is one of
our higher interests. It certainly is not our only or
our highest, because in that which is most profoundly
interesting, human life, the completeness of parts
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT 53
which constitutes beauty is never reached. There
must obviously be another and a higher source of
interest, one too exalted to be found where awhile
ago I sketched it, in the mere occurrence of a fact.
We cannot say that all events, simply because they
occur, are alike interesting. To find in them an in-
telligent interest we must rate their worth. I agree,
accordingly, with Mr. Arnold in thinking that it is
the passion for perfection, the assessment of worths,
which is at the root of all enduring interests. But I
believe that in the history of the world this passion for
perfection, this deepest root of human interests, has
presented itself in two forms. The Greek conceived
it in one way, the Christian has conceived it in an-
other.
It was the office of that astonishing people, the
Greeks, to teach us to honor completeness, the ma-
jesty of the rounded whole. We see this in every
department of their marvellous life. Whenever we
look at a Greek statue, it seems impossible that it
should be otherwise without loss; we cannot imagine
any portion changed; the thing has reached its com-
pleteness. Before it we can only bow and feel at
rest. Just so it is when we examine Greek archi-
tecture. There too we find the same ordered pro-
portion, the same adjustment of part to part. And
if we turn to Greek literature, the stately symme-
try is no less remarkable. What page of Sophocles
54 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
could be stricken out? What page what sen-
tence? Just enough, not more than enough! The
thought has grown, has asserted its entirety; and
when that entirety has been reached, it has stopped,
delighted with its own perfection. A splendid ideal,
an ideal which never can fail, I am sure, to interest
man so long as he remains intelligent!
And yet this beautiful Greek work shows only one
aspect of the world. It omitted something, it omitted
formative life. Joy in birth, delight in beginnings,
interest in origins, these things did not belong to
the Greek; they came in with Christianity. It is
Jesus Christ who turns our attention toward growth,
and so teaches us to delight in the imperfect rather
than in the perfect. It is he who, wishing to give to
his disciples a model of what they should be, does not
select the completed man, but takes the little child
and sets him before them and to the supercilious
says, “Take heed that ye despise not one of these
little ones." He teaches us to reverenee the begin-
ning of things. And at first thought it might well
seem that this reverence for the imperfect was a re-
trogression. What! is not a consummate man more
admirable than a child? "No," Jesus answered;
and because he answered so, pity was born. Before
the coming of Jesus Christ, I think we may say that
the sick, the afflicted, the child-shall I not say the
woman? - were but slightly understood. It is be-
S
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
55
cause God has come down from heaven, manifest-
ing even himself in forms of imperfection, it is on
this account that our intellectual horizon has been
enlarged. We may now delight in the lowly, we may
stoop and gather imperfect things and rejoice in
them, — rejoice beyond the old Greek rejoicing.
Yet it is easy to mistake the nature of this change
of standard, and in doing so to run into grave moral
danger. If we content ourselves with the imperfect
rather than with the perfect, we are barbarians. We
are not Christians nor are we Greeks, we are bar-
barians. But that is not the spirit of Jesus. He
teaches us to catch the future in the instant, to see
the infinite in the finite, to watch the growth of the
perfect out of the imperfect. And he teaches us that
this delight in progress, in growth, in aspiration, in
completing, may rightly be greater than our exulta-
tion in completeness. In his view the joy of perfect-
ing is beyond the joy of perfection.
Now I want to be sure that you young women,
who are preparing yourselves here for larger life and
are soon to emerge into the perplexing world, go
forth with clear and Christian purpose. For though
what I have been discussing may appear dry and ab-
stract, it is an extremely practical matter. Consider
a moment in which direction you are to seek the
interests of your life. Will you demand that the
things about you shall already possess their perfec-
56
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
tion? Will you ask from life that it be completed,
finished, beautiful? If so, you are doomed to dreary
days. Or are you to get your intellectual eyes open,
see beauty in the making, and come to rejoice in it
there rather than after it is made? That is the ques-
tion I wish to present to-day; and I shall ask you to
examine several provinces of life and see how differ-
ent they appear when surveyed from one point of
view or from the other.
Undoubtedly all of you on leaving here will go
into some home, either the home of your parents or
less fortunate some stranger's home. And when
you come there, I think I can foretell one thing: it
will be a tolerably imperfect place in which you find
yourself. You will notice a great many points in
which it is improvable; that is to say, a great many
respects in which you might properly wish it other-
wise. It will seem to you, I dare say, a little plain,
a little commonplace, compared with your beautiful
college and the college life here. I doubt whether
you will find all the members of your family dear
though they may be so wise, so gentle-mannered,
so able to contribute to your intellectual life as are
your companions here. Will you feel then, "Ah!
home is a dull place; I wish I were back in college
again! I think I was made for college life. Possibly
enough I was made for a wealthy life. I am sure I
was made for a comfortable life. But I do not find
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
57
I
these things here. I will sit and wish I had them. Of
course I ought not to enjoy a home that is short of
perfection; and I recognize that this is a good way
from complete." Is this to be your attitude? Or are
you going to say, "How interesting this home! What
a brave struggle the dear people are making with the
resources at their command! What kindness is shown
by my tired mother; how swift she is in finding out
the many small wants of the household! How dili-
gent my father! Should I, if I had had only their
narrow opportunities, be so intelligent, so kind, so
self-sacrificing as they? What can I do to show them
my gratitude? What can I contribute toward the
furtherance, the enlargement, the perfecting, of this
home?" That is the wise course. Enter this home
not merely as a matter of loving duty, but find in it
also your own strong interests, and learn to say, "This
home is not a perfect home, happily not a perfect
home. I have something here to do. It is far more
interesting than if it were already complete."
And again, you will not always live in a place so
attractive as Cleveland. There are cities which have
not your beautiful lake, your distant views, your
charming houses excellently shaded with trees. These
things are exceptional and cannot always be yours.
You may be obliged to live in an American town
which appears to you highly unfinished, a town which
constantly suggests that much still remains to be
58 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
done. And then are you going to say, "This place is
not beautiful, and I of course am a lover of the beau-
tiful. How could one so superior as I rest in such
surroundings? I could not respect myself were I
not discontented." Is that to be your attitude? It
is, I am sorry to think, the attitude of many who go
from our colleges. They have been taught to rever-
ence perfection, to honor excellence; and instead of
making it their work to carry this excellence forth,
and to be interested in spreading it far and wide
in the world, they sit down and mourn that it has
not yet come. How dull the world would be had it
come! Perfection, beauty? It constitutes a resting-
place for us; it does not constitute our working-
place.
I maintain, therefore, in regard to our land as a
whole that there is no other so interesting on the face
of the earth; and I am led to this conviction by the
very reasoning which brought Mr. Arnold to a con-
trary opinion. I accept his judgment of the beauty
of America. His premise is correct, but it should
have conducted him to the opposite conclusion. In
America we still are in the making. We are not yet
beautiful and distinguished; and that is why America,
beyond every other country, awakens a noble interest.
The beauty which is in the old lands, and which re-
freshes for a season, is after all a species of death.
Those who dwell among such scenes are appeased,
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
59
they are not quickened. Let them keep their past;
we have our future. We may do much. What they
can do is largely at an end.
In literature also I wish to bring these distinctions
before you, these differences of standard; and per-
haps I cannot accomplish this better than by exhibit-
ing them as they are presented in a few verses from
the poet of the imperfect. I suppose if we try to
mark out with precision the work of Mr. Browning,-
I mean not to mark it out as the Browning societies
do, but to mark it out with precision, - we might say
that its distinctive feature is that he has guided him-
self by the principle on which I have insisted: he has
sought for beauty where there is seeming chaos; he
has loved growth, has prized progress, has noted the
advance of the spiritual, the pressing on of the finite
soul through hindrance to its junction with the in-
finite. This it is which has inspired his somewhat
crabbed verses, and has made men willing to undergo
the labor of reading them, that they too may partake
of his insight. In one of his poems - one which
seems to me to contain some of his sublimest as well
as some of his most commonplace lines, the poem on
"Old Pictures in Florence," he discriminates be-
tween Greek and Christian art in much the same way
I have done. In " Greek Art," Mr. Browning says:
You saw yourself as you wished you were,
As you might have been, as you cannot be;
60 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there;
And grew content in your poor degree
With your little power, by those statues' godhead,
And your little scope, by their eyes' full sway,
And your little grace, by their grace embodied,
And your little date, by their forms that stay.
You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am?
Even so, you will not sit like Theseus.
You would prove a model? The son of Priam
Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use.
You're wroth can you slay your snake like Apollo?
still Niobe's the grander!
You're grieved
You live
You die
there's the Racers' frieze to follow:
there's the dying Alexander.
So, testing your weakness by their strength,
Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty,
Measured by Art in your breadth and length,
You learned to submit is a mortal's duty.
Growth came when, looking your last on them all,
You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day
And cried with a start What if we so small
Be greater and grander the while than they!
Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?
In both, of such lower types are we
Precisely because of our wider nature;
For time, theirs ours, for eternity.
To-day's brief passion limits their range;
It seethes with the morrow for us and more.
They are perfect - how else? they shall never change:
We are faulty - why not? we have time in store.
The Artificer's hand is not arrested
With us; we are rough-hewn, no-wise polished:
They stand for our copy, and once invested
With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished.
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
61
You will notice that in this subtle study Mr. Brown-
ing points out how through contact with perfection
there may come content with our present lot. This
I call the danger of perfection, our possible belittle-
ment through beauty. For in the lives of us all
there should be a divine discontent,-not devilish dis-
content, but divine discontent,-a consciousness that
life may be larger than we have yet attained, that we
are to press beyond what we have reached, that joy
lies in the future, in that which has not been found,
rather than in the realized present. And it seems to
me if ever a people were called on to understand this
glory of the imperfect, it is we of America, it is you
of the Middle West; it is especially you who are
undertaking here the experiment of a woman's col-
lege. You are at the beginning, and that fact should
lend an interest to your work which cannot so read-
ily be realized in our older institutions. As you look
eastward upon my own huge university, Harvard
University, it probably appears to you singularly
beautiful, reverend in its age, magnificent in its en-
dowments, equable in its working; perhaps you con-
template it as nearing perfection, and contrast your
incipient college with it as hardly deserving the name.
You are entirely mistaken. Harvard University, to
its glory be it said, is enormously unfinished; it is
a great way from perfect; it is full of blemishes.
We are tinkering at it all the time; and if it were not
62
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
so, I for one should decline to be connected with it.
Its interest for me would cease. You are to start
free from some trammels that we feel. Because we
have so large a past laid upon us we have not some
freedoms of growth, some opportunities of enlarge-
ment, which you possess. Accordingly, in your very
experiment here you have a superb illustration of
the principle I am trying to explain. This young
and imperfect college should interest you who are
members of it; it should interest this intelligent city.
Wise patrons should find here a germ capable of such
broad and interesting growth as may well call out
their heartiest enthusiasm.
If then the modes of accepting the passion for
perfection are so divergent as I have indicated, is it
possible to suggest methods by which we may disci-
pline ourselves in the nobler way of seeking the in-
terests of life?I mean by taking part with things
in their beginnings, learning to reverence them there,
and so attaining an interest which will continually
be supported and carried forward. You may look
with some anxiety upon the doctrine which I have
laid down. You may say, "But beauty is seductive;
beauty allures me. I know that the imperfect in its
struggle toward perfection is the nobler matter. I
know that America is, for him who can see all things,
a more interesting land than Spain. Yes, I know
this, but I find it hard to feel it. My strong tempta-
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
63
tion is to lie and dream in romance, in ideal perfec-
tion. By what means may I discipline myself out of
this degraded habit and bring myself into the higher
life, so that I shall always be interested in progress,
in the future rather than in the past, in the on-going
rather than in the completed life?" I cannot give
an exact and final receipt for this better mind. A
persistently studied experience must be the teacher.
To-day you may understand what I say, you may
resolve to live according to the methods I approve.
But you may be sure that to-morrow you will need
to learn it all over again. And yet I think I can
mention several forms of discipline, as I may call
them. I can direct your attention to certain modes
by which you may instruct yourselves how to take
an interest in the imperfect thing, and still keep that
interest an honorable one.
In my judgment, then, your first care should be to
learn to observe. A simple matter-one, I dare say,
which it will seem to you difficult to avoid. You
have a pair of eyes; how can you fail to observe?
Ah! but eyes can only look, and that is not observ-
ing. We must not rest in looking, but must pene-
trate into things, if we would find out what is there.
And to find this out is worth while, for everything
when observed is of immense interest. There is no
object so remote from human life that when we come
to study it we may not detect within its narrow com-
64 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
pass illuminating and therefore interesting matter.
But it makes a great difference whether we do thus
really observe, whether we hold attention to the
thing in hand, and see what it contains. Once, after
puzzling long over the charm of Homer, I applied to
a learned friend and said to him, "Can
you tell me
why Homer is so interesting? Why can't you and I
write as he wrote? Why is it that his art is lost,
and that to-day it is impossible for us to awaken an
interest at all comparable to his ?" - "Well,” said
my friend, "I have often meditated on that, but it
seems to come to about this: Homer looked long at
a thing. Why," said he, “do you know that if you
should hold up your thumb and look at it long
enough, you would find it immensely interesting?"
Homer looks a great while at his thumb. He sees
precisely the thing he is dealing with. He does not
confuse it with anything else. It is sharp to him;
and because it is sharp to him it stands out sharply
for us over thousands of years. Have you acquired
this art, or do you hastily glance at insignificant
objects? Do you see the thing exactly as it is? Do
you strip away from it your own likings and dislik-
ings, your own previous notions of what it ought to
be? Do you come face to face with things? If you
do, the hardest situation in life may well be to you a
delight. For you will not regard hardships, but only
opportunities. Possibly you may even feel, "Yes,
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
65
here are just the difficulties I like to explore. How
can one be interested in easy things? The hard
things of life are the ones for which we ought to give
thanks." So we may feel if we have made the cool
and hardy temper of the observer our own, if we have
learned to put ourselves into a situation and to under-
stand it on all sides. Why, the things on which we
have thus concentrated attention become our perma-
nent interests. For example, unluckily when I was
trained I was not disciplined in botany. I cannot,
therefore, now observe the rose. Some of you can,
for
you have been studying botany here. I have to look
stupidly on the total beauty of the lovely object; I
can see it only as a whole, while you, fine observer,
who have trained your powers to pierce it, can com-
prehend its very structure and see how marvellously
the blooming thing is put together. My eyes were
dulled to that long ago; I cannot observe it. Beware,
do not let yourselves grow dull. Observe, observe,
observe in every direction! Keep your eyes open.
Go forward, understanding that the world was made
for your knowledge, that you have the right to enter
into and possess it.
And then besides, you need to train yourselves to
sympathize with that which lies beyond you. It is
easy to sympathize with that which lies within you.
Many persons go through life sympathizing with
themselves incessantly. What unhappy persons!
66 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
How unfit for anything important! They are full of
themselves and answer their own motion, while there
beyond them lies all the wealthy world in which they
might be sharers. For sympathy is feeling with, —
it is the identification of ourself with that which at
present is not ourself. It is going forth and joining
that which we behold, not standing aloof and merely
observing, as I said at first. When we observe, the
object we observe is alien to us; when we sympathize,
we identify ourselves with it. You may go into a
home and observe, and you will make every person
in that home wretched. But go into a home and sym-
pathize, find out what lies beyond you there, see how
differently those persons are thinking and feeling
from the ways in which you are accustomed to think
and feel; yet notice how imperfect you are in your-
self, and how important it is that persons should be
fashioned thus different from you if even your own
completion is to come; then, I say, you will find
yourself becoming large in your own being, and a
large benefactor of others.
Do not stunt sympathy, then. Do not allow walls
to rise up and hem it in. Never say to yourself,
"This is my way; I don't do so and so. I know only
this and that; I don't want to know anything else.
You other people may have that habit, but these are
my habits, and I always do thus and thus." Do not
say that. Nothing is more immoral than moral psy-
THE GLORY OF -
67
THE IMPERFECT
chology. You should have no interest in yourself as
you stand; because a larger selfhood lies beyond you,
and you should be going forth and claiming your
heritage there. Do not stand apart from the move-
ments of the country, the political, charitable,
religious, scientific, literary movements, however
distastefully they may strike you.
—
Identify yourself
They all have a
with them, sympathize with them.
noble side; seek it out and claim it as your own.
Throw yourself into all life and make it nobly yours.
But I am afraid it would be impossible for you
thus to observe, thus to sympathize, unless you bring
within your imperfect self just grounds of self-respect.
You must contribute to things if you would draw from
things. You must already have acquired some sort
of excellence in order to detect larger excellence else-
where. You should therefore have made yourself the
master of something which you can do, and do on the
whole better than anybody else. That is the moral
aspect of competition, that one person can do a cer-
tain thing best and so it is given him to do. Some of
you who are going out into the world before long will,
I fear, be astonished to find that the world is already
full. It has no place for you; it never anticipated
your coming and it has reserved for you no corner.
Your only means of gaining a corner will be by doing
something better than the people who are already
there. Then they will make you a place. And that
68 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
is what you should be considering here. You should
be training yourself to do something well, it really
does not matter much what. Can you make dresses
well? Can you cook a good loaf of bread? Can you
write a poem or run a typewriter? Can you do any-
thing well? Are you a master somewhere? If you
are, the world will have a place for you; and more
than that, you will have within yourself just grounds
for self-respect.
To sum up, what I have been saying throughout
this address merely amounts to this: that the imper-
fect thing the one thing of genuine interest in all
the world — gets its right to be respected only through
its connection with the totality of things. Do not,
then, when you leave college say to yourself, "I know
Greek. That is a splendid thing to know. These
people whom I am meeting do not know it and are
obviously of a lower grade than I." That will not
be self-respectful, because it shows that you have not
understood your proper place. You should respect
yourself as a part of all, and not as of independent
worth. To call this wide world our own larger self
is not too extravagant an expression. But if we are
to count it so, then we must count the particular
thing which we are capable of doing as merely our
special contribution to the great self. And we must
understand that many are making similar contribu-
tions. What I want you to feel, therefore, is the
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
69
profound conception of mutual helpfulness and re-
sulting individual dignity which St. Paul has set
forth, according to which each of us is performing a
special function in the common life, and that life of
all is recognized as the divine life, the manifestation
of the life of the Father. When you have come to
that point, when you have seen in the imperfect a
portion, an aspect, of the total, perfect, divine life,
then I am not afraid life will be uninteresting. In-
deed I would say to every one who goes from this
college, you can count with confidence on a life which
shall be vastly more interesting beyond the college
walls than ever it has proved here, if you have once
acquired the art of penetrating into the imperfect, and
finding in limited, finite life the infinite life. "To
apprehend thus, draws us a profit from all things we
see."
}
·
1
RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES
147. Pope's Rape of the Lock, etc.
148. Hawthorne's Marble Faun.
149. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.
150. Ouida's Dog of Flanders, etc.
151. Ewing's Jackanapes, etc.
152. Martineau's The Peasant and the Prince.
153. Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.
154. Shakespeare's Tempest.
155. Irving's Life of Goldsmith.
156. Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, etc.
157. The Song of Roland.
158. Malory's Merlin and Sir Balin.
159. Beowulf.
160. Spenser's Faerie Queene. Book I.
161. Dickens's Tale of Two Cities.
162. Prose and Poetry of Cardinal Newman.
163. Shakespeare's Henry V.
164. De Quincey's Joan of Arc, etc.
165. Scott's Quentin Durward.
166. Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship.
167. Longfellow's Autobiographical Poems.
168. Shelley's Poems.
169. Lowell's My Garden Acquaintance, etc.
170. Lamb's Essays of Elia.
171, 172. Emerson's Essays.
173. Kate Douglas Wiggin's Flag-Raising.
174. Kate Douglas Wiggin's Finding a Home.
175. Whittier's Autobiographical Poems.
176. Burroughs's Afoot and Afloat.
177. Bacon's Essays.
178. Selections from John Ruskin.
179. King Arthur Stories from Malory.
180. Palmer's Odyssey.
181. Goldsmith's The Good-Natured Man.
182. Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer.
183. Old English and Scottish Ballads.
184. Shakespeare's King Lear.
185. Moores's Life of Lincoln.
186. Thoreau's Camping in the Maine Woods.
187, 188. Huxley's Autobiography, and Essays.
189. Byron's Childe Harold, Canto IV, etc.
190. Washington's Farewell Address, and Web-
ster's Bunker Hill Oration.
191. The Second Shepherds' Play, etc.
192. Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford.
193. Williams's Æneid.
194. Irving's Bracebridge Hall. Selections.
195. Thoreau's Walden.
196. Sheridan's The Rivals.
197. Parton's Captains of Industry. Selected.
198, 199. Macaulay's Lord Clive, and W. Hast-
ings.
200. Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham.
201. Harris's Little Mr. Thimblefinger Stories.
202. Jewett's The Night Before Thanksgiving.
203. Shumway's Nibelungenlied.
204. Sheffield's Old Testament Narrative.
205. Powers's A Dickens Reader.
206. Goethe's Faust. Part I.
207. Cooper's The Spy.
208. Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy.
209. Warner's Being a Boy.
210. Kate Douglas Wiggin's Polly Oliver's
Problem.
211. Milton's Areopagitica, etc.
212. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
213. Hemingway's Le Morte Arthur.
214. Moores's Life of Columbus.
215. Bret Harte's Tennessee's Partner, etc.
216. Ralph Roister Doister.
217. Gorboduc. (In preparation.)
218. Selected Lyrics from Wordsworth, Keats,
and Shelley.
219. Selected Lyrics from Dryden, Collins,
Gray, Cowper, and Burns.
220. Southern Poems.
221. Macaulay's Speeches on Copyright; Lin-
coln's Cooper Union Address.
222. Briggs's College Life.
223. Selections from the Prose Writings of Mat-
thew Arnold.
224. Perry's American Mind and American
Idealism.
225. Newman's University Subjects.
226. Burroughs's Studies in Nature and Lit-
erature.
227. Bryce's Promoting Good Citizenship.
228. Selected English Letters.
229. Jewett's Play Day Stories.
230. Grenfell's Adrift on an Ice-Pan.
231. Muir's Stickeen.
232. Harte's Waif of the Plains, etc.
233. Tennyson's The Coming of Arthur, the
Holy Grail and the Passing of Arthur.
234. Selected Essays.
235. Briggs's To College Girls.
236. Lowell's Literary Essays. (Selected.)
237. Marmion.
238. Short Stories,
239. Selections from American Poetry.
240. Howells's The Parlor Car, and The Sleep-
ing Car.
241. Mills's The Story of a Thousand-Year
Pine, etc.
242. Eliot's The Training for an Effective Life.
243. Bryant's Iliad, Abridged Edition.
244. Lockwood's English Sonnets.
245. Antin's At School in the Promised Land.
246. Shepard's Shakespeare Questions.
(Other titles to be announced.)
(75)
RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES

1
:
(Continued)
EXTRA NUMBERS
A American Authors and their Birthdays. | R Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales. Selected.
B Biographical Sketches of American Au- S
thors.
Irving's Essays from Sketch Book. Se-
lected.
D Scudder's Literature in School.
F Longfellow Leaflets.
C Warriner's Teaching of English Classics
in the Grades.
T
U
Literature for the Study of Language.
A Dramatization of the Song of Hia-
watha.
V
Holbrook's Book of Nature Myths.
W
Brown's In the Days of Giants.
X
Poems for the Study of Language.
Warner's In the Wilderness.
Z
G Whittier Leaflets.
H Holmes Leaflets.
I Thomas's How to Teach English Clas-Y
sics.
J Holbrook's Northland Heroes.
L The Riverside Song Book.
M Lowell's Fable for Critics.
N Selections from American Authors.
O Lowell Leaflets.
P Holbrook's Hiawatha Primer.
Q Selections from English Authors.
Nine Selected Poems.
AA Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner and
Lowell's The Vision of Sir Launfal.
BB Poe's The Raven, Whittier's Snow-
Bound, and Longfellow's The Court-
ship of Miles Standish.
CC Selections for Study and Memorizing.
LIBRARY BINDING
135-136. Chaucer's Prologue, The Knight's Tale, and The Nun's Priest's Tale.
160. Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book I.
166. Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship.
168. Shelley's Poems. Selected.
177. Bacon's Essays.
178.
Selections from the Works of John Ruskin.
181-182. Goldsmith's The Good-Natured Man, and She Stoops to Conquer.
183. Old English and Scottish Ballads.
187-188. Huxley's Autobiography and Selected Essays.
191.
211.
Second Shepherd's Play, Everyman, etc.
Milton's Areopagitica, etc.
216. Ralph Roister Doister.
222. Briggs's College Life.
223.
Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold.
224. Perry's The American Mind and American Idealism.
225.
Newman's University Subjects.
226. Burroughs's Studies in Nature and Literature.
227. Bryce's Promoting Good Citizenship.
235. Briggs's To College Girls.
236. Selected Literary Essays from James Russell Lowell.
242. Eliot's The Training for an Effective Life.
K. Minimum College Requirements in English for Study.
244.
Lockwood's English Sonnets.
246. Shepard's Shakespeare Questions.
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