Rhetoric possesses great disciplinary value for the understanding. It deserves careful study on the part of those who express their thoughts in public discourse. The moment it becomes an end, instead of means to an end, it defeats its own purpose. To draw the attention to the figures of speech and other rhetorical devices of an oration is to divert the mind from the line of thought and to defeat the purpose for which rhetoric is taught. The studies of the trivium are like the handicrafts in that they serve as means to an end. From one point of view they deserve to be classed with the useful arts; from another it is apparent that they furnish material for thinking quite as valuable as the multitudinous branches of study into which the quadrivium has been expanded.

The arts are sometimes divided upon the basis of use and beauty. From one point of view, as already indicated, the liberal arts may be regarded as belonging to the category of the useful, and thus as forming part of a class distinct from the fine arts. Yet the idea of beauty enters into all that man does. Sooner or later he seeks to adorn his home, his language, everything that he employs in giving expression to his inner life.

The thinking which lies at the basis of the fine arts has distinguishing qualities and characteristics. The mind may be so completely absorbed in poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and in the other things which make life beautiful that it ceases to be a fit instrument for useful living or for engaging in more advanced thinking. The element of feeling predominates in the appreciation of the beautiful. The two factors which enter into the beautiful are the idea and the form. By casting into the alembic of the imagination the materials which the mind gathers from the external world, there is evolved the ideal; as soon as this ideal is found embodied in any form of nature or art the object is called beautiful. The power to see the idea in the form, the ideal in the work of art, is a function of thinking, and deserves attention from those who are teaching others to think.

Vast is the difference between the æsthetic and the scientific appreciation of nature. The scientist pulls the flower to pieces, analyzes its parts, imposes hard names, and destroys that about the flower which is most attractive to the child and the poet. The student of beauty admires it as it is in its original surroundings. He cultivates it to adorn the garden, the yard, the home, the school-room.

Very much, therefore, depends upon the way in which nature is studied. The study may be pursued to beget habits of observation or to cultivate a sense of the beautiful. It may be studied for the sake of ascertaining the laws which govern the growth of plants, the changes of the seasons, the movements of the heavenly bodies, the forces which give us light, heat, and all else we need for body and mind. When it is studied for the sake of truth and beauty, the effort lifts us into the domain of the higher life.

Why should any portion of our life, as compared with another, be styled the higher life? Because a man’s life may abound in some of the activities which are essential to his existence and still fail to realize the end of his existence. Take life on the farm with all its splendid opportunities for the study of nature and of all that is attractive in God’s universe. Which should be of most account in the education of the farmer’s sons and daughters,—mind or money, light or lucre, the soul or the soil, character or capacity for getting riches? The curse of wealth, fame, office, and the like is that, if they become the chief object of one’s ambition, they drag the soul into the dust of dishonor, if not the dust of the street.

“If the farmer boy has only been taught how to raise better stock, what will he do when that better stock ranges his farm? Will he be a happier father and a nobler citizen? Will his home life be any less coarse and dull? Will the possession of blooded stock make him any more honest than common stock? If that is all you have taught him, will he not still be a brute among his brutes? Indeed, just so far as you increase his money-making without increasing his true culture and manliness, you increase the probability that he will die a drunkard, his son a spendthrift, and his grandson a pauper. The supreme need is character to guide these resources.”[56]

Whilst it is worth while to dignify labor in all the handicrafts by showing the need for intelligent thought on the part of those who follow them, it is of vastly more importance to emphasize the things of the mind, and to show how the ability to think conditions the activities of the higher life and is essential to the full realization of man’s being. The relation of thinking to the higher life will claim our attention in the concluding chapter.

XXII

THINKING AND THE HIGHER LIFE

How vastly disproportionate are the pleasures of the eating and of the thinking man! indeed, as different as the silence of an Archimedes in the study of a problem, and the stillness of a sow at her wash. Nothing is comparable to the pleasure of an active and prevailing thought,—a thought prevailing over the difficulty and obscurity of the object, and refreshing the soul with new discoveries and images of things, and thereby extending the bounds of apprehension, and enlarging the territories of reason.

DR. SOUTH.

What is more pleasant than to read of strong-hearted youths, who, in the midst of want and hardships of many kinds, have clung to books, feeding, like bees to flowers? By the light of pine-logs, in dim-lit garrets, in the fields following the plough, in early dawns when others are asleep, they ply their blessed task, seeking nourishment for the mind, athirst for truth, yearning for full sight of the high worlds of which they have caught faint glimpses; happier now, lacking everything save faith and a great purpose, than in after-years when success shall shower on them applause and gold.

BISHOP SPALDING.

XXII

THINKING AND THE HIGHER LIFE

The preceding chapter pointed out the function of thinking in the arts, and the reciprocal influence of these upon the power of thought. It remains to point out the relation of thinking to the higher life. The best point of departure for such a discussion is the book which has done more to foster the higher life of the soul than all other books combined. From some points of view the best book on teaching ever made is the Book of books. In it we find not only practical examples and marvellous illustrations of the art of the teacher, but also the most significant maxims and statements bearing upon the development of the inner life. In the account of the Temptation in the Wilderness, we have an utterance from the lips of the Great Teacher, directing our attention towards the higher life. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (Matt. iv. 4.)