Karl Hilty

“ Blithe are those ages when young and progressive nations still hope for happiness, or when men believe that in some new formula of philosophy, or of religion, or perhaps in some new industrial programme, the secret of human happiness has at last been found. Gloomy are those ages in which, as in our time, great masses of people are burdened with the conviction that all these familiar formulas have been illusions, and when persons of the keenest insight say—as they are now saying—that the very word happiness has in it a note of melancholy. ”

“ On the other hand, it is just as undoubted that individualism, the right of mastery over one’s own nature and over one’s free will so far as it is employed for good ends, is the most inalienable of all human rights, and one that no political democracy can or will ever set aside. To lower this individualism to a mere class or mass consciousness and to a common average of culture is barbarism; to develop it partially and selfishly only for oneself is criminal or insane. ”

“ The true spirit of work, which has no time for superfluities, but time enough for what is right and true, grows best in the soil of that philosophy which sees one’s work extending into the infinite world, and one’s life on earth as but one part of life itself. Then one gets strength to do his highest tasks, and patience among the grave difficulties and hindrances which confront him both within himself and in the times in which he lives. One is calmly indifferent to much which in the sight of this world alone may seem important, but which, seen in the light of eternity, loses significance. ”

“ For when a man once abandons the belief that every single human soul has an infinite value and that it is worth any trouble taken to save it, then he finds himself upon an inclined plane on which he gradually slips back again into complete selfishness.
The final word as to the knowledge of men must be—love to all. Love alone enables us to know a man exactly as he is, and yet not to flee him. To know men, without love, has always been a misfortune and the cause of the profound melancholy of many wise men in all ages ”

“ Thus, at any cost, and even for the sake of one’s own soul, one must make it his habit to cultivate love for others, not first of all inquiring whether they deserve that love or not—a question which is often too hard to answer. For without love life is without joy, especially when one has outgrown his youth. Lacking love, we sink into indifference, and indifference passes easily into aversion, and one’s aversions so poison life that life is no better than death. ”

“ God wills, he carries out in the man—easily, if he gives up his will, with difficulty and sorrow, if he resists or desires to go another way, and no power in the world can any longer prevent it. But there are, nevertheless, long portions of time at this stage of life when all principles or doctrines of belief refuse their service, and everything transcendental persists in appearing again as a mere dream and sport of fantasy. Those are the dangerous times in which the soul must keep itself quite still and beware of all decisive activity. ”

“ I fare to Heaven’s happiness.”
But neither is this yet the right conception of death. One can also die “full of days,” and age is not necessarily a tedious, ever-increasing, hopelessly incurable disease, but it can also be a continuous advancing, an evolving of oneself toward a nobler and a purer life than is possible on this earth. Death is then but the wholly natural and by no means violent and illogical transition into an analogous kind of existence that only needs to be continued; the fruit is ripe, and falls, not to be destroyed, but for a useful harvest. ”

“ There are not good things enough for all. The question is not whether such a state of things is right or just. On the contrary, it must be admitted to be a hard, unreasonable, unjust universe. It is not for the individual, however, set without consent of his own in such a universe, to change it. His only problem is to make it certain that in such a universe he is ‘the hammer, not the anvil.’”
Such is the essence of that worldly wisdom which is the creed of many cultivated people to-day. With it disappears, of course, any need of moral or religious education. ”

“ Why is there so great an aversion to making this experience? Why, when men are tormented with sorrow, often to the point of despair, why do they not at least make trial of this, instead of seeking death? The reason, perhaps, is mostly this: they do not want to be dependent on God; they had much rather put dependence on pitiless men. Indeed, the assurances of the Bible may be appropriated in their literal, full meaning only by the man who has sought no alien help beside, nor any human help at all before he has first sought God’s. ”

“ What the happiness is which one then finds is hard to communicate to another. It comes of ceasing to think first of all of oneself. It has, as Rothe says, “no private business to transact.” It does its work tranquilly, with absolute certainty that, though the issue of its work may be unrecognized, still it is secure. This way of life brings with it courage, and this courage manifests itself, not in feverish excitement, but in an outward habit of composure which testifies to inward and central stability. Such a life trusts its way and its destiny. ”

“ All that men have spoken and written about it for two centuries now has been condemned to unfruitfulness and has given real comfort to no one, although human error in these matters, if held in good faith, has probably of itself never caused any one to be lost. Only by the practical but unfailing road of experience, then, will you learn that a simple “Lord, help me,” coming from the very depths of the heart, shall open a way that, to all your philosophy, to all your submission to church, to all your severest works of penitence, had remained closed as with tenfold iron doors. ”

“ Great numbers of thoughtful people are just now much perplexed to know what to make of the facts of life, and are looking about them for some reasonable interpretation of the modern world. They cannot abandon the work of the world, but they are conscious that they have not learned the art of work. They have to fight the battle of life, but they are not sure what weapons are fit for that battle. They are so beset by the cares of living that they have no time for life itself. They observe that happiness often eludes those who most eagerly pursue it ”

“ Furthermore, the deliverances from sorrow, the triumphal days when a man beholds a mountain-load rolled away, belong to undoubtedly the purest moments of happiness in life, moments that God must grant to his own, if he is truly merciful to them. Spurgeon, therefore, rightly says, in one of his finest sermons, that if we truly trust God, he is, in the beginning, better than our fears, then better than our hopes, and finally better than our wishes. For his people, sorrow always lasts only so long as it still has a task to fulfil on their behalf. ”

“ Here is the solemn and tragic fact which lies behind all human life,—that what we have once done we can never change. There it remains, just as it happened, little as we may be inclined to believe, or to admit, that it is there. And hence it is that history truly written is no entertaining drama, ending in general reconciliation and embrace, but a tragedy which describes the movement of destiny. ”

“ Notwithstanding your resolution, there is, all the same, in every action of yours, yes, in every thought, a right way, and if you do not pursue it, then it is a sin. Or rather do not try; it is a reef on which millions have already gone to pieces, and on which you will go to pieces, too. “Beyond all Good and Evil” is a place not to be found on earth outside the mad-house, where many men, often highly gifted, are shut up to-day; not merely by chance, for the human spirit sinks into madness whenever, in all earnestness, it seeks to disregard these truths in its own life. ”

“ Truth, happiness, freedom from fear and care, peace with oneself and with all men, the sincere respect and affection of all,—one would think that these might be recognized as beyond a doubt the good things of life, compared with which the accumulation of wealth, the increase of honor, and the resources of luxury have no weight or significance. Indeed, the blessings of the children of light would outweigh the rewards of worldly wisdom, even if these rewards could be attained with certainty and without the bitterness, anxiety, and rivalry which inevitably accompany them. ”

“ The world’s call to pleasure sounds hollow to me, now that the doors of eternity stand open before; I am sated with the whited bowl of untruth and its vapid draughts, and I bear my empty pitchers to thy springs, O thou city of God!” These are the laborers that stood idle all the day, or fatigued themselves with useless toil. ”

“ Even the selfish, the envious, and the self-indulgent do not regard that which they want to possess as their real aim. It is only in their eyes the essential means to the real end, and that end is their own inward happiness. And this is precisely where they are self-deceived. For there is this solemn fact about the order of the world, which reveals itself to every candid observer,—that such people may attain all that they earnestly desire, yet not attain with it their own peace. Their attainment itself, their very success, becomes their punishment. ”

“ At this moment of life some recognize, with deep pain of soul, that they can not become all that to which the dreams of youth or the advantages of birth and education seemed to destine them, and they turn in despair to pleasure or to pretence. But others resolutely seek the point whence they may conquer their special world, and henceforth pursue a destiny which, perhaps, was not sung to them at their cradle, but which shows itself, nevertheless, to be the right one. ”

“ The paths by which people journey toward happiness lie in part through the world about them and in part through the experience of their souls. On the one hand, there is the happiness which comes from wealth, honor, the enjoyment of life, from health, culture, science, or art; and, on the other hand, there is the happiness which is to be found in a good conscience, in virtue, work, philanthropy, religion, devotion to great ideas and great deeds. ”

“ All lasting human relationships rest upon reciprocity. We must never be willing only to receive, nor must we ever be willing only to give; that always ends in dissatisfaction.
The opportunity of rendering great favors to men is not very frequent. On the other hand, one can quietly do any [85] one some small pleasure, though it be nothing more than a friendly greeting to light up, like a sunbeam, some lonely and joyless existence. We should not begin a day of our life without proposing to ourselves to make use of every opportunity in this way. ”

“ In a word, it must be said that the deeper life of man and that noble bearing which we remark in some people, and which no one, whatever be his station, can falsely assume, are attained only through faithful endurance of misfortune. That word of the Apostle Paul, “We glory in tribulations,” is, like many of his sayings, absolutely unintelligible to any one who has not experienced what renewal of power and what profound happiness may be discovered through misfortune itself. It is a form of happiness which one never forgets if he has once really experienced it. ”

“ The highest imaginable degree of this culture is a complete devotion to all that is good and great, a devotion that no sort of trouble any longer clouds, or can cloud; it is that condition of the soul, mentally conceivable but seemingly rarely attained, in which there is no longer any battle with the sensual and the transitory, and the struggle of nature against the law of the spirit is completely at end. ”

“ This man of art declares that in his view life is nothing else than misery! There is hardly an honest day-laborer who at the end of his life, full as it may have been of genuine troubles, could give so poor an account of himself.
The fact is, then, that human nature seems obviously not intended for this kind of happiness. Life is made for activity; and this kind of receptive enjoyment, even in its highest forms, is designed merely to give flavor and change to life, and to be sparingly used; so that those who give themselves too confidently to such enjoyment bitterly deceive themselves. ”

“ Life is no mere vale of sorrow that must be escaped from as soon as possible, but an important, perhaps the most important, part of our whole existence, in which we make our decision for advancing life, or for a gradual and real death. Even the many weak-hearted men of our day who only want to die quickly and “go to heaven” without a struggle, may well find themselves deceived, and that the struggle will yet meet them, but under less favorable conditions. ”

“ Ambition is the Moloch of our time, to whom we feel bound to sacrifice even our own children, and who, more than all other foes, destroys the bodies and the souls of youth.
If, still further, one commit himself, as is so often the case, to that philosophy of materialism in which this brief life is the end of [94] opportunity, so that but a few years are ours for the accomplishment of all which the pitiless and endless struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest permit, then there is an end of all restfulness and blessedness in work. ”

“ In other aging men, on the other hand, once more there awakens with almost elementary force the long-slumbering desire for pleasure in every direction, seeking again to blow into flame the pitiful spark of the fire of life. ”

“ The children of this world know what they want and pursue the end they set before themselves with energy and persistence, putting away all that stands between them and it; and this the children of light, at least in their earlier stages of development, seldom do. Still further, the children of this world are not wholly impervious to the higher motives of life. Their hearts are not the rock where the good seed falls in vain. They are merely the soil which is choked by other growth, where the seed takes root but cannot prosper. ”

“ For the genuine aristocracy there is another and a sterner privilege than what are commonly considered privileges. Something more is demanded of it than the continuous longing ordinary souls have for happiness and pleasure. And it is not good for it if it is ever quite absolved of the sorrows which alone keep it in this disposition, or if it succeeds or is disappointed in something that sprang from ordinary motives. The belief in the purifying power of sorrow and therefore in its necessity is always the kernel and centre of all true ethics, whether based upon philosophy or upon religion. ”