James Hutchins Baker

“ The intellect of man, for a time divorced from the warm instincts of his being, sent forth into chill and rayless regions of discovery, having performed its mission, will return and speak to the human soul in startling, welcome accents: Far and wide I have sought a basis for truth and found it not. Any philosophy that recognizes no God is false. Search your inner consciousness. You are yourself God’s highest expression of truth. You see beauty in the flower, glory in the heavens. You have human love and sympathy, divine aspirations. Life to you is nothing without aim and hope. ”

“ Labor! It is the secret of happiness. We are born bundles of self-activity, in infancy ever developing our powers by ceaseless movement, with eager curiosity ever reaching out toward knowledge of external things, ever laboring and constructing in imitation of the great, working world. Unless our energies are wasted by folly and our hearts are chilled by custom, it is the natural condition, even as children, older and wiser, but still as children, ever to extend with enthusiasm the boundary of knowledge, and in reality to join in the labor which was the play-work of our childhood. ”

“ The educated young man of to-day is the heir of the ages. All that science, art, literature, philosophy, civilization have achieved is his. All that thought has realized through ages of slow progress, all that has been learned through the mistakes made in the dim light of the dawn of human history, all that has been wrought out through devotion, struggle, and suffering, he may realize by the process of individual education. The law of progress still holds for the race and for him. He is a free factor, with a duty to help realize still more of the promise of human existence. ”

“ In these days no man is privileged to live an unproductive life. The development of his nature and the enjoyment of his powers is every man’s right; but mere serene pleasure in exalted thought and feeling, as sought by the mediæval recluse, in an age when ideals must be followed by action, when utility is yoked to philosophy, is no longer tolerable in scholar or saint. The world demands the best expression of every man’s best ability. The educated man should be a man of action and influence. If he chooses literature, he must give mankind the result of his deepest insight. ”

“ Imagine a man born in a desert land, and shut in by the walls of a tent from the glories of nature. Imagine him to have matured in body with no thought or language other than pertaining to the needs of physical existence. Imagine him, since we may imagine the impossible, to have a fully developed power for intellectual grasp and emotional life. Then open up to him the beauty of the forest, the poetry of the sea, the grandeur of the mountains, and the sublimity of the starry heavens ”

“ The beauty of the starry heavens will ever be transcendent; every natural scene and object remains a surpassing work of art; life is filled with tragedy and comedy, and the possibilities of human existence are as sublime as the eternal heights and depths. Such conceptions beget a poetry which rises to a faith above reason; that instinctively looks upon the fact of creation and of existence as sublime and full of promise, and clings to a belief, however vague, in the ultimate grand outcome for the individual. ”

“ But knowledge as such, and its use for manhood and happiness, are often underestimated. To know the processes and history of inorganic nature, to trace the growth of worlds and know their movements, and number the starry hosts, to study the structure and development of all organic life, to know the infallible laws of mathematics, to live amid the deeds of men of all ages, to imbibe their richest thoughts, to stand in presence of the problems of the infinite, make a mere animal man almost a god, direct him toward the realization of the great possibilities of his being. ”

“ Freedom is possible only in a world of good and evil, a world of choice, and with freedom the humblest creature is infinitely above the most perfect mechanism made and controlled by a blind necessity. Cease to prate of a life of perennial ease under June skies; the divinity within us rises in majesty and will not have it so. After all, those who are overcome in the struggle may have their reward; at Thermopylæ the Persians won the laurels, the Spartans the glory.
Does evolution transform the nature of duty into a mere calculation of the sum of happiness? ”

“ Plato and Aristotle—artists, statesmen, orators, poets, historians, men great and just, philosophers! Can we wonder that the glory of their names increases with time? They were men whom no truly independent worker ever surpassed. No wonder the soil of Greece is sacred, and that men of to-day go back in imagination across the chasm of ages and visit it with reverential spirit. No wonder we still go to the original sources for culture and inspiration. No wonder the great and noble men of Greece are still among the best examples for the instruction of youth. ”

“ We admire confidence and courage in the world of affairs, even when disaster may possibly follow. Have we not in our hearts the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” which constitute the faith of St. Paul? And shall we not use the courage of faith to seek a supreme good, when, though we do not find it, there is a reward even in the seeking? If I were to define faith I would call it the X-ray of the soul.
There can be no absolute break between old thought and new. The history of thought is a history of evolution. ”

“ His interest in life was not due to any recent stroke of good fortune, but was habitual.
The optimist is your best philosopher. He adapts himself to the world and uses it. He selects the best that life offers, and, when the sky is gloomy, he lives in hope of bright days. He has faith in the ultimate beneficent outcome of the plan of the Creator. As there is light for the eye, sound for the ear, form for the touch, aromas for the smell, food for the taste, so there is an object in the outer world, adapted to every human instinct and impulse. ”

“ Art leans toward the side of feeling, but is none the less rich and valuable for that. Shakespeare furnishes some of the highest types of art in literature. The flow of his verse, the light beauty of his sonnets, the boldness and wonderful aptness of his metaphors, the skill of his development, the ever-varying types, the humor, the joys, the sorrows, the wisdom, the folly of men, the condensation of events and traits and experiences in individual types, the philosophical and prophetic insight, the artistic whole of his plays, constitute a rich field of education. ”

“ Did a different universe walk under your hat and under mine, then there would be no society, no brotherhood, no individual growth; so far as a man isolates himself in selfishness and narrowness, he is detached from the source and life of his being, and perishes by himself. He remains undeveloped, because the soul comes to know itself only by reflection in the mirror of kindred natures. ”

“ When I see some grand old man, full of faith, courage, optimism, and cheerfulness, whose life has conformed to the moral law, who has wielded the right arm of his freedom boldly for every good cause, come to the end of life with love for man and trust in God, seeing the way brighten before him, turning his sunset into morning, I must believe that he represents the survival of the fittest, that his ideals are not the mere fictions of a blind nature, serving for the preservation of his physical being, but that the order of his life has been in accord with realities. ”

“ To me it requires greater faith to call the Christian experience an illusion than to accept its reality and validity.
The true poet is the living embodiment of instinctive faith. His mind and heart are keenly alive to God’s revelation of Himself in man and nature. He is a seer. His themes are the truths that come to him in visions from the realms of truth. He sees the principle of beauty in things; and familiar scenes, commonplace experiences are clothed in a spiritual glory. He accepts the world of facts and of science, but gives them their real meaning. ”

“ Let us retain the glory of the ancient civilization and add to it the marvellous scientific and practical spirit of the present. Then shall we have a civilization surpassing any previous one. Let us not only tunnel our mountains for outlets to our great transcontinental railway systems, but let us also find among our mountain ranges, and domes, and cañons, some sacred grottoes. Let us not only explore our peaks for gold and silver, but find some Parnassus, sacred to the Muses, whom we shall learn to invoke not in vain. ”

“ But in Plato, as from some ‘tower of speculation,’ we look into the distance and behold the future of the world and of philosophy. The ideal of the state and of the life of the philosopher; the ideal of an education continuing through life and extending equally to both sexes; the ideal of the unity and correlation of knowledge; the faith in good and immortality—are the vacant forms of light on which Plato is seeking to fix the eye of mankind. ”

“ Rich in experience is he who can see in the drifted gleaming snows on our mountain peaks more than the summer’s irrigation, in the green plains of May more than the growing crops of wheat and alfalfa, in the orchard bloom more than the promise of fruit, in public education and charity more than political and social prudence, in religious devotion more than conventionality. ”

“ To me morals, the conscience, the affections, and the passions are, I will own frankly and sweepingly, so infinitely more important than the other parts of life, that I conceive men rather triflers who become immersed in the latter. To me the medicine bottles on my chimney and the blood in my handkerchief are accidents; they do not color my view of life.... We are not put here to enjoy ourselves; it was not God’s purpose; and I am prepared to argue it is not our sincere wish.... Men do not want, and I do not think they would accept, happiness; what they live for is rivalry, effort, success. ”

“ The possibilities of education depend upon inborn capacities, but the unfolding of them is education. A man of large capacity, born among savages, remains a savage, an Arab is a Mohammedan, an Englishman is a Christian, a child among thieves is a thief, a child in a home of culture imbibes refinement and truth. Tennyson, in the interior of Africa, would not have developed his exquisite rhyme and rhythm, metaphor and verse, and polish and sparkle of expression, would not have conceived thoughts that penetrate the earth and the nature of man, and shoot upward to the quivering stars ”

“ The devotion to truth for its own sake, the love of nature in repose, the admiration of great deeds, fine sentiments and noble thoughts, were for him sufficient, as if he were isolated in a world of his own. We do not depreciate such interest, for life is worth nothing without it. But there is a demand for action, a call to externalize the power of one’s being. Each man is a part of the all, from eternity destined to be a factor in the progress of all. The thoughts and impulses that evaporate and accomplish nothing are not of much more value to the individual than to his neighbor. ”

“ Even the animals in the democracy show the spirit of equality, and the horses and asses march along the streets with all the rights and dignities of freemen, and will run at you if you do not get out of their way, and everything is just ready to burst with liberty. The citizens become sensitive and chafe at authority, and cease to care for the laws. Surely the statesman can turn to Plato for wisdom, for out of this condition grows tyranny. ”

“ The possession of the whole world is of no value without the good. No pleasure except that of the wise is quite true and pure. “Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or rather to the god in man?” “How would a man profit if he received gold and silver on the condition that he was to enslave the noblest part of him to the worst?” “The Holy is loved of God because it is Holy.” Not pleasure, but wisdom and knowledge and right opinions and true reasonings are better, both now and forever. The good ruler considers not his own interest, but that of the state. ”

“ We cannot easily estimate the value to the world of a genius, one of those men who stand on nature’s heights and see with clear vision, and proclaim the glories of their view to listening men, who picture at least feebly the things described. They are the heralds of new events, the inspirers of progress. A highly educated man, though not a genius, in a way may occupy a similar place, and may repay by his influence, many times, in practical ways, the expense of his education. ”

“ A true man is bold; he feels that for him all the forces of right will contend. He has courage for his work, because he knows he is on the right path and is moving toward ever higher attainments and a supreme result.
The subject is old as man, the thoughts are trite; why not utter your maxim and proceed, or rather say nothing? While there are lives empty of purpose and hearts that bleed in contrition and tragedies that fill prisons and madhouses, there is much to say and more to do. Have we no further use for wisdom? ”