A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and CharacterHillis, Newell Dwight
Philosophy
A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and Character
Hillis, Newell Dwight
Character; Self-culture
"The supreme art life above all other arts is the art of
living together justly and charitably. There is no other
thing that is so taxing, requiring so much education, so
much wisdom, so much practice, as the how to live with
our fellow-men. In importance this art exceeds all
productive industries which we teach our children. All
skill and knowledge aside from that is as nothing. The
business of life is to know how to get along with our
fellow-men."--_H.W. Beecher._
"As all the stars are pervaded by one law, in one law
live and move and have their being, so all minds that
reason and all hearts that beat, act in one empire of one
king; and of that vast kingdom, the law the most
sweeping, the most eternal, is the law of loving
kindness."--_Swing._
"The nations have turned their places of art treasure
into battle-fields. Fancy what Europe would be now if the
delicate statues and temples of the Greeks--if the broad
and massive walls of the Romans, if the noble and
pathetic architecture of the Middle Ages, had not been
ground to dust by mere human rage. You talk of the scythe
of time and the tooth of time; I tell you time is
scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the
worm, we who smite like the scythe. All these lost
treasures of human intellect have been wholly destroyed
by human industry of destruction; the marble would have
stood its 2,000 years as well in the polished statue as
in the Parian cliff; but we men have ground it to powder
and mixed it with our own ashes."--_Ruskin._
XII
THE SCIENCE OF LIVING WITH MEN
The great writers of all ages have held themselves well away from any
formal discussion of the art of right living and the science of a
skillful carriage of one's faculties. Government, war and eloquence
have indeed received full scientific statement, and those arts called
music and sculpture have obtained abundant literary treatment. But,
for some reason, no philosopher has ever attempted a formal treatise
teaching the youth how to carry his faculties so as to avoid injuring
his fellows and secure for them peace, happiness and success.
Nevertheless, the art of handling marble is nothing compared to the
art of handling men. Skill in evoking melody from the harp is less
than nothing compared to skill in allaying discords in the soul and
calling out its noblest impulses, its most energetic forces.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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