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
Here is the old hero in his dungeon in Florence. While he dozed, the
night before he was to be burned, the jailer saw a rare, sweet smile
upon his face. "What is it?" the guard asked. "I hear the sounds of
falling chains, and their clangor is like sweet music in my ears."
Then, with smiling face he went to his martyrdom. And here is Michael
Angelo. Grown old and blind, he gropes his way into the gallery of the
Vatican, where with uplifted face his fingers feel their way over the
torso of Phidias. Lingering by him one day the Cardinal Farnese heard
the old sculptor say: "Great is this marble; greater still the hand
that carved it; greatest of all, the God who fashioned the sculptor. I
still learn! I still learn!" And he too went forward sustained by his
vision of perfect beauty.
And here is John Huss, looking between the iron bars of his prison
upon an army of pikes and spears, massed before his jail; but the
martyr endured his danger by the foresight of the day when the swords
then wielded for repression of liberty of thought would flash for its
emancipation. And here is Walter Scott ruined by the failure of his
publishers, just at the hour when nature whispered that he had
fulfilled his task and earned his respite. But he girded himself anew
for the battle, and sustained his grievous loss through the foresight
of the hour when the last debt would be paid and his again would be a
spotless name. And here is that youth, Emerson, looking out upon a
world full of noise and strife, full of the cries of slaves and the
warfare of zealots. He was sustained by the foresight of a day when
God would breathe peace o'er all the scene. With hope shining in his
face, he began to "take down men's idols with such reverence that it
seemed an act of worship." And what shall we more say? By the sight of
the invisible, Dante endured his scaffold; the heroes, hunted like
partridges upon the mountains, endured their caves and the winter's
cold; martyrs endured the scourge and fagot. In every age, the great,
by the sight of the invisible, have been lifted into the realms of
tranquillity. Outwardly, there may have been the roar and boom of
guns, but inwardly men were lutes with singing harps. As the
householder sitting by his blazing hearth thinks not of the sleet and
hail falling on the roof of slate, so the soul abides in peace over
which has been reared the castle and covert of God's presence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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