Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of EthicsDrake, Durant
Philosophy
Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics
Drake, Durant
Ethics
to open our eyes to the beauty not only of flowers but of leaves of
grass, to the picturesqueness and significance of so dull a thing as
a ferryboat; or like Wordsworth, with his picturing of homely country
scenes and events, with his emotion at the sight of the sleeping city-
"a sight so touching in its majesty." This sense of the meaning of
common things floods most of us at one time or another, and we see
what in our blindness we have been overlooking. Go without your
comfortable bed for a while, your well-cooked food, your home, friends,
neighbors, and you will discover how rich you have been. Your mother's
face hinted by some stranger in a foreign land will some day overcome
you with the realization of the comfort of her love; and unless you
are a crabbed egotist the life of your fellows can furnish you with
endless pleasures. It is not necessary to own things to enjoy them;
our interests and enjoyments may well overlap and include those of
our friends and neighbors, and even those of strangers. The smile of
a happy child, a friend's good fortune a sunrise or moonlit cloud-strewn
sky, should bring a pure gladness to any one who has eyes to see and
heart to feel. We must "Learn to love the morn, Love the lovely working
light, Love the miracle of sight, Love the thousand things to do."
[Footnote: These lines are Richard Le Gallienne's. Cf. also Matthew
Arnold's lines: "Is it so small a thing To have enjoyed the sun, To have
lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done,
To have advanced true friends and beat down baffling foes? The sports
of the country people, A flute note from the woods, Sunset over the sea;
Seed-time and harvest, The reapers in the corn, The vinedresser
in his vineyard, The village girl at her wheel. . ."] The true lover of
beauty will not need to seek forever-new scenes and objects
to admire. He will find that which can feed his heart in the clouds
of morning, the blue of noon, or the stars of night. One graceful vase
with a flower-stalk bending over to display its drooping blossoms,
will fill him with a quiet happiness; the merry laughter of a child,
the tender smile of a lover, the rugged features of a weather beaten
laborer, will stir his soul to response; a few lines of poetry remembered
in the midst of work, a simple song sung in the twilight, a print of
some old master hanging by his bedside, a bird-call heard at sunset
or the scent of evening air after rain, may so speak to his spirit
that he will say, "It is enough!" It is not the number of beautiful
things that we have that matters, but the degree in which we are open
to their influence, the atmosphere into which we let them lead us.
Our hearts must be free from self-seeking, from regret, from anger,
from restlessness. The vision comes not always to the connoisseur,
comes to him whose life is simple, earnest, open-eyed and openhearted.
In the pauses of his faithful work he will refresh his soul with some
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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