Chapter VIII: The Steps of Life

It is an old and obvious fancy, that of dividing the inner life into a series of steps, or of describing it in the allegorical form of a pilgrimage with its various stages and halts and hindrances of one sort or another. Yet I do not know of any such description that suits the needs of our own day, especially the needs of people of culture; indeed, it is, and has ever been, a fault of most sermons that while they depict life’s attainable ideal with more or less exactness, they are noways able to give as plain an account of the way thither. Yet this is just the service (and the directions should be quite specific, too) which the church, it would seem, is called upon to perform for the present generation. What is known by the somewhat distasteful name of “the cure of souls,” so far as it exists at all, has become too professional (not to say too commercial) a matter with the churches: in the things of the spirit there is nothing if not freedom and individuality; yet it is just here that a kind of rigid technical nomenclature has been devised, with expressions that once may have been justified, but are now meaningless to many men and at some future time will have to be replaced, perhaps, by others.

Of the writings we possess on the unfolding of the inner life by steps, only one has come down to us from classical times; this is an essay of Plutarch, the Greek professor of philosophy (as we should now call him), who was born at Chæronea in Bœotia about 50 A.D., and died between 120 and 130 A.D. at Rome, where, among other things, he is said to have been the teacher of the future emperor Hadrian. Of his hundred and more writings, some shorter, some longer, the “Parallel Lives” are now almost the only ones read, and even these are less read in the schools than is perhaps proper. Of the rest, which are usually comprised under the general title of “Plutarch’s Ethical Writings,” one of the most readable is that dedicated to Sosius Senecio, consul under Trajan,--“How One may be Conscious of his Progress in Goodness.” On the whole, it exhibits the Eclectic view (in the sense of Ciceronian Eclecticism) as contrasted with the teachings of the Stoics, who only recognize the perfect wise man who observes their principles, on the one hand, and on the other, the man addicted to vice, without intervening transitional grades. In this treatise, as each reader will at once notice, there is a special lack of the depth which first came into morals through Christianity (then but little known as yet), and which will always come into morals only by that path; but it possesses in considerable degree a sound and natural human good sense, which is directed toward the nobler things of life, and whose development in youthful temperaments is an indispensable purpose in so-called classical culture.

Of the later writings of this kind the best are Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” a book from the great Puritan days in England, and the “Homesickness” of Jung-Stilling, written about a hundred years ago. In reality, the biographies of distinguished men should render this service of pointing out the way to their contemporaries and successors; but there are, unhappily, but few good and really true writings of this sort. For the biographers do not always understand the inmost experiences of those whose lives they are describing, many of which experiences really can not be made comprehensible to them in their full significance, since they were small occurrences with great consequences. Yet the autobiographies, which could tell all this, are usually marred with vanity and are sometimes the least true of biographies. It will therefore be well, on the whole, to recognize that in all these writings the individual character preponderates and that there is no “method” that reveals the proper course of life. The most useful thing about them, perhaps, is the very practical observations that might serve to encourage the wanderer on this much-travelled, yet universally unknown, way when he is likely to become weary, or to enlighten him when the continuation of the journey appears too uncertain or too much deflected from the presumably proper direction.

It is first of all to be said that every life has steps, and that no life runs from beginning to end in unchanging uniformity like a clear, murmuring meadow-brook, or in a straight direction, like an artificially contrived canal. But no life perfectly resembles another in its course, and even the apparently most natural steps often happen in the reverse order, so that there are men who in their youth are preternaturally wise, and have their youthful qualities only when old.

Yet there is never an inwardly healthy human life that shows no visible development at all, or that has spurts or pauses in it that are wholly arbitrary. A life that proceeds in a perfectly normal way is just as rare, but in every life there are mistakes that could have been avoided, and gaps that later it is no longer possible to fill out.

For every period in life has its purpose and its task. In spring the tree must do little more than grow and blossom, but not bear fruit as yet. The fruits one produces on the modern dwarfed trees, purposely hindered in their natural growth and designed merely for a speedy production of fruit, acquire neither the good quality nor, apparently, the soundness of fruits ripened on trees that have attained their natural full growth.

The various periods of life, then, must deposit and store away in the human being each a product peculiar to itself; in childhood the childlike nature, without which a man never becomes a well-rounded man, exerting a kindly influence upon other men; in youth that freshness and enthusiasm of spirit which begets the power of doing things; in manhood and womanhood the fulness and ripeness of all the thoughts and feelings, and the firmness that springs from a character steeled by deeds already achieved. Only thus can age also do its worthy task, not in falling into disconsolate decay, but in the quiet possession and contemplation of what life was and should be, and in the preparation for a greater and broader development.

Whoever skips any such period, or, as is more frequently the case, hastens over it and makes no use of its peculiar advantages, will seldom or never be in a position to retrieve it later, but will always have a very perceptible deficiency in his make-up.

To prevent this in younger years is a matter of education, of which I will not speak here, but in later life it is one of the chief aspects of that self-training to which a man is indebted for the real acquisitions of life more than to all the things that others can do for him.

In reference to its general character, in the aspect which one usually calls happiness or unhappiness, or a hard or easy lot, experience shows (and in most cases very plainly) that every life consists of three divisions, of which the first and the third are alike and the second unlike. Whoever has had a hard, unhappy youth is more likely to have a more favorable and successful manhood, but scarcely a cloudless end. On the other hand, when the days of youth are golden, they are almost always the precursor of exertions and storms in the middle part of life, on which there follows a quieter evening of age. Oftentimes this distinction also holds good for the minor steplike subdivisions of these three great divisions.

Which is the happier case may well be doubtful. Very energetic men fond of activity, who are substantially minded not to let “the vestiges of their earthly days vanish in the æons,” will be disposed to lay the greater value upon a successful manhood; but sunny-natured men need an untroubled youth and likewise a rougher middle period, if they are to be strong enough to exhibit in their age the pattern of a fully ripened life, perfected in every direction, so far as lies in the power of man. Once in his life, at any rate, a man must have it hard and heavy if he is to attain to the right way himself and to gain an understanding of the burdens of others; and on the whole a strong old age is best suited for that. And if the childhood days have been joyous, they afford an afterglow for the whole life, and in the reverse case, a bitter feeling of wrong. It is likewise difficult to be obliged, for the first time, to bear the hardest lot of all in old age.

One can not change the form of this lot; in this respect, at least, a man is surely not the moulder of his own happiness; only, he is not the inert slave of a blind Fate either. That is, if a hard youth predestines him to an old age not quite without care, he can make the best of this destiny by a clear and conscious submission and a courageous endurance; or if he has a beautiful childhood behind him, he can be thankful that it did not continue on thus into that stormy period of later life which is necessary for the steeling of his character. Thus conceived, even in these destinies the bold saying turns out to be exactly true, that to those who love God all the events of life, of whatever sort they may be, must turn out to their advantage. But in the lives of all thinking men the question to be decided is this: whether to choose much sorrow with much help from God, or much sorrow without such help, but with the temporary forgetfulness of momentary pleasure. The impotent Nietzschean revolt against such a fate for men helps nothing.

Finally, one can not make of himself something quite different from the native stuff that is in him. It is not proper that every one should be able to become everything; a very extended many-sidedness comes often only at the expense of depth. At the proper time rightly to criticise oneself in order to correct the many errors of education, which only very rarely estimates a human being quite correctly--this is the chief task of the most decisive point of life. This point, if life has proceeded quite normally, is at the beginning of the thirties, when the man has the last step of education behind him, and now, “in the midway of this our mortal life,” begins his self-training, for good or for bad. 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.

On the whole, however, the dreams of youth are not to be despised. In most cases they point to an unconscious native ability and so likewise to the dreamer’s destination, which expresses itself at first in fantastic pictures of the future; that is, in so far as they really come from within and are not the products of a false education or of a mistaken belief in the inheritance of talents. For it is only quite rarely that talents are inherited and that the sons of great men are themselves great. This is, to be sure, often made difficult for them because of comparison with their fathers, and not less because of the jealousy of men, who do not willingly suffer intellectual dynasties to rule among them; in this they are all republicans. On the other hand, men of much consequence seldom have or take the time to busy themselves intently with the bringing up of their children, and in such families, much oftener than in far simpler ones, the children fall into neglect, unless a mother of sufficient intelligence steps in, and is not herself too much busied with her celebrated and often very exacting husband.

It is scarcely necessary to say further that the mothers are the deciding element of the family for the education and the formation of the character of the children, especially the sons, and that the sons, as a rule, take after them more than after the fathers. It is a less familiar fact that the sons often resemble the mother’s brothers in character and natural ability, and that the best though sometimes also the most dangerous moulders of one’s youth are the grandmothers on the mother’s side.

The promise of a curse upon families that have shown themselves egotistical for several succeeding generations surely comes true; and experience shows that a want of love towards one’s parents is avenged through one’s own children, and, _vice versa_, a peculiar blessing throughout life accompanies those who have shown their parents much love.

There is no need to be anxious about the proper time for entering upon new steps of life, if the earlier ones have been rightly used; they will then do their own announcing through first an inner summons, and finally a definite determination, to advance farther, and without this experience it could not be well for any one to be in a higher plane. We can not stand a task that is yet too great for us; such a task we feel to be too ethereal, and we long for the coarser elements of life. On the other hand, the divinely-led man does not as a rule know very long beforehand what he has to do next or to what he will be called; he could not commonly endure it. But any one who has already really experienced many such instances of being personally guided in life will at last be sure in his faith as to the existence of such a higher guidance even in the life of individual men, while others (by their own fault, to be sure) count only in the mass, not as individuals.

Finally, steps in the inner life are not, of course, for those to whom life means nothing else than eating and drinking and dying to-morrow. The steps of the inner life exist rather only for those who are resolved to struggle out of a merely natural existence common to many others, on through to a really spiritual life.

For these, Thomas à Kempis points out the safest way in the following dialogue:

MY SON, the perfect freedom of the spirit thou canst not win nor
keep, if thou press not through to the complete renunciation of
thyself.

Slave-chains are borne by all who cling to something selfishly,
who love themselves, who desire the outer world with eagerness
and longing and curiosity, who seek the things that flatter the
senses and not the things that further the Kingdom of Christ, who
will always build and strengthen what yet hath no foundation; for
everything falleth into nothingness that is not born of God.

Hold thyself to this short saying, for it meaneth much: Forsake all,
and thou findest all.

Bid farewell to every desire; then enterest thou upon rest. Let this
word never leave thy thoughts; bear it within thee day and night; and
when thou hast brought it to fulfilment, then shalt thou understand
all.

But this, O LORD, is not the work of a single day, nor is it child’s
play. In this shell lies the whole kernel of the perfection of those
who seek God.

SON, that must not frighten thee back, nor discourage thee, but
rather draw thee to climb upward to the higher goal, or at the least
to bear a longing thereto in thy heart. If thou wert already so far
on the way that thou wert free from all blind love to thyself, and
wert ready and prepared to obey every beck of thy fatherly superior
whom I have set over thee, then might mine eye rest with pleasure
upon thee, and thy whole life would flow along in peace and joy.
For as soon as thou no longer wishest this or that in thine own
self-conceit, but shalt have yielded thyself wholly to thy God
without gainsay and from the innermost depth of thy heart, and shalt
have laid down all thy wishes into the hand of God, from that moment
onward shalt thou be at rest, and shalt find thyself at one with God,
in that no other thing shall be to thee so agreeable and pleasing as
God’s pleasure.

Whoever hath thus, in simplicity of heart, swung his thoughts upward
to God, and hath loosed himself from the inordinate love or hate of
any created thing, he alone shall be fit and worthy to receive the
gift of devotion. For where the Lord findeth empty vessels, there He
layeth in his blessing. And the more completely any one looseneth his
heart from the love of that which perisheth, and the more completely
he maketh his own self to waste away under deepest disregard, by so
much the quicker cometh this mercy, by so much the deeper it presseth
in, and by so much the higher the free heart of man is lifted up.

Then the eyes of man are opened, then standeth he amazed in rapture,
then his whole heart is dilated, for the hand of the Lord is now
with him, and he hath given himself wholly and for all eternity into
His hand. Lo, thus is that man blest who seeketh God with his whole
heart, and letteth his spirit no longer cling to the things that
perish.

I

Everything spoken in this dialogue is wholly true; only it is not merely not the work of a single day, but not even the work of a single life-period; it is rather an uncompromising process of growth that can not be hastened at will, but must gradually unfold itself in four great stages and must furthermore be properly brought to maturity in each separate period, if any real and beneficial good is to arise therefrom. There may be no compulsion about it; a hastening of growth occurs only in times of suffering; the first half of every task is mostly the hardest; from that point onward it goes more quickly and easily to the end.

The first stage is the seeking for a philosophy of life, and the dissatisfaction with the usual conceptions of the universe: “How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish here with hunger!” The second is the turning to the eternal, supernatural truth: “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else.” The third stage is the new life which must gradually take shape therefrom, though falling into many divisions. And the last has the promise of the prophet Zechariah: “At evening time there shall be light.” Out of the first stage the youthful man must pass with pure thoughts directed toward an ideal, with no stigma of immorality upon his conscience, with pleasure in work, and with a considerable amount of knowledge useful for his life-calling. If the second period is rightly spent, it will be devoted to the acquisition of three important things: position as a citizen of the state, a worthy marriage, and a sound religious and philosophical view of life. The third stage is that of the confirmation of this view in the struggle of life; this stage forms the real work of life. The fourth is the crowning of life with true success, and the final transition to a larger sphere of activity.

It is clear from the beginning that this course of development really rests upon self-training, and usually takes its start in that period of life in which every earnest man is tired of the “fables of the world” and is in the same frame of mind in which Dante has his great poem begin with the words: “In the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood astray;” or in which St. Theresa says: “My soul was submerged in the dream of earthly things, but it has pleased the Lord to awaken me from this slumber of death, and I beseech Him nevermore to let me fall back therein.” What education can do up to this point is, as regards the inner life, merely of a preparatory and prophylactic nature, and consists in keeping the young human being away from a wholly materialistic conception of the world, as well as from a merely formal religion, both of which would make difficult his later approach to a true philosophical and religious conviction. Such children as are educated in the natural sciences alone, as well as those who have heard of Christianity too early and too often, or have been trained to make use of religious expressions and forms mechanically (often against the grain), only rarely grow up to be men who later have the power of finding the way of peace. It is the especial task of education to keep the young soul free from the strain of immorality, and inclined toward a purer life than one that is based merely upon the senses. The soil on which the noble plant of a true religion should later take root and flourish is rendered unfit for that purpose by nothing so much as by the dominance of sensuality. The soaring-power of the spirit is thereby broken, and is regenerated again only with difficulty and partially, if at all. With this, we return to the thought already expressed elsewhere, that for the education of those who are to be given a higher culture (for the boys, at least, and probably also for their mothers and governesses and women teachers) the so-called classical education is indispensable, and on the whole to be preferred to the ordinary religious and moral instruction. Christianity then comes easily of itself, later on, if any one has honestly traversed this stage of instruction in the classical philosophy (which can not and should not be the final stage); and, as history has shown, Christianity bears its finest fruits upon a classical substratum. In particular, a classically educated spirit will never be able to sink into mere ecclesiasticism, and still less into the insipidities and the trivialities which, much as they are foreign to the great and noble nature of pristine Christianity, nevertheless, to its immense harm, cling to the quite common conception of it.

Besides, Christianity undoubtedly contains an element of alienation from the world, an element that can not be so suitable for the education of a young human being still intent upon the growth of all his intellectual faculties, as it is for the self-training that comes later. Indeed, one may go so far as to say that physical well-being (though by no means the highest form of feeling nor the highest destiny), and a certain human impulse to self-exaltation (which later finds its limit in the true humility of Christianity) are natural and even necessary to the growth of youth, and for this very reason the classical examples and ideals (and those of the Old Testament also, of course) fit in better with this period than do those of the Christian era. Only, the classical education must be adapted to the circumstances of the pupils’ environment, or this environment must itself be able to be elevated at the same time, or it will often make the pupils discontented with their lot. Indeed, it is even as Flattich rightly pointed out of old in the naïve words, “Youth must have its time of raging, though not wickedly so;” and for those who do not have this period in youth, it often comes afterward, only worse and more secretly.

When education has planted in the young human being a disposition inclined toward the ideal, and has begotten in him an aversion to all that is vulgar, together with some good life-habits, then it has performed its most important duty. At present, indeed, it wants to do more than this, but in reality it accomplishes less.

Two things must be made particularly clear to the young man at the conclusion of the first life-period: in the first place, within the limits of natural laws men attain to everything, so to speak, that they earnestly desire. Only, they must begin at the right time, must proceed in the right order, and must above all things not chase two hares at once. To become rich, renowned, learned, or virtuous, there is need in every case of a single-minded and orderly struggle that suffers no competition of some rival purpose. One must therefore know what one wants to be, and choose the right thing as early as possible. Then “the man grows, of himself, along with his greater aims.” Without these, he is vainly tempted to seek his development in the artificial forcing-beds of education.

The way in which this subjectivity (not wrong at the first) comes to an end is not one that can be exactly determined, either as to the time the end takes place or as to the cause that brings it about. The change usually begins with premonitions which eventually become strong impressions. These are often called forth merely by isolated words which sometimes have been spoken by men, apparently by chance, but are more frequently derived from reading. Books that fall into a man’s hand at just the right time are nowadays most frequently the instrumentality of the summons to a higher life. Many a time, also, the soul suddenly, in moments of elevation, sees itself transported to a quite different plane from that on which it really lives. It espies, as often happens to the mountain-wanderer, a new and beautiful region quite near before it, but which is still separated from its present standing-ground by a vast chasm, over which a bridge leads, but only far below in the depths.

In this period isolated experiences also occur which may be classed as strange, as hard to be described, and as by no means essential to development. On this point mystic writers say that there are three kinds of more intimate union with the divine: first, the quite regular kind (thus already understood in the Old Testament), that comes through submission and sincere love, a union that always remains open in its nature, that nothing can interrupt save a man’s own will contending against the will of God, and that is at once reëstablished as soon as the will is again accordant; second, an extraordinary kind, that comes through devout contemplation, which can not, however, be artificially produced, but which is only a yet greater affection of the heart, waiting in patience and humility for the response that God will perhaps give thereto; and lastly, a still more sensitive feeling of nearness to God, coming for the most part quite unexpectedly, but, of all the three, the least necessary and important for the progress of the inner life.

The end of the first stage of life is not satisfying--can not and should not be. All subjectivity is a form of thinking that ends in dissatisfaction, and the nobler the soul, the more quickly and deeply it falls into it. Along with this there very often comes a certain failure in the outer life, almost enigmatical; the cause is given in very picturesque language by an Israelitic prophet, Hosea, “I will hedge up the way with thorns, and I will make a fence against her, that she shall not find her paths.” It is the genuine mercy of God when every false way a man wishes to strike into is hedged with thorns; or when he, in another beautiful Israelitic simile, like a lily among thorns, can find his growth only straight upward. Those are the sorrows of youth for which later one is most thankful.

Nevertheless, because of these things a certain sadness masters the soul, and but few noteworthy men are to be found who have not temporarily suffered melancholy in their youth. Even at best, they live in the mood which Goethe depicts in the words:

_So still and thoughtful? Something is lacking; freely confess.
“Contented am I, but ’tis not well with me, nevertheless.”_

But, as every brave young soul sees, life is not given us with the purpose that we may always be only “still and thoughtful,” nor that we may consume ourselves in disconsolate complaints or in the pessimism that wastes the soul’s powers. Those are the conditions that attend transition, and must appear. A new life must spring therefrom, but one feels, indeed, that a kind of death first lies between.

This is the surrender of the personal will, intent upon the selfish life; this will a man renounces with so much difficulty that Calvin was able to found upon this fact his doctrine of a formal predestination of some to this development of his true existence, and of others to a loss of it. But every such death, for those who bear within them the seed of an eternal life, is not the final goal, but the means to a new and higher development of life. Whoever is unable to hold fast to this hope with the tenacity with which Job clung to it, and yet is no longer able to find any satisfaction in the world of the senses, falls now into a gloomy asceticism which is forever shovelling at his grave; or into an idle dialogue (in diaries and letters) with his painful dissatisfaction with the universe; or into the confused Buddhistic longing for some Nirvana; or, finally, into one of the various other aberrations of the human spirit, which all agree only in considering the true way as an impossible or fantastic one.

At this point of life, for a time, the word of salvation is, Forward!

II

At about the middle of a man’s life, and often the most quickly in the case of the best and most successful lives, there comes a moment of dissatisfaction with all that has hitherto been attained. This is more frequently the case among the cultured than among the other classes, because the continuous struggle of the latter for existence partly spares them this dissatisfaction and more clearly shows the way to free themselves from it. When, at this time, any one stands quite at the exit-gates of earthly existence, all human concerns appear to him literally nothing worth, and he would never feel kindly toward them again, even in their highest activities, if the wisdom of this world did not bring him back into the belief that these are only morbid sensations that must be overcome by a feeling of robust vitality. This, to be sure, they must do, but not unless a real death of the selfish nature precedes; upon such a death the most in every human life depends, although this event does not always come to pass in just the same form. The same feeling, however, is present in all nobler souls, that they do not get forward with their “intentions to do better,” but daily find new hindrances in themselves and in the surrounding world; and that, in their own nature, what is lacking is not the dream, indeed, but the _power_ of attaining an existence truly worthy of man. Those are conditions that often last for years; in their later period arise thoughts which, to some, make this process seem to resemble the ascent of a mountain.

But this ascending of the mountain does not always lead to the true summit it is designed for, even in the case of the best men, and in this respect, also, one is tempted to believe in predestination. Another mountain-peak which is sometimes attained is a noble scepticism, such as Gottfried Keller gives expression to in the touching words that, at some time or other in life, one must accustom himself to the thought of a real death, and that if he then gathers himself together, he does not become any the worse man therefor. Certainly not, only he is no perfectly satisfied man, with the thirst for truth and eternal life slaked; that is a goal which the most beautiful sceptical philosophy never reaches.

Doubting thought stands on a still higher plane in “The Holy Grail” of Tennyson:

“_Thereafter, the dark warning of our King,
That most of us would follow wandering fires,
Came like a driving gloom across my mind:
Then every evil word I had spoken once,
And every evil thought I had thought of old,
And every evil deed I ever did,
Awoke and cried: ‘This Quest is not for thee.’_”

Beyond this thought the most earnest and sincere souls would never get, if it were not for the solution which the English poet himself offers at the conclusion of his profound poem:

“_Let visions of the night or of the day
Come, as they will; and many a time they come,
Until this earth he walks on seems not earth,
This light that strikes his eyeball is not light,
This air that smites his forehead is not air
But vision--yea, his very hand and foot--In
moments when he feels he can not die,
And knows himself no vision to himself,
Nor the high God a vision, nor that One
Who rose again._”

It is very strange that a matter that has been in existence for almost two thousand years, that has already busied the minds and hearts of millions of teachers and writers, and that has been borne with great cost and exertions over seas and preached to nations to whom it was unknown, has become unfamiliar in its own place of dominion and among the most cultured nations of the globe. Or can we asseverate that the spirit, or, let us say, even the thought, of Christianity is something that is generally known and acknowledged in our European states?

Far removed from this view, some within so-called Christendom, like the Roman procurator Festus, hold Christianity to be a sort of more or less harmless superstition concerning “one Jesus, who was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive”; others regard it as a society which it is the proper thing to belong to, without necessarily having any further interest in it; a third class looks upon it as a hierarchy of priests which, for reasons mostly external, they either reverence or abhor. To yet others it is a science called theology, to penetrate which there is need of very long courses of study and many examinations. And when they come to the particulars in the “structure of doctrine,” not many among the learned wholly agree as to what faith is, or mercy, or the significance of the “sacrifice of Christ,” whether there is predestination and eternal punishment, or a “restoration of all things,” or what are the methodical steps one must take, to be saved. Every one who ventures into these labyrinths of theological and philosophical thought, without at the same time possessing a very decided aspiration toward the highest truth and a very sound understanding of human nature, is apparently in danger of losing the one or the other. And so, thousands of the most cultured men of our day have, in fact, given up making any further trial of what seems to be joined with only trouble, contention, doubt, and renunciation of the natural enjoyments of life, only to lead, at the end, to nothing other than a kind of human slavery, without any better assurance than before. Christianity is now, for the greater part of Christians, a doctrine of the churches and the schools, which one listens to as long as one must, but from which a cultured man will inwardly free himself as quickly as possible, even if he still outwardly believes he must allow himself to fit into forms of the social life when once they have become historical.

The simple answer to this is that we can neither dispense with Christianity nor put something in its place. We do not know (and it would be useless to wish to discover) what would have become of the civilized world, if Christianity had not appeared in it when it did; but it is certain that we can no longer get away from it now, nor ignore it, but we must reckon with it as with something that will endure, yet can not be wholly explained by science. True, science can not be prevented from discovering, as completely as possible, everything that is knowable, or from extending the sphere of the knowable as widely as possible; that is its right and its duty. With this there goes, in the conception of particular minds, the supposition that everything is knowable that concerns mankind, or that, at any rate, everything can be made knowable in time. This is the basis of a considerable part of the courage and the perseverance found in scientific investigation. But just as little may it be forbidden us to doubt that men will ever succeed in completely fathoming human nature in all its relationships to the universal Being and in its connection with all things; but even so, it is the duty (and of cultured people most of all) nevertheless, to stand firm, and in particular to put away the presumption with which imperfect knowledge, or even mere hypotheses, are wont to be set up in the place of the inward conviction as to the existence and worth of super-sensual things.

Highly as humanity has cause to value science and its steady advance, it would, nevertheless, take a tremendous backward step, if one should be able to remove from the sphere of its life and from the motives of its actions everything that is not scientifically provable. This is the ideal of many educated people of our time, but it is a false and a very inadequate one.

Our knowledge is patchwork, and will remain such. We shall scarcely ever be able to know even everything that concerns ourselves. Nor do the strongest motives of our best actions spring from the sphere of knowledge; otherwise the most learned people must always be the most perfect, which is by no means the case. Our spiritual Ego is rooted rather in the Unexplainable, and experience shows that if this something unexplainable is ever taken from the Ego in questions of faith, it tries to make up for the loss by adopting some superstition or other.

Of all the objects of faith, however, faith in Christ is historically the best established, humanly the most intelligible, and as a matter of personal experience the most easily found to be true. If in any man it is not all this, truly and enduringly, then the cause lies in his own will, or absence of will, for which the Gospel of John finds the correct expression, “as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God.” Luther also truly says: “Because the expression ‘to trust God and serve Him’ must be so elastic that every man follows after his own thoughts, and one thinks so and the other thus, therefore He has fixed Himself to a certain place and to a certain person, since He wants to be found and met in such a way that one may not miss Him.” A man’s faith is, therefore, itself no force or power, else superstition must also be such, but all true power in spiritual things is the property of God. But he summons this power and makes its appearance upon earth possible.

Only, this is likewise true, that Christianity has no effect in a man whose spirit is unbroken, who has no inner humility, but then it remains an empty form at best. If it is then united with the office of teaching, or with some other pretension of a special position or distinction, it conduces to the man’s destruction. What is regarded in the outer life as an irreparable harm, “a broken existence,” a rent that runs through all the plans of life, is not at all such in the inner; on the contrary, that is the soil in which faith in Christ best prospers, and they of all men are most to be pitied who despair just at the moment when they find themselves in such a position and can not grasp how near they are to salvation.

From this moment of humility there enters into man the real regenerative power of the good, which springs from that true righteousness which “counts” with God.

His further journey is, on the one hand, much easier than is often represented, for nothing more is now required of the man for which he has not power and insight in sufficient measure, together with a gladness of hope that can no longer be wholly troubled, and with a special, personal guidance that lightens all. But, on the other hand, it is more difficult than is, in this first moment, believed. For life is yet far from its termination; indeed, now is its real starting-point, and there begins a long series of occurrences which all have the purpose of showing man his real nature more clearly than he was in position to bear earlier, and of gradually being no longer indulgent toward him in any respect, as was hitherto in great measure the case. For “Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.” But all this happens only in the following, or even, now and then, in the final, period of life; before, it would have been quite impossible.

III

The difference between this “new life,” as Dante already called it, and the earlier seems not to be very great at first, and particularly not so great as fantasy, which always flies higher than reality, and enthusiasm, which must accompany every great resolve, had expected. Indeed, it is possible that there will still be moments in which the soul, freed from the slavery of selfishness, is seized with a certain backward-glancing desire for the “flesh-pots of Egypt”; for, in truth, the old “enjoyment of life” fades away only by slow degrees.

But there is one essential difference that is always noticeable: first of all, in the taking away of the feeling of fear and anxiety before an uncertain future, and of the continual fluctuation between exultation and dejection, which never let the feeling of security prevail. But now there is a fixed point where there is always rest. From this there follows, of itself, more patience with oneself and others, and less dependence upon them, besides a juster discernment for the essential in all things, and therewith the true wisdom of life that springs therefrom. Finally (and this is the chief matter), there is an absence of the continuous sense of sin because it can always be at once abolished, and there is a certainty of the right road, of steady advance, and of a good outcome at the end of life: “the path of the righteous is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”

The first period of this division of life is usually filled up with the continuous strengthening and confirmation of these principles through tests of many kinds. These can not fail to appear very soon, for faith, in spite of what has been said above, is nothing traditional that persists once for all, but something that must be engendered anew daily and hourly. A faith that is not always living and present could not be capable of successfully withstanding the attacks of Apollyon, who desires surely to reclaim his rebellious subject.

The power of this “Spirit of the World” is very great; happily, one experiences this only gradually in life; otherwise, perhaps, no one would have the courage to take up the battle with it. But there is one power that is still greater, and that is the power of God, which is made alive in a man through true Christianity. The chief matter in this (for most) the longest period of life is, therefore, steadfastness and courage. “Hold fast that which thou hast, that no one take thy crown;” and look not back, when thou hast once laid hand to plough.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing in this period of life is the union in man of divine control with freedom. Whatever 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. But if it is obliged to act, then let it say with the Spanish poet, “And be my life or truth or dream, right must my actions be.”

There must especially rise to full certainty in the soul the conviction that an eternal divine order exists, against which all the might of men who still have freedom of action contends quite vainly, and that all real success and all true happiness consists only in the free harmony of the free human will with this order, and that punishment does not _follow_ every violation of this harmony, but resides within it, and can only be set aside through God’s mercy. Then, as the Berlenburg Bible says, “the commands of God acquire a pleasant aspect, and we become their good friends and look upon them as true helps and preservers, by whose means God wishes to set to one side whatever hinders us from companionship and union with Him.”

Only when this conviction has become established within us, can we have a guiding principle for fruitful activity outward; before, it is too early, and so in most cases without result. Salvation is not a doctrine in which one can remain quite the same, can say Lord, Lord, and yet be far from him, but it is some actual thing that really happens to us if we give up our will to it.

But in order that this may be able to happen to us, we must first be free from self-love, from self-concern in all its forms; that is the difficult work that is wrought within us slowly, with many a halting-place and with much cross-bearing. For we must be quite empty of ourselves before we can receive everything that we need for our understanding and feeling, but it must come in daily rations like the manna of the Old Testament, not all at once as the crafty “old man” would much rather have it, so as to be as independent as possible of God’s daily grace; that is the “last error, that is worse than the first.” To train us thereto, so that we may receive the right gifts in their fulness, is the meaning of our life-guidance up to this point; only then, and not before, will our activity be full of blessing. In this connection the “social question” comes in, not only for the men of our time, but of every time; it has always existed, and always will exist, so long as there are human beings; it will never find its solution either through Church or through State, but only through the ethical power and the personal love of infinitely many individuals, each one of whom must, in the sphere of work indicated to him, do that which is specially laid upon him, and neither bury nor exchange his talent. That is his outward task in life, which he may neither evade nor be unfaithful to, and only when and in so far as he is just to this shall he teach it to others also, and help, during his lifetime, to maintain this teaching of love upon the earth. When once money, ambition, and pleasure no longer play any considerable rôle with a man, then he finds so much leisure time upon his hands that he must really look about him for some activity to fill it up, else he runs the risk of falling back, through tedium, to where he was before.

This period is, therefore, essentially made up of work and struggle, but if all goes rightly, the work is more and more joyous, done with greater and greater gladness, and without any feeling of distress, and the struggle against everything undivine in oneself or in others is more and more victorious, more and more quiet; and in this period there is finally “a rest that remaineth for the people of God.” God will give them the end they are waiting for, and an end that is not sad, like that of so many noble men who had a different aim in life.

Schiller’s picture is not the right one when he says, “Quietly, with vessel barely saved, the old man returns to the harbor from which, in youth, he set out with a thousand masts.” No; thankful for all he has done and suffered, content with what he has become through God’s mercy, and with the confident prospect of a yet greater and better field of action, he already, without waiting for his death-bed, lays his life-accounts to one side, and looks with simple quietness upon the (for him) unimportant transition into a new sphere of life.

IV

Age comes on suddenly, in most cases; very often with some special event, usually some sickness, which performs the function of what is called picket-duty in military life. Then oftentimes there is disclosed, just as suddenly, the difference (hitherto concealed) between men and the various outcomes of their lives. While some still endeavor with redoubled eagerness to enjoy the last fruits of their autumnal days (though age often reveals them now as so little worth while), or else give themselves up to pessimistic despair over the transitoriness of all things earthly (which always forms the close of each great period of pleasure), more earnestly minded spirits are now for the first time saying: “Whither am I bound? 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. These also will be accepted still, and will receive their penny at the end of the day’s labor as well as those who came earlier. The mercy of the Lord of Toil thus wills it, though many murmur against this, even yet.

But it is better, nevertheless, if this incoming has taken place earlier and the third period is not a time of turning about, but merely the natural sequence and development of the second. For the true steps of life have about them something of the Dantean Paradise; namely this, that in each of them, even in the lowest, already resides something of the uppermost--something that pacifies the soul, without longing for more, and yet with hope for more.

In the life of people who have become old, three sorts of dispositions are regularly shown. The ordinary one, when outward circumstances are favorable, is that of elderly people who are fond of life and who want as much as possible to enjoy the remnant of their existence in a finer or coarser manner, and accordingly sink now and then into caricatures of youth. The basis of this disposition is selfishness, which, even in its finer form, at last affects unpleasantly every one who meets it. Aristocratic idlers have such an exit to life, for the most part. A worthier end is when people who have been busy for the most of life take their repose, whether it be a resting upon their laurels, or, as more frequently happens, upon their accumulated capital. These are, in the best instances, the cheerful old people who are treasured and cared for by their relatives, spend their last days in respectably doing nothing, revel in memories of their youth, or student-years, or travels, or campaigns, and now and then compose memoirs, or let their jubilees be celebrated. Apart from a certain vanity and pettiness that is always joined therewith, this is an innocent exit to life, and the world is as a rule lenient toward it--if for no other reason, at least for the reason that these people no longer stand in anybody’s way; therefore it gladly gives them a handsome burial and a few fitting obituary notices in the papers on the day of the funeral, and with that its concernment is definitely fulfilled. The third kind of conclusion to life is the moving forward to a higher existence, the hand continuously at the plough, never looking backward to the past, but always directing the eyes toward what is yet to be attained. This conception of life is really only possible with persons who believe in a future life; nevertheless, it also appears among other earnest workers, but is then joined with sadness over the continual decline of the powers. This is the worthiest, indeed the only worthy exit to life, though often accompanied with sorrows of some sort, to keep one in fit condition for conflict. These three endings of life resemble the three caskets in Shakespeare’s drama: the first, in the golden casket, is outwardly the most splendid, but within is full of emptiness and is at bottom to be despised; the second, in the silver casket, is not unworthy, but somewhat “ordinary”; the third contains, in mostly invisible form, the real crown of a life that has been wisely understood and well-employed to the very end, and that bears within itself the full assurance of a yet better continuation beyond.

At any rate, the special task of the final step of life is living in all sincerity in nearness to God--something that it is much easier to think of than to describe. The descriptions of those who have themselves experienced this suddenly leave us, as a rule, in the lurch, whether because they lived in order to act, and not to describe, or because they disdained saying things about themselves which, at their stage of advancement, seemed matters of course and nowise meritorious, but something to be continuously received in humility. The goal of this period is just here--no longer to receive anything for one’s own sake, but to become a blessing to others in that humble spirit which now has come to belong to the virtues that have been won.

To begin with, there will usually come a great and final trial; for all men in whom God takes a real interest (if we may so speak) must again and again, in the different periods of their life, pass anew into a kind of smelting fire, whose glow, as Dante says, alone brings the spirit to its majority and separates the inferior elements of its nature, which perhaps appear as still necessary at a lower stage. Without a firm trust in God, such as should now exist in this final period of life, these last trials were often not to be endured; yet in them, nevertheless, each hard blow now has a tenfold effect. It is the best sign of advance if the soul possesses the grace to welcome this suffering and not to be tired of it until God himself removes it as quite superfluous. Psychologically correct in this regard is the remark of St. Angela of Foligni, that men at this stage must still, for their penance, harbor within themselves for a time, quite against their will, the very faults which once they voluntarily cultivated.

Out of all this there then arises the thoroughly humble man, no longer in the least infatuated with himself, to whom everything is right that befalls him, who believes he deserved nothing better, but something still worse if pure justice had been done, and who can let everything please him if it is God’s will. But if this is all genuine and not mere pious talking, this is a difficult task for which the man will be completely qualified only toward the end of his life. For self-love must be burnt out still more thoroughly than before, and he must be inflicted, or at least threatened, with the hardest blow that can be given to his special failing. If he passes through this without ever losing his trust in God, then he has approached nearer to the divine than could happen in any other way; and if there is such a thing at all as a life of blessed spirits after the fashion of our present feelings and conceptions, then he will be brought so near to this by acquiring such a temperament, that a transition to that life will now appear conceivable and possible to him.

But in that case the last aggravations of the earthly life have, without doubt, the further purpose of making the departure from it less difficult for the man thus tried; just as nothing in old people pleases us less, or makes a more vulgar impression upon us, than when they still hang tightly on to life.

One of the best aids is never to look back, because he who in Purgatory “looks back, must turn back”; and further, not to lose a single minute of life, but to keep one’s full activity up to the last moment. For the purpose of life in the period of age is to bear fruit, not to repose, and so long as something is still left to be done, what is already done is to be regarded as nothing.

The characteristic quality of this sort of old people is not an imaginary “saintliness,” but their wholesouledness. The only saintliness we attain to on this earth consists in a complete harmony with the divine will and in a complete readiness to fall in with it, so that no serious struggle between good and evil any longer finds place within ourselves. On the other hand, a mediæval saint rightly says that saintliness, whenever it is genuine, sets the outward man in order also. For God is a “God of order” and by no means a friend of singularities of any sort, especially in outward things. People who set a value upon such singularities, though they may not be wholly spurious “saints,” are certainly, nevertheless, very weak ones, whose peculiarities make them sometimes uneasy to live with. If religion, in this final stage of life, does not at least set such things right, but lets the man go on being querulous and selfish and difficult for those around him, then it has never been of much worth. A special indication of the ripeness of age, furthermore, is the union of qualities which, at other periods of life, are wont to exclude one another; for example, naïveté and shrewdness, dignity and childlike gayety, fineness of taste and complete simplicity, sternness and gentleness, clear judgment and enthusiasm of emotion. This alone gives the impression of completeness, as far as is possible here upon earth.

One or the other of my readers may still ask how one can remain young in old age. The most important spiritual means is probably “always to be learning some new thing,” to have an interest in something and to keep something always before oneself. Therefore the great apostle of Christianity said shortly before his departure: “Forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal, unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus: let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded, and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, even this shall God reveal unto you.” This, then, is a clear and simple road, and in this direction is already contained the final watchword of life: Obedience. Everything that is done for oneself, for one’s own elevation, even in the best sense, has, nevertheless, a slight after-taste of self-seeking, and in old age one will scarcely keep his life spiritually sound to the final moment, if it does not result at last in an absolute military obedience, and in a “harvest of God,”--reaped, that is, for Him, and not for ourselves. The secret of religion lies indeed in one’s keeping near to God, in all the stages of life; but first, one must learn to endure it (not to flee from it); then to seek it; and finally to have it, and “dwell in the everlasting glow.”

That this can not happen upon earth altogether without suffering, even to the very end, lies in the nature of things, and is shown in the life of many admirable men, who have eagerly longed for rest, and have said with old Simeon at the end of their days, “Now lettest thou thy bondservant depart, O Master, according to thy word, in peace.” Besides, as already pointed out, it may really happen that a so-called beautiful death, in the circle of one’s own people and amidst the general recognition of one’s fellow-citizens, may not at all mean the best destiny and the highest recognition on the part of God, as would some heroic death which is itself a last deed done for country or for humanity. But our time has become so feeble in its Christianity that such a thought now lies quite outside the reckoning of most men, even the most devout. But at any rate it does not lie in their power of will what form their death shall take, any more than formerly what form their life should take, and they must, under any circumstance, have found their peace with God in respect to this last of all life-problems also.

The most beautiful thing about a life near to its close is its repose of soul, that abounding peace which nothing can shake any longer, and which has fought it out with God and men, and has prevailed.

The essential element in all religion requisite thereto is very simple, and really lies already in the forgotten meaning of that word itself. It consists in the careful and constant maintenance of the “bond” which unites us with God, through our unfailing good-will toward Him, and through our renunciation of all that stands in the way--what the Scriptures call “seeking God.” This is our part. Then God also comes “ere we are aware, and lets much good fall to our share.” He comes even to such as know him only very imperfectly (and, for that matter, that is the case with us all), if only there is a sincere longing for Him in their hearts.

But unless He does come, each and every religious practice, in whatsoever form it now takes or may conceivably take hereafter, is but a still-born device of man, and never procures us what we are all nevertheless seeking--Happiness.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Originally an address before an association of young merchants.

By CARL HILTY

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