“I wonder if ever a song was sung
But the singer’s heart sang sweeter!
I wonder if ever a hymn was rung,
But the thought surpassed the meter!
I wonder if ever a sculptor wrought,
Till the cold stone echoed his ardent thought!
Or if ever a painter, with light and shade,
The dream of his inmost heart portrayed!”
“Yet the aim of every man,” said Humboldt, “should be to secure the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole.”
In every painting of the masters there is one idea or figure which stands out boldly; everything else is subordinate, and finds its real significance not in itself, but in pointing to the central idea. So, in the universe of God, every object of creation is but a guideboard with an index finger pointing to the central figure—Man. Man is the only great thing in the universe; all the ages have been trying to produce a perfect model. Only one complete human life, one ideal life, has yet evolved. Is not life itself a fine art, and more difficult than sculpture, painting, music, architecture, or the creations of poetry? Do we not need to learn how to live?
Apelles hunted over Greece for many years, studying the fairest points of beautiful women, getting here an eye, there a forehead, there a nose, here a grace, and there a turn of beauty, for his famous portrait of a perfect woman which enchanted the world. So the coming man will be composite—many in one. He will absorb into himself not the weakness, not the follies, but the strength and the virtues of other types of men. He will be a man raised to the highest power. He will be self- centered, equipoised, and ever master of himself. His sensibility will not be blunted by violation of nature’s laws. His whole character will be impressible, and will respond to the most delicate touches of nature.
“Did you ever watch a sculptor slowly fashioning a human countenance?” asks a modern teacher. “It is not molded at once. It is not struck out at a single blow. It is painfully and laboriously wrought. It is a work of time; but at last the full likeness comes out and stands fixed and unchanging in the solid marble. So does a man carve out his own moral likeness. Every day he adds something to the work.”
“I cannot see that you have made any progress since my last visit,” said a critic to Michael Angelo. “But,” said the sculptor, “I have retouched this part, polished that, softened this feature, brought out that muscle, given some expression to this lip, more energy to that limb.” “But these are trifles!” “It may be so, but trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.”
“That infinite patience which made Michael Angelo spend a week in bringing out a muscle in a statue with more fidelity to truth, or Gerhard Douw a day in giving the right effect to a dewdrop on a cabbage leaf,” makes all the difference between success and failure.
A man took a large, beautiful onyx to a noted artist to see what he could do to cover up a tinge of iron rust, which seemed to make the stone almost worthless. The artist engraved out of the blemish the figure of a lovely goddess. So the successful man turns the commonest events, the homeliest of things, into that which is beautiful in his life. And if he does it by a law of symmetrical development, then love, charity, contentment, benignity, and cheerfulness will look out from the marble he works upon. Let youth be taught to look for beauty in all they see, and to embody beauty in all they do, and the imagination will be active and healthy. If one loves beauty and looks for it, he will see it everywhere. If there is music in his soul, he will hear it everywhere; every object in nature will sing to him. Life will be neither a drudgery nor a dream, but will become full of God’s life and love.
If you infuse into the purpose with which you follow the various employments and professions of life, no matter how humble they may be, the sense of beauty, pleasure, and harmony, you are transformed at once from an artisan to an artist. Any discontent you feel with the work you are compelled to do comes from your doing it in the spirit of a drudge. Do it in the spirit of a master, with a perception of the beauty which inheres in all honest work, and the drudgery will disappear in delight. “It is the spirit in which we work, not the work itself, which lends dignity to labor; and many a field has been ploughed, many a house built, in a grander spirit than has sometimes attended the government of empires or the creation of epics.” How few, even in this magnificent life-gallery, where nature holds perpetual carnival of harmony and beauty, see anything of value except dollars and merchandise! As Emerson says, the farmer sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of the man on the farm.
Life is not mean, it is grand; if it is mean to any, he makes it so. God made it glorious. It is paved with diamonds; its banks He fringed with flowers. He overarched it with stars. Around it He spread the glory of the physical universe—suns, moons, worlds, constellations, systems—all that is magnificent is in motion, sublime in magnitude, and grand in order and obedience. God would not have attended life with this broad march of grandeur if it did not mean something.
Ruskin tells us that the earth we tread beneath our feet is composed of clay and sand and soot and water; and he tells us that, if Nature has her perfect work (in these things), the clay will become porcelain, and may be painted upon and placed in the king’s palace; then, again, it may become clear and hard and white, and have the power of drawing to itself the blue and the red, the green and the purple rays of the sunlight, and become an opal. The sand will become very hard and white, and have the power of drawing to itself the blue rays of the sunlight, and become a sapphire. The soot will become the hardest and whitest substance known, and be changed into a diamond. The water in the summer is a dewdrop, and in the winter crystallizes into a star. Even so the homeliest lives, by drawing to themselves the coloring of truth, sincerity, charity, and faith, may become crystals and gems “of purest ray serene.”
Every thought which enters the mind, every word we utter, every deed we perform, makes its impression upon the inmost fiber of our being, and the resultant of these impressions is our character. The study of books, of music, or of the fine arts is not essential to a lofty character. It rests with the workman whether a rude piece of marble shall be squared into a horse-block or carved into an Apollo, a Psyche, or a Venus di Milo. It is yours, if you choose, to develop a spiritual form more beautiful than any of these, instinct with immortal life, refulgent with all the glory of character. “The power of great thoughts and grand sentiments to refine the face and manner, to lift man above his surroundings, is marvelous. We see this illustrated in the faces of great scientists, great reformers, and great statesmen.” The body is but a servant of the mind. A well-balanced, cultured, and well- disciplined intellect reacts very powerfully upon the physique, and tends to bring it into harmony with itself. On the other hand, a weak, vacillating, one-sided, unsteady, and ignorant mind will ultimately bring the body into sympathy with it. Every pure and uplifting thought, every noble aspiration for the good and the true, every longing of the heart for a higher and better life, every lofty purpose and unselfish endeavor, reacts upon the body, makes it stronger, more harmonious, and more beautiful.
The influence of artistic work depicting character, in sculpture or painting, comes down to us from remote ages. We never weary of the antique forms of perfected beauty. Is Michael Angelo dead? Ask the hundreds of thousands who have gazed with rapt souls upon his immortal works at Rome. In how many thousands of lives has he lived and reigned!
“There is,” says Dr. J.R. Miller, “always something pouring out from our lives, like heat from a flame of perfume from a flower. Many a life has been started on a career of beauty and blessing by the influence of a noble act. Every true soul is impressed continually by the glimpses it has of loveliness, of holiness, or of nobleness in others.”
There are men and women in every country who conquer before they speak, and who exert an influence out of all proportion to their ability; and people wonder what is the secret of their power over men. It is natural for all