Brains, and How to Use Them
LA Talk with Young Men.)
I rOR what has the Creator given us our -*- brains 1 Why are affluent mental gifts bestowed upon some men? And how may even moderate abilities be made most effective for the promotion of truth and the well-being of humanity These are questions that copcern young men, especially those who are placed on the highest planes of intellectual culture and influence. All men are concerned in these questions; for a great man is, perhaps, the greatest fact in” the history of an age. No more decisive influence can be brought to bear upon any age, or any community, than the employment of its highest intellect for truth or for error, — for God and the right, or for the Devil’s wrong. Intellect ennobled, purified, heaven-directed, is the universal power to build up. Intellect perverted, corrupted, sin-directed, is the most terrible of agencies to pull down and destroy. “How shall I use my intellect is the most vital moral problem that can come before the court of your conscience.
Some men hold that talents are given for the same purpose that wealth is often inherited, — for mere personal luxury. There be intellectual millionnaires who decorate their mind, as a palace, for pride to walk through. Its superb picture-galleries, whose walls a creative imagination has clothed .with visions of entrancing beauty; its saloons of receptiveness, in which stately thoughts do come and go; its costly libraries, where memory stores up its massive accumulation, shelf on shelf; its statue-lined corridors and halls, — are but the splendid realm which self has adorned by the “might of its own power, and for the honor of its own majesty.” Scarcely a living being is the wiser, the better, the happier, for such mental monopolists. They stand in the midst of humanity as the marble mansion of a selfish Duke might stand in the midst of a poverty-cursed and squalid peasantry. While the nabob is gorging at his rosewood table, or lounging before his Murillos, the poor Lazarus without is begging crumbs for the lean and hungry brats, such as Murillo portrayed upon his canvas. One man surfeits: the others starve. There is enough for all, if it were distributed. Distribution is Heaven’s law, whether the treasures be in the lordly mansion, or in the lordly mind. For God never gave to man fine intellectual powers — vigorous understanding, strongwinged imagination, cunning invention, or soul-rousing eloquence — for the owner’s sole use and benefit. Talent is trust. Let no man covet it, unless there come with it wisdom from above to insure it a right direction.
One student uses his brain — as he uses his midnight lamp — merely to illuminate the page before his single eye. Another man makes his intellect a meridian sun! How bountifully does the full urn of noonday overflow! Not only on Alpine peaks, and “heart of the
BRAINS, AND HOW TO DSE THEM. Ill
Andes,” kindled into pyramids of fire, but down into modest vales the sunlight falls, warming the honeysuckle o’er the cottage doorway, lifting the tiny wheat-blade from its earthly tomb; and, even when some solitary daisy is shaded beneath an overgrown tree, the generous sun wheels round and round, until before nightfall the daisy too is reached, and fills her little cup with golden light. Such full-orbed intellects there be. They turn midnight into noon. Upon the most elevated minds and the most favored classes their rays may fall the earliest; but at length the lowliest valleys of human life are warmed in the celestial influence. So rose the tent-maker of Tarsus upon a benighted age. Amid the gloom of the sixth century shone out Augustine; amid the prejudice of the fifteenth beamed Christopher Columbus. The sixteenth century came in with clouds and darkness on its awful front. God said, “Let there be light,” and Luther was! When his sun departed with its trail of glory, the moral heavens beamed, in turn, with Lord Bacon, Milton,
Isaac Newton, Leibnitz, Pascal, Edwards, Chalmers, — each an overflowing orb of truth.
Have you never observed the descriptive phrase which Inspiration employs to set forth the moral benefactors of mankind”? The phrase employed is the happy one of “watering,” conveying the noble thought that it is the office of great intellect both to descend and to distribute.
In the torrid lands of the Orient, it was the wont of monarchs to construct vast reservoirs on the mountain-sides. These were filled by the rains of heaven. When the summer-heats had drank the gardens and the vineyards dry, the waters of the reservoir were conducted down, and forthwith the wilted vine lifted its head again, and the drooping fig-tree smiled. Green grew the pomegranate at the water’s cool touch; and golden grew the barley-harvest. So, on the heights of influence, God replenishes intellectual reservoirs. He fills them from on high. He fills them to irrigate the masses below them. The truths that accumulate there will stagnate if selfishness lock up the sluice-gates. But let it be your ambition to accumulate for others; freely receiving, freely give. Let not the curse that rests on him who hedges round his well in season of drought, or on him who locks up his granary in time of famine, rest on you, for intellectual stinginess: the meanest of misers is he who hoards a truth.
The sources of intellectual power are various. The range of employment for your mental attainments will be as various also as your several pursuits in life, — far too wide for the reach of a single hour’s discussion. But there are two sources of- mental power and usefulness, which are opened to every young man who has a brain to think or a heart to feel. Learning and Eloquence — getting the truth and giving the truth — are the two most attainable possessions for every healthy mind. For while the Creator has bestowed great analytical acumen as a gift comparatively rare; while the imagination, which can
“Glance from heaven to earth,
From earth to heaven,”
belongs to a favored few; while fertility of invention is a monopoly of genius, — yet nearly every healthy intellect can acquire truth and impart it. Young brethren, every affirmative man in your class (who is not smitten with congenital barrenness) may become measurably learned and measurably eloquent. For what is learning but storing the interior ipan through the five conduits of sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing, and so storing it that every precious parcel shall be at arm’s reach in the instant of need ] This depends on industry, not Genius. (Unless you make Genius to be the power of doing with prodigious rapidity what other minds effect by slow and steady strain, — as the driving-wheels of a locomotive achieve the same number of revolutions in a minute that the wheel of a baggagewagon accomplishes in an hour.)
Within the last few years England and America have laid in their honored graves two men, who were prodigies of acquirement unsurpassed. One of .them lies by the side of Addison in Westminster Abbey. The other — a namesake of Addison — lies by the side of President Edwai’ds in the Westminster Abbey of America.* One of them, when at school, was known among his school-fellows as “Macaulay, the Omniscient.” From boyhood he was a terrible toiler. He saw every thing; he heard every thing; he read every thing; he remembered every thing. It is even said that, if every copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost had been committed to the flames, the whole of the matchless epic could have been recovered, line for line, from the tablets of Macaulay ’s memory. That Macaulay had genius none will deny; but his special power was the power of acquiring, classifying, and presenting vast arrays of truth, and so presenting them as at once to enrich the memory and captivate the understanding. He was one of the distributing reservoirs of History. He is the father and founder of a school of authorship, in which he as yet stands without an
* The Cemetery at Princeton, N. J., which contains the ashes of Jonathan Edwards, Davies, Witherspoon, Dod, Miller, the Alexanders, and many other men of sacred renown.
equal. Other men have penetrated into profounder political philosophy. Others have preserved a more rigid impartiality. But no other man has combined in himself such power of acquisition, and such power of presentation, — such exhaustless wealth of knowledge “from the royal cedar to the hyssop of the wall,” — such enthusiastic conception of the grand and heroic, mingled with such detestation of what is sensual, selfish, and devUish in human history. In his own fine language it may be said of him that, “among the eminent men whose bones lie near him in the Great Abbey, none has left a more stainless, and scarcely one a more splendid name.”
If Macaulay had no superiors in Britain, he certainly had one American rival in powers of acquisition and retention. His own attainments in the domain of letters and of civil history were not more remarkable than the attainments in sacred literature, in Oriental research, and in ecclesiastic history, by Joseph Addison Alexander.
As I pronounce that hallowed name, the visions of student-days come back before me. I seem to see again that form as it once stood in the sacred desk; I seem to hear again those plaintive tones as they once melted on the air. That square, massive head (which we fancied to be like to Napoleon’s) rises once more before us; the ruddy glow on the cheek a beautiful emblem of the soul-health within. From those lips we seem to hear again those streams of concinnate exegesis, those brilliant bursts of impassioned vehemence, those tides of holy emotion, — all poured forth in a voice that sometimes swelled through the vestibule to passers in the street, and sometimes hushed itself to the plaintive melody of a lute. Such a reservoir has not been opened from any American pulpit in our generation. No man ever saw the bottom of that profound, capacious, all-containing, inexhaustible intellect. No man ever laid a task too heavy on that herculean mpmory. From a single reading he could commit a whole discourse; from a single perusal he rose up master of an intricate volume, — his mental recreations were other men’s arduous toils. A thousand pulpits are the richer for the accumulations of that one busy and beautiful life, — that career of labor and of love. Alas for us, that such a life should have ended! Alas for the bereaved town, the bereaved seminary and church, that never can grow reconciled to its bereavement! We go into our libraries, and behold two fatal gaps in two favorite departments of study; and we ask ourselves, “Who will ever finish yonder magnificent History since Macaulay’s hand has forgot its cunning’? Who will ever carry on those affluent commentaries since Addison Alexander has passed to the loftier knowledge and clearer light of the Heavenly world “?”
Lest any one should be discouraged by the pi-esentation of such prodigies of mental acquisition as the two celebrated examples just cited, let me say that they owed their eminence and usefulness to herculean industry. Young men, choose for your patron-saint Industry. Get some starling to cry work — work — work — study — study — study. Study every thing, but with a bearing on your own line of intellectual labor. Concentrate on one point, or a few points, “as a gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into two or three vigorous limbs, instead of suffering it to become a sheaf of spindling twigs.” Concentration is the secret of strength. “Stick to your brewery,” said the great Rothschild to Mr. Buxton, “and you will be the first brewer of London. Try to be brewer, banker, manufacturer, and merchant, and you will soon be — in the gazette.”
“Mr. A often laughs at me,” said Professor Henry once in Princeton College Laboratory, — “often laughs at me, because I have but one idea. He talks about every thing, aims to excel in many things, but I have learned that, if I ever make a breach, I must play my guns continually upon one point.”
This sober wisdom met its reward. He gave his days and nights to physical science. From the time when, an obscure youth, he studied Silliman’s Journal by fire-light, in a log cabin, on to the day when English dukes and earls rose up to do him respect, he had but one aim in life, — to add to the sum of human knowledge. He found the earth and air full of electricity; and he found, too, that the galvanic current, slow, but steady and continuous, was worth a thousand brilliant electric flashes. He set to work upon this, with might and main. He linked battery to battery; harnessed the subtile fluid into gigantic magnets, and made it lift prodigious burdens. And when at last, by his untiring toil, a chaos of facts was marshalled into the symmetry of a science; when, in obedience to his guidance (in common with other co-laborers), the electric current mounted the wires as a messagebearer round the globe, — then did the Genius of Truth crown Joseph Henry with the benediction, “Thou hast sought me and found me, because thou didst search for me with all the heart.”
Thus much for the acquisition of knowledge, which depends upon a busy brain. It is the result of concentration and industry invincible.
Eloquence, on the other hand, which is the second source of intellectual power that I am commending to you, — eloquence is the golden product of an inspired heart. No elaboration of rhetoric, no oratorical culture, can produce it, which ignores the spontaneous emotions of an honest, fearless, loving heart.
Would you rule men from the rostrum, from the bar, or from the sacred desk 1 Let no devil cheat you out of your conscience; let no callous critic shame you out of your honest emotions.
For what is eloquence but truth in earnest? The mind’s best words spoken in the mind’s best moments.
When truth gets full possession of a man’s conscience; when all his sensibilities are aroused and his sympathies in full play; when the soul becomes luminous, until the interior light and glow blaze out through every loop and crevice; when, from head to foot, the whole man becomes the beaming, burning impersonation of truth, — then is he honestly, naturally, irresistibly eloquent. To this a great nead is not always essential: a great heart is, and must be.
David, wailing over his self-ruined darling Absalom; Paul, pleading before Felix, until the guilty man paled to the color of his marble throne; Martin Luther, stretching up to the full height of his manhood, in those words, “Here I stand, I cannot otherwise. God help me. Amen;” Patrick Henry, sounding the key-note to Bunker Hill in, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” Whitefield, depicting the perils of a lost soul on the verge of the pit, until the plumes on Duchesses’ head-dresses quivered, and Chesterfield cried out, “Good God! he is gone!” Kossuth, sounding the requiem of his dead nationality; and Alexander Duff, pronouncing his sublime farewell to the heathery hills of Scotland, — these men were eloquent, not by special inspiration of the head, but by overpowering inspiration of the heart. The burning soul kindled the lips; and the baptism of eloquence came in the form of a “fiery tongue.”
The loftier the emotion, observe, the more impressive the utterance of the orator. The same law applies to eloquence that applies to hydrostatics. If the jet is to be thrown to a great height in the public fountain, the spring that feeds the fountain must have a lofty birthplace on the mountain-side. He who is false to the better instincts of his soul seldom can be eloquent. To the limber-tongued politician laboring with cunning speech to make the worse appear the better side, to the hireling pleader who barters justice for a fee, or to the hireling priest who sells souls for salary, — Nature denies to such that gift which she reserves for the leal and loyal spirit.
The grandest achievement of eloquence has been reached when the orator has received the fullest celestial baptism of love, when self has become swallowed up in the glory that surrounds the cross of Calvary.
And whei’e should we look for the highest realizations of true eloquence, but in the pulpit? “Where is there less excuse for tameness, for affectation, for heartlessness, for stupidity 1 Where can the strongest intellect find fuller play’? For the ambassador of truth has not only the loftiest of themes, but his text-book is the most perfect of models. In it may be found every thing that is most subhme in imagery, most melting in pathos, most irresistible in argument. The minister of Christ need not betake himself to the drama of Greece, the forum of Rome, or to the mystic retreats of German philosophy; he need not study Chatham in the Senate Chamber, or Erskine at the bar. He may ever be nurturing his soul amid those pages where John Milton fed, before those eyes’, which had “failed with long watching for liberty and law,” beheld the gorgeous visions of “Paradise.” He may be ever amid the scenes which inspired Bunyan to his matchless dream, and taught Jeremy Taylor his hearse-like melodies. The harp of Israel’s minstrel is ever in his ear; before his eye moves the magnificent panorama of the Apocalypse. He need but open his soul to that “oldest choral melody,” the book of Job; if it used to inspire Charles James Fox for the Parliament-house, why not himself for the pulpit? Paul is ever at his elbow to teach him trenchant argument; John, to teach persuasion; and a heart of steel must he have who is not moved to pathos in the chamber of heart-stricken David, or under the olive-trees of Gethsemane. The Bible is the best of models too, for it is always true to the life. It reaches up to the loftiest, down to the lowliest affairs of existence. The same divine pencil that portrayed the scenic splendors of the Revelations and the awful tragedy of Golgotha condescends to etch for us a Hebrew mother bending over her cradle of rushes, a village- maiden bringing home the gleanings of the barley-field, and a penitent woman weeping on the Saviour’s feet. What God has ennobled, who shall dare to caU common? What true orator of nature will fear to introduce into the pulpit a homely scene or a homespun character, a fireside incident or a death-bed agony, the familiar episodes of the field and the shop, the school-room and the nursery. He does not lower the dignity of the pulpit: he rather imparts to it the higher dignity of human nature.
Would that the pulpit, which is the most potent educator among us, would that every pulpit were thoroughly liberated, not only from a time-serving expediency that muffles its rebuking thunders, but from a contemptible petit-maitreism that curbs its free manly activities.
From the pulpit, the statesman should learn the “higher law “of justice and of right; the merchant should learn the golden rule of integrity. Before the pulpit the politician should breathe an atmosphere of such crystal purity that a descent into the Avernus of our ordinary” politics “would be instant suffocation. The pati’iot should find his minister more patriotic than himself; the maiden should be the purer for his delicacy; the mother should find a Christian culture made the easier for his luminous portraiture of the child-life’s joys and sorrows. His every utterance should be a fresh inspiration to the artist, a fresh stimulus to the intellect of the scholar. No man should build so high, but the pulpit should build above him. No reckless youth in his wildest aberration of profligacy should ever reach a pitfall or a precipice that had not been mapped out to him beforehand in the pulpit. And on life’s rough highway no sinning sufi”erer should faint or fall, or be flung into thicket so dense and dark, but over him should bend Christ’s messenger of love, and into his bleeding wounds should distil the balm of Heaven’s Gospel.
In all this, is there no scope for the loftiest intellect?