Princeton University - Nassau Herald Yearbook (Princeton, NJ)

Page 26 text:

24 THE NASSAU HERALD. There is a striking scene in one of the old poets, where, in the gentle slope of a valley, a humble, swaying lily is repre- sented as converting the subtle sunlight into leaves of green and calices of gold. About this delicate workshop Watch the mighty forces of nature, on either side are beheld the misty forms of the haze-cradled mountains, while the winds, bearing perfume, chant their softest cadences, and the lofty, trembling trees bow their heads as if they felt the presence of angelic hosts passing to and fro 5 and even so in the work- shop of the soul of man is mysterious time transformed by divine mechanism into action, while the powers of the uni- verse regulate in awful silence the achievements of this human wonder-worker. The world has often hushed its voice and listened to the Words of man, it has stood appalled at sight of declarations of independence, emancipation proc- lamations, and trembled before the phenomena of steam and electricity. It has been said that man is unarmed and helpless, but are we not surrounded with a complexity of forces which, com- bined with the human mind, have Wrought miracles rivaling the works of nature ? The sphere-harmony that floated from the forest trees tuned the soul of Wagner 5 the morning-light that painted the pearl of the fragile shell tinted the' poems of Wordsworth and Shelley 5 the sculpture of the tin y diatom furnished the designs that beautified the columns and arches of St. l?aul's Cathedral. - Man occupies the centre of this force-universe. You saw the leaf on yon ivy wither and fall 5 internal force wrought its decayg look closer at these century-stained walls and behold miniature moss-forests forming there. With such hidden powers in operation does not the mind feel capable of world-creation, and we are not constrained to cry, with the devout Novalis, We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body. With such possibilities isit not natural that life should become a search after power, that the great pulse of activity should beat Within the soul! Thus from

Page 25 text:

THE NASSAU HERALD. 23 filing: Ellratiaim. CHARLES F. MC CLUMPHA, OF NEW YORK. OUR LIVES are shadovvs on the dial-plate of time, and the World reads its hour-history from the flight of life over this human time-teller. Eternity chimes out its seconds, minutes, hours, in the varying harmonies of man's existence, and announces itself to the World in spiritual rather than in material tones. Men have fashioned many arbitrary signs which Will trace the path of this phantom, ever gliding before them, but hovv futile their attempts to mark it in the running ofthe sand or in the music of the bell, when it visibly shapesritself in man's ovvn soul, forming a living link in that tissue of history which invveaves all being, and joins the yesterday With the morrow. Life, therefore,is the great time-recorder of the past: The dainty, tender fern carved in solid rock the data from which We reckon dizzy cons, the poems of the Iliad have long echoed in their rhythmic verse the vanished dreams of the past. It is a grand plan of creation that moulds the delicate ,shells of the sea into foundation stones ofthe World, that converts the flowing rivers into rosy billovvs of cloud-ocean, but hovv preeminently magic the soul that precipitates action and thought from. the subtle fluid of time. It is impossible to analyze those soul-elements that have performed the deeds which color the pages of history. We call them energy, culture, genius, but these terms are insuiiicient, they only designate varying activities of the human mind. Energy never could explain a Luther, nor genius a Shakespeare.

Page 27 text:

THE NASSAU HERALD. 25 morn till night the clink of coin and the hum of machinery rise as prayers from metallic lips, addressing the divinity of trafiic. We must not mistake the spirit of the times. Be it activity, then men must learn to harmonize with activity, to ennoble it and make it conform with the spirit of nature. Study the simplest iiower, its texture, its coloring, its bud- ding, blossoming and fruit, all demonstrate a life of action Contemplate the life of a St. Paul, its doubts, its conflicts, its activities, all culminating in that heroic, divine burst of victory, I have fought the good ight. The particles that circled in that flower disk, the soul-substance of that power- ful man, are alike forms of activity, presenting their phe- nomena through different mediums. The fossil strata of the earth show us that nature began with rudimental forms, and rose to the more complex, and that the lower perish as the higher appear. This same law holds as true in the development of man's soul as of his body. To-day we are far from the summit, there are yet clinging to us ' the fossil remains which time itself must erode, but the very fact that a higher stratum has been reached places man in a different, superior position with regard to his fellow man. The instant a ray of light pene- trates a darkened room, its nature first requires it to chase away the darkness. Light becomes an activity, the removal of the darkness its duty. Carry this law one degree higher, and let it become a formula of life. We can only attain the highest point of development, the high mark of the ideal, when We fulfill this altruistic law of nature, which alone can solve the puzzling problems of life. God, immortality, duty, said George Eliot, U The first, inconceivable 5 the second, unbelievable 5 the last, awful, with inevitable fates? In the interdependence of nature, duty is a mechanism, a self- regulated mode of action, among men, duty means that dis- order has destroyed the perfection and mechanism of the soul, Restore man this perfect law, and you give him his whole duty. The flying buttress, laden with the carved festoons of 3 .