Part 13

The opposite to “noble” is not “bad” or “vicious” (though these are not noble), but “little, narrow-hearted, provincial, thinking only of small aims in life and only of oneself or of one’s immediate surroundings.” A broad vision, a large heart for all, indifference for one’s own self, care for others--all these are noble. Fearlessness is an essential element; also the not allowing oneself to be imposed upon by anything in the world, under any circumstances. This latter characteristic the genuine nobility has in common with the false, though in a pleasanter form and united with a sincere esteem for what is truly honorable, an esteem that the spurious nobility lacks. Another element is a certain finer cleanliness of spirit. No longer to be an animal in any direction, no longer in any way to favor the merely physical being--this is our real calling, which we are to learn here on earth that we may pursue it hereafter. When the soul stands firmly upon this level (and it seldom reaches it in one generation), what is vulgar becomes, to noble souls, unnatural and therefore physically repugnant; while, at the lower level of development, it still charms and entices, though it may spiritually be already overcome.

The following particular qualities, then, are not noble: first, all vanity; this is a quite certain mark of a soul still small; therefore, second, all boasting, all self-praise in general, and all pretensions of even (so to speak) the most permissible nature. These last are not unmoral, perhaps, but they are at any rate common and small. Then we must add, further, all immoderate pleasure in any kind of enjoyment, even when not purely physical; in eating and drinking, in music and the drama, or what not. The noble man must always stand above his pleasure and never yield himself into its power. Only one step farther in the very common though often innocent gratification of pleasure is the finding of delight in luxury; a stain of injustice is already associated with luxury, which infallibly means depriving another man of his own, and creates and maintains a dividing-line among men such as ought not to exist. A noble simplicity of living which does not degenerate into the cynicism of the Stoic is a certain mark of a soul by right of heredity already nobly born; but the love of luxury is the characteristic trait of the upstart. Luxury, with debts besides and one’s consequent dependence upon men, is the acme of commonness and leads very often on into wrong-doing.

It is quite the contrary of noble to speak much of oneself, and particularly to boast of one’s deeds or philanthropy--the latter, because one is scarcely justified in making much of a stir about it; for very few people give away what they themselves can make good use of, but only a part of their superfluity, which, because it is a superfluity, they do not even quite rightfully own. Those who are charitable in a really large-hearted fashion are, for the most part, only the poor, who regard it as a matter of course that they should help one another with everything they possess. With them, giving is not associated with glory, nor is receiving associated with shame; while the higher classes often seek to balance accounts with their Christianity on the cheapest terms, by bringing their philanthropy well forward into men’s notice.

To be sure, there is a way of concealing one’s deeds in such a fashion that they are meant to be discovered and thus win double praise. And it is not wholly right, and particularly not wholly Christian to free oneself altogether from personal contact with poverty by means of contributions to benevolent institutions. The Gospel knows nothing of such societies as yet (perhaps it even excludes them), but simply says, “Give to him that asketh thee”; one might at most add, “unless it will manifestly do him harm,”--as really happens in some cases. The anxious avoidance of any contact with a callous or not quite cleanly hand is anything but truly noble.

It is not noble to feel disdain toward inferiors, toward poor people who are often the truly noble of this world, toward children, toward the oppressed of every sort, and even toward animals. The chase especially, much as it may belong to the pleasures of noble or would-be noble people, can not be regarded as anything truly noble, and particularly if it is connected with no danger, but is simply a pleasure in the killing of defenceless creatures. Frederick the Great has a sharp passage about this in his writings, while the last French Bourbons were zealous huntsmen.

To be ever sincerely friendly with servants, never domineering or condescending, never familiar, but always generous and careful, is a great art which is rarely learned in a single generation, but is always a sure mark of nobility.

The moods of a noble soul are not based on pessimistic lines. The pessimists are those who have somehow fallen short and are incapable of struggling with courage for the highest things of life and of gaining them by the power and endurance necessary. Therefore they give out that they disclaim them, or represent the renunciation of them as the highest attainable goal. When their pessimism is not merely a passing phase in development, pessimists are always egotistical men of a narrow range of ideas, to whom one must not pay the honor of admiration. Thorough faultfinders, constant critics of everything, tormentors of women, overexacting, capable of falling into painful agitation over a misplaced article or over a train they have missed,--such are the least noble among them.

The noblest thing of all is the love of one’s enemies. To be kind to one’s friends, or to be friendly and fair toward everybody, is socially excellent, but a long way still from being noble. But they who take injuries quietly, and can always be just even to enemies, are the genuine aristocrats of the spirit.

The perfect pattern of nobility is Christ; many of his biographers give quite a false impression in depicting him too much from the humble and outwardly meek point of view, and thus carry many conceptions of our own bit of sky over into the oriental world, with its different ways of thought. It is just that unattainably perfect combination of the tenderest affection for the little ones, the poor, the oppressed, and the guilty, with that large and calm self-consciousness before all the high, the rich, and the mighty of that day (which nevertheless is never defiance or pride),--it is just that combination that lends to this personality a stamp it would be hard to declare purely human. To follow this type has since been the task of all who strive after perfection, and whoever turns away from it will always run the risk of chasing after a false ideal and not attaining the goal. As one of these false ideals has himself truly said, “In the breast of every man two souls inhabit: the one, in the strong joy of love, holds to the world with clinging organs; the other lifts itself forcefully away from the mist to the fields of high surmise.” A force exerted to subdue oneself, and a faith in these fields, will always in truth belong to the truly noble; and if the great poet, who never completely subdued the lesser of these souls in himself, says, in the second part of his most famous work, “Fool, whoever lifts yonder his blinking eyes, and fancies himself above the masses of his equals, let him stand fast and look about him here, for to him that can hear, this world is not mute,”--if he says this, then it is to be answered that to nobility there also belongs something of a foolishness that is yet wiser than all the wisdom of men.

The chief obstacles in the way of genuine nobility are the nobility that is not genuine and the fear of men.

The presence of some sort of “aristocracy” in every human society of long continuance is a proof of the need of something such, and at the same time the chief cause of its decay. One might say, somewhat paradoxically, that an aristocracy is at its purest and best where it has no right to exist; and at its worst where it possesses the greatest “rights.” Those who belong to these higher classes live now, for the most part, in the vain delusion (to which they are systematically brought up, and by which they are debarred from any better conception) that they owe to humanity nothing further than their mere existence, or that there is in general no other society for them but the “upper ten thousand,” as they are called in England. They deem it quite sufficient if they in a certain measure stand as representatives of “the beautiful” in the life of humanity, somewhat in the sense of the tasteless expression, “The rose that doth itself adorn, adorneth, too, the garden,” or in accordance with the better expression, not always rightly applied, that common natures count for what they do, noble natures for what they are. Taken in the right sense, this last is true; for from nobly living, nobly doing necessarily follows of itself, while it is but hypocrisy without it. One of the surest marks of men with noble natures is that the unfortunate are dearer to them than the fortunate. Where this is not so there is no genuine aristocratic nature of God’s grace, but only an ordinary man, however showy his station in life.

A certain haughty inaccessibility is very pleasant to the proud, and passes with them for noble. With God, however, this is not the case, and the man to whom he is merciful he transfers to conditions of life where that must be given up. For no one has any feeling for such distant demi-gods who do not share in the common human lot. They purchase their “exceptional position” much too dearly, since by it they are shut out from knowing what real love is.

Then, too, it is strange that the most useless of these birds-of-paradise of human society (and proud, too, of their uselessness) very often deport themselves as zealous followers of Christianity, while their whole mode of existence and their whole conception of the world stand in contradiction with the most elementary Christian principles.

It will therefore remain on the whole as Cromwell said, “The cause of Christ goes hand in hand with the cause of the people.” The spirit of nobility in the ordinary sense goes no further than a curious hearing of the gospel, or than the attempt to use the gospel for quite other ends than it was meant.

Still less noble than this aristocracy of birth (unless it is also inwardly noble) are, as a rule, the new arrivals into it from the lower classes, who mostly bring with them their inborn servile nature, or the arrogant money-aristocrats who have made themselves rich, but to whom the feeling of the rightfulness of their possessions must be wanting. Of such a man Demosthenes, in one of his finest speeches, asseverates that he was surely the child of some slave spuriously substituted in the place of the real child, and was not in the least fitted to belong in a free state.

All arrogance (even that over one’s talents or success) is an unfailing sign of a small soul. Of pride, however, one can not say quite the same. In Dante’s great poem it is very noteworthy that it is only inside the gate of grace that release from pride, that is, humility, is imparted to the man who is purifying himself from all his faults; before, he employs his pride in overcoming other and lower sins that conflict yet more with the nobility of the soul.

We can not, then, change this fact, that every genuine aristocracy rests upon the appointment of God, who is the only rightful “lord” upon earth, beside whom there is no other “right of lordship,” and who accepts those as his “vassals of the crown” whom he deems qualified. On the other hand, it is just as undoubted that individualism, the right of mastery over one’s own nature and over one’s free will so far as it is employed for good ends, is the most inalienable of all human rights, and one that no political democracy can or will ever set aside. To lower this individualism to a mere class or mass consciousness and to a common average of culture is barbarism; to develop it partially and selfishly only for oneself is criminal or insane. Beauty of form has its value and its right in the training of individual men and of whole generations, provided it is developed on the sound basis of the good--as if its blossom. But then it is the most perfect expression of manliness, of virtue in the ancient sense, of that chivalrous spirit of the Middle Ages which to-day is expressed in the word “gentlemanlike,” though this word often stands only for an empty mould without real contents. “Gentleness, when it weds to manhood, makes a man.” Otherwise not.

“The fear of man bringeth a fall,” says the wise Hebrew proverb-writer; “but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.” That is very much in accordance with experience. The fear of man leads always into by-paths and is ever somewhat petty and ignoble. Yet no one, even the highest and strongest, can forever remain without fear, if he knows no invisible Lord above him on whose protection he may absolutely rely, so long as he acts rightly.

With the fear of men is allied a crowd of other petty vices which all take their origin therefrom. Hate, envy, jealousy, vengeance, resentment, readiness to take offence, malice, injustice in the judgment of others, all as little noble as possible, are nothing but the consequences of fear. Even covetousness, the restless struggle for money and property, often springs not so much from a mad propensity to scrape everything together for oneself alone, as from the necessity (justified if there were no God) of winning and maintaining in the “struggle for existence” a place which never can be sufficiently assured against all mischances, and against all the assaults of a like-minded overwhelming number of enviers and haters of every individual prosperity. Looking at the matter just from the standpoint of covetousness alone (which has its own great inconveniences), if this fear were not present, there would very likely be no men wholly dispossessed and no social question.

If one would remedy these conditions, otherwise so hopeless, then some must be freed from the fear of being obliged to spend a short life without a just share in the happiness earth has to offer, whereby they are necessarily driven to half-insane exertions to win it by force; and others must be freed from the apprehension lest they shall see all become poor and wretched on account of a new distribution of property equally among all. To desire to mediate between these two opposites by means of palliatives is the fruitless exertion of the hour. Neither attitude of mind, however, has anything noble about it.

A soul that has attained complete nobility, free from fear and resting upon a firm ground of faith, is the most beautiful but also the rarest thing there is now. Very few will arrive at this goal to-day otherwise than by roundabout paths, be it through great doubts or through great sorrows; though to some the way thereto is made easier because of their parentage and ancestry, so that they can already begin to strive after it with the advantage of a better footing.

Yet it remains a sad fact that every child that is born clearly bears upon it the stamp of such a destiny, whose attainability is, with most, more and more lost with advancing age, although a heavy curse hangs over the head of him who draws away from this destiny a single one of the millions endowed with a nature called to the highest things.

Nevertheless, this is actually so, and, as was said at the beginning, it is impossible that there should be none but noble souls on earth; that would be at once the “state of eternal rest.” Such a noble and “exclusive” society we picture for the future life, so far as we can imagine that life at all. But there must always be at least a number of people who will not bow the knee to the “Baal” of the hour and just as little desire to live out their lives on a merely natural basis (for this is of the nature of animals); but their only care is, that God may continually dwell upon the earth.

To this, all are called, especially those who belong to the fellowship of Christianity; and if few are actually “chosen,” yet they form an élite to which every man has access. This kind of aristocracy will never pass out of existence, and to it undoubtedly belongs the immediate future, the more the democratic reform wins the upper hand in the life of the nations. But it will also, wherever it is genuine, be ever confirmed and upheld by God. An aristocracy, on the other hand, that no longer has any basis in its nation, is certainly a false or degenerate aristocracy that rightfully falls into decay.

For the genuine aristocracy there is another and a sterner privilege than what are commonly considered privileges. Something more is demanded of it than the continuous longing ordinary souls have for happiness and pleasure. And it is not good for it if it is ever quite absolved of the sorrows which alone keep it in this disposition, or if it succeeds or is disappointed in something that sprang from ordinary motives. The belief in the purifying power of sorrow and therefore in its necessity is always the kernel and centre of all true ethics, whether based upon philosophy or upon religion. The noblest of all earthly lots is sorrow cheerfully borne, and the blessing that springs therefrom for many. And herein lies the key to an otherwise perplexing riddle; and on this account many men, who will have nothing to do with religion, nevertheless stand nearer to it than many who are loud in their religious professions. Whoever can accept sorrow with a good-will and turn it victoriously to the building up of a better nature within him, is and will remain a noble man, with a nature fundamentally religious, much as his reason may resist any positive confession of religious faith. And in this one point lies the unity, which, silently surmounting all limitations, binds the nobler men of every faith and confession.

And so, a noble soul must be able to endure a considerable amount of injustice as it now exists in the world, apparently never to cease; nor will it find a cause of offence either in its own misfortunes or in those of others; nor must it try too carefully to escape a reputation for being somewhat foolish.

It is not always the greatest talents that are adapted to the greatest things. It is very significant that Isaiah says, “Who is blind, saith the Lord, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger that I send?” In the same manner Christ often says that, to be fit for the Kingdom of Heaven, one needs a childlike nature which the unwise are closer to than the wise. And the same thing was shown during the Reformation in the case of many who were the wisest of their time, but could not decide to surrender a certain “cultured” attitude of open-mindedness and impartiality toward questions of which the learned know, of course, that one can, in any event, “look at it from another point of view.” This is yet to-day the narrow defile which very many of the cultured shun to whom Christianity would be quite right, if it only fitted in a little more with the demands of the time, if it only would give up something of its uncompromising attitude in regard to ethics, and something of its absolute demand for faith in respect to things that are transcendental and not to be proved.

Christ himself would undoubtedly in his day have been able to conceive his calling in another way than he did. The story of the temptation was an event such as, once in his life, has happened to every highly gifted man, and for which he could assign place and date. Happy if he then struck the right road and no longer let himself be misled because the whole world was against him. Again and again it has finally been obliged to yield, this “whole world,” before a single soul; and we often experience yet to-day, in the smallest as in the greatest questions, the truth of the bold saying, “Who firmly holds to his mind, will fashion the world to himself.”