The art of being humans begins with the
practice of being genuine, and following standards of conduct
which the world has tested. If your life is not various and you
cannot know the best people, who set the standards of sincerity,
your reading at least can be various, and you may look at your
little circle through the best books, under the guidance of
writers who have known life and loved the truth.
IV
And then genuineness will bring serenity--which I take to be
another mark of the right development of the true human being,
certainly in an age passionate and confused as this in which we
live. Of course serenity does not always go with genuineness. We
must say of Dr. Johnson that he was genuine, and yet we know that
the stormy tyrant of the Turk's Head Tavern was not serene.
Carlyle was genuine (though that is not quite the first adjective
we should choose to describe him), but of serenity he allowed
cooks and cocks and every modern and every ancient sham to
deprive him. Serenity is a product, no doubt, of two very
different things, namely, vision and digestion. Not the eye only,
but the courses of the blood must be clear, if we would find
serenity. Our word "serene" contains a picture.
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