BE SURE OF YOUR IDEALS.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, 24 August 1923, Page 5

BE SURE OF YOUR IDEALS.

By Dr. Frank Crane. A young man writes me wanting to know how to decide between sticking to his ideals and earning a living. He is an artist. As such, shall he paint only as the divine afflatus moves him, for which the money he gets is uncertain and small; or shall he lower himself to drawing illustrations for cigarette and soap advertisements, where profits are large? When he takes his work to the publisher, the latter says: “I don’t know much about art, but I know what the public wants, and you must change this, that and the other thing.” Shall he submit to this dictation, or stand for his own genius?

My answer is: Cherish your own vision by all means, for creative work without the. heat of one’s own peculiar inspiration is poor stuff,But—

But ther are several points to be noted.

In the first place you want to be rather sure what your ideals are. And to find that out it is necessary to wrestle with the work-a-day world. Not only is labour the test of inspiration; it is also the channel to inspiration.

Our private convictions are not much good until they are kneaded into the events that come to us from destiny. Our environment is an integral factor of our personality. We do not know what we afe, without passing through experience, which means that we are the resulting compound of the force that is in us and the forces that act upon us.

Another thing, the first duty of a man is not to “follow his ideals.” It is rather to do some kind of work the world is willing to pay for. It is to earn a living, to take himself off the hacks of other people, to present to mankind a marketable equivalent for the bread, shelter and warmth given him. The Apostle Paul sewed tents for a living, and onlywrote his E*pistles after be had sold enough of his labour to get something to eat. And it is not degrading to any man to do with his might what his hands find to do, to provide for his wife and babies. We would all be saved a deal of callow tragedy if all young men and women of genius would hang on to their job while setting forth to make a living by art and letters. Besides this, it must he remembered that the same Deity that gives you your driving genius has made also the world you live in. And it is not unreasonable to suppose that that world is as much inspired in its way as you in yours.

John Wesley used to say to his young preachers something to the effect that Avhen God calls a man to preach He calls somebody to hear him.

Let us not despise our time, nor the people of it. If we learn to understand and interpret our surroundings, to read the message of events, and to know and love the people whom fate sends us; and if we respond to the wants of the world with all the talent we have, and seek to serve humanity instead of to criticise, uplift, boss, and scold it, we shall find ourselves much more quickly, and be not only true to our own ideals, but be a whole heap more agreeable to the folks that have to do with us.