You won’t see any smiles if you gaze at a 19th or early 20th-century family portrait. The same is true if you peer at the sculptures and paintings of Lincoln or Churchill or the imagined likenesses of Socrates and Caesar. Sobriety and dignity will be observed, but no frivolity.

The selfie world had not yet dawned. The renderings of these people are not sad or anxious but suggest the adults have taken on hard problems and won more than they’ve lost. Not goods or money but something inside.

The images communicate a sense of accomplishment, solidity, and integrity. Their eyes and expressions show they have grown from encountering life and earned the respect their face conveys.

The visage and stance of each of them offer more than can be seen. André Breton’s description of a Mexican painter comes to mind: 

“The art of Frida Kahlo is like a ribbon around a bomb.”

Socrates was not a bomber, but you get the message. These personalities were not to be toyed with. They have substance and weight — gravitas.

In their presence, you might be in awe. There is something more significant here, more extensive and formidable than the average person.

The likeness captured by the sculptor’s hands or the painter’s brush suggests the possibility of action. One imagines a world that does not act only on the artist’s subject but is acted upon by him.

The illustrations display what was customary in portraits of this kind in their time, but more. Whoever authorized the rendering of himself or his family wanted to be seen and recalled in a particular way.

The poet Mark Van Doren suggested that the basis of seriousness is education. He believed part of that growth of knowledge was the two-word Socratic instruction to “Know Thyself.” Van Doren said more.

He meant: Know in thyself the person thou hast never discovered was there, the person who is identical with all other persons in the end, the ideal, the perfect person insofar as he is knowable. Granted, he is not fully knowable. But education is never serious except when it is trying to dig him out, to bring him to a second birth, to make him think and speak.*

Put differently, man has much more in common with his fellow women and men than the many differences noted often. To quote Van Doren further, “Good and reasonable people, Abraham Lincoln once said, are the same everywhere.”*

Van Doren added, “Those who know best that all men are the same are themselves the most individual, the most personal, the most moving and loveable of men.”*

The growth in knowledge of oneself and another brings wisdom, joy, and sadness. One needs a practical education to make a living, but one must read books and play a part in the world and its collective well-being. Here, in these efforts, is the making of a serious person.

Specialization in a single discipline can undercut this. Homo sapiens need a more expansive view. The solitary one’s danger is to be so preoccupied with his career that his humanity slips through his fingers. Without his embrace of the inhabitants of a wider world, he will not engage with them in kindness and consideration.

Nor will he understand them.

Everyone demonstrates the values they live by and those they carved out and left aside. This is all the more true at a time when knowledge is growing exponentially.

Ultimately, relationships should allow the asking of questions and the disclosure of individual gravity. No emphasis on darkness or severity is intended in saying so, but rather the gathering of friends who accept peculiarities, ideas, laughter, and seriousness. 

In this, ladies and gentlemen, there is a recognition of how much one man shares with another. An approach of such deliberation and thought also puts energy into watching acquaintances, thinking over their words, and learning what their language does not reveal.

There are many ways to play, including the play of ideas.

Perhaps we inherited a lighter quality of being from the epoch of the sober folk. Where else could it have come from? The success of what they created gave succeeding generations an easier life.

Serious people pair their humor with a conscience and their laughter with goodwill.

Laugh and frolic from a humble place. Mankind never learns all there is to know about itself or others. But what you can discover will only be worthwhile if you are serious.

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The first of the two family photographic portraits of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was taken in 1895. The second, done while he was in the White House, dates from 1907. The Abraham Lincoln image in the center is an 1863 silver halide print.

*The Mark Van Doren quotes come from his September 15, 1963 address at the University of Illinois.