“For now we see through a glass, darkly.”
“Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.”
In the process of development nature goes from potentiality to higher
and higher actuality; what is in its being as tendency becomes real.
We may not suppose the movement that of spontaneous energy toward
accidental results, but rather the progressive realization of what is
in the entire rational scheme of the universe.
From the nebular mass sprang worlds and suns greater and less,
substance and form in infinite variety, plant life in progressive
orders, animal life in ascending types. Conscious existence gradually
became responsive to the multitude of nature’s impressions. The broken
rays of light displayed their rainbow hues to the growing power and
delicacy of the eye; sound revealed its keys, qualities, and harmonies
to the increasing susceptibility of the ear. Mind, as it developed,
realized in its consciousness new laws and ever greater wonders of the
outer world. On the objective side the laws were, the tinted sky and
the murmuring stream were, before mind became cognizant of them in
their perfection and beauty. Any serious contemplation of the great law
of development, in its full meaning, should inspire hope and purpose
in life. It suggests, not only sublime fulfilment for the world, but
large possibility for the individual man. The natural world, plants,
animals, the human race, institutions, science, art, religion, all
animate individual beings, man as an individual, have their history of
development, which suggests its lesson.
Nature is aspiration. From chaos to the world of this geologic age,
from protoplasm to man, from savagery to civilization, from ignorance
to culture, from symbolism to developed art, from egoism to altruism,
from germ to fruit, from infancy to maturity, from realization to
higher realization, has been the process. And this plan seems the
only one adapted to satisfy the nature and thought of rational being.
A world perfected, all possibilities realized, no chance for higher
attainment—these are conditions of monotony and death. The old
Heraclitus was right when he proclaimed the principle of the world to
be a _becoming_.
* * * * *
The child’s history, in a way, is an epitome of the history of the
race. At first he is deaf and blind to the world of objects. Note how
the possibilities of his being become realities, how knowledge grows
in variety and definiteness, until the external world stands revealed,
each object in its place, each event in its order, until notions of
time, space, cause, and right rise into consciousness. The child is
father of the man in the sense that the man can become only what he was
implicitly in childhood.
There is a tale of Greek mythology that Minerva sprang full-grown
from the head of Jove—a perfect being. We would rather contemplate a
being with possibilities not completely revealed. A philosopher said
that if Truth were a bird which he had caught and held in his hand he
would let it escape for the pleasure of renewed pursuit. There are the
wonders of nature and of physical evolution; but transcendently great
are the wonders of mind, and the view of its possibilities of endless
development—a thing that we believe will live on, when the sun, moon,
and stars shall be darkened.
* * * * *
The educated young man of to-day is the heir of the ages. All that
science, art, literature, philosophy, civilization have achieved is
his. All that thought has realized through ages of slow progress, all
that has been learned through the mistakes made in the dim light of the
dawn of human history, all that has been wrought out through devotion,
struggle, and suffering, he may realize by the process of individual
education. The law of progress still holds for the race and for him. He
is a free factor, with a duty to help realize still more of the promise
of human existence.
“Know thyself” was a wonderful maxim of the ancient philosopher,
and it leads to knowledge. “Know thy powers” is a better maxim for
practice, and it is a fault that men regard their limitations and not
their capabilities. We look with contempt upon a lower stage of our
own growth. Not for the world would we lose a little from our highest
attainment. The view is relative, and we have but to advance our
position and life is subject to new interpretation.
This is a period of the fading out of old ideals as they merge into
higher ones not yet clearly defined. The reverence for nature, for
its symbolism, the sanctions of religion, the transcendental belief,
the poetic insight have somewhat fallen away, and the world is partly
barren because not yet rehabilitated. Ideals are regarded as fit
for schoolgirl essays, for weakly sentimentality, for dreamers, for
those who do not understand the meaning of the new science and the
new civilization. Ideals! The transcendent importance of ideals is
just appearing. Not an invention could be made, not a temple could
be built, not a scheme for the improvement of government and society
could be constructed, not a poem or a painting could be executed, not
an instance of progress could occur without ideals. The world may be
conceived as an ideal, the development of all things is toward ideals.
We are at a stage of that development; the progression is infinite,
ever toward perfection, toward God, the Supreme Good. Lamartine said
wisely: “The ideal is only truth at a distance.”
Do circumstances forbid the possibility of higher development? Then
let the individual, in a chosen vocation, however humble, lose himself
in obedience and devotion to it, and thus, as a hero, live to his own
well-being and the welfare of others. Thereby he will find blessedness.
Carlyle’s “Everlasting Yea” shows this passage: “The Situation that has
not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here, in
this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable actual, wherein thou even
now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal; work it out therefrom;
and working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the Ideal is in thyself,
the impediment, too, is in thyself; thy Condition is but the stuff
thou art to shape that same Ideal out of; what matters whether such
stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, be
poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual and criest
bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know
this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, here or
nowhere, couldst thou only see!”
Here is a striking story, related as true: A young man had met with
misfortune, accident, and disease, and was suffering from a third
paralytic stroke. He had lost the use of his voice, of his limbs, and
of one arm. A friend visited him one day and asked how he was. He
reached for his tablet and wrote: “All right, and bigger than anything
that can happen to me.” By energy of will, by slowly increasing
physical and mental exercise, he reconquered the use of his body and
mind—gradually compelled the dormant nerve centres to awake and resume
their functions. Later he wrote: “The great lesson it taught me is that
man is meant to be, and ought to be, stronger and more than anything
that can happen to him. Circumstances, fate, luck are all outside, and,
if we cannot always change them, we can always beat them. If I couldn’t
have what I wanted, I decided to want what I had, and that simple
philosophy saved me.”
A healthy philosophy, speculative or common sense, a healthy ethics,
theoretical or practical, are indispensable to youth. Away with
unfree will, and pessimism, and pleasure philosophy, and the notion
of a perfected world and a goal attained. Substitute therefor
vigorous freedom, cheerful faith and hope, right and duty, and
belief in development. Most of the great poets and artists, most of
the successful business men have struggled with difficulties, and
have wrought out of their conditions their success. Burns did not
permit poverty, obscurity, lack of funds, lack of patronage, lack of
time to destroy or weaken the impulse of his genius. Shakespeare (if
this poet-king be not indeed dethroned by logic) with but imperfect
implements of his craft wrought heroically, and realized the highest
possibilities of literary creation. The biography of success is filled
with the names of men in a sense self-made.
Education is the unfolding of our powers. There is the realm of
knowledge: the relations of number and space, as revealed to a Laplace
or a Newton; the discoveries and interpretations of science, as they
appear to a Tyndall or a Spencer; history, in whose light alone we
can fully interpret any subject of knowledge; literature, whose pages
glow with the best thought and feeling of mankind; philosophy and
religious truth, with their grasp of the meaning of life; art, that
is a divine revelation in material form—all that has been realized
in the consciousness of man. The race has taken ages to attain the
present standard of civilization and enlightenment. The life of the
individual attains it through education. With some distinction of
native tendencies, education makes the difference between the Dahoman
and the Bostonian. Tennyson, in his “Locksley Hall,” in a mood of
disappointment and pessimism, would seek the land of palms, of savagery
and ignorance, and abjure the “march of Mind” and “thoughts that shake
mankind;” but a healthful reaction arouses again his better impulse,
and he counts “the _gray_ barbarian lower than the Christian _child_.”
Every young man who aims at medicine, theology, law, or teaching, who
aims at the best development of his powers, needs all the education
he can gain before he enters upon independent labor. All need a broad
foundation of general knowledge upon which to rear the structure of
special knowledge and skill. Our grandfathers got along with the
grammar school, the academy, college, and apprentice system; we need
the high school, the graduate school, and the professional school. Men
go into the field of labor without map, implements, or skill, and then
wonder why they do not succeed. The generation has advanced; more is
known, more is demanded, and undeveloped thought and skill soon find
their limitations in the practical world.
We are called upon not only to feel, but to act; not merely to know,
but to impart. The inner life is to realize itself in the outer world
of action. Ideals are to be followed closely by deeds. A mere recluse
is not in harmony with the times.
There is a thought in the following passage from Goethe not
inappropriate in this place:
“Wouldst thou win desires unbounded?
Yonder see the glory burn!
Lightly is thy life surrounded—
Sleep’s a shell, to break and spurn!
When the crowd sways, unbelieving,
Show the daring will that warms!
He is crowned with all achieving
Who perceives and then performs.”
The child does not at first discriminate colors, but later realizes
distinctions permanently existent. The child does not at first realize
the force of the abstract idea of right; but, when the idea appears,
it is not so much an evolution as a realization in the process of
evolution of the child’s consciousness. In the development of life on
the earth a time came when human beings realized the existence and
obligation of right as a new idea to them, not one “compounded of many
simples.” However produced, we may suppose that when it appears it
is a unique thing, a binding and divine thing, a thing carrying with
it all the implications of the Kantian philosophy—God, Freedom, and
Immortality.
How religion, philosophy, ethics, maxims of experience, dictates of
prudence proclaim to the ear of the youth the necessity of realizing
in idea and practice a progressive, upward tendency of character!
Vice is not a realization, but degeneration. Vice paralyzes the will,
paralyzes the intellect, paralyzes the finer emotions, paralyzes the
body, deadens the conscience to all that is positive and worthy. Men
often regard only the larger duties, but character is often made by the
sum of little duties performed. We are ready to use great opportunities
only when we have trained our powers by diligent performance of humble
work. Carlyle says: “_Do the Duty which lies nearest thee_, which thou
knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer.”
It broadens our view of religion to hold that the divine impulse works
in all men, and leads them toward truth; that no age or people has
been left in utter darkness; that there is something common to all
religions; and that in time God’s full revelation will come to all
nations.
“Whoe’er aspires unweariedly
Is not beyond redeeming.”
May we not ask if the experience distinctively called Christian is not
an actuality, the highest blossom of religious growth—if it is not
a realization possible for all, if it is not an ideal sweetly, nay,
transcendently, inviting? One who has read the following lines from
Goethe will never forget them; he has had a glimpse of the Holy of
Holies:
“Once Heavenly Love sent down a burning kiss
Upon my brow, in Sabbath silence holy;
And, filled with mystic presage, chimed the church bell slowly,
And prayer dissolved me in a fervent bliss,—
A sweet, uncomprehended yearning
Drove forth my feet through woods and meadows free,
And while a thousand tears were burning,
I felt a world arise for me.”
I sat on the veranda at my home at the close of a beautiful day. The
western glow was fading into a faint rose color. The pine trees on the
neighboring mountain top stood out in magnified distinctness against
the bright background. A bird in a near tree sang its good-night song.
Just over the mountain peak a star shone out like a diamond set in
pale gold. The great earth silently turned and hid the star behind the
pines. The ragged outline of mountains loomed up with weird effect.
The breeze freshened and waved the branches of the elms gracefully in
broader curves; it seemed to come down from the heights as if with
a message. It was a time for meditation. My thoughts turned for a
hundredth time to the significance of the higher emotional effects in
the presence of natural beauty and sublimity, and in the contemplation
of exalted æsthetic and ethical conceptions.
When the hand of nature touches the chords of the human heart, may we
not believe that the hand and the harp are of divine origin, and that
the music produced is heavenly? I mean that the human soul with all its
refinement of emotion is not material, but spiritual and Godlike; that
it has written upon it a sacred message, an assurance not of earth that
its destiny is boundless in time and possibility—a message profound in
its meaning as the unsearchable depth of God’s being.
* * * * *
All human institutions are progressive. Each stage of civilization
is complete in itself, but preparatory to another and higher stage.
Liberty, the art idea, the religious idea develop more and more as men
realize in consciousness higher truths and standards. From the art
that found expression in the cromlechs of the Druids to the highest
embodiment of spiritual ideas, from crude faith to philosophic and
religious insight, from rude mechanism to magnificence of structure and
invention—such has been history, such, we believe, will be history.
No wonder Carlyle exclaims: “Is not man’s history and men’s history a
perpetual Evangel?”—an announcement of glad tidings?
It is in this philosophy that the hope of the solution of many present
problems is found. In mediæval times the feudal system was the
reconciliation of the opposing interests of men in a unity of service
and protection. Later new conflicts arose which resulted in freedom for
all classes. To-day opposition has grown from the selfish interests of
capital and labor, and we believe the reconciliation will be found in a
unity which will equitably combine the interests of both. Change is the
law. The phœnix, ever rising from its own ashes, is stronger in pinion
and more daring in flight.
Plato held to the doctrine of ideas, of eternal verities, the
archetypes of all forms of existence, and believed growth in wisdom
to be a gradual realization of these ideas in consciousness. Modern
Platonism makes man a part of the Divine Being, with power to progress
in knowledge of truth and in moral insight. This progress aims at
an ultimate end that is both a realization and a reward. This view
explains our nature and aspirations, our intuitive notions and sense
of right; it explains the seeming providence that runs through history
and makes all things work together for good; it explains that harmony
of the soul with nature that constitutes divine music; it explains the
insight of the poet and the faith of man. Any new theory must be a
continuation of the past instead of standing in contradiction to it,
must reveal the deeper meaning of old truth. The spiritual truths that
belong to the history of man must be included in the new philosophy.
Theories must explain in accordance with common sense, and make
harmony, not discord, in our intellectual, æsthetic, and moral feelings.
* * * * *
“For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
“But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part
shall be done away.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I
know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
“Still, through our paltry stir and strife,
Glows down the wished Ideal,
And Longing moulds in clay what Life
Carves in the marble Real;
To let the new life in, we know,
Desire must ope the portal;—
Perhaps the longing to be so
Helps make the soul immortal.
“Longing is God’s fresh heavenward will
With our poor earthward striving;
We quench it that we may be still
Content with merely living:
But would we learn that heart’s full scope
Which we are hourly wronging,
Our lives must climb from hope to hope
And realize our longing.”