man shall have in the matter of doing good in the world, I shall
answer: a loving, honest, and brave heart, and a mind that judges
for itself. The heart that loves its fellow-men will move its
possessor to do good; and the mind that thinks and judges for
itself will decide in what direction its efforts ought to be made.
If a man be moved to do good, he will do it, and his heart will
lead him in the right direction. Under a mistaken sense of duty,
inculcated by incompetent counsellors, men find themselves in
fields of benevolent action to which they are very poorly adapted;
and the world is full of these blunders; but an honestly-loving
heart and an ordinarily clear brain, that nobody has been allowed
to meddle with and muddle, will tell a man where he belongs and
what he ought to do. If a man have a gift for ministering to the
sick, let him do it. If he have a gift for dealing personally with
the poor, let him do that. If he have a gift for making money, and
none for properly applying his charities, let him hand his money
to those who are competent to dispense it. I do not believe that
many loving hearts, coupled with unsophisticated judgments, are
engaged in indiscriminate and random efforts to act for religious
ends upon the minds they meet with. I believe that with all such
hearts and judgments there is connected a sense of that which is
fit and proper in time, place, and circumstance, so that wherever
they strike they leave their mark. I believe that such hearts and
judgments will scorn to do that by indirection which they can do
better directly, and that if it be fit and proper for them to
offer reproof to a man, they will do it by the brave word of
mouth, and not sneak up to him and put a card or a tract into his
hand. I believe that men with such hearts and judgments would
prefer making a subscription directly to a charitable object, to
making one indirectly by paying double price for articles they do
not want. And last, I think that pastors, with such hearts and
judgments, are not at all in danger of becoming coldly professional
in their noble duties. A life in any sphere that is the expression
and outflow of an honest, earnest, loving heart, taking counsel only
of God and itself, will be certain to be a life of beneficence in
the best possible direction.
LESSON XV.
MEN OF ONE IDEA.
"Cultivate the physical exclusively, and you have an athlete
or a savage; the moral only, and you have an enthusiast or a maniac;
the intellectual only, and you have a diseased oddity--it may be a
monster. It is only by wisely training all three together that the
complete man can be formed."--SAMUEL SMILES.
When the heats of summer have dried up the streams, and cataracts
only trickle and drip, and the dams of brooks and rivers cease to
pour the arching crystal from their lips, I have always loved to
explore the forsaken water-courses. An imprisoned fish, a shell
with rainbow lining, a curiously-worn rock, a strangely-tinted
and grotesquely-fashioned stone--these are always objects of
interest. Then to sit down upon a ledge that has been planed off
by ice, and smoothed by the tenuous passage of an ocean's
palpitating volume, and watch the shrunken stream slipping around
its feet, and hear the gurgle of the faintly-going water, and
growl so drowsy with the song that it breaks at last into
surprising articulations, and talks and laughs, and shouts and
sings--ah! this, indeed, is enchantment! There are few men,
I suppose, so fortunate as to have enjoyed a country breeding,
who do not recall scenes like this,--who do not remember a
half-holiday, at least, spent in the bed of a summer stream,
and at the feet of scanty cataracts, making fierce attacks on
water snakes, watching lizards lying among the stones of an old
raceway, creeping up, hat in hand, to a gauze-winged devil's needle
that shivered on a sunny point of rock, and looked as if it might
be the ghost of a humming-bird, starting to mark the sudden flight
and hear the chattering cry of the king-fisher as he darted
through the shadows and disappeared, and noting the slim-legged
wagtail, racing backward and forward upon the border of the
stream.
Among the objects of interest very often, if not always, to be
found at the feet of dams and cataracts, are what people call
"pot-holes." They are round holes worn in the solid rock by a
single stone, kept in motion by the water. Some of them are very
large and others are small. When the stream becomes dry, there
they are, smooth as if turned out by machinery, and the hard,
round pebbles at the bottom by which the curious work was done.
Every year, as the dry season comes along, we find that the holes
have grown larger and the pebbles smaller, and that no freshet
has been found powerful enough to dislodge the pebbles and release
the rock from their attrition. Now if a man will turn from the
contemplation of one of these pot-holes, and the means by which it
is made, and seek for that result and that process in the world of
mind which most resemble them, I am sure that he will find them in
a man of one idea. In truth, these scenes that I have been
painting were all recalled to me by looking upon one of these men,
studying his character, and watching the effect of the single idea
by which he was actuated. "There," said I, involuntarily, "is a
moral pot-hole with a pebble in it; and the hole grows larger and
the pebble smaller every year."
I suppose it is useless to undertake to reform men of one idea.
The real trouble is that the pebble is in them; and whole freshets
of truth are poured upon them, only with the effect to make it
more lively in its grinding, and more certain in its process of
wearing out itself and them. The little man who, when ordered by
his physician to take a quart of medicine, informed him with a
deprecatory whimper, that he did not hold but a pint, illustrates
the capacity of many of those who are subjects of a single idea.
They do not hold but one, and it would be useless to prescribe a
larger number. In a country like ours, in which every thing is new
and everybody is free, there are multitudes of self-constituted
doctors, each of whom has a nostrum for curing all physical and
moral disorders and diseases,--a patent process by which humanity
may achieve its proudest progress and its everlasting happiness.
The country is full of hobby-riders, booted and spurred, who
imagine they are leading a grand race to a golden goal, forgetful
of the truth that their steeds are tethered to a single idea,
around which they are revolving only to tread down the grass and
wind themselves up, where they may stand at last amid the world's
ridicule, and starve to death.
Man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds
out of the mouth of God, whether spoken through nature or
revelation. There is no one idea in all God's universe so great
and so nutritious that it can furnish food for an immortal soul.
Variety of nutriment is absolutely essential, even to physical
health. There are so many elements that enter into the structure
of the human body, and such variety of stimuli requisite for the
play of its vital forces, that it is necessary to lay under
tribute a wide range of nature; and fruits and roots and grain,
beasts of the field, fowls of the air, and fish of the sea, juices
and spices and flavors, all bring their contributions to the
perfection of the human animal, and the harmony of its functions.
The sailor, kept too long upon his hard biscuit and salt junk,
degenerates into scurvy. The occupant of the Irish hovel who
lives upon his favorite root, and sees neither bread nor meat,
grows up with weak eyes, an ugly face, and a stunted body. It is
precisely thus with a man who occupies and feeds his mind with a
single idea. He grows mean and small and diseased with the diet.
The soul bears relation to such a wealth of truth, such a
multitude of interests cluster about it, it has such variety of
elements--as illustrated by its illimitable range of action and
passion--it touches and receives impressions from all other souls
at such an infinite variety of points, that it is simply absurd to
suppose that one idea can feed it, even for a day.
A mind that surrenders itself to a single idea becomes essentially
insane. I know a man who has dwelt so long upon the subject of a
vegetable diet that it has finally taken possession of him. It is
now of such importance in his eyes that every other subject is
thrown out of its legitimate relations to him. It is the constant
theme of his thought--the study of his life. He questions the
properties and quantities of every mouthful that passes his lips,
and watches its effects upon him. He reads upon this subject
everything he can lay his hands on. He talks upon it with every
man he meets. He has ransacked the whole Bible for support to his
theories; and the man really believes that the eternal salvation
of the human race hinges upon a change of diet. It has become a
standard by which to decide the validity of all other truth. If
he did not believe that the Bible was on his side of the question,
he would discard the Bible. Experiments or opinions that make
against his faith are either contemptuously rejected or
ingeniously explained away. Now this man's mind is not only
reduced to the size of his idea, and assimilated to its character,
but it has lost its soundness. His reason is disordered. His
judgment is perverted--depraved. He sees things in unjust and
illegitimate relations. The subject that absorbs him has grown out
of proper proportions, and all other subjects have shrunk away
from it. I know another man--a man of fine powers--who is just as
much absorbed by the subject of ventilation; and though both of
these men are regarded by the community as of sound mind, I think
they are demonstrably insane.
If we rise into larger fields, we shall find more notable
demonstration of the starving effect of the entertainment of a
single idea. Scattered throughout the country we shall find men
who have devoted themselves to the cause of temperance, or
abstinence from intoxicating liquors. Here is a grand, a humane, a
most worthy and important cause; yet temperance as an idea is not
enough to furnish food for a human soul. Some of these men have
only room in them for one idea, and, so far as they are concerned,
it might as well be temperance as any thing, though it is bad for
the cause; but the majority of them were, at starting, men of
generous instincts, a quick sense of that which is pure and true,
and a genuine love of mankind. They dwelt upon their idea--they
lived upon it for a few years--and then they "showed their
keeping." If I should wish to find a narrow-minded, uncharitable,
bigoted soul, in the smallest possible space of time, I would look
among those who have made temperance the specialty of their
lives--not because temperance is bad, but because one idea is bad;
and the men afflicted by this particular idea are numerous and
notorious. They have no faith in any man who does not believe
exactly as they do. They accuse every man of unworthy motives who
opposes them. They permit no liberty of individual judgment and no
range of opinion; and when they get a chance, they drive
legislation into the most absurd and harmful extremes. Men of one
idea are always extremists, and extremists are always nuisances. I
might truthfully add that an extremist is never a man of sound
mind.
The whole tribe of professional agitators and miscalled reformers
are men of one idea. That these men do good, sometimes directly
and frequently indirectly, I do not deny; and it is equally
evident that they do a great deal of harm, the worst of which,
perhaps, falls upon themselves. Like the charge of a cannon, they
do damage to an enemy's fortifications, but they burn up the
powder there is in them, and lose the ball. Like blind old Samson,
they may prostrate the pillars of a great wrong, but they crush
themselves and the Philistines together. The greatest and truest
reformer that ever lived was Jesus Christ; but ah! the difference
between his broad aims, universal sympathies, and overflowing
love, and the malignant spirit that moves those who angrily beat
themselves to death against an instituted wrong! As an illustration,
look at those who have been the prominent agitators of the slavery
question in this country for the last twenty years. Are they men of
charity? Are they Christian men? Is not invective the chosen and
accustomed language of their lips? Do they not follow those against
whom they have opposed themselves, whether for good cause or
otherwise, into their graves with a fiendish lust of cruelty, and do
they not delight to trample upon great names and sacred memories?
Are they men whom we love? Do we feel attracted to their society?
Teachers of toleration, are they not the most intolerant of all men
living? Denouncers of bigotry, are they not the most fiercely bigoted
of any men we know? Preachers of love and good will to men, do
they not use more forcibly than any other class the power of words
to wound and poison human sensibilities?
It is not the quality of the idea which a man entertains that
kills him. Freedom for every creature that bears God's image--the
breaking of the rod of the oppressor and letting the oppressed go
free--this is a good idea. It is so great, so broad, so full, so
flowing, that a world of men might gather around it for a time as
they do around Niagara, and grow divine in its majestic music and
the vision of the wreath of light which heaven holds above it. If
a man undertake to live upon a single idea, it really makes very
little difference to him whether that idea be a good or a bad one.
A man may as well get scurvy on beans as beef. I suppose a diet of
potatoes would be quite as likely to support life comfortably as a
diet of peaches. It is because the human soul cannot live upon one
thing alone, but demands participation in every expression of the
life of God, that it will dwarf and starve upon even the grandest
and most divine idea.
The agitators and reformers are very ready to see the dwarfing
effect of a single idea or a single range of ideas upon the
Christian ministry, and a large number of Christian men. I admit
the accuracy of their observations in this matter, and, admitting
this, I can certainly ask the question whether they hope to escape
depreciation when the Christian idea--the divinest of all---is
insufficient of itself to make a man, and fill him, and give him
all desirable health and wealth and growth. As I have touched upon
this point, I may say that it is coming to be understood that a
man or a minister, in order to be a Christian, must be something
else--that Christianity received into nature and life is only one
of the elements of manhood--and that a man may become starved and
mean and bigoted and essentially insane by feeding exclusively
upon religion. What means the vision of these sapless, sad, and
sanctimonious Christians--these poor, thin, stingy lives--but
that all ideas save the religious one have been shut out from
them? Is it not notorious that a minister who has fed exclusively
upon religion is a man without power upon the hearts and minds of
men? Is it not true that he has most efficiency in pulpit
ministration who has the largest knowledge of and sympathy with
men, the broadest culture, and the widest acquaintance with all
the ideas that enter as food and motive into human life? Is it not
true that in the life-long, absorbing anxiety and carefulness of
a multitude of souls to secure their salvation, those souls are
constantly becoming less valuable, and thus--to use the language
of the market--less worth saving?
I cannot fail, however unwilling, to see much that is dry and
stiff and unlovely in the style of Christianity around me. It has
no attraction for me. I do not like the people who illustrate it;
and the reason is, not that they have got too much of Christianity,
but that they have not got enough of any thing else. Flour is good,
but flour is not bread. If I am to eat flour, I must eat it as bread;
and either milk or water must be used to make it bread. If a little
milk is used, the bread will be dry and heavy and hard. If a good
deal is used, the flour will be transformed into a soft and plastic mass,
which will rise in the heat, and come to my lips a sweet and fragrant
morsel. Christianity is good, but it wants mixing with humanity before
it will have a practical value. If only a little humanity be mixed with
it, the product will be dry and tasteless; but if it be combined with
the real milk of humanity, and enough of it, the result will be a loaf
fit for the tongues of angels. No: the divinest idea that has yet been
apprehended by the human mind is not enough for the human mind.
That which God made to be fed by various food cannot be fed with
success or safety by a single element. We cannot build a house of
dry bricks. It takes lime and sand and water in their proper proportions
to hold the bricks together.
This selection of a single idea from the great world of ideas to
which the mind is vitally related, and making it food and drink,
and motive and pivotal point of action, and supreme object of
devotion, is mental and moral suicide. It makes that a despotic
king which should be a tributary subject. It enslaves the soul to
a base partisanship. It is right to make money, and it is right to
be rich when wealth is won legitimately; but when money becomes
the supreme object of a man's life, the soul starves as rapidly
as the coffers are filled. It is right to be a temperance man and
an anti-slavery man, and an advocate of any special Christian
reform; but the effect of adopting any one of these reforms as the
supreme object of a man's pursuit, never fails to belittle him.
One of the most pitiable objects the world contains is a man of
generous natural impulses grown sour, impatient, bitter, abusive,
uncharitable, and ungracious, by devotion to one idea, and the
failure to impress it upon the world with the strength by which it
possesses himself. Many of these fondly hug the delusion to
themselves that they are martyrs, when, in fact, they are only
suicides. Many of these look forward to the day when posterity
will canonize them, and lift them to the glory of those who were
not received by their age because they were in advance of their
age. So they regard with contempt the pigmy world, wrap the
mantles of their mortified pride about them, and lie down in a
delusive dream of immortality.
Whether the effect of devotion to a single idea be disastrous or
otherwise to the devotees, nothing in all history is better
proved--nothing in all philosophy is more clearly demonstrable--
than the fact that it is a damage to the idea. If I wished to
disgust a community with any special idea, I would set a man
talking about it and advocating it who would talk of nothing
else. If I wished to ruin a cause utterly, I would submit it to
the advocacy of one who would thrust it into every man's face, who
would make every other cause subordinate to it, who would refuse
to see any objections to it, who would accuse all opponents of
unworthy motives, and who would thus exhibit his absolute slavery
to it. Men have an instinct which tells them that such people as
these are not trustworthy--that their sentiments and opinions are
as valueless as those of children. If they talk with a pleasant
spirit, we good-naturedly tolerate them; if they rant and scold
and denounce, we hiss them if we think it worth while, or we
applaud them as we would the feats of a dancing bear. If they say
devilish things in a heavenly sort of way, and clothe their black
malignities in silken phrases, we hear them with a certain kind of
pleasure, and take our revenge in despising them, and feeling
malicious towards the cause they advocate. It would kill us to
drink Cologne water, but the perfume titillates the sense, and so
we sprinkle it upon our handkerchiefs.
No great cause can be forwarded by the advocacy of men who have no
character, and no man can devote himself to an idea without the
loss of character. When a man comes forward to promulgate an idea,
we inquire into his credentials. How large a man is this? How
broad are his sympathies? How wide is his knowledge? What
relation does he bear to the great world of ideas among which
this is only one, and very likely a comparatively unimportant one?
Is he so weak as to be possessed by this idea, or does he possess
it, and entertain a rational comprehension of its relations to
himself and the community? I know that multitudes of good men have
been so disgusted with the one-sided, partisan character of the
advocates of special ideas and special reforms, that they would
have no association with them. We have only to learn that a man
can see nothing but his pet idea, and is really in its possession,
to lose all confidence in his judgment. When in a court of justice
a man testifies upon a point that touches his personal interests
or feelings or relations, we say that his testimony is not
valuable--not reliable. It decides nothing for us. We say that the
evidence does not come from the proper source. We do not expect
candor from him, for we perceive that his interests are too deeply
involved to allow sound judgment and utterly truthful expression.
It is precisely thus with all professional agitators and
reformers--all devotees of single ideas. They are personally so
intimately connected with their idea--have been so enslaved by
their idea--are so interested in its prosperity---that they are
not competent to testify with relation to it.
LESSON XVI.
SHYING PEOPLE.
"It is jealousy's peculiar nature
To swell small things to great; nay, out of naught
To conjure much: and then to lose its reason
Amid the hideous phantoms it has formed." YOUNG.
"I will not shut me from my kind;
And, lest I stiffen into stone,
I will not eat my heart alone,
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind."
TENNYSON.
"Fear is the virtue of slaves; but the heart that loveth is
willing." LONGFELLOW.
Reader, did you ever drive a horse that had the mean habit of
shying? If so, then you will remember how constantly he was on the
lookout for objects that would frighten him. He would never wait
for the bugbear to show its head; but he conjured it up at every
point. Every hair upon his sides seemed transformed into an eye;
and there was not a colored stone, nor a stick of wood, nor a bit
of paper, nor a small dog, nor a shadow across the road, nor any
thing that introduced variety into his passage, that did not seem
to be endowed with some marvellous power of repulsion. First he
dodged to the right, after having foreseen the evil from afar, and
wrought himself up to a fearful pitch of sidelong excitement; and
then he dodged to the left, having been surprised into passing a
cat without alarm; and so, dodging to the right and left, he has
half worried the life out of you. Being constantly on guard, and
always watching for objects of alarm, and suspicious of dangers in
disguise, he has had no difficulty in maintaining a condition of
permanent fright, which has worked itself off in spasms of shying.
To a man who has driven a horse up to a locomotive without danger
or fear, such an animal as this seems to be unworthy of the name
of a horse; and to one who has read of the spirit and fearlessness
of the war-horse, a shying horse seems to be the most contemptible
of his race.
Well, I have met shying men, and I meet them upon the sidewalk
almost every day. I have watched them from afar, and known by
their eyes and a certain preparatory nervousness of body, that
they would "shy" at me. I have been conscious, however, that there
was nothing in me to shy at. I have had no pistols in my pocket,
and no Bowie knife under my coat-collar. I have been innocent of
any intention to leap upon and throttle them. I have had no
purpose to trip their heels by a sudden "flank movement," and not
even the desire to knock their hats off. Indeed, I have felt
toward them a degree of friendliness and kindness which I would
have been very glad to express, had they afforded me an
opportunity; but they were shying men by nature, or by habit, or
by whim. So far as I have been able to ascertain the causes of
their infirmity, it is the result of a suspicion that they are not
quite as good as other people, and a belief that other people
understand the fact. Far be it from me to deny that their
suspicions touching themselves are well-grounded; but that is no
reason why other people should not speak to them politely. There
is a class of men and women who are always looking out for, and
expecting, slights from those whom they suppose to be their
superiors. They get a suspicion that a certain man feels above
them; so when they pass him in the street, they shy at him--go
around him--will not give him an opportunity to be polite to them.
They are martyrs, as they suppose, to unjust social distinctions.
They act as if they were painfully uncertain as to whether they
are men and women or spaniels.