inscrutable power from which all this vast procedure springs; its nature
we know not and cannot know. The thought of it moves us to wonder and
awe,--and this is the legitimate satisfaction of the religious sense.
And here it is that his philosophy utterly fails to satisfy. Yet it
marks the passing away of the attempt to interpret Deity in terms of
exact knowledge. Whatever form religion may hereafter wear, the old
precision of statement must be abandoned; the intellect must be more
humble. And further, the Spencerian view is wholly different from
atheism. It leaves the door open. It recognizes that some supreme
reality exists beyond and above man. That reality is not intelligible to
the intellect which analyzes and generalizes. But may it not be
approachable through another side of man's nature,--accessible through
gates like those by which one human spirit recognizes another human
spirit? The evolutionary philosophy, in an enlarged construction, raised
no barrier against the access to divinity through the noblest exercise of
humanity.
Live the personal life toward the highest ideals, with the faithfulest
endeavor,--and peace, trust, hope, spring up in the soul. So does man
find access to the supreme power; so does he find himself encompassed and
upborne by it; so is he drawn into closest union with his
fellow-creatures and with the divine source of all. It is the old answer
and the new; it is figured in the Hebrew's assurance that the Lord loveth
the righteous; it gives strength and courage to Epictetus; it inspires
the confidence of Jesus, the loving and holy soul finding its heavenly
Father; it speaks with glad voice in Emerson,--"contenting himself with
obedience, man becomes divine."
The essential truth is old, but in our day it is being disencumbered of
the husk of myth and dogma which obscured it; while by the growth of new
powers and finer sensibilities in man his access to highest reality
becomes more intimate.
As the evolutionary philosophy has already reaffirmed, clarified, and
enriched the moral life, so, blending with the clearest interpretation of
man's deepest experience, it is to reaffirm, purify, and deepen the
religious life.
One disciple of Spencer has applied herself with great genius and art to
creative fiction. George Eliot is a thorough Spencerian, and she is
constantly, effectively, almost with over-insistence, a moralist. Life
may be ruined by self-indulgence,--that is her perpetual theme. Of wide
range and variety, she is powerful above all in picturing the appeal of
temptation, the gradual surrender, the fatal consequence. Shakspere does
not show the inner springs of the fall of Macbeth or Angelo so clearly as
she shows the catastrophe of Arthur Donnithorne, of Tito Melema, of
Gwendolen Harleth. Readers from whom the threat of hell would fall off
as an old wife's tale, feel the dark power of reality in the mischief
which dogs each of her wrong-doers. More scantly, and with growing
infrequence, there are scenes of a natural gospel of redemption and
salvation,--Hetty reached in her misery by the Christian love of Dinah,
Silas Marner won back to happiness by the little child, Gwendolen saved
from her selfishness through dire disaster and a strong man's help.
The prevailing atmosphere of George Eliot's later books is sad, and the
sadness deepens as they go on. A labored, over-strenuous tone increases;
the style loses in simplicity and is overburdened with reflection. The
note of struggle is everywhere present, and shuts out repose, freedom,
joy. The sensitive reader can hardly escape an undertone of
suggestion,--yes, life must be made the best of, but it seems scarcely
worth the cost. Is it the entire absence of any outlook beyond this life
which makes the gloom of the later works? Yet this seems only partially
to explain. One seeks inevitably the clew to the writing in the life.
George Eliot's story as a woman is an open one. She took as her life
companion a man who was legally united to another woman. Her
justification apparently was that they were suited to each other, and
that with the support of this mutual tie they could best do their work.
Stated in plain terms, the moral question involved seems hardly to admit
of any debate. There is no more vital point in social morality than the
relation of the sexes, and George Eliot's own teaching reverts most often
to this topic, and always with its emphasis on restraint. Her actual
course assumed that the established and accepted law of society may be
set aside by a man and woman upon their own judgment that their need of
each other is paramount to the social law. A position more contradictory
to her avowed principles could hardly be stated. It was no new claim of
immunity; it had been professed and preached, especially on the
Continent, with results patent to all, of the subversion of social
foundations; it marks the especial danger-point of a time of swiftly
changing standards. It is impossible not to feel that her course was a
precedent and example in flat contradiction of the teaching she so
assiduously gave. Doubtless she persuaded herself she was right, but
such persuasion must have involved, the most dangerous sophistication
which besets man in his groping struggle,--a claim by a leader for
exemption from the common obligation on the plea that his welfare (that
is, his comfort) is especially necessary for the good of mankind. As one
reads George Eliot's pages with her own story in mind, the shadows are
heavy. In the over-active, restless reflections, one feels the working
of a mind incessantly exercised by its own self-defense. The suggestion
comes to us of a nature which has lavished all its energies on thinking,
and lacked strength for living, and so has failed of that vision which
comes not from thought but from life. The cramping horizon, the low sky,
the earthly limit within which love saddens and hope dies,--all seem to
bespeak that loss of truest touch with the universe which comes when one
is not true in act to the law he acknowledges. The sense of a tragedy in
herself, more pathetic than any she has depicted, touches us with awe,
with tenderness, with compunctious thought of our own failures. We are
"purified by terror and by pity."
The largest wisdom and the finest insight of our age are blended in
Tennyson's "In Memoriam." Written half a century ago, its truth not less
than its beauty stands unshaken by the later thought and knowledge.
Antedating the work of Darwin and Spencer, it accepts the principles of
Evolution. Its atmosphere is wholly modern. It is pervaded by the
sentiment of Christian faith, but it does not lean for support on dogma
or miracle. The difficulties it encounters are neither the terror in the
old view of the hereafter nor the problems incident to the supernatural
theology. The poet stands before the amazing spectacle of nature as seen
by science, beholding along with its prodigal beauty its appalling
destruction and its unswerving march. It is no longer hell, but
extinction, which seems to threaten man.
The intellectual problem of the universe is faced, but the medium through
which it is seen is the experience of a human heart filled by a sacred
love and then struck by bereavement. It is the old, typical, deepest
experience of man,--love confronted by death.
The poem moves like a symphony, weaving together requiem, cradle-song,
battle-march, and psalm, to a consummation of tender and majestic peace.
As the recurrent theme which governs the whole may be taken this:---
"How pure at heart and sound in head,
With what divine affection bold,
Should be the man whose thoughts would hold
An hour's communion with the dead."
These are the conditions,--fidelity, sanity, divinely bold affections;
this is the fruition, the sense of a mystic communion with the unseen
friend.
One passage gives the reconciliation between the evolutionary view of the
universe and a divine possibility for the individual. The evolutionary
process of nature is regarded as the type of the development of the
soul:---
"Contemplate all this work of Time,
The giant laboring in his youth;
Nor dream of human love and truth,
As dying Nature's earth and lime;
"But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends. They say,
The solid earth whereon we tread
"In tracts of fluent heat began,
And grew to seeming-random forms,
The seeming prey of cyclic storms,
Till at the last arose the man;
"Who throve and branched from clime to clime,
The herald of a higher race,
And of himself in higher place,
If so he type this work of time
"Within himself, from more to more;
Or, crowned with attributes of woe
Like glories, move his course, and show
That life is not as idle ore,
"But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And battered with the shocks of doom
"To shape and use. Arise and fly
The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die."
Thus do the moral purpose and the immortal hope define themselves in the
terms of the new philosophy. How are they related to the terms of the
old religion? The poet's attitude toward the historic Christ is wholly
reverent. Incidents of the gospel story are vivified by a creative
imagination. But Christ is no longer an isolated historic fact; he is
the symbol of all divine influence and celestial presence,--"the Christ
that is to be." The resurrection story is reverently touched, but it is
not upon this as a proof or argument that the poet dwells in regaining
his lost friend under a higher relation. That experience is to him
personal, at first hand. His comfort is not solely that in some future
heaven he shall rejoin his Arthur. The beloved one comes to him now in
moments of highest consciousness; associated profoundly, mysteriously,
vitally, with the fairest aspects of nature, with the loftiest purposes
of the will, with the most sympathetic regard of all fellow creatures.
In the experience which is supremely voiced in "In Memoriam," but which
is also recorded in many an utterance which the attentive ear may
discern, we recognize this: that the sense of the risen Christ which
inspired his disciples and founded the church was in truth an
instance--clad in imaginative, pictorial form--of what proves to be an
abiding law of human nature--the vivid realization of the continued and
higher existence of a noble and beloved life.
We may believe that in the progress of the race this faculty is being
developed. In its first emergence it was confused by crude
misinterpretations. A single instance of it was for two thousand years
construed as a unique event, the reversal of ordinary procedure, and the
basis of a supernatural religion. Now at last we correlate it with other
experiences, and interpret it as a part of the universal order.
Tennyson expresses that present heaven which is sometimes revealed to the
soul:--
"Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
Behold, I dream a dream of good,
And mingle all the world with thee.
"Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.
"What art thou, then? I cannot guess;
But though I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less:
"My love involves the love before;
My love is vaster passion now;
Though mixed with God and Nature thou,
I seem to love thee more and more.
"Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee though I die."
Two men beyond all others in America have interpreted the higher life.
Emerson revealed it through the medium of thought, beauty, and joy.
Lincoln showed it in action, sympathy, and suffering.
Lincoln had the deepest cravings of love, of ambition, and of religion.
His love brought him first to bereavement which shook his reason, then to
the daily tragedy of an unhappy marriage. His ambition--he said when he
entered his contest with Douglas--had proved "a failure, a flat failure."
In his crude youth he exulted in the rejection of Christianity; then he
felt the pressure of life's problems, and was powerless before them. He
could believe only what was proved,--all beyond was a sad mystery. He
bore himself for many years with honesty, kindness, humor, sadness, and
infinite patience. He did not for a while rise to the perception of the
highest truth in politics, but he was faithful to what he did see. He
lived in closest contact with ordinary men and knew them thoroughly. His
training was as a lawyer and a politician. This brought him in touch
with the every-day actuality and all its hard and mean facts. He was
disciplined in that attempt to reach justice under a code of laws which
is the practical administration of society, distinct from the idealist's
vision of perfection.
The time came when in the new birth of politics he rose to the perception
of a great moral principle,--the nation's duty toward slavery. At the
same time, his ambition again saw its opportunity. He had a strong man's
love of power, but he deliberately subordinated his personal success to
his convictions when he risked and lost the fight with Douglas for the
senatorship by the "house-divided-against-itself" speech.
In the anxious interval between his election and inauguration, he went
through, as he said long afterward, "a process of crystallization,"--a
religious consecration. He made no talk about it, but all his words and
acts thenceforth show a selfless, devoted temper.
He bore incalculable burdens and perplexities for the sake of the people.
He met the vast complication of forces which mix in politics and war--the
selfishness, hatred, meanness, triviality, along with the higher
elements--with the rarest union of shrewdness, flexibility, and
steadfastness. His humor saved him from being crushed. The atmosphere
he lived in permitted no illusions. "Politics," said he, "is the art of
combining individual meannesses for the general good."
He came to the sense of a divine purpose in which he had a part. He grew
in charity, in sympathy, in wisdom. His private griefs, such as the
death of his boy, deepened his nature. He bore burdens beyond
Hamlet's,--a temperament prone to melancholy, the death of the woman he
loved, a wife who was little comfort, an ambition which long found no
fruition and no adequate field, a baffled gaze into life's mystery; then
the responsibility of a nation in its supreme crisis, and the sense of
the nation's woe. Through it all he held fast the clew of moral fidelity.
A lover of peace, he was forced to be captain in a terrible war. "You
know me, Voorhees," he said to an old friend; "I can't bear to cut off
the head of a chicken, and here I stand among rivers of blood!"
Under overwhelming perplexities and responsibilities, amid a ceaseless
drain on his sympathies, he learned and practiced a higher fidelity and
deeper trust. At the outset was "the process of crystallization;" at the
end came "malice toward none, charity for all," "fidelity to the right as
God gives us to see the right." At last the sunrise of the nation's new
day shone full upon him. Then suddenly, painlessly, he passed into the
mystery beyond. He was loved by his people as they never loved any other
man. The world prizes its happy souls, but it takes to its inmost heart
him who is faithful in darkness.
[1] Jowett's translation.
[2] I have followed George Long's translation of Epictetus.
[3] In the language of Renan: "By this word [supernatural] I always mean
the _special_ supernatural act, miracle, or the divine intervention for a
particular end; not the general supernatural force, the hidden Soul of
the Universe, the ideal, source, and final cause of all movements in the
system of things."
IV
GLIMPSES
The virtue of truth-seeking is a modern growth. The love of
speculative truth, indeed, shines far back in antiquity, in individuals
or in little companies. But the truth-seeking quality has had its
special training through the pursuits of physical science. The
achievements of three centuries in this direction have been made under
the constant necessity of attention to reality, at whatever cost to
prepossession or desire. Watchfulness, patience, self-correction are
the requisites. There is the discipline of what Huxley calls "the
perpetual tragedy of science,--the slaying of a beautiful theory by an
ugly fact." This courage, patience, humility of the intellect, long
exercised on secondary problems, wrought into habitual and accepted
traits of the explorer, are called on at last to face the direst
ordeal. The human mind confronts the question, "Are my dearest faith
and love and hope based on reality?" To face that question, and face
it through; to yield to no despondency, however dark the answer; to
hold sometimes the best attainable answer, whether of affirmation or
denial, as only provisional, and wait for further light, whether it
come now or in a remote future, whether it come to him or to some
other,--this measures the greatness of the human spirit.
It is in this respect that our moral standards, compared with those of
Christendom for eighteen hundred years, have in a sense undergone not
merely a development but reversal. In that passage upon charity in
which the genius of early Christianity wings its highest flight, one
note alone wakes no response in us. "Charity beareth all things,
hopeth all things, endureth all things." Amen! But at "believeth all
things" we draw back. For us, the word must read "proveth all things."
So long as moral obligation was based solely on the sanction of a
supernatural world; so long as the condemnation of murder and theft and
adultery was supposed to rest on the fact that God gave two tables of
stone to Moses; so long as brotherhood and hope and trust ascribed
their charter to an incarnate Deity,--so long a _belief_ in the charter
and its history seemed the first requirement, the necessary condition
of morality. But to the modern mind the first and great commandment is
to see things as they are. The foundation of our morality, our
happiness if we are to be happy, our trust and worship if we are to
have a trust and worship,--in any event, our rule of life, our guide
and law,--must be, _follow the truth_. No sect monopolizes that
principle. It was orthodox old Nathaniel Taylor who used to bid his
students, "Go with the truth, if it takes you over Niagara!"
The question presents itself to man: "Is the Power that rules the
universe friendly to me?" It certainly does not offer the kind of
friendship which man instinctively asks. It does not give the
friendship which saves from pain, which insures ease, pleasure,
unchecked delight. Not an indulgent mother, certainly.
The starting-point for getting the question truly answered must be a
practical acceptance of the highest rule and ideal known to man.
Accepting that and following it, he rises higher and higher. He feels
himself in some inward accord with the moving forces of the universe.
The prime requisite is for him to obey, to do the right, be the heavens
kindly or hostile or indifferent. Just so, long before man knew
anything of the general laws of nature, he planted and reaped,
struggled for food and clothing, took care for himself,--he must do
long before he comprehends. So he must work righteousness and love,
God or no God. And in the summoning voice within him, the play upon
him of powers forever urging him to choose the right,--powers to which
he grows more and more sensitive as his effort is earnest,--in this he
comes to recognize some reality which has to him more significance and
impressiveness than any other thing in the world.
The working principle of the modern mind is that the universe is
orderly. Everything has its place and meaning. Man discerns in his
personal life this much of clear meaning, that he is to strive toward
the noblest ideal. As he accepts that, the conviction comes home to
him that in the highest sense the universe is friendly, for it is
attracting, urging, compelling him to the realization of his highest
dreams.
The highest intellect is always serene. Shakspere and Emerson stand at
the summit of human thought and vision; unlike as they are, both view
the spectacle of life with an intense interest, and a great though
sober cheer. If we analyze the elements which Shakspere portrays, we
might incline to judge that the sadness outweighs the joy. But the
impression left by his pages is somehow not sad. Some deeper spirit
underlies and penetrates. Back of Lear's heartbreak, Hamlet's
bewilderment, Othello's despair, we feel some presence which upholds
our courage. It is the mind of the writer, so lofty and wise that it
is not daunted by all the terrors it beholds, and which conveys to us
its own calm.
In a like mood, we may often look for ourselves on the drama of real
life, profoundly stirred by its comedies and tragedies, but not
overwhelmed,--least overwhelmed when our sight is clearest.
The sense of assurance--not of mere safety from special harm, but the
uplift of some unspeakable divine reality--comes in presence of the
grandest scenes of nature,--mountain or ocean or sunset. They supply
an external image, answering to some faculty in the soul. And when
through failure of sense or spirit the vision is obscured, the soul
becomes conscious in itself of that to which mountain and ocean are but
servants,--the reserve power to endure and to conquer which springs to
life at the stern challenge.
The deepest assurance comes not as an intellectual view nor as an
impression from the sublimities of nature. It is the outcome of the
severest conflicts and the heaviest trials. We cannot explain the
process, but we see in others or feel in ourselves this: that out of
the hardest struggle in which we have held our ground comes the deepest
peace. What serenity is to the intellectual life, that to the moral
life is this "peace which passeth understanding," this blending of
gladness and love. It is not a passive condition, but of the highest
potential energy,--the parent of all great achievements and patient
fidelities.
The soul learns to draw courage, trust, joy, and hope from its resolute
encounter with realities, without leaning on any explanation. It is
the onlooker only who despairs. Literature, so much the work of
on-lookers, exaggerates the depression. Men of action, toilers,
helpers, fathers, mothers, saints,--these do not despair. The world as
a whole, and the best part of the world, lives a life of action,
feeling, exercise of every faculty,--which generates courage, strength,
tenderness. Under all the confusion and wrong, there are still the
deep springs of that same experience, that "peace of God" which always
fed the highest life.
There is an experience sometimes felt of perfect assurance, peace, and
joy. It is "love which casteth out fear,"--the sense of being "God's
child;" it is communion with the Highest.
This is the heart of religion. It is known to "babes and sucklings,"
unknown to many otherwise very learned people. It speaks with an
absolute authority the message of love and peace, of joy and hope.
The mind is wont to clothe this message in some crude form, which
serves to convey it to others, but is like the alloy which makes the
pure gold workable, yet debases it.
This gladness of the spirit was the gospel of Jesus. He had it as no
one ever had it before. His followers caught it. They debased,
necessarily, but they spread it. They worshiped it in him, made him
their leader, master, and finally their God. They loved him as a
present reality, while they treasured the record of his human words.
In such exaltation, like the intoxication of a heavenly wine, the
untrained mind is creative in its ecstasy; hence the beautifully
conceived and easily believed stories of announcing angels, miracles of
healing, bodily resurrection.
Then came a long development of dogma and church,--much of obscuration,
much of degeneracy. Through it all survived the truths that love is
supreme, and that the law of life is goodness sublimed to holiness.
The revivals of religions have been the rediscovery of the glad truth,
freed each time from some accompanying error.
The discovery of Luther was that the soul's life in God was possible
outside of the Catholic church. Others had found this, too, but he
made it a militant truth, and successfully revolted.