hardship, and, if need be, to lose his life. The explorer must resolve
to be impervious to exquisite little tortures, to forget comforts, and
be a stranger to luxuries; to lose _his_ life, even, in order that the
world may add another line or dot to its maps. The explorer-missionary
must do all these things, and add to them the zeal for others that shall
illumine his labors, and make him at one with God. David Livingstone had
all these qualities, coupled with the sublime indifference of the truly
great to the mere side issues of life. You and I sit down to our
comfortable meals, sleep in our well-appointed beds, read our Bibles
with perfunctory boredom, and babble an occasional prayer for those who
endure hardships--when we are reminded from the pulpit to do so. When we
read of some awful calamity, such as has blazoned across the pages of
history within the past few weeks, we shudder that men should lay down
their lives in the barren wastes of ice. When we read of the thirty
years of steady suffering which Livingstone endured in the forests of
Africa, the littleness of our own lives comes home to us with awful
realization. You who fear to walk the streets with a coat of last
year's cut, listen to his half whimsical account of how he "came to the
Cape in 1852, with a black coat eleven years out of fashion, and Mrs.
Livingstone and the children half naked." You who shudder at the tale of
a starving child in the papers, and lamely wonder why the law allows
such things, read his recital of the sufferings of his wife and little
ones during the days without water under a tropic sun, and of the
splendid heroism of the mother who did not complain, and the father who
did not dare meet her eye, for fear of the unspoken reproach therein.
He was never in sufficient funds, and what little means he could gather
here and there were often stolen from him, or he found himself cheated
out of what few supplies he could get together to carry on his travels.
Months of delay occurred, and sometimes it seemed that all his labors
and struggles would end in futility; that the world would be little
better for his sufferings; yet that patient, Christian fortitude
sustained him with unfaltering courage through the most distressing
experiences. Disease, weakening, piteous, unromantic, unheroic, wasted
his form; ulcers, sores, horrible and hideous, made his progress slow
and his work sometimes a painful struggle over what many a man would
have deemed impossible barriers. The loss of his wife came to him twelve
years after she had elected to cast in her lot with his, but like Brutus
of old, he could exclaim,
"With meditating that she must die once,
I have the patience to endure it now.
Stanley could but marvel at such patience. On that memorable day when
they met, and the younger man gave the doctor his letters, he tells how
"Livingstone kept the letter-bag on his knee, then, presently opened it,
looked at the letters contained there, read one or two of his children's
letters, his face in the meanwhile lighting up. He asked me to tell him
the news, "No, Doctor," said I, "read your letters first, which I am
sure you must be impatient to read." "Ah," said he, "I have waited years
for letters, and I have been taught patience."
To you, of the younger generation, what a marvel, what a world of
meaning in those words--"I have been taught patience." We, who fret and
chafe because the whole world will not bend its will to our puny
strivings, and turn its whole course that we might have our unripe
desires fulfilled, should read and re-read of the man who could wait,
because he knew that time and all eternity would be bent to meet his
desires in time.
Livingstone's is a character that we cannot help but venerate; that
calls forth all one's enthusiasm; that evokes nothing but sincerest
admiration. He was sensitive, but so is any man of a high mind and
generous nature; he was sensitive on the point of being doubted or
criticised by the easy-chair geographers, lolling comfortably in their
clubs and scanning through their monocles the maps which the hard
working travellers had made. He was humble-souled, as are all the truly
great. His gentleness never forsook him; his hopefulness never deserted
him. No harassing anxiety, distraction of mind, long separation from
home and kindred, could make him complain. He thought all would come
out right at last, such faith had he in the goodness of Providence. The
sport of adverse circumstances; the plaything of the miserable slaves,
which were persistently sent him from Zanzibar, baffled and worried,
even almost to the grave; yet he would not desert the charge imposed
upon him. To the stern dictates of duty alone did he sacrifice his home
and ease, the pleasures, refinements, and luxuries of civilized life.
His was the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the
enduring heroism of the Englishman--never to relinquish his work, though
his heart yearned for home; never to surrender his obligations, until he
could write "Finis" to his work.
Yet who shall say that the years spent alone at the very heart of Nature
had not made him the possessor of that "inward eye," which, as
Wordsworth says, "is the bliss of solitude." For many years he lived in
Africa deprived of books, and yet when Stanley found him, he learned to
his surprise, that Livingstone could still recite whole poems from
Byron, Burns, Tennyson, Longfellow, and other great poets. The reason is
found in the fact that all his life he lived within himself. He lived in
a world in which he revolved inwardly, out of which he awoke only to
attend to his immediate practical necessities. It was a happy inner
world, peopled with his own friends, acquaintances, relatives, readings,
ideas, and associations. Blessed is the man who has found the inner life
more real than the trivial outer one. To him mere external annoyances
are but as the little insects, which he may brush away at will. No man
can be truly great who has not built up for himself a subjective world
into which he may retire at will. The little child absorbed in a
mythical land peopled by fairies and Prince Charmings is nearest to
possessing such an inner life; and we must become as little children. To
some it is a God-given gift; others may acquire it, as Jack London tells
us, by "going into the waste places, and there sitting down with our
souls." There comes then, the overwhelming realization of the charms and
beauties of nature--man is a pygmy, an abstraction, an unreality. This
had come to our hero. Added to the strength of his inner life
Livingstone had the deep sympathy with Nature in all her moods. He
became enthusiastic when he described the beauties of the Moero scenery.
The splendid mountains, tropical vegetation, thundering cataracts, noble
rivers, stirred his soul into poetic expression. His tired spirit
expanded in the presence of the charms of nature. He could never pass
through an African forest, with its solemn stillness and serenity,
without wishing to be buried quietly under the dead leaves where he
would be sure to rest undisturbed. In England, there was no elbow-room,
the graves were often desecrated, and ever since he had buried his wife
in the woods of Shupanga, he had sighed for just such a spot, where his
weary bones would receive the eternal rest they coveted. But even this
last wish was denied him, and the noisy honors and crowded crypt of
Westminster Abbey claimed him, far away from the splendid solitude he
craved. All Africa should have been his tomb. He should never have been
forced to share with hundreds of others a meagre and scant
resting-place. Yet there is food for rejoicing in the knowledge, that
though his body was borne away, his heart was buried by his beloved
natives in the forest.
The study of Dr. Livingstone would not be even superficially complete if
we did not take the religious side of his character into consideration.
By religion, we do not mean the faith he professed, the particular
tenets he believed, the especial catechism he studied, or any
hair-splitting doctrine he might have upheld, but that deeper ethical
side of manhood, without which there can be no true manhood.
Livingstone's religion was not of the theoretical kind, but it was a
constant, earnest, sincere practise. It was neither demonstrative nor
loud, but manifested itself in a quiet, practical way, and was always at
work. It was not aggressive, nor troublesome, nor impertinent. In him,
religion exhibited its loveliest features; it governed his conduct not
only towards his servants, but towards the natives, the bigoted
Mohammedans, and all with whom he came in contact. Without it,
Livingstone, with his ardent temperament, his enthusiasm, his high
spirit and courage, must have become uncompanionable, and a hard master.
Religion had tamed him, and made him a Christian gentleman; the crude
and wilful were refined and subdued; religion had made him the most
companionable of men and indulgent of masters--a man whose society was
pleasurable to a high degree.
If his life held for us no other message than this, it would hold
enough. Unfortunately the youth of to-day is apt to chafe when the
ideal of Christianity and manly religion is held up to him. He thinks of
the religious man as a milksop, a mollycoddle. He cannot associate him
in his mind with the doing of great deeds, the thinking of great
thoughts. His ideal of manhood is the ruthless Man on Horseback, with
too often a disregard of the sacred things of life. Sometimes, if the
youth of to-day thinks at all, he runs riot into ethics, forgetting
that, after all, there could be no ethics without a firm base of
religion. And so he wastes many precious years before he learns that all
the greatest men whom the world has known drew their strength and power
from the unseen and the spiritual.
We have noticed that Livingstone's religion was not aggressive nor
impertinent. Early in his career as a missionary, he recognized the
truth that if he were to exercise any influence on the native Africans,
it would not be by bringing to them an abstraction in place of their own
savage ideals. His influence depended entirely upon persuasion, and by
awakening within their minds the sense of right and wrong. "We never
wished them to do right," he says, "because it would be pleasing to us,
nor think themselves to blame when they did wrong." Worldly affairs, and
temporal benefits with the natives were paramount, so he did not force
abstractions upon them but, with a keen insight into human nature, as
well as into savage human nature, he reached their higher selves through
the more worldly.
His was a pure and tender-hearted nature, full of humanity and sympathy,
modest as a maiden, unconscious of his own greatness, with the
simplicity we have noted before, the simplicity of the truly great. His
soul could be touched to its depths by the atrocities of the Arab
slave-traders, yet he forgot his own sufferings in the desire to make
others immune from suffering. He had but one rule of life, that which he
gave to the Scotch school children, whom he once addressed:
"Fear God and work hard!"
* * * * *
It is one hundred years since this quiet, high-souled man was given the
world, in the little Scotch village, and yet another hundred may pass
away and still his life will be as a clarion call to the youth of the
world to emulate his manhood. For the world needs men now, as it never
needed them before,
"Men, high-minded men,
With powers as far above dull brutes endued
In forest brake or den, as beasts excel cold rocks and rambles rude."
Such a man was Livingstone, not afraid to be meek in order to be great;
not afraid to "fear God and work hard;" not ashamed to stoop in order
that he might raise others to his high estate. He gave the world a
continent and a conscience; with the lavishness almost of Nature herself
he bestowed cataracts and rivers, lakes and mountains, forests and
valleys, upon his native land. He stirred the soul of the civilized
world to the atrocities of the slave trade, and he made it realize that
humanity may be found even in the breast of a savage. When he laid down
his life in the forest he loved, he laid upon the altar of humanity and
science the costliest and sweetest sacrifice that it had known for many
a weary age.
What message has this life for us to-day, we the commonplace, the
mediocre, the unknown to fame and fortune? Shall we fold our hands when
we read of such heroes and say, "Ah, yes, he could be great, but I? I am
weak and humble, I have not the opportunity?" Who was more humble than
the poor boy spinning in the cotton-mill; who was less constrained by
Fortune's frowns than the humble missionary? His life brings to us the
message of doing well with that little we have.
We cannot all be with Peary at the North Pole, nor die the death of the
hero, Scott, on the frozen Antarctic continent. It is not given to us to
be explorers; it is not given us to be pioneers; we may not discover
vast continents, name great lakes, nor gaze with wonder-stricken eyes
upon the rolling of a mighty unknown river. But to each and all of us
comes the divine opportunity to carve for himself a niche, be it ever so
tiny, in the memories of men. We can heed the admonition of Carlyle, "Be
no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even a Worldkin. Produce! Produce!
Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce
it in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee, out with it then!"
The life of service; the life of unselfish giving--this must
Livingstone's life mean to us. Unselfish, ungrudging lavishing of life
and soul, even to the last drop of heart's blood. Service that does not
hesitate because the task seems small, or the waiting weary; service
that does not fear to be of no account in the eyes of the world. Truly,
indeed, might Wordsworth's apostrophe to Milton be ascribed to him:
"Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way
In cheerful godliness, and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay."
EDUCATION FOR MANHOOD[48]
BY KELLY MILLER
[Note 48: Reprinted from _Kelly Miller's Monographic Magazine_,
April, 1913.]
We must keep clearly in mind the proposition that the educational
process is always under domination of contemporary opinion. The
education prescribed for any class is likely to be conditioned upon the
presumed relationship of that class to the social body. When woman was
regarded as an inferior creature, whose destiny was to serve as a tool
and plaything of man, she was accorded only such education as would fit
her for this subsidiary function. Any other training was regarded as
unnecessary and mischievous. It is only within comparatively recent
times, when man began to realize the essential human quality and powers
of the female sex, and deemed it not mockery to place her on the same
footing with himself, that the comprehensive education of woman has
become a possibility.
The traditional relation of the American Negro to the society of which
he forms a part is too well known to need extensive treatment in this
connection. The African slave was introduced into this country as a pure
animal instrumentality to perform the rougher work under dominion of his
white lord and master. There was not the remotest thought of his human
personality. No more account was taken of his higher qualities than of
the higher susceptibilities of the lower animals. His mission was
considered to be as purely mechanical as that of the ox which pulls the
plow. Indeed, his human capabilities were emphatically denied. It was
stoutly contended that he did not possess a soul to be saved in the
world to come nor a mind to be enlightened in the world that now is.
Under the dominion of this dogma, education was absolutely forbidden
him. It became a crime even to attempt to educate this _tertium quid_
which was regarded as little more than brute and little less than human.
The white race, in its arrogant conceit, constituted the personalities
and the Negro the instrumentalities. Man may be defined as a
distinction-making animal. He is ever prone to set up barriers between
members of his own species and to deny one part of God's human creatures
the inalienable birthright vouchsafed to all alike. But the process was
entirely logical and consistent with the prevailing philosophy.
The anti-slavery struggle stimulated the moral energy of the American
people in a manner that perhaps has never had a parallel in the history
of vicarious endeavor. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
In dealing with fundamental principles of human rights and human wrongs
involved in the issue of slavery, these moral reformers found that the
Negro was a human being, endowed with heart and mind and conscience like
as themselves; albeit these powers of personality had long been
smothered and imbruted by centuries of suppression and harsh usage.
These philanthropists believed in the essential manhood of the Negro.
This belief was the chief dynamic of their endeavor. Upon this
foundation they not only broke the Negro's chain, but clothed him with
political and civic prerogative as an American citizen. They established
schools and colleges and universities for him because they believed in
his higher susceptibilities. To-day we are almost astounded at the
audacity of their faith. They projected a scheme of education comparable
with the standards set up for the choicest European youth for a race
which had hitherto been submerged below the zero point of intelligence.
These schools and colleges founded and fostered on this basis were the
beginnings of the best that there is in the race and the highest which
it can hope to be.
But, alas, as the passion engendered by the war grew weaker and weaker,
the corresponding belief in the Negro has also declined, and the old
dogma concerning his mission as a human tool has begun to reassert
itself. In certain sections the white race has always claimed that the
Negro should not be encouraged in the development of personality. The
denial of the designation "mister" is suggestive of this disposition.
With them the term "mister" is made to mean a direct designation of
personality. There is no objection to such titles as "doctor,"
"reverend" or "professor," as these connote professional rather than
personal quality.
Our whole educational activities are under the thrall of this retrograde
spirit. We are marking time rather than moving forward. The work is
being carried on rather than up. Our bepuzzled pedagogues are seriously
reflecting over the query, _Cui bono?_--Is it worth while? Few, indeed,
are left who have the intensity of belief and the intrepidity of spirit
to defend the higher pretentions of the Negro without apology or
equivocation. The old form of appeal has become insipid and uninspiring;
the ear has become dull to its dinging. The old blade has become blunt
and needs a new sharpness of point and keenness of edge. Where now is
heard the tocsin call whose key-note a generation ago resounded from the
highlands of Kentucky and Tennessee to the plains of the Carolinas
calling the black youths, whose hopes ran high within their bosoms, to
rise and make for higher things? This clarion note, though still for the
nonce, shall not become a lost chord. Its inspiring tones must again
appeal to the youth to arise to their higher assertion and exertion. If
you wish to reach and inspire the life of the people, the approach must
be made not to the intellectual, nor yet to the feelings, as the final
basis of appeal, but to the manhood that lies back of these. That
education of youth, especially the suppressed class, that does not make
insistent and incessant appeals to the smothered manhood (I had almost
said godhood) within, will prove to be but vanity and vexation of
spirit. What boots a few chapters in Chemistry, or pages in History, or
paragraphs in Philosophy, unless they result in an enlarged appreciation
of one's own manhood? Those who are to stand in the high places of
intellectual, moral, and spiritual leadership of such a people in such a
time as this must be made to feel deep down in their own souls their own
essential manhood. They must believe that they are created in the image
of God and that nothing clothed in human guise is a more faithful
likeness of the original. This must be the dominant note in the
education of the Negro. If the note itself is not new, there must at
least be a newness of emphasis and insistence. The Negro must learn in
school what the white boy absorbs from association and environment. The
American white man in his ordinary state is supremely conscious of his
manhood prerogative. He may be ignorant or poor or vicious; yet he never
forgets that he is a man. But every feature of our civilization is
calculated to impress upon the Negro a sense of his inferiority and to
make him feel and believe that he is good for nothing but to be cast out
and trodden under foot of other men. A race, like an individual, that
compromises its own self-respect, paralyzes and enfeebles its own
energies. The motto which should be engraved upon the conscience of
every American Negro is that which Milton places in the mouth of His
Satanic Majesty: "The mind is its own place and of itself can make a
heaven of hell; a hell of heaven." To inculcate this principle is the
highest mission of the higher education. The old theologians used to
insist upon the freedom of the will, but the demand of the Negro to-day
is for the freedom and independence of his own spirit. Destroy this and
all is lost; preserve it, and though political rights, civil privileges,
industrial opportunities be taken away for the time, they will all be
regained.
By the development of manhood on the part of the Negro nothing is
farther from my thought than the inculcation of that pugnacious, defiant
disposition which vents itself in wild ejaculations and impotent
screaming against the evils of society. I mean the full appreciation of
essential human qualities and claims, and the firm, unyielding
determination to press forward to the mark of this calling, and not to
be swerved from its pursuit by doubt, denial, danger, rebuff, ridicule,
insult, and contemptuous treatment. While the Negro may not have it
within his power to resist or overcome these things, he must preserve
the integrity of his own soul.
The higher education of the Negro up to this point has been very largely
under the direction and control of philanthropy. The support has come
almost wholly from that source. The development of this sense of manhood
should be the highest concern of a wise, discriminating philanthropy,
for if this is once developed the Negro will be able to handle his own
situation and relieve his philanthropic friends from further
consideration or concern; but, if he fails to develop this spirit of
manhood, he will be but a drag upon the resources of philanthropy for
all times to come.
The Negro must develop courage and self-confidence. A grasp upon the
principles of knowledge gives the possessor the requisite spirit of
confidence. To the timid, the world is full of mystery manipulated and
controlled by forces and powers beyond their ken to comprehend. But
knowledge convinces us that there is no mystery in civilization. The
railroad, the steamship, and the practical projects that loom so large
to the unreflecting, are but the result of the application of thought to
things. The mechanical powers and forces of Nature are open secrets for
all who will undertake to unravel the mystery. And so it is with
essential and moral principles. The one who will have himself rooted and
grounded in the fundamental principles of things can look with
complacence upon the panorama of the world's progress. The Negro should
plant one foot on the Ten Commandments and the other on the Binomial
Theorem: he can then stand steadfast and immovable, however the rain of
racial wrath may fall or the angry winds of prejudice may blow and beat
upon him.