Fellow-men.
"_Unus homo, nullus homo_" is a Latin proverb which means that one man
alone is no man at all. A man who should be neither son, brother,
husband, father, neighbor, citizen, or friend is inconceivable. To try
to think of such a man is like trying to think of a stone without size,
weight, surface, or color. Man is by nature a social being. Apart from
society man would not be man. "Whosoever is delighted in solitude is
either a wild beast or a god." To take out of a man all that he gets
from his relations to other men would be to take out of him kindness,
compassion, sympathy, love, loyalty, devotion, gratitude, and heroism.
It would reduce him to the level of the brutes. What water is to the
fish, what air is to the bird, that association with his fellow-men is
to a man. It is as necessary to the soul as food and raiment are to the
body. Only as we see ourselves reflected in the praise or blame, the
love or hate of others do we become conscious of ourselves.
THE DUTY.
+Since our fellow-men are so essential to us and we to them, it is our
duty to live in as intimate fellowship with them as possible.+--The
fundamental form of fellowship is hospitality. By the fireside and
around the family table we feel most free, and come nearest to one
another. Without hospitality, such intercourse is impossible.
Hospitality, in order to fulfill its mission of fellowship, must be
genuine, sincere, and simple. True hospitality welcomes the guest to our
hearts as well as to our homes; and the invitation to our homes when our
hearts are withheld is a hollow mockery. It is a dangerous thing to have
our bodies where our hearts are not. For we acquire the habit of
concealing our real selves, and showing only the surface of our natures
to others. We become hollow, unreal, hypocritical. We live and move
Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men and alien to ourselves--and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast.
Fellowship requires not only that we shall be hospitable and ask others
to our homes, but that we shall go out of our way to meet others in
their homes, and wherever they may be.
+The deepest fellowship cannot be made to order. It comes of itself
along lines of common interests and common aims.+--The harder we try to
force people together, and to make them like each other, the farther
they fly apart. Give them some interest or enthusiasm in common, whether
it be practical, or scientific, or literary, or artistic, or musical, or
religious, and this interest, which draws both toward itself at the same
time draws them toward each other. Hence a person, who from bashfulness
or any other reason is kept from intimate fellowship with others, will
often find the best way to approach them, not to force himself into
their companionship, against his will and probably against theirs; but
to acquire skill as a musician, or reader, or student of science or
letters, or philanthropy or social problems. Then along these lines of
common interest he will meet men in ways that will be at once helpful
and natural.
THE VIRTUE.
+Love is not soft, sentimental self-indulgence. It is going out of
ourselves, and taking others into our hearts and lives.+--Love calls for
hard service and severe self-sacrifice, when the needs of others make
service possible and self-sacrifice necessary. Love binds us to others
and others to ourselves in bonds of mutual fidelity and helpfulness. A
Latin poet sums up the spirit of love in the famous line:
Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.
[I am a man: and I count nothing human foreign to myself.]
Kant has expressed the principle of love in the form of a maxim: "Treat
humanity, whether in thyself or in others, always as an end, never as a
means." We have seen that the temptation to treat others merely as tools
to minister to our gratification, or as obstacles to be pushed out of
our pathway, is very strong. What makes us treat people in that way is
our failure to enter into their lives, to see things as they see them,
and to feel things as they feel them. Kant tells us that we should
always act with a view to the way others will be affected by it. We must
treat men as men, not as things. This sympathy and appreciation for
another is the first step in love. If we think of our neighbor as he
thinks of himself we cannot help wishing him well. As Professor Royce
says, "If he is real like thee, then is his life as bright a light, as
warm a fire, to him, as thine to thee; his will is as full of struggling
desires, of hard problems, of fateful decisions; his pains are as
hateful, his joys as dear. Take whatever thou knowest of desire and of
striving, of burning love and of fierce hatred, realize as fully as thou
canst what that means, and then with clear certainty add: Such as that
is for me, so it is for him, nothing less. Then thou hast known what he
truly is, a Self like thy present self."
The Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto
you, is the best summary of duty. And the keeping of that rule is
possible only in so far as we love others. We must put ourselves in
their place, before we can know how to treat them as we would like to be
treated. And this putting self in the place of another is the very
essence of love. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself includes all
social law. Love is the fulfilling of the law.
Love takes different forms in different circumstances and in different
relations. To the hungry love gives food; to the thirsty drink; to the
naked clothes; to the sick nursing; to the ignorant instruction; to the
blind guidance; to the erring reproof; to the penitent forgiveness.
Indeed, the social virtues which will occupy the remainder of this book
are simply applications of love in differing relations and toward
different groups and institutions.
THE REWARD.
+Love the only true bond of union between persons.+--The desire to be in
unity with our fellow-men is, as John Stuart Mill tells us, "already a
powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend
to become more strong, even without express inculcation, from the
influences of advancing civilization. The deeply rooted conception which
every individual even now has of himself as a social being, tends to
make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony
between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures." The
life of love is in itself a constant realization of this deepest and
strongest desire of our nature. Love is the essence of social and
spiritual life; and that life of unity with our fellow-men which love
creates is in itself love's own reward. "Life is energy of love."
Oneness with those we love is the only goal in which love could rest
satisfied. For love is "the greatest thing in the world," and any reward
other than union with its object would be a loss rather than a gain.
THE TEMPTATION.
+Kant remarks that a dove, realizing that the resistance of the air is
the sole obstacle to its progress, might imagine that if it could only
get away from the air altogether, it would fly with infinite rapidity
and ease.+--But in fact, if the air were withdrawn for an instant it
would fall helpless to the ground. Friction is the only thing the
locomotive has to overcome. And if the locomotive could reason it might
think how fast it could travel if only friction were removed. But
without friction the locomotive could not stir a hair's breadth from the
station.
In like manner, inasmuch as the greater part of our annoyances and
trials and sufferings come from contact with our fellow-men, it often
seems to us that if we could only get away from them altogether, and
live in utter indifference to them, our lives would move on with utmost
smoothness and serenity. In fact, if these relations were withdrawn, if
we could attain to perfect indifference to our fellows, our life as
human and spiritual beings would that instant cease.
The temptation to treat our fellow-men with indifference, like all
temptations, is a delusion and leads to our destruction. Yet it is a
very strong temptation to us all at times. When people do not appreciate
us, and do not treat us with due kindness and consideration, it is so
easy to draw into our shell and say, "I don't care a straw for them or
their good opinion anyway." This device is an old one. The Stoics made
much of it; and boasted of the completeness of their indifference. But
it is essentially weak and cowardly. It avoids certain evils, to be
sure. It does so, however, not by overcoming them in brave, manly
fashion; but by running and hiding away from them--an easy and a
disgraceful thing to do. Intimate fellowship and close contact with
others does bring pains as well as pleasures. It is the condition of
completeness and fullness of moral and spiritual life; and the man who
will live at his best must accept these pains with courage and
resolution.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
+The outcome of indifference and lack of sympathy and fellowship is
selfishness.+--Unless we first feel another's interests as he feels
them, we cannot help being more interested in our own affairs than we
are in his, and consequently sacrificing his interests to our own when
the two conflict. As George Eliot tells us in "Adam Bede," "Without this
fellow-feeling, how are we to get enough patience and charity toward our
stumbling, falling companions in the long, changeful journey? And there
is but one way in which a strong, determined soul can learn it, by
getting his heart-strings bound round the weak and erring, so that he
must share not only the outward consequence of their error, but their
inward suffering. That is a long and hard lesson."
+It is impossible to overcome selfishness directly.+--As long as our
poor, private interests are the only objects vividly present to our
imagination and feeling, we must be selfish. The only remedy is the
indirect one of entering into fellowship with others, interesting
ourselves in what interests them, sharing their joys and sorrows, their
hopes and fears. When we have done that, then there is something besides
our petty and narrow personal interests before our minds and thoughts;
and so we are in a way to get something besides mean and selfish actions
from our wills and hands. We act out what is in us. If there is nothing
but ourselves present to our thoughts, we shall be selfish of necessity;
and without even knowing that we are selfish. If our thoughts and
feelings are full of the welfare and interests of others we shall do
loving and unselfish deeds, without ever stopping to think that they are
loving and unselfish. Hence the precept, "Keep thy heart with all
diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." A heart and mind full
of sympathy and fellow-feeling is the secret of a loving life; and an
idle mind and an empty heart, to which no thrill of sympathy with others
is ever admitted, is the barren and desolate region from which loveless
looks and cruel words and selfish deeds come forth.
+Love is not a virtue which we can cultivate in ourselves by direct
effort of will, and then take credit for afterward.+--Love comes to us
of itself; it springs up spontaneously within our breasts. We can
prepare our hearts for its entrance; we can welcome and cherish it when
it comes. We cannot boast of it, for we could not help it. Love is the
welling up within us of our true social nature; which nothing but our
indifference and lack of sympathy could have kept so long repressed.
"Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself
unseemly, seeketh not its own." Love "seeketh not its own" because it
has no own to seek.
+Selfishness on the contrary knows all about itself; has a good opinion
of itself; never gets its own interests mixed up with those of anybody
else; can always give a perfectly satisfactory account of itself.+
Hence when we know exactly how we came to do a thing, and appreciate
keenly how good it was of us to do it; and think how very much obliged
the other person ought to be to us for doing it, we may be pretty sure
that it was not love, but some more or less subtle form of selfishness
that prompted it. Love and selfishness may do precisely the same things.
Under the influence of either love or selfishness I may "bestow all my
goods to feed the poor and give my body to be burned," but love alone
profiteth; while all the subtle forms of selfishness and self-seeking
are "sounding brass and clanging cymbal." Selfishness, even when it does
a service, has its eye on its own merit, or the reward it is to gain. In
so doing it forfeits merit and reward both. Selfishness never succeeds
in getting outside of itself. From all the joys and graces of the social
life it remains in perpetual banishment. Love loses itself in the
object loved, and so finds a larger and better self. Selfishness tries
to use the object of its so-called love as a means to its own
gratification, and so remains to the end in loveless isolation. Many
manifestations of selfishness look very much like love. To know the real
difference is the most fundamental moral insight. On it depend the
issues of life and death.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
+The most flagrant mockery of love is sentimentality.+--The
sentimentalist is on hand wherever there is a chance either to mourn or
to rejoice. He is never so happy as when he is pouring forth a gush of
feeling; and it matters little whether it be laughter or tears, sorrow
or joy, to which he is permitted to give vent. On the surface he seems
to be overflowing with the milk of human kindness. He strikes us at
first sight as the very incarnation of tenderness and love.
And yet we soon discover that he cares nothing for us, or for our joys
and sorrows in themselves. Anybody else, or any other occasion, would
serve his purpose as well, and call forth an equal copiousness of
sympathy and tears. Indeed a first rate novel, with its suffering
heroine, or a good play with its pathetic scenes, would answer his
purpose quite as well as any living person or actual situation. What he
cares for is the thrill of emotional excitement and the ravishing
sensation which accompanies all deep and tender feeling. Not love, but
love's delights; not sympathy, but the rapture of the sympathetic mood;
not helpfulness, but the sense of self-importance which comes from being
around when great trials are to be met and fateful decisions are to be
made; not devotion to others, but the complacency with self which
intimate connection with others gives: these are the objects at which
the sentimentalist really aims.
+The sentimentalist makes himself a nuisance to others and soon becomes
disgusted with himself.+--He cannot be relied upon for any serious
service, for this gush of sentimental feeling is a transient and
fluctuating thing; it gives out just as soon as it meets with difficulty
and occasion for self-sacrifice. And this attempt to live forever on the
topmost wave of emotional excitement defeats itself by the satiety and
ennui which it brings. Whether in courtship, or society, or business, it
behooves us to be on our guard against this insidious sham which cloaks
selfishness in protestations of affection; pays compliments to show off
its own ability to say pretty things; and undertakes responsibilities to
make the impression of being of some consequence in the world. The man
or woman is extremely fortunate who has never fallen a victim to this
hollow mockery of love, either in self or others. The worst effect of
sentimentality is that when we have detected it a few times, either in
ourselves or in others, we are tempted to conclude that fellowship
itself is a farce, love a delusion, and all sympathy and tenderness a
weakness and a sham. Every good thing has its counterfeit. By all means
let this counterfeit be driven from circulation as fast as possible. But
let us not lose faith in human fellowship and human love because this
base imitation is so hollow and disgusting:
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear,--believe the aged friend,--
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is;
And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost
Such prize despite the envy of the world,
And having gained truth, keep truth, that is all.
THE PENALTY.
+The penalty of selfishness is strife.+--The selfish man can neither
leave men entirely alone, nor can he live at peace and in unity with
them. Hence come strife and division. Being unwilling to make the
interests of others his own, the selfish man's interests must clash with
the interests of others. His hand is against every man; and every man's
hand, unless it is stayed by generosity and pity, is against him. This
clashing of outside interests is reflected in his own consciousness; and
the war of his generous impulses with his selfish instincts makes his
own breast a perpetual battlefield. The lack of harmony with his fellows
in the outward world makes peace within his own soul impossible. The
selfish man, by cutting himself off from his true relations with his
fellow-men, cuts up the roots of the only principles which could give to
his own life dignity and harmony and peace. Selfishness defeats itself.
By refusing to go out of self into the lives of others, the selfish man
renders it impossible for the great life of human sympathy and
fellowship and love to enter his own life, and fill it with its own
largeness and sweetness and serenity. The selfish man remains to the
last an alien, an outcast and an enemy, banished from all that is best
in the life of his fellows by the insuperable obstacle of his own
unwillingness to be one with them in mutual helpfulness and service.