cents. Beyond and above the class who run an account with the world and
merely manage honestly to pay _in kind_ for what they receive, there is
a noble army—the Shakespeares and Miltons, the Newtons, Galileos and
Darwins,—Watts, Morse, Howe, Lincoln, Garrison, John Brown—a part of the
world’s roll of honor—whose price of board and keep dwindles into
nothingness when compared with what the world owes them; men who have
taken of the world’s bread and paid for it in immortal thoughts,
invaluable inventions, new facilities, heroic deeds of loving
self-sacrifice; men who dignify the world for their having lived in it
and to whom the world will ever bow in grateful worship as its heroes
and benefactors. It may not be ours to stamp our genius in enduring
characters—but we can give what we are _at its best_.
Visiting the slave market in Boston one day in 1761, Mrs. John Wheatley
was attracted by the modest demeanor and intelligent countenance of a
delicate looking black girl just from the slave ship. She was quite nude
save for a piece of coarse carpet she had tied about her loins, and the
only picture she could give of her native home was that she remembered
her mother in the early morning every day pouring out water before the
rising sun. The benevolent Mrs. Wheatley expended some labor in
polishing up this crude gem, and in 1773 the gifted Phillis gave to the
world a small octavo volume of one hundred and twenty precious pages,
published in London and dedicated to the Countess of Huntingdon. In
1776, for some lines she had sent him, she received from the greatest
American the following tribute dated at Cambridge:
MISS PHILLIS:— ... I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice
of me in the elegant lines you enclosed; and however undeserving I
may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit
a striking proof of your poetical talents; in honor of which and as
a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the poem had I
not been apprehensive that, while I only meant to give the world
this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the
imputation of vanity. This and nothing else determined me not to
give it place in the public prints. If you should ever come to
Cambridge or near headquarters, I shall be happy to see a person so
favored by the Muses, and to whom nature has been so liberal and
beneficent in her dispensations. I am, with great respect,
Your obedient humble servant,
GEORGE WASHINGTON.
That girl paid her debts _in song_.
In South Carolina there are two brothers, colored men, who own and
conduct one of the most extensive and successful farms in this country
for floriculture. Their system of irrigating and fertilizing is the most
scientific in the state, and by their original and improved methods of
grafting and cultivating they have produced a new and rich variety of
the rose called _Loiseaux_, from their name. Their roses are famous
throughout Europe and are specially prized by the French for striking
and marvellous beauty. The Loiseaux brothers send out the incense of
their grateful returns to the world in the _sweet fragrance of roses_.
Some years ago a poor and lowly orphan girl stood with strange emotions
before a statue of Benjamin Franklin in Boston. Her bosom heaved and her
eyes filled as she whispered between her clenched teeth, “Oh, how I
would like to make a stone man?” Wm. Lloyd Garrison became her
providence and enlarged her opportunity; _she paid for it_ in giving to
the world the _Madonna with the Christ and adoring Angels_, now in the
collection of the Marquis of Bute. From her studio in Rome Edmonia
Lewis, the colored sculptress, continues to increase the debt of the
world to her by her graceful thoughts in the chaste marble.
On May 27, 1863, a mixed body of troops in blue stood eagerly expectant
before a rebel stronghold. On the extreme right of the line, a post of
honor and of danger, were stationed the Negro troops, the first and
third regiments of the Louisiana Native Guards. On going into action,
says an eye witness, they were 1080 strong, and formed into four lines,
Lieut.-Colonel Bassett, 1st Louisiana, forming the first line, and
Lieut.-Colonel Henry Finnegas the second. Before any impression had been
made upon the earth works of the enemy, and in full face of the
batteries belching forth their sixty-two pounders, the order to charge
was given,—and the black regiment rushed forward to encounter grape,
canister, shell and musketry, having no artillery but two small
howitzers—which seemed mere pop-guns to their adversaries—and with no
reserve whatever. The terrible fire from the rebel guns upon the
unprotected masses mowed them down like grass. Colonel Bassett being
driven back, Colonel Finnegas took his place, and his men being
similarly cut to pieces, Bassett reformed and recommenced. And thus
these brave fellows went on from 7 o’clock in the morning till 3:30 p.
m., under the most hideous carnage that men ever had to withstand.
During this time they rallied and were ordered to make six distinct
charges, losing thirty-seven killed, one hundred and fifty-five wounded,
and one hundred and sixteen missing, “the majority, if not all of
these,” adds a correspondent of the New York Times, who was an eye
witness of the fight, “being in all probability now lying dead on the
gory field without the rights of sepulture! _for when, by flag of truce
our forces in other directions were permitted to reclaim their dead, the
benefit, through some neglect, was not extended to these black
regiments_.”
“The deeds of heroism,” he continues, “performed by these colored men
were such as the proudest white men might emulate. Their colors are torn
to pieces by shot, and literally bespattered by blood and brains. The
color-sergeant of the 1st La. on being mortally wounded, hugged the
colors to his breast when a struggle ensued between the two
color-corporals on each side of him as to who should bear the sacred
standard—and during this generous contention one of the corporals was
wounded. One black lieutenant mounted the enemy’s works three or four
times, and in one charge the assaulting party came within fifty paces of
them. If only ordinarily supported by artillery and reserve, no one can
convince us that they would not have opened a passage through the
enemy’s works. Captain Callioux, of the 1st La., a man so black that he
prided himself on his blackness, died the death of a hero leading on his
men in the thickest of the fight. One poor wounded fellow came along
with his arm shattered by a shell, jauntily swinging it with the other,
as he said to a friend of mine: ‘Massa, guess I can fight no more.’ I
was with one of the captains looking after the wounded, when we met one
limping along toward the front. Being asked where he was going, he said,
‘I been shot in de leg, cap’n, an’ dey wants me to go to de hospital—but
I reckon I c’n gib ’em some mo’ yit.’”
Says Major-General Banks in the report from Headquarters of the Army of
the Gulf, before Port Hudson, May 30, 1863, writing to Major-General
Halleck, General-in-Chief at Washington: “The position occupied by the
Negro troops was one of importance and called for the utmost steadiness
and bravery in those to whom it was confided. It gives me pleasure to
report that they answered every expectation. Their conduct was heroic.
No troops could be more determined or more daring.”
“‘Charge!’ Trump and drum awoke,
Onward the bondmen broke;
Bayonet and sabre-stroke
Vainly opposed their rush.
Through the wild battle’s crush,
With but one thought aflush,
Driving their lords like chaff,
In the guns’ mouths they laugh;
Or at the slippery brands
Leaping with open hands,
Down they bear man and horse,
Down in their awful course;
Trampling with bloody heel
Over the crashing steel,
All their eyes forward bent,
Rushed the black regiment.
‘Freedom!’ their battle-cry—
‘Freedom! or leave to die!’
Ah! and they meant the word,
Not as with us ’tis heard,
Not a mere party-shout:
_They gave their spirits out_.
Trusted the end to God,
And on the gory sod
Rolled in triumphant blood!”
And thus they paid _their debt_. “They gave—_their spirits out_!”
In the heart of what is known as the “Black Belt” of Alabama and within
easy reach of the great cotton plantations of Georgia, Mississippi, and
Florida, a devoted young colored man ten years ago started a school with
about thirty Negro children assembled in a comical looking shanty at
Tuskegee. His devotion was contagious and his work grew; an abandoned
farm of 100 acres was secured and that gradually grew to 640 acres,
largely wood-land, on which a busy and prosperous school is located; and
besides a supply farm was added, of heavy rich land, 800 acres, from
which grain and sugar cane are main products. Since 1881, 2,947 students
have been taught here, of whom 102 have graduated, while 200 more have
received enough training to fit them to do good work as teachers,
intelligent farmers, and mechanics. The latest enrollment shows girls,
247; boys, 264. Of the 102 graduates, 70 per cent. are teachers,
ministers and farmers. They usually combine teaching and farming. Three
are printers (learned the trades at school), one is a tinner, one a
blacksmith, one a wheel-wright, three are merchants, three are
carpenters, others in the professions or filling miscellaneous
positions.
That man is paying his debt by giving to this country _living, working,
consecrated men and women_!
Now each can give something. It may not be a poem, or marble bust, or
fragrant flower even; it may not be ours to place our lives on the altar
of country as a loving sacrifice, or even to devote our living
activities so extensively as B. T. Washington to supplying the world’s
need for strong and willing helpers. But we can at least _give
ourselves_. Each can be _one_ of those strong willing helpers—even
though nature has denied him the talent of endlessly multiplying his
force. And nothing less can honorably cancel our debt. Each is under a
most sacred obligation not to squander the material committed to him,
not to sap its strength in folly and vice, and to see at the least that
he delivers a product worthy the labor and cost which have been expended
on him. A sound manhood, a true womanhood is a fruit which the lowliest
can grow. And it is a commodity of which the supply never exceeds the
demand. There is no danger of the market being glutted. The world will
always want _men_. The worth of one is infinite. To this value all other
values are merely relative. Our money, our schools, our governments, our
free institutions, our systems of religion and forms of creeds are all
first and last to be judged by this standard: what sort of men and women
do they grow? How are men and women being shaped and molded by this
system of training, under this or that form of government, by this or
that standard of moral action? You propose a new theory of education;
_what sort of men does it turn out?_ Does your system make boys and
girls superficial and mechanical? Is it a producing of average
percentages or a rounding out of manhood,—a sound, thorough, and
practical development,—or a scramble for standing and marks?
We have a notion here in America that our political institutions,—the
possibilities of a liberal and progressive democracy, founded on
universal suffrage and in some hoped-for, providential way _compelling_
universal education and devotion,—our peculiar American attainments are
richly worth all they have cost in blood and anguish. But our form of
government, divinely ordered as we dream it to be, must be brought to
the bar to be tested by this standard. It is nothing worth of
itself—independently of whether it furnishes a good atmosphere in which
to cultivate men. Is it developing a self-respecting freedom, a sound
manliness on the part of _the individual_—or does it put into the power
of the wealthy few the opportunity and the temptation to corrupt the
many? If our vaunted “_rule of the people_” does not breed nobler men
and women than monarchies have done—it must and will inevitably give
place to something better.
I care not for the theoretical symmetry and impregnable logic of your
moral code, I care not for the hoary respectability and traditional
mysticisms of your theological institutions, I care not for the beauty
and solemnity of your rituals and religious ceremonies, I care not even
for the reasonableness and unimpeachable fairness of your social
ethics,—if it does not turn out better, nobler, truer men and women,—if
it does not add to the world’s stock of valuable souls,—if it does not
give us a sounder, healthier, more reliable product from this great
factory of _men_—I will have none of it. I shall not try to test your
logic, but weigh your results—and that test is the _measure of the
stature of the fullness of a man_. You need not formulate and establish
the credibility and authenticity of Christian Evidences, when you can
demonstrate and prove the present value of CHRISTIAN MEN. And this test
for systems of belief, for schools of thought, and for theories of
conduct, is also the ultimate and inevitable test of nations, of races
and of individuals. What sort of men do you turn out? _How_ are you
supplying the great demands of the world’s market? What is your true
value? This, we may be sure, will be the final test by which the colored
man in America will one day be judged in the cool, calm, unimpassioned,
unprejudiced second thought of the American people.
Let us then quietly commend ourselves to this higher court—this final
tribunal. Short sighted idiosyncracies are but transient phenomena. It
is futile to combat them, and unphilosophical to be depressed by them.
To allow such things to overwhelm us, or even to absorb undue thought,
is an admission of weakness. As sure as time _is—these mists will clear
away_. And the world—our world, will surely and unerringly see us as we
are. Our only care need be the intrinsic worth of our contributions. If
we represent the ignorance and poverty, the vice and destructiveness,
the vagabondism and parasitism in the world’s economy, no amount of
philanthropy and benevolent sentiment can win for us esteem: and if we
contribute a positive value in those things the world prizes, no amount
of negrophobia can ultimately prevent its recognition. And our great
“problem” after all is to be solved not by brooding over it, and orating
about it, but by _living into it_.
THE GAIN FROM A BELIEF.
A solitary figure stands in the marketplace, watching as from some
lonely tower the busy throng that hurry past him. A strange contrast his
cold, intellectual eye to the eager, strained, hungry faces that surge
by in their never ending quest of wealth, fame, glory, bread.
Mark his pallid cheek and haggard brow, and the fitful gleam of those
restless eyes like two lone camp-fires on a deserted plain.
Why does that smile, half cynical, half sad, flit across his countenance
as he contemplates these mighty heart throbs of human passions and woes,
human hopes and human fears? Is it pity—is it contempt—is it hate for
this struggling, working, believing humanity which curls those lips and
settles upon that hitherto indifferent brow?
Who is he?
Earth’s skepticism looking on at the protean antics of earth’s
enthusiasms. Speculative unbelief, curiously and sneeringly watching the
humdrum, commonplace, bread-and-butter toil of unspeculative belief.
Lofty, unimpassioned agnosticism, _that thinks_—face to face with
hobbling, blundering, unscientific faith, _that works_.
Dare we approach?
“Sir: I perceive you are not drawn into the whirl-pool of hurrying
desires that sweep over earth’s restless sons. Your philosophy, I
presume, lifts you above the toils and anxieties the ambitions and
aspirations of the common herd. Pardon me, but do you not feel called to
devote those superior powers of yours to the uplifting of your less
favored brethren? May not you pour the oil of human kindness and love on
these troubled waters? May not your wisdom shape and direct the channel
of this tortuous stream, building up here, and clearing out there, till
this torrent become once more a smiling river, reflecting Heaven’s pure
love in its silvery bosom, and again this fruitful valley blossom with
righteousness and peace? Does not your soul burn within you as you look
on this seething mass of struggling, starving, sinning souls? Are you
not inspired to lift up despairing, sinking, grovelling man,—to wipe the
grime and tears from his marred countenance, and bid him Look aloft and
be strong, Repent and be saved, Trust God and live!”
Ah! the coldness of the look he turned on me! Methought ’twould freeze
my soul. “Poor fool!” it seemed to say; and yet I could not but think I
discovered a trace of sadness as he replied:—
“What is man?—A curiously fashioned clock; a locomotive, capable of
sensations;—a perfected brute. Man is a plant that grows and thinks; the
form and place of his growth and the product of his thought are as
little dependent on his will or effort as are the bark, leaves, and
fruit of a tree on its choice. Food, soil, climate,—these make up the
man,—the whole man, his life, his soul (if he have one). Man’s so-called
moral sense is a mere dance of molecules; his spiritual nature, a pious
invention. Remorse is a blunder, repentance is vain, self-improvement or
reformation an impossibility. The laws of matter determine the laws of
intellect, and these shape man’s nature and destiny and are as
inevitable and uncontrollable as are the laws of gravitation and
chemical affinity. You would-be reformers know not the stupendous
nonsense you are talking. Man is as little responsible for vice or crime
as for fever or an earthquake. Those in whom the cerebrum shows a
particular formation, will make their holidays in gambling, betting,
drinking, horse-racing—their more serious pursuits in stealing, ravening,
murdering. They are not immoral any more than a tiger is immoral; they
are simply _un_moral. They need to be restrained, probably, as pests of
society, or submitted to treatment as lunatics. Their fellows in whom
the white and gray matter of the brain cells are a little differently
correlated, will in their merry moods sing psalms and make it their
habitual activity to reach out after the Unknown in various ways, trying
to satisfy the vague and restless longings of what they call their souls
by punishing themselves and pampering the poor. I have neither blame nor
praise. Each class simply believe and do as they must. And as for
God—science finds him not. If there be a God—He is unknown and
unknowable. The finite mind of man cannot conceive the Infinite and
Eternal. And if such a being exists, he cannot be concerned about the
miserable wretches of earth. Searching after him is vain. Man has simply
projected his own personality into space and worshipped it as a God—a
person—himself. My utmost knowledge is limited to a series of sensations
within, aware of itself; and a possibility of sensations without, both
governed by unbending laws within the limits of experience and a
reasonable distance beyond.”
“And beyond that Beyond” I ask breathlessly—“beyond that Beyond?”
I am sure I detected just then a tremor as of a chill running through
that fragile frame; and the eye, at first thoughtful and coldly scornful
only, is now unmistakably shaded with sadness. “Beyond that Beyond?” he
repeated slowly,—beyond that Beyond, _if_ there be such,—_spaces of
darkness and eternal silence!_
Whether this prolonged throb of consciousness exist after its external
possibilities have been dissolved—I cannot tell. That is to me—a
horrible plunge—_in the dark!_ I stand at the confluence of two
eternities and three immensities. I see, with Pascal, only infinities in
all directions which envelop me like an atom—like a shadow which endures
for a moment and—will never return! All that I know is that I must die,
but what I know the very least of is that very death—which I can not
avoid! _The eternal silence_ of these infinite paces maddens me!
Sick at heart, I turn away and ask myself what is this system which, in
the words of Richter, makes the universe an automaton, and man’s
future—a coffin! Is this the cold region to which thought, as it moves
in its orbit, has brought us in the nineteenth century? Is this the germ
of the “Philosophy of the future”—the exponent of our “advanced ideas,”
the “new light” of which our age so uproariously boasts? Nay rather is
not this _monstruum horrendum_ of our day but a renewal of the
empiricism and skepticism of the days of Voltaire? Here was undoubtedly
the nucleus of the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, which went on
increasing in bulk and blackness till it seemed destined to enshroud
earth and heaven in the gloom of hell.
David Hume, who, though seventeen years younger than Voltaire, died in
1776 just two years before the great French skeptic, taught skepticism
in England on purely metaphysical grounds. Hume knew little or nothing
about natural science; but held that what we call mind consists merely
of successive perceptions, and that we can have no knowledge of anything
but phenomena. His system afterwards passes through France, is borrowed
and filtered through the brain of a half crazy French schoolmaster,
Auguste Conte, who thus becomes the founder of the Contist school of
Positivism or Nescience or Agnosticism as it is variously called. The
adherents of his school admit neither revelation, nor a God, nor the
immortality of the soul. Conte held, among other things, that two hours
a day should be spent in the worship of Collective Humanity to be
symbolized by some of the _sexe aimant_. On general principles it is not
quite clear which is the _sexe aimant_. But as Conte proceeds to mention
one’s wife, mother, and daughter as fitting objects of religious
adoration because they represent the present, past and future of
Humanity—one is left to infer that he considered the female the _loving
sex_ and the ones to be worshipped; though he does not set forth who
were to be objects of woman’s own adoring worship. In this
ecclesiastical system which Prof. Huxley wittily denominates _Romanism
minus Christianity_, Conte made himself High Pontiff, and his inamorata,
the widow of a galley slave, was chief saint. This man was founder of
the system which the agnostic prefers to the teachings of Jesus!
However, had this been all, the positivist would have been as harmless
as any other lunatic. But he goes a step farther and sets up his system
as the philosophy of _natural science_, originating in and proved by
pure observation and investigation of physical phenomena; and scoffs at
as presumptuous and unwarrantable all facts that cannot be discerned
through the senses. In this last position he is followed by John Stuart
Mill, Herbert Spencer, G. H. Lewes, and a noble army of physicists,
naturalists, physiologists, and geologists. Says one: “We have no
knowledge of anything but phenomena, and the essential nature of
phenomena and their ultimate causes are unknown and inscrutable to us.”
Says another: “All phenomena without exception are governed by
invariable laws with which no volitions natural or supernatural
interfere.” And another: “Final causes are unknown to us and the search
after them is fruitless, a mere chase of a favorite will-o-the-wisp. We
know nothing about any supposed purposes for which organs ‘were made.’
Birds fly because they have wings, a true naturalist will never say—he
can never know they have wings _in order that_ they may fly.”
And Mr. Ingersoll, the American exponent of positivism, in his “Why I Am
an Agnostic,” winds up a glittering succession of epigrammatic
inconsistencies with these words: “Let us be honest with ourselves. In
the presence of countless mysteries, standing beneath the boundless
heaven sown thick with constellations, knowing that each grain of sand,
each leaf, each blade of grass, asks of every mind the answerless
question; knowing that the simplest thing defies solution; feeling that
we deal with the superficial and the relative and that we are forever
eluded by the real, the absolute,—let us admit the limitations of our
minds, and let us have the courage and the candor to say: we do not
know.”
It is no part of my purpose to enter into argument against the
agnostics. Had I the wish, I lack the ability. It is enough for me to
know that they have been met by foemen worthy their steel and that they
are by no means invincible.