I have been invited to speak to you to-day concerning changes in
American society. In preparing to consider this subject, I cannot but
remember that the very question of social change is to some people an
open one. The supposition of any real onward movement in society is as
unwelcome and as untrue to these persons as was Galileo's theory
concerning the revolution of the earth around the sun. They will assert,
as indeed they may, that the same crimes are committed in all ages, with
the same good deeds to counterbalance them and that the capital
tendencies of human nature are always substantially the same. This also
must be allowed. The error of these friends consists in overlooking the
most characteristic and human of these tendencies, which is that of
progressive desire. This trait, deeper and stronger than the mere love
of change, pushes the whole heterogeneous mass of humanity onward in a
way from which there is no return.
The laws of human motive and action, meanwhile, remain as steadfast and
immovable as the laws by whose application Galileo made his discovery.
To discern at once the steadfast truth and its metamorphic developments
will be the task of the greatest wisdom.
When Theodore Parker invited the religious world to consider the
transient and the permanent elements of Christianity, he made a popular
application of a truth long known to philosophy. This truth is that life
in all of its aspects exhibits these two opposite qualities or
conditions. Much is transient in the individual, more is permanent in
the race.
The study of anthropology, so greatly enriched to-day by discovery and
investigation, would give us much to say under both of these heads, but
most, I think, under the last.
I remember that in reading Livy's history of the second Punic war, in
our own war time, I was struck by certain resemblances between the time
in which he wrote and that in which I read him. When I learned from his
pages that the merchants and ship-owners of ancient Rome managed to
impose the most worthless of their vessels upon the government for the
transport of troops and provisions, I exclaimed, "What Yankees these
Romans were!"
In reading some well-known satires of Horace I have been struck with the
resemblance of the ancient to the modern bore. Boileau's famous take-off
of the dinner given by a _parvenu_ is scarcely more than a French
adaptation of the feast of Nasidienus, as described by the Roman bard
who was Boileau's model.
In Virgil's account of the good housewife, who rises early in order to
measure out the work of the household, and in Solomon's description of
the thrifty woman of his time, one sees the value set upon feminine
industry and economy in times far removed from our own, yet resembling
it in this appreciation.
On the other hand, the dissimilarity of ancient and modern society is
equally seen in the same mirror of literature. The mention of matters
which, by common consent, are banished from decent speech to-day, the
position of Woman, from the vestal virgin buried alive for breach of
trust to the _devium scortum_, whom Horace frankly invites to his feast,
the gross superstition which saw in religion little save portents and
propitiation,--these mark on the dial of history an hour as distant from
our own in sympathy as in time.
You will wish to hear from me some account of changes which have come
within the sphere of my own observation, both as I have been able to see
for myself, and to compare what I have seen with what I have received
from the generation immediately preceding my own. Let me remind you
that, with all the advantages of personal observation, it may be more
difficult for us to give a true account of the age to which we belong
than of more distant times, upon which thought and reflection have
already done their critical and explanatory work. Familiarity so dulls
the edge of perception, as to make us least acquainted with things and
persons making part of our daily life. Mindful of these difficulties, I
will do my best to characterize the threescore years which have carried
me into and out of the heart of the nineteenth century.
I have seen in this time a great growth in the direction of liberal
thought, of popular government, of just laws and useful institutions. I
have seen human powers so multiplied by mechanical appliances as to
destroy the old measures of time and distance, and almost to justify
the veto once laid by the great Napoleon upon the use of the word
"impossible": "_Ne me dites jamais ce bete de mot_," said he; and it has
now become more _bete_ than ever.
What feature of society has not changed in the phantasmagoria of these
wonderful lustres? Each decade has made a fool of the one which went
before it. Whether in the region of extended observation and experiment,
or in that of subtle and profound investigation, human effort has seemed
in this time to put itself at compound interest, working at once with
matters infinitely little and with matters infinitely great, and surely
introducing mankind to a higher plane of comfort and co-operation than
has been reached in anterior ages.
While the mechanism of life has thus been brought much nearer to
perfection by the labor of our age, the principles of life remain such
as they have always been.
Pile luxury as high as you will, health is better, and the body of a
well-fed and not over-worked ploughman is, nine times out of ten, a
better possession than the body of a man of fortune, especially if he be
at the same time a man of pleasure. Marshal and gild the pomp of
circumstance, and do it homage with bated breath, character remains the
true majesty, honor and intelligence its prime ministers. Money can help
people to education, by paying for the support of those who can give it.
But money cannot excuse its possessor from the smallest of the mental
operations through which, if at all, a man comes to know what, as a man,
he should know.
The great _desiderata_ of humanity still remain these: to preserve the
integrity of nature, the purity of sentiment, and the coherence of
thought. The great extension of educational opportunities which we see
to-day should make the attainment of these objects easier than in ages
of less instruction. But while the pursuit of them is ever normal to the
human race, the inherent difficulties of their attainment remain
undiminished. Without self-discipline and self-sacrifice, no man to-day
attains true education, or the dignity of true manhood. For here comes
in the terrible fact of man's freedom as a moral agent.
Could our age possess and administer the powers of the universe to its
heart's content, in that heart would yet rest the issues of its life and
of its death.
The period of which I have to speak has certainly witnessed great
improvements in the theory of hygiene. The old heroic treatment of
diseases has nearly disappeared. The nauseous draughts, the
blood-letting and blisters, have given place to moderate medication, the
choice of climate and the regulation of diet. Women have been admitted
as copartners with men in the guardianship of the public health.
Athletic sports help the student to fresh blood and efficient muscle,
without which the brain sickens and perishes.
But even in this department how much is left to desire and to do! Our
greatest and richest city is still festering with the corruption that
breeds disease. No board of health seems to have power to sweep its side
streets and dark alleys. Fashion keeps her avenues clean, and neglects
the rest of the vast domain, for which she has her reward in many a
ghastly epidemic. The late Edward Clarke, of Boston,--heaven rest his
soul!--could alarm the whole continent with his threats of the physical
evils which the more perfect education of one sex would entail on both.
But he has left no public protest against the monstrosities of toilet
which deform and mutilate the bodies of women to-day, nor against the
selfish frivolity of life in both sexes, which is equally inimical to
true motherhood and to true fatherhood.
I have seen in fashions of dress and furniture the curious cycle which
my elders foretold, and which it takes, I should think, half a century
to fulfil. My earliest childish remembrance is of the slim dresses which
display as much as is possible of the outlines of the figure. I remember
the _elegantes_ of Gotham walking the one fashionable street of
fifty-five years ago, attired in pelisses of pink or blue satin. A white
satin cloak trimmed with dark fur seemed, even to my childish
observation, a chill costume for a pedestrian in the heart of winter. My
mother's last Paris bonnet, bought probably in 1825, appeared to her
children, twenty years later, such a caricature, that pious hands
destroyed it, in order that we might have no ludicrous association with
the sweet young creature whose death had left us babes in the nursery.
After many fluctuations and oscillations, I have seen modern head-gear
near of kin to the subject of this holocaust. I have seen the old forms
and colors return to popular favor. I have even heard that the very
white satin cloak, which seemed _outre_ to the critic of six years, has
been worn and greatly admired in the recent gay world of Paris. The
return in these cases, it must be said, is not to the identical point of
departure. Progress, according to some thinkers, follows a spiral, and
is neither shut in a circle nor extended in a straight line. The hoops
of our great-grandmothers are not the hoops which we remember to have
seen or worn. Their eelskin dresses are not the model of ours. Still,
the recurrence of the same vein of fancy marks a periodical
approximation to the region or belt of influence in which certain
forgotten possibilities suggest themselves to the seeker of novelty, and
in which the capricious, antithetical fancy delights to crown with honor
all that it found most devoid of beauty a few lustres ago.
Does this encyclical tendency in the familiar aesthetics of life imply a
corresponding tendency in the moral and intellectual movement of
mankind? I fear that it does. I fear that seriousness and frivolity,
greed and disinterest, extravagance and economy, in so far as these are
social and sympathetic phenomena, do succeed each other in the movement
of the ages. But here the device of the spiral can save us. We must make
the round, but we may make it with an upward inclination. "Let there be
light!" is sometimes said in accents so emphatic, that the universe
remembers and cannot forget it. We carry our problem slowly forward.
With all the ups and downs of every age, humanity constantly rises.
Individuals may preserve all its early delusions, commit all its
primitive crimes; but to the body of civilized mankind, the return to
barbarism is impossible.
The aesthetic elaboration of ethical ideas, always a feature of
civilization, becomes in our day a task of such prominence as to engage
the zeal and labor of those even who have little natural facility for
any of its processes.
The ignoring of this department of culture by our Puritan ancestors, had
much to do with the bareness of surrounding and poverty of amusement
which almost affright us in the record of their society. With all their
insufficiency, these periods of severe simplicity are of great
importance in the history of a people. The temporary withdrawal from the
sensible and pleasurable to the severe verities of ethical study
accumulates a reserve force which is sure to be very precious in the
emergencies to which all nations are exposed. The reaction against the
extreme of this is as likely to be excessive as was the action itself.
If we tend to any extreme, nowadays, it is to that of making art take
the place of thought, as may somewhat appear in the general rage for
illustration and decoration.
The ministrations of art to ethics are indeed unspeakably grand and
helpful. The cathedrals of the Old World, and its rich and varied
galleries, preserve for us the fresh and naive spirit of mediaeval piety.
Religious art, indeed, becomes almost secularized by its repetitions;
yet each of its great works has the isolation of its own atmosphere, and
speaks its own language, which we reverently learn while we look upon
it.
Of all arts, music is the one most intimately interwoven with the
ethical consciousness of our own time. The oratorios of Handel and of
Mendelssohn so blend the sacred text and the divine music, that we think
of the two together, and almost as of things so wedded by God, that man
must not seek to put them asunder. When I have sat to sing in the chorus
of the Messiah, and have heard the tenor take up the sweet burden of
"Comfort ye my people!" I have felt the whole chain of divine
consolation which those historic words express, and which link the
prophet of pre-Christian times to the saints and sinners of to-day. In
far-off Palestine I have been shown the plain on which it is supposed
that the shepherds were tending their flocks when the birth of the
Messiah was announced to them. But as I turned my eyes to view it, my
memory was full of that pastoral symphony of Handel's, in which the
divine glory seems just muffled enough to be intelligible to our abrupt
and hasty sense. Nay, I lately heard a beloved voice which read the
chapter of Elijah's wonderful experiences in the wilderness. While I
listened, bar after bar of Mendelssohn's music struck itself off in the
resonant chamber of memory, and I thanked the Hebrew of our own time for
giving the intensity of life to that mystical drama of insight and
heroism.
The transcendentalists of our own country made great account of the
relation of art to ethics, and perhaps avenged the Puritan partiality by
giving art the leading, and ethics the subordinate place in their
statements and endeavors. But the masters of the transcendental
philosophy in Europe did not so. Spinoza, Kant, and Fichte were
idealists of the severest type. Standing for the moment between the two,
I will only say that the danger of forgetting the high labors and
rewards of thought in the pleasure of beautiful sights and sounds is
one to which the highest civilization stands most exposed. To think
aright, to resolve and pray aright, we must retire from those delights
to the contemplation of that whose sublimity they can but faintly image,
as we pass with joy from the likeness of our friend into his presence.
Love of ornament is by no means synonymous with love of the beautiful.
The taste which overloads dress and architecture with superfluous
irrelevancies, is often quite in opposition to that true sense of beauty
which is indispensable to the artist and precious to the philosopher.
"[Greek: To kalon]," the Greeks said. Was it a naive utterance on their
part? Was it through their poverty of expression, or their want of
experience, that the same word with them signified the good and the
beautiful? No. It was through the depth of their insight, and the power
of their mental appreciation, that they so stamped this golden word as
that it should show the supreme of form on one of its faces, and the
supreme of spirit on the other.
The social domain of religion has also undergone a change. In my early
life I remember that all earnest and religious people were supposed to
live out of the great world, and to keep company only with one another
and with the subjects of their charitable beneficence. The
disadvantages of this course are easily seen. Free intercourse with the
average of mankind is one of the most important agencies in enlarging
and correcting the action of the human mind. The exigencies of ordinary
intercourse develop a sense of the dependence of human beings upon each
other, and a power corresponding to the needs involved in this
interdependence. The religious susceptibilities of individuals, which
are at once very strong in their character and very uncertain in their
action, are liable to become either exaggerated or exhausted by a course
of life which should rely wholly upon them for guidance and for
interest.
Let us, therefore, by all means have saints in the world, keeping to
their pure standard, and recommending it more by their actions than by
their professions. But these saints must be brave as well as pure.
Unworthy doctrine must not escape their reprobation. When a just cause
is contemned, they must stand by it. If the world shall cast them out in
consequence, it will not be their fault. The social leagues which group
themselves around the various churches of to-day, seem to me a feature
of happy augury. It is the office of the church to inspire and direct
the tone of social intercourse, and these associations should greatly
help it to that end. I lately heard Wendell Phillips complain that
church exercises nowadays largely consist of picnics and other
merry-makings. Only a little before, Mr. Phillips, in his reply to Mr.
Parkman's article against Woman Suffrage, had spoken of the growth of
social influence as a good.
It does, to be sure, look a little whimsical to read on the bulletin of
a Methodist church such announcements as this,--"Private theatricals for
the benefit of the Sunday school." But Wesley introduced the use of
secular tunes in his church on the ground that the devil should not have
all the good music. Neither should he monopolize the innocent amusements
with which, if they are left to him, he does indeed play the devil.
Although the great ocean will always hold Europe at arm's length from
us, yet the currents of belief and sympathy bring its various peoples
near to us in various ways. I remember to have taken note of this long
before the ocean steamships brought the eastern hemisphere within a few
days' journey from our own seaboard, and very long before the
time-annihilating cables were dreamed of. The French have always had
with us the prestige of their social tact and sumptuary elegance. The
English manners are affected by those among us who mistake the
aristocracy of position for the aristocracy of character. The Italians
rule us by their great artists in the past, and by their subtle policy
in the present. The Germans have, as they deserve, the pre-eminence in
music, in metaphysics, and in many departments of high culture.
I have not long since been taken to task by a writer in a prominent New
York paper for some strictures regarding the quasi-omnipotence of money
in the society of to-day. The writer in question enlarged somewhat upon
the greatly increased expenditure of money in our own country, as if
this must be considered as a good in itself. He concludes his statement
by remarking that Mrs. Howe has never studied the proper significance of
the money question. I desire to say here only that I have not neglected
the study of this question, which so regards the very life of society.
One of its problems I have ventured to decide for myself, viz., whether
the luxury of the rich really supports the industry of the poor.
The aesthetic of luxury is a mean and superficial one. The critique of
luxury is compliant and cowardly; and, despite its glittering promise to
pay any price for what it desires, luxury orders poorly, pays poorly,
and in the end undermines the credit of the State, the very citadel of
its solvency. I regret and deplore its prevalence to-day, and consider
it not as the safeguard, but as the most dangerous enemy of republican
institutions.
In our America, ay, even in our Puritan New England, the day has come in
which economy is a discredit and poverty a disgrace. With the common
school ever at work to lift the social level, unfolding to the child of
the day-laborer the page which instructs the son of the peer, the cry is
still that money is God, and that there is none other. One may ask, in
the business streets, whether rich people have any faults, or poor
people any virtues. A woman who sells her beauty for a rich dower is
honored in church and in State. Both alike bow to the money in her hand.
One proverb says that Time is money, as if it were
"Only that, and nothing more."
Another proverb says that Money is power. And in this form, no doubt, it
receives the most fervent worship, for luxury palls sooner or later,
while ambition is never satisfied. But we constantly meet, on the other
hand, with instances in which money is not power. Money does not give
talent or intelligence. You cannot buy good government, good manners, or
good taste: You cannot buy health or life. Do some of you remember the
shipwreck, some twenty years ago, of a steamer homeward-bound from
California? The few survivors told how the desperate passengers brought
their belts and bags of gold to the cabin, and threw them about with a
bitter contempt of their worthlessness. States have such shipwrecks, in
which avenging Fate seems to say to those who have sacrificed all for
wealth, "Thy money perish with thee."
The heroics of history are full of the story of great ends, accomplished
by very small means. Now a handful of resolute men hold the forces of a
great empire in check, and beat back the ocean surge of barbarism from
the marble of their strong will. Now a single martyr turns the scale of
the world's affection by throwing into the balance the weight of one
small life. Now a State with every disadvantage of territory, cursed
with sterility, or exposed to the murderous overflow of the salt sea,
takes its stand upon the simple determination to conquer for itself a
free and worthy existence. Frederick of Prussia and his small army,
Washington, with his handful of men, in these and so many other
instances, we admire the attainment of mighty ends through means which
seem infinitesimal in proportion to them. How shall it be in our
country, to which Nature has given the widest variety of climate, soil,
and production? Shall we become a lesson to the world in the opposite
direction? Shall we show how little a people may accomplish with every
circumstance in its favor, and with nothing wanting to its success but
the careful mind and resolute spirit? God forbid!
The belief in pacific methods of settling international differences has
made a noticeable progress in my time.
In my school-days I remember a grave Presbyterian household at whose
fireside I one day saw an elderly man seat himself, with little notice
from the members of the family. I inquired who he might be, and was
told, with some good-natured laughter, that this old gentleman was the
American Peace Society, _i.e._, the last surviving member of that
association. This was a humorous exaggeration of the truth. Judge Jay,
of New York, was living at that time, and all the enthusiasm of the
peace cause lived in him, and no doubt in many others. I have remembered
the incident, nevertheless; and when I have seen the stately Peace
Congresses held in Europe and elsewhere, when I have seen rapacious
England submitting to arbitration, when I have seen the flag of military
prestige go down before the white banner of Peace, as in the late change
of the ministry in that country, I have remembered that day of small
things, and have learned that the faith of individuals is the small seed
from which spring the mighty growths of popular conviction and sympathy.
The extensive wars which have taken place within the last forty years,
as extensive and as deadly as any the world ever saw, are sometimes
quoted in derision of those who believe, as I do, in the sober, steady
growth of the pacific spirit among people of intelligence. The reasons
for this advance lie deeper than the vision of the careless observer may
reach. Within the period of our own century the value of human life to
the individual has been greatly increased by the wide diffusion of the
advantages of civilization. The value of the individual to the State has
become greatly increased by the multiplication of industrial resources,
and by the immense emigration which at times threatens to drain the
older society of its working population. The spread of education has at
once undermined the blind belief of the multitude in military leaders,
and toned down the blind ferocity of instinct to which those leaders are
forced to appeal. Wars of mere spoliation are scarcely permitted to-day.
Wars of pure offence are deeply disapproved of.
The military and diplomatic injustice of past times has left unsettled
many questions of territory and boundary which will not rest until they
shall be set right. The populations which war has plundered and
subjugated, lay their cause before the world's tribunal. In aid of this,
the friends of the true law and order are ever busy in forming a nucleus
of moral power, which governments will be forced to respect. Thus,
though the war-demon dies hard, he is doomed, and we shall yet see the
battlements of his grim cathedrals places for lovers to woo and for
babes to play in.
In religion I have seen the dark ministrations of terror give way before
the radiant gospel of hope. I remember when Doctrine sat beside the bed
of death, and offered its flimsy synonym to the eyes upon which the
awful, eternal truth was about to dawn. I remember when a man with a
poor diploma and a human commission assumed to hold the keys of heaven
and hell in his hands, and to dispense to those who would listen to him
such immortality as he thought fit. I remember when it went hard with
those who, in forming their religious opinions, persisted in daring to
use the critical power of their own judgment. They were lonely saints;
they wandered in highways and byways, unrecognized, excommunicated of
men. No one had power to burn their bodies, but it was hoped that their
souls would not escape the torment of eternal flame. I have seen this
time, and I have lived to see a time in which these rejected stones,
hewn and polished by God's hand, have come to be recognized as
corner-stones in the practical religious building of the age. What a
discredit was it once to hear Theodore Parker! How happy are they now
esteemed who have heard him! Let not Mr. Emerson's urbanity lead him to
forget the days in which polite Boston laughed him to scorn. Brook Farm
was once looked upon as a most amusing caricature. But when the world
learned something about Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Ripley, William
Henry Channing, John Dwight, and George William Curtis, the public heart
bowed itself with remorseful homage before the ruined threshold of what
was, with all its shortcomings, a blameless temple to ideal humanity.
It is quite true that every change which I have seen in the society of
my time cannot be said to be, in itself, for the better. The price of
progress, like that of liberty, is eternal vigilance.
A time of religious enfranchisement may induce a period of religious
indifference. Cosmopolitan enlargement may weaken the force of
patriotism. The charity of society may degenerate into an indifference
concerning private morals, which, if it could prevail, would go far
towards destroying public ones. Humanity ever needs the watchman on the
tower. It needs the warning against danger, the guidance out of it. I
can imagine a set of prophets less absolute than the Hebrew seers, whose
denunciation of evils, near or present, should always couple itself with
profound and sober suggestions of help. And this will be the work of
faith in our day, to believe in the good which can overcome the evil,
and to seek it with earnest and brave persistence.
Let me return for a moment, very briefly, to what I touched upon just
now, the great changes in religious thought which this century has
witnessed. What manifold contrasts have we observed in this domain! What
a wild and wide chase in the fields of conjecture! What impatience with
the idols of the past, historical and metaphysical! There have been
moments in the last twenty years in which one might have said to the
religious ideals of past ages that the time had come in which every one
who raised his hand against them thought that he was doing God service.
This iconoclasm had its time, and, one supposes, its office.
But the religious necessities of mankind are permanent, and will outlast
any and all systems of pure criticism. The question arises, in all this
havoc of illusory impressions, Who is to provide for the culture and
direction of those instincts of reverence which are so precious to, so
ineradicable in the race? We must ask this service of those who believe
that religion is, on the whole, wiser than its critics. Those who have
been able to hold fast this persuasion will be the religious trainers of
our youth. Those who have relinquished it will have no more skill to
teach religion than a sculptor will have to feed an army.
The greatest trouble with human society is, that its natural tendency
leads it, not to learn right measure through one excess, but, on
becoming convinced of this, to rush into an opposite excess with equal
zeal and equal error. The mechanism of society requires constant
correction in order to keep up the succession of order and progress
through and despite this proneness to extravagance and loss of power.
This rectification of direction without interruption of movement is the
office of critical and constructive thought. Precious are the men, and
rare as precious, who carry this balance in their minds, and, while the
ship lurches now on this side and now on that, strain after the compass
with masterful courage and patience. We have all known such men, but we
have known, too, that their type is not a common one.
Among all who are out of work to-day, so far as the market is concerned,
those men of careful and critical judgment are the least called for, and
the least wished for by the majority of men. Headlong enthusiasm,
headlong activity, headlong doubt and cynicism, the prevalence of these
shows the force with which the present whirl of the spindle was cast.
Fair and softly, my quick-flying Century. To find out whether you are
going right or wrong, whether you are faithful or faithless, solvent or
bankrupt, you must have recourse to these same slow, patient men and
women, who try such questions by a more accurate and difficult method
than that of the popular inclination.
I find that the philosopher Kant, writing more than a hundred years ago,
remarks that in so sociable an age as his own Culture must naturally be
expected to assume an encyclopedic character. It will, he says,
necessarily desire to present a manifold number of agreeable and
instructive acquisitions, easy of apprehension, for entertainment in
friendly intercourse.
These words seem prophetic of the efforts after general information,
with a view to conversation as an accomplishment, which have constituted
a marked feature of American and English society within forty years. In
the dissolving view of the public predilection, this object has lost
much of its prominence. The ornate and well-rounded periods of the
conversationist are not more in request, nowadays, than were the
high-sounding sentiments of Joseph Surface to Sir Peter Teazle, when
experience had shown him their emptiness.
Blunt speech and curt expression rather are in favor. The heroines of
novels are supposed to fall in love with men of a somewhat brutal type.
Adonis is out of fashion. Hercules pleases, and even Vulcan is
preferred. One thinks that the influence of the mercantile spirit may be
recognized in this change. Long speeches and roundabout statements are
found not to pay. The man who listens to them with one ear, hearkens
with the other for the ocean telegrams, news of the stock market,
considers the maturing of a note, the success or failure of a scheme.
When there is no one to listen, loquacity itself will grow economical of
breath.
The world is quite right in its tacit protest against over talk. A great
deal of empty, irrelevant speech is liable to be imposed upon the
good-nature of society in the garb of instructive conversation. It is
weary to listen by the hour to men or women who principally teach you
their own opinion of their own erudition. But woe to the world if its
haste and greed should ever be such that the true teacher should want an
audience, the long lessons of philosophy find interpreters, but no
pupils.
The present is, on the whole, an encyclopedic, cosmopolitan era. I
suppose that it succeeds as a reaction to one of more special and
isolated endeavor. The example and influence of Goethe have had much to
do with the formation of the ideas of culture which have been prevalent
in our time. This wonderful man went, with such a happy tact, from one
thing to another. In poetry he did so much, in high criticism so much,
in science so much, and in world-wisdom so much! How naturally were the
lovers of study, who made him their model, led to undertake, as he did,
to render the most eminent service, to attain the highest honors in a
dozen different departments!
But the man Goethe was more wonderful even than his writings. His
individuality was too powerful to suffer loss through the variety of his
pursuits. He could be at once a courtier and a philosopher, a poet and a
scientist, a critic of morals and a man of the world, and in all things
remain himself.
I sometimes wonder why we Americans are so apt to show, in our conduct
and remarks, an undue preponderance of what the phrenologists term love
of approbation. This is an amiable and useful trait in human nature,
which may degenerate into a weak and cowardly vanity, or even into a
malignant selfishness. To desire the approbation which can enlighten us
as to the merits of what we have done or attempted, is wise as well as
graceful. To make constant laudation a prominent object in any life is a
capital mistake in its ordering. To prefer the praise of men to the
justification of conscience, is at once cowardly and criminal. I observe
these three phases in American life. I value the first, compassionate
the second, and reprobate the third. Surely, if there is any virtue
which a republican people is bound to show, it is that self-respect
which is the only true majesty, and which can afford to be as generous
and gracious as majesty should be.
It is, perhaps, natural that many of us should, through a want of
experience, mistake the standpoint of people conspicuous in the older
European society as greatly superior to our own. We can learn much,
indeed, from the observation of such a standpoint; but, in order to do
so, we must hold fast our own plain, honest judgment, as we derive it
from education, inheritance, and natural ability.
It must, I should think, be very tedious and very surprising to
Europeans to hear Americans complain of being so young, so crude, so
immature. This is not according to nature. Imagine a nursery full of
babies who should bewail the fact of their infancy. Any one who should
hear such a complaint would cry out, "Why, that's the best thing about
you. You have the newness, the promise, the unwasted vigor of
childhood,--gifts so great that Christ enjoined it upon holy men to
recover, if they had lost them."
If our society is young, its motto should be the saying of Saint Paul to
Timothy, "Let no man despise thy youth." The great men of our early
history deserve to rank with the ripest products of civilization. Was
Washington crude? Was Franklin raw? Were Jay, Jefferson, and Hamilton
immature? The authorities of the older world bowed down to them, and did
them homage. The Republicans of France laid the key of the Bastille at
the feet of Washington. Franklin was honored and admired in the court
circle of Louis XVI. There was a twofold reason for this. These men
represented the power and vigor of our youth; but our youth itself
represented the eternal principles of truth and justice, for whose
application the world had waited long. And thinking people saw in us the
dignity of that right upon which we had founded our hope and belief as a
nation.
I will instance a single event of which I heard much during my last
visit in Rome. A German, naturalized in America, and who had made a
large fortune by a railroad contract in South America, had purchased
from some European government the title of "Count." He was betrothed to
the sister-in-law of a well-known California millionnaire, whose wife
has been for some years a resident of Paris, where her silver, her
diamonds, and her costly entertainments are matters of general remark.
All of these parties are Roman Catholics. The wedding took place in
Rome, and was signalized by a festival, at which twelve horses, belong
to the bridegroom, were ridden in a race, whose prizes were bestowed by
the hand of the bride. The invitations for this occasion were largely
distributed by a monsignor of the Romish Church, and the king of Italy
honored the newly married pair by his presence.
Not long after this, I read in the Italian papers that this very count
had become a candidate for a seat in the Italian Parliament. I suppose
that money will assist an election as much in Italy as elsewhere. The
monsignor who interested himself so efficiently about the invitations
for the wedding party, was none other than the master of ceremonies of
Pope Leo XIII. He would, no doubt, have taken even greater interest in
the return of his friend to the Parliament. I do not know whether this
gentleman has ever succeeded in usurping the place of a representative
of the Italian people; but the chance of his being able to do so lay in
the American gold of which he had become possessed. Here is one instance
of the direct relations between Rome and America which Americans so
placidly overlook.
In this day of the world hope is so strong, and the desire for an
improved condition so prevalent, that much may be looked for in Europe
as the result of the legitimate action and influence of America. But if
American capital busies itself with upholding the shams of the old
world, if American taste and talent are led and pledged to work with the
reactionary agents everywhere against the enfranchisement of the human
race, where shall the hope of the world find refuge?
Goldsmith has a touching picture of the emigrants who, in his time, were
compelled to leave the country which would not feed them, for a distant
bourne, which could, by no means, be to them a home. But let us assist
at the embarkation of another group of exiles. These people have been
living abroad, and are about to return home. The rich, beautiful land
whose discovery has changed the fortunes of the human race, invites them
on the other side of the Atlantic. The flag which represents the noblest
chapter of modern history waves over them.
From dynastic, aristocratic Europe they go to inherit the work of an
ancestry heroic in thought and action. They go to the land which still
boasts a Longfellow, a Whittier, an Emerson, a Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Are they glad? Are they happy? No. They have learned the follies of the
old world, not its wisdom. They are not going home,--they are going into
exile.
Let us look a little at their record in the Europe which they regret so
passionately. They went abroad with money, and the education which it
commands, with leisure and health. What good deeds may they not have
done! What gratifying remembrance may they have left behind them! Shall
we not find them recorded as donors to many a noble charity, as students
in many a lofty school? We shalt indeed, sometimes. But in many cases we
shall hear only of their fine clothes and expensive entertainments, with
possible mortifying anecdotes of their fast behavior.
If the mother leaves a daughter behind her, it is likely to be as the
wife of some needy European nobleman, who despises all that she is bound
to hold dear, and is proud not to know that which it should be her glory
to understand.
I said at Concord, and I say it to-day, that the press is much affected
by the money debauch of the period. Let us examine the way in which this
result is likely to be brought about.
A newspaper or periodical is almost always an investment in which the
idea of gain is very prominent. This expectation may either regard what
the proposed paper shall earn as a medium of information, or the profit
of certain enterprises which its statements may actively promote.
Special organs are founded for special emergencies, as is a campaign
sheet, or for the advocate of special reforms, like the antislavery
"Standard" of old, and the "Woman's Journal" of to-day. These papers
rarely repay either the money advanced for them, or the literary labor
bestowed upon them.
Under the head of its earnings the newspaper depends upon two classes of
persons, viz., its advertisers and its subscribers. Either or both of
these may be displeased by the emphatic mention of some certain fact,
the expression of some certain opinion. "If we tell this unwelcome
truth," say the managers, "we shall lose such and such subscribers. If
we take this stand, some of our wealthiest advertising firms will choose
another medium of communicating with the public." The other set of
considerations just spoken of, the enterprises which are to be favored
and promoted, may still more seriously affect the tone and action of the
paper, which will thus be drawn in a twofold way to lend itself to the
publication only of what it will pay to say.
The annals of journalism in this country will, no doubt, show a fair
average of courageous and conscientious men among its chiefs. I am
willing to believe all things and to hope all things in this direction.
But I must confess that I fear all things, too, in view of a great
power, whose position makes it almost an irresponsible one. And I should
regard with great favor the formation of an unofficial censorship of
public organs, in view not so much of what may be published, as of what
is unfairly left out of the statements and counterstatements of
conflicting interests.
Of all the changes which I can chronicle as of my own time, the change
in the position of women is perhaps the most marked and the least
anticipated by the world at large. Whatever opinions heroic men and
women may have held concerning this from Plato's time to our own, the
most enlightened periods of history have hardly given room to hope that
the sex in general would ever reach the enfranchisement which it enjoys
to-day. I date the assurance of its freedom from the hour in which the
first university received women graduates upon the terms accorded to
pupils of the opposite sex. For education keeps the key of life, and a
liberal education insures the first conditions of freedom, viz.,
adequate knowledge and accustomed thought. This first and greatest step
gained, the gate of professional knowledge and experience quickly
opened, and that of political enfranchisement stands already ajar. The
battle can have but one result, and it has been fought, with chivalrous
temper and determination, not by one sex against the other, but by the
very gospel of fairness and justice against the intrenched might of
selfish passion, inertia, and prejudice. Equal conditions of life will
lift the whole level of society, which is so entirely one body that the
lifting or lowering of one half lifts or lowers the other half. This
change, which in the end appeared to come suddenly, has been prepared by
such gradual tentatives, by such long and sound labor, that we need not
fear to lose sight of it in any sudden collapse. There are women of my
age, and women of earlier generations, who have borne it in their hearts
all their lives through, who have prayed and worked for it, without rest
and without discouragement. Horace Mann was its apostle, Theodore Parker
was its prophet, Margaret Fuller, Lucy Stone, and a host of wise and
true-hearted women, whom the time would fail me to name, have been its
female saints. It was in nature; they have brought it into life; even as
Christ said, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." The slender
thread which crossed the dark abyss of difficulty was not the silken
spinning of vanity, nor the cobweb fibre of madness. From the faith of
pure hearts the steadfast links were wrought, and the great chasm is
spanned, and is ready to become the strong and sure highway of hope, for
this nation and for the nations of the earth.
The customs of society prescribe the mental garb and gait proper to
those who desire the favorable notice of their peers in their own time.
As these are partly matters of tradition and inheritance, we can learn
something of the merits and demerits of a generation by studying the
habits of familiar judgment which it hands down to its successor. A
narrow, ill-educated generation leaves behind it corresponding garments
of rule and prescription, to which the next generation must for a time
accommodate itself, because a custom or a fashion is not made in a day.
The rulers of society seem often more occupied in dwarfing the mind to
suit the custom than in enlarging the custom so as to fit it to the
growth of mind. The most dangerous rebellions, individual and social,
are natural revolts against the small tyranny which perpetuates the
insufficiency of the past.
The copper shoes which so cramp the foot of a female infant in China as
to destroy its power of growth, are not more cruel or deleterious than
are the habits of unreflecting prejudice which compress the growth of
human minds until they, too, lose their native power of expansion, and
the idol Prejudice is enthroned and worshipped by those on whom it has
imposed its own deformity as the standard of truth and beauty.
The heavy tasks which nature imposes upon women leave them less at
leisure than men to reform and readjust these inherited garments. The
necessity for prompt and early action obliges them to follow the
intuitive faculties, as all must do who have not time to work out the
problems of the reasoning ones. The instinct of possession is a ruling
one in human nature, and a woman inheriting a superstition or a
prejudice holds fast to it because it is something, and she has got it.
It seems to her a possession. It may be a mischievous and unfortunate
one, but it will take a good deal of time and thought to find that out.
Those who have the training of women's minds often train them away from
such a use of time and from such a labor of thought. Hence the fatal
persistence of large classes of women in superstitions which the
thinking world has outgrown, and the equally fatal zeal with which they
impose the same insufficient modes of judgment upon their children.
I pray this generation of women, which has seen such enlargements of the
old narrow order regarding the sex, I pray it to deserve its high post
as guardian of the future. Let it bequeath to its posterity a noble
standard of womanhood, free, pure, and, above all, laborious.
The standard of manhood really derives from that of womanhood, and not
_vice versa_, as many imagine. However we may receive from tradition the
order of their material creation, in that of training and education,
the woman's influence comes before that of the man, and outlasts it.
The figure of the infant Christ dwells always in our mind, accompanied
by that of the gracious mother who gave Him to the world. Let the fact
of this great gift prefigure to us the august office of Woman. Hers be
it also to preserve and transmit from age to age the Christian doctrine
and the Christlike faith. And, in order that she may fully realize the
glory and blessedness of giving, let her remember that what is worthily
given to one time is given to all time.
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