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THE MAKING OF A MAN
by
REV. J. W. LEE, D. D.
New York
Cassell Publishing Company
104 & 106 Fourth Avenue
Copyright, 1892, by
Cassell Publishing Company.
All rights reserved.
The Mershon Company Press,
Rahway, N. J.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION, 3
I. BREAD.
THE PROVISION FOR THE PHYSICAL NATURE OF MAN, 39
II. POWER.
THE PROVISION FOR THE SOCIAL NATURE OF MAN, 83
III. TRUTH.
THE PROVISION FOR THE INTELLECTUAL NATURE OF MAN, 137
IV. RIGHTEOUSNESS.
THE PROVISION FOR THE MORAL NATURE OF MAN, 203
V. BEAUTY.
THE PROVISION FOR THE ÆSTHETIC NATURE OF MAN, 253
VI. LOVE.
THE PROVISION FOR THE SPIRITUAL NATURE OF MAN, 293
VII. IMMORTALITY.
THE PERMANENCE OF THE COMPLETED LIFE OF MAN, 335
_INTRODUCTION._
“My God, I heard this day
That none doth build a stately habitation
But he that means to dwell therein.
What house more stately hath there been,
Or can be, than is Man? to whose creation
All things are in decay.
“Man is all symmetry
Full of proportions, one limb to another,
And all to all the world besides;
Each part may call the farthest brother,
For head with foot hath private amity,
And both with moons and tides.
“For us the winds do blow,
The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow:
Nothing we see but means our good
As our delight or as our treasure,
The whole is either our cupboard of food,
Or cabinet of pleasure.
“Since then, my God, thou hast
So brave a palace built. Oh, dwell in it,
That it may dwell with thee at last!
Till then afford us so much wit
That as the world serves us, we may serve thee
And both thy servants be.”
NATURE AND MAN.
The meaning of creation is not understood till dust stands erect in
a living man. That a great purpose was present from the beginning,
directing and controlling, there can be no doubt. It presided over the
first nebulous mist that floated out to take form in the foundations of
the earth. It measured and weighed the matter and force necessary to
form the globe. It determined the elements required to do the work lying
through the years before it. It assigned to them their laws, specific
gravities and affinities, and appointed, beforehand, the combinations and
collocations they were capable of making.
But not till the atoms throbbed in a human brain and beat in a human
heart, did the purpose, which had through the ages run, stand out,
defined and justified. Then it was that the intention underneath the
drift of the ages spelled itself out in the unity of thought, the freedom
of choice, and the capacity for love, potential in the intellect, will,
and heart of the first man. He was the realization of an ideal, which
gave meaning to the long periods of preparation. As the final expression
of the creative process, he was at once the interpreter and the
interpretation of all that had gone before.
I.
Writers of a certain school have sought to minify man’s place in nature.
They say, as Dr. Joseph Leconte well declares, that he is very closely
connected with, and forms a most insignificant part of, nature—that
he has no kingdom of his own, but belongs to the animal kingdom; that
in the animal kingdom he has no department of his own, but belongs
to the department of the vertebrates—along with birds, reptiles, and
fishes; that in the department of the vertebrates he has no privileged
class of his own, but belongs to the class of the mammals, along with
four-footed beasts; that in the class of mammals he has no titled order
of his own, but belongs to the order of primates, along with monkeys
and baboons. His conscience is but the resultant of fear and instinct,
slowly deposited through the years of his evolution. Its imperiousness
is self-constituted. Its scepter it has usurped, and, from the
exhalations of its own rising cowardice, it has woven the purple robes
which constitute the badge of its authority. His morality consists of
rules imposed by his own prudence, and which have no sanctions beyond
the opinions of his class or tribe. His religion is determined by the
physical conditions which surround his life—his geographical situation,
the nature and configuration of his soil, his climate, and his food. Thus
man is simply a natural product, while the civilization which he has
produced is as much determined by the physical conditions surrounding his
life, as the leaves and dates of the palm are determined by the physical
conditions surrounding that tropical tree. The hopes and the trials, the
courage and the sacrifice of the best men, as well as the ambitions and
motives of the worst, are put on a level with the damps and winds. The
one class is entitled to no more credit for what is noble and heroic,
than is rain for nourishing the crops; while the other deserves no more
rebuke for what is base and ignoble, than the lightning for striking
the Church and killing the people. The love which expresses itself in
monuments to commemorate the deeds of the good and the great, and the
condemnation which lifts itself into jails to confine the criminal and
the outlaw, have, in the last analysis, the same meaning. There is no
sacred significance or obligations rooted in divine sanctions, in either
the monuments or the jails. Both are but fickle phases of the passing
spirit.
The convictions of Moses, reproducing themselves in the government, laws,
literature, morality, and religion of a great people, conserving them
through the ages as examples of order and health, have no more meaning
than the sap which rises in some monarch of the forest, to express
itself in leaves and fruit. The conceptions of duty, which nerved the
heart and inspired the courage of the Apostle Paul, leading him to plant
churches in Asia Minor, to become the seeds of modern civilization,
were as completely natural as the rising of the waters of some mountain
spring, to flow over silver sands to the sea. The music of Beethoven,
the visions of Raphael, were but as the vapor in the light of the
morning sun, beautiful, perhaps, as the rainbow, but going out with the
setting day. Whatever of emotion or conscience they embodied, signified
no more than the colors of the peach bloom, or the notes of the falling
cascade. However esteemed the valor that risked life to break the reign
of oppression and murder, it was but a varying form of the heartless
ambition that sought in strength to make it prevail. The patriotism of
Leonidas, giving up his life to save his country, and the insane act of
Nero, swathing Christians in tar to light his feast, were forward and
reverse movements of the same human spirit; both natural, and both as
unmoral as the electricity that now strikes to destroy, and now burns the
malaria to save. No difference is made between poison in the fangs of
snakes, and mercy in the hearts of men.
Back of nature there is no purpose, and in its manifold combinations and
adaptations there is no design. It is only a vast aggregate of unresting
atoms, striking one upon another, and without intention and without
purpose, forming pairs, clusters, and groups, and thus assuming the
shapes we see. Why there happens to be order instead of chaos hangs on
the uncertain turn of luck.
II.
If there is mind in the universe, and if there is purpose in the order
and movements of the earth, then man is the culmination of that purpose,
and with reference to him was the order constituted and the movements
determined. If there is naught but matter and force, and these exist
without any directing or co-ordinating mind, then all things are without
intention and without reason. There is nothing good or bad. Nothing
is right or wrong. All things are reduced to a meaningless level of
indifference. But matter and force bear witness to mind. Matter is here
we know; and matter has not only form, extension, impenetrability, for
its qualities, but indestructibility. Take the matter that enters into
the composition of the earth. The amount of it is fixed and definite. It
may be expressed in pounds weight. Since the beginning, not an atom has
been added to it, or taken from it. Its presence here is to be accounted
for. It either determined its own existence, and the exact amount, in
pounds weight of that existence, or it was determined by some principle
or power outside of itself, or within itself, called mind. If it
determined itself to be, then it is intelligent, for self-determination
and self-action are the essential characteristics of mind. Then
intelligence is retained by being transferred from something called mind
to something called matter. But it has never been claimed that matter is
intelligent. Then it is not self-active or self-determining, and waits on
mind for its existence and its movements.
Matter as plainly bears testimony of the existence of mind, as to the
existence of itself. It is easier to believe that the earth has taken
the globular form and the circular motion by the determinations of mind,
than to believe that through its own determinations it has assumed a
circumference of twenty-five thousand miles, and the regular task of
wheeling on its axis every twenty-four hours.
Not only is it impossible to account for the exact amount of matter
making up the earth’s size and weight, without assuming the power of a
co-ordinating, determining mind; but a still greater task is upon us,
to account for the sixty odd original elements, out of which all things
in nature are formed without mind. These elements differ in quantity,
quality, specific gravity, and affinity. What determined their number,
their tendencies, and affinities? Why something more than sixty; no
more, no less? Why so much of some, so little of others? We must either
conclude that they determined themselves—that they held a convention
before they existed, and resolved upon taking form and motion, or else
we must believe that they were determined by some power, other than
themselves—by mind. If by their own motion, oxygen, and iron, and gold
are what they are; then the elements have the power of self-action and
self-determination, and are therefore intelligent.
The collocations these elements form are more difficult still to be
accounted for without the agency of mind. Figures piled up to the sun
are not able to express the possible combinations they are capable of
assuming. The possible combinations of even twenty-four letters of the
alphabet could not be expressed in literature, filling the world with
books. Much greater must be the number of combinations of the original
elements—the alphabet of creation. It is to be remembered, too, that
they disagree on more of their sides than they agree. They are by no
means equally congenial. Friendships and unions between them are formed
in accordance with the most exact rule and affinity. Does it not seem,
then, that combinations formed by chance would be mutually incompatible,
neutralizing, and destructive? Would they not forever ferment in
ungoverned chaos? Yet we see them dwelling together in the utmost unity,
like seeking like, and in the bonds of law and harmony, uniting in
compound, mineral, vegetable, animal, and the body of man himself.
Were there as many of the letter _a_, as there are atoms of oxygen; and
as many of the letter _b_, as there are atoms of hydrogen; and were the
letters of the alphabet to be increased in proportion to their use,
until they should equal the atoms of all the elements which enter into
the composition of the globe; how long would it take these letters,
stirred by some force like the winds, to assume the form of such a poem
as Paradise Lost? We cannot believe that all these letters, stirred by an
unseen force through infinite ages, would ever form a sensible verse of
poetry, or a rational verse of prose. It is as difficult to understand
how the letters of the alphabet could ever get into the rhythm of
Paradise Lost, without Milton’s mind, as to understand how unconscious
elements took the form of mountain, sea, grove, and globe; round,
articulate, and law abiding, without a great co-ordinating mind.
The physical forces and energies bear indubitable testimony to the
existence of mind, not only outside of themselves, but in themselves and
through themselves. We have the force of gravitation, the power which
bodies have of attracting one another in proportion to their mass, and
inversely as the squares of their distance; in other words, that power
which bodies have of getting up mutually aggregative motion, unless
prevented by some other power of an opposite nature. A body suspended in
the air is attracted toward the earth by the force of gravitation. A lump
of sugar held over a cup of tea, attracts into itself the water of the
tea cup. This is done by the force known as capillarity. A piece of iron
left exposed attracts the particles of oxygen in the atmosphere. This
is done by the force known as chemical affinity. Why do bodies attract
one another in proportion to their mass and inversely as the squares of
their distance? Why does a lump of sugar, held close over a cup of water,
attract the particles of water into itself? Why does a piece of iron in
the atmosphere attract to itself the oxygen? We are told it is because
of gravitation, capillarity, and chemical affinity. How happens it that
these forces have methods of action known as gravitation, capillarity,
and chemical affinity? They either determined themselves to have them and
to act in accordance with them, or else some power other than themselves
determined these methods of action for them.
The truth is, gravitation, capillarity, and chemical affinity are but
terms we use to define the operations of mind. To name a force and to
find the formula in accordance with which it works, is not to determine
the origin of its source. And because we have, by observation and
experiment, found out the methods and the measures of the mind’s working,
is no good reason why we should read mind out of the process altogether.
This is to mistake names for causes; and to suppose when one learns how a
force acts, that he has also learned what it is that acts.
A contemporary of Shakspere might have observed the poet so closely in
his home at Stratford-upon-Avon, as to be able to give to the world a
detailed and exact account of his habits of thought and hours of study;
but this would not have kept the intelligent part of mankind from
believing that a great mind had embodied itself in the immortal plays of
Shakspere.
Heat, electricity, light, and magnetism must also be expressions of mind,
for the same reason that matter is an expression of mind. To believe
them self-determined, is to believe them rational and intelligent. This
has never been claimed, hence our only way of accounting for their
existence is to regard them as the determinations of mind. We see them,
day by day, lending themselves to the uses and devices of man’s thought,
and expressions of thought they must be.
III.
This whole subject resolves itself into the question, Which is
fundamental and prior, mind or matter? If mind is fundamental and prior,
then there is design, intention, and purpose in nature. If matter is
first and fundamental, there is no such thing as design, intention, or
purpose anywhere. If mind is first and fundamental, then man is the end
and aim of creation, for in him the mind that formed the earth finds a
companion and an interpreter. If matter is first and fundamental, then
the earth is as much for crocodiles and wolves, as for men, and the
life of a human being is no better than that of a lizard. If matter is
fundamental, it were better to be a crocodile or an elephant than to be
a man, for they have more of the fundamental stuff of the universe in
their bodies; and their brains generate none of that subtle something
called _mind_, which perpetually asks questions that have no answer, and
cherishes beliefs that have no foundation. If matter is fundamental, then
we should trust our faculties, in proportion as they are animal, and deny
them in proportion as they are mental. Then the Neros and the Caligulas
were more rational in their sins, than the Luthers and the Wesleys in
their virtues. By following their lusts, the former found pleasure, of a
low order of course, but in the realm of the real; the latter, following
their convictions, found pleasure, of a higher order it may be, but it
was in a false and unreal domain. It were better to be true to the facts
on the plain of the appetites, than to be the silly victims of fraud on
the plain of the conscience and the affections. But it is impossible that
men have been true as they have been degraded, and false as they have
been pure. The design and purpose which has been apparent in nature, and
which men have felt in conscience approving the right and condemning
the wrong, must be there. To eliminate them, or to reason them away, is
to bring mental confusion, and to take from the conviction and thought,
which have made civilization, the principles on which they reposed, and
by which they were inspired.
IV.
Man has no deeper and surer impression than that the world belongs to him
and was made for him. It is deepened year by year, too, as he sees the
relations he sustains to it increase. No more certainly are the walls,
roof, and floor of a house related to the comfort and protection of the
family, than are the elements, forces, and seasons of nature related to
the well-being and civilization of man. Mountain and sky, meadow and
forest, the past and the present are permeated with the thought, or idea,
of man, whether in the first stages of progress, keeping beasts at bay
with sling or stone, or at a more advanced period, tunneling the rivers
and digging down the mountains. Young or old, child or man, nature stands
ready to serve him. Water from her skies flows through his veins to and
from his beating heart. Trees and shrubs and herbs minister to his
pleasure and his ills. Rocks, and timber, and steel lend themselves to
his service for house, hatchet, or chisel. When he ascends sufficiently
in the grade of civilization to give expression to his conceptions of
beauty, he finds the colors in the ores under his feet to embody his
visions. Would he illuminate his humble home at night, there is the pine
with its light-giving tar. Does he live amid the plains, where the pine
does not grow, there is the ox with his tallow ready to be made into
candles. Does he live on the coast, away from the ox or the pine, there
is the whale with his oil. Does he want a better light than pine, or
tallow, or oil can give, there are the coal beds, with their sunshine
laid up for his use for thousands of ages. Does he wish to turn night
into day, and make his streets glow with the radiance of the stars,
there is electricity to be drawn from its wide, mysterious fields, to
serve his growing desire. Would he cross the sea, the winds lie ready to
fill his canvas and draw him from continent to continent. Are the winds
too slow, there is the heat, stored in the mountains, ready to move his
engine and drive his wheel. Does he wish to make himself ubiquitous, and
send a message across the sea, before a ship could get out of port, there
waits on him again the mysterious lightning.
Nature teems with elements and forces to wait on man’s every thought, to
gratify his every desire, and to respond to his every aspiration. With
all her wealth she surrounds him, and in ten thousand ways invites him to
use it. The naturalist Guyot said the hand of man prefigures his destiny
as an intelligent worker. So the form of all continents and islands, the
outlines of all seas and coasts, contain the idea of the human family. At
a time, geologically about the same, the surface conditions of the earth
were prepared for the advent of man. The great Himalaya Mountain range
was lifted up to prepare an embosoming plain to serve as a cradle for the
human race. The long chain of mountains running through the whole length
of the North and South American continents was raised to prepare the way
for civilization on this side of the sea. When the ocean beds were dug
out and the waters called off from a part of the earth’s surface; when
the mighty peaks and the majestic turrets of the mountain chains were
lifted into the sky; when the encompassing atmosphere was filled with all
life-replenishing elements and wrapped about all oceans and shores; when
the poisonous forces destructive of man’s life were locked up in soils
and rocks; when the meadows were sown with grasses, and the hospitable
arms of the trees were loaded with fruit, then, upon the earth, adorned
and ready for his coming, man appeared.
V.
Considered as an embodiment of thought, man is the only creature who can
interpret Nature. The ideas and principles that fill his great books
were gathered from a study of her secrets and processes. The first books
on geology, giving the history of the earth, its upheavals, changes,
and transformations, were written in the rocks, sands, coal-beds, and
shells of the primal ages. The first books on chemistry were written in
the shape, sizes, affinities, and specific gravities of the atoms which
enter into the composition of all natural bodies. The first books on
arithmetic, by the knowledge of which man learns to divide and conquer
nature, were written in the qualitative relations and movements of
matter. The first books on astronomy were written in the orbits and
movements of the heavenly bodies. The first books on zoölogy were written
in the structure and habits of the lower animals. The books that fill
our libraries are but transcripts from the original volumes written in
rocks, seas, flowers, and skies. Man is the only being who can read and
transcribe these wonderful volumes. They lie unopened and unknown till
his interest is provoked. Their language carries no meaning till he comes
to find it and to ponder it. The herds that low amid the Alpine echoes
see, as well as the distinguished Tyndall, the great glaciers, as they
press with slow and measured pace down the mountain side; but their
meaning, and the law by which they move, is not known till the man of
science comes. To him, they speak in awful and majestic terms. To the
sheep in the meadow, the grass means nothing but food; to man, however,
every blade has a message, poetic and beautiful.
Considered as a home, this world was made for man; in a thousand senses,
it was not made for any other creature. It is the home of the oyster,
but its wants are met by a little basin in the sea. It is the home of
the elephant, but a few acres of Asiatic jungle furnish the food and the
conditions necessary to its life. It is the home of the bird, but give it
a tree and a worm, and a small circle of sky to fly around, and it needs
no more. But man needs it all. For his hunger, the foods and the fruits
of its continents, oceans, and skies. For his thirst, the waters of its
thousand rills. For his shelter and protection, all its woods. For his
thought, all its order and law. For his ills, the tender ministry of all
its minerals and plants. He is related to it all, and to be completely
furnished must be able to use it all.
Considered as a place of discipline, the earth is for man, for he is the
only creature helped and advanced by discipline. The beaver cuts his
tree and builds his dam to-day just as the beaver did in the first year
of his existence. He has had the discipline that comes through work,
but it has not improved him nor elevated him. In order that the bee may
live, he must gather his honey and build his cell. This is discipline.
But he never improves. He never grows in culture or skill. The bee that
built his cell in the trees of paradise, and gathered his honey from the
flowers that grew in the garden of Eden, knew as well how to construct
a cell according to mathematical principles, and to pack it with honey,
as the Italian bee of the nineteenth century, who stores his honey in a
painted gum prepared for him by man.
Monkeys in South America cross rivers by twisting their tails, thus
making bridges of themselves. This is discipline and exercise of a
complex and marvelous sort, but they devise no new ways of building
bridges. They do not increase in knowledge or skill by their work.
That he may gain the means of subsistence, man is under the necessity
of work too. But his work is to him a means of growth and knowledge.
His work has helped him forward, and secured to him culture and skill.
Suggestions come to him, as he fells the forest, as he plows the field,
as he plants the seed, and as he rows his dug-out. These suggestions he
turns to account. He builds them into better axes for cutting the trees,
into better plow-stocks for breaking the land, and into better boats for
crossing the sea.
By turning the suggestions he has received into better methods, into
improved tools and machinery, he has come from the dug-out to the ocean
steamer; from the pack-mule to the palace car; from the scythe-blade to
the mower and reaper; from the stone and sling to the improved army gun;
from the spinning-wheel to the cotton-factory; and from the foaming steed
of the flying messenger to the electric telegraph.
Because of the growth and improvement he has received through work,
the tom-tom has long given place to the piano, and the tent to the
modern home. Through struggle with nature, he has been piqued into a
determination to conquer her, to ferret out her secrets, and master her
processes.
The forces that oppose him he makes to serve him. The river current,
which forbids him to cross, he utilizes to ferry him over. He sets his
sail in the wind blowing eastward and avails himself of its power to
carry him westward. The waves that rise to engulf him he turns into
steam to outride them. The winds draw his water, the river saws his
plank. The tail of the beaver is adjusted by nature to the mud he needs
to cement his dam; his tooth is already adjusted to the hardness of the
tree, so that he cuts it down by instinct and without thought. The eagle
finds the air already under his wings when he would fly, and his talons
already prepared to hold his food, or to grasp a limb in the forest. The
fish finds itself in the beginning of its existence in an element ready
to respond to its fins, and in the presence of food adapted to its life.
The lower animals find themselves at the start in a world immediately
adjusted to their needs, so that they have only to use their feet, their
teeth, their horns, their claws, their wings, and their fins, to conquer
their enemies and find their food. The animal is wholly governed by
natural law, and hence has no history. He moves on nature’s level, and
is adjusted to her plains, her forests, her seas, and her skies, without
his thought or his device. Man is not related in the same outward,
immediate way to clothing, food, and fuel. His understanding, it is true,
corresponds to the scheme of nature, but he must grow into this by study,
by insight, by hints, by the use of faculties the lower animals do not
possess. As long as he remains on the plain of the tiger and panther, and
emulates their stealthy step to creep upon his prey, or his human foe,
like them, he has no history.
The savage, perhaps, did master the mystery of the dug-out and the
birch-bark canoe, but he had no place for his archives but a hole in
the ground, and no experience but such as died with him. Man’s history
begins with the attempt to conquer Nature. The contribution that Nature
makes to human civilization is that she sets herself against his inward
energies, as if to call them out. She puts limitations about him, that
he may be prompted to rise above them. The fury and storm of the sea
provokes his ingenuity to express itself in the steamship. The peril to
life and fortune contained in the lightning’s flash, begets the steel rod
that disarms it. The distance between the wheat that grows in one part
of the globe and the need for bread in another, leads to the discovery
of a method of transportation that obliterates it. Civilization is the
expression that man has made of himself in his attempts, through thought
and will, to effect the conquest of Nature. This witnesses to the
peculiar and magnificent place which alone belongs to him in nature.
It may be true that he has no kingdom of his own, no privileged class of
his own, and no titled order of his own; but it can hardly be disputed
that he has a history of his own. This history, written in the dim
glories of vast empires, in the rush of splendid cities, in the age-long
conflict between good and evil, in the undying creed of martyred faith,
in the hope, fidelity, trial, agony, triumph, and self-sacrifice of the
human race, bears witness to the fact, either that the earth was made for
man, or else that he is the only creature upon it capable of subduing it,
transforming it, recreating it, and appropriating it. If man is only a
natural product, the powers have certainly been engaged in a marvelously
intelligent and complicated sort of conspiracy to advance his interests
and to serve his dominion.
Nothing but what we have been accustomed to regard as design, intention,
purpose, is sufficient to account for the fact, that the scheme of nature
so completely corresponds to the understanding of man as to make it
possible for him to command and claim all her possessions for his own.
Men will never accept such a happy coincidence as the work of chance.
They will, by the very structure of their minds, believe that the scheme
and the understanding, which, through the process of struggle and trial,
grows into it, were intended, by the Great Author of both, the one for
the other.
_BREAD._
“The power that Greece had to throw out light is marvelous,
even now that we have the example of France. Greece did not
colonize without civilizing—an example that more than one
modern nation might follow: to buy and sell is not all.
“Tyre bought and sold: Berytus bought and sold: Sidon bought
and sold: Sarepta bought and sold. Where are these cities?
Athens taught; and she is to this hour one of the capitals of
human thought.
“The grass is growing on the six steps of the tribune where
spoke Demosthenes: the Ceramicus is a ravine, half-choked with
the marble dust which was once the palace of Cecrops: the Odeon
of Herod Atticus, at the foot of the Acropolis, is now but a
ruin on which falls at certain hours the imperfect shadow of
the Parthenon: the temple of Theseus belongs to the swallows:
the goats browse on the Pnyx. Still the Greek spirit lives:
still Greece is queen: still Greece is goddess. A counting
house passes away: a school remains.”
CHAPTER I.
THE PROVISION FOR THE PHYSICAL NATURE OF MAN.
In the form of bread, using the term in a wide generic sense, matter
passes into the service of man on the plane of human life. By regular
steps it is lifted and refined and adjusted to correspondence with human
need and comfort. In its raw and individual state, it is controlled by
physical force. From this crude condition it is carried by chemical
force to the order of the mineral kingdom. From this plane, it passes
up through the agency of vital force to the vegetable kingdom. Through
the power of vital force of a higher kind, it is advanced to the animal
kingdom. Here it is ready for man, and yields itself to the uses of
his life. From the time that vital force enters the realm of nature, a
process of assimilation begins. The plant assimilates the mineral, the
animal assimilates the plant, and man assimilates the animal. Through
regular gradations, matter passes up from the bottom of nature into
the service of man, who stands at the top. With each move upward it
gets associated with force of a higher kind. With each advance its
range gets wider and its movements freer. In the form of bread, it is
sufficiently refined and sublimated to be appropriated and utilized
for food, for shelter, for raiment, by the immortal spirit of man. The
necessity for food, for clothing, for shelter, creates commerce, and
commerce accomplishes results far more important than the production and
distribution of the temporal necessities of human life. It brings men
together; it establishes relations. It is the wonderful institution
which, early in the history of the race, began as a loom to catch up the
separate threads of individual life, to weave them into that marvelous
fabric called humanity. Ends of an infinitely higher order are realized
by the production and exchange of the elements of trade, than the
satisfying of hunger with bread, or the furnishing man with clothing and
shelter. The higher ends are the essential and ordained ends. That we may
understand what an important part the necessity for food has played in
the progress of man, it will be well to consider the significance of the
relations it first helped to establish.
I.
All power whatever, that distinguishes man from the brute, that in any
respect contributes to his commercial, mental, moral, or human value,
is due to union, relation, action and interaction among individuals.
In nature we may find illustrations of this truth. Sound, electricity,
heat, and light, are forms of force which owe their existence to action,
relation, interaction among material particles. They would never arise
in a universe of unrelated elements. Their difference is due, not to the
vibration of different elements, but to different rates of vibration
among the same elements. Consequent upon certain terms of formal and
quiet social intercourse among the molecules, there is sound. When
they intermingle more actively and intimately, there is electricity.
With a slight change in the method, but no decrease in the velocity
with which they move, there is heat. When they go at the top of their
speed, waltzing and swinging corners at an unthinkable rate, there is
light. From varying relations and actions among material particles, we
get the music which charms us, the means of communication which unite
us, the power to do work which serves us, and the beauty which refines
us. The unceasing play of these simple unseen elements made the fame of
Beethoven, who threw their vibrations into symphonies; and of Morse,
who utilized their speed to carry the news; and of Watt, who hitched
their radiations to the flying train; and of Daguerre, who put their
undulations to painting pictures. All forms of physical force may be
traced to the union, relation, and vibration of material particles.
The distance from atoms to men is well-nigh infinite, but the points
of resemblance between the genesis of physical force and the genesis
of social force are sufficiently striking to make it permissible to
trace the analogy between them. By social force is understood all those
forms of energy which men find themselves to possess by virtue of their
relations to one another in organized social life.
Commerce insures the union, and brings about the relations that make this
force possible. It furnishes the conditions without which it could not be.
A self-contained, self-included, insulated person does carry within the
depths of his being the organs of the civilized man, but they are as
completely out of sight and out of use as the harvests that sleep within
the kernels of the mummy wheat. If it were possible for an individual to
come to years of maturity, out of relations with his fellows, he would be
more destitute than a brute. Such an one, growing up in the woods or on
an island, with no associates but the squirrels and the birds, would not
have the personal furnishments of the monkey or the fox.
We can understand, too, by considering what man owes to his relations,
how widely and completely he is separated from the lower animals. A
thousand blackbirds, living together in relation, are not different from
a thousand blackbirds living apart and out of relation. A squirrel gains
no element of squirrelhood by companionship, and loses no element of it
in isolation. He may be taken from his nest as soon as he is born and
never be permitted to see another squirrel, but he will be just as much
of a squirrel, and know as well how to get the meat out of a nut, as if
free in the forests with others of his kind. A mocking bird comes to the
power of song as well in a cage, separated from other birds, as when fed
and trained in the orchard by the mother-bird. The chords in his throat
were set to music, and without teacher or praise, at a certain period of
his growth, his song will ring through the house.
The difference between a man brought up in some lone woods, out of all
relation with men, and one brought up in a civilized community, is
infinite. The lower animals get all they ever get by birth. No new
gifts or powers come to them through companionship. They go unerringly
to a certain destined end, whether they move in flocks or herds, or
alone as individuals. Men, on the other hand, find themselves by coming
together. Their organs sleep till waked by relation. By birth they can
get nothing but the germs, the mere naked elements of what they are to
become. Birth would be no blessing, but a deepening curse, but for what
comes to the child through relation. Birthright alone is not worth a mess
of pottage. Men often congratulate themselves on what they are pleased
to term their individual rights and personal freedom. While men do have
individual rights and personal freedom, it is always to be remembered
that these belong to them because of the relations woven around them by
the institutions of social life. The civilized man differs more from the
savage, than the savage differs from the highest animal. Yet the lowest
savage is infinitely removed from the highest animal, but solely in the
possession of the germs of the attainments and the accomplishments which
may be provoked and maintained by relation. Society alone furnishes the
soil in which these germs can grow. The savage, alone in the woods,
might secure for himself a covering of skins, but the cloth in which the
civilized man clothes himself is possible only in social relations.
With the commencement of human relations, the outlines of an absolutely
new world come into view. Dim and vague at the outset, as the relations
are simple and low. But as these increase in number, range, and degree,
not only the outlines, but the far-reaching surface, the mountains, the
rivers, the products, the sky, and the climate of a new world stand out
clear, definite, and unmistakable. This new realm we name _civilization_.
It is super-imposed upon the physical world, but is as distinct from it
as thought from the molecules of the brain. Nature furnishes the basis,
but social relations furnish the conditions of the human energy that has
lifted itself into the mighty edifice we call civilization.
All genera and species and families and individuals are so many forms
in which the radiant energy of the sun has deposited itself. Playing
with its heat and its light upon soil, sea, and sky, the sun has built
the myriad organic forms we see. So all objects, interests, and laws
embraced within the range of civilization are the forms in which social
force, arising through relations, has deposited itself. Human language
itself is an embodiment of social force. The grammars of different
languages actually advertise the social status and condition of the
peoples who used them. In the Chinese language we have no distinction
as to parts of speech, thus showing that the national consciousness was
arrested at the stage of paternalism in government. The ancient Romans
put enormous stress upon the will. They formulated the laws by which men
are still regulated in civilized social life. A hint of this we get in
the Latin language, by the small use made of the pronoun. Ideas, too,
are expressions of translated social energy. Nothing seems to be more
insulated than the human brain, by the aid of which the mind does its
thinking. Out of sight and out of touch, within the dark depths of its
own mysterious home, it would appear to be shut up to absolute solitude.
Here, at least, we would expect to find individual, independent work.
But not so. No individual brain can think, only as it uses the brains of
others in the process. Homer’s Iliad is a poetic formulation of what all
Greece felt. The elements of myth, thought, passion, which it contains,
were all in the contemporary Greek mind. In committing this poem to
memory, the Greeks were but storing up their own thoughts.
Hegel, in thinking out his remarkable system of philosophy, used the
brains of all the men who had preceded him in the difficult work of
solving the problems of existence. Darwin saw much in nature, because,
through relation, he was able to look through the eyes of all naturalists.
All values, whether in soil, waterfalls, precious stones, or money,
are forms of social force. Land in a great city sells for two thousand
dollars a front foot, because millions of people, drawn by the powers of
commerce, have come into fellowship upon it. Robinson Crusoe would have
given all the money he had on the ship for a loaf of bread. The heaps of
gold and silver in Wall Street are so valuable, because seventy millions
of people are circulating around them.
Moral laws are social products. They are not empirical, but fundamental,
eternal, and essential. They inhere in the constitution of man. But it
is only through relation that man comes to the recognition of them,
as binding for conduct. Light and heat have their laws, definite and
unfailing, but if natural particles never vibrated at a rate sufficient
to create these forces, the laws would not appear. They arise along with
the forces, and the same conditions which give rise to the forces, give
rise to the laws. So moral laws accompany a certain degree of attainment
and culture, only possible through relation.
Religion itself, the highest and most sacred deposit of human life, is
a product of social force. Whether we regard it as “modes of emotion,”
as Lecky; or the “recognition of all our duties as divine commands,” as
Kant; or as “awe in the presence of the mystery of an inscrutable power
in the universe,” as Spencer; or as “the infinite nature of duty,” as
Mill; or as “the immediate feeling of the dependence of man on God,” as
Schleiermacher, it never arises outside the range of relation. Still,
religion is something constitutional, inalienable, divine; but man would
never be thrilled by its hopes, or soothed by its peace, did he not
stand in vital relation to his fellows. The elements and raw material
of religion are eternally present, but relation calls into exercise the
susceptibilities and faculties which appropriate these elements and raw
material, turning them into hymns, theologies, prayers, sacrifices,
liturgies, and ceremonies.
Commerce, by bringing men together under the necessities of finding
food, clothing, shelter, enables them to find their intellects and what
they can know, their hearts and what they can love, and their wills and
what they can do.
Thus we trace the genesis of social force, with the expressions which
it makes of itself, in property, literature, law, art, and religion,
to mutual human relations, for the establishment of which, among men,
Commerce seems to have been ordained. If men could, without trading, have
found the means of subsistence, as do the foxes and the lions; then no
relations in the high sense of the term would have been established among
them; and like the foxes and the lions, they would have remained on the
earth without progress and without history.
The sun must be making tremendous drafts upon some unseen sources of
power, to be able to make, throughout the solar realm, such ample
expenditures of energy without bankruptcy.
The location of the vast depositories of power, upon which he draws so
liberally, we are not to inquire here. We do know that the force which
builds the forest, flushes the meadows with green, braids the vines into
festoons, and peoples the plant-world, comes from the sun. Wherever the
materials which keep the sun’s fires burning come from, they must pass
up to that center before they are available for service on this globe.
The stamp and superscription of the sun must be upon them before they
can take the form of grass, or leaf, or bird on the earth. In this sense
stand human relations between the force contained in the individual,
unrelated life, and the force which takes form in the objects of
civilization. The crude and inarticulate force in the individuals of the
tribe, or the nomads who only touch for war or passion, must be refined
through moral, political, and spiritual relations before it is ready to
take the form of poem, anthem, temple, or Plato.
II.
We wish to determine the principle in accordance with which the
production and distribution of food, shelter, and clothing are to be
regulated. These forms of value are embodiments of social energy,
generated through relations formed above nature by intelligence and
volition. In nature, then, we are not to find the law that is to regulate
them.
Bees build their cells, and birds their nests, and beavers their dams,
not by intelligence and will, called into existence after birth through
companionship, but by what is in-wrought into the very fibers of their
being irrespective of companionship. Birds, bees, and beavers have been
in the world thousands of years, yet the first bird, bee, or beaver
ever created had as much sense as the last. A single bee has as much
sense as all the bees in the world put together. Among all lower animals
each individual inherits the sense of the species. Hence the law “of the
struggle for existence,” resulting in “the survival of the fittest,”
said to be a regulating principle in the plant and animal kingdoms, is
not severe, regarded with reference to the individuals which inhabit
them. But to regard the operations of this law as beneficent upon the
plane of human life, as does Mr. Spencer, is altogether to overlook
the obligations men are under to one another, because of their mutual
relations. The life of each man, it must be remembered, in so far as it
is above that of the unrelated savage, is contained in the life of every
other man. In so far as it is comfortable, intelligent, and free, it has
been brought to him, and made over to him by his fellow-man. The law
which is to determine the regulation of the elements of commerce, which
are but expressions of the energy arising through mutual human relations,
must be as elevated as the relations which commerce begets, and which in
turn make commerce possible.
We must not go down among the tigers and the hyenas, who owe nothing but
bare birth to companionship, where the principle of “the survival of
the fittest in the struggle for existence” does prevail, to get the law
which is to regulate the production and distribution of products possible
only through companionship. Each individual, be he weak or strong, has
contributed something to the social body. The strength of the one may
have contributed courage, the weakness of the other may have called forth
pity; but both pity and courage are virtues possible only in relation. A
regulating principle that kills off the feeble ones, and drives the weak
ones to the wall, may do for brutes, who owe nothing to relationships;
but not for men, who owe everything to them. The attempt to regulate
forms of value in accordance with the law of “the survival of the fittest
in the struggle for existence” does not have sufficient regard for the
contribution each individual has made, by the very fact of his existence,
to make these values possible. The leading political economists of the
times have come to see that the law of extreme individualism, of “every
man for himself and the devil take the hindmost,” must be substituted by
some more beneficent principle—by some law that pays more respect to the
methods by which values have been created.
The province of commerce, as an institution, is to bring men together,
not merely that the boundaries of commerce may be extended and its
volume increased, but that men may learn the mutual obligations they
are under to one another, that their sympathy for one another may be
enlarged, and that respect for one another may be engendered.
It is only in an atmosphere of mutual trust, sympathy, and respect that
men can grow.
The need for bread, for protection, for raiment, prompts men to the
exchange of products, that each may share into the work of all. But
in the process of exchanging products, relations are established,
through the influence and power of which an order of man comes the mere
material comforts of life cannot supply. The significance of commerce,
then, is not understood, if it is considered simply with reference to
its immediate ends. These ends are met when men are supplied with the
material comforts of life. Ends, however, are mediated through it of
a kind different in order and degree. These we consider the essential
and ultimate ends of the relations which are established through the
exchange of products. What, then, is the ultimate end and object of human
relations? It is man. Man come to himself, conscious of himself, in
possession of himself. It is human life, enriched, perfected, completed.
It is man, strong, free, holy. It is man, not lost in the social texture,
nor swamped in the social organism; but, finding his individuality and
his peculiar, natural, simple self through them. The marvelous fabric
the social loom was set to weaving is man. The highest end of social
relations is a self-conscious, self-determining man, thinking the true,
willing the right, loving the good. These relations constitute the
organism out of which alone he can be born into symmetrical, well rounded
life.
The lower animals come from natural birth into the world entire and
complete. The young eaglet is correlated to the sky before he leaves the
egg. But man moves on a plane lower than the brutes, if he is not caught
at birth and carried by relation to his proper place. As man is the
highest product of social relations, it follows that the highest product
is the ultimate product.
An apple tree may be used for fire wood, or sawn into planks, but apples
are the ultimate reasons for the existence of the apple tree. Toward an
apple the germ started when it burst the sod and stood a little sprig
above the ground. Beyond the apple, the tree goes no further. It throws
its roots into the earth and its branches into the atmosphere, and
perpetually acts and reacts upon its environment, but all for the purpose
of turning soil, and sunshine, and rain into apples.
As we have seen, a part of the social energy arising through mutual
human relations is to be converted into language, values, literature,
morality, and religion, as a part of the capital invested in a sewing
machine factory goes into tools. But man is greater than language,
values, literature, morality, or religion; as the sewing machine is
greater than the tools by which it is made. Human relations create
language, values, art, morality, and religion, that they may be used to
advance and perfect the main work they were ordained to perform, “the
making of a man.”
When the people of a nation come to regard the elements of wealth,
literature, art, or even religion, as ends to be enjoyed rather than as
means to make man, they have missed the purpose of creation, and wander
amid the mazes of stupidity and blindness.
As far as outward splendor and wealth were concerned, Babylon had no
rival among the nations of ancient times. She was a vast and rich
empire. She embraced the most fertile portion of the globe. She had a
capital that eclipsed all others in magnificence. Her hanging gardens
were the wonder of the world; but her people stood not upon their
terraces to observe the stars, or to reach a higher civilization through
the realization of the nobler ends of their being. These were used as
places of revelry and sensual enjoyment. Thus the only work of art that
made them famous was used to make them stupid and depraved. Of her wealth
she made an end. Putting no estimate upon men, through the relations of
whom her wealth was created, she found at last that among all her people
she had produced no man amply endowed enough to give permanent mental
setting to her civilization and her faith. Her heart throbs, whatever
they were, got explained in no history, interpreted in no philosophy,
and lived in no life. For knowledge of her, we are dependent upon her
ruins, her pottery, her broken columns. Into oblivion has fallen all that
bejeweled and pampered life that reveled in her palaces and amid her
far-famed hanging gardens. Among none of her luxurious inhabitants did
she develop a man to commit the keeping of her secrets and the record of
her progress. Over her history has settled the stillness of the desert
and the gloom of eternal night.
On the other hand, how secure is the Greece, that flowered in her great
men! It was in the two centuries between 500 and 300 B. C., when she
emphasized men more than the things they created, that she produced the
men who have been the teachers of the human race. She has been despoiled
of her art treasures, her temples have fallen, her Parthenon is in ruins;
but the two hundred years of her life, which she deposited in her great
men, are immortal.
No tooth of time, no war’s bloody hand, no devastation of the years, can
take from her the glory which she lifted and locked in the genius of her
generals, her statesmen, her orators, and her philosophers. Epaminondas
and Pericles still fight for her, and guard with sleepless vigilance her
fair name. Plato and Aristotle still interpret her problems of destiny.
Sophocles and Pindar still sing her glory. Herodotus and Thucydides
still keep the record of her victories. Demosthenes and Æschines still
give imperishable expression to her conceptions of form and symmetry.
She deposited her riches in the spirits of her great men, and they are
forever secure. No thief can steal them, no rust can corrupt them. The
unfolding centuries may look in upon them and enjoy them, but they cannot
arrest them. The spirits of great men, like immortal ships, sail the
ocean of time, bearing the treasures of the civilizations which gave them
birth. They outride the fury of all the storms, and will sail on, till
The stars grow old,
The sun grows cold,
And the leaves of the Judgment book unfold.
But when Greece came to think more of the results than of the living
men, she lost not only the power to produce the men, but the capacity
to appreciate the results which had been created by them. Thinking more
of the temple than the builder, she soon had no architect to conceive,
and no son to understand the temple. Turning her national power into the
spirits of her living men, she utilized the mountains and the mines in
the service of beauty. But when life got cheaper than art, she no longer
had power to create new art, or to protect from vandalism the old. By
removing the emphasis from men to things, she descended from the Crœsus
to the pauper of civilization.
As long as Israel expended her national energy in the production of men,
she had Moses, greater than the Tabernacle; David, greater than his harp;
and Isaiah, greater than his song. But when the forms of her worship were
emphasized beyond the spirits of her people she lost the devotion which
created her church and the manhood that guided it. The men who formulated
the laws that made Rome the mistress of the world, grew at a period when
a Roman was the center of interest in the empire. But when her laws were
stressed to the obliteration of her men, she had them still, without
the ability to make more laws, or to execute the ones she had. Religion
in India is emphasized more than character; hence her men are lost in
a wanton and luxurious surrender to a modeless, transcendental, pure
being, and she is practically without a history.
III.
The ultimate reasons, then, for the existence of social relations,
brought about among human beings by exchange of products, is not the
satisfaction of hunger, or the enrichment of individuals in material
wealth, but the making of men. This being so, we are able to determine
the law by which the production and distribution of commercial products
are to be regulated. It must be a law that does not put the emphasis
on the products, but upon the men who are to be elevated through their
exchange. It must not be a law leaning to extreme individualism on the
one side, or to extreme socialism on the other. It must have proper
respect to the individual, and to the social organism to which he is
indebted for whatever of power he possesses. That law has already
been formulated for us. It is this: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself.” This is the coordination of self-love and good-will. As has
been well said, this saves for us the strength of private enterprise,
and individual initiative, the vigor of the self-regarding motives; yet
enthrones by their side as co-equal and co-regent powers, the principle
of benevolence, the obligation to promote the common weal. Self-support,
self-help, self-reliance, are still cardinal virtues, but philanthropy is
given co-ordinate authority with them in the commercial world. This is
the law most favorable to the growth of men.
Under its benign reign, men can come to themselves. Through the operation
of this law, there will be no curtailment of the volume or the extent of
commerce; but the emphasis will be kept in the right place, and men will
not be lost in the process of securing the elements of food and shelter.
Commerce will be the means of mediating to men their higher nature.
Surrounded by conditions engendered by the operation of a law like this,
life will reach through relation higher and higher ranges of hope and
insight. The elements of poems, symphonies, philosophies, temples, and
pictures will flow in the blood.
The fierce competition we see in the commercial world to-day is the
attempt to re-enact, in business life, the principle of natural
selection, or “the survival of the fittest in the struggle for
existence.” This is the law of the jungle, but not of the social realm.
This is doubtless the law among trees, determining their number, variety,
and structure; for one tree gains nothing from association with other
trees. This law doubtless operates in the sea, among the fish, and in
the sky among the birds, for fish and birds are what they are by birth
and not by association. Mr. Spencer regards the operation of this law
as beneficent. It kills off the unsuccessful members of society, it
drives the weak ones to the wall. Those who survive in the struggle are
the fittest. The Greeks, who put Socrates to death, were, according to
this so-called beneficent principle, the fittest to survive. This law
is regarded as beneficent as it operates among men to control their
products, upon the supposition that man is an animal and a part and
parcel of nature, as are the bears and the wolves. The things which
elevate men and civilize them, however, do not come from nature, but
are engendered through companionship and association. Hence, from the
sense of obligation men are under to one another for the best and
highest things of life, the law is to be deduced which is to regulate
their commerce and to determine the character of their actions. This
law is, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Thus business looks
to character. The discipline it insures is worth more than the money it
brings. The highest product of trade is man himself. If in business such
methods are practiced, if such aims are followed as destroy the man,
however great the returns in money, it is a thousand fold worse than a
failure. The man it was designed to make, it has destroyed.
IV.
The disposition to accumulate, which is right and praiseworthy, should
always be modified by right knowledge of the uses of property, and the
methods by which it is amassed. Nothing is more pitiable than for a
person to have more property than he has manhood. This indicates that
the stress has been on the wrong side of the wealth. Such a man is
under the sad necessity of taking his significance from the money he
has accumulated, rather than the noble elements of life he should have
secured in the process of obtaining it. With such a man, the end of
business has been lost. He has consumed the end in the means. Instead of
turning the elements of trade into manhood, manhood has been lost amid
the maze and chaos of things. The order of progress has been violated,
and the man, instead of moving on through business cares to immortal
character, turns back to the earth, and seeks to substitute the tendency
to move from it, by the disposition to settle permanently upon it. The
desire to get rich has grown so abnormal and perverted, that it seeks to
satisfy itself by the abundance of mere things. There are a great number
of mowers and reapers, engines and cotton-gins, hats and shoes, pins and
buttons; but a man has been lost in the making of them. This is more
than all the mowers and reapers, cotton-gins and steam engines, pins and
buttons ever made are worth. It is not mete that men should be sacrificed
to the beauty and perfection of machinery, or to things machinery turns
out. It is not necessary either. What we gain is not worth what we give.
The machinery should be so manipulated as to get the things, and at the
same time secure the perfection of men through the process. It is not
necessary for the painter to lose himself in his art, and sacrifice his
manhood to make his vision glow on the canvas. A proper regard for the
methods and uses of art will result in leaving in the living spirit a
picture more perfect than any painted by the brush. John Bunyan did
not lose his manhood in portraying the history of a human soul in its
attempts to get from earth to heaven. While conducting his pilgrim
safely through the sorrow and temptations of life, to a home in a better
world, he opened the pearly gates to his own soul. His work transfigured
his life, and was the means of sanctifying it. All business and all work
should lift up, and not hold down; it should make free, and not enslave;
it should ennoble and not degrade. It is as honorable to make shoes or
anchors as to paint pictures or write books. The shoemaker should learn
the secret through his work of finding the sandals of manhood for his
own feet. The blacksmith should learn, through the making of anchors for
the great ships, to find the anchor that is to hold his own soul to the
truth, amid the storms of life.
V.
If through trade only the material result is sought, the ends it were
intended to subserve are missed. Its bulk may be large, the machinery
through which it is carried on manifold and complicated, but with the
emphasis on the money side of it, no manhood will be reached through it.
The man side of a button machine is infinitely more important than the
button side. The buttons which fall on one side may conform precisely to
an approved and an exquisite pattern, but if the person who stands on the
other side does not, through the process of making buttons, get a man out
of himself, the whole thing is a disastrous failure. Human spirits are
too valuable to be used up in making buttons. More respect is to be had
to the human side of the loom than to the cloth side. The most beautiful
pattern of silk ever woven loses its power to please the eye when it is
remembered that the soul of a woman has been drawn into its threads and
colors. The sacrifice of individual life is impressive and noble, if the
object for which it is made is worthy. This kind of sacrifice is not the
means of losing life, but of gaining it. But no material result to be
used up in the passing season of fashion is worth such costly sacrifice.
Through forces we name capillarity, cohesion, and gravitation, matter
accomplishes the purposes of thought. They are but manifestations of the
power of mind working through them, to build up the mineral, vegetable,
and animal kingdoms. They look beyond themselves. They work for higher
ends. Thus all the industries we see in nature look to lifting and
refining matter, and force high enough to serve the uses of human life.
So the industries established on the plane of human life are to elevate
man another step in the scale of being. Through sowing and reaping,
through grinding and sawing, through spinning and weaving, through buying
and selling, through building and furnishing, he is to be carried on in
the march of progress.
The history of the physical universe culminates in man, finds its
interpreter and its interpretation in him. Never was the thought of him
absent from her movements through Pliocene, Miocene, Eocene, Cretaceous,
Jurassic, Triassic, Carboniferous, Devonian, Silurian, or Cambrian ages.
In all her awful cosmic emotion to reach order and form, it was the
anticipation of man that moved her, for he it is at last that comes of
it. So, through all the course of her tumultuous history, nature was
pregnant with man. The stars which sang together in the early morning of
the world, caught the inspiration which gave melody to their song from
the thought of him.
Commerce, if it is to be permanent and healthy and progressive, must
fall into line with the purpose nature was put upon its perilous course
to subserve. Her countless forms of industry established by the law
of supply and demand; her cars, rushing hither and thither all round
the world; her great steamships on every sea; her great furnaces, whose
chimneys lift themselves against the sky, must get their meaning and the
reason for their existence from the fact that they are putting in their
contribution to the making of a man. Her wheels are to fly, her spindles
are to whirl, her paddles are to splash, and her hammers are to ring,
making music amid it all, in anticipation of his increasing worth, his
growing thought, his enlarging hope. Her countless wheels of industry
will be throwing out axes, wagons, plow-stocks, hand-saws, and reapers
as they fly; but these will be only so many means used to discipline
the precious life committed for a while to her training. What chemical
affinity did in lifting the original elements to the mineral kingdom,
and what the animal did to lift the plant to the animal kingdom, so the
trades and industries of commerce are to do in lifting human life from
its individual, unrelated state to its social and fraternal state. The
elements of commerce are to be the means to help human character out of
human nature. Two kinds of raw material are to be refined. The iron in
the mountain is to be turned into razor blades and caligraphs; the reeds
in the swamps and the woods in the forests are to be turned into the
notes of organ and piano; and in the process of refining these, man is to
be disciplined in the use of himself, in the possession of himself, and
in the command of himself.
_POWER._
“Excessive devotion to the material is the evil of our epoch;
hence a certain sluggishness.
“The great problem is to restore to the human mind something of
the ideal. Whence shall we draw the ideal? Wherever it is to be
found. The poets, the philosophers, the thinkers, are its urns.
“The ideal is in Æschylus, in Isaiah, in Juvenal, in Alighieri,
in Shakspere. Throw Æschylus, throw Isaiah, throw Juvenal,
throw Dante, throw Shakspere into the deep soul of the human
race.
“Pour Job, Solomon, Pindar, Ezekiel, Sophocles, Euripides,
Herodotus, Theocritus, Plautus, Lucretius, Virgil, Terence,
Horace, Catulus, Tacitus, Saint Paul, Saint Augustine,
Tertullian, Petrarch, Pascal, Milton, Descartes, Corneille, La
Fontaine, Montesquieu, Diderot, Beaumarchais, Sedaine, André
Chenier, Kant, Schiller—pour all these souls into man.”