MAN
In Kingsley's fascinating historical romance, Raphael Aben-Ezra says
to Hypatia, "Is it not possible that we have been so busy discussing
what the philosopher should be, that we have forgotten that he must
first of all be a man?" This truth we too often forget. No
statesman, philosopher, least of all teacher, can be truly great who
is not, first of all, and above all, a great man. And in our study
of man are we not prone to forget that he stands in certain very
definite and close relations with surrounding nature?
Man has been the object of so much special study, his position,
owing to his higher moral and mental power, is so unique that he has
often been regarded not only as a special creation, but as created
to occupy a position not only unique, but also exceptional, above
many of the very laws of nature, and not bound by them. Many speak
and write of him as if it were his chief glory and prerogative to be
as far removed as possible, not only from the animal, but even from
the whole realm of nature. The mistake of making him an exception
arises, after all, not so much from too high a conception of man, at
least of his possibilities, as from too low a view of nature.
But however this view may have arisen, it is one-sided and mistaken.
Man certainly has a place in Nature--not above it. If he is the
goal toward which the ascending series of living forms has
continually tended, he is a part of the series--the real goal lies
far above him.
Pascal says, "It is dangerous to show a man too clearly how closely
he resembles the brute without showing him at the same time his
greatness. It is equally dangerous to impress upon him his greatness
without his lowliness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in
ignorance of both. But it is of great advantage to point out to him
both characteristics side by side."
A great German thinker began his work on the human soul with a
discussion of the law of gravitation.
All study of man must begin with the study of the atom. Man's life
we have seen to be the aggregate of the work of all the cells of his
body. But the protoplasm which composes his cells is a chemical
compound, and hence subject to all the laws of all the atoms of
which it is composed. And its molecules, or the smallest
mechanically separable compounds of these atoms, are arranged and
related according to the laws of physics, so as to permit or produce
the play of certain forces which are always the result of atomic or
molecular combination. Every motive or thought demands the
combustion of a certain amount of material which has been already
assimilated in the microscopic cellular laboratories of our body.
Every vital activity is manifested at least through chemical and
physical forces. And the elements of the fuel for our engines we
receive through plants from the inorganic world. For the plant, as
we have seen, stores up as potential energy in its compounds the
actual energy of the sun's rays. And thus man lives and thinks by
energy, obtained originally from the sun. But man not only consumes
food and fuel. The complicated protoplasm is continually wearing out
and being replaced. Every cell in our bodies is a centre toward
which particles of material stream to be assimilated and form for a
time a part of the living substance, and then to be cast out again
as dead matter. Our very existence depends upon this continual
change. There is synthesis of simple substances into more complex
compounds, and then analysis of these complex compounds into
simpler, and from this latter process results the energy manifested
in every vital action. We are all whirlpools on the surface of
nature; when the whirling ceases we disappear. Man, like every other
living being, exists in a condition of constant interchange with
surrounding nature; he is rooted in innumerable ways in the
inorganic world.
And because of these close relations the great characteristic of
living beings is the necessity and power of conformity to
environment. Hence a very common definition of life is the continual
adjustment of internal relations to external relations or
conditions. To a very slight extent man can rise superior to certain
of the ruder elements of his surroundings, but he gains this victory
only by learning and following the laws of the very environment
which he succeeds in subjecting to himself. Indeed his higher
development and finer build bring him into touch with an
indefinitely wider range of surroundings than even the lower animal.
Forces, conditions, and relations which never enter the sphere of
life of lower forms, crowd and press upon him and he cannot escape
them. His higher position, instead of freeing him from dependence
upon environment and subjection to law, makes him thus more
sensitive, as well as more capable of exact conformity to an
environment of almost infinite complexity; and more sure of absolute
ruin, if ignorant, negligent, or disobedient. The words of the
German poet are literally true:
"Nach ehernen, eisernen, grossen Gesetzen,
Müssen wir alle unseres Daseins
Kreise vollenden."
But man is an animal. And the principal characteristic of an animal
is that it eats a certain amount of solid food. The plant lives on
fluid nutriment, and this comes to it by the process of diffusion in
every drop of water and breath of air. The acquisition of food
requires no effort, and the plant makes none. It has therefore
always remained stationary and almost insensible. Not taking the
first step it has never taken any of the higher ones. But solid food
would not, as a rule, come to the animal--though stationary and
sessile animals are not uncommon in the water--he must go in search
of it. This called into play the powers of locomotion and
perception. And in the sequence of function we have seen digestion
calling for the development of muscle; and muscle, of nerve and
brain. And the brain became the organ of mind.
Man as a mere animal is necessarily active and energetic; otherwise
he stagnates and degenerates. Labor is a curse, but work a blessing;
and man's best work, of every kind, is done in the friction of life,
not in ease and quiet. Man is, further, a being composed of cells,
tissues, and organs, which were successively developed for him by
the lower animal kingdoms. The old view, that man was the microcosm,
had in it a certain amount of every important truth. We need to be
continually reminded of our indebtedness in a thousand ways to the
lowest and most insignificant forms of life.
Man is a vertebrate animal. This means that he has a locomotive, not
protective, skeleton, composed of cartilage--a tough, elastic,
organic material, hardened, as a rule, by the deposition of mineral
salts, mainly phosphate of lime, in exceedingly fine particles, so
as to form a homogeneous, flawless, elastic, tough, light, and
unyielding skeleton, held together by firm ligaments.
The skeleton is internal, and this fact, as we have seen, gives the
possibility of large size. And size is in itself no unimportant
factor. Professor Lotze maintains that without man's size and
strength, agriculture and the working of metals, and thus all
civilization, would have been impossible. But we have already seen
that there is an extreme of size, _e.g._, in the elephant, which
makes its possessor clumsy, able to exist only where there are large
amounts of food in limited areas, slow to reproduce, and lacking in
adaptability. This extreme also is avoided in man; in this, as in
many other particulars, he holds the golden mean. But we have also
seen that large size is, as a rule, correlated with long life and
great opportunity for experience and observation. And these are the
foundations of intelligence. Hence the deliverance of the higher
vertebrate, and especially of man, from any iron-bound subjection to
instinct.
And here another question of vital importance meets us. Is man's
life at present as long as it should or can be? The question is
exceedingly difficult, but a negative answer seems more probable. We
cannot but hope that, with a better knowledge of our physical
structure, a clearer vision of the dangers to which we are exposed,
more study of the laws of physiology, heredity, and of our
environment, and above all, less reckless disregard of these in a
mad pursuit of pleasure, wealth, and position, man's period of
mature, healthy, and best activity may be lengthened, perhaps, even
a score of years. The mitigation of hurry and worry alone, the two
great curses of our American civilization, might postpone the
collapse of our nervous systems longer than we even dream. And if we
could add even five years to the working life of our statesmen,
scholars, and discoverers, the work of these last five years, with
the advantage of all previously acquired knowledge and experience,
might be of more value than that of their whole previous life. Human
advance could not but be greatly, or even vastly, accelerated.
Moreover, we have seen that the history of vertebrates is really the
history of the development of the cerebrum, forebrain or large
brain, as we call it in man. This is the seat in man of
consciousness, thought, and will. This portion as a distinct and new
lobe first appears in lowest vertebrates, increases steadily in size
from class to class, reaches its most rapid development by mammals,
and its culmination in man. During the tertiary period--the last of
the great geological periods--the brain in many groups of mammals
increased in size, both absolutely and relatively, eight to tenfold.
Dr. Holmes says, that the education of a child should begin a
century or two before its birth; man really began his mental
education at least as early as the appearance of vertebrate life.
But man is a mammal. This means that every organ is at its best. The
digestive system, while making but a small part of the weight of the
body, and built mainly on the old plan, is wonderfully perfect in
its microscopic details. The muscles are heavy and powerful,
arranged with the weight near the axis of the body, and replaced
near the ends of the appendages by light, tough sinews. The higher
mammal is this compact, light, and agile. The skeleton is strong,
and the levers of the appendages are fitted to give rapidity of
motion even at the expense of strength. And this again is possible
only because of the high development and strength of the muscles.
Moreover, the highest mammals are largely arboreal, and in
connection with this habit have changed the foreleg into an arm and
hand. The latter became the servant of the brain and gave the
possibility of using tools.
But increase in size and activity, and the expense of producing each
new individual, led to the adoption of placental development. And
the mammal is so complex, the road from the egg to the fully
developed young is so long, that a long period of gestation is
necessary. And even at birth the brain, especially of man, is
anything but complete. Hence the necessity of the mammalian habit of
suckling and caring for the young. And this feebleness and
dependence of the young had begun far below man to draw out maternal
tenderness and affection. And the mammalian mode of reproduction and
care of young led to a more marked difference and interdependence
between the sexes.
The result of this is man's family life, as Mr. John Fiske has
shown so beautifully in that fascinating monograph, "The Destiny of
Man." And family life once introduced becomes the foundation and
bulwark of all civilization, morality, and religion. Far down in the
mammalian series, before the development of the family, maternal
education has become prominent, and the young begins life, benefited
by the experiences of the parent. How much more efficient is this in
family life. But, furthermore, the family is perhaps the first,
certainly the most important, of those higher unities in which men
are bound together. Social life of a sort undoubtedly existed,
before man, among birds, insects, and lower mammals. The community
was often defective or incomplete in unity, or existed under such
limitations that it could not show its best results, but that it was
of vast benefit from an even higher than mere physical standpoint,
no one will, I think, deny. But with the family a new era of
education and social life began.
First of all, the struggle for existence is thereby greatly modified
and mitigated. This crowding out and trampling down of the weaker by
the stronger is transferred, to a certain extent, from the
individual to the family and, in great degree, from the family to
larger and larger social units. For within the limits of the family
competition tends to be replaced by mutual helpfulness, and not only
are the loneliness and horror of the struggle between isolated
individuals banished, but, what is vastly more, the family becomes
the school of unselfishness and love. And what has thus become true
of the single family, and groups of nearly related families, is
slowly being realized in the larger units of communities and
states. For, as families and communities are just as really
organisms as are the individual men and women, whose soundness
depends upon the healthy activity of every organ, so there is a
survival, first of families, then of communities and rival
civilizations, in proportion to their unity and soundness in every
part. For on account of the close bonds of family and social life,
and in connection with the development of articulate speech, a new
kind of heredity, so to speak, arises, of vast importance for both
good and evil. This mental and moral heredity, over-leaping all
boundaries of blood and natural kinship, spreads light and good
influence or an immoral contagion through the community. And thus,
in sheer self-defence, society passes laws setting limits to the
oppression of the poor and weak, lest, degraded and brutalized, they
become breeding centres of physical and moral disease in the
community. The positive lesson that the surest mode of self-defence
is the elevation of these submerged classes, we are just beginning
to learn and apply.
By the ever-increasing acceleration of the development the gap
between man and the lower animal widens with wonderful rapidity. Of
course it is only in man, and higher man, that these last and
highest results of mammalian structure appear. But that, far removed
as they are, they are the results of mammalian and vertebrate
characteristics cannot, I think, be well denied. And this is only
one of innumerably possible illustrations of the fact that all our
most highly prized institutions are rooted far back in our ancestry,
often ineradicably in the very organs of our bodies. And thus
evolution, which many view only from its radical side--and it has a
radical side--is really the conservative bulwark of all that is
essentially worth possessing in the past.
But every factor in man's development tends toward intellectual and
spiritual development. Man's vast increase of brain; his finely
balanced body; his upright gait; setting his hands free from the
work of locomotion that they might become the skilful servants of
the mind; finally, articulate speech and social, and, above all,
family, life, all tended in this same direction.
And this makes the great difficulty in assigning man his
proper place in our systems of classification. Our zoölogical
classifications depend upon anatomical characteristics; and
anatomically man belongs among the order primates. But mental and
moral values cannot be expressed in terms of anatomy, any more than
we can speak of an idea of so many horse-power, and hence worth
three or four ancestral dollars. Hence, while from the zoölogical
standpoint man is a primate, and while he is very probably descended
from one of these, he has gradually risen above them mentally and
spiritually, so that he stands as far above them as they above the
lowest worm. And this leads us to the consideration of man, not
merely as a mammal, but as "Anthropos," Homo sapiens, although he
often degenerates into "Simia destructor."
From what has just been said man's pre-eminence cannot consist in
any anatomical characteristic, even of the brain--much less of
thumb, forefinger, hand, or foot. But man's mental and moral
characteristics (even though germs of these may be present in the
animal), whether differing in degree or kind from theirs, raise his
life to a totally different plane. He lives in an environment of
which the lower animal is as unconscious and ignorant as we of a
fourth dimension of space. He has the knowledge of abstract truth
and goodness, of certain standards outside of mere appetite and
desire, and feels and acknowledges, however dimly, the requirement
and the ability to conform his life to these standards. He alone can
say "I ought," and answer "I can and will." And hence man alone
actually lives in an environment of the laws of reason,
responsibility, and personality. Whatever germs of these higher
powers the animal possesses are means to material ends, to the
physical life of the animal. In man the long and slow evolution has
ended in revolution, the material and physical have been dethroned,
and truth and goodness reign supreme as ends in themselves.
But, you may object, this definition of man may be true ideally,
certainly it is not true actually. Where are the high ideals of
truth and goodness in the savage? and are these the supreme ends of
even the average American of to-day? But allowing all weight to this
objection, does it not remain true that a being who never says "I
ought," who acknowledges and manifests no responsibility, to whom
goodness does not appeal, and in whom these feelings cannot be
awakened, is either not yet or no longer man? But far more than
this, if the character of the individual is to be judged by his
tendency more than his present condition, by the way in which he is
going more than his momentary position, is not the race to be judged
and defined by a tendency, gradually though very slowly becoming
realized, and a goal, toward which it looks and which it is surely
attaining, rather than by its present realization? As we rise
higher in the animal kingdom the characteristics of the successive
higher groups are more and more slow of attainment and difficult of
realization, just because of their grander possibilities. And this
is true and important above all in the case of man. His
possibilities are beyond our powers of conception, for, if you will,
man is yet only larval man.
We have followed the sequence of functions to its culmination in a
mind completely dominated by righteousness and unselfishness,
however far above our present attainments this goal may be. We have
found that all attempts to reverse this sequence end in death or
degeneration. Failure to advance, especially in higher forms,
results in extinction or retrogression. We cannot stand still. Each
higher step is longer and more important than any preceding; each
last step is essential to life. Righteousness in the will is the
last step essential to man's progress. And if a sound mind in a
sound body is important or necessary, a sound will, resolutely set
on right, is absolutely essential. Failure to attain this is ruin.
And man can to a great extent place himself so that his surroundings
shall aid him to take this last, essential, upward step. He does
this by the choice of his associates. If he associates himself with
men who are tending upward, he will rise ever higher. If he choose
the opposite kind of associates he must sink into ever deeper
degradation; he has thereby chosen death. For his associates, once
chosen, make him like themselves. And thus natural selection makes
for the survival of those men who resolutely choose life. And
thoughtless or careless failure to choose is ruin. The man has
preferred degradation; it is only right that he should have it to
satiety.
But man is not, and never can be, pure spirit. He may "let the ape
and tiger die," but he must always retain the animal with its
natural appetites. Moreover, his higher mental capacities increase
their power. Memory recalls past gratifications as it never does to
the animal; imagination paints before him vivid pictures of similar
future enjoyments, and mental keenness and strength of will tell him
that they can all be his. But if he yields himself a slave to these
appetites, if he seeks to be an animal rather than a spiritual
being, he becomes not an animal but a brute; and the only genuine
brute is a degenerate man. And thus after conquering the world man's
very structure compels him to join battle with himself. For here, as
everywhere else, to attempt to go backward to a plane of life once
passed is to surely degenerate. The time when the prize of
pre-eminence could be won by mere physical superiority was passed
before man had a history. Physical superiority must be maintained,
and every advance in art and science, considered here as ministering
to man's physical comfort, is advantageous just so far as these
allow man freedom and aid to pursue the mental and moral line which
is the only true path left open to him. But when even these are
allowed to minister only to the animal, or to tempt to luxurious
ease and indifference to any higher aims, in a word, in so far as
they fail to minister to mental and moral advancement, they are in
great danger of becoming, if they have not already become, a curse
rather than a blessing. And we all know that this has been proven
over and over again in human history. Families, cities, and nations
rot, mainly because they cannot resist the seductions of an
overwhelming material prosperity. A man says to his soul, "Take
thine ease, eat, drink and be merry," and to that man scripture and
science say, with equal emphasis, "Thou fool!"
Every upward step in attainment of the comforts of life, of art and
science, brings man into new fields not of careless enjoyment but of
struggle. They swarm with new enemies and temptations before
unknown. The new attainments are not unalloyed blessings, they are
merely opportunities for victory or defeat. The uncertain battle is
only shifted to a little higher plane. Man has increased the forces
at his command only to meet stronger opposing hosts. And retreat is
impossible. Man remains a spiritual being only on condition that he
resolutely and vigilantly purposes to be so. To lag behind in this
spiritual path is death.
And the epitaph of nations and individuals is the record of their
defeat in this struggle to be masters and not slaves of their
material and intellectual attainments. Greece, the most intellectual
of all nations of all times, died in mental senility of moral
paralysis. Of Socrates's and Plato's "following after truth" nothing
remained but the gossipy curiosity of a second childhood, living
only to tell or to hear some new thing. And the schools of
philosophy were closed because they had nothing to tell which was
worth the knowing or hearing. All the wealth of the world was poured
into Rome, the home of Stoic philosophy, and it was smothered, and
died in rottenness under its material prosperity.
A family, race, or nation starts out fresh in its youthful physical
and mental vigor and strict obedience to moral law and in its faith
in God. For these reasons it survives in the struggle for existence.
It grows in extent and power, in intelligence and wealth. But with
this increase in wealth and power comes a deadening of the mind to
the claims of moral law, and an idolatrous worship of material
prosperity. The new generation looks upon the stern morality and
industry and self-control of its ancestors as straight-laced and
narrow. Morality may not be unfashionable, but any stern rebuke of
immorality is not conventional. Strong moral earnestness and
whole-souled loyalty to truth are not in good form. Wealth and
social position become the chief ends of men's efforts, and, to buy
these, unselfishness and truth and self-respect are bartered away.
Luxury, enervation, and effeminacy are rife, and snobbery follows
close behind them. The ancestral vigor, the insight to recognize
great moral principles, and the power to gladly hazard all in their
defence have disappeared in a mist of indifference, which beclouds
the eyes and benumbs all the powers. The race of giants is dwindling
into dwarfs. They say, when the time comes, we will rouse ourselves
and be like our fathers. And the crisis comes, but they are not
equal to it. The nation has long enough cumbered the ground, it has
already died by suicide and must now give place to a race and
civilization which has some aim in, and hence right to, existence,
and which is of some use to itself and others. If we would learn by
observation, and not by sad experience, we must remember that man is
above all, and must be a religious being conforming to the
personality of the God manifested in his environment.
Can you find anywhere a more profound or scientific philosophy of
history than that of Paul in the first chapter of Romans? "For the
invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly
seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his
everlasting power and divinity; so that they are without excuse:
because that, knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither
gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings and their senseless
heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became
fools. And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God
gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not
fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness."[A] And then follows
the dark picture, from which we revolt but which the ancient
historians themselves justify.
[Footnote A: Romans i. 20-22, 28.]
On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at Rome is Michel Angelo's
marvellous painting of the creation of Adam. A human figure of
magnificent strength is half-rising from its recumbent posture, as
if just awakening to consciousness, and is reaching out its hand to
touch the outstretched finger of God. The human being became and
becomes man when, and in proportion as, he puts himself in touch
with God, and is inspired with the divine life. The lower animal
conformed mainly to the material in environment, man conforms
consciously to the spiritual and personal.
Any science of human history that does not acknowledge man's
relation to a personal God is fatally incomplete; for it has missed
the goal of man's development and the chief means of his farther
advance. And a religion which does not emphasize this is worse than
a broken reed. It is a mirage of the desert, toward which thirsty
souls run only to die unsatisfied.
Man can never overcome in this battle with the allurements of
material prosperity and with the pride and selfishness of intellect,
except as he is interpenetrated and permeated with God, any more
than we can move or think, unless our blood is charged with the
oxygen of the air. It is not enough that man have God in his
intellectual creed; he must have him in his heart and will, in every
fibre of his personality, in every thought and action of life.
Otherwise his defeat and ruin are sure.
Three fatal heresies are abroad to-day: 1. Man's chief end is
avoidance of pain and discomfort, in one word, happiness; and God is
somehow bound to surfeit man with this. And this is the chief end of
a mollusk. 2. Man's chief end is material prosperity and social
position. 3. Man's chief end is intellect, knowledge. Each one of
these three ends, while good in a subordinate place, will surely
ruin man if made his chief end. For they leave out of account
conformity to environment. "Man's chief end is to glorify God and
enjoy him for ever." And just as the plant glorifies the sun by
turning to, and being permeated and vivified and built up by, the
warmth and light of its rays, similarly man must glorify God. This
is the religion of conformity to environment: man working out his
salvation because God works in him. Thus, and thus only, shall man
overcome the allurements of these lower endowments and receive the
rewards of "him that overcometh."
Thus prosperity and adversity, success and failure, continually test
a man. If he can rise superior to these, can subjugate them and make
them subserve his moral progress, he survives; if he is mastered by
them, he perishes. Through these does natural selection mainly work
to find and train great souls. They are the threads of the sieve of
destiny.
In this struggle man must fight against overwhelming odds, and the
cost of victory is dear. He must be prepared, like Socrates, to "bid
farewell to those things which most men count honors, and look
onward to the truth." He appears to the world at large, often to
himself, eminently unpractical. The majority against his view and
vote will usually be overwhelming. Truth is a stern goddess, and she
will often bid him draw sword and stand against his nearest and
dearest friends. The issue will often appear to him exceeding
doubtful. The grander the truth for which he is fighting, the
greater the need of its defence and enforcement, the greater the
probability that he will never live to see its triumph. The hero
must be a man of gigantic faith. But all his ancestors have had to
make a similar choice and to fight a similar battle. The upward path
was intended to be exceedingly hard. This is a law of biology.
Why this is so I may not know. I only know that no better and surer
way could have been discovered to train a race of heroes. For no man
ever becomes a hero who has not learned to battle with the world and
himself. Does it not look as if God loved a heroic soul as much as
men worship one, and as if he intended that man should attain to
it? Man was born and bred in hardship that he might be a hero.
"Careless seems the great avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
"Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied."
The Crown Prince of Prussia has less spending money than many a
young fellow in Berlin. He is trained to economy, industry,
self-control. He is to learn something better than habits of luxury,
to rule himself, and thus later the German Empire. The children of a
great captain, themselves to be soldiers, must endure hardness like
good soldiers. And man is to fight his way to a throne.
But his powers are still in their infancy and the goal far above
him. What he is to become you and I can hardly appreciate. First of
all, the body will become finer, fitted for nobler ends. It will not
be allowed to degenerate. It may become less fitted for the rough
work, which can be done by machinery; it will be all the better for
higher uses. It is to be transformed, transfigured. The eye may not
see so far, it will be better fitted for perceiving all the beauties
of art and nature. It will become a better means of expressing
personality, as our personality becomes more "fit to be seen." It is
continually gaining a speech of its own. And will not the ear become
more delicate, a better instrument for responding to the finest
harmonies, and better gateway to our highest feelings? We may not
have so many molar teeth for chewing food, but may not our mouths
become ever finer instruments for speech and song? In other words,
the body is to be transfigured by the mind and become its worthy
servant and representative.
As we learn to live for something better than food and clothes, and
cease to pamper the body, it will become better and healthier.
Science will stamp out many diseases, and we shall learn to prevent
others by right living. And what a change in our moral and religious
life will be made by good health. What a cheerful courage and hope
it will give.
Man will become more intelligent. He will learn the laws of heredity
and of life in general. He will see deeper into the relations of
things. He will recognize in himself and his environment the laws of
progress. He will clearly discern great moral truths, where we but
dimly see lights and shadows.
But while we would not underestimate the value and necessity of
growth in knowledge, we must as clearly recognize that the intellect
is not the centre and essence of man's being. Knowledge, while the
surest form of wealth of which no one can rob us, and the best as
the stepping-stone to the highest well-being, is like wealth in one
respect: it is not character and can be used for good or evil. If my
neighbor uses his greater knowledge as a means of overreaching us
all, it injures us and ruins him.
Our emotions, and this is but another word for our motives, stand
far nearer to the centre of life; for they control our conduct and
directly determine what we are. Knowledge of environment is good,
but of what real and permanent use is such knowledge without
conformity? Our real weakness is not our ignorance; we know the
good, but lack the will and purpose to live it out. And this is
because the thought of truth and goodness excites no such strength
of feeling as that of some lower gratification. We cannot perhaps
overrate the value of intellect; we certainly underrate the value of
emotion and feeling. "Knowledge puffeth up, love buildeth." It does
not require great intellect, it does require intense feeling to be a
hero. We slander the emotions by calling people emotional because
they are always talking about their feelings; but deep feeling is
always silent. It is not fashionable to feel deeply, and we are
dwarfed by this conventionality. We have almost ceased to wonder,
and hence we have almost ceased to learn; for the wise old Greeks
knew that wonder is the mother of wisdom.
The man of the future will probably be a man of strong appetites,
for he will be healthy; he will be prudent, because wise; but he
will hold his appetites well in leash. He will trample upon mere
prudential considerations at the call of truth or right. For in him
these highest motives will be absolute monarchs, and they are the
only motives which can enable a man to face rack and stake without
flinching. He will be a hero because he feels intensely. In other
words, he will be a man of gigantic will, because he has a great
heart. And in the man of the future all these powers will be not
only highly developed; they will be rightly proportioned and duly
subordinated. He will be a well-balanced man. But how few complete
men we now see.
We see the strong will without the clear intellect to guide it; the
gush of feeling either directed toward low ends or evaporating in
sentiment; the clear head with the cold heart. The high development
of one mental power seems to draw away all strength and vitality
from the rest. How rarely do we find the strong will guided by the
keen intellect toward the highest aims clearly discerned. Memory and
imagination must always play their part in the joy set before us.
But in addition to all these, the white heat of feeling, of which
man alone is capable, is necessary for his grandest efforts. Such a
being would be a man born to be a king. And there will be a race of
such men. And we must play the man that they may be raised upon our
buried shoulders. And they will tower above us, as the seers of old
in Judea, Athens, India, and Rome towered above their indolent,
luxurious, blind, and material contemporaries. And with all their
accelerated development, infinite possibilities will still stretch
beyond the reach of their imagination. For "men follow duty, never
overtake."
But all our analyses are unsatisfactory. In the history of any great
people there is a period when they seem to rise above themselves.
They have the strength of giants, and accomplish things before and
since impossible. We sometimes ascribe these results to the
exuberant vitality of the race at this time; and their life is large
and grand. Such was England under Elizabeth. Think of her soldiers
and explorers, her statesmen and poets. There were giants in those
days. What a healthy, hearty enjoyment they showed in all their
work, and with what ease was the impossible accomplished. The
greater the hardships to be borne or odds to be faced, the greater
the joy in overcoming them. They sailed out to give battle to the
superior power of Spain, not at the command, but by the permission,
of their queen; often without even this.
And what a vigor and vitality there is in the literature of this
period. Life is worth living, and studying, and describing. They see
the world directly as it is; not some distorted picture of it, seen
by an unhealthy mind and drawn by a feeble hand. The world is ever
new and fresh to them because they see it through young, clear eyes.
Were they giants or are we dwarfed? Which of the two lives is
normal? They used all their faculties and utilized all their powers.
Do we? The only force or product which we are willing to see wasted
is the highest mental and moral power. Our engines and turbine
wheels utilize the last ounce of pressure of the steam or water. The
manufacturers pay high wages to hands who can tend machines run at
the highest possible speed. The profits of modern business come
largely from the utilization of force or products formerly wasted.
But how far do we utilize the highest faculties of the mind, which
have to do with character, the crowning glory of human development?
Are we not eminently "penny-wise and pound-foolish?" A ship which
uses only its donkey-engines, and does nothing but take in and get
out cargo is a dismantled hulk. A captain who thinks only of cargo,
and engines, and the length of the daily run, but who takes no
observations and consults no chart, will make land only to run upon
rocks. Are we not too much like such dismantled hulks, or ships
sailing with priceless cargoes but with mad captains?
But we have not yet seen the worst results of this waste of our
highest powers. The sessile animal, which lives mainly for
digestion, does not attain as good digestive organs as his more
active neighbor, who subordinates digestion to muscle. Lower powers
reach their highest development only in proportion as they are
strictly subordinated to higher. This may be called a law of
biology. And our lower mental powers fail of their highest
development and capacity mainly because of the lack of this
subordination.
But a disused organ is very likely to become a seat of disease and
to thus enfeeble or destroy the whole body. And this disease effects
the most complete ruin when its seat is in the highest organs.
Dyspepsia is bad enough, but mania or idiocy is infinitely worse.
And our moral powers are always enfeebled, and often diseased, from
lack of strong exercise. And some blind guides, seeing only the
disease, cry out for the extirpation of the whole faculty, as some
physicians are said to propose the removal of the vermiform
appendage in children. Similarly might the drunkard argue against
the value of brain, because it aches after a debauch. Our work is
hard labor, and we gain no enjoyment in the use of our mental
powers; for the enjoyment of any activity is proportional to the
height and glory of the purpose for which it is employed. As long as
we are content to use only our lower mental faculties and to gain
low ends, our use of even these will be feeble and ineffectual, and
our lives will be poor, weak, and unhappy.
But future man will subordinate these lower powers to the higher. He
will utilize all that there is in him. And his efficiency must be
vastly greater than ours. And finally, and most important, these men
will be all-powerful, because they have so conformed to environment
that all its forces combine to work with them.
England under Elizabeth seemed to rise above itself. Think of
Holland, under William the Silent, defying all the power of Spain.
Look at Bohemia, under Ziska, a handful of peasants joining battle
with and defeating Germany and Austria combined. Think of Cromwell
and his Ironsides, before whom Europe trembled. These men were not
merely giants, they were heroes. And the essence of heroism is
self-forgetfulness. The last thought of William the Silent was not
for himself, but for his "poor people." And those rugged Ironsides,
"fighting with their hands and praying with their hearts," smote
with light good-will and irresistibly, because they struck for truth
and freedom, for right and God. These are motives of incalculable
strength, and they transfigure a man and raise him above his
surroundings and even himself. The man becomes heroic and godlike,
and when possessed by these motives he has clasped hands with God.
He is inspired and infused with the divine power and life. Such a
man has no time nor care to think of himself. To him it matters
little whether he lives to see the triumph of his cause, provided he
can hasten it. Though victory be in the future, it is sure; and the
joy of battle for so sure and grand a triumph is present reward
enough. His very faith removes mountains and turns to night armies
of the aliens. For heroism begets faith, just as surely as faith
begets heroism.
"Where there is no vision the people perish." When the member of
Congress can see nothing higher than spoils of office, nothing
larger than a silver dollar, you should not criticise the poor man
if his oratorical efforts do not move an audience like the sayings
of Webster, Lincoln, or Phillips.
Future man will be heroic and divine, because he will live in an
atmosphere of truth and right and God, and will be consciously
inspired by these divine, omnipotent motives.
But who will compose this future race? We cannot tell. And yet the
attempt to answer the question may open our eyes to truth of great
practical importance.
It would seem to be a fact that the offspring of a cross between
different races of the same species is as a rule more vigorous than
that of either pure race. Human history seems to show the same
result. The English race is a mixture of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Danes,
and Normans, with a sprinkling of other races. And a new fusion of a
great number of most diverse strains is rapidly going on in the
newly populated portions of America and in Australia. The mixture
contains thus far almost purely occidental races. It will in future
almost certainly contain oriental also. For the races of India,
Japan, and even China, are no farther from us to-day than the
ancestors of many of our occidental fellow-citizens were a century
ago. Racial prejudices, however strong, weaken rapidly through
intercourse and better acquaintance. One of the grandest and least
perceived results of missionary work is the preparation for this
great fusion.
Many races will undoubtedly go down before the advance of
civilization and have no share in the future. Progress seems to be
limited to the inhabitants of temperate zones; and even here the
weaker may be crowded out before the stronger rather than absorbed
by them. But many whom we now despise may have a larger inheritance
in the future than we. God is clearly showing us that we should not
count any man, much less any nation, common or unclean. And the laws
of evolution give us a firm confidence that no good attained by any
race or civilization will fail to be preserved in the future.
The forms which seem to us at any one time the highest are as a rule
not the ancestors of the race of the future. These highest forms are
too much specialized, and thus fitted to a narrow range of space,
time, and general conditions; when these change they pass away.
Specialization is doubly dangerous when it follows a wrong line. But
whenever it is carried far enough to lead to a one-sided
development, it narrows the possibility of future advance; for it
neglects or crowds out or prevents the development of other powers
essential to life. The mollusk neglected nerve and muscle. But the
scholar may, and often does, cultivate the brain at the expense of
the rest of the body until he and his descendants suffer, and the
family becomes extinct.
The young men of the nobility of wealth, birth, and fashion usually
marry heiresses, if they can. But only in families of enormous
wealth can there be more than one or two heiresses in the same
generation. She has very probably inherited a portion of her wealth
from one or more extinct branches of the family. Moreover, not to
speak of other factors, the labor and anxiety which have been
essential to the accumulation and preservation of these great
fortunes, or the mode of life which has accompanied their use or
abuse, tend to diminish the number of children. Heiresses to very
large fortunes usually therefore belong to families which are
tending to sterility. And this has very probably been no unimportant
factor in the extinction of "noble" families.
A sound body contains many organs, all of which must be sound. And
in a sound mind there is an even greater number of faculties, all of
which must be kept at a high grade of efficiency. Man is a
marvellously complex being, and more in danger of a narrow and
one-sided development than any lower animal. And it is very easy for
a certain grade or class of society, or for a whole race, to become
so specialized, by the cultivation of only one set of faculties as
to altogether prevent its giving birth to a complete humanity. Along
certain broad lines the Greeks and Romans attained results never
since equalled. But their neglect of other, even more important,
powers and attainments, especially the moral and religious, doomed
them to a speedy decay. The rude northern races were on the whole
better and nobler, and became heirs to Greek art and letters, and
to Roman law. And this is another illustration of the advantage or
necessity of the fusion of races.
To answer the question, "Which stratum or class in the community or
world at large is heir to the future?" we must seek the one which is
still to a large extent generalized. It must be maintaining, in a
sound body, a steady, even if slow, advance of all the mental
powers. It will not be remarkable for the high development or lack
of any quality or power; it must have a fair amount of all of them
well correlated. It must be well balanced, "good all around," as we
say. And this class is evidently neither the highest nor the lowest
in the community, but the "common people, whom God must have loved,
because he made so many of them."
They have, as a rule, fair-sized or large families. Their bodies are
kept sound and vigorous by manual labor. They are compelled to think
on all sorts of questions and to solve them as best they can. They
have a healthy balance of mental faculties, even if they are not
very learned or artistic. They are kept temperate because they
cannot afford many luxuries. Their healthy life prevents an undue
craving for them. They help one another and cultivate unselfishness.
The good old word, neighbor, means something to them. They have a
sturdy morality, and you can always rely upon them in great moral
crises. They are patriotic and public-spirited; they have not so
many, or so enslaving, selfish interests. They have always been
trained to self-sacrifice and the endurance of hardship; and heroism
is natural to them. They have a strong will, cultivated by the
battle of daily life. And among them religion never loses its hold.
But what of our tendencies to specialization in education and
business? Are these wrong and injurious? Specialization, like great
wealth, is a great danger and a fearful test of character. It tends
to narrowness. If you will know everything about something, you must
make a great effort to know something about, and have some interest
in, everything. The great scholar is often anything but the
large-minded, whole-souled man which he might have become. He has
allowed himself to become absorbed in, and fettered by, his
specialty until he can see and enjoy nothing outside of it. There is
no selfishness like that of learning.
We can accomplish nothing unless we concentrate our efforts upon a
comparatively narrow line of work. But this does not necessitate
that our views should be narrow or our aims low. Teufelsdröckh may
live on a narrow lane; but his thoughts, starting along the narrow
lane, lead him over the whole world. The narrowness of our horizon
is due to our near-sightedness.
But the only absolutely safe specialization is the highest possible
development of our moral and religious powers. For their cultivation
only enlarges and strengthens all the other powers of body and mind.
"But," you will object, "does religion always broaden?" Yes. That
which narrows is the base alloy of superstition. But a religion
which finds its goal and end in conformity to environment,
character, and godlikeness can only broaden.
But there is the so-called "breadth" of the shallow mind which
attempts to find room at the same time for things which are mutually
exclusive. God and Baal, right and wrong, honesty and lying,
selfishness and love, these are mutually exclusive. You cannot find
room in your mind for both members of the pair at the same time. You
must choose. And, when you have chosen, abide by your choice. A
ladleful of thin dough fallen on the floor is very broad. But its
breadth is due to lack of consistency. Better narrowness than such
breadth.
But while individual specialization may be safe for the individual,
and beneficial to the race, the race which is to inherit the future
must remain unspecialized. It must not sacrifice future
possibilities to present rapidity of advance. And the common people
are advancing safely, slowly, but surely. Wealth and learning become
of permanent prospective and real value only when they are
invested in the masses. They are the final depositaries of all
wealth--material, intellectual, moral, and religious. Whatever, and
only that which, becomes a part of their life becomes thereby
endowed with immortality. Will we invest freely or will we wait to
have that which we call our own wrested from us? If we refuse it to
our own kin and nation, it will surely fall to foreigners. "God made
great men to help little ones."
The city of God on earth is being slowly "builded by the hands of
selfish men." But the builders are becoming continually more
unselfish and righteous, and as they become better and purer its
walls rise the more rapidly.