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HUMANITY IN THE CITY.
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[Illustration: E. H. Chapin]
HUMANITY IN THE CITY.
BY THE
REV. E. H. CHAPIN.
NEW YORK:
DE WITT & DAVENPORT, PUBLISHERS,
160 & 162 NASSAU STREET.
BOSTON:
ABEL TOMPKINS, 38 & 40 CORNHILL.
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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by
DE WITT & DAVENPORT,
In the Clerk's Office of the U. S. District Court
for the Southern District of New York
G. W. ALEXANDER,
BINDER,
9 Spruce Street.
W. H. TINSON.
STEREOTYPER,
24 Beekman Street.
TAWS, RUSSELL & CO.
PRINTERS,
No. 26 Beekman Street.
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CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. THE LESSONS OF THE STREET 13
II. MAN AND MACHINERY 39
III. THE STRIFE FOR PRECEDENCE 65
IV. THE SYMBOLS OF THE REPUBLIC 93
V. THE SPRINGS OF SOCIAL LIFE 123
VI. THE ALLIES OF THE TEMPTER 157
VII. THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 187
VIII. THE HELP OF RELIGION 223
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PREFACE.
A volume like the present hardly requires the formality of a preface. It
is the continuation of a series already published, and, like that, aims
at applying the highest standard of Morality and Religion to the phases
of every-day life. In order, however, that the view with which these
discourses have been prepared may not be misconceived, I wish merely to
say that I am far from supposing that these are the only themes to be
preached, or that they constitute the highest class of practical
subjects, and shall be sorry if in any way they seem to imply a neglect
of that interior and holy life which is the spring not only of right
affections, but of clear perception and sturdy, every-day duty. I hope,
on the contrary, that the very aspects of this busy city life--the very
problems which start out of it--will tend to convince men of the
necessity of this inward and regenerating principle. Nevertheless, I
maintain that these topics have a place in the circle of the preacher's
work, and he need entertain no fear of desecrating his pulpit by secular
themes, who seeks to consecrate all things in any way involving the
action and the welfare of men, by the spirit and aims of His Religion
who, while he preached the Gospel, likewise fed the hungry, healed the
sick, and touched the issues of every temporal want. I may have failed
in the method, I trust I have not in the purpose.
E. H. C.
_New York, May, 1854._
THE LESSONS OF THE STREET.
HUMANITY IN THE CITY.
DISCOURSE I.
THE LESSONS OF THE STREET.
Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the
streets.--PROVERBS, i. 20.
The great truths of religion may be communicated to the mind and the
heart in two ways--by abstract treatment, and by illustration. It must
be taken up in its absolute connection with God, and with our own souls.
In solitary meditation, in self-examination, and in prayer, we shall
learn the intrinsic claims which Faith and Duty have upon reason and
conscience. But we cannot proceed far before we discover the necessity
of some _symbol_, by which these abstract principles may be made
distinct to us. And, looking around for this purpose, we find that all
the phases of existence are full of spiritual illustration--full of
religious suggestion and argument. Thus our Saviour pronounced his great
doctrines of Eternal Life, and of Personal Religion, and then turned to
the world for a commentary. Under his teaching nature became an
illuminated missal, lettered by the lilies of the field, and pencilled
with hues that played through the leaves of Olivet. The wild birds, in
their flight, bore upward the beautiful lesson of Providence, and the
significance of the Kingdom of Heaven was contained in a mustard-seed.
By no abstruse reasoning did he make his instructions so vivid to his
disciples, and so fresh to ourselves. But he awoke the conviction of
moral need, and repentance, and Divine Love, by drawing from instances
with which they had been familiar all their lives--the procedures of
government, the transactions of business, the labors of the husbandman,
and the incidents of home. And the result is essentially the same,
whether we start with the religious truth to find some illustration in
the world around us, or from some aspect of human life, or nature,
extract a religious truth. Nor need this always be sharply obvious. It
is only necessary that our point of view be sufficiently elevated to
throw a spiritual light upon things, and to reveal their moral
relations; for, often, our understandings are cleared, and our hearts
made better, by the mere scope and tendency of such observations.
With this conviction, I called your attention, last winter, to some of
the "Aspects of City Life," and with the same view, I wish now to
address you, for a few Sunday evenings, on the Conditions of Humanity in
the City, in which series I shall endeavor not only to present new
topics of interest, but to urge more explicitly some points, which, in
the afore-mentioned discourses, I merely touched upon.
The essential meaning of the personification in the text is in
accordance, I think, with the general tenor of remark which I have just
been making. For I understand it to mean, that everything is
instructive, that even in the common ways of life the most important
truths, and the profoundest moral and religious significance, are
contained. And the words before us, also, specifically indicate the
subject upon which I wish to speak this evening, for they declare that
"Wisdom... uttereth her voice in the streets."
The street through which you walk every day; with whose sights and
sounds you have been familiar, perhaps, all your lives; is it all so
common-place that it yields you no deep lessons,--deep and fresh, it may
be, if you would only look around with discerning eyes? Engaged with
your own special interests, and busy with monotonous details, you may
not heed it; and yet there is something finer than the grandest poetry,
even in the mere spectacle of these multitudinous billows of life,
rolling down the long, broad, avenue. It is an inspiring lyric, this
inexhaustible procession, in the misty perspective ever lost, ever
renewed, sweeping onward between its architectural banks to the music of
innumerable wheels; the rainbow colors, the silks, the velvets, the
jewels, the tatters, the plumes, the faces--no two alike--shooting out
from unknown depths, and passing away for ever--perpetually sweeping
onward in the fresh air of morning, under the glare of noon, under the
fading, flickering light, until the shadow climbs the tallest spire, and
night comes with revelations and mysteries of its own.
And yet this changeful tide of activity is no mere lyric. It is an epic,
rather, unfolding in its progress the contrasts, the conflicts, the
heroisms, the failures,--in one word, the great and solemn issues of
human life. And a few comprehensive lessons from that "Wisdom which
uttereth her voice in the streets," may prove a fitting introduction,
from which we can pass to consider more specific conditions of humanity
in the city.
Taking up the subject in this light, I observe that the first lesson of
the street is in the illustration which it affords us of the
_diversities of human conditions_. The most superficial eye recognizes
this. A city is, in one respect, like a high mountain; the latter is an
epitome of the physical globe; for its sides are belted by products of
every zone, from the tropical luxuriance that clusters around its base,
to its arctic summit far up in the sky. So is the city an epitome of
the social world. All the belts of civilization intersect along its
avenues. It contains the products of every moral zone. It is
cosmopolitan, not only in a national, but in a spiritual, sense. Here
you may find not only the finest Saxon culture, but the grossest
barbaric degradation. There you pass a form of Caucasian development,
the fine-cut features, the imperial forehead, the intelligent eye, the
confident tread, the true port and stature of a man. But who is this
that follows in his track; under the same national sky, surrounded by
the same institutions, and yet with those pinched features, that stunted
form, that villainous look; is it Papuan, Bushman, or Carib? Fitly
representing either of these, though born in a Christian city, and
bearing about not only the stamp of violated physical law, but of moral
neglect and baseness. And no one needs to be told that there are savages
in New York, as well as in the islands of the sea. Savages, not in
gloomy forests, but under the strength of gas-light, and the eyes of
policemen; with war-whoops and clubs very much the same, and garments as
fantastic, and souls as brutal, as any of their kindred at the
antipodes. China, India, Africa, will you not find their features in
some circles of the social world right around you? Idolatry! you cannot
find any more gross, any more cruel, on the broad earth, than within the
area of a mile around this pulpit. Dark minds from which God is
obscured; deluded souls, whose fetish is the dice-box or the bottle;
apathetic spirits, steeped in sensual abomination, unmoved by a moral
ripple, soaking in the slump of animal vitality. False gods, more
hideous, more awful, than Moloch or Baal; worshipped with shrieks,
worshipped with curses, with the hearth-stone for the bloody altar, and
the drunken husband for the immolating priest, and women and children
for the victims. I have no terms of respect too high for the brave and
conscientious men who carry the gospel, and their own lives, in their
hands to distant shores. But, surely, they need not go thus far to
_seek_ for the benighted and the debased. They may find there a wider
extent of heathenism, but none more intense than that which prevails
close by the school and the church. The richest products of modern
progress and Christian culture grow on the verge of barren wastes, and
jungles of violence, and "the region of the shadow of death."
In the street, however, not only do we behold these different degrees of
civilization, but those problems of diversity, which the highest form of
existing civilization developes--the diversities of extreme poverty, and
extreme wealth, for instance. Here sits the beggar, sick and pinched
with cold; and there goes a man of no better flesh and blood, and no
more authentic charter of soul, wrapped in comfort, and actually bloated
with luxury. There issues the whine of distress, beside the glittering
carriage-wheels. There, amidst the rush of gaiety; the busy, selfish
whirl; half naked, shivering, with her bare feet on the icy pavement,
stands the little girl, with the shadow of an experience upon her that
has made her preternaturally old, and it may be, driven the angel from
her face. Still, we cannot believe that above that wintry heaven which
stretches over her, there is less regard for the poor, neglected child,
than for that rosy belt of infant happiness which girdles and gladdens
ten thousand hearths.
And here, too, through the brilliant street, and the broad light of day,
walks Purity, enshrined in the loveliest form of womanhood. And along
that same street by night, attended by fitting shadows, strolls
womanhood discrowned, clothed with painted shame, yet, even in the
springs of that guilty heart not utterly quenched. We render just homage
to the one, we pour scorn upon the other; but, could we trace back the
lines of circumstance, and inquire why the one stands guarded with such
sweet respect, and why the other has fallen, we might raise problems
with which we cannot tax Providence, which we may not lay altogether to
the charge of the condemned, but for which we might challenge an answer
from society.
And, if we would ascertain the practical purport of this lesson of human
diversity which is so conspicuous in the street--the meaning of these
sharp contrasts of refinement and grossness, intelligence and ignorance,
respectability and guilt--we only ask a question that thousands have
asked before us. And yet, it is possible to surmise the purpose of these
diversities. We know, for one thing, that out of them come some of the
noblest instances of character and of achievement. Ignorance and crime
and poverty and vice, stand in fearful contrast to knowledge and
integrity and wealth and purity; but they likewise constitute the dark
background against which the virtues of human life stand out in radiant
relief; virtues developed by the struggle which they create; virtues
which seem impossible without their co-existence. For, whence issues any
such thing as _virtue_, except out of the temptation and antagonism of
vice? How could _Charity_ ever have appeared in the world, were there no
dark ways to be trodden by its bright feet, and no suffering and sadness
to require its aid? I look at these asylums, these hospitals, these
ragged schools--a zodiac of beautiful charities, girdling all this
selfishness and sin--I look at these monuments which humanity will honor
when war shall be but a legend, and laurels have withered to dust; and
when I think what they have grown out of, and why they stand here, I
regard them as so many sublime way-marks by which Providence unfolds its
purposes among men, and by which men trace out the plan of God.
And then, again, perhaps this problem of human diversity presses
heaviest where civilization is the most advanced, in order that men may
be more sharply aroused to seek some practical solution. It is an
encouraging sign when an evil begins to be intensely felt, and the
demand for relief becomes desperate. The civilization of our time is
imperfect; involves many incongruities; perhaps creates some evils; but
that it is an improved civilization, is evinced by the fact that it is
_self-conscious_; for perception is the necessary antecedent of endeavor
and success. The contrasts of human condition, then, that unfold
themselves in the crowded street, may teach us our duty and our
responsibility in lessening social inequality and need.
But a solution of this problem, clearer perhaps than any other, appears
when we consider another lesson of the street; a lesson which requires
us to look a little deeper, but which, when we do look, is no less
evident than these diversities. That lesson unfolds the essential
_unity_ of humanity. For, we find that the differences between men are
_formal_ rather than _real_; that, with various outward conditions, they
pass through the same great trials; and that the scales which seem to
hang uneven at the surface, and to be tipped this way and that by the
currents of worldly fortune, are very nearly balanced in the depths of
the inner life. We are shallow judges of the happiness or the misery of
others, if we estimate it by any marks that distinguish them from
ourselves; if, for instance, we say that because they have more money
they are happier, or because they live more meagrely they are more
wretched. For, men are allied by much more than they differ. The rich
man, rolling by in his chariot, and the beggar, shivering in his rags,
are allied by much more than they differ. It is safer, therefore, to
estimate our neighbor's real condition by what we find in our own lot,
than by what we do not find there. And now, see into what an essential
unity this criterion draws the jostling, divergent masses in yonder
street! Each man there, like all the rest, finds life to be a
discipline. Each has his separate form of discipline; but it bears upon
the kindred spirit that is in every one of us, and strikes upon motives,
sympathies, faculties, that run through the common humanity. Surely, you
will not calculate any _essential_ difference from mere appearances; for
the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over brackish
depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that
covers a divine peace. You know that the bosom _can_ ache beneath
diamond brooches, and how many blithe hearts dance under coarse wool.
But I do not allude merely to these accidental contrasts. I mean that
about equal measures of trial, equal measures of what men call good and
evil, are allotted to all; enough, at least, to prove the identity of
our humanity, and to show that we are all subjects of the same great
plan. You say that the poor man who passes yonder, carrying his burden,
has a hard lot of it, and it may be he has; but the rich man who brushes
by him has a hard lot of it too--just as hard for _him_, just as well
fitted to discipline him for the great ends of life. He has his money
to take care of; a pleasant occupation, you may think; but, after all,
an _occupation_, with all the strain and anxiety of labor, making more
hard work for him, day and night, perhaps, than his neighbor has who
digs ditches or thumps a lapstone. And it is quite likely that he feels
poorer than the poor man, and, if he ever becomes self-conscious, has
great reason to feel meaner. And then, he has his rivalries, his
competitions, his troubles of caste and etiquette, so that the merchant,
in his sumptuous apartments, comes to the same essential point, "sweats,
and bears fardels," as well as his brother in the garret; tosses on his
bed with surfeit, or perplexity, while the other is wrapped in peaceful
slumber; and, if he is one who recognizes the moral ends of life, finds
himself called upon to contend with his own heart, and to fight with
peculiar temptations. And thus the rich man and the poor man, who seem
so unequal in the street, would find but a thin partition between them,
could they, as they might, detect one another kneeling on the same
platform of spiritual endeavor, and sending up the same prayers to the
same eternal throne.
But, say you, "here is one who is returning to a home of destitution, of
misery; where the light of the natural day is almost shut out, but in
which brood the deeper shadows of despair." And yet, in many a splendid
mansion you will find a more fearful destitution, a dearth of
affections, killed by envy, jealousy, distrust; stifled by glittering
formalities; a brood of evil passions that mock the splendor, and darken
the magnificent walls. The measure of joy, too, is distributed with the
same impartiality as the measure of woe. The child's grief throbs
against the round of its little heart as heavily as the man's sorrow;
and the one finds as much delight in his kite or drum, as the other in
striking the springs of enterprise or soaring on the wings of fame.
After all, happiness is the rule, not the exception, even in the hearts
that beat in the crowded city; and its great elements are as common as
the air, and the sunshine, and free movement, and good health. And what
the fortunate may seem to gain in variety of methods, may only be
unconscious devices to simulate or recover that natural relish which
others have never lost. And no one doubts that the great dispensations
of life, the events that make epochs in our fleeting years, cleave
through all the strata of outward difference, and lay bare the core of
our one humanity. Sickness! does it not make Dives look very much like
Lazarus, and show our common weakness, and reveal the common marvel of
this "harp of thousand strings?" And sorrow! it veils all faces, and
bows all forms alike, and sends the same shudder through the frame, and
casts the same darkness upon the walls, and peals forth in the same
dirge of maternal agony by the dead boy's cradle in the sumptuous
chamber, and the baby's last sleep on its bed of straw. And Death! how
wonderfully it makes them all alike who in the street wore such various
garments, and had such distinct aims, and were whirled apart in such
different orbits! Ah! our essential humanity comes out in those composed
forms and still features. Those divergent currents have carried them out
upon the same placid sea at last; and the same solemn light streams
upon the clasped hands and the uplifted faces. We don't mind the drapery
so much then. It seems a very superficial matter beside the silent and
starless mystery that enfolds them all.
In what I have thus said I do not mean to maintain that outward
conditions are nothing. I think they are a great deal; and we do right
in striving to improve them; in escaping the evil, and seeking to secure
the good that pertains to them. But, I repeat, when we come to the
essential humanity, to the real discipline and substance of life, we
find the same great features; and so this lesson of the street may help
explain the problem suggested by the other; may reconcile each of us to
our condition in the crowd, and direct our attention to substantial
results.
But, again, the street, with its processions and activities, teaches us
that much in human life is merely _phenomenal_, merely _appears_. We
enter into this truth by a very common train of observation. We know how
much is put on purposely for the public gaze, and has no other intention
than to be seen; how hollow are many of the smiles, and gay looks, and
smooth decencies. And even the complexion of some, with its red and
white, is more unsubstantial than all the rest; for it is in danger of
being washed away by the first shower. It is strange to meet people
whose personal significance in life is that of a shop window exhibiting
lace and jewelry; strange to encounter men in whose place we might
substitute a well-dressed effigy, and they would hardly be missed. Of
course appearances should be attended to, and are good in their place.
It is right that we should honor society by our best looks and ways. But
it is not merely ridiculous, it is sad, to think how much in the street,
where humanity exhibits all its phases, is appearance and but little
else.
But dress and manners are not all that is phenomenal in human life.
These men and women themselves, this streaming crowd, these brick walls
and stately pinnacles, those that pursue and the things that are
pursued, are only appearances. It may be profitable for us to stand
apart from this multitude, this river of living forms, and think in how
short a time it all will have passed away; how short a time since, and
it was not! A little while ago, and this rich and populous city was a
green island, and our beautiful bay clasped it in its silver arms like
an emerald. The wilderness stood here, and the child of the forest
thought of it as a prepared abiding place for himself and for his people
for ever. The red man has gone; the wild woods have vanished; and these
structures, and vehicles, and busy crowds, have come into their places
magically, like the new picture in a dissolving view. But are these
forms of life, is your presence here or mine, any more substantial than
those that have sunk away? Nay, all this splendid civilization, what is
it but a sparkling ripple in the calm eternity of God? Dwellings,
stores, banks, churches, streets, and the restless multitudes, are but
forms of life,--as it were a rack of cloud drifting across the mirror of
absolute being. That which seems to you substantial is only spectral.
And as the dress of the fop, and the smile of the coquette, is merely an
appearance; so the wealth for which men strain in eager chase, and the
fabrics which pride builds up, the anvils on which labor strikes its
mighty blows, and the body to which so much is devoted, and which
absorbs so much care, are but appearances also. While that which may
seem to you as a shadow--the spiritual substratum of life, the basis of
those spiritual laws which run through all our conditions--is the only
abiding substance.
If we only look in this light, my friends, upon the continuous spectacle
of human movement and human change, we shall find that "Wisdom...
uttereth her voice in the streets." Old as the thought may be, in the
rush of the great crowd it will come to us fresh and impressively, that
all this is but a form of spiritual and eternal being. A day in the city
is like life itself. Out of unconscious slumber into the brilliant
morning and the thick activity we come. But, by-and-by, the heaving mass
breaks into units, and one by one dissolves into the shadow of the
night. Two cities grow up side by side--the city in which men appear,
the city into which they vanish; the city whose houses and goods they
possess for a little while and then leave behind them, and the city
whose white monuments just show us the pinnacles of their estates in the
eternal world. The busy, diversified crowd that rolls through the
streets--it is only an appearance! It is a ceaseless march of
emigration. In a little while, the names in this year's Directory may be
read in Greenwood.
But we must not rest with this as the final lesson of the street. It is
only the form of Life that is transient and phenomenal; but the _Life_
itself is here, also--here, in these flashing eyes, and heaving breasts,
and active limbs. These conditions, however transient, involve the great
interest of Humanity; and that lends the deepest significance to these
conditions. The interest of Humanity! which gives importance to all it
touches, and transforms nature into history; which imparts dignity to
the rudest workshop, and the most barren shore, and the humblest
grave--this permits us to draw no mean or discouraging conclusions from
the achievements and the changes of the multitudes around us. It may do
for the skeptic, who sees nothing in existence but these forms of
things; who sees nothing but the limited phenomena of our present state,
and thinks that includes all; it may do for him to croak over the
transitoriness of life, and call it a trivial game. But it is _not_
trivial; and there is no spot where man acts, there is nothing that he
does, that is insignificant. Perhaps you have a quick eye for the
foibles of people, and can detect their vanities, and meannesses, and
laughable conceits. If you employ this gift to correct a bad habit, or
expose a falsehood, it is well enough. But if it induces you to look
upon things merely with the skill of a satirist, then let me say, there
is no "ludicrous side" to life; there is nothing in human conduct that
is simply absurd. The least transaction has a moral cast, and every word
and act reveals spiritual relations. The interest of man can never be
thrown into insignificance by his conditions; these draw interest from
him. And, whatever his post in the world, however limited or broad his
sphere of observation, for _him_ life is real, and has intense
relations. We must not stand so far apart from the crowd as to occupy
the position of mere spectators, and regard these men and women as so
many mechanical figures in a panorama. We must look through the depths
of their experience into their own souls, and through the depths of that
experience again upon the world, beholding it as it appears to the
beggar, and the lonely woman, and the child of vice and crime, and the
hero, and the saint, and as it falls with intense yet diverse
refractions upon all these multiform angles of personality. So shall we
learn to cherish a solemn and tender interest in the dear humanity
around us, and feel the arteries of sympathy which connect it, in all
its conditions, with our own hearts. And, as we return homeward from our
study of the street, it may be with our irritation, and prejudice, and
selfishness softened down; with a larger love flowing out towards the
least, and even the worst; realizing the spiritual ties that make us
one, and the Infinite Fatherhood that encircles us all; perhaps
suggestions will come to us that have been best expressed in the words
of the poet--
"Let us move slowly through the street,
Filled with an ever-shifting train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat
The murmuring walks like autumn rain.
"How fast the flitting figures come!
The mild, the fierce, the stony face;
Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some
Where secret tears have left their trace.
* * * * *
"Each, where his tasks or pleasures call
They pass, and heed each other not.
There is, Who heeds, Who holds them all,
In His large love and boundless thought.
"These struggling tides of life that seem,
In wayward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream
That rolls to its appointed end."
MAN AND MACHINERY.
DISCOURSE II.
MAN AND MACHINERY.
For the spirit of the living creature was in the
wheels.--EZEKIEL, i. 20.
Whatever may have been the significance of the sublime vision from which
I have extracted those words, I do not think that their essential
meaning is perverted when I apply them to the subject which comes before
us this evening. I am not aware of any sentence that expresses more
concisely the relation which I would indicate between _Man_ and
_Machinery_; between those great agents of human achievement and the
living intelligence which works in them and by them. And though a Divine
Spirit moved in those flashing splendors which burned before the eyes of
the prophet, is it not also a divine spirit that mingles in every great
manifestation of humanity, and that moves even in the action of man,
the worker, toiling among innumerable wheels?
Perhaps if we were called upon to name some one feature of the present
age which distinguishes it from all other ages, and endows it with a
special wonder and glory, we should call it the Age of Machinery. We
trust our age is unfolding something better than material triumphs. The
results of past thought and past endeavor are pouring through it in
expanding currents of knowledge, liberty, and brotherhood. But the great
_agents_ in this diffusion of ideas and principles are those vehicles of
iron, and those messengers of lightning, which compress the huge globe
into a neighborhood, and bring all its interests within the system of a
daily newspaper. Like the generations which have preceded us, we enter
into the labors of others, and inherit the fruits of their effort. But
these powerful instruments, condensing time and space, endow a single
half-century with the possibilities of a cycle. If we take the period
comprehending the American and the French revolutions as a dividing
line, and look both sides the chasm, we shall discover the difference
of a thousand years. Remarkable for brilliant achievements in every
department of physics, ours well deserves to be called the Age of
_Science_, also. But it is still more remarkable, for the application of
the most majestic and subtle constituents of the universe to the most
familiar uses; the wild forces of matter have been caught and harnessed.
Go into any factory, and see what fine workmen we have made of the great
elements around us. See how magnificent nature has humbled itself, and
works in shirt-sleeves. Without food, without sweat, without weariness,
it toils all day at the loom, and shouts lustily in the sounding wheels.
How diligently the iron fingers pick and sort, and the muscles of steel
retain their faithful gripe, and enormous energies run to and fro with
an obedient click; while forces that tear the arteries of the earth and
heave volcanoes, spin the fabric of an infant's robe, and weave the
flowers in a lady's brocade.
I think, then, we may appropriately call it--The Age of Machinery. It is
not a peculiarity of the city, but, rather, seeks room to stretch
itself out; and so you may perceive its smoky signals hovering over a
thousand vallies, and the echo of its mighty pulses throbbing among the
loneliest hills. Nevertheless, it is sufficiently developed here to
illustrate the Conditions of Humanity in the City, and this fact,
together with the general interest of the subject, is my warrant for
taking it up in the present discourse. And my remarks must necessarily
be of a general cast, as I have no room for the statistics, and details,
and various discussions which grow out of the theme.
And the key-note of all that I shall say, at the present time, is really
in the text itself--"For the spirit of the living creature was in the
wheels."
In the first place, these words suggest the relations of _Use_ and
_Help_ between Man and Machinery. Upon surveying these numerous and
complicated instruments, the thought that most readily occurs, perhaps,
is that of the _necessity_ of machinery. The very first step that man
takes, out of the condition of infant weakness and animal rudeness, must
be accomplished by the aid of some implement. He alone, of all beings
upon the face of the earth, is obliged to _invent_, and is capable of
endless invention. The necessity for this springs out, and is a prophecy
of, his destiny. The moment he was seen fashioning the first tool,
however imperfect, that moment was indicated the difference between
himself and the brute, and the control he was destined to gain over the
world about him. To fulfil this destiny, he confronts nature with naked
hands; and yet, there is the earth to plough, the harvest to reap, the
torrent to bridge, the ocean to cross; there are all the results to
achieve which constitute the difference between the primitive man, and
the civilization of the nineteenth century. The Machine, then--the agent
which links the gratification to the want--is born of necessity. But we
must make a distinction between those instruments which are positively
essential, and those, for instance, which merely answer the demands of
luxury or indolence.
And this brings up the question of the _comparative_ uses of
Machinery--the foremost place being assigned to those implements which
are absolutely indispensable to man's existence upon the earth. But
between this absolute degree, and that of frivolous invention, there are
countless grades of utility. And the question of usefulness must be
decided according to the _standard_ of utility which we apply. If bare
subsistence is assumed to be the end of man upon the earth, most of our
modern inventions are useless. We can travel without a locomotive, and
procure a meal without a cooking-range. The moment we rise above the
grossest conception of human existence, the test of usefulness becomes
enlarged, and we can make a safe decision upon whatever increases man's
comfort, adds to his ability, or inspires his culture. In this way, new
things _become_ indispensable. That which was not necessary _a priori_,
_is_ necessary now, in a fresh stage of development, and in connection
with circumstances that have sprung up and formed around it. That which
was not necessary to man the savage, living on roots and raw fish, is
necessary to man the civilized, with new possibilities opening before
him, and new faculties unfolded within him. The printing-press was not
absolutely necessary to Nimrod, or to Julius Caesar, but is it not
absolutely necessary now? Strike it out of existence to-day, and what
would be the condition of the world to-morrow? You would have to tear
away with it all that has grown up around it, and become assimilated to
it--the textures of the world's growth for three hundred years. Paul
moved the old world without a telegraph, and Columbus found a new one
without a steamship. But see how essential these agents are to the
present condition of civilization. How many derangements among the
wheels of business, and the plans of affection, if merely a snow-drift
blocks the cars, or a thunder-storm snaps the wires! Our estimate of
necessity, and, therefore, of utility, must be formed according to
present conditions, and the legitimate demand that rises out of them;
these conditions themselves being the necessary developments of society
and of the individual.
But some of these, you may say, are the demands of luxury, of indolent
ease, of man setting nature to work and lapsing in self-indulgence. To
some degree this result may grow out of the present state of things; as
some portion of evil will follow in the sweep of an immense good. But
what is the precise sentence to be passed upon this prevalent luxury? Of
course, admitting the evil--which is apparent--I maintain that there is
a great deal of good in it; that it is inextricably associated with much
real refinement and progress. Men are accustomed to speak of the
simplicity and purity of past times, and to compare, with a sigh, the
good old era of the stage-coach and the spinning-wheel with these days
of whizzing machinery, Aladdin palaces, and California gold. But the
core of logic that lies within this rind of sentiment forces a
conclusion that I can by no means admit, the conclusion that the world
is going backward. I never knew of an epoch that was not thought by some
then living to be the worst that ever was, and which did not seem to
stand in humiliating contrast with some blessed period gone by. But the
golden age of Christianity is in the future, not in the past. Those old
ages are like the landscape that shows best in purple distance, all
verdant and smooth and bathed in mellow light. But could we go back and
touch the reality, we should find many a swamp of disease, and rough
and grimy paths of rock and mire. Those were good old times, it may be
thought, when baron and peasant feasted together. But the one could not
read, and made his mark with a sword-pommel; and the other was not held
so dear as a favorite dog. Pure and simple times were those of our
grandfathers,--it may be. Possibly not so pure as we may think, however,
and with a simplicity ingrained with some bigotry and a good deal of
conceit. The fact is, we are bad enough, imperfect, not because we are
growing worse, but because we are yet far from the best. I think,
however, with Lord Bacon, that _these_ are "the old times." The world is
older now than it ever was, and it contains the best life and fruition
of the past. And this special condition of luxury is a growth out of the
past, and is the necessary concomitant of much that is good. Opening new
channels for industry, it furnishes occupation for thousands; while, in
many of its phases, it indicates a refined culture, and a sphere
elevated above the imperative wants of existence. It is no proof of the
disadvantages of machinery, therefore, to say that it ministers to
something beside absolute bodily need, and delivers man from a slow and
exhausting drudgery. So far as it helps us to control nature, and
increases the facilities of human intercourse, and diffuses general
comfort and elegance, and affords a respite from incessant physical
toil, so far it is an agent and a sign of progress.
But, it may be said again, that it is the agent of a selfish and
exclusive power, enriching a few and injuring many. And it cannot be
denied that grave problems grow out of the relations between Machinery
and the laboring classes. Every little while, some new invention is
thrust forward, which takes a portion of labor out of the hands of flesh
and transfers it to hands of iron. It is not enough to say that mankind
in general is benefited by these inanimate agents, which do the work of
the world so much more rapidly and powerfully. This may answer as an
argument against a monopoly of any one kind of mechanical force. It may
be a reason for using cars instead of steamboats, and balloons rather
than railroads. The general good must be advanced, whatever the damage
to private interests. But the present case brings up the question
whether machinery is a general good at all; whether the effect of its
introduction into almost every department of labor, will not be felt in
the destitution of millions. And, upon this point, I observe, that, like
all other great revolutions, the immediate effect may be such as has
been suggested. But the final result will be beneficial, and such a
result may be traced out even now. For instance, this clogging of old
departments of labor will precipitate men upon fresh ones, and upon
those that have been too much neglected. It will tend to introduce woman
to branches of industry perfectly suited to her, but which have been too
exclusively occupied by the other sex, and to turn the attention of
robust men to those great fields of productive toil which are as yet but
little improved. It may drive them from the dependence, the crowded
competition, the unwholesome life of the city, into the broad fields and
open air and the sovereignty of the soil. And if this immense intrusion
of machinery has only this result, of equalizing the balance against
production, we shall have one solution of the problem. And there will be
another solution, if this phalanx of mechanism shall lift the mass of
men above the occasions of coarse material drudgery into other
activities, which doubtless will be thrown open, and shall allow more
leisure for spiritual culture. But in this, and all other great
questions affecting human welfare, I throw myself back, finally, upon
the tokens of Providential Design. The world moves forward, not
backward; and the great developments of time are for good, not evil. By
machinery, man proceeds with his dominion over nature. He assimilates it
to himself; it becomes, so to speak, a part of himself. Every great
invention is the enlargement of his own personality. Iron and fire
become blood and muscle, and gravitation flows in the current of his
will. His pulses beat in the steamship, throbbing through the deep,
while the fibres of his heart and brain inclose the earth in an electric
network of thought and sympathy. That which was given to help man, will
not hinder nor hurt him. "For the spirit of the living creature is in
the wheels."
I observe, in the second place, that the words of the text accord with
the testimony which machinery bears to the _dignity of man_. All these
great inventions--these implements of marvellous skill and power--prove
that the inventor, or the worker, himself is _not_ a machine. I know of
nothing which gives me so forcible an impression of the worth and
superiority of mind, of its alliance with the Creative Intelligence, as
the exhibition of an ingenious piece of mechanism. I have stood with
wonder before such a specimen, and seen it work with all the precision
of a reflecting creature. Lifting the most tremendous weights, cleaving
the most solid masses, performing the nicest tasks, as though a living
intellect were in it, informing it and directing its power. I hardly
know of any achievement that stands as a higher witness for the human
mind. The great poem that bursts in a flood of inspiration upon the soul
of genius, and opens the realms of immortal beauty, may lift us to a
nobler plane of endeavor. The heroic act of toil or martyrdom for
principle, certainly has a loftier, because it is a moral, grandeur. But
as an illustration of the _creativeness_ of man's intellect--of its
wondrous capability--of its alliance with that attribute of the Divine
Nature which is evident in the fibres of the grass-blade and the march
of the galaxy--I know of nothing more striking than this piece of
mechanism, which is the product of the most profound and patient
thought, the harmonizing of antagonistic forces, the combination of the
most abstruse details, fitted to the remotest exigencies, and working
just as the inventive mind meant it should, and just as it was set
a-going, as if that mind were presiding over it, were in it, though it
is now far distant, or has vanished from the earth. That mind is
immortal! that nature, which is common to all men, transcends any shape
of matter and is superior to mechanism. And it may be necessary to say
this, necessary to say that man, who is helped by machinery, is
_separate_ from it. It is mind that is thus involved with matter. The
spirit of a living creature that is in the wheels.
It may be necessary to say this, my friends, and to say it frequently,
lest the vast mechanical achievements of our time seduce us into a mere
mechanical life. I do not think that the deepest question is, whether
machinery will multiply to such an extent as to snatch the bread from
the mouths of living men; but whether men, with all the possibilities of
their nature, will not become absorbed in that which supplies them with
bread alone? I have just expressed my admiration for the genius of the
great inventor. Nor can I honor too highly the faithful and industrious
mechanic--the man who fills up his chink in the great economy by
patiently using his hammer or his wheel. For, he _does_ something. If he
only sews a welt, or planes a knot, he helps build up the solid pyramid
of this world's welfare. While there are those who, exhibiting but
little use while living, might, if embalmed, serve the same purpose as
those forms of ape and ibis _inside_ the Egyptian caverns--serve to
illustrate the shapes and idolatries of human conceit. At any rate,
there is no doubt of the essential nobility of that man who pours into
life the honest vigor of his toil, over those who compose this feathery
foam of fashion that sweeps along Broadway; who consider the insignia of
honor to consist in wealth and indolence; and who, ignoring the family
history, paint coats of arms to cover up the leather aprons of their
grandfathers.
I shall not be misunderstood then, when, making a distinction in behalf
of the mechanic by profession, I say that no man should be a mere
mechanic in _soul_. In other words, no man should be bound up in a
routine of material ends and uses. He should not be a mechanic, working
exclusively in a dead system, but always the architect of a living
ideal. And surrounded, astonished, served and enriched as we are by
these splendid legions of mechanism, the danger is that material
achievement will seem to us the _supreme_ achievement; that all life
will become machinery; and the higher interests of being, and the great
firmament of immortality, be eclipsed by these flashing wheels. We are
in danger of being drawn away from the sanctities of the inner life and
the still work of the soul, by this maelstrom of excitement and power.
No religious man can help asking, and asking anxiously, whether the
spirit of devotion is as deep and fresh, whether spiritual communion
with God is as direct and constant, in this whirl and roar, and
marvellous achievement, as they were in times bearing less evidently the
signs of material progress. For, that which merely gives us a stronger
grasp of the world around us, and sends us along the level of nature, is
not the most genuine element of progress; but that which elevates our
moral plane and enriches the great deep of our spiritual being. The
steamship and telegraph are not absolute tokens of this progress, but
the moral earnestness and the Christian charity that work through them
are; and these must spring up in hearts that are not merely adjusted to
the world, but lifted above it--that are not so occupied by mere
machinery as to neglect the living streams of an inward and devout
culture.