Once—it is a thought which troubles us—once it was a simple enough
matter to be a human being, but now it is deeply difficult; because
life was once simple, but is now complex, confused, multifarious.
Haste, anxiety, preoccupation, the need to specialize and make machines
of ourselves, have transformed the once simple world, and we are
apprised that it will not be without effort that we shall keep the
broad human traits which have so far made the earth habitable. We have
seen our modern life accumulate, hot and restless, in great cities—and
we cannot say that the change is not natural: we see in it, on the
contrary, the fulfillment of an inevitable law of change, which is no
doubt a law of growth, and not of decay. And yet we look upon the
portentous thing with a great distaste, and doubt with what altered
passions we shall come out of it. The huge, rushing, aggregate life of
a great city—the crushing crowds in the streets, where friends seldom
meet and there are few greetings; the thunderous noise of trade and
industry that speaks of nothing but gain and competition, and a
consuming fever that checks the natural courses of the kindly blood; no
leisure anywhere, no quiet, no restful ease, no wise repose—all this
shocks us. It is inhumane. It does not seem human. How much more likely
does it appear that we shall find men sane and human about a country
fireside, upon the streets of quiet villages, where all are neighbors,
where groups of friends gather easily, and a constant sympathy makes
the very air seem native! Why should not the city seem infinitely more
human than the hamlet? Why should not human traits the more abound
where human beings teem millions strong?
Because the city curtails man of his wholeness, specializes him,
quickens some powers, stunts others, gives him a sharp edge, and a
temper like that of steel, makes him unfit for nothing so much as to
sit still. Men have indeed written like human beings in the midst of
great cities, but not often when they have shared the city’s
characteristic life, its struggle for place and for gain. There are not
many places that belong to a city’s life to which you can “invite your
soul.” Its haste, its preoccupations, its anxieties, its rushing noise
as of men driven, its ringing cries, distract you. It offers no quiet
for reflection; it permits no retirement to any who share its life. It
is a place of little tasks, of narrowed functions, of aggregate and not
of individual strength. The great machine dominates its little parts,
and its Society is as much of a machine as its business.
“This tract which the river of Time 2
Now flows through with us, is the plain.
Gone is the calm of its earlier shore.
Border’d by cities, and hoarse
With a thousand cries is its stream.
And we on its breast, our minds
Are confused as the cries which we hear,
Changing and shot as the sights which we see.
“And we say that repose has fled
Forever the course of the river of Time
That cities will crowd to its edge
In a blacker, incessanter line;
That the din will be more on its banks,
Denser the trade on its stream,
Flatter the plain where it flows,
Fiercer the sun overhead,
That never will those on its breast
See an enobling sight,
Drink of the feeling of quiet again.
“But what was before us we know not,
And we know not what shall succeed.
“Haply, the river of Time—
As it grows, as the towns on its marge
Fling their wavering lights
On a wider, statelier stream—
May acquire, if not the calm
Of its early mountainous shore,
Yet a solemn peace of its own.
“And the width of the waters, the hush
Of the gray expanse where he floats,
Freshening its current and spotted with foam
As it draws to the Ocean, may strike
Peace to the soul of the man on its breast—
As the pale waste widens around him,
As the banks fade dimmer away,
As the stars come out, and the night-wind
Brings up the stream
Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.”
We cannot easily see the large measure and abiding purpose of the novel
age in which we stand young and confused. The view that shall clear our
minds and quicken us to act as those who know their task and its
distant consummation will come with better knowledge and completer
self-possession. It shall not be a night-wind, but an air that shall
blow out of the widening east and with the coming of the light, and
shall bring us, with the morning, “murmurs and scents of the infinite
sea.” Who can doubt that man has grown more and more human with each
step of that slow process which has brought him knowledge,
self-restraint, the arts of intercourse, and the revelations of real
joy? Man has more and more lived with his fellow-men, and it is society
that has humanized him—the development of society into an infinitely
various school of discipline and ordered skill. He has been made more
human by schooling, by growing more self-possessed—less violent, less
tumultuous; holding himself in hand, and moving always with a certain
poise of spirit; not forever clapping his hand to the hilt of his
sword, but preferring, rather, to play with a subtler skill upon the
springs of action. This is our conception of the truly human man: a man
in whom there is a just balance of faculties, a catholic sympathy—no
brawler, no fanatic, no pharisee; not too credulous in hope, not too
desperate in purpose; warm, but not hasty; ardent, and full of definite
power, but not running about to be pleased and deceived by every new
thing.
It is a genial image of men we love—an image of men warm and true of
heart, direct and unhesitating in courage, generous, magnanimous,
faithful, steadfast, capable of a deep devotion and self-forgetfulness.
But the age changes, and with it must change our ideals of human
quality. Not that we would give up what we have loved: we would add
what a new life demands. In a new age men must acquire a new capacity,
must be men upon a new scale, and with added qualities. We shall need a
new Renaissance, ushered in by a new “humanistic” movement, in which we
shall add our present minute, introspective study of ourselves, our
jails, our slums, our nerve centers, our shifts to live, almost as
morbid as medieval religion, a rediscovery of the round world, and of
man’s place in it, now that its face has changed. We study the world,
but not yet with intent to school our hearts and tastes, broaden our
natures, and know our fellow-men as comrades rather than as phenomena;
with purpose, rather, to build up bodies of critical doctrine and
provide ourselves with theses. That, surely, is not the truly
humanizing way in which to take the air of the world. Man is much more
than a “rational being,” and lives more by sympathies and impressions
than by conclusions. It darkens his eyes and dries up the wells of his
humanity to be forever in search of doctrine. We need wholesome,
experiencing natures, I dare affirm, much more than we need sound
reasoning.