The Chief End of Man Part 1

The Chief End of Man.

by George S. Merriam.

_The chief end of man,--to define it anew, and cite the witness of the ages, may seem an audacious attempt, likely to issue in failure or in commonplace. By the scholar this work must often be judged as crude, to the churchman it will sometimes seem mischievous, and to the man of science it may appear to lack solidity of demonstration. But its essential purpose is to utter afresh, though it be with stammering tongue, the message with which the universe has answered the soul of man whenever he listened most closely and obeyed most faithfully._

_It is the a.s.surance that Fidelity, Truth-seeking, Courage, and Love are the rightful lords of human life, and its sufficient guides and interpreters. It is the knowledge that as man is true to his best self he finds the universe his friend._

_That message the seeing eye reads in the face of earth, and the listening ear hears it in the song of the morning stars. The will finds it as answer to its loyal endeavor. The heart wins it through rapture and through anguish. It is our dearest inheritance, it is our most arduous achievement. It is the sword with which each man must conquer his destiny. It is the smile with which Beatrice welcomes her lover to Paradise._

THE CHIEF END OF MAN

PROLOGUE

It sometimes happens that a man is confronted by a perplexing crisis, before which he is quite at a loss how to direct his course. His familiar rules and habits seem to fail him, and his perplexity approaches dismay. At such a time, if his previous life has been guided by purpose and consideration, he may perhaps help himself by looking attentively back at the steps by which he has. .h.i.therto advanced. He recalls other crises, he sees how they were met, and light, it may be, breaks on the path before him, or at least he takes fresh heart and hope.

Some such crisis confronts the thoughtful mind of the world to-day, in the disappearance of the old sanctions of religion. When the idea of an authoritative revelation of divine truth has been finally dislodged, there are moments when moral chaos seems to impend. We are still upheld by old habits and a.s.sociations, we are borne along by forces mightier than our creeds or negations, and the loyal spirit catches at moments the "deeper voice across the storm," even though the voice be inarticulate. But it is felt that we need to somehow define anew the rule of life. By what road shall man attain his supreme desire,--how can he be good, and how can he be happy?

As the individual seeks help in looking back over his course, so it may help us if we look back a little over some of the significant pa.s.sages in the movement of mankind. History is to the race what memory is to the individual. One's best treasure is the memory of his happy and heroic hours. The best treasure of humanity is the story of its happy and heroic souls. Let us call before us some of these, and see how they answered the questions we ask.

Following this clew, we run back along the line of what may be called "our spiritual ancestry." Turning naturally to our own next of kin, a child of New England, going back from the teaching of his youth to his fathers and to their fathers, soon finds before him the Puritan. When we study the Puritan it appears that he was a most composite product, and that just behind him, and essential to the understanding of him, is the great mediaeval church. Studying the church, there is nothing for it but to go back to its foundation, and ponder well the one from whose person and teaching it grew. And to know at all the mind of Jesus we must know something of the mind of Judaism, of which he was the child.

Indeed, the popular religion of to-day bases itself directly on the Old and New Testaments; so that our lineage must clearly be traced from this as one of its origins. Another ancient line attracts us, by a history which blends with Judaism at the birth of Christianity, and by a literature which is rich in moral treasures. We must glance at some of the landmarks of the Greek and Roman story.

And here our present study may define its bounds. We will not go back to the progress from the animal up to man, nor survey the prehistoric man; nor will we turn aside to the religions of Egypt, Arabia, and the East; and we can but lightly glance at the early Teutonic people from whom we are descended after the flesh. It will sufficiently serve our purpose if we touch a few salient points among our more direct progenitors in the life of the spirit. And, after all, our richest search will be in the years nearest ourselves.

But no version of history simply as history gives an adequate basis for the higher life. That life must be worked out by each for himself, equipped as he finds himself by inheritance and circ.u.mstance, and guided largely by the sure and simple laws of conduct which he drew in with his mother's milk. Study and thought may help a little, and so such essays as the present are offered for whatever they may afford.

Of all human studies, history, at its best,--the knowledge of whatever of worthiest the past of mankind affords,--such history is of all studies most delightful and inspiring, for it is the contact through books with n.o.ble souls--and the touch of a great soul is a natural sacrament. Such history has significance mainly as its events and characters find parallels in the mind that reads. The soul of to-day, catching from the past the voices of prophets and leaders, thrills with a sense of kinship. The story of American independence means most when the reader has fought his own Bunker Hill, and wintered at Valley Forge, and triumphed at Yorktown. The death of Socrates has small significance unless something in the reader's heart answers to his affirmation that "nothing evil can happen to a good man, in living or dying." The life of Jesus and the story of Christianity are most fully understood when life's experience has brought the Mount of Vision and the Garden of Gethsemane, the cross and pa.s.sion, the resurrection, and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

The interest of the present study is in the ill.u.s.tration of certain great spiritual laws. These are laws of which every man may make proof for himself. He may find instances of their working in any close observation of his nearest neighbor, or in reading his newspaper. He may find the clearest exemplification of them in studying the n.o.blest men and women he has known, or, if his life has been worth living, in recalling the most critical and significant pa.s.sages of his own experience. The reading of these laws is the latest and finest result of the experience of the race. In their substance, they are acknowledged by all good men. No wholly new path to goodness and happiness is likely to be suddenly discovered; certainly no essentially new ideal of what kind of goodness and happiness we are to seek. The saints and heroes are all of one fellowship, though they do not all speak the same language. In a word, there are certain traits of character which all men whose opinion we value now recognize as supremely worthy of cultivation. To seek to know things as they really are; to fit our actions to our best knowledge; to conform in word and act to the truth as we see it; to seek the good of others as well as our own; to be sympathetic and responsive; to be open-eyed to beauty, open-hearted to our fellow creatures; to be reverent and aspiring; to resolutely subject the lower elements of our nature to the higher; to taste frankly and freely the innocent joys of life; to renounce those joys and accept privation, suffering, death, when duty calls,--such purposes and dispositions as these are unquestionably a true rule of life. The main theme to be ill.u.s.trated in these pages is that this ideal and rule is in itself an all-sufficient principle. Fidelity to the best we know, and search always for the best, is the natural road to peace and joy, the sure road to victory. It is the key which opens to man the treasury of the universe.

To enforce and vivify this conception,--this interpretation of the key of life as consisting in fidelity to certain ideals of character,--we go back to the memorable examples of the past. We use those examples, partly to show how the spiritual laws always worked, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; and partly to show how as time advanced the laws have been understood with growing clearness, and applied with growing effectiveness. The same stars shone above the sages of Chaldea as shine above us, but our astronomy is better than theirs. The sages of Greece, the prophets of Palestine, the heroes of Rome, the saints of the Middle Ages, the philanthropists and the scientists of to-day, each made their special contribution to the spiritual astronomy. From age to age men have read the heavens and the earth more clearly, and so made of them a more friendly home. Just as, too, there come times of momentous progress in the physical world; the establishment of the Copernican theory, the discovery of a new continent, the mastering of electricity,--so there are periods of swift advance and discovery in the spiritual life, and such a birth-hour, of travail and of joy, comes in our own day.

In this hasty panorama of the past, then, the effort has been to give real history. But every student knows how transcendent and impossible a thing it is to recall in its entirety and fullness any phase of the past. Even the specialist can but partially open a limited province.

So with what confidence can one with no pretensions to original scholarship, however he may use the work of deeper students, express his opinion on any special point in a survey of thirty centuries? If, accordingly, any competent critic shall trouble himself to convict the present writer of error: "This view of Epictetus confuses the earlier and the later Stoics;" or "This account of the Hebrew prophets lacks the latest fruit of research,"--or, other like defect,--acknowledgment of such error as quite possible may be freely made in advance. But, in our bird's-eye view of many centuries, any fault of detail will not be so serious as it would be if there were here attempted a chain of proofs, a formal induction, to establish from sure premises a safe conclusion. Only of a subordinate importance is the detail of this history. We say only: in this way, or some way like this, has been the ascent. The contribution of the Stoic was about so and so; the Hebrew prophet helped somewhat thus and thus. But the ultimate, the essential fact we reach in the Ideal of To-day. Here we are on firm ground. The law we acknowledge, the light we follow,--these may be expressed with entire clearness and confidence. The test they invite is present experiment. Nothing vital shall be staked on far-away history or debatable metaphysics.

In the fivefold division of the book, "Our Spiritual Ancestry" is a bird's-eye view of the main line of advance, which culminates in "The Ideal of To-Day." A more leisurely retrospect of certain historical pa.s.sages is given in "A Traveler's Note-Book;" thoughts on the present aspect are grouped under "Glimpses;" and "Daily Bread" introduces a homely and familiar treatment.

I

OUR SPIRITUAL ANCESTRY

The ideas and sentiments which underlie the higher life of our time may be largely traced back to two roots, the one Greek-Roman, the other Hebrew.

Each of these two races had originally a mythology made up partly of the personification and worship of the powers of nature, and partly of the deification of human traits or individual heroes.

The higher mind of the Greeks and Romans, in which the distinctive notes were clear intelligence, love of beauty, and practical force, gradually broke away altogether from the popular mythology, and sought to find in reason an explanation of the universe and a sufficient rule of life.

The Greek-Roman mythology made only an indirect and slight contribution to modern religion. But the ethical philosophy and the higher poetry of the two peoples belong not only to our immediate lineage but to our present possessions.

A humanity common with our own brings us into closest sympathy with certain great personalities of this antique world. Differences of time, race, civilization, are powerless to prevent our intimate friendship and reverence for Homer, Sophocles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Epictetus.

Homer shows the opening of eyes and heart to this whole wonderful world of nature and of man.

Sophocles sees human life in its depth of suffering and height of achievement. He views mingled spectacle with profound reverence, sure that through it all is working some divine power. Goodness is dear to the G.o.ds, wickedness is abhorrent to them. But the good man is often unhappy,--from strange inheritance of curse, or from complication of events which no wisdom can baffle. Yet from the discipline of suffering emerges the n.o.blest character, and over the grave itself play gleams of hope, faint but celestial.

In Socrates, we see the man who having in himself attained a solid and n.o.ble goodness, addresses all his powers to finding a clear road by which all men may be led into goodness. He first propounds in clearness the most important question of humanity,--how shall man by reason and by will become master of life?

Plato takes up the question after him, and follows it with an intellect unequaled in its imaginative flight. Plato lighted the fire which has burned high in the enthusiasts of the spirit,--the mystics, the dreamers, the idealists.

Aristotle confined himself to the homelier province where demonstration is possible, and laid the foundation of logic and of natural science.

Lucretius resolutely puts away from him the whole pageant of fict.i.tious religion. He scouts its terrors, and scorns to depend on unreal consolation. He addresses himself to the intellectual problem of the universe, and decides that all is ruled by material laws.

In Epictetus man reverts from the problem of the universe to the problem of the soul. The beauty of the Greek world has faded, the stern Roman world has trained its best spirits to live with resolute self-mastery.

The mythologic G.o.ds are no longer worth talking about for serious men.

But here is the great actual business of living,--it can be met in manly temper, and be made a scene of lofty satisfaction and serene tranquillity.

Epictetus was the consummate expression of that Stoic philosophy in which were blended the clearness of Greek thought and the austerity of the best Roman life. Stoicism reverted from all universe-schemes, spiritual or materialist, to the conduct of human life which Socrates had propounded as the essential theme. The Stoic affirmed that all good and evil reside for man in his own will, and that simply in always choosing the right rather than the wrong he may find supreme satisfaction. Epictetus expresses this in the constant tone of heroism and victory. In the more feminine nature of Marcus Aurelius the same ideas yield a beautiful fidelity along with a habitual sadness.

Stoicism was the n.o.blest attainment of the Greek-Roman world. It was a clear and fearless application of reason to human life, with little attempt to solve the mystery of the universe. It gave an ideal and rule to thoughtful, robust, and masculine natures. It made small provision for the ignorant, the weak, or the feminine. Its watchwords were Reason, Nature, Will.

The distinction of the Hebrew development was that the higher minds took up the popular mythology, elevated and purified it. The Hebrew genius was not intellectual but ethical and emotional. The typical Hebrew guide was not a philosopher but a prophet. Through a development of many centuries the popular religion from polytheistic became monotheistic, and from worshiping the sun and fire came to worship an embodiment of righteousness and of supreme power. An ideal of character grew up--in close a.s.sociation with religious worship and ceremonial--in which the central virtues were justice, benevolence, and chast.i.ty. The sentiments of the family, the nation, and the church were fused in one. Its outward expression was an elaborate ceremonial. Its heart was a pa.s.sion which in one direction dashed the little province against the whole power of Rome; in another channel, preserved a people intact and separate through twenty centuries of dispersal and subjection; while, in another aspect, it gave birth to Jesus and to Christianity.

Jesus was one of the great spiritual geniuses of the race,--so far as we know, the greatest. The highest ideas of Judaism he sublimated, intensified, and expressed in universal forms. Indifferent to the ceremonial of his people, he taught that the essence of religion lay in spirit and in conduct.

The holy and awful Deity was to him a tender Father. The whole duty of man to man was love. Chast.i.ty of the body was exalted to purity of the heart. He lived close to the common people; taught, helped, healed them; caressed their children, pitied their outcasts, laid hands on the lepers, and calmed the insane. He brooded on the expectation of some great future which earlier seers had impressed on the popular thought, and saw as in prophetic vision the near approach of the perfect triumph of holiness and love. Overshadowed by danger, his hope and faith menaced as by denying Fate, he rallied from the shock, trusted the unseen Power, and went serenely to a martyr's death.

Jesus had roused a pa.s.sion of personal devotion among the poor, the ignorant, the true-hearted whom he had taught and called. When he was dead, that devotion flamed out in the a.s.sertion, He lives again! We have seen him! He will speedily return! The Jewish belief in a bodily resurrection and a Messianic kingdom gave form to this faith, and unbounded love and imagination gave intensity and vividness. That Jesus was risen from the dead became the cardinal article of the new society which grew up around his grave. His moral precepts, his parables, his acts, his personality,--the personality of one who was alike the child of G.o.d and the friend of sinners,--these were enshrined in a new mythology.

A society, enthusiastic, aggressive; at first divided into factions; then blending in a common creed and rule of life; a loyalty to an invisible leader; a sanguine hope of speedy triumph, cooling into more remote expectation, and in the finer spirits transforming into a present spiritual communion; a growing elaboration of organization, priesthood, ritual, mythology; a diffusion through vast ma.s.ses of people of the new religion, and a corresponding depreciation of its quality,--this was the early stage of Christianity. It vanquished and destroyed the Greek-Roman mythology, already half dead. Philosophy strove with it in vain,--there was no real meeting-ground between the two systems. The final appeal of the Stoic was to reason. The Christian theologians thought they reasoned, but their argumentation was feeble save at one point. But that was the vital point,--experience. Christianity, in its mixture of ardor, credulity, and morality had somehow a power to give to common men and women a n.o.bility and gladness of living which Stoicism could not inspire in them. So it was the worthier of the two antagonists that triumphed in the strife.

Ideally, there ought to have been no strife. Christianity and ethical philosophy ought to have worked side by side, until the religion of Reason and the religion of Love understood each other and blended in one.

Destined they were to blend, but not for thousands of years. The new religion brooked no rivalry and no rebellion. It swayed the world despotically, but the beginning and secret of its power was that it had captured the world's heart. Its best watchwords were Faith, Hope, Love.

In a word, civilized mankind, having outgrown the earlier nature-worship, and having found the philosophic reason inadequate to provide a satisfying way of life, accepted a new mythology, because it was inspired by ideas which were powerful to guide, to inspire, and to console. For many centuries we shall look in vain for any serious study of human life except in conformity to the Christian mythology.

The Roman world was submerged by the invasion of the northern tribes.