The Whence and the Whither of Man Part 13

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 a.s.signing man his proper place in our systems of cla.s.sification. Our zoological cla.s.sifications 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 zoological 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," h.o.m.o 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 s.p.a.ce. He has the knowledge of abstract truth and goodness, of certain standards outside of mere appet.i.te 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 a.s.sociates. If he a.s.sociates himself with men who are tending upward, he will rise ever higher. If he choose the opposite kind of a.s.sociates he must sink into ever deeper degradation; he has thereby chosen death. For his a.s.sociates, 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 appet.i.tes. 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 appet.i.tes, 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 pa.s.sed is to surely degenerate. The time when the prize of pre-eminence could be won by mere physical superiority was pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d. 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 sn.o.bbery 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 c.u.mbered 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, they glorified him not as G.o.d, 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 G.o.d in their knowledge, G.o.d 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 rec.u.mbent posture, as if just awakening to consciousness, and is reaching out its hand to touch the outstretched finger of G.o.d. The human being became and becomes man when, and in proportion as, he puts himself in touch with G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. This is the religion of conformity to environment: man working out his salvation because G.o.d 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 G.o.ddess, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

"Then to side with Truth is n.o.ble 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 mult.i.tude 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 n.o.bler 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 appet.i.tes, for he will be healthy; he will be prudent, because wise; but he will hold his appet.i.tes 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 a.n.a.lyses 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.dlike, and when possessed by these motives he has clasped hands with G.o.d.

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 G.o.d, 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, j.a.pan, 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. G.o.d 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 s.p.a.ce, time, and general conditions; when these change they pa.s.s 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 n.o.bility 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 acc.u.mulation 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 "n.o.ble" families.