The Young Man and the World Part 20

"Great battles," said he, "have been fought; there will be no more wars of magnitude. The great principles of the law have all been announced and applied to every conceivable form of human rights and controversy. For example, in our own country there will be no more new and great const.i.tutional arguments. Everything, from now on, will be only an application of what has already been said and decided.

"In invention, there may be some improvements on old and present devices, but there will be no more Edisons, no more Marconis. In medicine, we are about at the top of the mountain. In literature, the creative and fundamental things have all been done. There will be no more Shakespeares, no Miltons, no Dantes, no Goethes. Even Hugo is dead. From now on books will be mere second-hand talk.

"In statesmanship, nothing is left except that common housekeeping which we call administering government. In diplomacy, the same old lies will continue to be told, and so on."

This young man's profoundly melancholy view of life is that which I have found crushing the _elan_ out of many young men; and particularly college students. In their hearts they feel that progress is finished, so far as individual effort _by them_ is concerned. They feel that _for them_ there is nothing but to eat, sleep, laugh, grieve and go to their graves. They feel that _for them_ there is no such thing as leaving behind them a monument of their own constructive effort. Talk to most young men in college or school, and you will find this feeling, like a pathetic minor chord, running through their highest and most daring boasts.

Is not our college training responsible for some of this melancholy negativeness of life? However it happens, the truth is that too few young men come out of our great universities with the greater part of the boldness of youth left in them. Somehow or other those fine, and, if you will, absurd enthusiasms which n.o.body but young men and geniuses are blessed with, have been educated out of the graduate. How many seniors in our historic American universities would not have sneered John Bunyan out of existence, or have told the young and unripe Bonaparte how presumptuous he was to think of fighting the trained generals of Europe?

"Yes," says a certain type of young man, "all the great things have been done. Nothing is left for me but the commonplaces." This is not true.

The great things have not all been done; scarcely have they been commenced. "There is more before us than there is behind us," said my old forest "guide," wise with the wisdom of the woods and their thoughtful silences. And the purpose of this paper is to point out the infinite number of practical possibilities immediately at hand; to awaken each young man who reads these words to some one of the million voices which from all the fields of human endeavor is calling him; and so, by showing him things to do, make him a doer of things, if he will.

Let us take the law--that entrancing subject which exercises such an empire over the minds of most young men. Our own const.i.tutional law is only a part of that universal body of jurisprudence with which all real lawyers must deal. Very well; we have only begun the discussion and settlement of our great const.i.tutional questions. Marshall and Hamilton, it is true, when they formulated the doctrine of implied powers, seemed to unlock the door of all const.i.tutional difficulties, leaving nothing for future lawyers and jurists to do but to find their way through the channels and pa.s.sages thus opened.

But it was only one great field to which they laid down the bars.

Others equally large--yes, larger--lie beyond it. It is generally admitted now by all thorough students of the Const.i.tution that there is such a thing as const.i.tutional progress--const.i.tutional development. The Const.i.tution does and will grow as the American people grow.

Half a dozen questions are now in the public mind that measure, in importance, up to the level of Marshall's elementary decisions. Beyond these is still the application of inst.i.tutional law to the interpretation of the Const.i.tution. There is no book so much needed in the present, or that will be so much needed in the future, as a great work on our inst.i.tutional law--such a work as the world sees once in a century.

Consider this one phase of jurisprudence for only a moment, young man, just to see what a world of thought it opens to the mind.

Inst.i.tutional law is older, deeper, and even more vital than const.i.tutional law. Our Const.i.tution is one of the concrete manifestations of our inst.i.tutions; our statutes are another; the decisions of our courts are another; our habits, methods, and customs as a people and a race are still another.

Our inst.i.tutional law is like the atmosphere--impalpable, imperceptible, but all-pervading, and the source of life itself. Most leading decisions of our courts of last resort, involving great const.i.tutional questions, refer to the spirit of our inst.i.tutions as interpreting our Const.i.tution. It is our inst.i.tutional law which, flowing like our blood through the written Const.i.tution, gives that instrument vitality and power of development.

Inst.i.tutional law existed before the Const.i.tution. Our inst.i.tutions had their beginnings well-nigh with the beginning of time. They have developed through the ages. Magna Charta only marked a period in their growth; the a.s.sertion of the rights of the Commons marked another; our Revolution marked another; the adoption of our Const.i.tution marked another still.

I have no respect for const.i.tutional learning which deals alone with the written words of the Const.i.tution, or even with the intention of its framers, and ignores the sources and spirit of that great instrument. The Const.i.tution did not give us free inst.i.tutions; free inst.i.tutions gave us our Const.i.tution. All our progress toward liberty and popular government, made since the adoption of the Const.i.tution, has been the spirit of our inst.i.tutions working out its sure results, through the Const.i.tution when possible, modifying it when necessary.

Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence a denunciation of slavery, and called it an "execrable commerce." It was stricken out at the request of Georgia and South Carolina, and years afterward slavery was recognized in our Const.i.tution.

But slavery was opposed to the spirit of our inst.i.tutions, and while legalized by our Const.i.tution and defended by armies as brave as ever marched to battle, const.i.tutional slavery went down before inst.i.tutional liberty; and Appomattox was the capitulation of the word of death in our Const.i.tution to the spirit of life in our inst.i.tutions. Every amendment of our Const.i.tution marks the progress of our inst.i.tutions.

The Const.i.tution contemplated and provided for the election of Presidents by electors, who should select the best man to preside over the Republic, irrespective of the people's choice. That was the intention of the fathers. But in that they did not correctly interpret the spirit and tendency of our inst.i.tutions, which is toward getting the Government as close to the people as possible.

And so, in spite of the Const.i.tution, in spite of the intention of the fathers, in spite of the fact that this plan was pursued for several elections, the spirit of our inst.i.tutions prevailed over our Const.i.tution, and no presidential elector now dare cast his ballot against the candidate for whom the people instruct him to vote.

Even outside of the doctrine of implied powers by which our written Const.i.tution has been made to meet many of the emergencies of our history, there are important things in our National life that have all the force of organic law which are unprovided for by the Const.i.tution.

For example, the Const.i.tution does not say that a congressman must live in the district which he represents. So far as const.i.tutional law is concerned, he might live anywhere. But no matter--our inst.i.tutional law settles that. The theory of local self-government requires the representative of a locality to live in that locality.

Wherever our Const.i.tution has been weak and insufficient in its apparent expressed powers, the spirit of our inst.i.tutions has given it life. Read Marshall's opinions; read most of our great const.i.tutional decisions; read the whole history of American const.i.tutional progress, if you would know the beneficent influence of our inst.i.tutions on our Const.i.tution.

Thus we see that our inst.i.tutions are the preservers of our Const.i.tution. The doctrine of implied powers, which has saved the country and the Const.i.tution too, has been made possible only by reading our Const.i.tution by the light of our inst.i.tutions, as Hamilton and Marshall did.

And so our security is not in the written word of the Const.i.tution alone; it is there, of course, but it is in our inst.i.tutions also which are the spirit of the Const.i.tution, which illumine and emphasize the meaning of that n.o.ble instrument. England has no written const.i.tution; certain other countries have had and have now ideal written const.i.tutions.

And yet England has steady and continuous liberty and law, while those others, even with written const.i.tutions, frequently have had bureaucracy and military absolutism. They had the _forms_ of liberty and popular government in these written const.i.tutions, but they did not have free inst.i.tutions, which alone make formal const.i.tutions living and vital things.

England, without a written const.i.tution, is almost as free a government as ours. Law reigns supreme. The poorest gatherer of rags has equal rights before the bar of justice with belted earl or millionaire, and those equal rights are impartially enforced. Neither wealth nor t.i.tle are favored more than poverty or humble rank in the courts of England; and even royalty appears as witness, the same as his meanest subject.

The Government itself is subject to the will of the people; and no ministry remains in power in face of an adverse majority, or forces into law an act of which the people disapprove. The English Parliament goes to the people as often as the Government, in any of its proposed measures, fails of a majority. The suffrage is constantly enlarging, and the rights of labor are almost as carefully guarded by the laws of England as by ours.

England's treatment of Ireland has been harsh, severe, unjust; and yet even there the spirit of a larger liberty in the interest of the Irish tenant, approaching state socialism, compels the landlord to sell his land whether he wants to or not, at a price fixed by others than himself, and enables the tenant to buy the land by the payment of his rent. Tolerance, justice, and individual liberty are daily developing throughout the British Empire, instead of diminishing.

And yet England has no written const.i.tution. But she has inst.i.tutions, free inst.i.tutions, inst.i.tutions similar to those we have here in America. It is the free inst.i.tutions of England that preserve and increase the liberty of Englishmen, and diminish and destroy the authority of the monarch, who is now only the personification of the nation, the emblem of the Empire.

It is England's free inst.i.tutions that, in Egypt, in Hongkong, in Ceylon, in the Malay states, in India, have given the people of those dark places some of the fruits of liberty to eat for the first time in all the strange history of the oppressed and wasted Orient. And it is our free inst.i.tutions, as well as our Const.i.tution, that in America make kings impossible, and have, for a hundred years, wrought for a larger liberty and a more popular government.

And it is the spirit of our inst.i.tutions, as well as our Const.i.tution, that will prevent the abuse of power by American authority in Porto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines, or any other spot blessed by the protection of our flag. It is our free inst.i.tutions, working now by one method and now by another, after the fashion of our practical race, that are establishing order, equal laws, free speech, unpurchasable justice, and "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" throughout our ocean possessions.

It is our inst.i.tutional law, therefore, of which men should inquire who would know the meaning and the life of our const.i.tutional law. We have heard from lawyer and orator of "the Const.i.tution," "the letter of the Const.i.tution," etc.; we have listened for "our inst.i.tutions,"

and in vain. And yet, is it not written that "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life"?

Is it not written that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of G.o.d"? I respect not the expounders of const.i.tutional law who have not learned the history of our inst.i.tutions, of which the Const.i.tution is the richest fruit, until that history is a part of their being.

I respect not that const.i.tutional charlatanism that fastens its eye on the printed page alone, disdains our inst.i.tutions as interpreting it, and refuses to consider the sources of that Const.i.tution--the development of our present form of government for a century and a half from the old crown charters; the English struggle for the rights of man, regulated by equal laws which preceded that; the spirit of Dutch independence, Dutch federation, and Dutch inst.i.tutions working upon that, and still back to the counsels of our Teuton fathers in the German forests in the dim light of a far distant time.

If a people adopt a written instrument, you must understand that _people_ and their _inst.i.tutions_ before you understand the writing.

You cannot separate a people and their history from a written const.i.tution which is only a part of that history. The same words by one people may have a different meaning used by another people. Any writing can only be an index to the inst.i.tutions of a people.

A people's _inst.i.tutions_ are the soul of the written and unwritten law. You must understand the French people, their history, and their inst.i.tutions, before you can understand their written const.i.tution.

You must understand the American people, our history, and our inst.i.tutions, before you can understand our Const.i.tution.

I have thus enlarged upon our inst.i.tutional law to give young men a hint of its possibilities. Before this century closes, the greatest law book in all the literature of jurisprudence will be produced upon the subject of our inst.i.tutional law. The materials are as plentiful as the history of our race, the demand as insistent as our daily life.

Great law books all written! Nonsense. As yet we have had only the turgid descriptions of the toilsome and halting progress of justice through the ages--that is all we have had, compared with the n.o.ble volume that will be written, giving mankind the high, clear, and simple thinking of a greater Blackstone and a wiser Kent. It may be that this generation will produce this immortal judicial author; it may be that you, young man, are he. At least one thing is sure--the work is there waiting for the workman.

But if you do not feel equipped for this monumental effort, there are other phases of the law more imminent, if not so comprehensive, in each of which there is opportunity and demand for original work.

For example, it is clear to all that the laws of marriage and divorce must be made rational and uniform throughout the Nation; that the laws respecting corporations are inappropriate, inadequate, and unjust, both to corporations and to the public--that they do not measure up to the present complex conditions; that the laws respecting commercial paper need to be systematized.

It is absurd, too, that a farmer living on one side of an imaginary state line which separates his farm and the state in which it is located from that of his neighbor living on the other side of the imaginary line in another state, should have to deal with his neighbor as if he were a foreigner in a foreign land and under foreign laws.

Again, the multiplication of decisions on all subjects has reached a point where practise by precedent, to be exhaustive and thorough, has become practically impossible; and so the problem that confronted the Roman emperors, and terminated in the Pandects of Justinian, is now demanding immediate solution at the hands of American legislators, lawyers, and jurists.

So, you see, my ambitious young friend, that by no means all has been done in the law, and that what has been done is so bulky, unorganized, and confused, that even to reduce, rationalize, and systematize it is the greatest task of all. The trouble will therefore be with yourself, and not with conditions, if you remain an underling in this great profession.

Take literature--take imaginative literature. More can be said on its possibilities than on those of the law--and I enlarged upon the unexplored fields of the law merely to outline the immensity of the great things yet to be done in the law's domain. Is it not plain that the great novel of modern society is yet to be written? The contest between human nature and the complex machinery of our industrial system, and the mastery of human nature over the latter, present a theme such as Homer, or Vergil, or Dante never had.

The world awaits this genius! If you are not he, but talented in that direction, there are a thousand phases of American life that are of permanent historic value, which are rapidly pa.s.sing away forever, and need to be perpetuated by literature and art.

In poetry, the master singer of modern days has not yet appeared.

There have been faint signs of him, a suggestion of him, an indistinct prophecy of him, in nearly all of the world's singers for a hundred years. Some day he will come. It may be soon, and then he will sound that note which shall again thrill the hearts and again turn heavenward the eyes of men all round the world.

The point I am making is that the great things in poetry have not all been done. On the contrary, it is the same old cry the world has heard since Homer. Until Shakespeare wrote, it appeared, to those who had no vision, that the immortal things in literature had all been done. But these immortal things and things not immortal, things permanent and things temporary, were only food and material for Shakespeare.

Literature, then, has only been furnishing the materials--the timber--for the structure that is yet to be built. But the timber is n.o.ble in dimension, and they must be giants who use it. If you are a giant, your task awaits you.