MASTER L 91 3 MICROFILMED 1991 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library ■i. jr 1 ■-< il 1 GHT STATEMENT The copvriaht law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code -- concern? the makingof photocuPies or other reproductions of copyrighted material.. Columbia University Library reserves the right to refuse to accept a cop\ order 'if. in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violatior. of the copyright k!.'- . AUTHOR' WELSH, ALFRED HIX TITLE: MAN AND HIS RELATIONS PL A CE : COLUMBUS DATE: 1887 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT Master Negative # bill I TTC MICROFORM TARGET Original Material as Filmed - Existii\g Bibliographic Record 4* " """ " ^ ' I 170 W465 V/elsh, Alfred Hix, 1850-1889. Man and his relations, by Alfred H Columbus, Potts, 1887. Welsh .♦. xi, 611 p. ports. 24 .-cm 2 • > (>74()3 Restrictions on Use: iIlM SIZE: B'5o-^'^ IMAGE PLACEMENT: DATE FILMED: ^ TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA /D-V REDUCTION RATIO: IB UB INITIALS ^c. HLMEDBY: RESEARCH 'PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODBRIDGE. CT c HIM Association for information and Image IManagement 1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1100 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 5r.-c N Centimeter iU I I 2 3 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Inches T 1 TTT 4 Ji. 7 8 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiliiiiliiiilii T ITT 1.0 I.I 1.25 Ml 9 iiiilii 10 11 iiiiliiiiliiiili i5£ asA ■ 90 IS. 2.8 3.2 3.6 1.4 TT^ 4 2.5 2.2 2.0 1.8 1.6 12 13 14 iliinliiiiliiiili TTT TTT 15 mm MflNUFnCTURED TO FIIIM STHNDflRDS BY fiPPLIED IMflGEp INC. i^;^«jife^: J ; •mi: '■■t '» ■^^ft &^f -rW TrTA^ -Ji^'-Vl IU-.-4'- • ' -N*-:^ ^^T jlL'M "^ Columbia ®nibergitp m tfte Citp of ^eto ^orb LIBRARY GIVEN BY m R5\>^^t. S. Frc^4h\A III ::;;•!•>:•-. ■"S«i{aiv ill!:*"!' »;!Mi«i) i- . '«it«»" m ^^ J \3 ■-v^ctia:--"r\rs;- "'r'-v- --^ryr^'-^'^'' -i- :*-<>r •J<^ ■•;••. •>H»li -.B l>'f Miiiit;- lit -?!?• iMt i|<:ili "-^'i^^ 'T^-^. ^W I'S'v'b^^t ^^^'^ :i.l-.^ !«!'. ;^3^ i i I p i I 4^ ! f M ") a/ui^ (^^^^ a^r -^/£ ^ //^ I ^ -^ ,y ^ ^ • • » • * • • • » ». • > • • • • » • ■ • • • • • ( ■ • • > 1 • I • » » > I I • I • I < I • » » • » » » 1 : : !•. :•. . . > > > The true Shekinah is Man. — Chrysostom. Do not believe that a book is good, if in reading it thou dost not become more contented with thy existence, if it does not rouse up in thee most generous feelings. — Lavater. COLUMBUS AND CINCINNATI POTTS & LEECH PUBLISHING COMPANY 1887 Ohio Valley Press cincinnati no 4 ^ « » • • • • • • 4 « Copyright, 1885 »..•/ r • • • » t » • • 91 o TO GOVEENOR CHARLES FOSTER I DEDICATE THIS VOLTJME AS A TOKEK OF MY MORE THAN ORDINARY AFFECTION A. H. W. PEEFACE. mUE aim herein embodied has been to prepare, in accordance with the i publisher's request, a book culled from the flowers of all books, culled, however, conformably to the requirements of a work of art -unity, wholeness, eelf-completion ; a book that should follow and represent a line of thought, furnishing to man, in the wisdom of the best minds, and in the world's choicest forms of expression, the essential principles and lessons for the conduct of life -life viewed in its relations to the physical and the spirit- ual, the human and the Divine, the finite and the infinite. The labor has been one of love, and it is hoped that the work, thus sought to be enriched with the wealth of the great souls, and warmed with the life-blood of the master spirits, will be found to serve for delight and for use, both to the scholar and the general reader, the aspiring among the young and the cul- tivated among the old. What path is more full of pleasantness and peace, not to say of mental and moral gain, than that which leads us into close contact with noble natures? "I am not the rose," says the Eastern apologue, "but I live with the rose, and so I have become sweet." A. H. WELSH. Columbw, July 21, 1885. OOE"TENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE THE ENVIKONMENT ^ Aspects and Attitudes Law Unity and Kinship ^^ Mind ^^ Beauty • ^^ Adaptation ; Limitations Fate ^^ CHAPTER II. THE NATURE OF MAN • ^^ Evil of Putting a Low Estimate on Man 59 Faculties ^^ Intellect ^^ Sensibility ^^ Will ^^ 71 Moral Sense ' ^ Genius '^^ Talent ^^ Duality ^^ Contradictions °* Classifications ^^ Importance of the. Individual ^^ The Cycle of Man l^^ Vlll CONTENTS. CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. PAGE. MAN IN ACTION IO5 Gifts iQQ Callings HO Misdirection . , , U4 The Merchant II7 The Lawyer 221 The Politician ^^28 The Physician j3]^ The Journalist 237 The Preacher j3g The Teacher j^y Which? Z.'.'.'.]Z'.'.'.Z'.Z'.Z 151 One's Star ^ c^ City and Country j^g Public and Private Life jgg Law of Labor 1 gq Limitations of Labor -j^ijn Blessedness of Labor ^^^ Manhood Lost or Won in Material Pursuits 175 CHAPTER IV. ^^I>« 183 ^^°^^ 191 ^^^"^ 195 Happiness ^ qq Doing Good 206 Character o^ _ Higher and Lower oie Essentials of Life nno CHAPTER V. MEANS 227 ^°^^«*^^ !231 Concentration ''4 MEANS— Cbn^inuea. ^^*^*- „ . , 244 Persistency 247 Self-Reliance Method ^^^ ^ 257 Economy Minute Faithfulness ^^^ T , ., 267 Integrity „ 209 Hope Difficulty ^^^ 276 Mental Cultivation Health ^^^ 286 The Necessity for an Ideal CHAPTER VI. 9Q1 HABITS ^""^ Improvement of Time " 907 Work and Play -*^' Politeness Cleanliness ^ , 310 Tobacco 314 Intemperance Impure Thought ^^^ Self-Examination ^^^ Moral Relations of Habit ^^6 CHAPTER VII. CULTURE ' ^^^ True Idea of Education ^^^ Ethical • Volitional jEsthetical Studies Books and Reading ^^^ Novels CONTENTS, CONTENTS. XI CUUIVB^E—Cmtinued. page. Newspapers 386 Amusements 389 Company 395 Conversation 398 Eight Use of Speech 402 The School of Life 406 Lesson of Energy 411 Lesson of Obedience 413 Who is a Gentleman ? 414 Who is a Lady ? ....,,, 418 CHAPTER VIII. DOMESTIC ASPECTS 421 Woman , 425 Love 431 Courtship 435 Marriage 441 Husband and Wife , 450 Duties of Parents . ... 461 Childhood 466 Government 467 V CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. PAGE. POLITICAL ASPECTS 538 National Forces •' ^44 Parties 549 Politicians ^5- The Party Man 554 Statesmen 558 The Bane of the Eepublic 561 Free Trade or Protection 565 England and America 572 Melioration 577 CHAPTER XI. t RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 579 Trust 581 Reverence 583 Worship 584 Church-going 589 Utilization of Evil 591 Consequences 596 The Coming Night 599 Immortality 604 Grandeur of Man 609 SOCIAL ASPECTS 477 Fashion 434 Dress 496 Gossip 501 Coquetry and Flirtation 506 Friendship 5O9 Distribution and Caste 513 Capital and Labor 524 The Art of Living with Others , 533 I-ns, the intellierence which contrives, and the muscular force which executes, these movements, are themselves powers of Nature. It thus appears that we must recognize at least two principal meanings in the word Xature. In one sense, it means all the powers existing in either the outer or the inner world, and every- thing which takes place by means of those powers. In another sense, it means, not everything which happens, but only what takes place without the agency, or without the voluntary and THE ENVIRONMENT. O intentional agency, of man. This distinction is far from exhaust- ing the ambiguities of the word, but it is the key to most of those on which important consequences depend.^ Aspects and Attitudes.— Each of the Physical Sciences attempts to explain the outward world in one of its aspects, to interpret it from one point of view. And the whole circle of the Physical Sciences, or Physical Science in its widest extent, con- fines itself to explaining the appearances of the material world by the properties of matter, and to reducing what is complex and manifold to the operation of a few simple but all-pervading laws. But besides those aspects of Nature which Physical Science explains, over and above those laws which the Sciences discover, there are other sides or aspects of Nature which come to us through other than scientific avenues, and which, when they do reach us, bring home to us new truth, and raise us to noble con- templations. This ordered array of material appearances, these marshaled lines of Nature's sequences, wonderful and beautiful though they be, are not in themselves all. No reasonable being can rest in them. Inevitably, he is carried out of and beyond these to other inquiries which no Physics can answer. How stand these phenomena to the thinking mind and feeling heart which contemplates them ? how came they to be as they are? are they there of themselves, or is there a Higher Center from which they proceed? what is their origin? what the goal toward which they travel? Inquiries such as these, which are the genuine prod- uct of Eeason, lead us for their answer, not to the Physics of the Universe, but to another order of thought— to Poetry, to Philosophy, and to Theology. And the light thrown from these regions on this marvelous outward framework, while it contradicts nothing in the body of truth which Science has made good, per- meates the whole with a higher meaning, and transfigures it with 1 John Stuart Mill. 6 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. a splendor ^vhich is Divine. . . . Ko doubt, even in the most remote eras, when savage men dwelt naked in caves, or cowered in abject worship before the blind forces of Nature, and lived in terror of wild beasts, or of each other, even then there must have been moments when their hearts were imaginatively touched, as either the hurricane or the thunder awed them, or Nature looked on them more benignly through the sunset or the dawn. In that later stage, when the Aryan family had reached their mythologizing era, and, owing to the weakness of their abstracting powers and the strength of untutored imagination, were weaving the appearances of earth and sky into their hierarchies of gods. Nature and Imagination were face to face, and were all in all. The other intellectual powers of man were as yet comparatively dormant. He had not yet learned con- sciously to disengage the thoughts of himself and of God from the visible appearances in which they were still entangled. But to trace the movements of Imagination through that primeval time forms no part of my present task. Even without attempting this, there is more than enough to detain our thoughts, if we attempt to trace, even in outline, some of tlie ways in which the human and poetic imagination has worked on the outward world in that later stage when the three great entities, God, Man, and Nature, were in thought clearly distinguished. Though in studying our present subject it may be necessary, for clearness's sake, in some measure to isolate Nature in thought from the other two great objects of contemplation, with which in reality it is so closely interwoven, we must never conceive of it as if it were really a separate and independent existence. However we may for a moment regard Nature by herself, we must not forget that in reality we can never contemplate it apart from the other two entities on which it depends : that Nature, as mere isolated appear- THE ENVIRONMENT. ' ance, without a mind to contemplate and a power to support it, is meaningless; that all the three objects of knowledge co-exist at every movement, interpenetrate and modify each other at every turn of thought; and that it is to the light reflected on Nature from the othe'r two that she owes a large part of her meaning, her tenderness, her suggestiveness, her sublimity. The tendency to . isolate Nature and to regard it as a self-subsisting thing, cut off from other existence, has been strong ever since man came to be clearly conscious of his own distinctness from the world. In this, as in every other realm of thought, progress is slow; it requires long ages to get to the right mental attitude. Among the ethnic races, at least, there were first the two periods already noticed— one in which man crouched in blind abject terror in presence of the elements; another marked by that brighter Nature-worship embodied in the Aryan mythoh)gy, which, though past its prime, was still surviving when the Homeric poems were composed. Then succeeded.the time when, on the one hand, the mind of man separated itself from the world and asserted its distinct existence and when, on the other, the thought of Deity, under the guidance ofreflection and pliilosophy, gradually extracted itself from the visible appearances in which it had been so long imbedded. When this great change had made itself felt, and when, at the same time, out-of-door life gave place to life in cities. Nature, in a great measure, lost its hold on man's regards, and retired into the back<^round as a lifeless mechanical thing, without interest or beauty, or any intimacy with man. The material world, indeed, had .till its utilitarian value. It ministered to man s bodily wants in the thousand ways that immemorial usage handed down, and which science in recent times has so greatly multi- plied If the refreshing presence of Nature still blended unawares with the animal spirits of men, and cheered them 8 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. when they Avere weary, yet the multitudes cast on it no imagi- native regards, and cared nothing for the poetry which mediates between the eye and the heart. This seems a true account of the mental attitude of the great civilized communities, down even to recent times. And, notwithstanding the great move- ment toward Nature which is said to characterize this modern era, one may well doubt whether the sentiment has really j^ene- trated the hearts of even the most cultivated men. Such thino-s must always be difficult to gauge. Yet one can not but some- times wonder, if from the modern love of Nature, and the much talk about it, there could be deducted all that may be set down to love of change, imitation, fashion, and the desire to meet the expectations of refined society, how much would remain of feel- ing that was native, genuine, and spontaneous. A few, we may believe, there have been in every age, and more, perhaps, in this than in former ages, to whom, in spite of the prosaic atmosphere that surrounded them, Nature was some- thing more than a dead machine, something even worthy of affection. Poets, too, were born from age to age, favorite chil- dren of t "Gaudentes rure Camoense," who had their hearts oj^ened in a pre-eminent degree to receive the love of Nature themselves, and to awaken it in other hearts by the music which they lent to it.^ Law\ — According to its derivation, nature (natura, nascitur) means that which is born or produced — the becoming; that which has a beginning and an end; that which has not the cause of its existence in itself, and the cause of which must be sought in something antecedent to and beyond itself— that is, nature is the phenomenal. This the word itself expresses in the strongest manner. That which begins to be, as the necessary consequence 1 J. C. Shairp. e I •1 THE EKVIEONMEKT. 9 of antecedent conditions, is natural. The co-existence, resem- blance, and succession of phenomena constitute the order of Nature; and the uniformity of these relations among phenomena are the laws of Nature} When men first turned their attention on the phenomena of nature, every event was viewed as a miracle, for every effect was considered as the operation of an intelligence. God was not exiled from the universe of matter; on the contrary. He was mul- tiplied in proportion to its phenomena. As science advanced, the deities were gradually driven out; and long after the sublunary world had been disenchanted, they were left for a season in possession of the starry heavens. The movement of the celestial bodies, in which Kepler still saw the agency of a free intelligence, was at length by Newton resolved into a few mathematical principles; and, at last, even the irregularities which Kewton was compelled to leave for the miraculous correc- tion of the Deity have been proved to require no supernatural interposition ; for La Place has shown that all contingencies, past and future, in the heavens, find their explanation in the one fundamental law of gravitation.^ In the intellectual infancy of a savage state man transfers to Nature his conceptions of himself, and, considering that every thing he does is determined by his own pleasure, regards all passing events as depending on the arbitrary volition of a superior but invisible power. He gives to the world a consti- tution like his own. The tendency is necessarily to superstition. Whatever is strange, or powerful, or vast, impresses his imagina- tion with dread. Such objects are only the outward manifesta- tions of an indwelling spirit, and therefore worthy of his veneration. After Reason, aided by Experience, has led him forth from these delusions as respects surrounding things, he 1 B. F. Cocker, D. D. « Sir William Hamilton. 10 MAN AND HIS KELATIONS. still clings to his original ideas as respects objects far rcnioved. la the distant and irresistible motions of the stars he finds arguments for the supernatural, and gives to eadi of those shining bodies an abiding and controlling genius. The mental phase through Avhich he is passing permits him to believe in the exercise of planetary influences on himself. But as Keason led him forth from fetichism, so in due time it again leads him forth from star-worship. Perhaps not without regret does he abandon the mythological forms he has created; for, long after he has ascertained that the planets are nothing more than shining points, without any perceptible influence on him, he still vener- ates the genii once supposed to vivify them — perhaps even he exalts them into immortal gods. Philosophically speaking, he is exchanging, by ascending degrees, his primitive doctrine of arbitrary volition for the doctrine of law. As the fall of a stone, the flowing of a river, the movement of a shadow, the rustling of a leaf, have been traced to physical causes, to like causes at last are traced the revolutions of the stars. In events and scenes continually increasing in greatness and grandeur, he is detecting the dominion of law. The goblins, and genii, and gods, who successively extorted his fear and veneration, who determined events by their fitful passions or whims, are at last displaced by the noble conception of one Almighty Being, who rules the universe according to reason, and therefore according to law. In this manner the doctrine of government by law is extended, until at last it embraces all natural events. It was thus that, hardly two centuries ago, that doctrine gathered immense force from the discovery of Newton that Kepler's laws, under which the movements of the planetary bodies are exe- cuted, issue as a mathematical necessity from a very simple material condition, and that the complicated motions of the THE ENVIRONMENT. 11 4 solar system can not be other than what they are. Few of those who read in the beautiful geometry of the Principia the demon- stration of this fact saw the imposing philosophical consequences which must inevitably follow this scientific discovery. And now the investigation of the aspect of the skies in past ages, and all predictions of its future, rest essentially upon the principle that no arbitrary volition ever intervenes, the gigantic mechanism moving impassively in virtue of a mathematical law. And so, upon the earth, the more perfectly we understand the causes of present events, the more plainly are they seen to be the conse- quences of physical conditions, and therefore the results of law. To allude to one example out of many that might be considered, the winds, how proverbially inconstant! Who can tell whence they come or whither they go? If anything bears the fitful character of arbitrary volition, surely it is these. But we deceive ourselves in imagining that atmospheric events are for- tuitous. Where shall a line be drawn between that eternal trade-wind, which, originating in well-understood physical causes, sweeps, like the breath of destiny, slowly, and solemnly, and everlastingly, over the Pacific Ocean, and the variable gusts into which it degenerates in more northerly southerly regions- gusts which seem to come without any cause, and to pass away without leaving any trace? In what latitude is it that the domain of the physical ends, and that of the supernatural begins? All mundane events are the results of the operation of law. Every movement in the skies or upon the earth proclaims to us that the universe is under government. But if we admit that this is the case, from the mote that floats in the sunbeam to muhiple stars revolving round each other, are we willing to carry our principles to their consequences, and to recognize a like operation of law among living as among lifeless things, in the 12 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. THE ENVIRONMENT. 13 organic as well rs the inorganic world? What testimony does physiology offer on this point? Physiology, in its progress, has passed throngh the same phases as physics. Living beings have been considered as beyond the po^yer of external influences, and, conspicuously among them, Man has been affirmed to be inde- pendent of the forces that rule the world in which he lives. Be- sides that immaterial principle, the soul, which distinguishes him from all his animated companions, and makes him a moral and responsible being, he has been feigned, like them, to possess another immaterial principle, the vital agent, which, in a way of its own, carries forward all the various operations in his economy. But when it was discovered that the heart of man is constructed upon the recognized rules of hydraulics, and, with its great tubes, is furnished with common mechanical contrivances, valves; when it was discovered, especially to man, that the eye has been arranged on the most refined principles of optics, its cornea, and humors, and lens, properly converging the rays to form an image — its iris, like the diaphragm of a telescope or microscope, shutting out stray light, and regulating the quantity admitted; when it was discovered that the car is furnished with the means of dealing with the three characteristics of sound — its tympanum for intensity, its cochlea for pitch, its semi-circular canals for quality; when it was seen that the air brought into the great air passages by the descent of the diaphragm, calling into i)lay atmospheric pressure, is conveyed upon physical principles into the ultimate cells of the lungs, and thence into the blood, pro- ducing chemical changes throughout the system, disengaging heat, and permitting all the functions of organic life to go on; when these facts and very many others of a like kind were brought into prominence by modern physiology, it obviously became necessary to admit that animated beings do not constitute that exception once supposed, and that organic operations arc the result of physical agencies.* The Reign of Law-is this, then, the reign under which ^ve Uve^ Yes, in a sense it is. There is no denying it. The whole .orld around us, and the wh.,le world within us, are ruled by Law. Our very spirits are subject to it-those sp.nts w Inch yet • seem so spiritual, so subtle, so free. How often in the darkness do they feel the restraining walls-bounds w.th.n wl.ch they move-conditions out of which they can not think! The per- ception of this is growing in the consciousness of men. It grows with the growth of knowledge ; it is the delight, the reward, the .oal of Science. From Science it passes into every do mam of Lu.ht, and invades, amongst others, the Theology of the Church. And so we see the men of Theology coming out to parley with the men of Science-a white flag in their hands, and savin.. " If you will let us alone, we will do the same by you Keep^'to your own province; do not enter ours. The Reign o Law which you proclaim we admit-outside these ^valls but no .vlthin then.; let there be peace between us." But tins w.l „evcr do. There can be no such treaty dividing the doma.n of Truth ^ VmrY A>-D KIKSHIP.-One principle of gravitation causes a stone to drop toward the earth, and the moon to wheel round .t. One law of attraction carries all the different planets about he sun This philosophers demonstrate. There are also other points of agreement amongst them, which may be considered as nlks of tl identity of their origin, and of their .ntelhgent Author In all are found the conveniency and stability derived from gravitation. They all experience vicissitudes of days and nLhts! and changes of season. They all, at least Jupiter Mars and Venus, have the same advantages from their atmosphere as 1 J. W. Draper, LL.D. ' 0"1=« »' ■'^'^^^■ • 1i -Jtf 14 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. THE ENVIRONMENT. 15 we have. In all the planets, the axes of rotation are permanent. Nothing is more probable than that the same attracting influence, acting according to the same rule, reaches to the fixed stars; but, if this be only probable, another thing is certain, viz.: that the same element of light does. The light from a fixed star affects our eyes in the same manner, is refracted and reflected according to the same laws, as the lij^ht of a candle. The velocity of the lijrht of the fixed stars is also the same as the velocity of the liirht of the sun, reflected from the satellites of Jupiter. The heat of the sun, in kind, differs nothing from the heat of a coal fire. In our own globe, the case is clearer. New countries are continually discovered, but the old laws of nature are always found in them: ne\v plants, perhaps, or animals, but always in company with plants and animals which Ave already know, and always possess- ing many of the same general properties. We never get among such original or totally different modes of existence, as to indi- cate that we are come into the province of a different Creator, or under the direction of a different will. In truth, the same order of things attends us wherever we go. The elements act upon one another, electricity operates, the tides rise and fall, the magnetic needle elects its position in one region of the earth and sea as well as in another. One atmosphere invests all parts of the globe, and connects all ; one sun illuminates; one moon exerts its specific attraction upon all parts. If there be a variety in natural effects, as, e. g., in the tides of different seas, that very variety is the result of the same cause, acting under different circumstances.^ Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them. She arms and equips an animal to find its place and living in the earth, and, at the same time, she arms and equips another animal 1 Paley. to dectroy it. Space exists to divide creatures; but Ly clothing the sides of a bird .itli a few feathers, she gives him a petty omnipresence. The direction is forever onward but the artist still goes back for materials, and begins again .vnth the first ele- ments on the most advanced stage: otherwise, all goes to nun. If we look at her work, .ve seem to eateh a glance of a s,-stem m transition. Plants arc the young of the .-orld, vessels of health and vi,or; but they grope ever upward toward consciousness. The tr^es are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan the.r imprison- „.cnt, rooted in the ground. The animal is the novice and pro- bationer of a more advanced order. The men, though young, having tasted the first drop from the cup of thought, are already dissipated. The maples and ferns arc still uncorrupt ; yet no doubt, when they come to consciousness, they, too, will curse and .wear. Flowers so strictly belong to youth that we adult men loon come to feel that their beautiful generations concern not us: .e have had our day ; now let the children have theirs. The flowers jilt us, and we are old bachelors, with our ridiculous tenderness.^ , ^ , . . . - ,x^^ The .^reatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the su^^estln of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I Z. not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the bough in the storm is new to me, and old It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right Isext to the household faces, is not the visible world the earliest existence that we know, the last we lose sight of in our earthly .ojourn? All his life long man is encompassed with it, and never .ets bevond Its reach. He lies an Infant in the lap of Mature before he has awakened to any consciousness. When conscious- 1 Emerson. 2 Ibid. 16 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. THE ENVIRONMENT. 17 ness does awaken within him, the external world is the occasion of the awakening, the first thing he learns to know at the same time that he learns his mother^s look and his own existence. For the growing boy she is the homely nurse tliat, long before schools and school-masters intermeddle with him, feeds his mind with materials, pouring into him alike the outward framework of his thought and the colors that flush over the chambers of his imagery. The expressive countenance of this earth and of these heavens, glad or pensive, stern or dreary, sublime or homely, is looking in on his heart at every hour, and mingling with his dreams. Nature is wooing his spirit in manifold and mysterious ways, to elevate him with her vastness and sublimity, to gladden him with her beauty, to depress him with her bleakness, to restore him with her calm. This quick interchange of feeling between the world without and the world within, this vast range of sympathy, so subtle, so unceasing, so mysterious, is a fact as cer- tain and as real as the flow of the tides or the motion of the earth. ^ Mind. — A law supposes an agent and a 'power : for it is a mode according to which the power acts. Without the presence of such an agent, of sucli a power, conscious of the relations on which the law depends, producing the effects which the law pre- scribes, the law can have no efliciency, no existence. Hence we infer that the intelligence by which the law is ordained, the power by which it is put in action, must be present in all places where the effects of the law occur; that thus the knowledjze and agency of the Divine Being pervade every portion of the universe, producing all action and passion, all permanence and change. The laws of Nature are the laws which He in His wisdom prescribes to His own acts; His universal presence is the necessary condition of any course of events, His universal agency the only origin of any efficient force.^ And matter, seen essentially, becomes spirit in fusion trem- bling to organize itself. The visible world is spirit outspread before the senses, for the analysis of understanding, the synthesis of reason, and matter is spirit's coufiue, limning bodies to the senses. Out of the chaos dawns in sight j The globe's full form, in orbed light; Beam kindles beam, kind mirrors kind, Nature's tlie eye-ball of the Mind ; The fleeting pageant tells for nought Till shaped in Mind's creative thought.> The ultimate problem of all philosophy and all religion is this : " How are wc to conceive aright the origin and first principle of things f ' The answers, it has been contended by a living author ofdrstiuguisbed merit, are necessarily reducible to two, between which all systems are divided, and on the decision of whose con- troversy all antagonist speculations would lay down their arms. " In the beginning was Force," says one class of thinkers; " force, singular oi plural, splitting into opposites, standing oif into p^lar-.ties, ramifying into attractions and repulsions, heat and magnetism, and climl)ing through the stages of physical, vital, animal, to the mental life itself" " On the contrary," says the other class, " in the beginning was Thought ; and only in the necessary evolution of its eternal ideas into expression does force arise— self-realizing thought declaring itself in the types of being and the lawsof plienomena."^ Nature will be reported : all things are engaged in writing its history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The roiling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain, the river its channels in the soil, the animal its bones in the stratum, the fern and leaf their modest epitaph in the coal. The fallen drop Shairp. « Cocker. 1 A. Bronson Alcott. 8 James Martiueau. ^1 18 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. makes its Sculpture in the sand or stone; not a footstep in the snow, or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting a map of its march ; every act of man inscribes itself in the memories of his fellows, and in his own face. The air is full of sounds, the sky of tokens, the ground of memoranda and signa- tures ; and every object is covered over with hints which speak to the intelligent.^ We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. Only by the vision of tliat wisdom can the horoscoj)e of the ages be read, and by falling back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit of prophecy which is innate in every man, we can know what it saith. Every man's words, who speaks from that life, must sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same thought on their own part. I dare not speak for it. My words do not carry its august sense ; they fall short and cold. Only it.-elf can inspire whom it will, and behold ! their speech shall be Ivrical, and sweet, and universal as the risin"; of* the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane words, if I may not use sacred, to indicate the heaven of this deity, and to report what hints I have collected of the transcendent simplicity and energy of the Highest Law.^ AVe find in the physical world at least two ultimate existences — Matter and Force. I believe that we know both of these by intuition, and by no process can we get rid of the one or the other. As to Force, it will be expedient to look for a moment at the grandest scientific truth established in our dav — a doctrine worthy of being placed alongside that of universal gravitation — I mean that of the Conservation of Physical Force; accordin^r to which, the sum of Force, actual and potential, in the knowable universe, is always one and the same : it can not be increased, 1 Hugh Miller. = Emerson. THE ENVIRONMENT. 19 and it can not be diminished. It has long been known that no human, no terrestrial, power can add to or destroy the sum of matter in the cosmos. You commit a piece of paper to the flames, and it disappears ; but it is not lost : one part goes up in smoke, and another goes down in ashes; and it is conceivable that at some future time the two may unite, and once more form paper. AYhy may not imagination trace the noble dust of "Alexander till we find it stopping a bung-hole f' As thus: Alexander died; Alexander was buried; Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth ; of earth w^e make loam ; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer barrel ? " Imperial Ca?sar, dead, and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away : O, that the earth which kept the world in awe Should patch a wall t' expel the winter's flaw !" As man can not create or annihilate matter, so he can not create or annihilate force. This doctrine has been scientifically estab- lished in our day by men like Mayer, Joule, Henry, and others. We now regard it as one and the same force, but under a vast variety of modifications, which warms our houses and our bodily frames, which raises the steam and impels the engine, which effects the different chemical combinations, which flaslies in the lightning and lives in the plant. Man may direct the force, and make it go this w^ay or that w-ay ; but he can do so only by means offeree under a different form — by force brought into his frame by his food, obtained directly or indirectly through the animal from the plant, which has drawm it from the sun ; and as he uses or abuses it, he can not lessen or augment it. I move my hand, and, in doing so, I move the air, which raises insensibly the temperature of the room, and may lead to chemical changes, 20 MAN AND 1113 RELATIONS. THE ENVIRONMENT. 21 and excite electric and magnetic currents, and take tlie circuit of the universe without being lost or lessened. Now, the bearing of this doctrine on religion seems to be twofold : First, it fur- nishes a more striking manifestation than anything known before of the One God, with His infinitely varied perfections— of His power, His knowledge, His wisdom, His love, His mercy ; and we should see that one Power blowing in the breeze, smiling in the sunshine, sparkling in the stars, quickening us as we bound along in the felt enjoyment of health, efflorescing in every form and hue of beauty, and showering down daily gifts upon us. The profoundest minds in our day, and in every day, have been fond of regarding this force, not as something independent of God, but as the very power of God acting in all action ; so that " in Him we live, and move, and haVJ our being.^^ Bat, secondly* it shows us that in God^s works, as in God Himself, there is a diversity with the unity ; so that force manifests itself now in gravity, now in molecular attraction and motion, now in chemical affinities among bodies, now^ in magnetic and diamag- netic properties, now in vital assimilation. And we see that all these forces are correlated : so that the doctrine of the Correlation of all the varied Physical Forces stands alongside of the Con- servation of the one Physical Force ; and by the action of the whole, and of every part made to combine and harmonize, there arise beauteous forms and harmonious colors; the geometry of crystals ; the types of the plant, and of every organ of the plant— the branches, the roots, the leaves, the petals, the pistils, the stamens— and the types of the animal, so that every creature is fashioned after its kind, and every limb takes its predetermined form, while there is an adaptation of every one part to every other — of joint to column, and joint to joint, of limb to limb, and of Limb to body, of the ear to the vibrating medium, and the nostrils to odors, and the eye to the varied undulations of light. So much for Force, with its Correlations. But with the Forces we have the matter of the universe, in which, I believe, the Forces reside. It is maintained that the worlds have been formed out of Star Dust. Now, I have to remark as to this star dust, first of all, that it is at best an hypothesis. No human eye, unas'sisted, has ever seen it. as it gazed, on the clearest night, into the depths of space. It is doubtful whether the telescope has ever alighted upon it, in its widest sweeps. Lord Rosse's telescope, in its first look into the heavens, resolved what had before been reckoned as star dust into distinctly forme.i stars. But I am inclined to admit the existence of star dust as an hypothesis. I believe it explains phenomena which require to be explained, and which can not otherwise be accounted for. I allow it freely, that there is evidence that the planets and moons and sun must have been fashioned out of some such substance, at first incandescent, and then gradually cooling. But, then, it behooves us to look a little more narrowly into the nature of this star dust. Was it ever a mass of unformed matter, without indi- viduality, without properties? Did it contain within itself these sixty elementary substances, with their capacities, their affinities, their attractions, their repulsions? When a meteor comes, as a stranger, within our terrestrial sphere, either out of this original star dust or out of planets which have been reduced to the state of original star dust, it is found to have the same components as bodies on our earth, and these with the .same properties and affinities. The spectroscope, which promises to reveal more wonders than the telescope or microscope, shows the same ele- ments-such as hydrogen and sodium-in the sun and stars as in the bodies on the earth's surface. 22 MAN AND niS RELATIONS. THE ENVIRONMENT. 23 The star dust, tlien, has already in it these sixty elementary bodies, with all their endowmcnts^-gravitating, mechanical, chemical, magnetic. Whence thcso elements? Whence their correlations, thoir attractions, their affinities, their fittinrs into each other, their joint action? It is by no means the strongest point in my cumulative argument ; but it does look as if, even at this stage, there had been harmonizing 2)0\ver at work, and dis- playing foresight and intelligence. As to this material, we must hold one or other of two opinions. One is, that it had from the beginning all the capacities which afterward appear in the worlds formed out of it. It has not only the mechanical, but the chem- ical, the electric powers of dead matter; the vital properties of plants and animals, s'l^h as assimilation, absorption, contractility ; and the attributes of the conscious mind, as of perception by the senses, of memory, imagination, comparison, of the appreciation of beauty, of sorrow, of joy, of hope, of fear, of reason, of conscience, of will. These capabilities may not yet be developed; but they are there in a latent, a dormant, state in the incandescent matter; and are ready, on the necessary conditions being supplied, to rise to the instincts of animals— to the love of a mother for her offspring — to the sagacity of the dog, the horse, or the elephant — to the genius of a Moses, a Homer, a Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle, a Paul, a John, a Shakespeare, a Milton, a Xewton, a Leibnitz, or an Edwards. Were all this capacity in the star dust, I would bj constrained to seek for a cause of it in a Power possessed of knowledge, wisdom, and beneficence, planting seeds in that soil to come forth in due season. But there is another supposition : that these qualities were not in the original matter, but were added from age to age — it may be, according to law; and, if so, they must have come from a Power out of and bevond the star dust— from a Power possessed of reason and affection. I know not that science can determine absolutely which of these alternatives it should take. But take either; and, on the princi- ple of effect implying cause, the mind must rise to the contempla- tion of a Being who must himself be possessed of intelligence, in order to impart intelligence.^ Kepler relates that one day, when he had long meditated on , atoms and their combinations, he was called to dinner by his wife, who laid a salad on the table. "Dost thou think,'' said he to her, "that if, from the creation, plates of tin, leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops of oil and vinegar, and fragments of hard-boiled eo-o-s, were floating in space in all directions and without order, chance could assemble them to-day to form a salad?" "Cer- tainly not so good a one,'' replied his fair spouse, " nor so well seasoned as this." (Claude Bertrand, "Les Fondateurs de I'As- tronomie moderne," p. 154 ) In Baron d'Holbach's parlor, in a company of atheists, the witty Abbd Galiani said: "I will sup- pose, gentlemen, that he among you who is the most fully con- vinced that the world is the effect of chance is playing with three dice— I do not say in a gambling house, but in the best house in Paris. His antagonist throws sixes once, twice, thrice, four times— in a word, constantly. However short the duration of the game, my friend Diderot, thus losing his money, will unhesitatingly say, without a moment's doubt, 'The dice are baded; I am in a bad house.' What then, philosopher? Because ten or a dozen throws of the dice have emerged from the box so as to make you lose six francs, you believe firmly that this is in consequence of an adroit manoeuvre, an artful combina- tion, a well-planned roguery ; but, seeing in this universe so pro- dio-ious a number of combinations, thousands of times more to difficult and complicated, more sustained and useful, you do not suspect that the dice of Nature are also loaded, and that there is 1 M'Cosh. 24 MAN AND 1113 RELATIONS. above them a great rogue wlio takes pleasure in catching vou." In a corner of his garden a Scotch philosopher, the Beattie, drew witli his finger the three initial letters of his child's name, sowed the furrows with cresses, and smoothed the earth. The child was only six or seven years of age, and was learning to read, but had been taught nothing concerning God. ^' Ten days after," says Beattie, "the child came running to me all amazed, and told me his name had grown in the garden. I smiled at these words, and appeared not to attach nmch importance to what he had said. But he insisted on taking me to see what had happened. ' Yes/ said I, on coming to the place, 'I see well enough that it is so; but there is nothing wonderful in this — it is a mere accident,' and went away. But he followed me, and, walking at my side, said, very sericmsly : ' That can not be. Some one must have planted the seeds to make the letters.' * You think, then, this is not the result of chance?' 'Yes,' said the boy, firmly, * I think 8o.' ^ Well, then, look at yourself; consider your hands and fingers, your legs and feet, and all your members. Do they not seem to you regular in their appearance and useful in their service? Can they be the result of chance?' 'No,' was the answer, 'some one must have made them.' 'Who is that some one?' I asked him, and he replied that he did not know. I then made known to him the name of the great Being who made all the world ; and the lesson was never forgotten, nor the circum- stance which led to it."^ Beauty. — As a countenance is made beautiful by the soul's shining tlirough it, so the world is beautiful by the shining through it of God.^ "The lilies of the field," dressed finer than earthly princes, springing up there in the humble furrow-field, a beautiful eye looking out on you from the great inner Saa of Beauty. How could the rude Earth make these, if her Essence, 1 JosepU Cook, 2 Jacobl. THE ENVIRONMENT. 25 ruped from what is below, or caused by it, but added to it, till we reach man at the top. Man is there by the possession of everything that is below him, and something more— that something being that w^hich makes him man.^ It is evident that there is a manifest progress in the succession of beings on the surface of the earth. This progress consists in an increasing similarity to the living fauna, and among the vertebrates, especially in their increasing resemblance to man. But this connection is not the consequence of a direct lineage between the faunas of different ages. There is nothing like parental descent connecting them. The fishes of the Palaeozoic age are in no respect the ancestors of the reptiles of the Second- ary age ; nor does man descend from the mammals which pre- ceded him in the Tertiary age. The link by which they are connected is of a higher and immaterial nature ; and their con- nection is to be sought in the view of the Creator Himself, whose aim in forming the earth, in allowing it to undergo the successive changes which geology has pointed out, and in creating successively all the different types of animals which have passed away, was to introduce man upon the surface of our globe. Man is the end toward which all the animal creation has tended from the first appearance of the first Palaeozoic fishes.^ 1 Mark Hopkins, LL.D. 2 Agassiz. THE NATURE OF MAN. 57 My God, I heard this day That none doth build a stately habitation But he that means to dwell therein. What house more stately hath there been, Or can be, than is Man ? to whose creation All things are in decay. For man is every thing, And more. He is a tree, yet bears no fruit ; A beast, yet is or should be more. Eeason and speech we only bring. Parrots may thank us, if they are not mute, They go upop the score. Man is all symmetry. Full of proportions, one limb to another, And all to the world besides ; Each part may call the farthest brother ; For head with foot hath private amity, And both with moons and tides. Nothing hath got so far. But man liath caught and kept it as his prey. His eyes dismount the highest star : He is in little all the sphere : Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they Find their acquaintance there. For us the winds do blow, The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow. Nothing we see but means our good As our delight, or as our treasure ; The whole is either our cupboard of food, Or cabinet of pleasure.^ The essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself " I " — ah, what words have we for such things ? — is a breath of 1 Herbert. 58 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. Heaven; the Highest Being reveals himself in man. This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture for that Unnamed ? " There is but one temple in the universe," says the devout Novalis, " and that is the body of man. Noth- ing is holier than that high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the flesh. ^Ye touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body !" This sounds much like a mere flourish of rhetoric, but it is not so. If well medi- tated, it will turn out to be a scientific fact; the expression, in such words as can be had, of the actual truth of the thing. We are the miracle of miracles— the great* inscrutable mystery of God. We can not understand it, we know not how to speak of it; but we feel and know, if we like, that it is verily so.^ The physical man stands at the apex of the pyramid of matter— all the juices, flavors and fatness of the world converg- ing- to enrich his blood and renew his flesh, and incarnate them- selves in his organism; all the forces of nature— light, heat, atmosphere, electricities, chemical affinities, magnetisms— circu- lating around him and refreshing his strength ; all the subtile arts of matter playing in the secretions and the mysteries of his moving laboratory of life. Your spirit steps into your body to ride and wield the harnessed forceS of the world. And now within the material home is the intellectual structure of a man, which mental philosophies for ages have been trying to measure and report in its large and graceful proportions of reason, senti- ment, passion, will. And interpenetrating and towering over this is the beauty that belongs to the human being; not the mere physical beauty which hides and yet shines in the fashion- ing of the limbs, and which glows in the glorious marble of the Apollo, but the splendor of intellectual strength that showers 1 Carlyle. THE NATURE OF MAN. 59 from the eye, the calm that sleeps mysteriously upon a brow, the majesty that enthrones itself over an eyebrow, and lowers from the bony circle an inch or two in sweep, built for an eye like ^Yebster's — a majesty which, when Nature tries to intimate with physical material, she splits a notch in the New Hampshire mountains, and bars the awful walls with a bare precipice of granite — a pride of power like that shed from the chest of Goethe— a commanding, all-potent presence that swathed the form of Washington. And above all these insignia of meaning and mystery are the spiritual forces that live and work deeper and deeper in a human being, playing even through his flesh as visibly as chemical processes leave their traces .there. For, at the 'same moment that the powers of the stomach are sending the flush of physical health to the cheek, a force of Heaven is writing there, with delicate pencil more subtle than a sunbeam, and more enduring than a graver^s steel, a line of expression, telling of reward for some good deed or noble sacrifice. And while the brandy a man takes immoderately is publishing itself in the hue of his countenance, a brush from the pit is reaching up to leave the stain of a passion, or the coarse turn of a habit and a sin. Every power of this universe is at work upon every man— all the science, all the beauty, all the forces of the realm of intellect, all the pencils of the regions of heaven and hell. Every sphere surrounds each human frame. Our feet are in the dust, but we rise through all climates, zones, kingdoms, and there is no one of us whose base is not in the world of dark- ness, and the summit of whose being does not pierce at times to the secret heavens.^ Evil of Putting a Low Estimate on Man.— It is of dangerous consequence to represent to man how near he is to the level of beasts, without showing him at the same time his 1 Thomas. 60 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. greatness. It is likewise dangerous to let him see liis greatness, without his meanness. It is more dangerous yet to leave him iirnorant of either ; but verv beneficial that he should be made sensible of both.^ Who is this small philosopher that smiles, either at the simplicity of all honest men, or at the simplicity of all honest defenders of them? He is, in the first place, a man who stands up before us, and has the face to boast that he is himself with- out principle. No doubt, he thinks other men as bad as him- self A man necessarily, perhaps, judges the actions of other men bv his own feelings. He has no other interpreter. The honest man, therefore, will often presume honesty in another; and the generous man, generosity. And so the selfish man can see nothing around him but selfishness; and the knave, nothing but dishonesty; and he who never felt anything of a generous and self-devoting piety, who never bowed down in that holy and blessed worship, can see in prayer nothing but the offering of selfish fear; in piety, nothing but a slavish superstition. In the next place, this sneerer at all virtue and piety not only imagines others to be as destitute of principle as himself, but, to some extent, he makes them such, or makes them seem such. His eye of pride chills every goodly thing it looks npon.^ The idea which we form of man, like the idea which we form of God, is a powerful element in our civilization, either for good or ill. This idea will strongly affect the condition and character of every one. " Call a man a thief, and he will pick a pocket," is already a proverb. Convince him that he is the noblest creation of the great God, that his beauty shames these flowers at my side, and outblazons the stars of heaven — then he begins to aspire to have a history, to be a man ; and this aspiration 1 Pascal. 2 Dewey. THE NATURE OF MAN. 61 corresponds to the great nature in him. Soon as you convince him of this nature, he takes a step forward, and puts out wings to fly upward. I look with anguish on the two schemes of thou<»-ht which degrade the nature of man, hostile in many other respects — the materialism of the last or the present century, and the popular theology of all Christendom, both of which put a low estimate on man. The one makes him a selfish and mortal animal, only body and bones and brains, and his soul but a function of the brute matter he is made of; the other makes him a selfish and immortal devil, powerful only to sin, and im- mortal only to be eternally tormented. The popular theology of Christendom, one of the many errors which man has cast out of him, as incidents of his development, has much to answer for. It debases God, and it degrades man. It makes us think meanly of ourselves, and dreadfully of our Creator. What makes it more dangerous and more difficult is that both of these errors are taught as a miraculous revelation from God Himself, and, accordindv, not amenable to human correction. Now, self- esteem is commonly large enough in the individual man ; it is but rarely that one thinks of himself less and less highly than he ought to think; for the great function to be accomplished by self-esteem is so very important that it is always, or almost always, abundantly provided for. But it is one of the com- monest errors in the world to think meanly of human nature itself. It is also one of the most fatal of mistakes. Nay, indi- vidual self-esteem is oflen elated by the thought that general human nature is rather contemptible, and the special excellence that I have does not come from my human nature, which I have in common with every beggar in the street and every culprit that was ever hanged, but from my personal nature, and is singular to me; not the possibility of the meanest man, but the 62 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. peculiar possession of myself. A man thus gratifies his self- esteem at the expense of his real self-advancement and bliss. Then, too, it is thought an acceptable and beautiful mode of honoring God to think meanly of his chief work — that it is good for nothing; for then, it is said, we do not exalt the creature above the Creator, but give God the glory. That is, in reality, we give -God the glory of making a work that is good for nothinjr, and not worth the making. I could never think that I honored an artist by thinking as meanly as it was possible on trial to think of the best work which that artist had brought to pass.^ Faculties. — To know, to feel, and to choose, are the most obviously distinguishable states of the soul. These are referred to three powders or faculties, which are designated as the intel- lect, the sensibility, and the will. No soul is truly human in which they are not present. The exercise and experience of them is necessary to every perfectly constituted and fully devel- oped human being. They may not all be active in an infant of a few days old, but they are sure to become so, if the infant lives, and nothing interferes w^ith its normal development. But when we say that the soul must possess these powers in order to be human, we do not assert that any two human beings possess them in the same proportion, or exercise them with the same energy. All men perceive, remember, and reason ; but all men do not perceive with the same quickness and accuracy, nor do all men remember with the same readiness and reach, nor do they reason with equal certainty and discrimination. The sensi- bilities of some men are obtuse, and of others are acute. The choices and practical impulses of men differ most of all. By these, each man is pre-eminently himself, sharing in no sense his individuality with any other human being. 1 Parker. THE NATURE OF MAN. 68 In these natural and original differences, the faculties are not altogether independent one of another. A powerful intellect, to be dt^veloped into its normal attainment, needs to be stimulated by strong feelings, aud to be held and directed by a determined will. Nature usually provides for tlie possibility of such a development, by proportioning the several endowments of the soul to one another. Hence, a man superior in intellect is usually superior in the capacity for energetic feeling and effect- ive decisions. If there be a marked disproportion between any one and the others, we observe it as irregular aud unnatural. Anv such irregularity is sure to be manifest, and often to be strildngly conspicuous in the development of the powers, from the weakness and limitations of infancy up to the energy and comprehensiveness of adult years. The soul with a structure strikingly abnormal can not attain a healthy and shapely growth. Any striking predominance of the intellectual over the emotional powers, or any defect in energy of will, either prevents an even progress, or induces premature feebleness or a dwarfish stature.^ Intellect. — And the thinking principle — or, at least, that rather than any other — must be considered to be each man's self.^ Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature ; but he is a reed which thinks. The universe need not rise in arms to crush him; a vapor, a drop of water, suffices to kill him. But were the universe to crush him, man would still be greater than the power which killed him ; for he knows that he dies, and of the advantage which the universe has over him the universe knows nothing.^ Man is that compound being, created to fill that wide hiatus that must otherwise have remained unoccupied between the 1 Dr. Noah Porter. 2 AristoUe. 3 Pascal. 64 MAN AND 1113 RELATIONS. natural world and the spiritual. . . . Possessing earth, hut destined for heaven, he forms the link between the two orders of beings, and partakes much of the grossness of the one, and somewhat of the refinement of the other. Reason, like the magnetic influence imparted to iron, gives to matter properties and powers which it possessed not before, but without extending its bulk, augmenting its weight, or altering its organization : it is visible only by its effects, and perceptible only by its opera- tions. Reason, superadded to man, gives him peculiar and characteristic views, responsibilities and destinations, exalting him above all existences that are visible but which perish, and associating him with those that are invisible but which remain. Reason is that Homeric and golden chain descending from the throne of God even unto man, uniting heaven with earth, and earth with heaven. For all is connected, and without a chasm : from an angel to an atom, all is proportion, harmony, and strength.^ Every substance is negatively electric to that which stands above it in the chemical tables, positively to that which stands below it. AVater dissolves wood, and iron, and salt; air dis- solves water; electric fire dissolves air, but the intellect dissolves fire, gravity, laws, method, and the subtlest unnamed relations of nature, in its resistless menstruum. Intellect lies behind genius, which is intellect constructive. Intellect is the simple power anterior to all action or construction. Gladly would I unfold in calm degrees a natural history of the intellect, but what man has yet been able to mark the steps and boundaries of that transparent essence? The first questions are always to be asked, and the wisest doctor is graveled by the inquisitive- ncss of a child. How can we speak of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of its knowledge, of Its ethics, of its »C-lton. THE NATURE OF MAN. 65 wo^ks, and so forth, since it melts wmII into perception, knowl- edge into act? Each becomes the other. Itself alone is. Its vision is not like the vision of the eye, but is union with the things known. Intellect and intellection signify to the common car consideration of abstract truth. The consideration of time and place, of you and mo, of profit and hurt, tyrannize over most men's minds. Intellect separates the fact considered from you, from all local and personal reference, and discerns it as if it existed for its own sake. Heraclitus looked upon the affec- tions as dense and colored mists. In the fog of good and evil affections, it is hard for man to w^alk forward in a straight line. Intellect is void of affection, and sees an object as it stands in the light of science, cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of the individual, floats over its own personality, and regards it as a flict, and not as I and mine. He who is immersed in what concerns person or place can not see the problem of ex- istence. This the intellect always ponders. Nature shows all things formed and bound. The intellect pierces the form, over- leaps the wall, detects intrinsic likeness between remote things, and reduces all things into a few principles.^ Sensibility.— We all instinctively feel that a man of pure intellect, however grand and powerful that intellect may be — a man In whom the rational too completely predominates over the emotional — is incomplete and unsatisfactory. He is inharmo- niously ckvdopecL We shrink from these incarnations of mind as somcthiiig portentous and unnatural, and leave them alone in their desolate and solitary irrandeur.^ The capacity of a man, at least for understanding, may almost be said to vary according to his powders of sympathy. Again, what is there that can counteract selfishness like sympathy? Selfishness may be hedged in by minute watchfulness and self- 1 Emerson. 2 W. R. Greg. 66 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. denial, but it is counteracted by tlic nature being encouraged to grow out and ^ix its tendrils upon foreign objects. The immense defect that want of sympathy is may be strik- ingly seen in the failure of the many attempts that have been made in all ages to construct the Christian character, omitting sympathy. It has produced numbers of people, walking up and down one narrow plank of self-restraint, pondering over their own merits and demerit: , keeping out, not the world exactly, but their fellow-creatures, from their hearts, and caring only to drive their neighbors before them on this pbnk of theirs, or to push them headlong. Thus, with many virtues and much hard work at the formation of character, we have had splendid bigots or censorious small people. But sympathy is warmth and light, too. It is, as it were, the moral atmosphere connecting all animated natures. Putting aside, for a moment, the large differences that opinions, language and education make between men, look at the innate diversity of character. Natural philosophers were amazed when they thought they had found a newly-created species. But what is each man but a creature such a3 the world ha 5 not before seen ? Then think how they pour forth in multitudinous masses, from princes, delicately nurtured, to little boys on scrubby commons, or in dark cellar^! How are thesj people to be understood, to be taught to understand each other, but by those who have the deepest sympathies with all ? There can not be a great man with- out large sympathy. There may be men who play loud-sounding parts in life without it, as on the stage, where kings and great people sometimes enter, who are only characters of secondary import— deputy great men ; but the interest and the instruction lie with those who have to feel and suffer most.^ A man without large power of feeling is not good for much 1 Arthur Helps. THE NATURE OF MAN. 67 as a man. He may be a good mathematician, a very respectable lawyer, or doctor of divinity, but he is not capable of the high and beautiful and holy things of manhood. He can not even comprehend them; how much less do and become! It is power of feeling, as well as thought, which furnishes the substance wherewith the orator delights and controls and elevates the mass of men. Thought alone is never eloquent ; it is not enough, even for the orator's purpose ; he must stand on the primeval rock of human consciousness, must know by experience the pro- f:)undest feelings of men, their love, their hate, their anger, their hope, their fear, and, above all things, their love of God, and unspeakable trust therein. Feeling, he must make others feel. Mere thought convinces; feeling always persuades. If imagination furnish the jjoet with wings, feeling is the great, stout muscle which plies them, and lifts him from the ground. Thought sees beauty, emotion feels it. Every great poet has been distinguished as much for power of emotion as power of thought. Pope had more wisdom than Burns, Pollok as much as Wordsworth ; but which are the poets for the man's heart and his pillow? In great poets like Homer, Dante, Milton, Shake- speare—noblest of them all— there is a great masterly power of feeling joined to a great masterly power to think. They see and feel, too, and have the facultv divine of tellino; what thev feel. Poetry and Eloquence are twin sisters ; Feeling Is their mother. Thought Is the father. One is directed more to beauty; sits still in the house, her garlands and singing robes about her all the day. Tlie other is devoted more to use, cumbered with much serving, wears a workdav suit. But thev liave the same eye, the same face, the same family likeness. Every great artist, painter or sculptor must likewise have great power to feel. Half the odds between Eaphael and a Chinese painter is in the QS MAN AND HIS nELATIONS. power of feeling. But few men are poets, orators, sculptors or painters. I only mention these to show how, for the high modes of intellectual activity, feeling is necessary. It is equally necessary for the common life of men. Thought and feeling both must go to housekeeping, or it is a sad family. The spiritual part of human beauty, man^s or woman's, is one- fifth an expression of thought, four-fifths of feeling. The phil- osopher's fiice is not handsome. Socrates, John Locke, John Calvin, and Emanuel Kant are good enough types of mere thought— hard thought, without emotion. It is the power of feeling which makes the wise father attractive, the strong- minded mother dear. This joins relatives nearer than kindred blood ; it makes friendship actual ; it is the great element in philanthropy; it is the fountain whence flows forth all that which we call piety. Philanthropy is feeling for men, friendship is feeling with men, and piety is feeling with God. All great religious leaders have been men of great power of emotion- Mahomet, Luther, Loyola, Wesley, Whitefield; and what we admire most in Jesus is not His masterly power of thought, but His genius for love, power of feeling in its highest modes. His intellectual character is certainly of great weight. His foot- prints are very deep; but most meu do not think of Jesus as a great-minded, a great-thoughted man. ''Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more;" " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do;" thought alone had not reached up so high as that in that age and in this young man, but a great mountain of spnitaneous human feoling pressed on Him, and drove that fount up to such heights of sparkling piety .^ Fine sensibiliries are like woodbines, delightful luxuries of beautv to twine round a solid, iqrright stem of understanding, 1 rarker. THE NATURE OF MAN. 69 but very poor things, if, unsustained by strength, they are left to creep along the ground.^ Will. — Our wills are creators. As we will, we come into possession of ourselves ; we were not selves, but things^ without these. The will is Personal. The having a will difierences man from animals.^ If the will, which is the law of our nature, were withdrawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what w^e should then feel from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious mad- ness — a horrid thought ! ^ And w^hat shall we sav of the will? which savs to the wilder- ness, bloom, and it is as the garden of Eden; which says to the mountain, be open, and the bowels of the rock are blasted out; w^iich makes a path through the sea, and a pillar of cloud and fire, or an iron pathway through the desert; which tameth the tiger, and maketh a plaything of the lion; which grasps the impending thunderbolt, and hides its powerless flash in the bosom of the earth? And O what awful power does the will sometimes exert within the dominions of the soul! See that martyr laid upon the rack ! Every limb is stretched, and every nerve thrills with agony. A single word, and the prisoner will be relieved and restored to his friends. How shall we avoid uttering: it? Will not his intellect rebel? Will not his heart crv out? Will not his tongue, for an instant, break loose? Wait and see. Hark ! the heavv instrument falls, and a bone is broken, and the sharp fragments pierce through the quivering flesh. An interval follows — a dreadful interval — and, in the midst of the agony, the executioner demands the word of recan- tation; but that tongue, which utters forth groans that make a city shudder, lisps not a syllable. Slowly the instrument de- 1 John Foster. 2Alcott 3 Milton. 70 HAN AND HIS KELATIONS. THE NATURE OF MAN. 71 scends again, and another bone is broken, and anotlier, till every limb is in fragments, and the whole body lies lacerated and bleeding; and now the exeeutioner approaches, and the dews of death are upon the martyr's brow, and though the tongue speaks sweetly and freely of Jesus, and of the hmd where the weary rest, it is mute as the grave as to recantation. Zeno, on the rack, lest his tongue should betray him, bit it off, and spit it out in the face of his judge. The human will is, perhaps, the most sublime of all things. That power which wields the light- ning and moves the storm, which scatters worlds through space as the husbandman casts seed into the farrow, which by a look of terror could blast the universe, suffers the will of man to rise up against itself. How terrible looks the fabled Atreus, glutted with his banquet of revenge, when the justice of the gods comes djwn upon the feast! Bolt after bolt falls on every side, yet the untamed will of the rebel, as if in triumph, looks up from the sea of fire, and cries, "Thunder, ye powerless gods! I am aveno-edl " And such a scene — vea, and more dreadful — do we see every day enacted in the sinner's breast, where the will sits amid the ruins of the soul, an outcast from God, and, though on earth, like Satan in the pit, saying, in its desolation as it approaches the tomb, " Hail, horrors ! hail, Infernal world ! and thou, profoundest hell, Receive thy new possessor." ^ ^Vhat constitutes strength of will ? It is that quality of the mind which is prompt to decide, and, having decided, can not be moved from its purpose, but holds on through evil report and good report; overcomes obstacles; shrinks from no diffi- 1 Bishop Thomson. culty; relies on its own judgment; does not yield to fashion — and so presses to its mark always. Strength of will is the power to resist, to persist, to endure, to attack, to conquer obstacles, to snatch success from the jaws of death and despair. It is the most vital element in character. It is essential to excellence ; for of him who has it not it must be said: " Unstable 41s water, thou shall not excel." A man of weak will is at the mercy of the last opinion; is unable to make up his mind, or, having made it up, to keep to it. He is unde- cided, and can not decide. He sees the right, and drifts toward the wrong. He determines on a course of conduct, and then quits it on the first temptation. AVcak as a breaking wave, a helpless idler, wax to take a stamp from anytliing stronger than himself, if he adopts a right course, it is only by accident; and if he is virtuous, it is only a piece of good luck.^ Moral Sense. — Assuredly it is not intellect or reason merely in its purely cognitive and speculative form which makes a man a man, and not a monkey — a creature with a certain power of shaping his own destinies and realizing his own self-projected ideal. Man is essentially a practical animal; he grows naturally up into a state and a church, and every variety of organized action ; and to be practical he must be moral, for practice with- out morality is only another name for confusion, anarchy, and self-destruction.^ Man is made of two parts — the physical part, and the moral. The former he has in common with the brute creation. Like theirs, our corporeal pains ai"e very limited and tempo- rary. But the sufferings which touch our moral nature have a wider range, and are infinitely more acute, driving the suf- ferers sometimes to the extremities of despair and distraction. Man, in his moral nature, becomes, in his progress through life, 1 James Freeman Clarke. 2 Blackie. '4 72 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. a creature of prejudice, a creature of opinions, a creature of habits, and of sentiments growing out of them. These form our second nature, as inhabitants of the country and members of the society in which Providence has phiced us.^ There is a moral sense by which we perceive the distinction between good and bad, right and wrong, just as by the physical sense we perceive the distinction between black and white. The idea of right and wrong is universal. There is no man so bad as not to recognize evil in another, if not in himself. All the world over, in all lands and all languages, men use the words ^^luly,'^ '^justice,'' ^^ right," "wrong," "ought," "ought not." Everywhere there is found in man traces of conscience, reward- ing him when lie does what he believes to be right, punishing him with remorse when he does what he thinks to be wrong. People differ as to what is right and what is wrong. The standard varies, the law differs. Yet there has never been a nation or race which did not approve courage, truth, generosity, honesty; did not despise cowardice, falsehood, selfishness, dis- honesty. A North American Indian, a Spanish inquisitor, a Southern slaveholder, or an absolute despot, will torture human beings from pleasure, from principle, or, as he thinks, from necessity ; but not one of them approves cruelty in others, or in general. So men will lie in business, for their religion, for their friends, for their own safety; but no one approves of lying in itself. Each man disapproves it in every one but himself, and in every case except his own case. In all souls there is this instinctive sense of right and wrong. If there were not, morality, could not exist, and society would be impossible. For morality is nothing if it is not respect for right and duty, apart from all rewards they may bring. A man who only does right because he is afraid of punishment if he 1 Burke. THE NATURE OF MAN. 73 does wrong, or because he hopes for some reward here or here- after for doing right, does not. act conscientiously at all; he merely acts selfishly. Society is held together by conscience. See that laborer, uneducated, poor, who has been working ten hours a day since he was a child, and can only just support him- self. What makes him industrious, temperate, honest, orderly, instead of being an idle wretch, ready for any crime? Is It the fear of the police and the prison ? No. The great mass of men support order and law because they think it right to do so; because conscience tells them to do so. A few scoundrels are kept from being too scoundrelly by the police and the prison; the great mass of men never think of the police or prison, but do right because dMty tells them to. It is an evil for a nation when conscience takes the side of rebellion, when law seems tyranny ! The deep corner-stone of republican institutions is faith in a universal conscience. You give all the power to the majority of the people. What is to prevent them from tyran- nizing over you? The majority are poor; only a minority are rich. What is to prevent them from voting themselves your houses and lands? Nothing but conscience, the instinct ot right. Now, we have proved in this country that there are no institutions so stable as a democracy. In proving this, we have at the same time proved transcendentalism : that is, that all men have a conscience.^ Society is an organism, as much as a plant or an animal, and, as such, exists only by the cohesive power of certain moral laws, the cessation of whose action would instantly be followed by its resolution into an aggregate of hostile, confounding, and mutu- ally exterminating elements. One does not require to travel to Buh^aria, or to be familiar with Turkish misgovernment, or no government, in any part of the world, to be made startlingly 1 Clarke. 74 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. THE NATURE OF MAN 75 alive to the fact that the normal state of human gregarionsness, uhich we call society, may at any moment cease when the cement of society, which we call sympathy, ceases to act, and the con- trolling power of justice or practical reason is disowned. Man is man essentially and characteristically by his consistent, reasonable action in relation to his fellows; in other words, by acknowled^nii'T the moral law. The moment he throws this law aside he becomes a beast, a tiger or a fox, or a combination of the two, with thj addition of intellectual ingenuity to make the fjrocity of the tiger more systematic, and the cunning of the fox more treacherous. And thus, as Mephistopheles says in Faust, he becomes ''more brutish than any brute caji be"— becomes transformed, in fact, into a fiend, a demon or a devil,' in the fashion of which the records of our criminal courts, and the lives of unbridLnl men, drunk with power and pleasure in high places, furnish only too numerous examples. There can be no doubt, therefore, that man is by the constitution of his nature essentially a moral animal.^ The same law of evolution, which we have seen governing the history of speculative thought, may also be traced as determining the progress of ethical inquiry. In this department there are successive stages marked, both in the individual and the national mind. There is, first, the simplicity and trust of childhood, submitting with unquestioning fiiith to prescribed and arbitrary laws; then the unsettled and ill-directed force of youth, ques- tioning the authority of laws, and asking reasons why this or that is obligatory ; then the philosophic wisdom of riper years, recognizing an inherent law of duty, which has an absolute rightness and an imperative obligation. There is first a dim and shadowy apprehension of some lines of moral distinction, and some consciousness of obligation, but these rest mainly upon an XBlackie. outwnrd la^v-thc observed practice of others, or the command of the parent as, in some sense, the command of God. Then, to attain to personal convictions, man passes through a stage of doubt; he asks for a ground of obligation, for an authority that shall approve itself to his own judgment and reason. At last he arrives at some ultimate principles of right, some imn.utable standard of duty ; he recognizes an inward law of cousc.enee, and it becomes to him as the voice of God. He extends h>s analysis to history, and he finds that the universal conscience of the race has, in all ages, uttered the same behest.' Man is but a little thing in the muU of the objects of nature. Yet, Uv the moral quality radiating from his countenance, he may' abolish all considerations of magnitude, and, in his man- ners, equal the majesty of the world.^ Gexius.— The whole difference between a man of genius and other men, it has been said a thousand times, and most truly, is that the first remains in great part a child, seeing with the large eyes of children, in perpetual wonder, not conscious of much knowledge-conscious, rather, of infinite ignorance, and yet infinite power ; a fountain of eternal admiration, delight, and creative force within him meeting the ocean of visible and governable things around him.' What we call genius may, perhaps, with more strict propriety, be described as the spirit of discovery. Genius is the very eye of intellect and the wing of thought. It is always in advance of its time. It is the pioneer for the generation which it pre- cedes. For this reason it is called a seer ; and hence its songs have been prophecies." . ,^ „ r ,i,- But on the whole, "genius is ever a secret to itself; of this old truth we have, on all sides, daily evidence. The Shake- speare takes no airs for writing Hamlet and the Tempest; under- 1 Cocker. 2 Emerson. 8 Ruskin. 4 Simms. 76 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. Stands not that it is anything surprising: Milton, again, is more conscious of his flicuhy, which, accordingly, is an inferior one. On the other hand, what cackling and strutting must we not often hear and see, when, in some shape of academical profusion, maiden speech, review article, tiiis or the other well-fledged goose has produced its goose-egg, of quite measurable value, were it the pink of its whole kind, and wonders why all mortals do not wonder ! ^ The advent of genius is like what florists style the breaking of a seedliuiT tulip into what we mav call high-caste colors — ten thousand diugy flowers, then one with the divine streak; or, if you prefer it, like the coming up in old Jacob's garden of that most gentlemanly little fruit, the seckel pear, which I have sometimes seen in shop windows. It is a surprise — there is nothing to account for it. All at once we find that twice two makes five.^ Genius is that power of man which by deeds and actions gives laws and rules. When auy one rushed into the world on foot without knowing precisely why or whither, it was called a journey of a genius; and when any one undertook some absurd- ity without aim or advantage, it was a stroke of genius.^ The man of genius invents and originates, making new forms out of the commonest material. He finds general laws in facts that have been familiar to everybody since the world Avas. All the neighbors ir. Crotona twenty-three hundred years ago heard the two village blacksmiths beat the anvil, one with the great hammer, and the other with the small one; Pythagoras took the hint from that rhythmic beat, and l)rought the harmonic scale of music out from the blacksmith's "ten pound ten.'' Every boy sees that, in a right-angled triangle, the largest side is opposite the square angle ; but Pythagoras discovered that if you draw 1 Carlyle. 8 0. W. Holmes. 3 Goethe. THE NATURE OF MAN. 77 three square figures, each as long as the three several sides of this triangle, the hirgest square will be as big as both the others. It was one of the grandest discoveries of mathematical science. Every priest in the Cathedral of Pisa two hundred and seventy years ago, and all the women and children at Christmas, saw the great lamps which hung from the ceiling, some by a longer, and some by a shorter chain ; they saw them swing in the wind that came in with the crowd, as the Christmas doors, storied all over with mediaeval fictions, were opened wide. None but the genius of Galileo saw that the motion of these swinging lamps was always uniform and in proportion to the length of the cliains, the lamp with the longest chain swinging slowest, and that with the shortest completing quickest its vibration. He alone saw that the swinging lamps not only distributed light, but also kept time, and each was a great clock, whereof he alone had the dial, and the hand pointed to the hour in his mind. Nay, for five hundred years in that great Cathedral these lamps, swinging slowlv to and fro, had been proclaiming the law of gravitation, but Galileo was the first man who heard it. All the farmers in Cambridgeshire saw apples fall every autumn day, and a hun- dred astronomers scattered through Europe knew that the earth moved around the sun; but only one man, by his genius, saw that the earth moved and apples fell by the same gravitation, and obeved the same universal law. There were tw^o or three thousand ministers in England two hundred years ago — educated men— and they were preaching with all their might, and trying to make the popular theology go down with the reluctant Anglo-Saxon people, who hate nonsense. How dull their ser- mons—telling the people that man was a stranger and pilgrim on earth, with their talk about Abraham's faith, and their quo- tations from tiie Epistle to the Hebrews! How dead they are 78 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. now, those dreadful sermons of the seventeenth century — save here and there a magnificent word from Jeremy Taylor or Robert South ! How dead they were then — abortive sermons, that died before they were spoken ! But a common tinker, with no educa- tion, often in low company, hated for being religious, and for more than twelve years shut up in jail, writes therein the ^^ Pil- grim\s Progress," which makes Calvinism popular, and is still the most living book which got writ in that century of England's great men, when Shakespeare, and Milton, and Herbert, and Bacon, and Taylor, were cradled in lier arms. Adam Smith takes the common facts known to all gazetteers, the national income and expenditures, the exports and imports, manufactures, the increase of population, etc., and by his genius sees the law of political economy, and makes national housekeeping into science. Shakespeare picks up the common talk of the village, what happens to everybody — birth, love, hope, fear, sorrow, death — and then what marvelous tragedies does he make out of the drama of every man's life ! They tell a story of a man in Greece who, one day, walking along the seashore, picked up the empty shell of a tortoise, with a few of the tendons still left, and found it gave a musical note as he touched it; he then drew threads across it from side to side, and out of the corded shell invented musical instruments. Fire and water are as old as creation, and have been in man's hands some thirty or forty thousand years, I suppose ; there was not a savage nation in Asia or America but had them. Men have married these two antagonistic elements together for many a thousand years, and water boils. But from these two Robert Fulton breeds a giant who is the mightiest servant of mankind, altering the face of nature and the destination of man. Everv chemist knew that certain substances were sensitive to light, and changed their color THE NATURE OF MAN. 79 by day; nay, every farmer's daughter knew that March wind and May sun made cloth white and faces brown. But Xiepce and Daguerre had such genius that they took advantage of this fact, and set the sun to paint pictures in forty seconds. King Charlemagne, not being able to writa when called upon to sign his name, daubed his palm from the ink-horn, and put his hand on the document, the great sign-manual of that giant emperor. ^\iy, five hundred years before Moses, kings had seals with their names engraven thereon, and stamped them on wax. Thirty- five hundred years later, the genius of Faustus puts together a thousand of these seals, a letter on each, and therefrom makes a 23rinted Bible. How hard they tugged at the bow-string and plied the catapult to knock down the walls of a town in the middle ages! Schwartz makes gunpowder, and cross-bows and catapults go out of fashion. These are men of genius ; men of talent could never have accomplished these results which I have mentioned. These are the men who really command the world, the original thinkers. There are not a great many of them. It seems necessary that seven-eighths of man's life shall be routine, doing to-day what we did yesterday; the same old thing over and over again. But now and then the great God raises up one man of genius In a million, who shovels away the snow, and makes a path where all men can vralk, clean-footed and drv-shod. Let us reverence these men. Speaking practically, genius is power of construction — power to originate and create new forms out of old matter, new matter out of human nature. Speaking philosophically, or by analysis, genius Is great power of instinct, spontaneous intuition. That Is the element of necessity, as it were, in genius. It is, next, great power of conscious reflection, great imagination in its greatest forms, great attention, the power to bend all the facul- 80 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. ties to the special task in haiul. This is the element of freedom in genius. Genius kno^YS the thing which it works upon and produces ; not always does it know itself. The same man is seldom synthetic to create, and analytic to expLain the process of creation. Homer and Shakespeare know how to make poetry, but not how they make it ; the art, not the analytic explanation. Yet others have the genius for self-knowledge, power of analytic consciousness ; but it is not often that the poet and the philoso- pher lodge in the same body. This human house of clay \i not large, nor strongly walled enough, nor nice enough, to entertain two such royal guests. Human nature is too great to be made perfect, all parts of it, in a single man : " One science only will one genius fit, So vast is art, so narrow human wit." As, analytically speaking, genius is power of instinctive intui- tion, and power of conscious reflection, so, practically, it is the highest power of work, power of spontaneous work, j)ower of voluntary work ; and it is this w^iich unites the womanly intuition with manly reflection. Genius is God's highest gift to man.^ Genius is religious. It is a larger imbibing of the common heart. It is not anomalous, but more like, and not less like, other men. There is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise. The author, the wit, the partisan, the fine gentleman, does not take place of the man. Humanity shines in Homer, in Chaucer, in Spenser, in Shakespeare, in Milton. They are content with truth. They use the positive degree. They seem frigid and phlegmatic to those who have been spiced with the frantic passion and violent col')ring of inferior but popular writers.' 1 Parker. ' Emerson. THE NATURE OF MAN. 81 And what is Genius but finer love — a love impersonal, a love of the flower and ])crfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? It looks to the cause and life ; it proceeds from within outward, whilst Talent goes from without inward. Talent finds its models, methods, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within, going abroad only for audience and spectator, as we adapt our voice and phrase to the distance and character of the ear we speak to. All your learning of all litera- tures would never enable you to anticipate one of its thoughts or exju'cssions; and yet each is natural and familiar as household words. Hero about ns coils forever the ancient enigma, so old and so unutterable. Behold ! there is the sun, and the rain, and the rocks : the old sun, the old stones. How easy were it to describe all this fitly! yet no word can pass. Nature is a mute, and man, her articulate speaking brother, lo ! he also is a mute. Yet when Genius arrives, its speech is like a river; it has no straining to describe, more than there is straining in nature to exist. When thought is best, there is most of it. Genius sheds wisdom like perfume, and advertises us that it flows out of a deeper source than the foregoing silence ; that it knows so deeply and speaks so musically, because it is itself a mutation of the thing it describes. It is sun and moon and wave and fire in music, as astronomy is thought and harmony in masses of matter.^ Talent. — Every man can not say, write, discover something new. Nature, that loving mother, has sown original genius of that sort very sparingly, and if in a century, on any special subject, more than one springs up, it may be regarded as a miracle. But to collect, arrange, boil, and roast, what has once Ibid. 82 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. THE NATURE OF MAN. 83 been brouglit forwiird, so that it may be well flavored and easily digested by this man and that, plenty of people are found, who of their kind are not born in vain. There is one class of uncommon persons who have more of what everybody has a little. They dift'er from the rest in quantity, not in kind. They do as other men, but better and stronger. They create nothing new, originate nothing; but they understand the'actual, they apply another man\s original thought, develop and improve the old, execute much, invent little. They say what somebody else said and thought originally. They say what the great mass of the people think and can not yet say. A man of this sort comes very close to the outside of men. That is the man of talent. Speaking practically, talent is executive power in its various modes; it is ability to adapt means to ends. On analysis, vou find it is not superior power of instinct and spontaneous intuition, but on'y superior power of conscious reflection, power to know by intellectual process, to calculate, and to express the knowledge and the calculation. It is a great gift, no doubt. It is men of great talent who seem to control the world, for they occupy the headlands of society. In a nation like ours, they^occupy the high positions of trade and politics, of literature, church, and state. Talent is jls variable in its modes of manifestation as the occupations and interests of men. There mav be talent for war, for productive industry, for art, philoso- phy, politics, also for religion. There are always a few men of marked talent in every community. With the advance of man- kind, the average ability continually greatens; it is immensely more' in Xew England to-day than it was in Palestine two thousand years ago; but the number who overpass the broad level whicli mankind stands upon, I suppose, bears about the same ratio at all seasons to the whole mass.^ 1 George Forster. 2 Parker. 0r Genius is of the soul, talent of the understanding. Genius is warm, talent is passionless. Without genius there is no intu- ition, no inspiration ; without talent, no execution. Genius is interior, talent exterior; hence genius is productive, talent accumulative. Genius invents, talent accomplishes. Genius gives the substance ; talent works it up under the eye, or, rather under the feeling of genius. Genius is emotional, talent intellect- ual; hence genius is creative, and talent instrumental. Genius has insight, talent only outsight. Genius is always calm, reserved, self-centered; talent is often bustling, officious, confi- dent. Genius gives the impulse and aim as well as the illumina- tion, talent the means and implements. Genius, in short, is the central, finer essence of the mind, the self-lighted fire, the intu- itional gift. Talent gathers and shapes and applies what genius forges. Talent is ever approaching, and yet never reaches, that point whence genius starts. Genius is often entirely ridit, and is never wholly Avrong; talent is never wholly right. Genius avails itself of all the capabilities of talent, appropriates to itself what suits and helps it. Talent can appropriate to itself noth- ing; for it has not the inward heat that can fuse all material, and assimilate all food, to convert it into blood ; this only genius can do. Goethe was a man of genius, and, at the same time, of immense and varied talents; and no contemporary })rofited so much as he did by all the knowledges and discoveries and accumulations made by others. For full success the two, genius and talent, should co-exist in one mind in balanced proportions, as they did in Goethe's, so that they can play smoothly together in effective combination. In Walking Stewart, says De Quincev, genius was out of all proportion to talent, and thus wanted an organ for manifesting itself. ^ Duality. — As there is much beast and some devil in man, » G. II. Calvert. 84 MAN AND HIS RKLATIOXS. 80 is tlierc some angel and some God in liim. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but, in this life, never wholly destroyed.^ Now the basest thought possible concerning man is, that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual— coherently and irrevocably so ; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other.- There are none of us but must be living two lives — and the sooner we come to recognize the flict clearly the better for us — the one life in the outward material world, in contact with the things which we can see, and taste, and handle, which are always changing and passing away; the other in the invisible, in contact with the unseen— with that which does not change or pass away, which is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.^ Man's twofold nature is reflected in history. ''He is of earth,'' br.t his thoughts are with the stars. Mean and petty his wants and his desires; yet they serve a soul exalted with grand, glorious aims, with immortal longings, with thoughts which sweep the heavens, end 'Grander through eternity." A pigmy standing on the outward crust of this small planet, his far-reaching spirit stretches outward to the infinite, and there alone finds rest. History is a reflex of this double life. Every epoch has two aspects — one calm, broad, and solemn, looking toward eternity ; the other agitated, petty, vehement, and con- fused, looking toward time."* There is in man a continual conflict between his reason and his passions. He might enjoy tranquillity to a certain extent, were he mastered by either of these singly. If he had reason without passion, or passion without reason, he might have some Coleridge. 2 Kuskin. -Thomas Hughes. 4 Carlyle. THE NATURE OF MAN. 85 degree of peace; but, possessing both, he is in a state of ])cr- petual warfare : for peace with one is war with the other: he is divided against himself. If it be an unnatural blindness to live without inquiring -into our true constitution and condition, it proves a hardness yet more dreadful to believe in God and live in sin.^ Whenever the human character is portrayed in colors alto- gether dark, or altogether bright; whenever the misanthrope pours out his scorn upon the wickedness and baseness of man- kind, or the enthusiast lavishes his admiration upon their virtues, do we not always feel that there needs to be some qualification — that there is something to be said on the other side? 2 Nay, more ; do not all the varying representations of human nature imply their opposites ? Does not virtue itself imply that sins and sinful passions are struggled with and overcome? And, on the contrary, does not sin in its very nature imply that there are high and sacred powers, capacities, and affections, which it violates ? In each of us, even in the very seat of our being, there are — as in Jacob — two, nay, sometimes three or five, separate charac- ters striving for the mastery. It is that conflict between two contending principles — that dialogue, as it were, between "the two voices" — which is one of the profoundest mysteries of our nature, but which the Bible itself fully acknowledges. We see it in the dark struggle within the single mind of the author of Ecclesiastes. We see it in the dramatic form of the Book of Job and the Song of Solomon. We see it not only in the twofold character of Jacob, but in the double, treble, quad- ruple character of David. We see it in the multiplied demons — one, two, seven — mounting till their name is Legion, which, 1 Pascal. 8 Dewey. 86 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. however ^ve exnlaiii the phrase, took possession of their victims in the Gospel history. We see it in the flux and reflux of the better mind of Peter, described in a few suc<,'essive verses as the Eock of the Church, and as S:itan, its deadly enemy. We see it in the distractions and divisions in tlie mind of Paul in tlie seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. We see it throu. r .*, i THE NATURE OF MAN. 93 ure, commerce, whatever has value and is salable—these, and these alone, have real worth and importance The elevated and impulsive emotions, which act upon our nature and influence in so great a degree our conduct, have no real existence for the practical man ; he sees them not, or despises them, and leaves them to women and children. The only interests he can appreciate are such as are palpable, and can be touched, measured, weighed. He could not compre- hend Epicurus, even if he should read him ; but he does not read him, for he was a philosopher and an ancient ; he doubts even whether such a man ever existed— for who can tell what hap- pened two thousand years ago ? Morality is for him a matter of calculation ; and it is by sums of addition and subtraction that he judges in each case of the propriety of a course of conduct. As a practical man is his stand- ard of comparison, it seems to him as if all the world were gov- erned by the spirit of calculation. He neither believes in nor doubts of a Deity; he does not think about the subject at all; it is too refined and abstract for him. And, confined in his own narrow round of ideas, he is positive, confident, unhesitating, and content. Practical men are entirely persuaded that they govern the w^orld, because they everywhere float on the surface ; they make the laws and administer them; they manufacture, and buy, and sell • thev are the consumers. But they never seem to be aware that this world, which they suppose is under their direction, is a mighty force, that, in its movement, is sweeping them onward. The outward and apparent revolutions in society, which are the only ones apparent to. them, conform to their ideas, while the movers of them are hidden from their view ; and thus they take the mill-wheel f)r the water that forces it to turn.^ 1 Joufror. ii 94 MAN AND III3 RELATIONS. Some men seem to be sent into the world for purposes of action only. Their faculties arc all strung up to toil and enterprise ; their spirit and their frame are alike redolent of energy. They pause and slumber like other men, but it is only to recruit from actual fatigue ; they occasionally want quiet, but only as a re- freshment to prepare them for renewed exertion — not as a normal condition to be wished for or enjoyed for itself. They need rest, not repose. They investigate and reflect, but only to estimate the best means of attaining their ends, or to measure the value of their undertaking against its cost ; they think — they never meditate. Their mission, their enjoyment, the object and condi- tion of their existence, is WORK. They could not exist here with- out it; they can not conceive another life as desirable without it. Their amount of vitality is beyond that of ordinary men ; they are never to be seen doing nothing; when doing nothing else, they are always sleeping. Happy souls ! Happy ?7icn, at least! There are others who skim over the surface of life, reflecting just as little as these and not reposing much oftener ; whose sen- sibilities are quick, whose temperaments are cheerful, whose frames are naturally active but not laborious ; on whom nature and the external world play as on a stringed instrument, some- times drawing out sweet sounds, sometimes discordant ones, but whom the inner world seldom troubles with anv intimation of its existence ; men whom the interests of the day suffice to occupy ; the depths of whose souls are never irradiated by gleams or stirred bv breezes '^ from a remoter life.'^ Thcv, too, are to be envied. The bees and the butterflies are alike happy. " Happy the many to whom Life displays Only the flaunting of its Tulip-flower; "Whose minds have never bent tj scrutinize Into the maddening riddle of the Koot — - Shell within shell, dream folded over dream." ^ 't's ...IV < i> THE NATURE OF MAN. 05 There are other spirits whom God has cast in a diifcrent mold, or framed of less harmonious substance— men gifted with that contemplative faculty which is a blessing or a curse accord- ing as it is linked with a cheerful or a melancholy temperament ; accordino; as it is content to busy itself only with derivative and secondary matters, or dives down to the hidden foundation of things; according as it assumes and accepts much, or is driven l)y its own necessity to question everything; according as it can Avander happily and curiously among the flowers and fruit of the Tree of Life, or as it is dangerously impelled to dig about its roots and analyze the soil in which it grows. To such men existence is one long note of interrogation, and the universe a store-house of problems all clamorous for solution. The old fable of the Sphinx is true for them : life is the riddle they have to read, and death, sadness, or the waste of years, is the penalty if they hiil to interpret it aright. A few, perhaps, may find the key, and reach "the peace that passeth understanding." A large number fancy they have found it, and are serene in their fortu- nate delusion. Others retire from the eflfort, conscious that they have been baffled in the search, but, partly in weariness, partly in trust, partly in content, acquiescing in their failure. Others, ao-ain, and these too often the nobler and the grander souls, reach the verge of their pilgrimage still battling with the dark enigma, and dying less of age or malady than of the profound depression that must be the lot of all who have wasted life in fruitless efforts to discover how it should be spent and how regarded; and which even a sincere belief in the flood of life which lies behind the great black curtain of Death can not quite avail to dissipate.^ Importance of the Individual. — The worth of a state, in the lono- run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.^ Greg. 2J. S. Mill. 96 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spoces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; and posterity seems to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Ciesar is born, and for ages after we have a Tvoman Empire. Christ Is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man— as Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Refor- mation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox ; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, ^Uhon called ^^the height of Pvome;" and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons. Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity- boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists fur hi ni. The termination of the world in a man appears to be tlie last vitiuiv of intellio-ence. The universal does not attract us until housed in an individual. AYho heeds the waste abyss of possi- bllitv ? The ocean is everywhere the same, but it has no charac- t. r until seen with tho shore or the ship. W in> would vaIiw. any number of miles of Atlantic brine bounded by lines of latitude and lijngitude ? Confine it by granite rocks, let it wash a shore where wise men dwell, and it is filled witli repression ; and the point of greatest interest is where the land tind water meet. So mn-t we admire in niin, ilie iovm of the formless, the concentra- tion of the vast, the hniise of reason, the cave of memory. See the plav oi" I'aou-'ht- ! what ninible, gigantic creatures are these! what sanrian^, what palaictheria, sliall be namod with these agile movtr.-? Tiie great Pan < f old, who was clothed in a leopard skin to signify tho beantiful variety of things, and the lirniament '0^ tit \\ .■^,1 d 7 THE NATURE OF MAN. 97 his coat of stars, was but the representative of thee, O rich and various Man I thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and ih^ night and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain, the geometry of the City of God ; in thy heart,' the bower of love and the realms of right and wrong. An indi- vidual man is a fruit which it cost all the foregoing ages to form and ripen. The history of the genesis or the old my tirology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He, too, is a demon or God tlirown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order. V,wh individual soul is such, in virtue of its being a power to translate the world into some particular language of its own ; if not into a l)ietnr(^ n ^t^xtno. or a dance-why, then, into a trade, an art, a science, a mode of living, a conversation, a character, an influence.^ In a crowded city you see the multitude of men going to and fro, each on his several errand of business or pleasure; yon see the shops, so busy and so Inll ; the ships, so many and of su^h great cost, going so far and sailing so swift; yon are told so many thousand men lodge each night niidcrneath the eity roofs, and every morning so many thousarid more come here to join the doing and the driving of tin. town, and depart thenee at night. You look at all this ninnif^old doing and drivln-, the great stream of activity that runs up and down the streets and lanes, and you think how very unimportant, in>ignifiennt even, is any one man. Yonder dandy, say you, who has just blossomed out of the tailor's window, a summer tulip transplanted lo the sidewalk, might drop through and never be nn'ssed ; so might that little shrinking maiden, L UincLiun -d' the English Parliainenl wa-^ i-. put tuvlve honest men i:i a jiiry-bnx. TTa iidght linv(^ brought It m the .iiiall.-L pnint, and .aid the hi-he-t innnh.n ..f the En-lidi Parliament, and .^ into ehildhuud ; bounds int.. youth: sober^ into nam- hoo works of Id-^ predecessor, and leave to one who comes after him the >ami um - less labor, with whieh he, too, consumes his Hie. 'lhu> day> aia' bound to each other; thus races and kingdoms are bound to eaeli otiier. The sun sets, that night may come, and uieu may again rejoice over a new dawn.^ All ilie world's a t^tage, And all the iiieu and wuinen merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man i!i his lime plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At llrst the infant, Mewling and puking in tlie nurse's arms: And then the whining sehool-boy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like a snail Unwillingly to school : and then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow : then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in (piarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth: and then the justice, In fair round belly, with good capon lined, i Parker. ^ Ilcnrv Cilcs. Herder. I 102 MAX AND HIS RELATIONS. THE NATURE OF MAN. 103 AVith eyes severe, and beard of formal cut, Full cf wise saws and modern instances. And so he plays his part : the sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered })antaloon, AVith spectacles^on nose, and pjuch on side. His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound : Last scene of all That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness, and mere oblivion ; Sails teeth, sans eyes, suns taste, sans everything.* AYe have a brief description of seven stages of life by a remark- ably good observer. It is very presumptuous to attempt to add to it, vet I have been struck with the fact that life admits of a natural analysis into no less than fifteen distinct periods. Tak- ing the five i)rimary divisions — infancy, childhood, youth, man- hood, old age — each of these has its own three periods of immaturity, complete development, and decline. I recognize an old baby at once — with its "pipe and mug'^ (a stick of candy and a porringer) — so does everybody ; and an old child shedding its milk-teeth is only a little })rototype of the old man shedding his permanent ones. Fifty or thereabouts is only the childhood, as it were, of old age; the gray-beard youngster must be weaned from his late suppers now. So you will see that you have to make fifteen staires, at anv rate, and tlrat it would not be hard to make twenty-five — five primary, each witli five secondary divis- ions. The infancy and childhood of commencing old age have the same ingenuous simplicity and delightful unconsciousness about them as the first stage of the earlier periods of life shows. The great delusion of mankind is in supposing that to be individual 1 Shakespeare. 1 \ and exceptional which is universal and according to law. A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously calle«l an old man for the first time. Nature gets us out of youth into manhood, as sailors are hurried on board of vessels in a ^\.i\\i^ of intoxication. We are hustled into maturity reeling witn our passions and imagina- tions, and we have drifted far away from port before we awake out of our illusions. But to carry us out of maturity into old age, Avithout our knowing where we are going, sh.c drugs us Avlth strong opiates, and so we sti'.gger along with wide open eyes that see nothing until snow enough has fallen on our heads to rouse our comatose brains out of their stupid trances.^ Generation after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body, and, forth-issuing from Cimmerian Xight, on Heaven's mission appears. What Force and Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one, hunter-like, climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science ; one madly dashed to pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow — and then the Heaven-sent is recalled ; his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanquished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-f a'.ning, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this nivsterious Mankind thunder and flame, in lonof-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknoM-n Deep. Tims, a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth ; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are leveled, and her seas filled up, in our ])assage: can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality and are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped in; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the Earliest Van. But 1 Holmes. 104 MAN AND HIS RELATIONS. whence? O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God to God; " We are such stuff A.-. Dreams are made of, and our little Life Is rounded with a sleep ! " iCarlyle. 1 i! II II [H!/\WT1H1(D)!^F^ E w «l%. OHAPTEE III MAN IN ACTION. The devil never tempted a man whom he found judiciously employed.— SprRGEON. IN life/' as the great Pascal observes, *^ we always believe that we are seeking repose, while, in reality, all that we ever seek is agitation." It is ever the contest that pleases us, and not the victory. Thus it is in play; thus it is in hunting; thus it is in the search of truth; thus it is in life. The past does not interest, the present does not satisfy, the future alone is the object which engages us. . . . The man who first declared that he was not a (TO(fd^j or possessor, but a