Part 2 (1/2)
More central to man than any social ideal is the personal ideal. For society is but an aggregation of units; state, church, community, family, have their aim and outcome in the individual man; they are serviceable only as through them he becomes good and happy. What new interpretations has this century seen of the personal ideal? They may partly be read in a group of poets of the English-speaking people. Wordsworth, loyal to the forms of the old Christianity, shows life as really sustained and gladdened by simple duty and by the sacramental beauty of nature--one giving the rule of conduct, the other disclosing the divinity of the world. Tennyson gives in ”In Memoriam” that interpretation of human life which comes when love is sublimed by death. Browning shows the soul face to face with the doubt, the denial, the dismay, which are added to the foes of human peace in an age which has lost the old faith, and shows the soul victorious over all by its own energy, constancy, and joy. In Whittier, the dogmatic system of Christianity is transformed into a spirit of fidelity, brotherhood, and tender trust. Emerson gives that direct vision of divine reality, seen in nature, in humanity, in the heart's innermost recesses, which is possible to a soul purified by moral fidelity, reverent of natural law, and winged by holy desire.
These have been the prophets of hope and of victory. The dark message of defeat and despair has also had its full expression. Satiety with material good, disappointment of inward joy, the loss of the old objects of adoration and trust, have inspired utterances in every key of gloom, impotence, despondency verging toward suicide. Schopenhauer has formulated a philosophy of pessimism, and through a host of the minor story-tellers and versifiers runs the note of discouragement and abandonment. The most dangerous alliance which besets man is that between Sensuality and Unbelief, whispering together in his ear, ”Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die!” Sometimes unbelief is at the widest remove from sensuality; it may go with pure devotion to truth and thirst for goodness. There are pathetic and n.o.ble voices of seekers after G.o.d, which when they do not gladden yet strengthen and purify, and which catch at moments an exquisite tone of peace and joy. Such are Clough and Matthew Arnold. We have one moralist of the Spencerian school, George Eliot, who unites a strong ethical sense with a wonderful reading of human nature. Her essential message, told again and again in every book, is, ”Life may be ruined by self-indulgence--beware!” If we ask, ”But may life be saved by fidelity?” her answer is uncertain. And in her own life we read, with humbled eyes, the defect which marred the note of triumph and deepened the note of warning.
If, again, as to the Personal Ideal, we revert to the basal elements of character,--to the homely, every-day aspect,--to the life not only of the cultivated few but of the ma.s.s of humanity,--the new perception has been reached, that Work is the basis of all personal and social virtue. Toil, said the old Scripture, is G.o.d's punishment for man's sin. Toil, says the religious enthusiast, is a necessary incident of an existence whose higher exercise lies in spiritual emotion reaching toward a future Paradise. But toil, to modern eyes, is the root which binds man to his native earth, and transmits all the sap which creates flowers and fruit.
Intelligent, arduous, thrifty toil is the mother of greatness. ”Do the next thing,--do the nearest duty,--labor rather than question,”--is the most articulate note in Carlyle's stormy message. The old charity was to give bread to the hungry; the new charity is to help the hungry to work for their bread. A generation ago it seemed to American reformers that the nation's problem would be solved if once the slaves were freed. They were set free, and then it was seen that the whole question of their future destiny was still to be met. Practical necessity, religious zeal, political schemes, all played their part; but the best answer came through the apostle Armstrong, ”Character, wrought out through education and labor.” The inherited devotion of Christian missionaries caught the light of personal experience and observation, and a man in whom heroic temper blent with shrewdest wisdom laid the foundation of an education transcending in its aims and results the whole traditional system of school and university. It is an object-lesson of supreme significance.
That way lies the future education of our children,--character its aim, nature its chief book, exercise of all the bodily and spiritual powers its method.
Here, then, are the results of our century as they bear on man's higher life. A religion through special revelation has been displaced by a religion which faces all the facts of existence and bases itself on them.
Man has found new clews to read the story of his past, and new ways to mould his present and future. The old ethical ideals have been reaffirmed, broadened, purified. The task of building personal life and of ordering society has been set before man in fresh clearness, under heavy penalties for failure and heart-filling rewards for success. It is seen that the humble path of moral obedience issues in celestial heights of spiritual vision. Out of the n.o.blest use of the Here and Now springs the a.s.surance of a Hereafter and the sense of a present eternity. The way to the Highest is open, inviting, commanding. The simplest may enter, and the strongest must give his full strength to the quest.
II
THE IDEAL OF TO-DAY
The way of the highest life is clear and certain. Its first and last precept is fidelity to the best we know. Its constant process is that fidelity wins moral growth and spiritual vision.
All attempts to demonstrate the nature and attributes of G.o.d, all effort to prove by argument that the universe is administered by righteousness and benevolence, are aside from the main road. The real task for man is to order his own life, as an individual and in society.
To do that, he needs to understand his own life as a practical matter; he needs to study the procedure of the world in which he stands; he needs to rally every force of knowledge, resolution, sympathy, reverence, aspiration, upon this high business of personal and social living. As he achieves such life, there develop in him the faculties which read sublime meanings in the universe of which he is a part. As he becomes divine, he finds divinity everywhere.
The heart of religion is joy, peace, energy, support under suffering, inward harmony, true relation with fellow creatures, grateful sense of the past, full fruition of the present, glad out-reach to a beckoning future. The way to that life is wholly independent of doubtful argumentation. It lies simply in a whole-hearted conformity to what are known beyond all question as the worthy aims, the just requirements, the righteous laws.
Let us consider somewhat at large the unfolding of this philosophy of life. Let us seek to sympathetically interpret the deepest, most significant working of the human spirit in our time.
Is it not the distinctive note of the thoughtful and honest mind of to-day, as compared with a like mind some centuries ago, that it contemplates more directly the actual procedure of the universe, is less concerned with supernatural personages and transactions, and more attentive to what has happened and is happening in this mundane sphere?
The piety of our ancestors contemplated the justice and mercy of G.o.d as manifested in the counsels of eternity,--his righteous condemnation of the wicked, and the love-inspired sacrifice of Christ. The philosophy of our ancestors was largely an attempt to map out a world-scheme from man's inner consciousness. The modern thinker, whether he calls himself Christian or not, is inclined to make his essay toward the Supreme Power by way of the observed workings of the universe. And certain general impressions which he thus receives we may distinguish.
That aspect of things which now engages us with the fascination of a new and vast discovery is what we term ”Evolution.” Its spectacle, on the one hand, prompts a sure and soaring hope. In the sum of things we see a movement upward and still upward,--from unorganized to organized matter, from unconscious to sentient existence, from beast to man, from savage to saint,--and who can say to what height in the coming ages?
But on the other hand we see that thus far at least the progress of the favored is at deadly cost to the losers. And we see that parallel with the ascending white line of humanity runs an ascending black line,--the bad man of civilization is in some ways worse than the bad man of savagery. And this complexity of good and evil is recognized at a time when a higher sensibility has made the old familiar pain and sin of humanity seem more than ever intolerable.
Yet the spectacle of creation and of the world, as we see and know it, makes upon us an impression far beyond that of mere perplexity or dismay. It produces a sentiment which we may best call _awe_. All the great aspects of nature wake in us this reverential emotion. A familiar instance is the effect upon us of the starry heavens. The Psalmist thrilled at that sight,--how much more deeply are we moved, knowing what we know of the vastness and the order! Some like effect on us has the unfolding revelation of the whole process of nature. ”I think the thoughts of G.o.d after him,” said Kepler. Let any man study in some clear exposition the development of the human race from the animal; and the wonder of the process, the unity of design, the unforeseen goals reached one by one, the irresistible impression that the harmony which man's little faculties can discern is but a fraction of some sublimer harmony,--these emotions have in them a surpa.s.sing power to humble, purify, and exalt the spirit.
The modern mind addresses itself to the highest reality through the actualities of existence, and of those actualities one most significant phase is the procedure and laws of nature. But there is another and more impressive aspect: it is the inner life of humanity; it is man's own conscious existence, with its struggles, victories, defeats, its agonies and raptures, its mirth, its play, its sweetness and bitterness. This to us is the realm of real existence. In this we are at home. The march of the planets, the evolution of a world, the whole process of nature, is like the view from a window; and, gazing upon it, sits feeling, thinking, aspiring man. His consciousness is environed and conditioned by the surrounding world, but is utterly unexplained by it, wholly untranslatable in its terms. Definite and precise is the language of mathematics, of chemistry, of physical procedure. Mystery of mysteries is the human spirit,--mystery of mysteries and holy of holies. A new sense of the sacredness of human life has been born in this later age. It is our most precious acquisition. Better could we have waited for modern science than for modern humanity. Better could we spare the telegraph and the steam-engine and anaesthesia than that quickened sense of the value of man as man which inspires the deepest political and social movements of to-day. In all sober minds, in all lofty effort,--whatever there may be of despair of G.o.d or hopelessness of a personal future,--we see a profound recognition of the solemnity and sacredness of human existence. Through the sad pages of George Eliot, through Emerson's exultant psalm, through the reformer's battle, the socialist's scheme, runs this golden link,--the value of simple humanity.
This, then, we may say is the characteristic att.i.tude of the man of to-day,--before the processes of nature, awe and reverence; before the life of humanity, sympathy and tenderness.
But now rises a heart-moving question. The dearest article of religious faith has been a Divine Power, governing the universe and holding to man an intimate relation involving issues of supreme significance to humanity. At this point modern thought falters. The long-familiar expression of that belief is the a.s.sertion of a personal, providential, all-just, and all-loving G.o.d. What reason have men a.s.signed to themselves for belief in such a G.o.d, while confronted all the time by the fearful spectacle of a world in which sin and misery perpetually mingle with goodness and happiness? What has been the resource of the Christian intellect against that mystery of evil which baffled the questioner in the book of Job, and drove Lucretius to virtual atheism, and left Marcus Aurelius in doubt whether there be G.o.ds or not? The resource of the Christian thinker has been his belief that Jesus Christ was G.o.d incarnate. Here was a soul which was sinless and holy, which loved sinners so as to die for them; and this was G.o.d himself. That belief has been the foundation of Christian theology.
It left the mysteries of earth's sorrow and sin unexplained; but it offered the a.s.surance, under a most living figure, that the author and final disposer of the whole was one whose nature was love itself.
When it ceases to be believed that Jesus was G.o.d, the corner-stone of this whole structure of belief, as an intellectual conception, is gone.
The void is concealed for a while by intermediate theories,--that Jesus was a kind of inferior deity, that he was at least a supernatural messenger. Frankly say that he was a man only, and we have really given up that intellectual ground of confidence in a G.o.d on which for many centuries men have stood. And, in that involuntary and most regretful surrender, and in the first impression following it, that the only discernible order is a mechanical order, with no room for wors.h.i.+p, no hope of immortality, lies the tragedy of the thinking world to-day.
For a mult.i.tude of minds, G.o.d is eclipsed, and the earth lies in shadow. In shadow, but not in despair. For still there is
”The prophetic soul Of the wide world, dreaming of things to come.”
Slowly emerges a new conception. In the lowest depth of his spirit man has found that, in Robertson's words, ”it is better to be true than to be false, better to be pure than to be sensual, better to be brave than to be a coward.” By that sure and simple creed man lives through his darkest day. When the tree seems dead, that root lives. And presently there grows from it a n.o.bler tree.