The Making of a Man

by James W. Lee

V.

What is the correlate to the social side of man’s nature? Where is the domain that matches it? Where is the vast realm, large enough to furnish sufficient scope for all the possibilities which seem to lie folded within it? A study of the eye reveals the fact that the light of the sun is necessary to furnish an element wide and ethereal enough for the exercise of its functions. By a study of the ear, we learn that it is related to sound with all its possibilities of harmony. The fin of the fish is related to the waters of the sea. The bird’s wing is a prophecy of the sky. The migrating instinct of the wild goose is related to the South, with its soft skies and balmy air.

In the calculations of Adams, in England, and of Leverrier, in France, the perturbations of the planet Uranus were in correspondence with the planet Neptune.

On the side of himself as individual, as we have seen, man is related to the earth with all it contains to satisfy the needs of the body. We wish also to determine the nature and dimensions of the sphere to which he is related as social.

We have seen that, even within national boundaries, human life comes to be fertile in great men, great deeds, and great art, when the expression of it is social, rather than individual. With such disposition of her national life force, Greece reached an unparalleled height of grandeur and influence. But all outside of Greece were esteemed as barbarians. The barbarian hordes around her state were like so many walls, which kept the waves of national life from passing out into any world-wide sea. The limits were soon reached, then the waves receded, to be thrown back again in quick succession against the encompassing walls. Was this not in violation of the law and nature of the expression which the social side of man, by its very structure, is inclined to give of itself? Is it not, by its nature, disposed to pass out in accordance with moral laws, which have no boundaries and limits? And were not the walls they permitted their hate to build of the barbarians on the outside to arrest the outward flow of their national life, the evidence of a tacit treaty with their selfishness? Did these not, after all, bear witness to a hampered and halted surrender to the nobler side of their nature? Did they not show that the Greeks were only willing to give social expression to their national life, as far as the boundary lines of Achai? Too noble to permit the emphasis to rest on the individual side of her people, as separate members of the state, she lifted narrowness and selfishness into greater place by giving them national form.

Too great of breadth to be individually selfish, she was not great enough to be nationally unselfish. The individual sides of themselves her people sacrificed on the altars of the state to her national unity, she transmuted into contempt and hatred of other nations. Selfishness only passed from the individual to the state. Retained by the state, it worked itself back into the individuals again, when the unity of the state was disintegrated. Do we not have in the limitations which Greece attempted to put on the expression which the social nature of man would give of itself, the real secret of their downfall? If, while giving even limited social expression to her national life, Greece developed a civilization so rich, how much greater might have been her contribution to human progress had not the seeds of disintegration been sown among her people through national enmity and hate. In the two hundred years which embraced the most fertile portion of her history she laid the foundation of thought. But it was only through thought that she sought to solve the problems of life and destiny.

The social life of the Jews found only limited expression for itself. It was worked out into religious lines that were unlimited and all embracing, but this was in spite of their prejudices.

Their compact social life, the vast depth and vigor of their social vitality, the tenacity with which they clung together, made it possible for them to lay the foundation of a religion and an ethics larger than they dreamed. Their scriptures, their prophets, and their saints were not possible in a soil less socially rich.

Their devotion, their loyalty, their voluntary subordination of private to public interests, their religious fidelity fitted them to become the children of God. The summit of civilization they reached enabled them to see and to transcribe the outlines of the kingdom of heaven. They ascended high enough the mount of being to recognize the laws necessary to regulate human conduct. But they permitted their narrowness and prejudice to build of the Gentiles about them, walls to limit the outflow of their national life. Hate for the unfortunate people without, could not be without its influence on the lives of those within.

The selfishness which, as a nation, they cherished toward other people, reproduced itself at length in their own lives. From the children of God they descended until they became the children of the devil. The visions of their nobler men were discounted and despised. The selfishness that put them against the Gentiles, finally put them against one another; and while they kept together in a certain sense, in spite of the upper and nether mill stones of history, it was rather in memory of what they had been, than of what they were.

In the civilization of Rome, again, limitations were put on the expression of the social side of man’s nature. Within the precincts of Rome, under her eagles and within her roads, there was a sinking of the individual and an expression of the social side, that has been rarely equaled in history. It was this merging of the individual units into the social whole of Rome, that made it possible for her to formulate the legal measures and provisions which continue to protect human life and property. But sacrifice, companionship, social cohesion on the inside, could not, for many centuries, be accompanied with fierce opposition and cruel hate for others on the outside. It was inevitable that sooner or later the disposition on the outside would get distributed among the individuals on the inside.