The Making of a Man

by James W. Lee

V.

We enter the world of humanity, which is the realm of morality, through the family. Here we open our eyes to the light, and here we have the first intimations of truth, which is provision for the intellect, and of righteousness, which is provision for the will. The truth of the family is the sum of the relations which subsist among the members of it. The family consists, we will say, of father and mother, and children. Here is a man and a woman, then, bound together by the relation of marriage. The children are related to the parents as offspring. The children are related to one another as brothers and sisters. Altogether they are one and they are many. There is unity and there is difference. In the relations implied in the names husband and wife, father and mother, parents and children, brothers and sisters, we have the truth of the family. We know the family and can only know the family through these relations. Take the relations away, and you take the family away. There cannot be a husband without a wife, a father without a mother, parents without children, and children without a father and a mother. Abiding in these relations, which make up the truth of the family, wrapt up with them and growing out of them, are the laws of right which the will is to obey. The relation of marriage is accompanied by certain obligations and duties which husband and wife are to observe. These obligations and duties are divine laws, because marriage is a divine relation. The relations involved in the term parents, are attended by certain necessary laws the father and the mother are to observe with reference to children. The names of child, brother, sister, imply relations that in turn imply laws the child is to follow with reference to parents, and brothers and sisters are to regard with reference to one another. These laws, which grow out of the relations which constitute the family, are not arbitrary, artificial, or accidental. They have not been formed by the opinions of men, nor formulated in the legislative assemblies of men. Legislative bodies have, perhaps, confirmed them and reproduced them in statutes, but this was not to create, but to transcribe what was already present. The laws with reference to which the members of a family find themselves placed are as essential and constitutional as the laws governing natural objects, which we define when we say bodies attract each other in proportion to their mass and inversely as the squares of their distance. These are subtle and invisible principles which cannot be read out of rocks and logs and moons and suns. Displace rocks and logs and suns and moons, and the apparent power of these laws would not be seen, but upon the appearance of the natural objects, they would be immediately grasped and dominated by the power of the laws.

We pass from the family into the school. Here again we find laws already laid for the will to follow. They grow out of the truth, constitutive of the school, and this truth is made up of the relations subsisting among the members of the school. There are teachers, whose duty it is to control and to instruct. There are children, whose duty it is to learn and obey. The school is an institution, the object of which is to lead young minds into a knowledge of the earth, its continents, seas, rivers, and mountains; into a knowledge of language, its structure, uses, and the meaning of its terms; into a knowledge of humanity, its races, governments, and religions. If children are to share in the benefits of the object for which the school is established, they must observe the laws which inhere in the very constitution of it.

They must obey the teacher, they must study the books, they must be polite, forbearing and kind to one another. It often happens that a child enters the school and refuses to follow the laws that reside in the structure and purpose of the school. He is willful and conceited, and thinks his own way better than the necessary and essential way ordained for him. He has the same sort of experience the engineer has who attempts to run his engine from the turntable, without reference to the railway lines laid for it. There is friction and trouble. Various methods of punishment are resorted to with the view to get his will to move along the lines laid for it. If rebuke and punishment fail, then he is turned out, to attempt the stupid and insane experiment of getting himself through the world without reference to the laws fixed for his will to obey. Of course he does not go far. He turns up sooner or later in the jail, the hospital, the penitentiary, or the poorhouse.

Leaving the school, we find ourselves citizens of the state, members of society. But we do not go into society like an ax-man in a frontier forest to clear a place for his house, his fence, and his field. Methods of conduct are already prescribed, lines of action are already fixed, and the laws which claim our obedience are already formulated. Society is an organism of mutually dependent members; the object of it is the equity of all, the welfare of all, and the liberty of all. Equity, liberty, welfare do not come by accident. Men cannot reach them out of touch and contact with one another. They are only possible to men living together, and only possible in conformity with certain conditions, and in the observance of certain laws. These laws lie folded in the nature of men as social beings. They are fundamental, and Aristotle saw them when he said, “man is by nature a political animal.” The germs of government and law are in the depths of every man’s being, as the germs of the oak are in the acorn. Wise men, living in society, have seen the truth of society, made up of the relations subsisting among people living together. Accompanying these relations, and counterparts of them, they have discovered the laws necessary to insure the equity, liberty, and welfare of all. These laws have been embodied in constitutions, enactments, and statutes. To carry out these laws and to make them prevail, certain institutions have been established, a body of men whose duty it is to execute the laws, a Judiciary, whose duty it is to interpret and expound the laws, and a legislative body, whose duty it is to repeal old laws that did not work well, and to frame new laws to meet the exigencies of new conditions. To protect the rights of all, certain penalties have been made to accompany the violations of laws. To make these penalties real, and to inflict them upon the proper parties, courts and jails and penitentiaries have been established.

So we see, as the acorn cannot grow without appropriating the elements already prepared for it in the soil and the sky; and as the carbon cannot burn without laying hold of the oxygen already existing for it in the atmosphere of the room; and as the fish cannot swim without utilizing the water already adjusted to its fins; so man cannot fill out the possibilities of his being without obeying the laws he finds already ordained for his will, when he comes into the world. These laws converge about his will in the home where he first sees the light, and are always deducible from the particular relations in which, at any time, his moral life is placed. They are as real as the laws of heat and motion and gravity. They run out from the home through the school, and from the school through all the continents of the social realm. They grow out of the truth of the facts of the family, the school, and society. They are as fundamental, necessary, and divine as the family, the school, and society. By observing them, man is able to turn into his character the tenderness of the home, the learning of the school, and the resources of society.