Secularism, the religion of Nature, should teach our brethren that their highest physical and their highest moral welfare can be only conjointly attained, and that cramping misery stunts the soul, as well as the body of its victim. It should preach the solidarity of human interests which prevents the oppressor from enjoying the fruits of his inhumanity, and makes the curses of his dependents, nay, even the mute misery of his starving cattle, react on the happiness of a cruel master. It should expose the business methods of the humanitarians who propose to silence the clamors of their famished brethren with consecrated wafers and drafts on the bank of the New Jerusalem.
The Christian duty of transferring our love from our friends to our enemies may be one of those virtues that have to await their recompense in a mysterious hereafter, but natural humanity can hope to find its reward on this side of the grave. [[172]]
CHAPTER XIV.
FRIENDSHIP.
A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.
Philosophers of the utilitarian school have begun to reëstablish the long-forgotten truth that Materialism is the indispensable root of the plant which bears its flowers in spiritual aspirations. The consequence of universal practice is the best test of a dogma, and if all men were to divest themselves of their earthly possessions and devote their lives to the hyperphysical vagaries of the Galilean messiah, there would soon be neither crops to harvest nor bread to eat, and unworldly saints would starve as surely as ungodly sinners. “Ideality” may be the crown of the brain, as the brain is of the body, but the organs of the mind cannot dispense with the aid of the alimentary organs; the pinnacle of the social fabric needs intermediate supports. Education has to secure the welfare of the body before it can successfully cultivate the faculties of the mind; and it is not less certain that a man has to be a good patriot before he can be a worthy cosmopolitan, and a good friend before he can be a good patriot.
In the progress of individual development the instinct of friendship asserts itself at a very early period. Its recollection hallows the memory of the poorest childhood. The shepherd-boys of the upper Alps travel dozens of miles over cliffs and rocks to meet their friends at a salt-spring; on the shores of the Baltic the boys of the lonely fishermen’s cabins [[173]]frequent their trysting-places in spite of wind and weather. Early friendships throw the charm of their poetry even over the dreary prosa of grammar-school life; the fellowship of school-friends forever endears the scenes of their sports and rambles, and for many a poor office-drudge the recollection of such hours “holds all the light that shone on the earth for him.” True friendship smoothens the rough path of poverty, while friendlessness, even in the gilded halls of wealth, is almost a synonyme of cheerlessness:
Ich wüsste mir keine grössre Pein,