In Emerson, a soul inheriting centuries of Catholic and Puritan training, until obedience was its instinct and purity its native atmosphere,—a soul endowed with genius,—spread its wings and flew with the suddenness and joy of a young bird's first flight. He saw good everywhere, beauty everywhere, and was glad with the gladness of a seer and savior. He is one of those of whom he speaks, as belonging to a better world which is yet to come, and who touch us with a sense of a heaven on which we are just beginning to enter.
Though he professes an idealist philosophy, and that way of thinking can be traced in all his writings, he never makes of it a creed or dogma. His children are welcome to worship in the church which has lost its attraction for him. The skeptic may freely question immortality,—nay, Emerson himself sometimes feels uncertainty. The personal God, and man's personal immortality, which the idealist is wont to affirm as definite certainties, Emerson will not explicitly avow or define. Universal good, beauty, order,—these he sees, feels, is sure of. What form belongs to them, let each imagine as best he can. So free, so generous, so simply true is he that not only men of an idealist way of thinking, but all strong and high souls own impulse from him,—the scientist, the positivist, the churchman.
His distinctive note is not self-abnegation, but it is the note which with that makes a perfect harmony. Joy in God and self-sacrificing love are the two wings of the angelic life. Long have the preachers taught self-sacrifice,—now let one child of God sing the joy of God!
The latest chapter in the story of the higher life is the conception of man and the world which has grown up under the influence of modern science. The most original and effective expression of this philosophy is given by Herbert Spencer. What new light does the evolutionary philosophy throw on man's chief problem, the right conduct of his own life?
First, it defines with clearness two great forces which bear on the individual life, as Heredity and Environment. Next, it defines the ideal to be sought, by reaffirming in substance the familiar conception of human morality, showing its sanctions on purely natural grounds, and giving new applications and extensions of its principles. And finally, compared with the traditional theology, it leads to a new conception of the relation between man and the higher power, and necessitates, what Spencer does not supply, a new expression of the religious life.
The discovery of Darwin, supplying the final link to the growing proofs of the evolutionary development of man, opened an amazing panorama of the past history of the planet's inhabitants. The predecessors and successors of Darwin added to the panorama one after another scene of wonder. The standpoint of thought seemed wholly changed, and a readjustment necessary which threatened overthrow to all the old creeds and standards. Spencer, who has been the most successful in generalizing the new knowledge, comes back to the inquiry, By what law shall man guide his own conduct? His answer is substantially a reaffirmation of the principles which good men have acknowledged for many ages. Whatever else is changed, it remains true that justice, fidelity, chastity, honor, regard for others, are man's safest guides and his lawful rulers. Altruism is only a new word for the golden rule. But the advance of society has brought wider and finer applications: the claim of the whole community comes closer home; the principles which have been recognized within the church and the neighborhood must be carried on to reshape institutions, industries, the whole social organism.
The moral idea is thus reaffirmed and extended, but how can man attain that ideal? By using his free will, said the Stoic. By the grace of God obtained through prayer, said the Christian. Is man then free, or is he the passive creature of a greater power, and of what nature is that power? Now, where theologians have sought to define the Deity, and to conceive his government of his creatures in terms of a personal affection and will, scientists, contenting themselves with observation of facts, have shown that each man is what he is and does what he does partly because of what his parents and remoter ancestors were and did before him, and partly because of the forces of climate, institutions, education, companionship, event, which surround him from his birth to his grave. Heredity and Environment, these are
"the hands That reach through Nature, moulding Man."
It looks at first as if the old dispute between free will and necessity were settled at last, and man were indeed a creature of inscrutable fate. Yet, in the very act of acknowledging certain ideals of character as desirable, we become conscious of an impulse and initial effort—call it automatic or call it voluntary—toward attaining those ideals. As a matter of practice, we speedily recognize that both Heredity and Environment are in a degree under human control. If they are deities, they are accessible to prayers, the prayers which are watchfulness and obedience. Man is always at work to better the environment of himself and his fellows. As he sees more clearly that his true good is character and the noble self, he shapes his environment more intelligently and resolutely to that end. As to heredity, while the individual is powerless over his own lot, he is in a degree potential over those who are to succeed him. The conception of duty is enlarged by the obligations of marriage and parenthood, in a wise selection and thoughtful care for the future offspring.
Heredity and Environment, then, are partly the servants of man. Yet largely they are his lords and masters. In a degree, but only in a degree, do we make ourselves what we are. And while the degree of that self-determining power can never be known, we learn to be charitable toward others and exacting toward ourselves.