If we rise into larger fields, we shall find more notable demonstration of the starving effect of the entertainment of a single idea. Scattered throughout the country we shall find men who have devoted themselves to the cause of temperance, or abstinence from intoxicating liquors. Here is a grand, a humane, a most worthy and important cause; yet temperance as an idea is not enough to furnish food for a human soul. Some of these men have only room in them for one idea, and, so far as they are concerned, it might as well be temperance as any thing, though it is bad for the cause; but the majority of them were, at starting, men of generous instincts, a quick sense of that which is pure and true, and a genuine love of mankind. They dwelt upon their idea—they lived upon it for a few years—and then they "showed their keeping." If I should wish to find a narrow-minded, uncharitable, bigoted soul, in the smallest possible space of time, I would look among those who have made temperance the specialty of their lives—not because temperance is bad, but because one idea is bad; and the men afflicted by this particular idea are numerous and notorious. They have no faith in any man who does not believe exactly as they do. They accuse every man of unworthy motives who opposes them. They permit no liberty of individual judgment and no range of opinion; and when they get a chance, they drive legislation into the most absurd and harmful extremes. Men of one idea are always extremists, and extremists are always nuisances. I might truthfully add that an extremist is never a man of sound mind.
The whole tribe of professional agitators and miscalled reformers are men of one idea. That these men do good, sometimes directly and frequently indirectly, I do not deny; and it is equally evident that they do a great deal of harm, the worst of which, perhaps, falls upon themselves. Like the charge of a cannon, they do damage to an enemy's fortifications, but they burn up the powder there is in them, and lose the ball. Like blind old Samson, they may prostrate the pillars of a great wrong, but they crush themselves and the Philistines together. The greatest and truest reformer that ever lived was Jesus Christ; but ah! the difference between his broad aims, universal sympathies, and overflowing love, and the malignant spirit that moves those who angrily beat themselves to death against an instituted wrong! As an illustration, look at those who have been the prominent agitators of the slavery question in this country for the last twenty years. Are they men of charity? Are they Christian men? Is not invective the chosen and accustomed language of their lips? Do they not follow those against whom they have opposed themselves, whether for good cause or otherwise, into their graves with a fiendish lust of cruelty, and do they not delight to trample upon great names and sacred memories? Are they men whom we love? Do we feel attracted to their society? Teachers of toleration, are they not the most intolerant of all men living? Denouncers of bigotry, are they not the most fiercely bigoted of any men we know? Preachers of love and good will to men, do they not use more forcibly than any other class the power of words to wound and poison human sensibilities?
It is not the quality of the idea which a man entertains that kills him. Freedom for every creature that bears God's image—the breaking of the rod of the oppressor and letting the oppressed go free—this is a good idea. It is so great, so broad, so full, so flowing, that a world of men might gather around it for a time as they do around Niagara, and grow divine in its majestic music and the vision of the wreath of light which heaven holds above it. If a man undertake to live upon a single idea, it really makes very little difference to him whether that idea be a good or a bad one. A man may as well get scurvy on beans as beef. I suppose a diet of potatoes would be quite as likely to support life comfortably as a diet of peaches. It is because the human soul cannot live upon one thing alone, but demands participation in every expression of the life of God, that it will dwarf and starve upon even the grandest and most divine idea.
The agitators and reformers are very ready to see the dwarfing effect of a single idea or a single range of ideas upon the Christian ministry, and a large number of Christian men. I admit the accuracy of their observations in this matter, and, admitting this, I can certainly ask the question whether they hope to escape depreciation when the Christian idea—the divinest of all—-is insufficient of itself to make a man, and fill him, and give him all desirable health and wealth and growth. As I have touched upon this point, I may say that it is coming to be understood that a man or a minister, in order to be a Christian, must be something else—that Christianity received into nature and life is only one of the elements of manhood—and that a man may become starved and mean and bigoted and essentially insane by feeding exclusively upon religion. What means the vision of these sapless, sad, and sanctimonious Christians—these poor, thin, stingy lives—but that all ideas save the religious one have been shut out from them? Is it not notorious that a minister who has fed exclusively upon religion is a man without power upon the hearts and minds of men? Is it not true that he has most efficiency in pulpit ministration who has the largest knowledge of and sympathy with men, the broadest culture, and the widest acquaintance with all the ideas that enter as food and motive into human life? Is it not true that in the life-long, absorbing anxiety and carefulness of a multitude of souls to secure their salvation, those souls are constantly becoming less valuable, and thus—to use the language of the market—less worth saving?
I cannot fail, however unwilling, to see much that is dry and stiff and unlovely in the style of Christianity around me. It has no attraction for me. I do not like the people who illustrate it; and the reason is, not that they have got too much of Christianity, but that they have not got enough of any thing else. Flour is good, but flour is not bread. If I am to eat flour, I must eat it as bread; and either milk or water must be used to make it bread. If a little milk is used, the bread will be dry and heavy and hard. If a good deal is used, the flour will be transformed into a soft and plastic mass, which will rise in the heat, and come to my lips a sweet and fragrant morsel. Christianity is good, but it wants mixing with humanity before it will have a practical value. If only a little humanity be mixed with it, the product will be dry and tasteless; but if it be combined with the real milk of humanity, and enough of it, the result will be a loaf fit for the tongues of angels. No: the divinest idea that has yet been apprehended by the human mind is not enough for the human mind. That which God made to be fed by various food cannot be fed with success or safety by a single element. We cannot build a house of dry bricks. It takes lime and sand and water in their proper proportions to hold the bricks together.
This selection of a single idea from the great world of ideas to which the mind is vitally related, and making it food and drink, and motive and pivotal point of action, and supreme object of devotion, is mental and moral suicide. It makes that a despotic king which should be a tributary subject. It enslaves the soul to a base partisanship. It is right to make money, and it is right to be rich when wealth is won legitimately; but when money becomes the supreme object of a man's life, the soul starves as rapidly as the coffers are filled. It is right to be a temperance man and an anti-slavery man, and an advocate of any special Christian reform; but the effect of adopting any one of these reforms as the supreme object of a man's pursuit, never fails to belittle him. One of the most pitiable objects the world contains is a man of generous natural impulses grown sour, impatient, bitter, abusive, uncharitable, and ungracious, by devotion to one idea, and the failure to impress it upon the world with the strength by which it possesses himself. Many of these fondly hug the delusion to themselves that they are martyrs, when, in fact, they are only suicides. Many of these look forward to the day when posterity will canonize them, and lift them to the glory of those who were not received by their age because they were in advance of their age. So they regard with contempt the pigmy world, wrap the mantles of their mortified pride about them, and lie down in a delusive dream of immortality.
Whether the effect of devotion to a single idea be disastrous or otherwise to the devotees, nothing in all history is better proved—nothing in all philosophy is more clearly demonstrable— than the fact that it is a damage to the idea. If I wished to disgust a community with any special idea, I would set a man talking about it and advocating it who would talk of nothing else. If I wished to ruin a cause utterly, I would submit it to the advocacy of one who would thrust it into every man's face, who would make every other cause subordinate to it, who would refuse to see any objections to it, who would accuse all opponents of unworthy motives, and who would thus exhibit his absolute slavery to it. Men have an instinct which tells them that such people as these are not trustworthy—that their sentiments and opinions are as valueless as those of children. If they talk with a pleasant spirit, we good-naturedly tolerate them; if they rant and scold and denounce, we hiss them if we think it worth while, or we applaud them as we would the feats of a dancing bear. If they say devilish things in a heavenly sort of way, and clothe their black malignities in silken phrases, we hear them with a certain kind of pleasure, and take our revenge in despising them, and feeling malicious towards the cause they advocate. It would kill us to drink Cologne water, but the perfume titillates the sense, and so we sprinkle it upon our handkerchiefs.
No great cause can be forwarded by the advocacy of men who have no character, and no man can devote himself to an idea without the loss of character. When a man comes forward to promulgate an idea, we inquire into his credentials. How large a man is this? How broad are his sympathies? How wide is his knowledge? What relation does he bear to the great world of ideas among which this is only one, and very likely a comparatively unimportant one? Is he so weak as to be possessed by this idea, or does he possess it, and entertain a rational comprehension of its relations to himself and the community? I know that multitudes of good men have been so disgusted with the one-sided, partisan character of the advocates of special ideas and special reforms, that they would have no association with them. We have only to learn that a man can see nothing but his pet idea, and is really in its possession, to lose all confidence in his judgment. When in a court of justice a man testifies upon a point that touches his personal interests or feelings or relations, we say that his testimony is not valuable—not reliable. It decides nothing for us. We say that the evidence does not come from the proper source. We do not expect candor from him, for we perceive that his interests are too deeply involved to allow sound judgment and utterly truthful expression. It is precisely thus with all professional agitators and reformers—all devotees of single ideas. They are personally so intimately connected with their idea—have been so enslaved by their idea—are so interested in its prosperity—-that they are not competent to testify with relation to it.