I felt a world arise for me.”
I sat on the veranda at my home at the close of a beautiful day. The western glow was fading into a faint rose color. The pine trees on the neighboring mountain top stood out in magnified distinctness against the bright background. A bird in a near tree sang its good-night song. Just over the mountain peak a star shone out like a diamond set in pale gold. The great earth silently turned and hid the star behind the pines. The ragged outline of mountains loomed up with weird effect. The breeze freshened and waved the branches of the elms gracefully in broader curves; it seemed to come down from the heights as if with a message. It was a time for meditation. My thoughts turned for a hundredth time to the significance of the higher emotional effects in the presence of natural beauty and sublimity, and in the contemplation of exalted æsthetic and ethical conceptions.
When the hand of nature touches the chords of the human heart, may we not believe that the hand and the harp are of divine origin, and that the music produced is heavenly? I mean that the human soul with all its refinement of emotion is not material, but spiritual and Godlike; that it has written upon it a sacred message, an assurance not of earth that its destiny is boundless in time and possibility—a message profound in its meaning as the unsearchable depth of God’s being.
All human institutions are progressive. Each stage of civilization is complete in itself, but preparatory to another and higher stage. Liberty, the art idea, the religious idea develop more and more as men realize in consciousness higher truths and standards. From the art that found expression in the cromlechs of the Druids to the highest embodiment of spiritual ideas, from crude faith to philosophic and religious insight, from rude mechanism to magnificence of structure and invention—such has been history, such, we believe, will be history. No wonder Carlyle exclaims: “Is not man’s history and men’s history a perpetual Evangel?”—an announcement of glad tidings?
It is in this philosophy that the hope of the solution of many present problems is found. In mediæval times the feudal system was the reconciliation of the opposing interests of men in a unity of service and protection. Later new conflicts arose which resulted in freedom for all classes. To-day opposition has grown from the selfish interests of capital and labor, and we believe the reconciliation will be found in a unity which will equitably combine the interests of both. Change is the law. The phœnix, ever rising from its own ashes, is stronger in pinion and more daring in flight.
Plato held to the doctrine of ideas, of eternal verities, the archetypes of all forms of existence, and believed growth in wisdom to be a gradual realization of these ideas in consciousness. Modern Platonism makes man a part of the Divine Being, with power to progress in knowledge of truth and in moral insight. This progress aims at an ultimate end that is both a realization and a reward. This view explains our nature and aspirations, our intuitive notions and sense of right; it explains the seeming providence that runs through history and makes all things work together for good; it explains that harmony of the soul with nature that constitutes divine music; it explains the insight of the poet and the faith of man. Any new theory must be a continuation of the past instead of standing in contradiction to it, must reveal the deeper meaning of old truth. The spiritual truths that belong to the history of man must be included in the new philosophy. Theories must explain in accordance with common sense, and make harmony, not discord, in our intellectual, æsthetic, and moral feelings.
“For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
“But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.