The Making of a Man

by James W. Lee

CHAPTER I.
THE PROVISION FOR THE PHYSICAL NATURE OF MAN.

In the form of bread, using the term in a wide generic sense, matter passes into the service of man on the plane of human life. By regular steps it is lifted and refined and adjusted to correspondence with human need and comfort. In its raw and individual state, it is controlled by physical force. From this crude condition it is carried by chemical force to the order of the mineral kingdom. From this plane, it passes up through the agency of vital force to the vegetable kingdom. Through the power of vital force of a higher kind, it is advanced to the animal kingdom. Here it is ready for man, and yields itself to the uses of his life. From the time that vital force enters the realm of nature, a process of assimilation begins. The plant assimilates the mineral, the animal assimilates the plant, and man assimilates the animal. Through regular gradations, matter passes up from the bottom of nature into the service of man, who stands at the top. With each move upward it gets associated with force of a higher kind. With each advance its range gets wider and its movements freer. In the form of bread, it is sufficiently refined and sublimated to be appropriated and utilized for food, for shelter, for raiment, by the immortal spirit of man. The necessity for food, for clothing, for shelter, creates commerce, and commerce accomplishes results far more important than the production and distribution of the temporal necessities of human life. It brings men together; it establishes relations. It is the wonderful institution which, early in the history of the race, began as a loom to catch up the separate threads of individual life, to weave them into that marvelous fabric called humanity. Ends of an infinitely higher order are realized by the production and exchange of the elements of trade, than the satisfying of hunger with bread, or the furnishing man with clothing and shelter. The higher ends are the essential and ordained ends. That we may understand what an important part the necessity for food has played in the progress of man, it will be well to consider the significance of the relations it first helped to establish.

I.

All power whatever, that distinguishes man from the brute, that in any respect contributes to his commercial, mental, moral, or human value, is due to union, relation, action and interaction among individuals. In nature we may find illustrations of this truth. Sound, electricity, heat, and light, are forms of force which owe their existence to action, relation, interaction among material particles. They would never arise in a universe of unrelated elements. Their difference is due, not to the vibration of different elements, but to different rates of vibration among the same elements. Consequent upon certain terms of formal and quiet social intercourse among the molecules, there is sound. When they intermingle more actively and intimately, there is electricity. With a slight change in the method, but no decrease in the velocity with which they move, there is heat. When they go at the top of their speed, waltzing and swinging corners at an unthinkable rate, there is light. From varying relations and actions among material particles, we get the music which charms us, the means of communication which unite us, the power to do work which serves us, and the beauty which refines us. The unceasing play of these simple unseen elements made the fame of Beethoven, who threw their vibrations into symphonies; and of Morse, who utilized their speed to carry the news; and of Watt, who hitched their radiations to the flying train; and of Daguerre, who put their undulations to painting pictures. All forms of physical force may be traced to the union, relation, and vibration of material particles. The distance from atoms to men is well-nigh infinite, but the points of resemblance between the genesis of physical force and the genesis of social force are sufficiently striking to make it permissible to trace the analogy between them. By social force is understood all those forms of energy which men find themselves to possess by virtue of their relations to one another in organized social life.

Commerce insures the union, and brings about the relations that make this force possible. It furnishes the conditions without which it could not be.

A self-contained, self-included, insulated person does carry within the depths of his being the organs of the civilized man, but they are as completely out of sight and out of use as the harvests that sleep within the kernels of the mummy wheat. If it were possible for an individual to come to years of maturity, out of relations with his fellows, he would be more destitute than a brute. Such an one, growing up in the woods or on an island, with no associates but the squirrels and the birds, would not have the personal furnishments of the monkey or the fox.

We can understand, too, by considering what man owes to his relations, how widely and completely he is separated from the lower animals. A thousand blackbirds, living together in relation, are not different from a thousand blackbirds living apart and out of relation. A squirrel gains no element of squirrelhood by companionship, and loses no element of it in isolation. He may be taken from his nest as soon as he is born and never be permitted to see another squirrel, but he will be just as much of a squirrel, and know as well how to get the meat out of a nut, as if free in the forests with others of his kind. A mocking bird comes to the power of song as well in a cage, separated from other birds, as when fed and trained in the orchard by the mother-bird. The chords in his throat were set to music, and without teacher or praise, at a certain period of his growth, his song will ring through the house.

The difference between a man brought up in some lone woods, out of all relation with men, and one brought up in a civilized community, is infinite. The lower animals get all they ever get by birth. No new gifts or powers come to them through companionship. They go unerringly to a certain destined end, whether they move in flocks or herds, or alone as individuals. Men, on the other hand, find themselves by coming together. Their organs sleep till waked by relation. By birth they can get nothing but the germs, the mere naked elements of what they are to become. Birth would be no blessing, but a deepening curse, but for what comes to the child through relation. Birthright alone is not worth a mess of pottage. Men often congratulate themselves on what they are pleased to term their individual rights and personal freedom. While men do have individual rights and personal freedom, it is always to be remembered that these belong to them because of the relations woven around them by the institutions of social life. The civilized man differs more from the savage, than the savage differs from the highest animal. Yet the lowest savage is infinitely removed from the highest animal, but solely in the possession of the germs of the attainments and the accomplishments which may be provoked and maintained by relation. Society alone furnishes the soil in which these germs can grow. The savage, alone in the woods, might secure for himself a covering of skins, but the cloth in which the civilized man clothes himself is possible only in social relations.

With the commencement of human relations, the outlines of an absolutely new world come into view. Dim and vague at the outset, as the relations are simple and low. But as these increase in number, range, and degree, not only the outlines, but the far-reaching surface, the mountains, the rivers, the products, the sky, and the climate of a new world stand out clear, definite, and unmistakable. This new realm we name civilization. It is super-imposed upon the physical world, but is as distinct from it as thought from the molecules of the brain. Nature furnishes the basis, but social relations furnish the conditions of the human energy that has lifted itself into the mighty edifice we call civilization.