The Making of a Man

by James W. Lee

We wish to determine the principle in accordance with which the production and distribution of food, shelter, and clothing are to be regulated. These forms of value are embodiments of social energy, generated through relations formed above nature by intelligence and volition. In nature, then, we are not to find the law that is to regulate them.

Bees build their cells, and birds their nests, and beavers their dams, not by intelligence and will, called into existence after birth through companionship, but by what is in-wrought into the very fibers of their being irrespective of companionship. Birds, bees, and beavers have been in the world thousands of years, yet the first bird, bee, or beaver ever created had as much sense as the last. A single bee has as much sense as all the bees in the world put together. Among all lower animals each individual inherits the sense of the species. Hence the law “of the struggle for existence,” resulting in “the survival of the fittest,” said to be a regulating principle in the plant and animal kingdoms, is not severe, regarded with reference to the individuals which inhabit them. But to regard the operations of this law as beneficent upon the plane of human life, as does Mr. Spencer, is altogether to overlook the obligations men are under to one another, because of their mutual relations. The life of each man, it must be remembered, in so far as it is above that of the unrelated savage, is contained in the life of every other man. In so far as it is comfortable, intelligent, and free, it has been brought to him, and made over to him by his fellow-man. The law which is to determine the regulation of the elements of commerce, which are but expressions of the energy arising through mutual human relations, must be as elevated as the relations which commerce begets, and which in turn make commerce possible.

We must not go down among the tigers and the hyenas, who owe nothing but bare birth to companionship, where the principle of “the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence” does prevail, to get the law which is to regulate the production and distribution of products possible only through companionship. Each individual, be he weak or strong, has contributed something to the social body. The strength of the one may have contributed courage, the weakness of the other may have called forth pity; but both pity and courage are virtues possible only in relation. A regulating principle that kills off the feeble ones, and drives the weak ones to the wall, may do for brutes, who owe nothing to relationships; but not for men, who owe everything to them. The attempt to regulate forms of value in accordance with the law of “the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence” does not have sufficient regard for the contribution each individual has made, by the very fact of his existence, to make these values possible. The leading political economists of the times have come to see that the law of extreme individualism, of “every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost,” must be substituted by some more beneficent principle—by some law that pays more respect to the methods by which values have been created.

The province of commerce, as an institution, is to bring men together, not merely that the boundaries of commerce may be extended and its volume increased, but that men may learn the mutual obligations they are under to one another, that their sympathy for one another may be enlarged, and that respect for one another may be engendered.

It is only in an atmosphere of mutual trust, sympathy, and respect that men can grow.

The need for bread, for protection, for raiment, prompts men to the exchange of products, that each may share into the work of all. But in the process of exchanging products, relations are established, through the influence and power of which an order of man comes the mere material comforts of life cannot supply. The significance of commerce, then, is not understood, if it is considered simply with reference to its immediate ends. These ends are met when men are supplied with the material comforts of life. Ends, however, are mediated through it of a kind different in order and degree. These we consider the essential and ultimate ends of the relations which are established through the exchange of products. What, then, is the ultimate end and object of human relations? It is man. Man come to himself, conscious of himself, in possession of himself. It is human life, enriched, perfected, completed. It is man, strong, free, holy. It is man, not lost in the social texture, nor swamped in the social organism; but, finding his individuality and his peculiar, natural, simple self through them. The marvelous fabric the social loom was set to weaving is man. The highest end of social relations is a self-conscious, self-determining man, thinking the true, willing the right, loving the good. These relations constitute the organism out of which alone he can be born into symmetrical, well rounded life.

The lower animals come from natural birth into the world entire and complete. The young eaglet is correlated to the sky before he leaves the egg. But man moves on a plane lower than the brutes, if he is not caught at birth and carried by relation to his proper place. As man is the highest product of social relations, it follows that the highest product is the ultimate product.

An apple tree may be used for fire wood, or sawn into planks, but apples are the ultimate reasons for the existence of the apple tree. Toward an apple the germ started when it burst the sod and stood a little sprig above the ground. Beyond the apple, the tree goes no further. It throws its roots into the earth and its branches into the atmosphere, and perpetually acts and reacts upon its environment, but all for the purpose of turning soil, and sunshine, and rain into apples.

As we have seen, a part of the social energy arising through mutual human relations is to be converted into language, values, literature, morality, and religion, as a part of the capital invested in a sewing machine factory goes into tools. But man is greater than language, values, literature, morality, or religion; as the sewing machine is greater than the tools by which it is made. Human relations create language, values, art, morality, and religion, that they may be used to advance and perfect the main work they were ordained to perform, “the making of a man.”

When the people of a nation come to regard the elements of wealth, literature, art, or even religion, as ends to be enjoyed rather than as means to make man, they have missed the purpose of creation, and wander amid the mazes of stupidity and blindness.