The Making of a Man

by James W. Lee

II.

Yet this limited and unlimited self; transitory, perishable, and finite on the one side; everlasting, imperishable, and infinite on the other, are bound together in the same person. The fall of the one is accompanied by the descent of the other, and the rise of the one is accompanied by the ascent of the other. Their union involves perpetual conflict, and there waits on the turn of the battle, the depression of remorse, or the exultation of triumph.

On the individual side of himself, man would take up with the present, the immediate, with that which allures the sense, and, with unholy incense, regales the imagination. On the social side of himself, he would despise the immediate, and give the casting vote in favor of the unbiased, immeasurable good. In such a being as man, conflict were inevitable. With a horizon measured by the edge of the plain where he stands on the one side, and a horizon melting into the infinite star depths on the other, it were but to be expected that a contest would arise between the larger and the lesser outlook. On the one side, he would possess the field, concentrate his attention upon its grasses and its fruits, and lose himself in its products. On the other, he would go forth to see where the stars are, to consider the sources of their light, and to travel with them along their silent paths. With a view measured by the hour that shuts him round on the one side, and with a view measured by the organic pulsations of the world on the other; the question would be, whether to give himself to the immediate pleasures of the hour; or to elongate the pendulum of his timepiece till it should embrace the ages, and regulate his life by an eternal measure. With appetites on one side, clamoring for the things in sight, and with conscience on the other, calling for harmony with things high and remote; the question would be, whether to give the consent of the will to the demand of the appetites, or to the appeal of the conscience.

III.

Knowing the side of himself of which a man takes counsel—the individual, or the social—you are prepared to fix his grade in the scale of being. The difference between Benedict Arnold and George Washington was just this: in the case of the one the individual side was dominant; in the case of the other the social side held sway. This is the difference between the miser, despised of all, and the philanthropist, honored of all. This is the difference between the debauche and the saint, between the man who lives for his God and his race, and the man who pours himself out on his lust and his passion. If the promptings of the individual side of man’s nature are to be distrusted and watched, while liberal and unstinted recognition is to be given to the social side, it is well to inquire into the meaning and office of this larger fact of his life.

Let it be granted that on the individual side of himself man has no kingdom of his own, no department of his own, no privileged class of his own, and no titled order of his own. Let this side of him be left to the naturalist, to be classed with the vertebrates, the mammals, or the primates. But what conclusion are we to reach concerning the social side of himself, that has found embodiment in that vast and complicated movement we call civilization? Through this age-long historic process man has been seeking to realize the capacities of his larger nature. Like a magnificent temple, civilization has been rising through the centuries. Its walls have silently come up from the earth, like Solomon’s Temple, without clink of trowel or sound of hammer. It is built of granite, cut from the Gethsemanes of history. Leonidas and his brave three hundred at the pass of Thermopylæ carved some of the blocks of this great edifice, into whose walls men have gone down as the living stones. The brave Britons, at the waters of Solway, lifted to place some of the richly foliaged pillars that stand upon its floors. William the Silent, while organizing the forces and achieving the victories of the Netherlands, was at the same time turning some of its arches and resting in place some of its architraves. The Martyrs, who went to undying fame and honor through fires of Smithfield, furnish themes for the music which resounds through its corridors. It is the triumph of the social nature of man, and stands upon the soil which has been made by the crumbling dust of all generations of brave men. Its pinnacles and towers pierce the skies, and declare to the immeasurable heights, the force, the faith, the sentiment, and the love of man. It defies the elements of disintegration and change, and around the tops of its lofty pillars there cluster the buds of eternal spring. The gigantic trunks, whose arched branches support the roof of this great structure, express themselves in never withering flowers, and, where the boughs interlace at the summit of the arches, there comes the light of heaven to color and illumine. Yet within its doors we are in no forest of stone, where thoughts of men have been chiseled into semblance with the trees. Its foundations are built of convictions, its pillars of hope, its vaulting of lofty purpose, and its windows of faith. Its cement is the blood of suffering, and its decoration the loves of heroes. It is the edifice man has built in which to house the social side of his nature. It contains and will conserve all contributions ever made to human weal.

In walking the streets of Rome, one has a strange and melancholy sense of the traditions and memories which cluster about every ruin and every spot. But around the myriad facts and forces of civilization there hang associations more pathetic still. Here we walk, not amid the ruins of the past, but amid the achievements, the victories, and the glories of the past. Achievements, victories, and glories not associated with broken columns, defaced monuments and moldering ruins, but with the laws and institutions of living men. We have here, in ten thousand embodied forms, the travails of the souls of our fathers. Their spirits live in the words we use, their consciences bind in the laws we observe, their visions bless in the pictures we see, and their devotion sanctifies in the religion we love. All the blood ever shed in sacrifice, all the eloquence that ever thrilled senates and peoples in defense of the right, all the protests ever in silence felt or in public uttered against the wrong, are here held in everlasting form.

Are we to regard civilization, the manifold and complicated sum in which man’s social nature has expressed itself, as nothing more than a natural product? Are we to account for this by the same physical principles in accordance with which the bee builds his cell, the monkey hangs his bridge, and the beaver erects his dam? Does this stately projection of man’s social nature mean no more than some lofty Alpine Matterhorn, pushed into the heavens by the unconscious fires in the earth’s bosom? Is this only like some mighty Giants’ Causeway, lifted up by the same physical forces and by the same natural processes? If this is so, why is it that when we turn away from civilization as a whole, to view it in some of its national forms, we see the spiritual ups and downs of history in such striking contrast with the uniform face which nature wears? If the radiant civilization of Greece, that filled the earth with the eloquence of thought and the melody of song, with the Republic of Plato and the Ethics of Aristotle, that clothed itself in the Parthenon of Phidias and the Iliad of Homer, was as natural among the nations as the uprising of Gibraltar among the mountains, why is it that Gibraltar still stands as the solemn sentinel of the Ocean and the Sea, while the civilization of Greece is but a memory of the past? The same sky and earth, and Mar’s Hill are there. Around her classic coast there still murmurs the same heaving sea. But while ships may still sail to Gibraltar, never more can they draw up to the Piræus of worthy representatives of Plato and Aristotle. Not again do men, with noble brows, deep eyes, and never dying thought, look into the Ægean from that memorable meeting place of the world’s ships.

If the history of Israel, from the time of Abraham to the coming of John the Baptist, was but a natural product, as easy to be accounted for as the mountains round about Jerusalem; why is it that the mountains still encompass the holy city; while we find no more men like Moses, David, and Isaiah to lead, to rule, and to prophesy? There are the same Judean hills and valleys. There rapidly flows the same historic Jordan. There grow the same grapes, the figs, and olives. There are the same holy mountains. There are the same dangerous rocks in the sea at Joppa. The physical conditions that made the corn and the honey and the cattle are there; and there still are found the corn, the honey, and the cattle. But no massive man like Moses ever more climbs Sinai to get law on tables of stone, or Pisgah, to see the promised land and die. No man after God’s own heart, like David, any more minds sheep, watches the stars, and writes poetry there. Never more do we find there a man like Isaiah, struggling on his knees in prayer that he may rise up to give his people the oracles of God. A shallow, degenerate and fickle people dwell amid the groves and the vines where once lived the great race which gave to men their ethics and the outlines of true religion.

If the civilization of Rome, that reached such volume and force as to make her the mistress of the world, was as natural as the rising and falling of the tides, why is it that Rome is in ruins, while the tides continue to rise and fall? With no other aid than such as is afforded by natural law and physical force, we cannot solve this problem. Where monkeys grew once, monkeys grow to-day; where lions roamed once, lions roam to-day; where figs grew once, figs grow to-day. The same physical conditions, the same configuration of soil, the same degree of climate, produce uniform natural results from age to age. These may be counted on with the certainty of a coming eclipse, conditioned on varying conjunctions of the heavenly bodies. But we must pass from the level and range of soil, sky, climate, and physical conditions, to account for the fact that a country in one period of its history produces a Pericles, and, in another, a muddy-headed numskull; in one age an aristocracy of poets, artists, statesmen, philosophers, and orators; and in another, a listless swarm of stupid and secular cumberers of the ground.