There is also the law of truth in speech, the law of purity in thought, the laws that forbid theft and covetousness and killing. But all these laws are gathered up and fulfilled in love, just as the seven colors of nature are gathered up and fulfilled in the one white sunbeam. And he who loves will fulfill all these laws. Loving himself, man will not waste his physical treasure. As it was vandalism for the iconoclasts to pass through the cathedrals of Europe whitewashing the frescoes and breaking down the statues, much more is it vandalism for men to destroy that temple of God called the body. If man loves his mind he will, through culture, lead what is germinal and latent forth into full blossom and fruitage. He who loves scholarship will make haste to double the books in his library. He who loves sweetness will double the sweetness of his melody. He who loves friends will double their number and strengthen their affection. He who loves industry will strengthen his toil and lend it influence. Looking toward the home, love fulfills the law of helpfulness. Looking toward the weak and poor, love fulfills the law of service and sympathy. Looking toward a great crisis for humanity, love fulfills the law of martyrdom.
Just as summer fulfills all ripeness and growth for seed and root and tree, so love fulfills all laws for self and man and the all-loving God.
After thirty-six years of tireless toil Herbert Spencer has brought to a conclusion the labors of a lifetime. His final volume places the capstone on the structure of his philosophy. In reading these pages no thoughtful mind can fail to perceive that for science also has dawned the vision splendid. If history began with an era of force, its last and crowning achievement will be the era when love, organized into laws and institutions, will lend perfection to civilization. The upward march of mankind has been slow and accompanied by tremendous losses. At the beginning strength prevailed and weakness went to the wall; the bird with the swiftest wing first reached the fountain, the deer with the swiftest foot reached the place of shelter, the ox with the strongest thrust reached the richest fodder. Pushed back, weakness perished, while strength prevailed and propagated.
This law of violence received its first check through the parental instinct. Parenthood built a fortress with walls and bulwarks about the babe. Love of offspring caused a weakness to survive. At last an era dawned when many parents united to construct a shield for weak children indeed, but also for weak adults. The state lifted the shield between weakness and its oppressor. The widow and the orphan were permitted to glean after the harvesters. The traveler, passing through the field, might pluck a handful of corn or pull a bunch of figs. The creditor must not take the blanket or coat from the laborer nor the boat from the poor fisherman, nor the plane or saw from the poor carpenter. Stimulated by Christ's example and teachings, society began to multiply the bulwarks against tyranny and selfishness. Looking toward the child, for the protection of weakness and unripeness, the state built these shields called the school and library, looking toward the unfortunate and those weak in body or mind, the state built bulwarks called asylum and hospital. Looking toward the chimney-sweep, the factory boys and girls, the state began to soften pain and mitigate the distress of labor. Looking toward the serf and the slave and the prisoner, the novelist and poet constructed song and story as shields for the protection of the weak and the oppressed.
One hundred years ago a man was as a beast of the field, and the slaughter of men in Italy, by the tyrant who ruled over them, stirred no more thought in England than the news of the slaughter of so many beasts. But fifty years ago the state had become so gentle toward the weak that when Mr. Gladstone made a protest against the savagery and infuriated cruelty wrought upon the inmates of the dungeons of Italy, then the heart of Europe turned toward Rome, the throne trembled upon its foundations. Formerly when any foreign government wished to colonize Africa, they sent out a regiment of soldiers, cut off a slice of the country and annexed it. Now public sentiment forbids such tyranny. The only way the aggressive nations can obtain possession of new territory is to do it under the name of a protectorate, sugar-coating, as has been said, the deeds of tyranny. If the dungeon has been rifled of its prey, if cruelty has been scourged out of the land, if despotism tottered, it is because society was slowly climbing up that stairway, of which the first step is fear and the last is love.
In these January days our earth, snow-clad and frost-bound, seems like a huge ball of ice. Yet all unconsciously to itself, the earth is being swept on into spring and summer. Unconsciously, but none the less truly, society, under the silent and secret impulse of the great God, has been journeying upward toward the time when love shall fulfill every law; when kindness and sympathy shall be organized in manners and customs. All the revolutions of the past, all the clangor of war, all the tumbling down of Bastilles, all the piling up of cities, is as nothing to the advance of the world toward that era when love shall perfect man's institutions and civilization.
Love also perfects religion. It is the glory of Christ that he unveils the sovereignty of character and crowns manhood with all-maturing and all-perfecting love. Looking backward, man finds that all religions fall into four classes: There is the religion of fear and force, when man offers sacrifices to appease the gods and conciliate justice. There is the religion of law, when men reduce life to formal rules, and the Pharisee rigorously fulfills his duty as chief, or trader, or friend. There is the religion of romanticism, when men of powerful intellect and strong imagination evolve their ideal and, withdrawing to some cave, give themselves to reverie. In all such self becomes an orb, so large as to eclipse brother man and God. Last of all there is the religion of Christ, in which love is root, blossom and fruitage. It aims at the development and unfolding of everything that is gracious in life, whatever strikes at admiration, whether it is in school, in art, in song, in wit, in travel, in books; whatever is praiseworthy in courage or endurance, whatever has fineness and sweetness and nobility; all that belongs to the hero and patriot; all that belongs to the seer and scholar; all that belongs to leadership in trade and commerce—all these elements are to be united and carried upward into the sweetness and purity of life, until the full man, standing apart and standing above life, seems to have been informed with divine love, as with a presence.
And when love has made the most of the man himself it overflows to bless others. Christ's disciples are not here to be ministered unto, but to minister. Religion, says Christ, is love, and love is gentle toward those with hollow eyes and famine-stricken faces. Love is kindly toward those who have a tragedy written in the sharpened countenance. Love is patient toward those who have lost fidelity, as a man loses a golden coin; who have lost morality as one who flounders in the Alpine drifts. And this religion of love takes on a thousand modern forms. If it is not rowing out against the darkness and storm, as did Grace Darling to save the shipwrecked, it is going forth to those tossed upon life's billows, to succor and to save. For love is making the individual life beautiful, making the home beautiful, and will at last make the church and state beautiful. Men will not bow down to crowned power nor philosophic power nor esthetic power; but, in the presence of a great soul, filled with vigor of inspiration and glowing with love, man will do obeisance. There is no force upon earth like divine love in the heart of man, and at last that force will sweeten and regenerate society.
Love also fulfills immortality. Of late science has reduced the number of things that endure. The astronomer tells us the sun is burning up, and will be a dying ash-heap as truly as the coal in man's cellar will be exhausted. The geologists tell us the flowing of "the crystal springs wearies the mountain's heart as truly as the beating of the crimson pulse wearies man's; that the force of the iron crag is abated in its time, like the strength of human sinews in old age." The everlasting mountains are doomed to decay as surely as the moth and worm. It seems that the shining texture of stars and suns must wax old, like a garment, and decay. If now youth is eager to master all knowledge, plunge into the thick of life's battle, forge some tool, enact some law, right some wrong, the time will speedily come when the man will sit down amid the ruins of his life and confess that his idols have been shivered, one by one.
He who loves endures. For him always all is well. That youth with a great love for nature's treasures that promised fame, but who found his open book crimson with the life-current, may dry his tears, for love is immortal and beyond he will fulfill the dreams denied here. Because he loves the slave, Livingstone, falling in the African forest, need not fear, for love will make his work immortal. The sweet mother, whose love overarches the cradle with thoughts that for number are beyond the stars, need not fear to leave behind the gentle babe, for everlasting love will encircle it. Falling into unconsciousness and putting out upon the yeasty sea midst the falling darkness, man may call back: "I still live." For God is love and God is eternal. Therefore man who loves is immortal also.