“Even to the outcry against the fleeting nature of our impressions of beauty, and, for a time, satisfying, comes an answer in the story of Shelley’s Sensitive Plant. The author concludes the beautiful yet sad story by saying:
| “‘I dare not guess; but in this life Of error, ignorance, and strife, Where nothing is, but all things seem, And we the shadows of the dream, “‘It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery. “‘That garden sweet, that lady fair, And all sweet shapes and odours there, In truth have never past away: ’Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed; not they. “‘For love, and beauty, and delight, There is no death nor change: their might Exceeds our organs, which endure No light, being themselves obscure.’ |
“If this be so, can we not increase and make more lasting our knowledge of these things by mastering ourselves and giving scope to the spiritual side of us?”
[THE LOVE OF OTHERS]
In love for others human nature manifests its highest expression. It is the quality of soul by which, in his relations with his fellows, a man’s capacity for service is determined; it is the fount at which all the finer springs of action are fed. Generosity, mercy, pity, friendship, devotion, sacrifice, flow from this one source, which conscious effort may help to replenish, but which conscious or unconscious borrowing can never exhaust.
In his love for others lay the absorbing passion of Harper’s life. It was a love which begot him the strongest and most enduring of friendships, and it was a love which carried his influence, and the sweet purpose of his life, away out beyond the circles of those with whom he was in daily association to where the tide of affection is wont to ebb, or, apparently, wastes itself in the reefs and shallows which abound. Man, woman, or child, he felt their kinship to the race; their lives were related to his life; misfortune only heightened his sympathy, and failure his compassion. Day after day gave new expression to the wealth of generous purpose in that great human heart of his. It dictated the fields into which he directed his activities; it inspired his impulses, and was the sustaining power in his work.
Nor was this, with Harper, a blind love, an unreasoned passion. On the contrary, whatever its origin, it derived its strength from a carefully thought out philosophy of life, a philosophy based on a belief in a divine order and purpose in the universe, and in the sanctity of individual lives. He had faith in both God and man, and he held that the will of the one could only be fulfilled as it was realized in the life of the other. This belief explains his efforts on behalf of individuals, it interprets the views he held on such questions as those of social and political reform.
He loved men because of the belief he had in their natures. “After all,” he writes, “it is not the external appearance of a man, nor what he says or does, that ought to excite our admiration or distrust, but that inner personality, the individuality, the soul, which is ‘the all and in all,’ and of which appearances are but imperfect representations and expressions.” He was not a man given to professions, or to the public performance of good deeds; in fact, the being seen of men caused him to hesitate in the doing of much which a less sensitive nature would have allowed. He did not shrink, however, from manifesting a personal interest in lives which seemed to demand it of him, or from revealing his purpose to those whom he knew could appreciate it aright.