The Secret of Heroism: A Memoir of Henry Albert Harper

by William Lyon Mackenzie King

[SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IDEALS]

Few men of his years have thought as deeply as Harper did, or had clearer perceptions, concerning conditions and forces which make for happiness and progress in social life, and the development of national greatness. Had he been spared he would have been an earnest and practical reformer; silent as his voice is now, the words he once uttered are not without their value to our day and generation. He was a true patriot in sentiment and aspiration.

Harper loved his country and its people, and in all that he undertook, which was of a public nature, he was animated by an enthusiasm for the common good. Of the self-imposed tasks he had undertaken in addition to his regular duties at the department of labour, and in each of which he had made some progress, were treatises on “Labour Legislation in Canada,” and the “Outlines of an Industrial History of the Dominion.” Among his contributions to publications other than the Labour Gazette, was a short essay on Colleges and Citizenship in a Christmas number of the Acta Victoriana of Victoria College, one or two articles in The Commonwealth on Canada’s Attitude Towards Labour, and an uncompleted monograph, intended for publication, on The Study of Political Economy in the High Schools. He was president of the Ottawa Social Science Club, secretary-treasurer of the Ottawa section of the University of Toronto Alumni Association, and an active member of the Ottawa Literary and Scientific Society. He was at the same time promoting the organization of a University Club, a plan of which he had carefully prepared, and the object of which was to bring the university men of the city into closer touch with each other, and make their influence more widely felt in the civic and social life of the community.

The background of all Harper’s thinking on social and political problems was coloured by his belief in a moral order; in the forefront was ever the individual proclaiming this order, and seeking to realize it in his own life. Institutions of whatever kind, whether national or religious, were to him of human creation. Their usefulness was in proportion to the degree to which they helped to give expression to the unseen purpose in the universe. Nature and man, alone, were divine. It followed logically from this that man’s work among his fellows in the world was to discover the moral order, reveal and maintain it, so far as within him the power lay. Harmony with this order meant happiness, want of harmony, whether by the individual or the state, unhappiness. In this view, the individual is vastly superior to any institution he and his fellows may construct, superior as an end, and as a means to an end. If a set of conditions exist which are counter to the moral order, or obstruct its fulfillment in the lives of men, these conditions should be changed, the individual should not be sacrificed to them. On the other hand, change may be, and ought to be accomplished more by men than by institutions, and can only be accomplished in the degree to which beliefs become active, potent factors in individual lives.

It is true that human knowledge is limited, and that the purpose of God is infinite, and so there may rightly be among men differences of opinion as to what, under any circumstances, are the ends to be sought, and the best means to attain those ends; and humility may well characterize all expressions of belief relative thereto; but, to the extent of knowledge gained, the ground underfoot is firm, and humility will not excuse the want of assertion, where right reason is set at naught by wrongful conduct. Moreover, there is much on which men can be agreed, broken arcs visible to all, though the perfect round is seen by none. There are right and wrong, truth and falsehood, honesty and dishonesty, love and hate, purity and vice, honour and dishonour, and the difference between them is as apparent and real as the difference ’twixt day and night, albeit, now and again, a twilight of uncertainty may render doubtful the confines of separation. Harper’s exclusive insistence was only upon what in this way was acceptable to all; and knowing that it was acceptable, he was sure the appeal would find a response in those to whom it was addressed. Whatever men might be in seeking privately their own selfish ends, their belief in a moral order was apparent once action became collective; the public had a conscience to which it was generally true, though men at times might seem to betray their better selves; and public opinion might be expected to guard for society as a whole a right for which individuals sometimes lost respect. How great, therefore, was the responsibility upon those who had the capacity, or opportunity, to see that public opinion was rightly formed and directed, and that, in social and political affairs, truth and right should be made to prevail!

This insistence upon the recognition of responsibility in those favoured by educational training or opportunity, is well brought out in a paragraph or two in the short essay on Colleges and Citizenship. Referring to a quotation from Sir Alfred Milner’s life of Arnold Toynbee, in which “the estrangement of the men of thought from the leaders of the people” is referred to as having constituted, in Toynbee’s mind, the great danger of the democratic upheaval of the time, Harper writes:

“People in Canada to-day are doubtless not so anxious about democratic upheaval. Fortunately the aggravated conditions of an old world metropolis have not yet been developed. The task is easier; the duty none the less imperative. It is more possible to secure the confidence of men who are not embittered by the pangs of slumdom. But because conditions here are not as distressing as they have been and are elsewhere, it is surely no less desirable, with a view to promoting industrial peace and healthy national development, that the men who have opportunity and capacity for the serious study of social and economic problems, should not allow themselves to become fenced off by a wall of indifference of their own creation from those to whom the mass of the people look for direction, inspiration and suggestion. It is reasonable to expect that he who claims to be engaged in the pursuit of truth should not give countenance to what makes for social disorder and national decay.

“Men are as much open to reason, as liable to accept truth, when they have been convinced of it, as when Arnold Toynbee studied, lectured and wrote. They are as prone to prefer what is genuine to what is pretense and dissimulation. Surely a peculiar obligation to see that men think rightly and act sanely, devolves upon those whose vantage ground should enable them to distinguish what is genuine. Sir Alfred Milner, having in mind the earnest friend of his undergraduate days, said six years ago to the members of Toynbee Hall: ‘I do not go so far as to say that what Oxford thinks to-day England will do to-morrow, but certainly any new movement of thought at the universities in these days rapidly finds its echo in the press and in public opinion.’ Indeed, is there not fair ground for the belief that much of the virtue which has marked the conduct of Great Britain’s High Commissioner at Cape Town, throughout the South African crisis is due to association with the high-minded student, who, in the congenial atmosphere of Oxford, did not forget that he was a citizen?”

It was his belief in the importance of men recognizing their duties as citizens, and being able to discharge these duties with intelligence and for the common good, which led Harper to prepare a scheme for the teaching of Political Economy in the high schools. The merits of this plan he had summarized as follows: