THE FUTURE OF HUMAN CHARACTER :—BRIGHT SIDE.
WERE the preceding article a complete statement of the facts, civilization would seem on the eve of stereotyping itself, and the destiny of man would appear to be sterile indeed, but it is not complete. There are facts to be recorded as bright as these are gloomy. Amid the decay of the creeds and the roar of petty conflicts, under the complex network of doubts which seem to shut in men, each to his little plot of obvious duty, as a few red threads will shut in a stag to a half-rood of grass, we seem to per- ceive at last the rise of new and tremendous forces which will once again retone the heart, rebrace the mind, and at last reinvigorate or, to speak even more frankly, re-create faith in the souls of men. Education does not only pulverize. Things are still in their germ, but we think we see one change, perhaps the greatest of all, coming over the spirits of civilized men, a thirst for truth by itself, a sovereign, driving faith in that, an utter indifference to and Contempt of the results of that, which is absolutely new in history, and which of all the intellectual passions tends most to clear and strengthen the mental blood. The love and admiration of scientific processes, the hunger, sometimes almost brutal, for realism in art, and literature, and life, the weary carelessness for things which used to inflame mankind may be, certainly seem to this writer to be, mere symptoms of this new impulse, just as hunger, and peevishness, and a -tumult of the blood are often the first symptoms of returning convalescence. No influence save faith alone tends so directly to strengthen the character as this single-eyed passion, none enables men to walk with so decided a step, and none frees them more rapidly from the bondage of the webs woven, as the preceding writer says, by the new consciousness men have of the complexity of all things. Once hold truth invaluable, and doubt loses its paralyzing force. Moreover, the hunger for truth which in science, or history, or theology, always begins by killing faith, always ends by serving as a base for a new structure, would, we believe, reanimate Christianity—now supposed to be dying, because for the third time it is stripping itself to put on its new armour—even without another and yet stronger impulse now rising among men. This is the spirit which, for want of a better word, we must call Sympathy, the spirit Shakespeare called Mercy, and the author of Ecce Homo styles the " enthusiasm of humanity," a spirit born within the last hundred years, which has in it the capacity of becoming a motor, a fanaticism, even in certain excep- tional situations a destroying force, a spirit which seventy years ago produced Robespierre, which in our own day has yielded John Brown and Mazzini, a spirit which is the secret force of that otherwise anarchical tendency we call Democracy, and the- mainspring and sustenance of " the Revolution," which is. already acting as the solvent of all old laws, institutions, and crystallizations of society. This sympathy with man as man, absolutely new, is becoming a mighty operative force. There are no fanatics like those who are possessed by it. There are no- changes so vast as those which they suggest, no lives so arduous as those which they will lead. Force of character, quotha I Has it ever been shown more grandly than by the Abolitionists, infidels half of them, but men borne on by this new impulse to face torture, and contempt, and death, the scorn of wise men, and the hatred of worldly men, as the purest Christians alone have ever had force to do. Wherein was Cromwell so much stronger than John Brown, Huss than Garrison, Xavier than Howard, Wycliffe than many a man among us who, unable to bear the- torment of his pity for the misery of men, of his sovereign sym- pathy with wretchedness, has, half mad, gone out from his old. beliefs, stripped himself naked of ideas, and so, amidst the shocked scorn of friends, and families, and comrades, declared war to the knife on all that exists, but existing, does not remove his. horror. He is wrong enough usually, but how weak ? And remem- ber, as this passion of sympathy spreads, and deepens, and clears itself, as men grow to sympathize with humanity in all its misery, in its sinfulness as in its pain, as they come to war against moral- as they now war on social suffering, so must the one figure, in- whom and through whom alone their ideal is completed, regain its- power over their imaginations, their hearts, their lives. In the Man-God alone is philanthropy, the love of man, seen perfect_ Half the best warriors in the social war are " infidels," men who cannot bow down to the authority which has left the world to. groan ; but to them, above all, will come first the conviction that,. strain on as they will, they cannot love man as He loved, that their endurance is weak beside His, that their tolerance and mercy and pitifulness—things which are but names for the one quality of sympathy—are imperfect, lustreless, wanting in breadth, and. depth, and coherence, beside the perfect fullness of His love.. It is from the lower side, from the human side, from the long; delayed recognition of Christ as the completion of the highest ideal of man,—recognition prevented for ages by the wicked; theory of an averted vengeance—that we look for the second revival of that true and only Christianity which believes as ib believes in the axiomata of mathematics, that Christ, God and: man, died for the human race. In men in whom the love of truth is as a flame, in whom sympathy is illimitable, and in whom. faith has once more grown up from below, there will be no lack. of force. That the character of the great men of the next genera- tion will be like the character of the greatest in the past we by no means affirm. Probably it will not. Out of that sense of the vast complexity of all things there should grow, will grow im the minds reillumined by faith, enlarged by sympathy, made- single by love of truth, a mighty tolerance, a patience, a calm. serenity, to which our greatest have often been strangers. The warrior element will not be so all-pervading, the uniform will be- exchanged more often for the ermine. There will be serenity ier these men, but serenity is not weak. We look as one of the blessings of the future for the recovery of the one lost blessing of the old Pagan world—the blessing which philosophers call un- consciousness, calm, capacity of enjoyment, and Christians child- likeness ; the nature we see dimly through the ages in the best of the Greeks, see plainly even now sometimes in a few old men and women, upon whom a living faith and a serene life have impressed that stamp of saintliness which, of all the aspects of human nature, has in it most of softness, and least of feebleness or indecision.. Weakness of character ! Imagine Calvin with Melanchthon's heart, and we are near the ideal to which the world tends, and which, be it what it may else, at least is not weak, not the character which subsides into a search for physical comfort. Men tell us who have studied Americans, Germans, and Europeans free of the tyranny of convention, that they see among their best specimens, among farmers in the West like Lincoln,. among professors like Carl Ritter, among workmen—take Nadar—dim foreshadowings of men like this, men whose characters are of iron in their self-dependence, men like Jacobins in the strength of their convictions, yet with hearts absolutely irradiated with sym- pathy for man and faith in God's love—men whom nothing resists successfully, yet who have recovered a power of childlike gladness,,
a capacity of serenity such as man in this century has sold,—the purchase-money for his victories over opposing Nature.
And then, too, there is another force, almost new, also at work. We are about to say what will probably excite in half of our readers a sense of the ridiculous, but still it has to be said, if our conviction is to be fully expressed. Hope is becoming once more a motive power. It is a singular fact in the Christian psychology that hope, which the Apostles regarded as a virtue,—an executive force, a motive power,—has ever since that time been degraded in men's ideas into a mere quality very lightly esteemed. A hopeful man is, in the parlance of to-day, a sort of fool. Hope, nevertheless, is once more regaining her power, so completely regaining it as not unfrequently to be mistaken for her strong sister, Faith, is in- fluencing the souls of men, is strengthening them to try unknown paths, untrodden ways, to work for ends which but for hope they would scarcely even desire. The passionate belief that Utopia may be attained, that we may yet reach a land where all shall be free and instructed and good, where the human race shall " have its fair chance," is exciting men afresh, is stimulating them to endure, is helping them to dare. It was but a hope, a dream, an Utopia which sustained the North in its tremendous struggle, but then the force which sustained it is neither feeble nor worthy of contempt. Men as the old creeds vanish are ceasing to despair, and in morals as in politica courage is the essential basis of all vigorous or successful action. A good deal of the despairing in- difference mentioned iu the preceding article is the result of hope, of the new conviction or impression that higher things are not unattainable. If nothing but bread is attainable—one fights for bread, but if one clearly experiences the hope of meat ? We do not wish to push this argument too far, partly because it may be a feeling peculiar to certain idiosyncrasies, partly because hope at last is only a result of faith ; but still the development of this faculty is to be reckoned among the brighter gleams in a picture which might otherwise be dark.
And finally—for we can neither hope to state, nor even to indicate, the infinite details of this side of the argument—it is necessary to adduce one negative argument. The crave for com- fort has an aspect the pessimists never acknowledge, it is one form of victory over the body. The highest thinkers of all ages have acknowledged that this victory must be gained, and as the Stoics held the road to it was contempt for the body, and the monks subjugation of the body, so the moderns hold unconsciously that the swiftest path is the silencing of the body. The modern thinker seats himself in an easy chair, not in order to enjoy the easy chair, but in order that the nobler part of him may be free from the consciousness of the inferior—may not be worried by its claims, disturbed by its remonstrances, fretted by its complaints. It is not luxury he is seeking, but mental freedom, the freedom the Stoic sought when he chatted in the rain as if the sun had shone, and held it beneath him to pay attention to the chill. The modern man is not less desirous of that liberty of scorn for the clouds, but to get it, instead of stripping, he invents a waterproof ; he silences the body by content, instead of by control, reigns as a Caisar instead of an ancient absolutist. We like neither regime, but it is not weakness of character, but misdirected power of character, which produces the second—a misdirected power which, more wisely used, may make the mind and the soul more genuinely free, and therefore more genuinely strong than they have been. The highest song of suffering ever sung was penned by a king, and fortitude, endurance, strength in all forms, are the qualities which, from the days of the Roman patriciat, the aristocrats have not lacked. It is not in the luxurious, but in those who are hankering for luxury, that feebleness is found.
Previous page
