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fall into new environments, a better and truer perspective; seem no
longer so susceptible to separate and radical change. The real
nature of the complex stuff of life they were seeking to work in is
revealed to them—its intricate and delicate fiber, and the subtle,
secret interrelationship of its parts—and they work circumspectly,
lest they should mar more than they mend. Moral enthusiasm is not,
uninstructed and of itself, a suitable guide to practicable and
lasting reformation; and if the reform sought be the reformation of
others as well as of himself, the reformer should look to it that he
knows the true relation of his will to the wills of those he would
change and guide. When he has discovered that relation, he has come
to himself: has discovered his real use and planning part in the
general world of men; has come to the full command and satisfying
employment of his faculties. Otherwise he is doomed to live for
ever in a fool’s paradise, and can be said to have come to himself
only on the supposition that he is a fool.
VI
Every man—if I may adopt and paraphrase a passage from Dr. South—
every man hath both an absolute and a relative capacity: an absolute
in that he hath been endued with such a nature and such parts and
faculties; and a relative in that he is part of the universal
community of men, and so stands in such a relation to the whole.
When we say that a man has come to himself, it is not of his
absolute capacity that we are thinking, but of his relative. He has
begun to realize that he is part of a whole, and to know what part,
suitable for what service and achievement.
It was once fashionable—and that not a very long time ago—to speak of
political society with a certain distaste, as a necessary evil, an
irritating but inevitable restriction upon the “natural” sovereignty and
entire self-government of the individual. That was the dream of the
egotist. It was a theory in which men were seen to strut in the proud
consciousness of their several and “absolute” capacities. It would be as
instructive as it would be difficult to count the errors it has bred in
political thinking. As a matter of fact, men have never dreamed of
wishing to do without the “trammels” of organized society, for the very
good reason that those trammels are in reality but no trammels at all,
but indispensable aids and spurs to the attainment of the highest and
most enjoyable things man is capable of. Political society, the life of
men in states, is an abiding natural relationship. It is neither a mere
convenience nor a mere necessity. It is not a mere voluntary
association, not a mere corporation. It is nothing deliberate or
artificial, devised for a special purpose. It is in real truth the
eternal and natural expression and embodiment of a form of life higher
than that of the individual—that common life of mutual helpfulness,
stimulation, and contest which gives leave and opportunity to the
individual life, makes it possible, makes it full and complete.
It is in such a scene that man looks about to discover his own place and
force. In the midst of men organized, infinitely cross-related, bound by
ties of interest, hope, affection, subject to authorities, to opinion,
to passion, to visions and desires which no man can reckon, he casts
eagerly about to find where he may enter in with the rest and be a man
among his fellows. In making his place he finds, if he seek
intelligently and with eyes that see, more than ease of spirit and scope
for his mind. He finds himself—as if mists had cleared away about him
and he knew at last his neighborhood among men and tasks.
What every man seeks is satisfaction. He deceives himself so long
as he imagines it to lie in self-indulgence, so long as he deems
himself the center and object of effort. His mind is spent in vain
upon itself. Not in action itself, not in “pleasure,” shall it find
its desires satisfied, but in consciousness of right, of powers
greatly and nobly spent. It comes to know itself in the motives
which satisfy it, in the zest and power of rectitude. Christianity
has liberated the world, not as a system of ethics, not as a
philosophy of altruism, but by its revelation of the power of pure
and unselfish love. Its vital principle is not its code, but its
motive. Love, clear-sighted, loyal, personal, is its breath and
immortality. Christ came, not to save Himself, assuredly, but to
save the world. His motive, His example, are every man’s key to his
own gifts and happiness. The ethical code he taught may no doubt be
matched, here a piece and there a piece, out of other religions,
other teachings and philosophies. Every thoughtful man born with a
conscience must know a code of right and of pity to which he ought
to conform; but without the motive of Christianity, without love, he
may be the purest altruist and yet be as sad and as unsatisfied as
Marcus Aurelius.
Christianity gave us, in the fullness of time, the perfect image of
right living, the secret of social and of individual well-being; for
the two are not separable, and the man who receives and verifies
that secret in his own living has discovered not only the best and
only way to serve the world, but also the one happy way to satisfy
himself. Then, indeed, has he come to himself. Henceforth he knows
what his powers mean, what spiritual air they breathe, what ardors
of service clear them of lethargy, relieve them of all sense of
effort, put them at their best. After this fretfulness passes away,
experience mellows and strengthens and makes more fit, and old age
brings, not senility, not satiety, not regret, but higher hope and
serene maturity.
THE END
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