A Man's Value to Society Part 9
Each president and prime minister strengthens himself by a cabinet.
But what if the peasant or workman could surround himself with a group of counselors and advisers that included a hundred of the greatest intellects of his generation? What if some Herschel should approach the youth to say, "You need your night's rest for sleep; but for you I will give the years for studying the stars and their movements?" What if some Dana should say, "For you I will decipher the handwriting upon the rocks, trace the movement of the ice plows, search out the influence of the flames as they turn rocks into soil for vineyards?"
What if some Audubon should say, "For you I will go through all the forests to find out the life and history of the winged creatures, from the humming-bird to hawk and eagle?" What if Niebuhr should say, "For you I will decipher the monuments, all ruins and obelisks, all man's parchments and ma.n.u.scripts for setting forth man's upward progress through the centuries?" But this is precisely what books do for us.
Saving man's time and strength, books also increase his manhood and multiply his brain forces. With them, a man of fourscore years ends his career wiser than, without them, he could have been, though he had lived and wrought through ten thousand summers and winters. This is what Emerson means when he says, "Give me a book, health and a June day, and I will make the pomp of kings ridiculous." When the Athenian youth, beloved of the G.o.ds, went forth upon his journey, one friend brought him a wondrous armor, proof against arrows; another brought a horse of marvelous swiftness; another brought a bow of great size and strength. Thus armed, the youth conquered his enemies. But when books have armed man against his foes, they go on to change his enemies into friends; they shield him against ignorance; they free him from superst.i.tion; they clothe him with grat.i.tude. Thank G.o.d for books, cheering our solitude, soothing our sickness, refining our pa.s.sions, out of defeat leading us to victory! That youth can scarcely fail of character, happiness and success who, day by day, goes to school to sages and seers; who by night hears Dante and Milton discourse upon Paradise; who has for his mentors in office and counting-room some Franklin or Solomon. Experience, supplemented by books, teaches youth more in one year than experience alone will teach him in twenty.
Books also preserve for us the spirit of earth's great ones, just as the cellar of the king holds wines growing more precious with the lapse of years. From time to time G.o.d sends to earth some man with a supreme gift called genius. Pa.s.sing through our life and world, he sees wondrous sights not beholden of our eyes, hears melodies too fine for our dulled hearing. What other men behold as bits of coal, his genius trans.m.u.tes into diamonds. In the darkness he sleeps to see some "Midsummer Night's Dream;" in the day he wakens to behold the tragedy or comedy in his friend's career. While he muses, the fires of inspiration burn within him. When the time comes, the inner forces burst out in book or song or poem, just as the tulip bulb when April comes publishes its heart of fire and gold. The book he writes is the choicest wine in life, "the gold made fine in the fires of his genius." Seldom come these elect ones, just as the bush burned only once during Moses' many years in the desert. Many foot hills must be united to produce one vast mountain. Only one range of Rockies is needed to support many states. One Mississippi also can drain a continent.
Thinking of these great ones, Milton said: "The book is the life-blood of the master spirit." Just as the wisdom spoken into the phonograph makes marks there to be reproduced at will, so books preserve and repeat the eloquence of the greatest. Through his "Excursion," when Wordsworth says, "I go to the fields to-day," the youth may whisper, "and I go with thee." He may also accompany Layard, going forth to study the old tablets and the monuments; with Scott he may ride with Ivanhoe to castle and tournament; with Virgil and Dante he may shiver at the brink of the inky river or exult over the first glimpse of Paradise.
Well did Charles Lamb suggest that men should say grace--not only over the Christmas festival, but also over the table spread with good books. For man has no truer friends, Earth offers no richer banquet.
When Southey grew old and dim of vision, he was seen to totter into his library. Moving about from shelf to shelf the aged scholar laid his hand upon one favorite book and then upon another, while a rare sweet smile pa.s.sed over his face, just as we lay hand tenderly upon the shoulder of some dear friend. Through their books his old friends, the heroes of the past, had told Southey of their innermost dreams, their pa.s.sions, their aspirations, what braced them in hours of battle, how they endured when death robbed them of their best. Poor and lonely, full oft the poet had talked with these volumes as with familiar friends. So before he died Southey said to his books "Good night," ere in that bright beyond he said "Good morning" to their authors.
This divine injunction as to the companionship of books bids us search out the use and purpose of reading. Primarily, books are to be read for information and mental strength. The hunger of the body for bread and fruit is not more real than the hunger of the intellect for facts and principles. Knowledge stands in as vital relation to the growth of reason as iron and phosphate to the enrichment of the blood. Ignorance is weakness. Success is knowing how. Ours is a world in which the last fact conquers. In addition to his own experience and reflection, the young artist must stand in some gallery that brings together all the best masters. Standing beside the Elgin marbles in the British Museum, the sculptor must bathe and soak himself in the Greek ideal and spirit, until the Greek thought throbs in his brain, and he feels the Greek enthusiasm for strength in round, lithe arms, and limbs made ready for the race.
But in a large, deep sense, books are the galleries in which spirits are caught and fastened upon the pages. Books are storehouses into which facts and principles have been harvested. Just as a bit of coal tells us what ferns and flowers grew in the far-off era, so the book gives us the very quintessence of man's thoughts about life and duty and death. Nor is there any other way of gaining these vital knowledges. Life is too short to obtain them through conversation or travel. Nor is any youth ready for his task until he has traced the rise and growth of houses, tools, governments, schools, industries, religions. He must also compare race with race, land with land, and star with star. Asked about his ideas of the value of education, a man distinguished in railway circles answered: "I have learned that each new fact has its money value. Other things being equal, the judgment of the man who knows the most must always prevail." But books alone can supplement experience, and give the information that makes man ready against his day of battle.
It has been said, "For a thousand men who can speak, there is only one who can think; for a thousand men who can think, there is only one who can see." Since, then, the greatest thing in life is to have an open vision, we need to ask the authors to teach us how to see. Each Kingsley approaches a stone as a jeweler approaches a casket to unlock the hidden gems. Geikie causes the bit of hard coal to unroll the juicy bud, the thick odorous leaves, the pungent boughs, until the bit of carbon enlarges into the beauty of a tropic forest. That little book of Grant Allen's called "How Plants Grow" exhibits trees and shrubs as eating, drinking and marrying. We see certain date groves in Palestine, and other date groves in the desert a hundred miles away, and the pollen of the one carried upon the trade winds to the branches of the other. We see the tree with its strange system of water-works, pumping the sap up through pipes and mains; we see the chemical laboratory in the branches mixing flavor for the orange in one bough, mixing the juices of the pineapple in another; we behold the tree as a mother, making each infant acorn ready against the long winter, rolling it in swaths soft and warm as wool blankets, wrapping it around with garments impervious to the rain, and finally slipping the infant acorn into a sleeping bag, like those the Esquimos gave Dr.
Kane.
At length we come to feel that the Greeks were not far wrong in thinking each tree had a Dryad in it, animating it, protecting it against destruction, dying when the tree withered. Some Faraday shows us that each drop of water is a sheath for electric forces sufficient to charge 800,000 Leyden jars, or drive an engine from Liverpool to London. Some Sir William Thomson tells us how hydrogen gas will chew up a large iron spike as a child's molars will chew off the end of a stick of candy. Thus each new book opens up some new and hitherto unexplored realm of nature. Thus books fulfill for us the legend of the wondrous gla.s.s that showed its owner all things distant and all things hidden. Through books our world becomes as "a bud from the bower of G.o.d's beauty; the sun as a spark from the light of His wisdom; the sky as a bubble on the sea of His Power." Therefore Mrs.
Browning's words, "No child can be called fatherless who has G.o.d and his mother; no youth can be called friendless who has G.o.d and the companionship of good books."
Books also advantage us in that they exhibit the unity of progress, the solidarity of the race, and the continuity of history. Authors lead us back along the pathway of law, of liberty or religion, and set us down in front of the great man in whose brain the principle had its rise. As the discoverer leads us from the mouth of the Nile back to the headwaters of Nyanza, so books exhibit great ideas and inst.i.tutions, as they move forward, ever widening and deepening, like some Nile feeding many civilizations. For all the reforms of to-day go back to some reform of yesterday. Man's art goes back to Athens and Thebes. Man's laws go back to Blackstone and Justinian. Man's reapers and plows go back to the savage scratching the ground with his forked stick, drawn by the wild bullock. The heroes of liberty march forward in a solid column. Lincoln grasps the hand of Washington. Washington received his weapons at the hands of Hampden and Cromwell. The great Puritans lock hands with Luther and Savonarola.
The unbroken procession brings us at length to Him whose Sermon on the Mount was the very charter of liberty. It puts us under a divine spell to perceive that we are all coworkers with the great men, and yet single threads in the warp and woof of civilization. And when books have related us to our own age, and related all the epochs to G.o.d, whose providence is the gulf stream of history, these teachers go on to stimulate us to new and greater achievements. Alone, man is an unlighted candle. The mind needs some book to kindle its faculties.
Before Byron began to write he used to give half an hour to reading some favorite pa.s.sage. The thought of some great writer never failed to kindle Byron into a creative glow, even as a match lights the kindlings upon the grate. In these burning, luminous moods Byron's mind did its best work. The true book stimulates the mind as no wine can ever quicken the blood. It is reading that brings us to our best, and rouses each faculty to its most vigorous life.
Remembering, then, that it is as dangerous to read the first book one chances upon as for a stranger in the city to make friends with the first person pa.s.sing by, let us consider the selection and the friendship of books. Frederic Harrison tells us that there are now 2,000,000 volumes in the libraries, and that every few years the press issues enough new volumes to make a pyramid equal to St. Paul's Cathedral. Lamenting the number of books of poor quality now being published, this author questions whether or not the printing press may not be one of the scourges of mankind. He tells that he reads but few books, and those the great ones, and describes his shipwreck on the infinite sea of printer's ink, and his rescue as of one escaping by mercy from a region where there was water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink. Let us confess that books by their very mult.i.tude bewilder, and that careless and purposeless reading destroys the mind.
Let us admit, too, that books no more mean culture than laws mean virtues.
Doubtless, individuality is threatened by the vast cataract of literature. As children, we trembled needlessly when the nurse told us that skies rained pitchforks, but as men we have a right to fear when the skies rain not pitchforks but pamphlets. Mult.i.tudes are in the condition of the schoolboy who, when asked what he was thinking about, answered that he had no thoughts, because he was so busy reading he had no time to think. Like that boy, mult.i.tudes to-day cannot see the wood for the trees. Many stand before the vast abyss of literature as Bunyan's pilgrim stood before the Slough of Despond, crying: "What shall I do?" The necessity of severe selection is upon us, but certain things all must read.
First of all, every year each young man and woman should take a fresh look about the world house in which all live. When Ivanhoe waked to find himself a prisoner in a strange castle he straightway explored the mansion, pa.s.sing from chamber to banquet hall, and from tower to moat, and the high walls that shut him in. If, indeed, G.o.d did so dearly love this star as to use its very dust for making man in His own image, we ought to love and study well this world house, wherein is enacted the drama of man's life and death. Longfellow thought of our earth as a granite-sheathed ship sailing through air, with plate of mail bolted and clamped by the Almighty mechanism, the throbbings of Vesuvius hinting at the deep furnaces that help to drive her forward upon the voyage through s.p.a.ce. But G.o.d's name for this earth house was Paradise. And a veritable paradise it is, with its vegetable carpet, soft and embroidered, beneath man's feet; with its valleys covered with corn until they laugh and sing; with its n.o.ble architecture of the mountains covered with mighty carvings and painted legends. Verily, it would be an ungracious thing for us to go on living here without taking the trouble to look upon this earth's floor, so firm and solid, or study the beauteous ceiling lighted with star lamps by night. And the evenings of one week with Geikie or Dana will tell us by what furnaces of fire the granite was melted, by what teeth of glaciers and weight of sea-waves the earth's surface was smoothed for the plow and the trowel. How long it has been since the glacier was a mile thick upon the very spot where we stand, how long since the waters of Lake Michigan, now flowing over Niagara, ceased flowing into the Mississippi.
The evenings of another week with Professor Gray or Grant Allen will tell us how all the trees and plants live and breathe and wax great; how the lily sucks whiteness out of the slough, and how the red rose untwists the sunbeam and pulls out the scarlet threads. The evenings of another week with Ball or Proctor or Langley will exhibit the sun pulling the harvests out of our planet, even as the blazing log pulls the juices out of the apples roasting before the hot coals; how large a house on the moon must be in order to be seen by the new telescope at Lake Geneva; whether or not the spots on the sun represent great chunks of unburned material, some of which are a full thousand miles across, materials thrown up by gaseous explosions. While Maury will take us during another week, in a gla.s.s boat that is water-tight, upon a long cruise more than three thousand leagues under the sea, showing us those graveyards called sea sh.e.l.ls, those cities called coral reefs, those strange animals that have roots instead of feet, called sponges.
Having journeyed around the earth house, each should study himself; his body as an engine of mental thought, an instrument of conduct and character; the number and nature and uses of the forty and more faculties of mind and heart with which he is endowed. From the study of the soul the mind moves easily to the upward movement of the race, as man journeys from hut to house, from tent to temple, from force to self-government and education and literature, from his flaming altar to the rising hymn and aspiring prayer. This tells us what contribution each race, Hebrew and Greek, Roman and Teuton, has made to civilization. Then come the books of life, wherein the qualities to be emulated are capitalized in the lives of the great, for biography is one of man's best teachers. Therein we see how the hero bore up against his wrongs, his sorrows and defeats, and how he sustained himself in times of triumph. Phillips Brooks thought that the basis of every library should be biography, memoirs, portraits and letters. Nor should we forget the books of art, wherein the facts of life are idealized and carried up to beauty. Witness the dramas, poems, or the several great novels.
But apart from and above all others is the book, the Bible. Alone it has civilized whole nations. Be our theories of inspiration what they may, this book deals with the deepest things in man's heart and life.
Ruskin and Carlyle tell us that they owe more to it in the way of refinement and culture than to all the other books, _plus_ all the influence of colleges and universities. Therein the greatest geniuses of time tell us of the things they caught fresh from the skies, "the things that stormed upon them, and surged through their souls in mighty tides, entrancing them with matchless music"; things so precious for man's heart and conscience as to be endured and died for.
It is the one book that can fully lead forth the richest and deepest and sweetest things in man's nature. Read all other books, philosophy, poetry, history, fiction; but if you would refine the judgment, fertilize the reason, wing the imagination, attain unto the finest womanhood or the st.u.r.diest manhood, read this book, reverently and prayerfully, until its truths have dissolved like iron into the blood.
Read, indeed, the hundred great books. If you have no time, make time and read. Read as toil the slaves in Golconda, casting away the rubbish and keeping the gems. Read to trans.m.u.te facts into life, but read daily the book of conduct and character--the Bible. For the book Daniel Webster placed under his pillow when dying is the book all should carry in the hand while living.
THE SCIENCE OF LIVING WITH MEN
"There is an art of right living."--_Arthur Helps._
"The supreme art life above all other arts is the art of living together justly and charitably. There is no other thing that is so taxing, requiring so much education, so much wisdom, so much practice, as the how to live with our fellow-men. In importance this art exceeds all productive industries which we teach our children. All skill and knowledge aside from that is as nothing. The business of life is to know how to get along with our fellow-men."--_H.W. Beecher._
"As all the stars are pervaded by one law, in one law live and move and have their being, so all minds that reason and all hearts that beat, act in one empire of one king; and of that vast kingdom, the law the most sweeping, the most eternal, is the law of loving kindness."--_Swing._
"The nations have turned their places of art treasure into battle-fields. Fancy what Europe would be now if the delicate statues and temples of the Greeks--if the broad and ma.s.sive walls of the Romans, if the n.o.ble and pathetic architecture of the Middle Ages, had not been ground to dust by mere human rage. You talk of the scythe of time and the tooth of time; I tell you time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm, we who smite like the scythe. All these lost treasures of human intellect have been wholly destroyed by human industry of destruction; the marble would have stood its 2,000 years as well in the polished statue as in the Parian cliff; but we men have ground it to powder and mixed it with our own ashes."--_Ruskin._
XII
THE SCIENCE OF LIVING WITH MEN
The great writers of all ages have held themselves well away from any formal discussion of the art of right living and the science of a skillful carriage of one's faculties. Government, war and eloquence have indeed received full scientific statement, and those arts called music and sculpture have obtained abundant literary treatment. But, for some reason, no philosopher has ever attempted a formal treatise teaching the youth how to carry his faculties so as to avoid injuring his fellows and secure for them peace, happiness and success.
Nevertheless, the art of handling marble is nothing compared to the art of handling men. Skill in evoking melody from the harp is less than nothing compared to skill in allaying discords in the soul and calling out its n.o.blest impulses, its most energetic forces.
Nor is there any science or any productive industry whatsoever that is at all comparable to the science of just, smooth and kindly living.
For the business of life is not the use and control of winds and rivers; it is not the acquisition of skill in calling out the secret energies contained in the soil or concealed in the sky. The business of life is the mastery of the art of living smoothly and justly with one's fellows and the acquisition of skill in calling out the best qualities of those about us. Indeed, the home and the market do but furnish practice-ground for developing expertness in carrying one's faculties. Sir Arthur Helps first coined the expression, "the art of right living," and society can never be sufficiently grateful to this distinguished scholar for reminding us that when every other art has been secured, every other science achieved, there still remains for mastery the finest of all the fine arts, the science of a right carriage of one's faculties midst all the duties and relations of home and school, of store and street.
Searching out for some reason why scientists have discussed friendship, reform, or patriotism, but have pa.s.sed by the science of right living, we shall find the adequate explanation in the fact that this is the largest subject that can possibly be handled. It concerns the right carriage of the whole man, the handling of the body, and the maintenance of perfect health; the control of the temperament, with its special talent or weakness; the use of reason, its development and culture; the control of judgment, with the correction of its aberrations; it involves such a mastery of the emotions as men have over winds and rivers; it concerns conscience and conversation, friendship and commerce, and all the elements affectional and social, civic and moral.
For man stands, as it were, in the center of many concentric circles.
About himself, as a center, sweeps the home circle; his immediate neighborhood relations describe a wider circle; his business career describes one larger still; then come his relations to the community in general, while beyond the horizon is a circle of influence that includes the world at large. When the tiny spider standing at the center of its wide-stretching and intricate web, woven for destruction, chances to touch any thread of the web, immediately that thread vibrates to the uttermost extremity. And man stands at the center of a vast web of wide-reaching influence, woven not for blighting, but for blessing, and every one of these out-running lines, whether related to friends near by or to citizens afar off, thrills and vibrates with secret influences; and there is no creature in G.o.d's universe so taxed as man, having a thousand dangers to avoid, and fulfilling ten thousand duties. He who would adequately discuss the science of right living must propose a method that will enable man to carry his faculties midst all the conditions of poverty or riches, of sickness or health, of the friendship of men or their enmity.
Discerning the largeness of this theme, many question whether right living can be reduced to a science, and, if so, whether it ever can be acquired as an art. We know that there is a science of government, a science of wealth, a science of war, and mastery in each department seems possible. Moreover, long practice has lent men skill in the arts. Even Paganini was born under the necessity of obtaining excellence in his art through practice. t.i.tian also was a tireless student in color, and Macaulay himself toiled hard over his alphabet.
Printers tell us that practice expels stiffness from the fingers and makes type-setting an automatic process. Daniel Webster was counted the greatest orator of his time; but there never lived a man who drilled himself in solitude more scrupulously, and his excellence, he says, was the fruit of long study.
Henry Clay had a great reputation as a speaker; but when the youth had through years practiced extemporaneous speech in the cornfields of Kentucky, he went on to train himself in language, in thought, in posture, in gesture, until his hand could wield the scepter, or beckon in sweet persuasion, until his eye could look upon his enemies and pierce them, or beam upon his friends and call down upon them all the fruits of peace and success. Nor has there been one great artist, one great poet, one great inventor, one great merchant, nor one great man in any department of life whose supremacy does not, when examined, stand forth as the fruit of long study and careful training. Men are born with hands, but without skill for using them. Men are born with feet and faculties, but only by practice do their steps run swiftly along those beautiful pathways called literature or law or statesmanship. Man's success in mastering other sciences encourages within us the belief that it is possible for men to master the science of getting on smoothly and justly with their fellow men. In importance this knowledge exceeds every other knowledge whatsoever. To know what armor to put on against to-morrow's conflicts; how to attain the ends of commerce and ambition by using men as instruments; how to be used by men, and how to use men, not by injuring them, not by cheating them, not by marring or neglecting them; but how through men to advance both one's self and one's fellows--this is life's task. For skill in getting on with men is the test of perfect manhood.
No other knowledge is comparable to this. It is something to know how to sail a vast ship; it is important to understand the workings of a Corliss engine; man does well to aspire to the mastery of iron and wood, and the use of cotton and wool; most praiseworthy the ambition to master arguments and ideas; but it is a thousand times more important to understand men. To be able to a.n.a.lyze the underlying motives; to attain skill in rebuking the worst impulses in men, and skill in calling forth their best qualities; to distinguish between selfishness and sincerity; to allay strife and promote peace; to maintain equanimity midst all the swirl of pa.s.sion; to meet those who storm with perfect calm; to meet scowling men with firm gentleness; to meet the harshness of pride with a modest bearing; to be self-sufficing midst all the upheaval and selfishness of life--this is to be a follower of Christ, and He is the only gentleman our world has ever seen. Oh, for some university for teaching the art of right living! Oh, for some college teaching the science of attaining the personal ends of life without marring one's ideals! For life has only one fine art--the art of getting along smoothly with ourselves and our fellows.
Let us confess that man easily masters every other art and science.
His discoveries as to stars and stones and shrubs provoke ever fresh surprise. His inventions, who can number? He easily masters winds and rivers. He takes the sting out of the thunderbolt and makes it harmless. Afterward with electric lamps he illumines towns. With invisible sunbeams he paints instantaneous pictures of faces, palaces, mountains, and landscapes. With the dark X-rays he photographs the bone incased in flesh, the coins contained in the purse. With his magnet the scientist throws a rope around the cathode rays and drags them whithersoever he will. In the field the inventor uses an electric hoe to kill the germs of the thistle and deadly nightshade. Strange that he cannot invent an instrument for killing the germs of hatred and envy in his own heart! The gardener easily masters the art of cultivating roses and violets, but breaks down in trying to produce in himself those beauteous growths called love, truth, justice--flowers, these, that are rooted in heaven, but blossom here on earth.
An expert driver will hold the reins over six fiery steeds, or even eight, but he descends from his coach to find that his own pa.s.sions are steeds of the sun that run away with him, bringing wreckage and ruin. Man has skill for turning poisons into medicines. He changes deadly acids into balms, but he has no skill for taking envy's poisons out of the tongue, or sheathing the keen sword of hatred. As to physical nature, man seems rapidly approaching the time when all the forces of land and sea and sky will yield themselves as willing and obedient servants to do his will. But, having made himself monarch in every other realm, man breaks down utterly in attempting the task of living peaceably with his friends and neighbors. Sublime in his integrity and strength, he is most pitiable in the way he wrecks his own happiness, and ruins the happiness of others. Pestilence in the city, tornado in the country, the fire in the forest--these are but feeble types of man as a destroyer. One science is as yet unmastered by man--the science of right living and the art of getting along smoothly with himself and his fellows.
To-day the new science explains the difficulty of right living, by the largeness of man's endowment. There are few failures in the animal or vegetable world. Instinct guides the beast, while the shrub attains its end by automatic processes. No vine was ever troubled to decide whether it should produce grapes or thorns. No fig tree ever had to go to school to learn how to avoid bearing thistles. The humming bird, flying from shrub to shrub, hears the inner voice called instinct.
These instincts serve as guide books. The animal creation that moves through the air or water or the forests experiences but little difficulty in finding out the appointed pathway. But the problem of rose, lark or lion is very simple and easy, compared with the problem of man. If the oak must needs bear acorns, man is like a vine that can at will bring forth any one of a hundred fruits. He is like an animal that can at its option walk or fly, swim or run. The pathway opened before the brute world is narrow and its task therefore is very simple, while the vast number of pathways possible to man often embarra.s.ses his judgment and sometimes works bewilderment.
After thousands of years man is still ignorant whether it is best for him to eat flesh or confine himself only to fruit; whether the juice of the grape is helpful or harmful; whether the finest culture comes from confining one's study to a single language, as did Socrates and Shakespeare, or through learning many languages, as did Cicero and Milton; whether a monarchy or democracy is better suited for securing the people's happiness and prosperity; whether the love of G.o.d in front is a motive sufficient to pull a man heavenward, or whether fear and fire kindled in the rear will not lend greater swiftness to his footsteps. It is wonderful how many problems yet remain to be solved.
Nor could it be otherwise. As things increase in size and complexity the difficulty of handling them increases. It is easy to manage a spinning-wheel, but difficult to handle a Jacquard loom having hundreds of delicate parts. It is easy to use a boy's whistle, but hard to master the pipe organ with keys rising bank upon bank. Out of an alphabet numbering six and twenty letters all the sciences and arts can be fashioned; but the alphabet of man's faculties numbers four and forty letters. Who shall measure the divine literatures possible to all these combinations of thought, feeling and aspiration?
The scientist tells us that all of the instruments and excellences distributed among the animals are united in man.
Man has the beaver's instinct for building, the bee's skill for hiving, the lion's stroke is less than man's trip-hammer, the deer's swift flight is slowness to man's electric speed, the eagle itself cannot outrun his flying speech. It is as if all the excellences of the whole animal creation were swept together and compacted in man's tiny body, with the addition of new gifts and faculties; but this concentration of all the gifts distributed to the animal world in man means that the dangers and difficulties that are distributed over all the rest of the animal creation will also be concentrated upon his single person. The increase of his treasure carries with it the increase of danger and difficulty. The vastness of his endowment opens up the possibilities of innumerable blunderings and stumblings and wanderings from the way. By so much, therefore, as he is above the bird and the beast, by that much does the task of carrying aright his faculties increase in magnitude.