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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 49

A Divine Man [Discourses, 1st Series, No. 9]

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A Divine Man.

Discourses

1st Series. No. 9.

J. A. & R. A. Reid, Printers. Providence:

1883.
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A Divine Man.

The world has been looking through all the ages for a [unclear: divi] man. It sought him first in special providences and [unclear: miracl] It predicted, it prayed for, the coming of Eastern Saint [unclear: a] Judean Saviour. But somehow neither has seemed to satisfy Neither has enabled it to find the truth and the way, and [unclear: so] last it has set to work in dead earnest to create by its own [unclear: e] ertions, that which the gods have not granted. It has at thrown off the old superstitions, and experienced a [unclear: Religi] whose creed is simply and forever the sacredness of the [unclear: indivi] soul.

It has not reached this sublime faith in a moment, it does not always act upon it now, but from out the struggles and [unclear: t] martyrdoms of the past it has come with its face Zionward [unclear: ;] journey's from now on, sometimes with hesitating and [unclear: relucts] steps, but nevertheless up and on, toward the light of day. [unclear: If] not long, taking into consideration only the known history of [unclear: t] human race, since man was held to be the victim of strange [unclear: a] diabolical powers. In the night of ignorance [unclear: everywhere] brooding over the earth, the prophets of the times, the [unclear: scholl] of the times, made some very serious mistakes. As an [unclear: exam] of these errors, Mr. Lecky, in his Rise and Influence of the [unclear: Spi] of nationalism in Europe, speaking of Magic and [unclear: Witchera]; quotes one of the ablest writers of the thirteenth century, saying that diseases and tempests are the direct acts of [unclear: t] devil; that the devil can transport men at his pleasure [unclear: throu] the air; and can transform them into any shape. Such page 4 [unclear: lief] seems to us to-day at once ridiculous and barbarous, but [unclear: he] record shows that it was entertained, not only by the weak id ignorant, but by the able minds of that era. It is [unclear: impossi] to conceive of the number of lives sacrificed for the supposed [unclear: n] of witchcraft. For more than fifteen hundred years this [unclear: lusion] was considered a fact established on Bible authority, [unclear: uring] the Inquisition multitudes of victims perished in agony id torment. In Germany and France, in England and [unclear: Scotnd], in Italy and Sweden, there was a continual harvest of [unclear: lood]. Here we find a judge boasting that he has put to death [unclear: ght] hundred witches in sixteen years; there a priest exerting [unclear: l] his influence to multiply the victims. Luther, at the head of [unclear: e] Reformation said, "I would have no compassion on these [unclear: itches;] I would burn them all! "And several persons in assachusetts were condemned and executed, and many more [unclear: rown] into prison, as late as 1692, on charges of entering lambers through key-holes, and pricking and pinching women id children until the air was full of their shrieking and bewail[unclear: g], though the tormentors were nowhere to be seen.

How did it come about that people were so marvelously edulous and so easily and basely deceived. Mr. Lecky finds [unclear: e] explanation in the mental limitations of the times. "The [unclear: uth] is," he says, "that in those ages, ability was no guarantee [unclear: ainst] error, because the single employment of the reason was develop and expand premises that were furnished by the [unclear: urch]. There was no such thing as an uncompromising and [unclear: reserved] criticism of the first principles of teaching; there [unclear: is] no such thing as a revolt of the reason against conclusions [unclear: at] were strictly drawn from the premises of authority." That is the unmitigated tyranny' of Rome, no small portion of the [unclear: rit] of which, in some things, Protestantism inherited. While [unclear: ch] conditions remained, it was simply impossible for any [unclear: wer], known or unknown, to find the man for whom humanity [unclear: is] longing. To pass from Rome to Reason, from the spirit of [unclear: thority] to complete individual freedom, that was the task to accomplished before the divine being sought should come.

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How little the nature of that struggle has been realized [unclear: unit;] these modern times, and bow little in all its significance [unclear: v] realize [unclear: un] it now ! At first the individual was of no account. [unclear: H] had no disposition to demand rights. He had no reason expect mercy. His interests were not worth considering, [unclear: a] he himself was more than willing to be a sacrifice to the [unclear: tyran] of kingly and priestty power, as the devout worshipers of [unclear: Ju] gernaut are said to have thrown themselves upon the ground be crushed by the wheels of his moving tower. Later on, [unclear: son!] consideration was paid him as a mere animal. Finally an [unclear: effort] was made to conciliate him, to conquer him through [unclear: diplomacy] by force of brains instead of force of arms. The motto of [unclear: rule] found expression in the words of Richelieu: "Use all means [unclear: l] persuade; failing of that to crush." And now it has [unclear: bee] hinted in this nineteenth century that each individual [unclear: shou] stand on the pedestal of his own independence, summon [unclear: at] things without exception to the bar of his reason, take [unclear: Tru] for his authority, and no authority whatsoever for Truth. It the glory of these times that the thinking world accepts [unclear: th] latter position as its ideal, though it is still far from realizing if It is true that no tyranny asserts itself as boldly now as [unclear: i] past times; we do not believe in witches—if we did we [unclear: probably] should not hang them; but there are certain [unclear: manifestation] of public opinion which still exercise an iron sway over [unclear: ma] kind, still retard the growth of a high order of manhood [unclear: an] womanhood. Nor are these manifestations less dangerous [unclear: b] cause exceedingly subtle and plausible. How many [unclear: custom] live now, precisely as witchcraft did, because certain [unclear: premise] are given to man which he is not to question, or—what [unclear: amount] to the same thing—which he does not question. I do not [unclear: sa] the exercise of his reason on any given subject is absolutely [unclear: prohibited;] I do not say he deliberately abdicates its exercise; [unclear: t] real difficulty is, that it does not occur to him to exercise it. [unclear: H] acquiesces, accepts, as he would say, a thousand things [unclear: witho] ever submitting them to the mental faculty, and becomes a [unclear: me] machine without knowing it. Hence it has been repeatedly [unclear: sa] page 6 [unclear: ith] perfect truth, that if people can only be made to think for [unclear: emselves] the whole battle is won. So important is this [unclear: ele] ent in the make-up of character. Thought means a healthy [unclear: lf-assertion]; to stifle thought is to crush the individual; to [unclear: ush] the individual is to overthrow society and undermine civilization. We look back through history and say Louis XVI. was [unclear: tyrant]. The African slave-trade, American slavery, Russian [unclear: rfdom],—these were all forms of tyranny. And we say truly, [unclear: t] we must not think, because these have been abolished, that [unclear: e] highway to unfettered progress is cleared. There are some [unclear: gers] to a sound individualism which lie very near our own [unclear: rs].

One of the most threatening of these is a frequent oppressive perverting influence in our homes. To call a child into the [unclear: orld], and to superintend its early growth, is one of the greatest [unclear: ivileges] of this life. So great a privilege is it, that it is only [unclear: operly] exercised by those who truly love. But the privilege [unclear: not] one whit greater than the responsibility. The parent is [unclear: t] the owner of the child as he may own a house, or a [unclear: jack-]ife, but he is its guide and helper through the formative [unclear: riod] of its career. He has no right to compel it to grow other-[unclear: ise] than nature inclines it—he cannot do that if he tries; [unclear: ither] has he any right to leave it to grow up by itself, as Topsy [unclear: d]. It is his business, the most vital and sacred business he [unclear: n] have on hand, to study the character which he is to [unclear: assist] unfolding, and to impress, in natural and legitimate ways, his [unclear: n] best self upon it. Not by direct acts so much as by the [unclear: stable] influence of pure motive and unselfish living. It is the [unclear: d] barbaric idea that physical force is the most potent power. [unclear: ou] shall and you must, are its offspring, but the wise parent and [unclear: acher] knows perfectly well that in the long run these are the [unclear: eakest] of masters. He knows that they would often be absolutely superfluous, if there had existed at the very foundation of [unclear: e] family, and been maintained through all its history, a profound [unclear: d] childlike reverence for the individual. By that I do not [unclear: ean] the let-alone indifference which so often exists between page 7 fathers and mothers, and must be seen and felt by their sons and daughters. That is the lowest form of individualism, and unworthy the name it bears. What I mean is such an intimate acquaintance between husband and wife, between parents and children, as shall lead to knowledge of and respect for, all individual characteristics, and an intelligent cooperation in assisting their growth. Such knowledge and such cooperation are the foundation stones of a successful home, and it would seem as if they ought not to be hard to find. Depend upon it, my friend, if you think the members of your family ought to grow just as you want them to, and you feel dissatisfied because they do not meet your expectations in this respect,—depend upon it the trouble is not with them, it is with you. Why should you not rejoice in every strong trait of character they develop, and make yourself its friend? How strange it seems that men who will do almost anything and everything just because they feel inclined to, will frequently make themselves the embodiments of the concentrated prohibition of all time in the presence of their wives, who want to think just as they are inclined to, and to put their thoughts into deeds just as they are inclined to. Freedom for bad habits, for doubtful practices, for general license; prohibition of individual growth, that is about what it amounts to in many such cases. The greatness of all true philosophy of living lies in this respect for the individual; and the place of all others where it should exist, and should be most carefully cultivated, if it does not already exist, is the home. When all parents hold such a fine and exalted relation with each other, when together they hold such a fine and exalted relation with their children, the nursery for the Divine Man will have been constructed. Born into its atmosphere, his home influence will be such as to lift him towards the stars. In that

"Mingling of affection
Where one can tell
Another all his mind,"

a heart that has no guile will grow until it shall be impossible to tell where the human ends and the divine begins.
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But the Divine Man not only needs a nursery, he needs a school. Because he is not to come of miraculous conception, [unclear: he] is not to jump into the arena of life a perfect being—that [unclear: allacy] is exploded now. He is to be a product of natural laws. His career is to be an evolution. So we find the thinking world to-day looking about for an education fit to go with the nursery we have pictured, and to carry on the work which it begins. And it does not find it in our present appliances. All thoughtful people are the friends of our public school system, they [unclear: are] glad to have it with us even as it is, but they are profoundly [unclear: anxious] that it should evolve into something more adequate to [unclear: human] needs. It is hardly necessary to argue the point that [unclear: the] human stomach is not simply a cavity into which, at [unclear: stated] times, a given amount of food should be emptied. Everybody [unclear: nows] something of the laws of digestion. Everybody knows [unclear: that] food should be properly selected, varied with the tastes and [unclear: eeds] of the individual, and taken at proper times and in proper [unclear: quantities]; the ultimate end being not to fill an empty vessel, [unclear: but] to absorb into the blood and to convert into bone and tissue [unclear: what] is eaten. This is the way in which the body lives and [unclear: grows]. Now supposing intellectual education to be all that [unclear: needs] attention at the hands of the state, the great fault of our [unclear: ublic] school is that it treats the mind, an infinitely more complex and subtle organ than the stomach, as if all it needed was [unclear: to] be filled up. A diet has been prescribed, suited or supposed [unclear: to be] suited to all, as if all minds were built after the same [unclear: model], possessed the same tendencies, and worked by the same [unclear: methods]. But intellectual education is not all that is needed. [unclear: Why] the process of development which goes on in the nursery, [unclear: and] the results of which are all needed in adult life, should not [unclear: be] ministered to in its entirety in the public school, it is a little [unclear: difficult] to understand. And the tendency now, in searching [unclear: for] a system which shall produce a divine man by natural processes, is to emphasize some of the features which have been [unclear: itted]. A complete human being, and that is and must allays be our ideal, a complete human being needs an educated page 9 conscience and educated hands, just as much as he needs an educated mind; and he needs also a harmonious development of these different organs. I need not at this late day catalogue the deficiencies in our educational work concerning these. I simply refer to them in general terms now, that I may point out the reason for their existence and suggest the way in which they are to be removed. The present scope and methods of popular education are not the outgrowth of study of, and respect for, the individual. They are the result of an attempt to deal with men in the mass. It has been the need of society and the need of the state, rather than the need of the man, which has been uppermost in our educational philosophy. The safety of society requires that all men should know how to read, how to write, how to cipher, therefore society, through its representative, the state, must see that all men are taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. But under the new inspiration society has discovered that its safety requires that every individual shall know the difference between right and wrong, and stall know how to earn an honest living, quite as clearly as it requires that he shall know how to read the Bible, write his name, and add a column of dollars and cents. In other words, the natural logic of events has carried us from the contemplation of the masses to the contemplation of the individual, and to-day we are trying, wisely trying, to focus all our educational glasses upon him. Under the lead of such thinkers as Pestalozzi and Froebel, the world is gradually putting itself at school to the children, as the only sure method of learning how to treat a growing mind. Now what has this study of the child-nature already shown? In my judgment several things, but nothing more plainly than this—that the power of observation and the desire to do are among the very earliest facts of its evolution. The child, the mere baby, uses its eyes and hands, long before it shows any hunger for the alphabet or the multiplication table. I affirm without any hesitation that, as a rule, children from three to twelve years of age can be given, with infinite advantage, elemen-tary instruction in Natural History and Industrial Occupation. page 10 Aye, more than that, if they have an opportunity they will surely suggest in some way to a thoughtful mind that this is what they specially need. I defy any one to produce a boy who, when he picks up a kitten by the tail, will not be interested to learn about its backbone. I have yet to see the child who is not pleased to learn for the first time that the lion is a big cat; that the monkey has no feet but is the fortunate possessor of four hands; that his little dog is a quadruped because it has four feet, and he himself is a biped because he has two. Go with me into any Kindergarten and I will show you children, three, four, five years of age, so happy in sewing or pricking, in folding or cutting papers, or in moulding little clay balls and cubes, that you will mistakenly call it only aimless play. Well, what do such facts as these mean? They are the promulgation to our minds of the Almighty Laws of human evolution, if we can only see and grasp them. Education, they say, is not a getting from without; it is a growth from within. If your boy shows a taste for the use of tools, buy him an amateur tool-chest in precisely the same spirit that you would buy him a mental arithmetic or a geographical reader. If your girl has a keen eye for form and a disposition to make mud and snow huts, give her an opportunity to work in clay or plaster in precisely the same spirit that you buy her a spelling-book and secure for her a music teacher. And above all things else, make the lives of both a miniature world in which Practical Ethics may be taught as easily and naturally as the flowers blossom and the birds sing. In a word, do not say beforehand just what every child shall have, do not measure out so many quarts of arithmetic and so many yards of spelling for each; but study each individual case and help each to develop, according to the laws of its own being, into spherical beauty and wholeness. Each child has the power to see, the power to do, the power to think. Education means enabling him to see correctly, to do wisely, to think freely and independently. And the system which does not thus adapt itself to the development of the child in its natural way; which does not aim at evolution instead of involution, is weak at the page 11 very foundations, and sure to result in an unsymmetrical product. There is a time for everything good, there is a place for everything good in education. If we study human character and respect the individual, we shall learn when that time and that place are; and so shall be able at length to construct an ed-ucational system capable of doing its part toward the making of A Divine Man.

But evolution does not run in streaks. It includes all facts. The process has no beginning of which we may be certain. We cannot say that it ever has reached, or ever will reach an end. So the growth from the worthlessness to the sacredness of the individual goes on, not only in the nursery and the school, but in the whole of life, which is, after all, but a larger nursery and a larger school. As might be expected, the child who has not enjoyed an atmosphere of complete individual freedom, grows up a conformist. He respects a great many things more than he respects his own thought. Indeed, the foundations of his character are so weak, that, as already suggested, it does not occur to him to have any thought which can justly be called his own. Hence we get four dangerous and often unrecognized forms of authority; each of which is a constant menace to strong character. I refer to the power of social custom, the power of the church, the power of the press, and the power of the state. These are all, in a sense, forms of what we may call the tyranny of the majority. I do not say they are unmitigated evils and ought to be abolished. I am not an anarchist But I say they all exert certain subtle influences which must be recognized and largely overcome, before we can have a race of self-reliant men.

Of the customs of society, it may be said, that no one is obliged to conform to them; that to be out of the fashion is not to invite the penalty of the law. But we must remember that public opinion is law in this country, and to withstand that is a difficult task. How many of the forgeries, the thefts, the irregularities, among otherwise upright citizens, are due to an attempt to conform to a condition of society beyond their means. How often a social standard is set—as rigorously as if enacted into page 12 law—to be below which costs something, to be above which is a passport to the esteem of one's fellows. The difficulty is not so much in dishonesty, as in a universal lack of respect for the individual in all that makes him most a man. He does not respect himself so much as he respects the opinions of others. Others do not respect him as they respect the combined influence of the majority. All this tends to confirm that apish conformity which early training has encouraged. Everybody wants to have something like everybody else. Everybody wants to be like everybody else. This creates, in time, not only a fashion in clothes and food and dwellings, but a fashion in reading and study. I have heard it said of Carlyle that if he would only have used common language it would have been so much the pleasanter to read him, and his work in the world would have been so much the greater. I think there is a fallacy in this criticism. Carlj-le's style was his own. To have compelled him to write in the majestic simplicity of Emerson, would have been to infringe upon his individuality, and consequently to rob him of half his power. We must respect the individual. We must throw off this nightmare of conformity. Mill says, "Where not the persons own character, but the traditions or customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress." This is the danger incurred in subordinating the individual to the crowd, and in substituting artificial for natural relations. The great evil of protection is that it begets in the protector an overbearing disposition, and in the protected a servile disposition. Alms-giving encourages dependence. Justice helps to opportunities for self-maintenance, and so promotes self-reliance. It matters little to what phase of social life we turn;—to the centre of fashion, to the private club, to the public charity, to the radical re-form, the first thing to be done is not to win public esteem, not to provide places for paupers, not to count votes;—it is to call out individual characteristics, and to strengthen the springs of individual thought and action. At a time when Senator Sum- page 13 ner was subjected to rebukes from many quarters for his public attitude on certain questions, Mr. Emerson wrote him, "Your course is particularly admirable, because self-appointed and self-sustained." It seems to me that nothing is so much needed at this hour as that we should all learn to see with our own eyes, to do with our own hands, and to think with our own minds.

This self-reliance is also needed in Religion. The number of people who do not question the authority of the church is still by no means small. They get up Sunday morning, they answer the summons of the bell, they take their accustomed seats, they repeat the creed, they listen to the discourse, and scarcely think for a moment of the belief to which they are formally assenting. So tremendous has been the authority of the church, that even now many of its devotees accept without thought the premises it furnishes. The children are taught in Sunday schools of the existence and character of God as a thing to be taken on trust; theological views are instilled into their minds concerning immortality and the mission of Jesus; the origin, nature, and des-tiny of man are treated as things about which there is no difference of opinion; and so the young grow up in a sort of tacit acceptance of the doctrines of the church, without for once being taught to reason about them, as they may about what are regarded as purely secular things. As they become old enough to enter the church itself, the attitude of the ministry helps to confirm this early teaching, for there is scarcely a pulpit,—the exceptions are only enough to prove the rule,—there is scarcely a pulpit where there is not a line of limitation drawn. The existence of the Roman Catholic Church depends upon the sup-pression of free thought. The existence of a large portion of the Protestant Church depends upon limiting thought by the boundary lines of its creeds. The word of the one to the individual is, do not think at all about these things. The word of the other is, think freely up to this point, but stop here. So, if the truth is told, you find the great majority of people who attend church to-day pretending to hold opinions which have been emptied into their minds, but which never have undergone, and page 14 never will undergo, any process of intellectual absorption and assimilation. That, you see, in one of the most important of all spheres of thought is taking Authority for Truth, instead of Truth for Authority.

So in relation to the Press, one of the most powerful of forces, perhaps the most powerful force in public life to day. It is not like a book made up upon some one line of thought. It aims to furnish in its way what all the people want, and at the earliest possible moment. These two characteristics, multiplicity of subjects and speed in treatment of them, tend to make the work of the newspaper as a thinking power superficial, extremely so. And yet thousands of people, consciously or unconsciously, allow the editor, with his party bias, or his church bias, or his social bias, to do their thinking for them. I state what every one who has studied the matter knows, when I say that more than almost any other agency in existence, the value of the press depends upon the ability of its individual readers to judge critically of the reasonableness of its reports and the soundness of its opinions.

And finally, the State itself, while claiming with us to represent the people, may hold a relation to the individual citizen which is essentially one of tyranny. That is what the constant discussion of the character and limitation of human government, so largely participated in by some of the ablest minds of all ages, means. With us, students of political institutions have long been interested to discover some wise method of minority representation, with a view to perfecting the representative basis of our political structure. Spencer and others have remarked, that while in this country we boast of our great individual liberty, there is really no more despotic power on earth than the tyranny of the majority may sometimes be. "The freest form of government," says Mr. Spencer, in Social Statics, "is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few, we call tyranny; the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also. You shall do as we will, and not as you will, is in either case the declaration; and if the hundred make it to page 15 the ninety-nine, instead of the ninety-nine to the hundred, it is only a fraction less immoral." This observation of Mr. Spencer is a radical, and I think, rightly understood, a profound one. It indicates the necessity for reducing the amount of legislation, and the number of subjects legislated upon, to the minimum. It is an expression of the ever growing conviction that, as a whole, the powers of government need to be very much lessened.

Still there is danger of misunderstanding in this argument, against which I would like to guard myself. Many people know no difference between criticising a thing and condemning it. If there are those who think our public schools, our social life, our churches, our newspapers, our government, doubtful blessings, I am not of them. My only aim is to claim that in the last analysis the unit of measure which cannot be divided is the individual. And that all institutions are worthy just in proportion as they minister to the highest development of the individual. As between him and the eternities nothing can interfere. Neither "law, nor constitution is final—Truth alone is final. In its service Man is more than Constitutions, and owes a higher than human allegiance." As Ruskin says, the essence of Light is in his eyes, the centre of Force in his soul,—the pertinence of Action in his deeds.

Perhaps all I have tried to express may be summed up in the thought that man is the slave of his environment, and always will be so long as he is only half-equipped to meet its conditions and overcome them. To send him forth, then, to the struggles of life fully armed,—physical, mentally, morally,—that should be the aim of home, of school, of all social and political forms.

Having finished our chase after mediators, we now turn our attention to the more heavenly work of studying the relative influences of heredity, and circumstances, and in trying to control both for the highest good. In the mean time, the world moves nearer to its ideal, exclaiming more earnestly than ever,

"Give me that man
Who is not passion's slave and I will wear him
In my heart's core."

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At length the new Messiah appears. "He asks heaven for the day's business, worships when he transacts it nobly," and climbs to the Eternal on the ladder of his aspirations. We wonder where he has been so long, as we see him multiplied into a million hearts, and rejoice that neither in old India nor old Judea, but right here in new America, amid conditions of larger truthfulness, purity, and love, the hour and the man have come.