III. THE NEW IDEAL
The old religions and science are at war. With pitiless consistency science directs its attack upon their vulnerable positions. The conception of inexorable law subverts the testimony of miracles; the fond belief in truths divinely revealed fails to withstand the searching analysis of historical criticism; the battle of science is yet far from being won, but from our standpoint the issue cannot appear doubtful. It behooves us therefore to inquire into the moral bearings of the general result thus far achieved and to review what we have lost and won. Shall we succeed thereby in allaying the sense of alarm that is wont to agitate the timid heart when it beholds so much that it confidently believed a part of the everlasting verities of life, sink back into the gulf of uncertainty and doubt?
We are standing at the portals of a new age, and new conceptions have arisen of the purpose which we are here to accomplish and of the means of help we can command in the attempt to realize our destiny. These new conceptions we call The New Ideal. It is the purpose of our present discourse to compare some salient features of the old and new.
The old and new Ideals agree in looking to an Infinite beyond the borders of experience, for it is in the nature of the ideal to lift us above the merely real. They differ in the direction in which they seek their object, and the bias which they consequently give to men's thoughts and actions. Theology, perceiving the inability of reason to solve the problems of the beginning and the end, yet unable to restrain a desire to know what is really unknowable, has impressed the imagination into its service, and drawn a picture of the transcendental world, conforming indeed to the analogies of man's terrestrial existence, but on this account all the more adapted to answer the wishes of the masses of mankind. Enough for them that they feel the need of believing the picture true. We of the New School are, if possible, even more profoundly convinced of the limitations of human reason. We cheerfully accord to the religious conceptions of the past a poetic value; they are poetry, often of the sublimest kind; but we cannot deceive ourselves as to the noble weakness of the heart to which they owe their origin; we cannot forget that in their case alas the wish has been father to the thought. To us the mystery is still mystery – the veiled arcana are not revealed, the riddle is unread. But we are not therefore filled with terror or dismay. In the moral nature of man we discover a divine element. In the voice of conscience we hear the voice of the present divinity within us, and we learn to regard this mortal state of ours as a channel through which the currents of Eternity ebb and flow ceaselessly. The divine nature is not far off, nor beyond the sea; in our own hearts on our own lips!
But let us seek to scrutinize the distinctive features of the old and new more closely. The old ideal was supernatural in character, it taught man to regard his life on earth as a brief, temporary transit, himself an exile from the Kingdom on high. The concerns of the present world were in consequence deemed of secondary importance, and the eye dwelt with anxious preference on the dim chances of the hereafter. Where the hope of immortality has been prominently put forward by any religion, the effect has thus but too often proved disastrous to the progress and security of society. It is well-known by what painful penances the monks of the Middle Ages sought release from the trammels of the flesh, how they affected to despise the ties of domestic affection, how they retarded the advancement of knowledge, how the passions which they sought in vain to suppress often recoiled upon them with fearful retribution, and gave rise to disorders which seriously undermined public virtue.
But not only has supernaturalism tended indirectly to weaken the springs of virtue, it has called into being an order of men whose very existence is a standing menace to the freedom of intellect and the rights of conscience. The distance between the Creator and his creatures is so great, that the intervention of some third party is deemed necessary to mediate between the finite and the Infinite. The priest steps in to perform this office, and his influence is great in proportion to the value of the services which he is supposed to render. Furthermore it is believed that the personal deity requires the performance of certain actions in his honor, and what these actions are is again left to the priest to determine. In this manner the ceremonial part of religion grows up, and acquires a degree of importance fatal to the moral life. The duties toward God transcend the duties toward man, and but too often usurp their place.
The Bible likens the relations of man to God to those of a child to its father. It is true supernaturalism has often proved a valuable stay to those already morally strong, and it were absurd to deny that under its fostering care many of the noblest qualities that distinguish the filial relation have been developed in the lives of religious men. It is from no lack of appreciation on our part that we have dwelt on the evils rather than the blessings it has brought. But in acknowledging that we have really lost the sense of protection, the childlike trust which lend such rare beauty to the character of many ancient models of piety, we deemed it important to point to the shades that darken the picture of the * supernatural religions, its lights are made the theme of a thousand discourses week after week, and are hardly in any danger of being speedily forgotten.
From the back-ground of the old Ideal stands out in bold relief the new. It is the reverse of supernatural; if it takes pride in anything, it is in marking a return to nature. Trammels of the flesh, contamination of the body? There is nothing it tells us in itself contaminating. The body is not alien to the mind, it is the seed plot from which mind flowers out in every part. Regard the form of man, observe the quick play of the features, the expressive smile, the speaking glance, every attitude, every gesture full of meaning, the whole body irradiated as it were, with the indwelling intelligence. And so the passions too which we are wont to associate with our corporeal nature are but the rough material from which the artist soul behind them fashions its immortal types of beauty and of holiness. There is a graceless innuendo in the term nature, as of something hard, gross, material. In truth, nature is the subtlest, most ethereal presence of which we catch a gleam only at rare intervals, the reflex of a hidden light that glimmers through the facts and motions of the world. Take the nature of water for instance. Is it in the hydrogen, in the oxygen, in the single atom? Not there, yet there! somewhere hovering, imponderous, elusive. It comes nighest to the senses when the atoms act and react upon each other, in the flow of mighty rivers, in the leap of cataracts, in the turmoil of the sea. Or the nature of the tree; is it in the roots, in the trunk, in the spreading branches, the leafy crown? Perhaps in the fruit more than elsewhere the hidden being of the tree comes forth into external reality, and opens to the eye and touch. In action and fruition the deeper nature appears. Thus in the outward world, and thus in man. Our soul-life, too, is a flowing stream, whose power is not in any part but in the ceaseless, changeful motion of the whole, that forms a strong spiritual current on which our thoughts and sentiments move like swimmers toward an infinite sea. And like a tree are we, with the mighty trunk of intellect, the spreading branches of imagination, the fibrous roots of the lower instincts, that bind us to the earth. But the moral life is the fruit we bear; in it our true nature is revealed; in it we see the purpose of our being fulfilled. So when we speak of a return to nature, it is this higher nature to which we refer, whose origin we know not, but whose workings we feel, and know them by the token of the sweet satisfaction they afford us to be the crown and glory of our lives. The old Ideal emphasizes the Eternal that is without us; the new the Eternal that is within ourselves. The old styles us exiles from the kingdom of truth; the new summons us to be the banner-bearers of truth; the old points to a heaven beyond the earth, the new tells us that our earth too is a part of the heaven, a light-world, among endless worlds of light.
If secondly we consider the means of support at our disposal in the pursuit of the ideal, we find prayer in universal use among the adherents of the old. Prayer in the sense of supplication, has been defined as "a request made to the Deity as if he were a man." And truly the language of prayer often tallies with this description. "Let me succeed in this undertaking," prays the Indian, "that I may slay my enemy and bring home the tokens of victory to my dear family, in order that they may rejoice together. Have pity on me and protect my life, and I will bring thee an offering." Some such inducement as the last is frequently coupled with the petition, "Here is an offering for you, O God! Look kindly towards this family, let it prosper and increase, and let us all be in good health." "Let me come upon my enemies speedily, let me find them sleeping and not awake, and let me slay a good many of them." "I pray for cattle, I pray for corn, I ask also for children, in order that this village may have a large population, and that your name may never come to an end, for of old we have lived by your favor, let us continue to receive it. Remember that the increase of our produce is the increase of your worship, and that its diminution must be the diminution of your rites." Among the Hindoos the efficacy ascribed to prayer was such that the gods themselves were deemed powerless to resist it, and the mystic invocations of the priests exerted a fateful influence on the destinies of the world. The ancient and modern literature of the Hebrews likewise testifies to their faith in prayer, and Christianity has herein followed if not outstripped their example. In case of drought the following prayer is offered in many of our churches: "Send us, we beseech thee, in this our necessity, such moderate rain and showers that we may receive the fruits of the earth to our comfort and to thy honor." In case of storms: "We humbly beseech thee to restrain these immoderate rains, wherewith for our sins thou hast afflicted us, and we pray thee to send such seasonable weather that the earth may in due time yield her increase for our benefit." In case of famine, "Increase the fruits of the earth by thy heavenly benediction, and grant that the scarcity and dearth which we now most justly suffer for our sins, through thy goodness may be turned into plenty." In case of sickness, prayers are offered for the recovery of the sufferer.
Against all these forms of petition the modern view of life emphatically protests. It starts with the grandest of scientific generalizations, that of the universality of nature's laws. These laws cannot be broken; they govern the course of the planets as they revolve through space, they appear in the slightest eddy of dust that rises on our streets. The world is a Kosmos; to pray for a change in its arrangements is to pray for its destruction. The rains come when they must come, and the earth yields or withholds her crop, as a system of causes determined from immeasurable aeons of time prescribes. Is the God to whom men pray so poor a workman that he will change the mechanism of the Universe at their bidding? If all that is, is his work, why then the drought is his work, and the famine, and the sickness are his work, and they are, because he has willed that they should be. "The gods help them that help themselves." We are placed in a world with which we are but half acquainted; our business is to know it thoroughly. All the history of mankind from the beginning has been a series of tentative struggles to acquire this precious knowledge, and we have made indeed some headway. We began by defending ourselves against the attacks of wild beasts; we tilled the soil; we invented tools, we formed communities, we moderated the friction of social intercourse; we discovered the talisman of science, and the Aladdin's lamp of art. In the treatment of disease also a great advance has been made. When the Mayflower reached the American continent, she found a bleak and barren shore, full only of graves. A great epidemic had swept over the Indian tribes, and the natives fell like dead flies before the scourge. They had charms and prayers; these did not help them. We have accomplished a little; we are bound to aim at more. Why then call in the supernatural? It will not come, though we call never so loudly. The vain attempt does but keep us from that which is more needful, active exertion and strenuous efforts at self-help. But we are told that our success is poor at best, and that in the vast majority of cases, all our exertions avail nothing: moreover it is said that man is too frail and feeble a creature to depend upon himself alone in times of trial, and that prayer, whether it be answered or not, is valuable as a means of consolation that soothes and stills the heart. It is but too true that our achievements fall far short of our desires. Let those that do not, cannot pray, seek support in the sympathies of their kind, and where self-help fails, mutual help will offer them an inexhaustible source of strength and comfort. As for that species of prayer which is not addressed to a personal God at all, but claims to be an aspiration, an outpouring of the spirit, we do fail to see how it deserves the name of prayer in any sense. The use of the vocative, and of the pronoun thou is certainly calculated to mislead, and the appearance of inconsistency is hardly avoidable.
Lastly, the old Ideal was stationary, retrospective; it placed its paradise at the beginning of human history. In the far off past it beheld our best and loftiest hopes anticipated and realized. Then the full significance of life had been reached; then the oracles had spoken loudly and clearly whose faint echoes now float like memories of half forgotten melodies to our ear; then the imperishable truths were revealed in those olden, golden days. Not so, says the new Ideal. Rude and wretched were the beginnings of mankind on earth, poor the mind, and void the heart. Far from being exemplary, the ideas of right and wrong entertained by our earliest progenitors were infinitely below our own. Not indeed, that the substance of the moral sentiment has ever perceptibly changed. The inherent principle of right remains the same, but it assumes higher forms and is applied on a wider scale as the race advances. Thus the commandment not to kill a being like ourselves was recognized from the first, but in the earliest times, only members of the same family were esteemed beings like ourselves; to kill a neighbor was not wrong. The family widened into the clan, the clan into the people, and all the nations are now embraced in the common bond of humanity. Thus step by step the life of the clansman, the fellow citizen and at last of every human being came to be regarded as sacred. From a common centre morality has developed outward in concentric circles. In different ages also different virtues predominated. Patriotism was esteemed highest in the Roman world; self-sacrifice and chastity in the first Christian communities. But whatever had thus been gained was not thereafter lost. Each age added its own to the stock of virtue; each contributed its share to swell the treasure of mankind. The struggle for existence that raged fiercely on the lower levels of culture, loses its harsher aspects as we advance upon the path of civilization. The methods of force by which the unfit were eliminated are gradually falling into disrepute, if not into disuse. At last the good will survive because of its own persuasive excellency. The conflict will become one of ideas merely, an emulous peaceful contest for the prize of truth.
That the manners of the modern world have indeed become ameliorated, our own brief experience as a society serves to illustrate. A few centuries ago, such an enterprise as ours would never have been attempted, or if undertaken, would have been speedily crushed by the arm of authority or the weight of prejudice. We will not say that bigotry is dead; the fires of persecution still slumber beneath their ashes, and now and then start up into pretty bonfires to amuse the idle crowd; but the time has gone by when they could mount on funeral pyres – they can kindle conflagrations no more.
The new Ideal is progressive. Whatever we have achieved, it tells us there are larger achievements yet beyond. As we rise in the scale of moral worth, the eye becomes clearer and wider of vision. We see in remote ages a race of men freer and stronger because of our toils, and that is our dearest hope and our sweetest recompense that they shall reap what we have sown.
The old and the new Ideals will struggle for the mastery; that which is stronger will conquer as of old, in the struggle for existence. But the new hope fills us with trust and gladness that that which is true will be strong.
IV. THE PRIESTS OF THE IDEAL
It is with good reason, that the very name of the priesthood, has become odious to the modern mind. How has their fanaticism drenched the earth with blood, how has their unbridled ambition sown seeds of discord among the nations; how lamentable a commentary is the record of their frailties upon the assumption of superior sanctity and God-given authority. Yet it is not the priestly office, but its abuse, which has proved of evil, nor has the time yet come, when the ministry of priests can be safely dispensed with. There shall come a new Ideal to attract men's reverence and a new service of the Infinite and a new priesthood also to do its ministry. It is of this modern priesthood, I would speak.
Fear not that I am about to advocate a return to that system of spiritual bondage, from which we have but just escaped. The priests to whom we allude shall not be known by cassock or surplice. It is not at the altar they shall serve, least of all shall they have dogmas to communicate. They shall not be more than human, only if possible more human. Priests have we of science, we name them so; men whose whole soul is wrapped up in the pursuit of knowledge: priests of art, who dedicate their lives to the service of the Beautiful, priests also of the Moral, artists of the Good, sages in the science of Virtue, teachers of the Ideal.
Let us consider for a moment, in order to illustrate our meaning, the life of one such priest, whose fame has come down to us undimmed by the corroding influence of time – the life of Socrates. He held no office, he ministered at no shrine, yet he was in the true sense a priest. A plain unpretentious man, content to live on coarse fare, inured to want, homely in appearance, using homely language; nothing had he in appearance to attract; yet the gay youths left their feasts and frolics when he approached, and the busy market-place was hushed to listen to the strange wisdom of his sayings; there was indeed a singular and potent charm in this man's soul. He had a great need of righteousness, wonderful, how he awakened the same need in the hearts of the Athenian burghers of his day. He was the reverse of dogmatic. In comparison with the vastness of the unknown, he was wont to say, all human knowledge is little even to nothingness, he did not assume to know the truth, but strove to assist men in finding truths for themselves. He had his own enlightened views on questions of theology. But far from desiring to convert others to his convictions, he rather sought to divert their attention from those mysterious problems, in which men can never be wise, problems that are no nearer their solution today, than they were two thousand years ago. To those who questioned him concerning religion he replied: Are ye then masters of the humanities, that ye seek to pry into divine secrets? His father had been a fashioner of statues before him, he was a fashioner of souls! This Socrates was condemned to suffer death on the charge of atheism, and met his fate with the calmness of the philosophic mind. If death, he said, is progress to untried spheres, then welcome death! If it is sleep only, then also welcome death and its deep repose. All the tokens of the priest were fulfilled in him. He was true to himself and unbared to others the veiled truths of their own higher nature. He was a loftier presence on earth, a living flame fed from its own central being, a sun to which the world turned and was thereby enlightened. We perceive then, that what we desire is not a new thing. There has been this service of the Ideal from the earliest times. Only a new plea would we urge for larger fidelity to that which the best have striven for, and which under new conditions it will be the glory of our age to approach more nearly.
The priest shall be a teacher of the "Ideal," but what is the Ideal and how distinguish it from the Real. Regard the trees, behold their number, the wondrous plenitude of their kinds.. There is the lithe and slender pine, the mighty oak, the stately palm, the tender willow. Alike yet most unlike. And who has ever seen the perfect tree! Observe the expressive features of the human face. How many thousands of such faces are born into the world each year and yet no two alike. By what fine shades, what scarce perceptible curves, what delicate touches has nature's chisel marked them each apart. Graceful forms and lovely faces there are, yet perfect none. Now the Ideal is the perfection of the Real. To find it we must go beyond the Realities. We study the nature of the tree, of man. We note the suggestions of the various parts, complete and produce them in utmost harmony, each perfect in itself, each serving by its own perfection, the rounded symmetry of the whole. In the image thus created we grasp the ideal form. Art with its genial enchantments, creates such images and gives them permanence in pure types of immortal significance. Art is idealism of form.
The intellect also, which looks out from behind the features, the indwelling man, exhibits the same twofold aspect of the Real and Ideal. Our real thoughts are incomplete and inadequate. We are led astray a thousand times by false analogies, we are decoyed into the labyrinths of fancy, we become the victims of impression, the toys of circumstance. But deep down in the basic structure of the mind are true laws, unerring guides. Logic expresses them, logic is the idealism of intellect.
And lastly we recognize the same distinction in the realm of feeling. To the untutored caprice, the overmastering impulse, in brief to the realism of the passions is opposed the law of right feeling, which ethics expresses. Ethics is the idealism of character. We call this last the capital revelation of man's nature. The moral law is not derivative, it can not be proven, it can not be denied. It is the root from which springs every virtue, every grace, all wisdom and all achievement. An attempt has indeed been made to base morality upon a certain commonplace utility, but true morality scorns your sad utilities. That is useful, which serves an object besides itself, while morality is itself an end, and needs and admits no sanction save its own excellency. As it delights the man of science to expand his judgment in ever wider and wider generalizations, as the larger thought is ever the truer thought, so is there an exquisite pleasure and an unspeakable reward in expanding the narrow consciousness of self in the unselfish, and the larger emotion is ever the nobler emotion. We speak of the moral Ideal, as The IDEAL, because it expresses the central idea of human life,# the purpose of our existence on earth. To expound and illustrate its bearings on our daily duties, our joys, our griefs and our aspirations, is the scope and limit of the priestly office.
The moral ideal would embrace the whole of life. Before it nothing is petty or indifferent, it touches the veriest trifles and turns them into shining gold. We are royal by virtue of it, and like the kings in the fairy tale, we may never lay aside our crowns. It tells us, that nothing shall be for its uses only, but all things shall take their tone and quality from the central idea.
When we build a house, it shall not be for its uses only. We shall have kitchens and drawing rooms and libraries and pictures and flowers, if possible. But the house, with all its comforts and luxuries, is mere framework, and our words and doings construct the true, the spiritual home. When we sit down to table, it shall not be for the use of the food and the flavor of the wine only, but morality should preside at the feast and lend it grace and dignity. Morality does not mope in corners, is not sour nor gloomy. It loves genial fellowship, loves to convert our meanest wants into golden occasions for joy and sympathy and happy communion. Manners too are the offspring of character. We do not rate highly the dry and cheerless conventionalisms of etiquette, but in their origin, they were the fruit of truth, and love. The rules of good breeding may be reduced to two; self-possession and deference. As when a public speaker loses his self-control, his own uncertainty is quickly communicated to his audience, and he forfeits his influence over his hearers; so the same cause produces the same effect in every lesser audience that gathers in our parlors. Society says to you: If I shall trust you, you must begin by trusting yourself. The man of the world will enter the palace of the prince and the cottage of the peasant with the same equipoise of manner. If he respects himself, there is no reason why he should stand abashed. Self-possession is essentially self-respect. Deference, too, is a primary condition of all courtesy. It teaches us to concede to others whatever we claim for ourselves; it leads us instinctively to avoid loudness, and self-complacency. It is expressed not only in the polished phrase, but in mien, attitude, every movement. Self-possession and deference of manner are both the outgrowth of moral qualities, the one depending on the consciousness of personal worth, the other inspired by an unselfish regard for the well-being of others. From these two it were possible to deduce the rules of a new 'Chesterfield,' which should be free from all the conceit and affectation of the old. Unfortunately, manners are no longer the natural outpouring of heart-goodness. Men attire themselves in politeness as they do in rich apparel; they may be as rude as they please, the year round, they know they can be fine on occasion. Moreover in the home circle, where the forms of courtesy are quite indispensable to prevent undue friction; to send the light of grace and poetry into a world of little cares; to fill the atmosphere of our daily surroundings as with the fragrance of a pervading perfume; they are yet most commonly neglected. The word manners has the same meaning as morals. When we shall have better morals, we shall have truer and sweeter manners.
The Ideal which thus seeks to interpenetrate the most ordinary affairs of private life, stands out also in the market place, in the forum, in the halls of legislation, and setting aside the merely useful, exhorts men to return to permanent values. That is the ideal view of politics which teaches us to hold the idea of country superior to the utilities of party, to exact worthiness of the public servants, to place the common good above sectional animosities and jealousies. That is the ideal view of commerce, which impels the merchant, while seeking prosperity by legitimate means, to put conscience into his wares and dealings and to keep ever in sight the larger purposes of human life. That is the ideal view of the professions, which leads their representatives to subordinate the claims of ambition and material gain to the enduring interests of science, justice, and of all the great trusts that are confided to their keeping. And he therefore shall be called a priest of the Ideal, who by precept and example will divert us from the absorbing pursuit of the realities and make plain to us that the real is transitory, while in the pursuit of the Ideal alone we can find lasting happiness. For the realities are constantly disconcerting us in our search for the better. They are so powerful, so insistent; we think them every thing until we have proved their attractions and find them nothing. We have that only which we are. But the common judgment holds to the reverse; we are only what we have. And so the turbulent crowd plunges madly into the race – for acres, for equipage, for well-stocked larders, for office, for fame. Good things are these, as scales on the ladder of life, but life is somewhat more than acres and equipage and office and fame. Seldom indeed do we truly live. Often are we but shadows of other lives. We affect the fashions not only in dress but also in thought and opinion. We are good or bad, as public opinion bids us. The state is ruined, the church is corrupted, and the world's giddy masquerade rushes heedlessly on. Give me one who will think Having and Seeming less than Being; who will be content to be himself and a law unto himself and in him I will revere the ideal man. Before him the shams and mockeries of existence shall sink away. He will look into his own soul and tell you the oracles he has read there, and you will hear and behold your own heart. He will plant the sign of the Eternal on a high standard and call unto a people that strays in the wilderness to look up to that and be saved. The old and the young will he instruct, and they shall love him, for his words will be an articulate cry to the dumb voices in their own breasts. This is the be-all and end-all of his mission, – to make them acquainted with themselves. Do you know he will say, what a power is in you, what a light is hidden in the deep recesses of your nature. Artists are ye all to whom your own soul is given to mold it into beauty. Happy, happy indeed if you seek no other reward but the artist's joy in his work and know that to be your glory and your recompense.