The Golden Censer Part 13

So much in compliment of mankind. Now this same marvelous creature, man, has a critical spirit. He is endued with a quality of progression. The motive power in this progression is dissatisfaction. Let us listen to the sages when they drop eulogy and become out of conceit with themselves.

"MAN IS IMPROVABLE,"

says Horace Mann. "Some think he is only a machine, and that the only difference between a man and a mill is, that one is carried by blood and the other by water." Says Pascal: "What a chimera is man! what a singular phenomenon! what a chaos! what a scene of contrariety! A judge of all things yet a feeble worm; the shrine of truth, yet a ma.s.s of doubt and uncertainty; at once the glory and the scorn of the universe.

If he boasts, I lower him; if he lowers himself I raise him; either way I contradict him, till he learns he is a monstrous, incomprehensible mystery." "Make yourself an honest man," says Carlyle sarcastically, "and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world." This remark sprang, probably, from a reading of

WHATELEY'S COMPARISON

of a rogue with a man of honor: "Other things being equal, an honest man has this advantage over a knave, that he understands more of human nature: for he knows that _one_ honest man exists, and concludes that there must be more; and he also knows, if he is not a mere simpleton, that there are some who are knavish. But the knave can seldom be brought to believe in the existence of an honest man. The honest man _may_ be deceived in particular persons, but the knave is _sure_ to be deceived whenever he comes across an honest man who is not a mere fool." "Man is

TOO NEAR ALL KINDS OF BEASTS--

a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture."

This was the poet Cowley's opinion. "Of all the animals" scolds Boileau, "which fly in the air, walk on the ground, or swim in the sea, from Paris to Peru, from j.a.pan to Rome, the most foolish animal, in my opinion, is man." People must be very bad, indeed, who get opinions as low as the two last quoted. That rapacious vulture George Peabody! that dissembling crocodile William Cowper! that robbing wolf Girard! that thieving fox Charles Sumner! that fawning dog Napoleon Bonaparte! and those most foolish animals Louis Aga.s.siz and Isaac Newton! It does not well become the weakest links in a chain to boast that they gauge that chain's strength, for the chain can be greatly strengthened, upon this easy discovery of those weak links, by simply dropping them out of connection.

And now comes the query: "What is man?" He has always been more or less at a loss for some striking and succinct statement of his peculiar characteristics--of the mark that separates him from other animals.

Diogenes Laertius says that Plato having defined man to be a two-legged animal without feathers, he (Diogenes) plucked a c.o.c.k, and, bringing him into the school, said "Here is Plato's man." From this joke there was added to the definition "With broad flat nails." Even this definition is just as faulty, as it does not exclude many species of the monkey. Again it was thought that man was the only being who laughs. Says Addison, poetically: "Man is the merriest species of the creation; all above and below him are serious." But scientists refuse to accept this distinction as accurate. "Man is an animal

THAT COOKS HIS VICTUALS,"

says Burke. "So does the buzzard" (in the sun) say the learned men. "Man uses tools," says another. "So does the beaver--the ourang-outang hurls stones, and fights with clubs," say the scientists. Finally, says Adam Smith, in his "Wealth of Nations:" "Man is an animal that makes bargains; no other animal does this--one dog does not change a bone with another." We must be satisfied with this, I suppose, but it is a very faulty declaration, for I have seen one dog change a bone with another, in which instance a big dog traded with a little dog, and impressed the little dog with the desirability, under the circ.u.mstances, of the smaller of two bones! And I am not sure but that

ALL BARGAINS, WHETHER HUMAN OR CANINE,

are of that stripe, wherein the superior of two bone or money getters acquaints the inferior with the good points of a bad bargain. Buffon, at the beginning of his Natural History, is unable, even, to give any line of demarcation between vegetable and animal substances, and perplexes the mind with an infinitude of faulty attempts, in turn showing the weak spot in each. "For man is a plant,"

SAYS PLUTARCH,

"not fixed in the earth nor immovable, but heavenly, whose head, rising, as it were, from a root upwards, is turned towards heaven." "A man ought to carry himself in the world," says Henry Ward Beecher, continuing and building on Plutarch's thought, "as an orange-tree would, if it could walk up and down in the garden,--swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up to the air."

Know then thyself, presume not G.o.d to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

This is the declaration of the great poet Pope, and a glance across the world's literature will show that the mandate was unneeded. For ages before the birth of the celebrated "wasp of Twickenham," mankind had been at study on the subject. "The burden of history" says George Finlayson, "is what man has been; of law, what he does; of physiology, what he is; of ethics, what he ought to be; of revelation, what he shall be." "Man is the product of his own history," says Theodore Parker. "The discoverer finds nothing so grand or tall as himself, nothing so valuable to him. The greatest star is that at the end of the telescope--

THE STAR THAT IS LOOKING, NOT LOOKED AFTER,

nor looked at." "Man is greater than a world, than systems of worlds; there is more mystery in the union of soul with the physical than in the creation of the universe." This sentence is by Henry Giles. To the first portion of it I give unqualified belief. I believe, too, with John Ruskin, that "the basest thought possible concerning man is that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is n.o.bly animal, n.o.bly spiritual--coherently and irrevocably so; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other."

"Man is the metre of all things," says Aristotle,

"THE HAND

is the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the form of forms."

The remark of the great Athenian regarding the hand, while no truer than that one touching the mind, is yet easier of demonstration to the unphilosophical reader. For instance, the printers of the finest engravings to this day use the palm of the hand to apply the ink; the type-setting machine is so far a failure for the want of the human fingers; the most perfect performance of music on a machine yet lacks that _sympathy_ and exception to mathematical rule which the human fingers, highly trained, impart to the keyboard, and the violin, that thing most nearly in communication with the soul of man,--pays no allegiance whatever save to the human hand well practiced in its mastery; the hand skilled in love soothes the aching brow; the whole framework of this instrument, the hand, filled with gold coins, almost without volition spurns the spurious piece; the false bank-note is lifted with suspicion; across the signature the deft fingers run to aid the eye; over the letters the mind of the sightless pushes its loyal touch, and the signal comes faithfully back to the dungeoned intelligence!

OUR OPPORTUNITIES

are the greatest of those of any living beings. It follows, it seems to me, that our responsibilities should be greater, both in justice and in reason. Every opportunity is equivalent to a duty. We owe--with all these miracles of the living world centered and perfected in our bodies,--a duty equally grand and difficult. Let us enn.o.ble ourselves.

John Fletcher wrote a beautiful metaphor in very clumsy verse when he said:

Man is his own star, and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man Commands all light, all influence, all fate,

Nothing to him falls early, or too late.

Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.

HOLY WRIT.

The Lord has well loved man: "He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings, so the Lord alone did lead him." "The Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to be a captain over his people." "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, [then] what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him

A LITTLE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS,

and hast crowned him with glory and honor!" "I have set the Lord before me. Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved." "Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." "I have been young, and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." "For all our days are pa.s.sed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told." "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." "He giveth his beloved sleep."

"A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps." "One event happeneth to them all." "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall turn unto G.o.d who gave it."

We perceive, upon a glance at this broad subject, that a book would be better fitted to its treatment than a chapter, and yet a chapter alone will aid in attuning the mind to the n.o.bility of our destiny. A single thought entering the mind at the right time will turn the current of a life. Let us elevate and strengthen our present into the n.o.bler foundation of a happier future on earth and a blissful eternity in heaven. We are endowed with shame. Let it keep us from meriting the stinging epigram: "G.o.d made him, and therefore let him pa.s.s for a man."

WOMAN.

She was a phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight.

And now I see, with eye serene, The very pulse of the machine; A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveler betwixt life and death; The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect woman, n.o.bly planned, To warm, to comfort, and command And yet a spirit still, and bright, With something of an angel light.--Wordsworth.

"Man is the image and glory of G.o.d, but the woman is the glory of the man," says the great Book. This is so true that most of the charities and mercies for which mankind gets credit in his own moral intelligence are inspired by the charitable and merciful attributes so characteristic of true womanhood. Campbell, in the "Pleasures of Hope,"

speaks thus of the Garden of Paradise:

The world was sad--the garden was a wild, And man, the hermit, sighed, till woman smiled.

And lovely woman has smiled forever. Into the lot of life she has put all that has endeared it or made it tolerable; into the hope of the hereafter she has ever breathed the breath of life and kept it a living force. Besides the charms she has for man as a thing of superexcellent beauty, woman has ever held him in the second greatest debt he owes. She teaches him, not less, a greater debt (to G.o.d), and brings him before that Chief Creditor with little thought of her own dues. Upon

A SUBJECT SO PLEASANT TO MAN,

it is not strange that he has spent his days in framing speeches to reward the admirable devotion of woman, and it is pleasant to believe the object of those encomiums has received them as the most desirable form of remuneration. She has listened to his praise with beating heart, and blossomed into greater loveliness. She has had no greed of money, save as it would array her in beauteous raiment, that she might better guard the love she has won; she has had little ambition, save as she might be of service to her mate, whose unquiet soul has never ceased its