The new biography of Benedict Arnold tells us of the despair of the traitor"s final days, the remorse that gnawed his heart, the agony that filled his life. Yet no arbitrary degree was imposed upon Arnold. He plotted the surrender of the interests committed to him as a general, planned the stratagem that ended in the capture and execution of Andre, and received $30,000 in gold for his treachery. Having gone over to the enemy, he placed himself at the head of a band of English troops and went forth to destroy the towns and villages of his boyhood and pillaged the homes of his old friends. He sowed avarice, and of avarice he reaped $30,000. He sowed distrust in America; he reaped distrust from the Englishmen who had bought his honor. He sowed treason; he reaped infamy. He sowed contempt for the colonists, and, dying, he reaped the contempt from his old friends, who counted his body carrion. For the harvests of the soul represent not arbitrary degrees, but the workings of natural law. If Ceres, the G.o.ddess of harvests, makes the sheaf to reap the seed, conscience, recalling man"s career, ordains that like produces like. What a man soweth that shall he also reap is the law of nature and of G.o.d.
The heroes of the Old Testament are common people capitalized. What is unique in the experience of these sons of greatness holds true of all of lesser rank. The career of one of these giants is a pictorial exhibition of this principle of the spiritual harvest. Young Jacob was shrewd, crafty and full of foresight. If Esau, his brother, was a "hail fellow well met," the child of his impulses, Jacob was a diplomat and very wily. One day, when the father, Isaac, was blind and old, Esau grew restless, and at last went away with his companions, for he dearly loved to hunt. In that hour ambition tempted Jacob and avarice led him away. Advantaging himself of his brother"s absence, Jacob used the skin of a kid to make his hands hairy, like the hands of Esau, and, simulating the brother"s voice, he extorted from his dying father those tokens that, according to the Eastern custom, made him the successor to his father"s t.i.tle, wealth and power. Full twoscore years pa.s.sed swiftly by and the deceit seems to have brought is large money returns to crafty Jacob.
But silently nature was working out the harvest of retribution, through that law of heredity that makes sons repeat the qualities of their father. When Jacob was now advanced in years his ten sons began, to develop craftiness, and soon they plowed great furrows of care in the father"s face. In those days of care his young son Joseph stole into Jacob"s heart like a sweet sunbeam, and, with his open, loving ways, filled his father"s heart with gladness. When the elder brothers knew Jacob had given Joseph a coat of many colors they remembered the craft of their father in his early career. One evening, when the herds and flocks were scattered widely over the hills, Simeon sent out messengers and called his brothers together for a conference. In that hour he said: "Wist ye not how our father, being a younger son, supplanted his elder brother, Esau? And behold his craft will now make his younger child, Joseph, to supplant his elder brothers! Do ye not remember how our father, Jacob, took a kid and made his hands like unto the hands of Esau? Let us now take a kid and make its blood represent the blood and death of Joseph. What Jacob did for his father, Isaac, let his sons do to their father, Jacob." Thus, with subtle irony, nature made the man"s sins to come back to him. A boy, Jacob deceived his father, now, grown gray and old, his boys brought their father an armful of deceits.
In that hour when Reuben and Simeon held up the coat of many colors, all red with blood, great nature might have whispered to Jacob: "It is the blood of the kid that you slew for deceiving your father returning to enable your sons to deceive you." For, having sowed deceit, deceit also and stratagem Jacob reaped. Himself a son, he thrust a dart into his father"s heart. Become a father, his ten sons became archers, skilled with darts that filled their father"s heart with agony. For nature loves justice; her rule is law, sometimes her rod is iron.
The principle that every deed is a seed that contains the germ of its own reward or punishment has received full interpretation by the poets and dramatists. In his "Paradise Lost," Milton has made a detailed study of the principles of the spiritual harvests. The poet represents Satan as an angel, fallen indeed, and sadly battered by his fall, yet still an archangel glorious for strength and beauty. Having visited Paradise and accomplished the destruction of Eve"s innocence and Adam"s happiness, Satan returns home, pa.s.sing over a bridge of more prodigious length than now arches the gulf between earth and h.e.l.l. When the prince arrived at Pandemonium, the capital of Lucifer"s realm, he found that the leaders of the fallen host had arranged a reception in the great banquet-hall of the palace. In the presence of the applauding throng, the prince told the story of how he had succeeded in opening the earth as a place to which these exiled angels might retreat from the prison in which they had been so long confined, and pointed to the great bridge spanning the abyss "twixt earth and h.e.l.l. When the loud cheerings and rejoicings over this fact had ceased, Satan told by what stratagem he had succeeded in inducing man to break friendship with G.o.d. It was not by disguising himself as an angel of light. But, affirmed Satan, man cared so little for the laws of G.o.d that, although disguised as a serpent, he induced man to sin.
"Then awhile Satan stood, expecting their universal shout and high applause To fill his ear, when contrary he hears On all sides from innumerable tongues A dismal universal hiss, the sound Of public scorn. He wondered, but not long Had leisure. Wondering at himself no more, His visage drawn, he felt; too sharp and spare His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining Each the other, till supplanted down he fell, _A monstrous serpent_ on his belly p.r.o.ne, _Reluctant, but in vain_. A greater power Now ruled him, _punished in the shape he sinned_, According to his doom."
Also when Satan attempted to speak, Milton says, only a hiss went forth "from forked tongue to forked tongue." When many days had pa.s.sed by and their hunger was very sore because these fallen angels had seduced man by an apple, it came about that when, fierce with hunger, they seized the fruit ripe upon the branches, the apples were found to be filled with soot and ashes. By these striking suggestions Milton gives us his idea how angels and men reap what they sow. Should the literary critic seek an appropriate heading for the tenth book of "Paradise Lost," he could hardly find one more appropriate than this: "What Man Soweth, That Shall He Also Reap."
This law of the spiritual harvest that visits retribution upon unrighteousness or visits reward upon integrity seems to have cast a spell of fascination upon all great writers. Even those who have written upon liberty, law, patriotism, or love have not been content to end their task until they have, through song or story, ill.u.s.trated this law of the soul"s seedtime and harvest. The ancient poet who wrote at a time near to the dawn of history makes a strong man go forth to seize his neighbor"s flocks and herds, but returning the prince found that in his absence enemies had looted his palace and carried off not only his treasure, but his wife and children. In ending the tale the writer adds the reflection that "G.o.d is just!"
Later on the Grecian threw this moral principle into a tale for children, a story that still lives under the t.i.tle "Baucis and Philemon." One day two travelers entered a village, but as they drew near, each housewife slammed her door, while rude boys threw clods at the wayfarers and let loose their dogs, who snapped and snarled after the travelers. Pa.s.sing quite beyond the village the pilgrims came to a humble cottage. As they approached his door Philemon came forth to offer refuge, and apologized for the rudeness of his neighbors. The old man prepared for them seats in the grateful shade and hurried to bring them fresh water from the cool spring. Baucis also hastened to bring the loaf, with her one small honeycomb and her pitcher of milk.
When the gla.s.ses were filled twice and thrice and still the rich milk failed not, the old housewife marveled, until she found that in the bottom of the pitcher there was a fountain from which the rich milk gushed so long as it was needed. Nor did the honeycomb fail, nor did the sharp knife make the wheaten loaf to be less. Having told us that the morning brought disaster to the inhospitable villagers, but brought a.s.surance from these angels who had been entertained unawares that Baucis and Philemon should never more want for earthly goods, the writer of the olden times sets forth for us the principle that good man and bad alike reap what they sow, since each deed contains a harvest like unto itself. Indeed, literature and life teem with exhibitions of this principle. Haman, the rich ruler, builds a gallows for poor Mordecai, whom he hates, and later on Haman himself is hanged upon his own scaffold. David sets Uriah in the front of the battle and robs him of his wife, and when a few years have pa.s.sed, in turn David is robbed of his wife, his palace also, and his city.
Walter Scott believes in moral retribution. He tells us of a youth who deftly split an arrow at the point where it fitted the bow-string, that when his brother, whom he hated, should bend his bow the arrow might split and, rebounding, pa.s.s through his eye. Now it happened that the brother returned from the hunt without using his weapon. That night, alarmed at a commotion without, the youth seized his bow, and, chancing to strike upon that very arrow, was himself slain by the stratagem that he had wickedly planned for his brother. George Eliot, too, has dedicated her greatest volume to the study of this principle. The orphan child, t.i.to, is received into the arms of an adopted father, who lavishes upon him all his wealth. But when the youth was grown to full strength and beauty, one night t.i.to left his adopted father in slavery and fled with his gold and gems into a foreign land. Years pa.s.sed by and, with his stolen wealth, t.i.to bought wife, palace, position, fame.
He had sown falsehood and cruelty, and nothing seemed so unlikely as that he would reap a similar harvest. But one day the people discovered his falsehood and attacked t.i.to. A mob pursued him through the streets, and, knowing his strength as a swimmer, the youth cast himself into the River Arno. When t.i.to had swum far down the river to the other side, and, in his exhaustion, would go ash.o.r.e, he looked up, and, lo! he discerned the gray-haired father whom he had injured trotting along the sh.o.r.e side by side with the swimmer. In the old man"s eyes blazed bitter hatred, in his hand flashed a sharp knife.
What the youth had sown years before now at last he was to reap. When increasing weakness compelled him to approach the sh.o.r.e he looked beseechingly to his father for mercy, but found only justice. With a wild and bitter cry t.i.to reaped his harvest. Soon the mud of that river filled the eyes and ears of him who years before had received defilement into his heart. What seed he had sown, that Nature gave him as a harvest--good measure, heaped up, and shaken together.
History permits no man to escape the reflection that if, for the time being, individuals have escaped this moral law, nations have felt its full force. Nature does, indeed, walk through the fields with footsteps so gentle as to disturb no drop of dew hanging upon the blade of gra.s.s. Nature also hath her sterner aspect, and for the sons of iniquity her footsteps are earthquakes, her strokes are strokes of war and of pestilence. When Sophocles worked out the law of moral retribution for King Oedipus and Antigone, his daughter, the poet might well have gone on to note that if the Grecian army had sacked the Trojan cities the time would come when the Roman fleet would sack her cities and make her sons to toil as captives. Later on, if the Roman conquerors swept the East for corn and wheat, looted stores and shops, pillaged palaces for treasure for triumphal processions, the time came when Nature and G.o.d decreed that the vast wealth piled up in the Roman capital should excite the cupidity of the Goths, until at last the streets of that great city were swept with flame and store-houses were pillaged by marauders. In reviewing the history of Venice Ruskin was so impressed with this principle of the moral harvest that he affirms that the history of palace and cathedral, of fleets and navies, is simply the story, written by a pen dipped in fire and blood, of how the children reaped what the fathers had sown.
For many months past the statesmen of England have been sending forth discussions reviewing the career of their country. In the light of the Eastern problem one of these authors reflects that whenever England has sown injustice to a weaker nation she has reaped injustice and retribution for herself. He notes that in the last century the governors of England--for example, Lord Hastings--went through the land robbing rajahs, despoiling the people by false weights and measures, until they had turned the whole country into one vast desert. The hour came when before the House of Commons Burke impeached Hastings for high crimes and misdemeanors, as the enemy of India and England and all men.
But England was content to impose a trifling fine upon her wicked official. How could she give up the treasure she had filched for herself? Years pa.s.sed and an injured people brooded upon its wrongs, and the time came when what England had sown in tears she reaped in blood. One day the Indian soldiers mutinied. The next day the wells were filled with the bodies of English officers, their wives and children; then merchants and missionaries and travelers were slaughtered. For weeks the strife went on. If once the English soldier had pillaged the Indian villages, now, in turn, the English quarters were pillaged. "Blind of eye and hard of heart," said the sage statesman. "Retribution hath been visited upon us," said the great leader. "Our jealousy and greed hath ended with that sword being sharpened against ourselves." The note of conviction is in the voice of this statesman, but what saith be save this: "What a man soweth, that also shall he reap!"
All young hearts may well remember that it is safe to do right, but dangerous to sow wrong! No matter how smooth, how soft and sweet, seem the paths of sin, know that beneath every flower there lurks a spider, beneath every silken couch of indulgence there broods a nest of serpents, and the scene that begins with flowers shall end midst thorns and thickets. For the moment, indeed, the judge may seem un.o.bservant and the watchman may seem asleep; but he who yields to any deflection from honor shall find at last that G.o.d never slumbers, that his laws never sleep. Go east or go west. Nature is upon the track of the wrong-doer. Could the sage of old sit down to converse with each youth who to-day walks on the street, perchance he would find many who, through excess, are draining away the rich forces of nerve and brain and blood.
Daily they deny reason its book, taste its music, love its n.o.ble companionship. At last, when the harp of the physical senses begins to give way, and they fall back upon the mental faculties for pleasure, then these faculties that have been starved shall, in turn, make men suffer. In that hour reason or memory shall say: "Because I called and ye refused; because I stretched out my hand and no man regarded, therefore I will laugh at your calamity. I will mock at your desolation when your fear cometh as destruction and your desolation as whirlwind." In Daniel Webster"s words of disappointed ambition, "I still live," we see that a statesman sows what he reaps. In Goethe"s fearful cry for "more light" we see that the poet who sows darkness shall reap darkness. In Lord Byron"s piteous "I must sleep now" we see that he who sows morbidness and pa.s.sion reaps feverishness and shame.
The law is inexorable. He who sows foul thoughts shall reap the foul countenance of a fiend. He who sows pure thoughts shall reap the sweetness and n.o.bility of the face of Fra Angelico. He who sows reflection shall reap wisdom. He who sows sympathy shall reap love.
The good Samaritan who sows tenderness to the man wounded by the wayside shall reap tenderness when angels stoop to bind up his broken heart.
THE LOVE THAT PERFECTS LIFE.
"Love is the fulfilling of the law."--_Romans, xiii, 10_.
"Men may die without any opinions, and yet be carried into Abraham"s bosom, but if we be without love, what will knowledge avail? I will not quarrel with you about opinions. Only see that your heart be right with G.o.d. I am sick of opinions. Give me good and substantial religion, a humble, gentle love of G.o.d and man."--_John Wesley_.
"Therefore, come what may, hold fast to love. Though men should rend your heart, let them not embitter or harden it. We win by tenderness, we conquer by forgiveness. O, strive to enter into something of that large celestial charity which is meek, enduring, unretaliating, and which even the overbearing world cannot withstand forever! Learn the new commandment of the Son of G.o.d. Not to love merely, but to love _as He loved_. Go forth in this Spirit to your life duties, go forth, children of the Cross, to carry everything before you, and win victories for G.o.d by the conquering power of a love like his."--_Frederick W. Robertson_.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LOVE THAT PERFECTS LIFE.
The purpose of Christ"s mission to earth was the development of ideal manhood. The instruments he fashioned and the agents he ordained all wrought unceasingly toward a manhood that was ample in faculty, fertile in resource and ripe in those qualities that make for maturity of character. He sought to teach men how to carry their faculties through all the strife, collisions and rivalries of life, without damaging men or being damaged by them.
Always to the children of good fortune right living has seemed easy, for these live midst sheltered conditions and exhibit goodness as naturally as the sheltered southern nooks have gra.s.s and flowers when all the northern hillsides are brown with death or white with snow.
But Christ came teaching the children of weakness and misfortune how to bear up midst adversity, how to sing songs at midnight and how, through defeat, to march to final victory. So beautiful was the manhood he unveiled before men that, beholding it, men low and men high, the publican and prodigal, the centurion and ruler also, quivered with hope, as the harp quivers under the touch of the harper.
For his ideal includes every quality that kindles admiration and delight; all gentleness, all goodness, all simplicity, the refinement of the scholar, the insight of the seer, the courage that makes the youth a hero. In luminous hours men behold visions of ideal perfection hanging like stars in a midnight sky. Unfortunately for many, these visions burst like bubbles and soon pa.s.s away. Artists and sculptors look forward to an hour when, by a touch here and a touch there, the statue shall be perfected and the portrait completed; so Christ pointed forward to an hour when, having been wrought upon by darkness and by light, by defeat and by victory, by sorrow and by joy, at last wisdom shall be made perfect, judgment know no error, love have full disclosure and the soul enter into unhindered perfection.
Great are the achievements of the chisel upon the block of marble, marvelous the skill with which a master turns a dead canvas into l.u.s.trous life and beauty. Matchless the power that turns a clod into a rosy apple, a seed into a sheaf of wheat, a babe into a sage; yet neither nature nor art knows any transformation like unto that wonder of time when, by slow processes, G.o.d develops man out of rude and low conditions of life unto those high and spiritual moods when selfishness gives place to self-sacrifice, coa.r.s.eness to sweetness, hardness to gentleness and love, and perfection dwells in man as ripeness dwells in fruit, as maturity dwells in harvests.
The mainspring of all progress, individual and social, is the desire to fulfill in character all one has planned in thought. Man"s life is one long pursuit of the visions of possible excellence which disquiet, rebuke and tempt him upward. "As to other points," said John Milton, "what G.o.d may have determined for me I know not, but this I know--that if he ever instilled an intense love of moral beauty into the breast of any man, he has instilled it into mine. Ceres, in the fable, pursued not her daughter with a greater keenness of inquiry than I, day and night, the idea of perfection." Haunted by his dream of excellence, the poet likened himself to one born beside the throne and reared in purple, yet by some mischance left to gypsies, midst poverty and neglect, while thoughts of the glory he has known and that imperial palace whence he came, are never out of mind. In picturing forth these conceptions of sweetness and light, philosophers have found it hard to summarize the qualities that make up ideal manhood.
Conceding that the Christian is the perfect gentleman, who does for his fellows what an easy chair does for a tired man, what a winter"s fire is to a lost traveler, we may also affirm that Newman"s definition is inadequate and fragmentary. As the ideal portraits of Christ, from Perugino to Hoffman, divide the kingdom of beauty--and must be united in one new conception in order to approach the perfect face--so the poets and the philosophers, with their diverse conceptions of ideal manhood, divide the kingdom of character. "The true man cannot be a fragmentary man," said Plato. Is he not one-sided who masters the conventional refinement and the stock proprieties, yet indulges in drunkenness and gluttony? "Pleasure must not be his sole aim," said the accomplished Chesterfield. "I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world, and consequently know their futility, and do not regret their loss. Those who have no experience are dazzled with there [Transcriber"s note: their?] glare, but I have been behind the scenes and have seen all the coa.r.s.e pulleys, which exhibit and move all the gaudy machines that excite the admiration of the ignorant audience."
Nor is scholarship enough. From Solomon to Burke, the wisest men have been the saddest of men. The Scottish physician who ordered his secretary to select from his library all the books upon medicine and surgery that were printed prior to 1880 and sell them, tells us how futile is the pursuit of wisdom and how rapidly the systems of to-day become the cast-off garments of to-morrow. Nor must the perfect man represent power and wealth alone, for "the wealth of Croesus cannot bring sleep to the sick man tossing upon his silken couch, and all the Alexanders and Napoleons have shed bitter tears, conquering or conquered." He who is merchant or scholar or ruler, and only that, climbs his pillar like Simeon Stylites.
All such know not that the world itself is a pillar all too small for the soul to stand upon. This life-chase after bubbles, this fighting for trifles, this pursuit of false grails, reminds us of the story of that Grecian boy lured to his death by the enchantress. Going into the palace garden to pluck a rose, the youth beheld the form of a young girl standing in the edge of the glimmering woods. With soft words and sweet, she called him. Forgetting his dear ones in the palace, the youth ran after his enchantress. Along a pathway of flowers she danced before him, sometimes sweeping the strings of her harp, sometimes singing, and shaking her curls at his haste, ever shooting arrows from her eyes, yet ever just eluding his embrace. On and on she led him into the bog, that covered his garments with mud, through the thorns and brambles that tore his white skin, over rocks steep and sharp.
Ever and anon the youth stopped to pluck the thorns from his hands and bind up his bleeding feet; then, gathering his torn purple about him, he plunged on, in the hope of drinking at last the sweet cup of her sorcery. When, at the end of the day, the desire of his heart was given him, the illusion fell away, for the youth embraced not a beautiful maiden, but an old hag, who had led him into the desert to a hut whose stones were darkness and whose walls were confusion.
As the term genius includes all those forms of culture termed poetry, music, eloquence, leadership, so love is a term that includes all those shapes of human welfare known as education, refinement, liberty, happiness. Properly defined, love is that exalted state of mind and heart when reason is luminous, when judgment and imagination glow under its influence just as the electric bulb glows under the living current.
There are three possible states and moods under which the mind may fulfill its functions. There is a dull and quiescent condition when reason and judgment act, but act without fervor. Power is there, but it is latent, just as heat is in the unkindled wood lying on the grate, but the heat is hidden.
Then there is a higher mood of the mind, when, under the influence of conversation or reading, the mind emits jets and flashes of thought, through witticism or story; but this creative mood is intermittent and spasmodic. Last of all is that exalted mood when the mind glows and throbs, when reason emits thoughts, as stars blaze light; when the nimbus that overarches the brows of saints in ancient pictures literally represents the effulgence of the mind. Work done in the lower moods is called mediocre; work done by the mind in the second stage is a.s.sociated with talent, but when, through birth or ancestry, the mind works ever in regnant and supernal moods, it is called genius.
Affirming that all minds rise into this higher mood at intervals, we may also affirm that all the best work in literature or art or commerce has been wrought during these exalted states when love for the work in hand has rendered the mind luminous and crystalline.
It was love of nature that lent Wordsworth his power to divine nature"s secret. When the poet approached Chamouni and the mountains that gird it round he tells us he was conscious of a shivering from head to foot, with mingled awe and fear; his mind glowed with an indescribable pleasure; his body thrilled as if in the presence of a disembodied spirit; his heart approached nature with an intensity of joy comparable only to that joy which Dante felt when approaching Beatrice. But when the cares of this world gained upon him and the love of nature faded gradually away in the manner described by him in his "Intimations of Immortality," then also his power to describe nature faded away. For only when the heart loves can intellect do great work.
His biographer tells us that when Angelo grew old and blind he was accustomed to ask his servant to lead him to the torso of Phidias.
Pa.s.sing his hands slowly over the broken marble, the sculptor entered into the thought of the great Grecian, and with love for his art glowing in his face and thrilling in his voice, he mused aloud upon the genius of Phidias. Love of his art made all his days bright and all his moons honeymoons. When Wyatt Eaton, the artist, was in Millet"s home he noticed that when the wife called the artist from his task to his noonday meal, the artist"s whole being had so gathered itself into the eye that there was no life left with which to hear. Love lent genius skill. No other sentiment is so universal or so powerful in its influence as love that energizes the mind and heart. Love lent swiftness to the feet of Sir Galahad; lent his heart courage; lent his sword victory. Entering the palace, love, said Cicero, "makes gold shine." Love for the birds lent fame to Audubon; just as love for the bees lent fortune to Huber. Love of knowledge hived all the wisdom in the libraries; love of beauty adorned all the galleries; love of service organized all the philanthropies. To-morrow, at the behest of love, and in the interests of dear ones at home, all the wheels will begin to revolve; all the trains go out and all the ships come in.
When a man of real force and worth pa.s.ses upward into that high state of purity and sweet reasonableness called love, he becomes almost sacred and exhales an ineffable and mysterious atmosphere. Great is the power of trade; wonderful the influence of fortune and force; marvelous the hundred instrumentalities and inst.i.tutions of society, but above all of them is man, whose love can indeed "make riches splendid," whose wisdom love can make mellow, whose strength love can make gentle, whose defeats love can turn into victories. In that hour one hundred men dwell in one man.
Love also perfects morality and fulfills all ethical laws. What health is to the body, what sweetness is to the lark"s song, what perfume is to the rose, that morality is to culture and character. Drunkenness and gluttony have not more power to blear the eye than immorality to degrade the soul. When Homer tells us that Ulysses escaped unharmed from the enchanted palace, but suffered injury from his unfaithfulness to a friend, the poet wishes us to know that it is easier to recover from the poison of Circe"s cup than to escape the effect of disobedience to the laws of G.o.d.
Fortunately nature is so organized as to keep the consequences of ill-doing ever before man"s eyes. Disobeying the law of fire man is burned; disobeying the law of steam man is scalded; disobeying the law of honor friends avert their faces, or the door of the jail closes behind the wrongdoer. So few are these laws and so simple that they could not be plainer were they emblazoned upon the sky as an ever-present scroll. There is the law of reverence. Conscious of vastness and sublimity, in the presence of mountains, man, frail, ignorant, pa.s.sing swiftly to his grave, is asked to bow his head in the presence of the Eternal One.
There is also the law of truth in speech, the law of purity in thought, the laws that forbid theft and covetousness and killing. But all these laws are gathered up and fulfilled in love, just as the seven colors of nature are gathered up and fulfilled in the one white sunbeam. And he who loves will fulfill all these laws. Loving himself, man will not waste his physical treasure. As it was vandalism for the iconoclasts to pa.s.s through the cathedrals of Europe whitewashing the frescoes and breaking down the statues, much more is it vandalism for men to destroy that temple of G.o.d called the body. If man loves his mind he will, through culture, lead what is germinal and latent forth into full blossom and fruitage. He who loves scholarship will make haste to double the books in his library. He who loves sweetness will double the sweetness of his melody. He who loves friends will double their number and strengthen their affection. He who loves industry will strengthen his toil and lend it influence. Looking toward the home, love fulfills the law of helpfulness. Looking toward the weak and poor, love fulfills the law of service and sympathy. Looking toward a great crisis for humanity, love fulfills the law of martyrdom.
Just as summer fulfills all ripeness and growth for seed and root and tree, so love fulfills all laws for self and man and the all-loving G.o.d.
After thirty-six years of tireless toil Herbert Spencer has brought to a conclusion the labors of a lifetime. His final volume places the capstone on the structure of his philosophy. In reading these pages no thoughtful mind can fail to perceive that for science also has dawned the vision splendid. If history began with an era of force, its last and crowning achievement will be the era when love, organized into laws and inst.i.tutions, will lend perfection to civilization. The upward march of mankind has been slow and accompanied by tremendous losses.
At the beginning strength prevailed and weakness went to the wall; the bird with the swiftest wing first reached the fountain, the deer with the swiftest foot reached the place of shelter, the ox with the strongest thrust reached the richest fodder. Pushed back, weakness perished, while strength prevailed and propagated.