PROGRESS AS REALIZATION.

“For now we see through a glass, darkly.”

“Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.”

“Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.”

In the process of development nature goes from potentiality to higher and higher actuality; what is in its being as tendency becomes real. We may not suppose the movement that of spontaneous energy toward accidental results, but rather the progressive realization of what is in the entire rational scheme of the universe.

From the nebular mass sprang worlds and suns greater and less, substance and form in infinite variety, plant life in progressive orders, animal life in ascending types. Conscious existence gradually became responsive to the multitude of nature’s impressions. The broken rays of light displayed their rainbow hues to the growing power and delicacy of the eye; sound revealed its keys, qualities, and harmonies to the increasing susceptibility of the ear. Mind, as it developed, realized in its consciousness new laws and ever greater wonders of the outer world. On the objective side the laws were, the tinted sky and the murmuring stream were, before mind became cognizant of them in their perfection and beauty. Any serious contemplation of the great law of development, in its full meaning,should inspire hope and purpose in life. It suggests, not only sublime fulfilment for the world, but large possibility for the individual man. The natural world, plants, animals, the human race, institutions, science, art, religion, all animate individual beings, man as an individual, have their history of development, which suggests its lesson.

Nature is aspiration. From chaos to the world of this geologic age, from protoplasm to man, from savagery to civilization, from ignorance to culture, from symbolism to developed art, from egoism to altruism, from germ to fruit, from infancy to maturity, from realization to higher realization, has been the process. And this plan seems the only one adapted to satisfy the nature and thought of rational being. A world perfected, all possibilities realized, no chance for higher attainment—these are conditions of monotony and death. The old Heraclitus was right when he proclaimed the principle of the world to be abecoming.

The child’s history, in a way, is an epitome of the history of the race. At first he is deaf and blind to the world of objects. Note how the possibilities of his being become realities, how knowledge grows in variety and definiteness, until the external world stands revealed, each object in its place, each event in its order, until notions of time, space, cause, and right rise into consciousness. The child is father of the man in the sense that the man can become only what he was implicitly in childhood.

There is a tale of Greek mythology that Minerva sprang full-grown from the head of Jove—a perfect being. We would rather contemplate a being withpossibilities not completely revealed. A philosopher said that if Truth were a bird which he had caught and held in his hand he would let it escape for the pleasure of renewed pursuit. There are the wonders of nature and of physical evolution; but transcendently great are the wonders of mind, and the view of its possibilities of endless development—a thing that we believe will live on, when the sun, moon, and stars shall be darkened.

The educated young man of to-day is the heir of the ages. All that science, art, literature, philosophy, civilization have achieved is his. All that thought has realized through ages of slow progress, all that has been learned through the mistakes made in the dim light of the dawn of human history, all that has been wrought out through devotion, struggle, and suffering, he may realize by the process of individual education. The law of progress still holds for the race and for him. He is a free factor, with a duty to help realize still more of the promise of human existence.

“Know thyself” was a wonderful maxim of the ancient philosopher, and it leads to knowledge. “Know thy powers” is a better maxim for practice, and it is a fault that men regard their limitations and not their capabilities. We look with contempt upon a lower stage of our own growth. Not for the world would we lose a little from our highest attainment. The view is relative, and we have but to advance our position and life is subject to new interpretation.

This is a period of the fading out of old ideals as they merge into higher ones not yet clearly defined.The reverence for nature, for its symbolism, the sanctions of religion, the transcendental belief, the poetic insight have somewhat fallen away, and the world is partly barren because not yet rehabilitated. Ideals are regarded as fit for schoolgirl essays, for weakly sentimentality, for dreamers, for those who do not understand the meaning of the new science and the new civilization. Ideals! The transcendent importance of ideals is just appearing. Not an invention could be made, not a temple could be built, not a scheme for the improvement of government and society could be constructed, not a poem or a painting could be executed, not an instance of progress could occur without ideals. The world may be conceived as an ideal, the development of all things is toward ideals. We are at a stage of that development; the progression is infinite, ever toward perfection, toward God, the Supreme Good. Lamartine said wisely: “The ideal is only truth at a distance.”

Do circumstances forbid the possibility of higher development? Then let the individual, in a chosen vocation, however humble, lose himself in obedience and devotion to it, and thus, as a hero, live to his own well-being and the welfare of others. Thereby he will find blessedness. Carlyle’s “Everlasting Yea” shows this passage: “The Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal; work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment, too, is in thyself; thy Condition is but the stuff thou artto shape that same Ideal out of; what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, here or nowhere, couldst thou only see!”

Here is a striking story, related as true: A young man had met with misfortune, accident, and disease, and was suffering from a third paralytic stroke. He had lost the use of his voice, of his limbs, and of one arm. A friend visited him one day and asked how he was. He reached for his tablet and wrote: “All right, and bigger than anything that can happen to me.” By energy of will, by slowly increasing physical and mental exercise, he reconquered the use of his body and mind—gradually compelled the dormant nerve centres to awake and resume their functions. Later he wrote: “The great lesson it taught me is that man is meant to be, and ought to be, stronger and more than anything that can happen to him. Circumstances, fate, luck are all outside, and, if we cannot always change them, we can always beat them. If I couldn’t have what I wanted, I decided to want what I had, and that simple philosophy saved me.”

A healthy philosophy, speculative or common sense, a healthy ethics, theoretical or practical, are indispensable to youth. Away with unfree will, and pessimism, and pleasure philosophy, and the notion of a perfected world and a goal attained. Substitute therefor vigorous freedom, cheerful faithand hope, right and duty, and belief in development. Most of the great poets and artists, most of the successful business men have struggled with difficulties, and have wrought out of their conditions their success. Burns did not permit poverty, obscurity, lack of funds, lack of patronage, lack of time to destroy or weaken the impulse of his genius. Shakespeare (if this poet-king be not indeed dethroned by logic) with but imperfect implements of his craft wrought heroically, and realized the highest possibilities of literary creation. The biography of success is filled with the names of men in a sense self-made.

Education is the unfolding of our powers. There is the realm of knowledge: the relations of number and space, as revealed to a Laplace or a Newton; the discoveries and interpretations of science, as they appear to a Tyndall or a Spencer; history, in whose light alone we can fully interpret any subject of knowledge; literature, whose pages glow with the best thought and feeling of mankind; philosophy and religious truth, with their grasp of the meaning of life; art, that is a divine revelation in material form—all that has been realized in the consciousness of man. The race has taken ages to attain the present standard of civilization and enlightenment. The life of the individual attains it through education. With some distinction of native tendencies, education makes the difference between the Dahoman and the Bostonian. Tennyson, in his “Locksley Hall,” in a mood of disappointment and pessimism, would seek the land of palms, of savagery and ignorance, and abjure the “march of Mind” and “thoughts that shake mankind;” but a healthfulreaction arouses again his better impulse, and he counts “thegraybarbarian lower than the Christianchild.”

Every young man who aims at medicine, theology, law, or teaching, who aims at the best development of his powers, needs all the education he can gain before he enters upon independent labor. All need a broad foundation of general knowledge upon which to rear the structure of special knowledge and skill. Our grandfathers got along with the grammar school, the academy, college, and apprentice system; we need the high school, the graduate school, and the professional school. Men go into the field of labor without map, implements, or skill, and then wonder why they do not succeed. The generation has advanced; more is known, more is demanded, and undeveloped thought and skill soon find their limitations in the practical world.

We are called upon not only to feel, but to act; not merely to know, but to impart. The inner life is to realize itself in the outer world of action. Ideals are to be followed closely by deeds. A mere recluse is not in harmony with the times.

There is a thought in the following passage from Goethe not inappropriate in this place:

“Wouldst thou win desires unbounded?Yonder see the glory burn!Lightly is thy life surrounded—Sleep’s a shell, to break and spurn!When the crowd sways, unbelieving,Show the daring will that warms!He is crowned with all achievingWho perceives and then performs.”

“Wouldst thou win desires unbounded?

Yonder see the glory burn!

Lightly is thy life surrounded—

Sleep’s a shell, to break and spurn!

When the crowd sways, unbelieving,

Show the daring will that warms!

He is crowned with all achieving

Who perceives and then performs.”

The child does not at first discriminate colors, but later realizes distinctions permanently existent. The child does not at first realize the force of the abstract idea of right; but, when the idea appears, it is not so much an evolution as a realization in the process of evolution of the child’s consciousness. In the development of life on the earth a time came when human beings realized the existence and obligation of right as a new idea to them, not one “compounded of many simples.” However produced, we may suppose that when it appears it is a unique thing, a binding and divine thing, a thing carrying with it all the implications of the Kantian philosophy—God, Freedom, and Immortality.

How religion, philosophy, ethics, maxims of experience, dictates of prudence proclaim to the ear of the youth the necessity of realizing in idea and practice a progressive, upward tendency of character! Vice is not a realization, but degeneration. Vice paralyzes the will, paralyzes the intellect, paralyzes the finer emotions, paralyzes the body, deadens the conscience to all that is positive and worthy. Men often regard only the larger duties, but character is often made by the sum of little duties performed. We are ready to use great opportunities only when we have trained our powers by diligent performance of humble work. Carlyle says: “Do the Duty which lies nearest thee, which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer.”

It broadens our view of religion to hold that the divine impulse works in all men, and leads them toward truth; that no age or people has been left in utter darkness; that there is something commonto all religions; and that in time God’s full revelation will come to all nations.

“Whoe’er aspires unweariedlyIs not beyond redeeming.”

“Whoe’er aspires unweariedly

Is not beyond redeeming.”

May we not ask if the experience distinctively called Christian is not an actuality, the highest blossom of religious growth—if it is not a realization possible for all, if it is not an ideal sweetly, nay, transcendently, inviting? One who has read the following lines from Goethe will never forget them; he has had a glimpse of the Holy of Holies:

“Once Heavenly Love sent down a burning kissUpon my brow, in Sabbath silence holy;And, filled with mystic presage, chimed the church bell slowly,And prayer dissolved me in a fervent bliss,—A sweet, uncomprehended yearningDrove forth my feet through woods and meadows free,And while a thousand tears were burning,I felt a world arise for me.”

“Once Heavenly Love sent down a burning kiss

Upon my brow, in Sabbath silence holy;

And, filled with mystic presage, chimed the church bell slowly,

And prayer dissolved me in a fervent bliss,—

A sweet, uncomprehended yearning

Drove forth my feet through woods and meadows free,

And while a thousand tears were burning,

I felt a world arise for me.”

I sat on the veranda at my home at the close of a beautiful day. The western glow was fading into a faint rose color. The pine trees on the neighboring mountain top stood out in magnified distinctness against the bright background. A bird in a near tree sang its good-night song. Just over the mountain peak a star shone out like a diamond set in pale gold. The great earth silently turned and hid the star behind the pines. The ragged outline of mountains loomed up with weird effect. The breeze freshened and waved the branches of the elms gracefully in broader curves; it seemed to come down from the heights as if with a message. It was a time for meditation. My thoughts turned for a hundredth time to the significance of the higheremotional effects in the presence of natural beauty and sublimity, and in the contemplation of exalted æsthetic and ethical conceptions.

When the hand of nature touches the chords of the human heart, may we not believe that the hand and the harp are of divine origin, and that the music produced is heavenly? I mean that the human soul with all its refinement of emotion is not material, but spiritual and Godlike; that it has written upon it a sacred message, an assurance not of earth that its destiny is boundless in time and possibility—a message profound in its meaning as the unsearchable depth of God’s being.

All human institutions are progressive. Each stage of civilization is complete in itself, but preparatory to another and higher stage. Liberty, the art idea, the religious idea develop more and more as men realize in consciousness higher truths and standards. From the art that found expression in the cromlechs of the Druids to the highest embodiment of spiritual ideas, from crude faith to philosophic and religious insight, from rude mechanism to magnificence of structure and invention—such has been history, such, we believe, will be history. No wonder Carlyle exclaims: “Is not man’s history and men’s history a perpetual Evangel?”—an announcement of glad tidings?

It is in this philosophy that the hope of the solution of many present problems is found. In mediæval times the feudal system was the reconciliation of the opposing interests of men in a unity of service and protection. Later new conflicts arose which resulted in freedom for all classes. To-day oppositionhas grown from the selfish interests of capital and labor, and we believe the reconciliation will be found in a unity which will equitably combine the interests of both. Change is the law. The phœnix, ever rising from its own ashes, is stronger in pinion and more daring in flight.

Plato held to the doctrine of ideas, of eternal verities, the archetypes of all forms of existence, and believed growth in wisdom to be a gradual realization of these ideas in consciousness. Modern Platonism makes man a part of the Divine Being, with power to progress in knowledge of truth and in moral insight. This progress aims at an ultimate end that is both a realization and a reward. This view explains our nature and aspirations, our intuitive notions and sense of right; it explains the seeming providence that runs through history and makes all things work together for good; it explains that harmony of the soul with nature that constitutes divine music; it explains the insight of the poet and the faith of man. Any new theory must be a continuation of the past instead of standing in contradiction to it, must reveal the deeper meaning of old truth. The spiritual truths that belong to the history of man must be included in the new philosophy. Theories must explain in accordance with common sense, and make harmony, not discord, in our intellectual, æsthetic, and moral feelings.

“For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

“But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; butthen face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

“Still, through our paltry stir and strife,Glows down the wished Ideal,And Longing moulds in clay what LifeCarves in the marble Real;To let the new life in, we know,Desire must ope the portal;—Perhaps the longing to be soHelps make the soul immortal.“Longing is God’s fresh heavenward willWith our poor earthward striving;We quench it that we may be stillContent with merely living:But would we learn that heart’s full scopeWhich we are hourly wronging,Our lives must climb from hope to hopeAnd realize our longing.”

“Still, through our paltry stir and strife,

Glows down the wished Ideal,

And Longing moulds in clay what Life

Carves in the marble Real;

To let the new life in, we know,

Desire must ope the portal;—

Perhaps the longing to be so

Helps make the soul immortal.

“Longing is God’s fresh heavenward willWith our poor earthward striving;We quench it that we may be stillContent with merely living:But would we learn that heart’s full scopeWhich we are hourly wronging,Our lives must climb from hope to hopeAnd realize our longing.”

“Longing is God’s fresh heavenward will

With our poor earthward striving;

We quench it that we may be still

Content with merely living:

But would we learn that heart’s full scope

Which we are hourly wronging,

Our lives must climb from hope to hope

And realize our longing.”

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