Part 9 (1/2)
+Subjection to animals degrading.+--The animals are vastly inferior to man in dignity and worth. Many of them have strong wills of their own, and if we will allow it, will run over us, and have their own way in spite of us. Such subjection of a man or woman to an animal is a most shameful sight. To have dominion over them is man's prerogative; and to surrender that prerogative is to abrogate our humanity.
This subjection of a person to an animal may come about through a morbid and sentimental affection for an animal. When a man or a woman makes an animal so much of a pet that every caprice of the cat or dog is law; when the whole arrangements of the household are made to yield to its whims; when affections that are withheld from earnest work and human service are lavished in profusion on a pug or a canary; there again we see the order of rank in the scale of dignity and worth inverted, and the human bowing to the beast.
THE PENALTY.
+Inhumanity to brutes brutalizes humanity.+--If we refuse by consideration and kindness to lift the brute up into our human sympathy, and recognize in it the rights and feelings which it has in common with us, then we sink to the unfeeling and brutal level to which our cruelty seeks to consign the brutes. Every cruel blow inflicted on an animal leaves an ugly scar in our own hardened hearts, which mars and destroys our capacity for the gentlest and sweetest sympathy with our fellow-men.
CHAPTER XIV.
Fellow-men.
”_Unus h.o.m.o, nullus h.o.m.o_” is a Latin proverb which means that one man alone is no man at all. A man who should be neither son, brother, husband, father, neighbor, citizen, or friend is inconceivable. To try to think of such a man is like trying to think of a stone without size, weight, surface, or color. Man is by nature a social being. Apart from society man would not be man. ”Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a G.o.d.” To take out of a man all that he gets from his relations to other men would be to take out of him kindness, compa.s.sion, sympathy, love, loyalty, devotion, grat.i.tude, and heroism.
It would reduce him to the level of the brutes. What water is to the fish, what air is to the bird, that a.s.sociation with his fellow-men is to a man. It is as necessary to the soul as food and raiment are to the body. Only as we see ourselves reflected in the praise or blame, the love or hate of others do we become conscious of ourselves.
THE DUTY.
+Since our fellow-men are so essential to us and we to them, it is our duty to live in as intimate fellows.h.i.+p with them as possible.+--The fundamental form of fellows.h.i.+p is hospitality. By the fireside and around the family table we feel most free, and come nearest to one another. Without hospitality, such intercourse is impossible.
Hospitality, in order to fulfill its mission of fellows.h.i.+p, must be genuine, sincere, and simple. True hospitality welcomes the guest to our hearts as well as to our homes; and the invitation to our homes when our hearts are withheld is a hollow mockery. It is a dangerous thing to have our bodies where our hearts are not. For we acquire the habit of concealing our real selves, and showing only the surface of our natures to others. We become hollow, unreal, hypocritical. We live and move
Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest Of men and alien to ourselves--and yet The same heart beats in every human breast.
Fellows.h.i.+p requires not only that we shall be hospitable and ask others to our homes, but that we shall go out of our way to meet others in their homes, and wherever they may be.
+The deepest fellows.h.i.+p cannot be made to order. It comes of itself along lines of common interests and common aims.+--The harder we try to force people together, and to make them like each other, the farther they fly apart. Give them some interest or enthusiasm in common, whether it be practical, or scientific, or literary, or artistic, or musical, or religious, and this interest, which draws both toward itself at the same time draws them toward each other. Hence a person, who from bashfulness or any other reason is kept from intimate fellows.h.i.+p with others, will often find the best way to approach them, not to force himself into their companions.h.i.+p, against his will and probably against theirs; but to acquire skill as a musician, or reader, or student of science or letters, or philanthropy or social problems. Then along these lines of common interest he will meet men in ways that will be at once helpful and natural.
THE VIRTUE.
+Love is not soft, sentimental self-indulgence. It is going out of ourselves, and taking others into our hearts and lives.+--Love calls for hard service and severe self-sacrifice, when the needs of others make service possible and self-sacrifice necessary. Love binds us to others and others to ourselves in bonds of mutual fidelity and helpfulness. A Latin poet sums up the spirit of love in the famous line:
h.o.m.o sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.
[I am a man: and I count nothing human foreign to myself.]
Kant has expressed the principle of love in the form of a maxim: ”Treat humanity, whether in thyself or in others, always as an end, never as a means.” We have seen that the temptation to treat others merely as tools to minister to our gratification, or as obstacles to be pushed out of our pathway, is very strong. What makes us treat people in that way is our failure to enter into their lives, to see things as they see them, and to feel things as they feel them. Kant tells us that we should always act with a view to the way others will be affected by it. We must treat men as men, not as things. This sympathy and appreciation for another is the first step in love. If we think of our neighbor as he thinks of himself we cannot help wis.h.i.+ng him well. As Professor Royce says, ”If he is real like thee, then is his life as bright a light, as warm a fire, to him, as thine to thee; his will is as full of struggling desires, of hard problems, of fateful decisions; his pains are as hateful, his joys as dear. Take whatever thou knowest of desire and of striving, of burning love and of fierce hatred, realize as fully as thou canst what that means, and then with clear certainty add: Such as that is for me, so it is for him, nothing less. Then thou hast known what he truly is, a Self like thy present self.”
The Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you, is the best summary of duty. And the keeping of that rule is possible only in so far as we love others. We must put ourselves in their place, before we can know how to treat them as we would like to be treated. And this putting self in the place of another is the very essence of love. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself includes all social law. Love is the fulfilling of the law.
Love takes different forms in different circ.u.mstances and in different relations. To the hungry love gives food; to the thirsty drink; to the naked clothes; to the sick nursing; to the ignorant instruction; to the blind guidance; to the erring reproof; to the penitent forgiveness.
Indeed, the social virtues which will occupy the remainder of this book are simply applications of love in differing relations and toward different groups and inst.i.tutions.
THE REWARD.
+Love the only true bond of union between persons.+--The desire to be in unity with our fellow-men is, as John Stuart Mill tells us, ”already a powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to become more strong, even without express inculcation, from the influences of advancing civilization. The deeply rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social being, tends to make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures.” The life of love is in itself a constant realization of this deepest and strongest desire of our nature. Love is the essence of social and spiritual life; and that life of unity with our fellow-men which love creates is in itself love's own reward. ”Life is energy of love.”