On Being Human | Page 3

fulfillment of an inevitable law of change, which is no doubt a law of growth, and not of decay. And yet we look upon the portentous thing with a great distaste, and doubt with what altered passions we shall come out of it. The huge, rushing, aggregate life of a great city--the crushing crowds in the streets, where friends seldom meet and there are few greetings; the thunderous noise of trade and industry that speaks of nothing but gain and competition, and a consuming fever that checks the natural courses of the kindly blood; no leisure anywhere, no quiet, no restful ease, no wise repose--all this shocks us. It is inhumane. It does not seem human. How much more likely does it appear that we shall find men sane and human about a country fireside, upon the streets of quiet villages, where all are neighbors, where groups of friends gather easily, and a constant sympathy makes the very air seem native! Why should not the city seem infinitely more human than the hamlet? Why should not human traits the more abound where human beings teem millions strong?
Because the city curtails man of his wholeness, specializes him, quickens some powers, stunts others, gives him a sharp edge, and a temper like that of steel, makes him unfit for nothing so much as to sit still. Men have indeed written like human beings in the midst of great cities, but not often when they have shared the city's characteristic life, its struggle for place and for gain. There are not many places that belong to a city's life to which you can "invite your soul." Its haste, its preoccupations, its anxieties, its rushing noise as of men driven, its ringing cries, distract you. It offers no quiet for reflection; it permits no retirement to any who share its life. It is a place of little tasks, of narrowed functions, of aggregate and not of individual strength. The great machine dominates its little parts, and its Society is as much of a machine as its business.
"This tract which the river of Time Now flows through with us, is the plain. Gone is the calm of its earlier shore. Border'd by cities, and hoarse With a thousand cries is its stream. And we on its breasts, our minds Are confused as the cries which we hear, Changing and sot as the sights which we see.
"And we say that repose has fled Forever the course of the river of Time That cities will crowd to its edge In a blacker, incessanter line; That the din will be more on its banks, Denser the trade on its stream, Flatter the plain where it flows, Fiercer the sun overhead, That never will those on its breast See an enobling sight, Drink of the feeling of quiet again.
"But what was before us we know not, And we know not what shall succeed.
"Haply, the river of Time-- As it grows, as the towns on its marge Fling their wavering lights On a wider, statelier stream-- May acquire, if not the calm Of its early mountainous shore, Yet a solemn peace of its own.
"And the width of the waters, the hush Of the gray expanse where he floats, Freshening its current and spotted with foam As it draws to the Ocean, may strike Peace to the soul of the man on its breast-- As the pale waste widens around him, As the banks fade dinner away, As the stars come out, and the night-wind Brings up the stream Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea."
We cannot easily see the large measure and abiding purpose of the novel age in which we stand young and confused. The view that shall clear our minds and quicken us to act as those who know their task and its distant consummation will come with better knowledge and completer self-possession. It shall not be a night-wind, but an air that shall blow out of the widening east and with the coming of the light, and shall bring us, with the morning, "murmurs and scents of the infinite sea." Who can doubt that man has grown more and more human with each step of that slow process which has brought him knowledge, self-restraint, the arts of intercourse, and the revelations of real joy? Man has more and more lived with his fellow-men, and it is society that has humanized him--the development of society into a infinitely various school of discipline and ordered skill. He has been made more human by schooling, by growing more self-possessed--less violent, less tumultuous; holding himself in hand, and moving always with a certain poise of spirit; not forever clapping his hand to the hilt of his sword, but preferring, rather, to play with a subtler skill upon the springs of action.