On Being Human | Page 2

in the subject," as he says; "if the book was
not meant to be read for that purpose, for what purpose was it meant?"
These are the young eyes to which books yield up great treasure, almost
in spite of themselves, as if they had been penetrated by some swift,
enlarging power of vision which only the young know. It is these
youngsters to whom books give up the long ages of history, "the
wonderful series going back to the times of old patriarchs with their
flocks and herds"--I am quoting Mr. Bagehot again--"the keen-eyed
Greek, the stately Roman, the watching Jew, the uncouth Goth, the
horrid Hun, the settled picture of the unchanging East, the restless
shifting of the rapid West, the rise of the cold and classical civilization,
its fall, the rough impetuous Middle Ages, the vague warm picture of
ourselves and home. When did we learn these? Not yesterday nor today,
but long ago, in the first dawn of reason, in the original flow of fancy."
Books will not yield to us so richly when we are older. The argument

from design fails. We return to the staid authors we read long ago, and
do not find in them the vital, speaking images that used to lie there
upon the page. Our own fancy is gone, and the author never had any.
We are driven in upon the books meant to be read.
These are books written by human beings, indeed, but with no general
quality belonging to the kind--with a special tone and temper, rather, a
spirit out of the common, touched with a light that shines clear out of
some great source of light which not every man can uncover. We call
this spirit human because it moves us, quickens a like life in ourselves,
makes us glow with a sort of ardor of self-discovery. It touches the
springs of fancy or of action within us, and makes our own life seem
more quick and vital. We do not call every book that moves us human.
Some seem written with knowledge of the black art, set our base
passions aflame, disclose motives at which we shudder--the more
because we feel their reality and power; and we know that this is of the
devil, and not the fruitage of any quality that distinguishes us as men.
We are distinguished as men by the qualities that mark us different
from the beasts. When we call a thing human we have a spiritual ideal
in mind. It may not be an ideal of that which is perfect, but it moves at
least upon an upland level where the air is sweet; it holds an image of
man erect and constant, going abroad with undaunted steps, looking
with frank and open gaze upon all the fortunes of his day, feeling even
and again--
`"...the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far
more deeply interfused. Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.
And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the
mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things."
Say what we may of the errors and the degrading sins of our kind, we
do not willingly make what is worst in us the distinguishing trait of
what is human. When we declare, with Bagehot, that the author whom
we love writes like a human being, we are not sneering at him; we do
not say it with a leer. It is in token of admiration, rather. He makes us
like our humankind. There is a noble passion in what he says, a
wholesome humor that echoes genial comradeships; a certain
reasonableness and moderation in what is thought and said; an air of
the open day, in which things are seen whole and in their right colors,
rather than of the close study or the academic class-room. We do not

want our poetry from grammarians, nor our tales from philologists, nor
our history from theorists. Their human nature is subtly transmuted into
something less broad and catholic and of the general world. Neither do
we want our political economy from tradesmen no our statesmanship
from mere politicians, but from those who see more and care for more
than these men see or care for.
II
Once--it is a thought which troubles us--once it was a simple enough
matter to be a human being, but now it is deeply difficult; because life
was once simple, but is now complex, confused, multifarious. Haste,
anxiety, preoccupation, the need to specialize and make machines of
ourselves, have transformed the once simple world, and we are
apprised that it will not be without effort that we shall keep the broad
human traits which have so far made the earth habitable. We have