On Being Human | Page 3

seen
our modern life accumulate, hot and restless, in great cities--and we
cannot say that the change is not natural: we see in it, on the contrary,
the 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