On Being Human | Page 8

very art of choice--all future generations
for witnesses and audience. When you talk with a man who has in his
nature and acquirements that freedom from constraint which goes with
the full franchise of humanity, he turns easily with topic to topic; does
not fall silent or dull when you leave some single field of thought such
as unwise men make a prison of. The men who will not be broken from
a little set of subjects, who talk earnestly, hotly, with a sort of
fierceness, of certain special schemes of conduct, and look coldly upon
everything else, render you infinitely uneasy, as if there were in them a
force abnormal and which rocked toward an upset of the mind; but
from the man whose interest swings from thought to thought with the
zest and poise and pleasure of the old traveler, eager for what is new,
glad to look again upon what is old, you come away with faculties
warmed and heartened--with the feeling of having been comrade for a
little with a genuine human being. It is a large world and a round world,
and men grow human by seeing all its play of force and folly.
VI
Let no one suppose that efficiency is lost by such breadth and
catholicity of view. We deceive ourselves with instances, look at sharp
crises in the world's affairs, and imagine that intense and narrow men
have made history for us. Poise, balance, a nice and equable exercise of
force, are not, it is true, the things the world ordinarily seeks for or
most applauds in its heroes. It is apt to esteem that man most human
who has his qualities in a certain exaggeration, whose courage is

passionate, whose generosity is without deliberation, whose just action
is without premeditation, whose spirit runs toward its favorite objects
with an infectious and reckless ardor, whose wisdom is no child of
slow prudence. We love Achilles more than Diomedes, and Ulysses not
at all. But these are standards left over from a ruder state of society: we
should have passed by this time the Homeric stage of mind--should
have heroes suited to our age. Nay, we have erected different standards,
and do make a different choice, when we see in any man fulfillment of
our real ideals. Let a modern instance serve as test. Could any man
hesitate to say that Abraham Lincoln was more human than William
Lloyd Garrison? Does not every one know that it was the practical
Free-Soilers that made the practical Free-Soilers who made
emancipation possible, and not the hot, impracticable Abolitionists; that
the country was infinitely more moved by Lincoln's temperate sagacity
than by any man's enthusiasm, instinctively trusted the man who saw
the whole situation and kept his balance, instinctively held off from
those who refused to see more than one thing? We know how
serviceable the intense and headlong agitator was in bringing to their
feet men fit for action; but we feel uneasy while he lives, and vouchsafe
him our full sympathy only when he is dead. We know that the genial
forces of nature which work daily, equably, and without violence are
infinitely more serviceable, infinitely more admirable, than the rude
violence of the storm, however necessary or excellent the purification it
may have wrought. Should we seek to name the most human man
among those who let the nation to its struggle with slavery, and yet was
no statesmen, we should, of course, name Lowell. We know that his
humor went further than any man's passion toward setting tolerant men
atingle with the new impulses of the day. We naturally hold back from
those who are intemperate and can never stop to smile, and are deeply
reassured to see a twinkle in a reformer's eye. We are glad to see
earnest men laugh. It breaks the strain. If it be wholesome laughter, it
dispels all suspicion of spite, and is like the gleam of light upon
running water, lifting sullen shadows, suggesting clear depths.
Surely it is this soundness of nature, this broad and genial quality, this
full-blooded, full-orbed sanity of spirit, which gives the men we love
that wide-eyed sympathy which gives hope and power to humanity,
which gives range to every good quality and is so excellent a credential

of genuine manhood. Let your life and your thought be narrow, and
your sympathy will shrink to a like scale. It is a quality which follows
the seeing mind afield, which waits on experience. It is not a mere
sentiment. It goes not with pity so much as with a penetrative
understanding of other men's lives and hopes and temptations.
Ignorance of these things makes it worthless. Its best tutors are
observations and experience, and these serve only those who keep clear
eyes and