Short Studies on Great Subjects | Page 8

'my friend, the times which are gone are a book
with seven seals; and what you call the spirit of past ages is but the
spirit of this or that worthy gentleman in whose mind those ages are
reflected.'
One lesson, and only one, history may be said to repeat with
distinctness; that the world is built somehow on moral foundations; that,
in the long run, it is well with the good; in the long run, it is ill with the
wicked. But this is no science; it is no more than the old doctrine taught
long ago by the Hebrew prophets. The theories of M. Comte and his
disciples advance us, after all, not a step beyond the trodden and
familiar ground. If men are not entirely animals, they are at least half
animals, and are subject in this aspect of them to the conditions of
animals. So far as those parts of man's doings are concerned, which
neither have, nor need have, anything moral about them, so far the laws
of him are calculable. There are laws for his digestion, and laws of the
means by which his digestive organs are supplied with matter. But pass
beyond them, and where are we? In a world where it would be as easy
to calculate men's actions by laws like those of positive philosophy as
to measure the orbit of Neptune with a foot-rule, or weigh Sirius in a
grocer's scale.

And it is not difficult to see why this should be. The first principle on
which the theory of a science of history can be plausibly argued, is that
all actions whatsoever arise from self-interest. It may be enlightened
self-interest; it may be unenlightened; but it is assumed as an axiom,
that every man, in whatever he does, is aiming at something which he
considers will promote his happiness. His conduct is not determined by
his will; it is determined by the object of his desire. Adam Smith, in
laying the foundations of political economy, expressly eliminates every
other motive. He does not say that men never act on other motives; still
less, that they never ought to act on other motives. He asserts merely
that, as far as the arts of production are concerned, and of buying and
selling, the action of self-interest may be counted upon as uniform.
What Adam Smith says of political economy, Mr. Buckle would extend
over the whole circle of human activity.
Now, that which especially distinguishes a high order of man from a
low order of man--that which constitutes human goodness, human
greatness, human nobleness--is surely not the degree of enlightenment
with which men pursue their own advantage; but it is
self-forgetfulness--it is self-sacrifice--it is the disregard of personal
pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advantages remote or present,
because some other line of conduct is more right.
We are sometimes told that this is but another way of expressing the
same thing; that when a man prefers doing what is right, it is only
because to do right gives him a higher satisfaction. It appears to me, on
the contrary, to be a difference in the very heart and nature of things.
The martyr goes to the stake, the patriot to the scaffold, not with a view
to any future reward to themselves, but because it is a glory to fling
away their lives for truth and freedom. And so through all phases of
existence, to the smallest details of common life, the beautiful character
is the unselfish character. Those whom we most love and admire are
those to whom the thought of self seems never to occur; who do simply
and with no ulterior aim--with no thought whether it will be pleasant to
themselves or unpleasant--that which is good, and right, and generous.
Is this still selfishness, only more enlightened? I do not think so. The

essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in,
and the beauty of a great action is gone--like the bloom from a soiled
flower. Surely it is a paradox to speak of the self-interest of a martyr
who dies for a cause, the triumph of which he will never enjoy; and the
greatest of that great company in all ages would have done what they
did, had their personal prospects closed with the grave. Nay, there have
been those so zealous for some glorious principle, as to wish
themselves blotted out of the book of Heaven if the cause of Heaven
could succeed.
And out of this mysterious quality, whatever it be, arise the higher
relations of human life, the higher modes of human obligation. Kant,
the philosopher, used to say that there were two things which
overwhelmed him with awe as he thought of them. One was the
star-sown deep of