The Chief End of Man | Page 8

appearing. More clearly and confidently in our day than ever before the
universe may be seen and felt by man as a Cosmos,--a beautiful order.
This bird's-eye view will grow more distinct and vivid if we study
certain typical figures which group themselves as the representatives of
succeeding generations. Our conventional division of centuries will
serve as a convenient framework for four groups.
In the sixteenth century we have Sir Thomas More, uniting the highest
virtue of the church with the clearest intelligence of the new thought,
and setting forth in Utopia the ideal to be sought,--not mere individual
salvation, not an ecclesiastical fold, but a human commonwealth of free,
happy, and virtuous citizens.
Instead of the peaceful growth of such a society,--made impossible by
selfishness, ignorance, and passion,--comes social upheaval and
religious revolution, its central figure the burly, heroic, great-hearted
Luther; by turns a rebel and a conservative; leading the successful
revolt of Teutonic Europe against Rome, but leaving reconstruction to
other hands.
Then we have Calvin, the builder of the creed of Protestantism; in its
substance little but a symmetrical statement of mediaeval ideas, but

resting its appeal not on authority, but logic; or, more exactly, on the
authority of a book, which, having no longer an infallible interpreter,
must be judged by human reason as to its contents and at last as to its
nature and origin. Thus, unconsciously, Calvin initiated a religious
democracy and ultimately a religion of reason; while for the time he
established a creed more austere and grim than the Catholic. Opposite
him stands Loyola, the reviver of Catholicism, infusing it with a new
heroism and self-sacrifice; reaffirming and intensifying its authority;
scornful of speculation, powerful in organization; zealot, missionary,
educator; giving to ecclesiastical obedience an added emphasis, to
organization a new force.
For a typical group in the next century, let us take Francis Bacon,
leading the human intellect away from abstractions and from other
worlds to the close, intelligent study of the material world in which
men live. Beside him stands Shakspere, reading the world of humanity
with eyes neither biased by creed nor sublimed by faith; portraying
with marvelous range the joys, sorrows, humors of mankind; showing
on his impartial canvas a true humanity, far different from the fictitious
saint and fictitious sinner of the theologian; showing, as with the truth
of nature, "virtue in her shape how lovely;" but with no consolation
beside the grave, no satisfying ideal for man's pursuit nor rule for man's
guidance. Near him we see "the Shakspere of divines," Jeremy Taylor;
he, too, is close to the realities of life, but he is planted firm on the
belief in a supernatural revelation of God, Christ, and a hereafter, and
for those who so believe offers a simple, noble way of "Holy Living
and Dying."
In Cromwell is embodied the attempt of extreme Protestantism to
mould society and the state by the authority of a supernatural religion.
The Puritan creed for which he stands is a mixture of Hebraic and
Calvinistic elements; the Puritan temper is at its best heroic and austere,
made despotic by its confidence of divine authority, and by its
supernaturalism made indifferent to the new science and to the various
elements of human nature on which statesmanship must build. Its
political sway is brief, its effects on English and American character
are lasting.

In the next century the master minds stand outside of Christianity.
Voltaire assails the whole ecclesiastical and supernatural fabric with
terrible weapons of hard sense and derision. For the target of his arrows
he has a church at once corrupt, tyrannical, and weak, and a creed
which the best intelligence has outgrown. He heartily scouts the church,
dogma, miracle; admits a vague Deity and a possible hereafter, but
cares little for them; is fearless, jovial, generous,--a rollicking,
comfortable, formidable apostle of negations.
Into the vacuum he creates comes Rousseau, and at his touch there well
up again deep fountains of feeling, belief, desire. Rousseau, too, has
left behind him the church and its dogmas; but he craves love, joy,
action, and finds scope for them. He delights in nature's beauty, and it
is the symbol to him of a God in whom there remains of the Christian
Deity only the element of beneficence. He exhorts men to return to
nature, but it is a somewhat unreal nature, a dream of primeval
innocence and simplicity. He idealizes the family relation, and brings
wisdom and gentleness to the training of the child. He lacks the
Hebraic and Puritan stress on conscience; the mild benevolence of his
Deity is somewhat remote from the ethical need of man and from the
actual procedure or the universe; Rousseau himself is tainted with
sensuality,--a diseased, suffering, pathetic nature, with "sweet strings
jangled," worthy of pity and