Things Human

MAN is unquestionably a highly rational being. Still, if you travel and observe, from the mouth of the Danube to the Golden Gate, you will find most men wearing a coat with a useless collar marked with a useless “V ”-shaped slash, and decorated with two useless buttons at the small of the back, and one or more useless buttons at the cuffs. The collar, the slash, and the buttons are there in answer to no rational need; it is not a common climate nor a common racial need of protection against climate that they represent, but a common civilization whose form and ritual they mutely confess. Over this entire area those who aspire to be of the Brahmin caste deck their heads for wedding, funeral, and feast with a black cylindrical covering, suited, so far as we can discern, neither to avert the weapon of the adversary or the dart of the rain, nor to provide a seat whereon man may sit and rest himself. And as for the women contained within this same area we behold that the amplitude of the sleeve, the disposition of the belt, and the outline of the skirt all obey the rise and fall of one resistless tide which neither moon nor seasons control.

Wherever civilization and education have done the most to make individuality self-conscious and rational, there it is that individuality seeks most earnestly to merge itself in the external confessions of membership in the body of the whole. What it openly seeks in the matter of external confession it however unconsciously assumes in all the inner frame-work and mould-forms of manners, customs, morals, law, art, and faith. The statement of creeds, the standards of morals, the forms of art men adopt without regard to race and blood, or to climate and natural environment. They have them and hold them as historical endowment, and their lives, no matter how they may struggle to make them otherwise, no matter how they may think they succeed, are formal more than they are rational, are historical more than they are begotten of the day.

It is because man is a social being that he is an historical being, and a social being he surely is first and foremost. Individualism and the theory of individual rights are late discoveries. The “Individual ” is scarcely more than a dried Präparat, an isolation developed in the glycerine and perserved with the alcohol of the philosophicolegal laboratories. Some very wise people assume to have found out a century or so ago that society and the social compact were created out of a voluntary surrender of individual rights. This holds good much after the manner of Mr. O’Toole’s interpretation of the power house at Niagara, — “The machinery what pumps the water for the Falls.”

It is because man is a social being that he is an historical being. This does not mean that by nature he maintains a family tree or revels in historical research. The very social order, in which as the inseparable condition of his existence he finds himself, is an historical deposit, an historical resultant. It is indeed history itself, — history pressed flat, if he only knew it, — or rather, history itself is the attempt to raise the fiat pictures into relief and give them depth.

The historical interpretation constitutes the only genuine explanation of those complexities of condition and usage which characterize the social fabric, and in default of historical perspective most men at all times and all men at most times simply marvel and conform. This elaborate and unaccountable structure of laws, usages, and religion impresses the normal, untaught mind as a thing too solid, too intricate, and too vast to have been fashioned by the minds and hands of men such as those of the day. Only gods or heroes could have devised it. Hence it is that the age of heroes always precedes the age of history. But Homer prepared the way for Herodotus, in that the explanation by way of the gods and the heroes offers a first satisfaction to the first groping quest as to how this marvel of society and state could have come to be. And yet neither of the two methods — that by the heroes or that by history — does more than skim the surface. For most purposes, and for the great mass of the matter, we simply, with more or less protest, conform, and are content to restrict that individual inquiry and origination which we like to call freedom to the close limits of some snug private domain well fenced from the common and the street. The labor is too vast, the hope of remuneration too doubtful, the ultimate benefit too questionable, for us to assail the well-established conventional orthography of society.

It is evidently more rational to spell the word could with a cood. It may be that some will find it a moral duty to truth or to the rising generation so to do, and perhaps they will do it merely for the purpose of setting a good example. But with all the complexity of interests attaching to the use of written English as a social vehicle over the great English-speaking domain, it looks veritably as if the good example were like to be seed sown by the wayside. And even if it should take root and bear its ample fruit of phonetic spellings, would it yet represent a gain to have shut the language of the present off from the past, and made the English of Shakespeare and Milton a dead language to the readers of the next generation ? We live in a great society with all the centuries of English thought since the days of Elizabeth, and the written English in the form of a more or less established conventional orthography is the bond thereof. It is very irrational; it is very illogical, so the reformer and radical tell us, and they are undoubtedly correct. But the interesting feature of the matter is that for these persons the question is herewith settled, and orthography is sentenced forthwith to violent death. If orthography is illogical they esteem it competent for them to say, “So much the worse for orthography, ” but if orthography serves a high and necessary purpose and still is illogical, may it not be competent for us to say, “So much the worse for logic ” ? We may indeed suspect that all this logic has been far too shallowly conceived.

I have not introduced this allusion to spelling and spelling reform with any desire to stir the peaceful minds of my readers unto strife, nor is it my purpose to embroil myself with the Spelling Reform Association in this or in any other connection. The fact is, nothing furnishes a better illustration of the human-social institutions such as we are discussing than does language, and especially in those features of its life which reveal the processes of standardizing, and the tendency toward coöperation and uniformity. The forces which make toward establishing the uniformity of the so-called laws of sound are ultimately, as social forces, the same as those which create the standard literary idioms or Schriftsprachen and the conventional orthographies. They are all one also with those social instincts that develop the standard formulas of courtesy, the usages of etiquette, fashions in dress, standards of taste in literature and art, the conventions of manners and morals, the formal adherences of religion, and the established law and order of the state. These are all of them the “things human ” that go with man as a social, historical being, and, of them all, language as an institution utterly human, utterly social, utterly historical affords the clearest illustrations of those principles which hold sway in this field of humanity pure and undefiled ; and so it is that the speech-reformer in every guise from the Volapükist to the phonetic speller is typical in general outlook, method of thought, and plan of procedure for all the theoristreformers who have ever hung in the basket of a phrontisterion. We hold no brief for Toryism, or against the reformers but to the end that that socialmindedness which we incline to stamp as historical-mindedness may be sufficiently set forth and characterized; we are constrained to point a contrast and isolate for use as a foil the extreme opposing type of mind and attitude of life. It is seldom that we find a man who is all one, or all the other. The concept theorist and doctrinaire is ordinarily obtained as an abstraction from many men’s actions in many different fields, and yet single specimens have been found of almost typical purity. I imagine, for instance, that the somewhat ill-defined term “crank ” represents a struggle of the language to label an article of humankind which has been absolutely sterilized from the taint of historical-mindedness. The name crank is, I believe, a title we reserve for other people than ourselves, and in the exercise of our own peculiar forms of crankhood we prefer to allude to what we call “our principles.” It becomes therefore a somewhat dangerous task, to deal with the concept crank, lest we seem to be laying profane hand upon the sacred ark of principle, even though it be only to steady it along the rough way of human life.

I presume there is nothing of which we are more weakly proud, especially we men, than our logic. And yet it is our logic that too often makes fools of us. In fact, plain logic is usually too simple an apparatus for the need. The data for the construction of a perfect syllogism can only be obtained from an artificially prepared cross-section of life, — which never does it justice. To operate with plane geometry and neglect the third dimension on the axis of historic order is to do offense unto the constitutive principle of human social life. To be human is to be social, to be social is to be historical, and human judgments, to be sound, must be historical judgments. Those judgments which, in life affairs, appear to be the soundest, and which betray that priceless thing termed in common parlance common sense, are based on a contingent reasoning that frankly confesses the incompleteness of its syllogisms. The leap across the gap in the syllogistic structure is akin to that the spark of wit and humor takes, and the direct intuitions in which women are believed to deal with such success are much the same, though the syllogistic structure is only sketched in dotted lines.

Pure reason and plain logic have been always much commended to us as a guide of life. They level the rough places and make the crooked paths straight. For the sorest problems they furnish the easiest solutions. Their prophets are such as have withdrawn from the world, and in the quiet of their bedchambers have thought out the formulas of life. The clearest visions that are vouchsafed to living men concerning the great problems of international finance are shown unto these men in the breezy freedom of the prairie, far from the stifling bustle of Wall Street and its confusion of established facts.

Inasmuch as life is not logical, these men generally find that most things in life are to be disapproved of, and incline to be pessimists. For the same reason they are unlikely to be coöperatively inclined, and criticise more than they create. As it is much easier, by reason of its shallow rationality, to formulate pessimistic discourse than optimistic, it follows that these people, and people who temporarily assume their rôle, are more in evidence in the public press and on the public platform than their relative numbers or importance would really justify.

It certainly would be an unwarranted generalization if I should assume to find the source of all pessimism in this pseudo-logic of life, — much of it having of course a physical and indeed specifically hepatic source, — but it is well to mark the genetic relation between the two, for pessimism is as false to life as logic is. In human life, and in all things human, the inspiring, life-giving, creative forces are the inseparable three, — hope and confidence and sympathy. They are positive ; they draw materials and men together, and scatter not asunder; they construct and not destroy. For human use it is evident that criticism was intended by Providence as a purgative, not as a food.

Our occupation with the phoneticspelling reformer as type of the logical or pseudo-logical doctrinaire has for the time carried us away from the characterization of that historical order in human life with which this discourse on things human had its beginning, and which we had ventured to call the orthography of human society.

Every year of our swiftly unfolding national history brings to our view with startling emphasis some illustration of the great fact that our national life is composed out of social conditions intricately dovetailed and interlaced, which have their roots in a history too complex for the easy analysis of the political theorist. On every hand a warning comes for political sobriety and patience. It is now about a quarter of a century since an amendment to the Constitution extended the ballot to the negro of the South. The action was taken in deference to the evidently logical application of certain principles of human right believed to be well established. Those who aggressively favored the action were men of noblest purposes, of undoubted patriotism, and of positive moral enthusiasm. The case was to them so clear as to leave no room for hesitation or doubt. The logic of war had enforced the logic of reason. Time however has now done its clarifying work, and behold, in spite of all the logics, the social facts that were there, lying in wait, have reasserted themselves. In the name of consistency a violence had been done. Despite all our aversion to the evasion of the written law, the people of the North, so far as one may infer from public expressions, have quietly, slowly withdrawn from the field of protest, leaving the historical facts to do their own sweet will and work, community by community, state by state. War and logic prevailed at the first, the historical facts prevail at the end.

We as a people are said to come of a practical-minded stock, and that practical-mindedness which made the English Constitution asserts itself continuously in our national life, as we show over and over again our capacity flexibly to adjust ourselves both as people and as government to the changing conditions which arise about us and reshape our duty and our opportunity. The recent decisions of the Supreme Court, tangled as they seemed at first report, resolve themselves into a plain significance as regards their main bent. The letter of the law written in view of distinctly different conditions and for radically different purposes and safeguards cannot restrain the people through their representatives in Parliament or Congress from devising means of procedure that shall satisfy existing needs. Whether we assume to live by written or unwritten Constitution, it will always be, with a people such as we by spirit and tradition are, the Constitution written in the people’s life and work that holds the sway supreme. There must be after all some deep philosophy in Mr. Dooley’s apprehension that whether the flag follows the Constitution or the Constitution the flag, the decisions of the Court follow the election returns.

Five years ago we were in the midst of a frenzy of popular logic on the currency question which has now so far abated, leaving so few traces that it cannot be considered unsuited for mention under the far-famed shelter of the academic freedom. The supporters of the doctrine of the free coinage of silver were, I believe, in the main sincere. The doctrine was easier to understand and advocate than its opposite. Its simple, crystalline logic appealed particularly to large masses of people who are impatient of complicated historical instruction, but to whom, as to all of us humans, it is a high satisfaction to think they are thinking. The opposing doctrine labored under the embarrassment of being founded in the historical facts of established international usage, but in its good time the historical logic prevailed over its shallower counterpart, as it must needs always do.

It is always a prolific source of danger in a government such as ours that parties are tempted to set forth in platforms far-reaching policies which seek their grounding in smoothly stated a priori principles of right and government. These strokes of radicalism, like the French radicalism and its argument from the state of nature, serve to clear the air, though usually at high cost, and we should not like to see them utterly withheld from the people, and a politics of organizational and personal struggles utterly displace them. The safer and more veracious use of the party platform will be that which deals with questions within practical range and proposes policies in reference to existing actual conditions. It is not necessary to explore the ultimate problem of the origin of evil and original sin every time a hen-roost is robbed.

The manners and morals of any social community at any given time constitute a firm historical deposit, with sanctions and guarantees so strong that the hammer and acids of analyzing reason find it an ill-paid task to stir them. There are men who have thought it worth while to raise persistent protest against that gentle convention which garbs us in the dress coat. It would be an easy matter doubtless to prove after reflection its unworthiness as protection for the lungs or thighs, and it might be difficult to defend it against a proposition to redispose its material by transfer from back to front, but the dress coat is there, and convenience uses it rather than serves it. This is far easier than to think out a new coat on eternal principles every year. In general the issue does not appeal to the interest of the great public, and no one is likely to find his political fortunes advanced by any manipulation thereof.

That institution of civilized society, the family, framed through the uniting of one man and one wife until death do them part, is an institution confirmed in the testings and pains and joys of centuries of human experience. It is anchored and framed and jointed into the very fabric of society, until society is unthinkable without it. In the presence of a social structure so established, and whose existence and purity are bound up with the very life of society, there is no place for the small queryings of the theorist. If he abides among us he will conform. Society cannot tolerate, and will not, that one family be dissolved and another “announced ” at the instance of some personal convenience or some shallow logic of affinities.

There is a certain law and order which human society must insist upon as a prior condition to all discussion regarding forms and mechanism of government and distribution of rights and privileges. The first thing to do with a debating society is to call it to order. The first thing to teach a child is to do what it is told to do, and for the reason that it is told to. Other reasons await the more placid opportunity afforded by complete pacification. We have of late, in educational matters, been traversing a period of much experimenting and much unsettling of views and aims and methods. One may not therefore with any confidence expect a general agreement upon any proposition, however elementary. It has seemed to me nevertheless that there ought to be agreement, even if there is not, concerning one thing, namely, that our aim in educating is to make the individual more effective as a member of human society, — I would indeed venture to make it read, “effective for good.” If education addressed itself simply to the development of the individual as an unclothed immortal soul, the mundane state would scarcely be justified in its present interest. It is as a prospective member of society and a citizen that the pupil claims the interest of a school-supporting state. An education which now accepts this definition of its aim cannot admit itself to be in first line a branch or dependency of biology. Children are little animals surely enough, but it is for our practical purposes immeasurably more important that they are incipient social beings. That the biological theory of education has exercised in many a detail an injurious influence on the practice of the schools I believe has not escaped the attention of many of us. One leading result has been a groping vagueness that has possessed the minds of teachers and professors of teaching themselves, a vagueness which has arisen through cutting loose from the solid piers of the historical facts, close akin to that which we mark in the vagrant discipline which seeks to deal with society apart from history and decorates itself with the name of sociology.

The education that educates remains in spite of all the vivisections and postmortems a training, — a training that adapts and fits the little barbarian to his civilized environment, an environment in part natural, to be sure, but preëminently social and historical, a training that makes him punctual, dutiful, obedient, conscientious, courteous, and observant, self-controlled, law-abiding, and moral, and gives him sobriety of judgment, and encourages health to abound, health of body and mind, which is no more nor less than sanity.

In the attitude toward human life there abide the two contrasted types. One is the voice crying in the wilderness, the man clad in skins, ascetic, teetotaler, radical, reformer, agitator; and of him they say he hath a devil, he is a crank. His mission is to awake with a ringing “Repent ” the dormant public mind and stir the public conscience, but in him is no safe uplifting and upbuilding power. His errand is fulfilled in a day, and after him there cometh one whose shoe latchet he is unworthy to loose, — the man among men, the Man-Son, living the normal life of men, accepting the standing order, paying tribute unto Cæsar, touching elbows with men of the world, respecting the conventions of society, healing and helping men from the common standingground of human life.

The call which comes to the University from the need of the day is a call for trained men; not extraordinary specimens of men, but normal men; not eccentrics, but gentlemen; not stubborn Tories or furious radicals, but men of sobriety and good sense, men of good health and sanity, — men trained in the school of historical-mindedness.

Benjamin Ide Wheeler.