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Page 51
The soul is a prediction of clearer vision, truer thought, more
unselfish love and wiser choices. It is a prophecy of the perfect man.
History is also prophetic of larger souls. The stream of human history,
after it has been followed backward a few thousand years, leads into the
region of legend and myth--that is, to a time when history could not be
written because there was no writing, and when all truth was conveyed in
symbolical forms. That means toward a time of narrow experience, and of
knowledge far more limited than the present. Memory, in those days, was
enormously and abnormally capacious and retentive, but there was no
appreciation of humanity. Few lessons from the experiences of others
were possible, because the mind was filled with merely tribal legends.
What was called early civilization was only relatively splendid. There
was unsurpassed poetry but no science, ample brawn but diminutive brain,
much passion but little love. Out of the darkness of the past the stream
of history, very narrow and shallow at first, has emerged and steadily
expanded and deepened. Men are now equally intense but far clearer in
vision, nobler in purpose, and purer in character. Their laws year by
year have become more humane, their sympathies less contracted, their
institutions more civilized. Nature's secret drawers have been unlocked.
We are sometimes told that science has added much to the store of man's
knowledge but nothing to the strength of his mind or the nobility of his
character. That is a serious mistake. With the enlarged visions of the
universe, with clearer conceptions of our cosmic relations, with the
national neighborliness which is now a necessity, the capacity and the
quality of the soul must change. Nay, it has already changed, for we
inhabit the same lands over which savages formerly roamed, and we find
in the earth and air what they never found; and when we look up into the
great wide sky and say, "The Heavens declare the glory of God," we are
not thinking of a tribal Deity, or a partial, and more or less
passionate, monarch enthroned in the midst of his splendors, but of the
King Eternal, immortal, invisible. Knowledge tends to enlarge the mind
by which it is acquired. All faculties are strengthened by use.
History has moved along a bloody pathway, or, to revert to the figure of
a stream, is indeed a river of "tears and blood." The horrors of the
process by which the race has been lifted can hardly be exaggerated. I
do not forget them while I put stronger emphasis on the fact that the
outcome of all the struggle of individuals, the conflict of classes, and
the wars of nations has been a nobler and purer quality of soul,--not
less heroic but more sacrificial, not less strong but far more virtuous.
The growth of the individual soul is mirrored in the progress of the
race. When we have learned to read aright the history of the world, we
are informed as to the interior forces which have made civilization.
Events are expressions of thoughts; institutions are manifestations of
soul. If there has been progress in institutions there must have been an
equal progress in the souls which are the real forces by which progress
is always won. As history has been the evolution of humanity toward
finer forms, so it is the assurance that the forces which have been at
work in the past will not cease, but steadily continue until "the pile
is complete." The perfect society will be composed of perfected
individuals. History as prophecy is harmonious with soul as prophecy.
The future state of the soul has been the subject of rare fascination
for the world's great thinkers. Nearly all religions have a forward
look. "The Golden Age" lies far in the distance, but it has commanded
the faith of all the seers. It has sometimes been a dream concerning
individuals, and again a vision of the perfected society, but in reality
the two are one, for the social organism is but a congeries of
individuals. Bacon dreamed of New Atlantis, Sir Thomas More saw the fair
walls of Utopia rising in the future, Plato defined the boundaries of
the ideal Republic, Augustine wrote of the glories of the _Civitate
Dei_, and Tennyson with matchless music has sung of the crowning race:--
"Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be."
The common characteristic of these social ideals is their dependence on
the culture of individuals. With the incoming of "the valiant man and
free," the man of "larger heart and kindlier hand," there is a
reasonable hope that the darkness of the land will disappear.
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