-jrr>ws««;Jto»« r...Ti j rWtww^ >-^'-,"5"?l"'„'^"- $B Eh3 7D7 AR F iMAN ^J: * it ^1] '; <^ ^ , 1 ^ ^ < ^' i > Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/arey6uhuman00hyderich ARE YOU HUMAN? A LECTURE TO THE FRESHMAN CLASS IN YALE COLLEGE ON THE RALPH HILL THOMAS FOUNDATION ^The^y^o THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO ARE YOU HUMAN? BY WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE PRESIDENT OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE WehJ got* THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1916 All rights restrved Copyright, 1916, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1916. NorixjooU ^W0g J. S. Cashing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. INTRODUCTION Cast Into the metal of the bell of my old school, The PhilHps Exeter Academy, are these words : — " Hue venite pueri ut viri sitisy' " Come here, boys, to become men." Kant defined education as " the process by which man becomes man/' We are not born men ; nor do we come to manhood automatically on reaching one and twenty. To become human we have to take up and fulfill our human re- lationships. Of these I have selected the dozen most important. Merely to describe V Are You Human'? too, men were not to graduate from his proposed school until the ripe age of fifty. Our common humanity was de- veloped by hunters and herdsmen, fishermen and farmers, explorers and pioneers ; men who wrested their subsistence from the forest and the furrow; men who faced wild beasts and savages ; men who were the few survivors of the many who went down under these tremendous strains. This hard-won vigor of the pioneer is lost in a few generations of civi- lized conditions, unless we develop some artificial substitute for the Athletics beast and the savage, the tempest and the plague. That civiHzed sub- stitute is athletics. Clerks and salesmen, students and professional men, sorely need to ride and shoot, or hunt and fish, or run and row, or play baseball and football, or at least tennis and golf, if they are to retain the physical features of the humanity so hardly won for us by our vigorous and re- sourceful ancestors. Do you then stamp your will through nerve and muscle on the mountain or the sea ; a gamy fish or an elusive animal ; on the court or links, the river or the cinder 3 Are You Human? track, the diamond or the grid- iron ? If so, on this side you are a man, worthy of the sturdy ancestors from whom you are descended. Or do you shrink from contact with hard conditions, and worthy opponents ? Are you content to sit on the bleachers and yell ; or lounge in your rooms and smoke ; or loaf at the clubroom and gossip and bet. Then your enfeebled constitution, your flabby muscles and unsteady nerves, show that on this side of your nature you are still unhuman — an undeveloped boy, with merely the years and bulk of a man. 4 Athletics Or do you weaken your power to resist disease and to stand strain by stimulants, drugs, or unnatural in- dulgences ; simply for the sensations they give, apart from any normal use they serve ? Then you are inhuman : you are not a man at all, but an over- grown baby prematurely escaped from the nursery; unworthy of the long line of sturdy ancestors from whom you have degenerated. II SOCIETY Bacon tells us that "He who loveth solitude is either a wild beast or a god/' As gods are not so nu- merous nowadays as formerly, Ba- con's remark classifies the unsocial man as less than human. We all accept to-day the principle : " Unus homo nullus homo'' — "One man alone is no man at all." Do you mingle freely, helpfully, sympathetically with your fellows as host or guest, officer or member, 6 Society partner or opponent ; conforming to the little conventions devised to make social intercourse enjoyable ? Do you readily and generously merge your interests in the interests of the company or party, the society or club, the game or entertainment, in which you chance to be ? If so, you are human on the social side ; and the parties and picnics, dinners and teas you attend ; the clubs, fraternities, circles to which you belong, in a rough external way measure on this side the degree of your humanity. Or are you too stupid and lazy to master the little conventions that 7 Are You Human ? bar the entrance to good society ? Are you too self-conscious to get out of yourself into happy commun- ion with others ? Are you too shy to meet men and women a little more than halfway ? Then to that extent you are missing one of the best gifts humanity has in store for you. In self-inflicted isolation and unhappiness you are unhuman. Or are you a mere climber, try- ing to ^"make" this club or enter that circle for your own selfish ends ? Are you disloyal, betraying those who trust you ? Do you roll as a sweet morsel under your tongue the failings of your fellows ? Do you 8 Society think not of what you can put into your group, but what you can get out of it ? Lowest of all, do you take pleasure in your power to keep other fellows out of the groups that you are in, and glory in your ex- clusiveness ? Is your wealth, or family, or education, or taste, not a magnet to draw less fortunate men to you, but a barrier to fend them off ? Then your snobbishness marks you as unfit for membership in any group of genuine and generous men, and in spite of all the clubs you "'make,'' and the circles into which you climb, brands you as at heart false, hollow, and inhuman. 9 Ill SCIENCE By the long labor of devoted scientists man has won, or is on the way to win, the mastery over nature. The combinations of the molecules, the courses of the stars, obey the laws of his arithmetic and trigo- nometry. The geologist sees in the uplifted mountains and fertile valleys the results of processes essentially the same as those going on to-day ; and looks forward to a time when his lO Science knowledge of the structure and con- stitution of the earth will enable him to predict the location of min- erals with something of the accuracy with which the astronomer predicts an eclipse. The botanist sees in sepal and petal and stamen and pistil modified leaves ; and develops new varieties of flowers and fruits and vegetables to suit his taste. The biologist traces in the human embryo the recapitulation of the history of the evolution of man from lower forms. The engineer harnesses steam and electricity to his car ; and for pur- II Are You Human ? poses of conversation contracts a continent to the dimensions of a single hall. Can you then, in one or more of these departments, astronomy, geol- ogy, physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, not merely in verbal description, but in first-hand manip- ulation and experiment, retrace these law-abiding processes of nature, these serviceable devices of man ? Can you disentangle essential from accidental ; and trace the obscure recurring identity underneath the obvious and confusing diversity ? Having discovered for yourself law in two or three spheres, do you ap- 12 Science proach all scientific subjects in ab- solute confidence that every-where, from the smallest atom to the re- motest star, there is discovered or discoverable law ? Can you call by their names rare specimens ; see the law in its unusual as well as its usual workings : predict what will be, and determine what shall be ? If so, you are human on this side ; you are a scientific man. Or do you believe in luck ; fear thirteen at a table, and shrink from enterprises begun on Friday ? Mak- ing due allowance for the control of mind over matter with which it is organically connected, to heal disease 13 Are You Human? and increase strength, do you go farther and believe in the merely magical power of mind over external matter, apart from discovered or discoverable law ? Then in your thinking you are harking back to the outgrown child- hood of the race : you are childish, superstitious, unhuman. Or worst of all, do you deliberately stultify yourself? Do you put things together in your mind which refuse to go together in fact, like a man I once met who professed to believe on scientific grounds that Adam was evolved, but was equally clear on Biblical grounds that Eve 14 Science was a special creation ? Do you try to force these absurd views on other persons ? Do you speak dis- paragingly of scientific truth as com- pared to ecclesiastical dogmas, and try to maintain incredible creeds by inquisition and persecution ? Then you are inhuman : you are the suc- cessor of the men who stoned the prophets, burned martyrs at the stake; tormented and persecuted the men who brought new light ; and crucified the world's greatest truth-lover. 15 IV ART Unlike science, which knows the world as it is and moulds it to man's use, art fashions for man's delight a fairer world than nature ever made. Stones do not grow of themselves into statues and cathe- drals ; sounds do not arrange them- selves in symphonies, nor pigments in madonnas ; characters in life are seldom as clear-cut as those of Shakespeare and George Eliot. The spontaneous ejaculations of Tommy i6 Art f Atkins do not grow into Barrack Room Ballads ; nor are the tomb- stones in any actual cemetery quite as expressive of the lives they com- memorate as those in the Spoon River Anthology. Sculptor and architect, painter and engraver, novelist and dramatist, poet and orator, give us a more human world than nature without them could produce — illuminated by a ^' light that never was on sea or land/' Their works are literally supernat- ural. For they discard the irrele- vant, heighten the significant, con- centrate into an instant, or at most a few hours, the quintessence of a 17 Are You Human ? lifetime, or a cause for which nations have fought for years. Have you then a great and grow- ing acquaintance with buildings, pictures,. plays, novels, poems, songs, which you enjoy and love ? Have you favorite artists, dramatists, novelists, poets, musicians, from whom you gain refreshment and expansion, and to whom you seek to introduce your friends ? If so, you are human on the side of art, and are happily at home in this fairest of the humanities. Or do you live wholly in the world of your own eyes ; drudging monotonously in bondage to the i8 An commonplace : the slave of dull rou- tine ? Then at this point you are unhuman : you are throwing away the fruits of generations of gifted men in all the arts ; you are selling your birthright of one of the most precious of the humanities for a mess of miserable pottage. Or, worst of all, do you pervert this human faculty of imagination, the power of creation by selection and concentration, to pick out and gloat over aspects of life which in their proper function and subor- dination are pure and noble ; but isolated, exaggerated, and empha- sized, become vulgar and obscene ? 19 Are You Human ? Do you, as Carlyle says, ''dig up the roots of the fair flowers that deck the marriage bower, to show with grinning, grunting satisfaction the dung they flourish in"? If so you are neither human nor unhuman but inhuman : a sneaking degener- ate indulging in the secret places of your soul a perverted art you would be ashamed to confess to decent people in the open. And you will not escape this de- generate form of inhumanity simply by fighting it directly. That often only consolidates and confirms the perversity. Deliverance comes by cultivating noble art and enjoying 20 Art good literature : for art is so much more subtle and pervasive than most of man's other interests, that the best way to keep perverse art and perverted imagination out is to bring noble imagination and good art in. As the author of ''Ecce Homo" has told us, "No heart is pure that is not passionate, and no virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic.'' 21 HISTORY The animal for the most part is bound to the present. To look be- fore and after, to give the present its setting in past and future, is the prerogative of man; and history is its instrument. All our human customs and in- stitutions have been dearly bought by the struggles and sacrifices of our ancestors. To retrace the steps by which order and liberty in govern- ment, toleration in religion, de- cency in morals, sincerity in art, have been won ; to see the ends 22 History customs and institutions now obso- lete once served ; to cherish what is still useful, and gently lay aside what has outlived its usefulness ; to get a taste of life lived long ago from first-hand contact with docu- ments and monuments is necessary if we are to escape the narrow span of an ever-vanishing present to which the brutes are chained. Do you fight over again the de- bates and battles of the American Revolution and the Civil War ? Do you retrace the slow development of Enghsh liberty; win nationality for their countries with Bismarck and Cavour ; see the splendor and horror 23 Are You Human ? of the Revolution in France ; dwell in the Holy Roman Empire ; and go back to the foundations of law in Rome, the first flush of civiliza- tion in Greece ? Have you rich interests in other lands ; dear friends among the great of long ago ? Do you cherish the civilization you enjoy not merely for its comforts and im- munities, but for the heroes and patriots and martyrs with whose lifeblood they were bought ? Then you rise above the bondage of the animal into the liberty of man. Or do you live in the fleeting, unilluminated present ; seeing merely 24 History the dull, dead facts before your half- closed eyes ; forgetting the heroisms and sacrifices out of which they came ; and therefore powerless to forecast and shape the forms into which they shall develop ? Then you are merely an animal mind in a human body. You are unhuman. Or do you in your blind stupidity think what is always was and ever shall be ? Do you cling to the old just because it is old ; no matter how many facts and needs it fails to meet ? Then you are one kind of an inhuman being, — the stupid conservative to whom the present 25 Are You Human ? is dead and rigid just because the past never was mobile and alive. Or do you in ruthless anarchism smash everything that fails to work exactly to your liking ? Do you dis- card old creeds because they are not at all points credible; throw over- board political constitutions and safe- guards because they work incidental injustice; seek to abolish private property because most workers are underpaid, and some starve ; abolish discipline in education because the traditional curriculum has brought down from the past some anomalies, and some scTioolmasters have been tyrants or old fogies ? 26 History Then you are another kind of in- human being : — the reckless radi- cal, throwing out the baby with the bath: in petulance condemning the 90 or 95 per cent that is sound and useful in ecclesiastical, political, economic and educational tradition, because like all things human they carry their 5 or 10 per cent of waste and slag. Into one or the other of these oppo- site inhumanities — stupid conserva- tism or reckless radicalism — every man is sure to fallwho ventures to pass from present to future save through the portals of history, — through an intelligent and reverent appreciation of the achievements of the past. 27 VI PHILOSOPHY Athletics, society, science, art, history, are however only so many fractions of Kfe. Neither of them, nor all together, with business, poli- tics, wealth, and love thrown in, can make us see life whole, and lift us to the eternal point of view. That is the province of philosophy : to see real unity underneath seeming diversity; to discover order in ap- parent chaos ; to unveil mind in the disguises of matter; to throw 28 Philosophy the bridges of rational hypothesis across the chasms of bhnd unin- teUigibility, — and to do this not in conceited and futile independence, but in all the light the masters of reflection, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Royce, Berg- son, can lend you. Do you then under some unifying principle, — ideas, energy, monads, reason, will, the thing that works, the vital impulse, happiness, duty, or self-realization, — endeavor to unify the world and give man's life its rational setting in a coherent and intelligible whole ? Then you are taking up the philo- ^ 29 Are You Human? sophic side of your human inher- itance, and putting a line of demar- cation between you and the brutes. Or do you take life piecemeal : now rising in exultation on the flood of fortune and partial, evanescent success ; now going down in despair before some petty, passing misfor- tune ? Beyond the trivial circle of your personal concern is there a hard wall into which you never try to penetrate, before which your thinking stops hopeless and dead ? Then you are unhuman ; and su- perstition lieth at your mind's door. Or worst of all, being selfish and sensual yourself, do you with the 30 Philosophy aid of some Omar Khayyam or Nietzsche make for yourself a philos- ophy of materialism and irrespon- sibility; not honestly thought out, but fashioned in the image of your own base desires or arrogant conceit ? Do you do for yourself what the ruling class of a great nation has done — make a philosophy to justify your greed and pride : reckless of the ruin it brings on its victims ? Do you conjure up or borrow second- hand some fine formula, like the "superman,'' or "'the law of nature,'' or the exemptions of genius, or the supreme rights of passion, to justify your lust and lawlessness ? 31 Are You Human? Then you are inhuman ; you are perverting to ignoble and degener- ate ends a counterfeit philosophy; and you will bring on yourself, and all who have the misfortune to be intimately associated with you, some such curse as the deluded disciples of Nietzsche, Treitschke, and Bernhardi have brought on the modern world. You will be not a philosopher, but a sophist. 32 VII BUSINESS Aristocracies have always looked down on business as material and sordid. With the rise of Christian democracy the tables have been turned ; and we now look down with pity on the man who, whether from inherited wealth, or incapacity, will not or can not take his part in the world's work. The man who lives on other persons' toil and en- terprise is missing one of the essential human experiences. D 33 Are You Human? Not until you can produce in quality and quantity, at the time and place where it is wanted, some valuable article or service, are you a full-grown man. To be more served than serving, since Christ came and democracy has interpreted him, is a badge of inferiority. Do you plan to carry on your busi- ness or profession as your little con- tribution to the great, complicated, beneficent whole .^ Are you deter- mined to give at least as much and as good as you take .? Are you resolved to make your product or service sound and genuine, however fraudulent cus- tomers or competitors may be t 34 Business If so, your farming, your manu- facturing, your trade, your profes- sion will make a man of you — strong with a human strength nothing less arduous and exacting can develop. Or do you aim by inherited or married wealth to shirk all the hard work of hand or brain ; con- suming much, producing little or nothing ? Or if poverty compels you to work, are you bent on doing as little as you can ; treating your work as so much drudgery to be gotten through as easily as possible, with no interest in the process and no pride in the product ? Then you are not a man, but a shirk and a para- 35 Are You Human ? site. For without useful, difficult, enthusiastic work, paid or gratuitous, public or domestic, man is not man. Or, worst of all, do you go into business merely to make money, regardless of how, or out of whom, you make it ? Do you misrepre- sent the goods you make or sell ? Do you promote fraudulent enter- prises, or wreck sound ones by dis- honest manipulation ? Do you look on business merely as a vast pool from which to scoop out indifferently honest or dishonest gains ? Then you are inhuman; and the bigger the business you do on these inhuman terms, the more inhuman you become. 36 VIII POLITICS Without law, order, government, police protection, military force, and officers to make and execute the laws, society soon would lapse into savagery. To study political science, to form and express politi- cal opinion ; to support good meas- ures and honest and able men : to run for office yourself as soon as financial independence makes it possible to do so without becoming dependent on the distributors of political favors, — this is the least 37 Are You Human? you can do as citizens of a free state. Do you then know how poHtical poHcies have worked in the past and are working in other lands to-day ? Are you on the lookout for needed reforms in representation, adminis- tration, legislation, and government regulation ? Is the public interest as precious to you as your own ; and the quality of public service as zealously guarded as the efficiency of those who serve you ? Then you are human in your citizenship. Or do you leave all this to pro- fessional politicians, who care as little as you for the public interest, 38 Politics but more for what they can get out of the public in salaries and graft ? Then you are unhuman : unworthy of the state that gives you law and liberty, protection and prosperity. Or are you yourself in politics for what you can get out of it in franchises, discriminations, tariffs, favors, spoils ; seeking to get your- self, or your friends, or your class, supported at the public expense ? Then you are inhuman ; you are the only kind of traitor the modern state in times of peace and plenty has to fear. Until such men as you are recognized and branded as traitors the republic is not safe. 39 IX WEALTH To make money honestly is often hard, but not so hard as it is to spend it wisely and generously. Yet unless it is invested or spent in ways wisely expressive of one's interests and aims, money is not wealth ; and does not humanize its owner. Unused money is a dis- grace, showing that its owner has more power than he is competent to exercise. Do you aim to be a rich man ? 40 Wealth That question cannot be answered by telling how many houses and lands, stocks and bonds, you hope to have. We must ask further : Do you plan to support a family ? help friends ? relieve neighbors ? promote re- forms ? pay your taxes as your fair share of the public expense ? sus- tain hospitals, schools, missions, playgrounds ? If so, you are aiming to be a rich man ; you are human on this difficult side of wealth : for your money, be it little or much, is the effective expression of a rich and devoted spirit. Or do you hoard your money, or 41 Are You Human F spend it on petty personal gratifica- tions, or run in debt for needless luxuries, or give it away carelessly in response to uninvestigated im- portunity ? Then you are a pauper yourself, and a cause of poverty in others. You are unhuman in your misuse of wealth. Or will you try to make a splurge with your money ? Will you buy things you don't care for just for the sake of being seen to have them ? Will you live in a bigger house than you can enjoy as a home, or use in hospitality ? Will you travel inces- santly in restless irresponsibility ? 42 Wealth Will you allow the workers of the world to do more for you than you do for them ? Then your money will be a curse to you and to all with whom you come in contact. To the extent of the power your money gives, you will make the world a harder, colder, cruder world than it would be if you were dead and buried, and your wealth were distributed among generous and responsible heirs. You are inhuman ! Your whole attitude towards money reveals your sordid selfishness and heartless inhumanity. 43 X LOVE We are persons, and can develop our personality only through other persons. The incidental and super- ficial contacts with others in ath- letics, society, business, and politics are not enough to bring out the best in us. We must have friends with whom we share our deepest interests. Yet even friends are not enough. The family, the love of wife and children, the responsibili- ties and sacrifices of maintaining a 44 Love home, are the great agencies for humanizing men. The man who misses that is only half or quarter of the man he was meant to be. Do you then plan to share life's joys and sorrows with some woman who shall call out all your chivalry, and keep you at your best ? Do you desire children with a desire that keeps you clean and sound that you may give them your uncon- taminated best .? Are you willing to take on whatever economic bur- den may be necessary to their sup- port and education and start in life ? Then you are human with the finest qualities of humanity. 45 Are You Human? Or are you too proud or too shy to meet women on frank and friendly terms ? Do you prefer club life with its cheap luxury above the struggle to support a family ? Then you are unhuman; and outraged nature will inflict her automatic penalty which forbids that so unhuman a person shall be reproduced and rep- resented in future generations. Or, worst and lowest, do you, while shirking love's responsibilities, in selfish sensuality seize on the physical pleasures nature for her own shrewd ends has linked with love ? Do you buy your brief grati- fication at the cruel cost of the 46 Love degradation of some woman, or a whole class of women, and at the risk of disease to yourself and your future family ? Then you are neither man nor brute; for the brutes, not having the social standards man has evolved, cannot inflict on one another the fearful penalties human society in self-protection has attached to woman's wrong. You are stabbing humanity at its most delicate and sensitive point ; proving yourself un- worthy of the human mother who bore you ; and taking your place below the brutes, with the fiends. For this robbing a woman, or a class 47 Are You Human? of women, of their birthright of self-respect and social honor, in re- turn for feigned love or a money fee, is the lowest depth of cruelty and inhumanity to which a fiend in human form can sink. 48 XI MORALS The customs, rules, laws, and in- stitutions which humanity has evolved for the regulation of life, "the precipitate of mankind^s pro- longed experiment in living,'' morals, in other words, are the ways in which experience has shown that men must walk if they will escape hate, strife, war, ugliness, indecency, disease, and untimely death. Do you put truth above the con- venience of lying ? honesty above E 49 Are You Human ? the profits of fraud ? temperance above the gratification of appetite and passion ? Are you bearing your fair share of the burden of maintain- ing and improving the standards of wholesome, happy human Hving which generations of self-controlled, self-sacrificing men have laboriously erected ? Then you arc human : a worthy member of the company of heroes and martyrs who have made, are making, and shall continue to make the glory of our common humanity. Or do you act as the crowd acts with which you happen to be ? Is your conduct the result of your SO Morals environment ? Do you observe law when penalty compels, and break it when you think you can do so and escape detection ? Then you are unhuman :' a mere resultant of the physical and social forces that chance to play upon you. You are not a free and original man : but an enslaved, driven thing. Or do you in open defiance trample on these conditions of common well- being ? Do you boast of cheating your creditor out of his dues ; glory in successful trickery; tell stories that reek with debauchery and lust ; speak contemptuously of truth, purity, honesty and honor 'i SI Are You Human ? Then you are tearing down hu- manity's most costly structure; undermining the sacred foundations of happiness reared by generations of your human ancestors. You are inhuman. 52 XII RELIGION There is only one thing more sacred than morality, and that is religion — the grateful and reverent obedience to the one God who is seeking and serving the welfare of all his human children. Such obedi- ence and reverent service of this Fatherly Will, and the resolute and sacrificial fighting of all that opposes it, is the crowning human experience. Jesus lived that life uniquely and S3 Are You Human? supremely ; tens of thousands of his followers, imperfectly but genuinely, are living in that high and holy ex- perience of doing the Father's will to all our brother men. Do you offer yourself gratefully and reverently, in private and in public, to the service of God and your human brothers ? Do you find hard things made easy in the power of this high fellowship ; heavy bur- dens made light by the peace it brings ; sorrow turned into joy by the light it sheds on every form of suffering and sacrifice ; loneliness transformed into companionship through this inseparable relation of 54 Religion your heart with the great loving heart of the Father ? If so, you are human on the high- est plane. You are a Christian man. Or are God, and Christ, and the Spirit of Christian service, for you mere words without a personal mean- ing ? Are you kind to those you like, or from whom you expect favors ; indifferent and cold to others ? Do you take life as it comes in broken pieces, making no attempt to bind them together through devotion to the mighty and beneficent purpose you share with God and Christ and all good men ^. 55 Are You Human ? If so, you are not an original and creative power for good in the world, to be counted on in times of stress and strain. You are living on the momentum your parents and teachers have given you, — a mo- mentum that is slowly but steadily declining and will leave you spent, empty, worn out, and broken down — an easy prey to the first serious temptation that strikes you un- awares. You are unintrenched, un- prepared : in the inmost recesses of your soul you are hollow and un- human. Or last, lowest, and worst, do you by profane or cynical speech, hypo- S6 Religion critical or contemptuous attitude, not only stay out of this high fellowship yourself, but keep others from enter- ing ? Do you misuse your special gifts and opportunities to pour ridi- cule on the struggles of the noble men and women who are giving themselves to the service of God through the service of their fellow- men ? Are you offending one of these little ones that are trying to live the Christian life ? If so, you are the kind of man of whom Jesus in burning indignation exclaimed, "'It is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck and that he 57 Are You Human ? should be sunk in the depth of the sea/' At the highest level humanity has reached, you are not merely nega- tive and unhuman ; you are hateful and inhuman. S8 CONCLUSION Human, unhuman, or inhuman you must be in every relation of life. If you find yourself human at any point, thank God ; but remember that the only way to stay human is to keep the human qualities in active exercise. To him who exercises the humanity he has, humanity is given more abundantly ; but from him who neglects to exercise it there is taken away the little he seemeth to have. If you find yourself unhuman at any point, do not be discouraged. 59 Are You Human ? It is astonishing how much in- terest and capacity you will discover in yourself for society or art or busi- ness or religion, if you associate with persons who have these interests : and try to find the enjoyment they find in them. You will acquire them as you acquire the power to swim or sing : by try- ing before you can do it ; making errors ; and gradually eliminating the errors that you make. The grand- stand is the only place where errors are not made : and the courage to make and correct errors is the secret of coming to be human ; whether in athletics or society, science or art, 60 Conclusion business or politics, morals or re- ligion. To refuse to accept our unhumanity at any point as final, is the way to overcome it, and be- come human. For at every point we are all to some extent potentially human. If you have found yourself in- human at any point, that is a much more serious matter. For inhu- manity is seldom confined to a single point. It has underground, sub- conscious roots that spread. To be inhuman at one point is to be in danger of becoming selfish, heart- less, irresponsible, and inhuman through and through. There is only 6i Are You Human? one way of escape. It is to be ashamed, and sorry ; to confess it, and renounce it, and fight it. You. need not stay inhuman an instant longer than you choose. The ef- fects on yourself and on others of mean, inhuman acts and attitudes will persist and work cruel harm. But the instant you are genuinely sorry and ashamed, and resolved to renounce it, that instant the fetters of inhumanity drop from your limbs ; and you stand up a free man, clothed not in the inhumanity you despise, but in the humanity you admire and strive to become. That is the great Gospel Christ brought to the world. 62 Conclusion In the sight of God, of Christ, and of all human men you are not the mean, inhuman being you have been and despise ; you are the generous human being you desire to be and shall become. There is hope, eman- cipation, humanity for the worst man who earnestly desires it. How- ever inhuman you may have been, you are from this time forth as human as you sincerely desire and strive to be. A parable may make this clear. Three men are climbing a mountain. One, the inhuman man, is near the base. The second, the unhuman man, is halfway up. The third, the 63 Are You Human? human man, is almost at the top. Which of the three will reach the summit first ? You say the third, the human man. So until the advent of Christ all the world an- swered. He however said, ^'You can't tell until you look inside of these three men." Suppose that on looking inside you find the man near the top, the human man, com- placent, having seen enough, and standing still. The man halfway up, the unhuman man, is undecided whether to go up or down. The in- human man, the man down at the base, has his eyes fixed on the sum- mit, and is determined to reach it. 64 Conclusion Which of the three will reach the summit first ? The man at the bot- tom, the inhuman man — if he is sincerely sorry and ashamed of his inhumanity, and determined at all costs to be human. May you be able to say with the Latin poet, ^^ Homo sum humani nil a me alienum puto^^ — "I am a man and deem nothing human foreign to myself." Or better still, may it be said of you at the end : — " His life was gentle and the elements So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, 'This was a ^65 Printed in the United States of America. 'TpHE following pages contain advertisements of books by the same author or on kindred subjects The Gospel of Good Will as Re- vealed in Contemporary Christian Scriptures The Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale University for 191 6 By WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE President of Bowdoin College and Author of "The Five Great Philosophies of Life," etc. Clothy i2mo, $1.50 This book goes straight to the heart of the Gospel to be preached and practiced — the Gospel that Christ expects men to be great enough to make the good of all affected by their action, the object of their wills, as it is the object of the will of God. "The Chris- tian,'' President Hyde writes, "is not a 'plaster saint' who holds 'safety first' to be the supreme spiritual grace, but the man who earns and spends his money, controls his appetites, chooses peace or war and does whatever his hand finds to do with an eye single to the greatest good of all concerned. Sin is falling short of this high heroic aim. ... To the Christian every secular vocation is a chance to express Good Will and sacrifice is the price he gladly pays for the privilege. . . . Christian character and Christian virtues will come not by direct cultivation but as by-products of Good Will expressed in daily life. The church is a precious and sacred instrument for transforming men and institutions into sons and servants of Good Will." These extracts indicate in a measure the trend of President Hyde's theme which he has treated fully and in a practical way that will appeal to all thinkers. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Five Great Philosophies of Life By WILLIAM DeW. HYDE President of Bowdoin College Clothy i2mo, $1.50 The five centuries from the birth of Socrates to the death of Christ produced five principles : The Epicurean pursuit of pleasure ; the Stoic law of self-control ; the Platonic Plan of Subordination ; the Aristotelian Sense of Proportion ; and the Christian Spirit of Love. The purpose of this book, which is a revised and considerably en- larged edition of " From Epicurus to Christ," is to let the masters of these sane and wholesome principles of personality talk to us in their own words. Practical Idealism By WM. DeWITT HYDE, D.D. Clothy i2mo, $1.50 " A book of singular lucidity and of ethical vigor and practical philosophy, utterly free from theological bias, wide in the outlook of keen thought and warm feeling, and admirably interpreting 'the spiritual significance of everyday life.' " — The Outlook. " Full of much that is intellectually stimulating, and full too, as its title signifies it was meant to be, of much that is practically helpful." — Church Union, "Whoever reads this volume . . . will concede readily that it deserves the highest commendation. Certainly we recall no other treatise upon its topic which we consider its equal. It is exceedingly concise and compact. It is characteristically candid and large- minded. It outlines its subject with proper concentration of atten- tion upon essential points, and its interest increases to the climax. Its style is unusually lucid and intelligible." — The Congregationalist. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York BY THE SAME AUTHOR Outlines of Social Theology PART I. THEOLOGICAL II. ANTHROPOLOGICAL III. SOCIOLOGICAL Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 " It contains something more than commonly well worth reading. The keynote of the volume, as we read it, is sounded in the first sentence of Chapter IV : ^ It is impos- sible to separate God from man or man from God. They are correlative terms.' The author plants himself firmly on this social conception of theology, and holds it. The book is, all through, very much out of the ordinary line. It does not fly in the face of settled convictions, nor contradict the traditional creeds. The subject is set up for discussion in a different light and in new and delightfully suggestive rela- tions." — The Independent. " A most welcome book. It is something far better and more desirable than its title would indicate. We think he deserves credit for something more thorough and lasting than he is willing to claim. At any rate, he traverses from end to end the whole region of religion, on the side both of theory and of practice, and explores it in the light of the science and thinking and spirit of our day. The author's gift of telling utterance, his fine feeling, and lofty purpose seem never to fail him. He shows that he has in rare de- gree the gifts of the preacher, and that these chapters were first spoken as sermons. They lose in print none of their reality and practical efficiency. It is a good omen that this first attempt at a thorough restatement of Christian doctrine should command the service of the art to please and con- vince, and partake both of the ^ grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ.'" — The Congregationalist. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York CHURCH PRINCIPLES FOR LAY PEOPLE The Episcopal Church, Its Faith an Order i By GEORGE HODGES Dean of the Episcopal Theological School Cloih, i2mo, ^.;- This book is intended for three groups — the younger clergymen, who will find in the analyses prefaced to the chapters material that will be valuable in their own teaching, members of confirmatioi classes who will be helped by the summaries which it contains and persons who are desirous of knowing the doctrine and dis- cipline of the Episcopal Church. The volume embodies the results of twenty years' experience in the instruction of students in the Episcopal Theological School. In the midst of many natura differences of emphasis and opinion those positions are indicate* in this work in which most members of the Episcopal Churcj are substantially agreed. Why Men Pray By CHARLES LEWIS SLATTERY Rector of Grace Church, New York City Clothj i2mo, $.75 Dr. Slattery defines prayer roughly as "talking with the unseen.*' In his book he does not argue about prayer but rather sets down in as many chapters six convictions which he has concerning it. These convictions are, first, that all men pray; second, that prayer discovers God, that, in other words, when men become conscious of their prayer they find themselves standing face to face with one whom in a flash they recognize as God; third, prayer unites men; fourth, God depends on men's prayer; fifth, prayer submits to the best; and sixth, prayer receives God. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York BY THE SAME AUTHOR Outlines of Social Theology PART I. THEOLOGICAL II. ANTHROPOLOGICAL III. SOCIOLOGICAL Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 " It contains something more than commonly well worth reading. The keynote of the volume, as we read it, is sounded in the first sentence of Chapter IV : ^t is impos- sible to separate God from man or man from God. They are correlative terms.' The author plants himself firmly on this social conception of theology, and holds it. The book is, all through, very much out of the ordinary line. It does not fly in the face of settled convictions, nor contradict the traditional creeds. The subject is set up for discussion in a different light and in new and delightfully suggestive rela- tions." — The Independent. " A most welcome book. It is something far better and more desirable than its title would indicate. We think he deserves credit for something more thorough and lasting than he is willing to claim. At any rate, he traverses from end to end the whole region of religion, on the side both of theory and of practice, and explores it in the light of the science and thinking and spirit of our day. The author's gift of telling utterance, his fine feeling, and lofty purpose seem never to fail him. He shows that he has in rare de- gree the gifts of the preacher, and that these chapters were first spoken as sermons. They lose in print none of their reality and practical efficiency. It is- a good omen that this first attempt at a thorough restatement of Christian doctrine should command the service of the art to please and con- vince, and partake both of the ' grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ.' " — The Congregationalist, THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York CHURCH PRINCIPLES FOR LAY PEOPLE The Episcopal Church, Its Faith and Order By GEORGE HODGES Dean of the Episcopal Theological School Cloth, i2mo, $.7$ This book is intended for three groups — the younger clergymen who will find in the analyses prefaced to the chapters material that will be valuable in their own teaching, members of confirmation classes who will be helped by the summaries which it contains, and persons who are desirous of knowing the doctrine and dis- cipline of the Episcopal Church. The volume embodies the results of twenty years^ experience in the instruction of students in the Episcopal Theological School. In the midst of many natural differences of emphasis and opinion those positions are indicated in this work in which most members of the Episcopal Church are substantially agreed. Why Men Pray By CHARLES LEWIS SLATTERY Rector of Grace Church, New York City Clothy i2mo, $.75 Dr. Slattery defines prayer roughly as "talking with the unseen." In his book he does not argue about prayer but rather sets down in as many chapters six convictions which he has concerning it. These convictions are, first, that all men pray; second, that prayer discovers God, that, in other words, when men become conscious of their prayer they find themselves standing face to face with one whom in a flash they recognize as God; third, prayer unites men; fourth, God depends on men's prayer; fifth, prayer submits to the best; and sixth, prayer receives God. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York •i*i-^ 'Jifky'" -'^ -•» """ ■^^'wrSaP^i "D^r^T^^n - 1 g^ d !?: C* ^ M l« t^ ?g C/) 2" d o K! w O, o 2 W^ from the I; ? § 1^ J 2 1^ ►o ^ M a 1 td o- " S n j^ YA 02918 867206 ^1 UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA UBRARY