The Whence and the Whither of Man eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 325 pages of information about The Whence and the Whither of Man.

The Whence and the Whither of Man eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 325 pages of information about The Whence and the Whither of Man.
outside of mere appetite and desire, and feels and acknowledges, however dimly, the requirement and the ability to conform his life to these standards.  He alone can say “I ought,” and answer “I can and will.”  And hence man alone actually lives in an environment of the laws of reason, responsibility, and personality.  Whatever germs of these higher powers the animal possesses are means to material ends, to the physical life of the animal.  In man the long and slow evolution has ended in revolution, the material and physical have been dethroned, and truth and goodness reign supreme as ends in themselves.

But, you may object, this definition of man may be true ideally, certainly it is not true actually.  Where are the high ideals of truth and goodness in the savage? and are these the supreme ends of even the average American of to-day?  But allowing all weight to this objection, does it not remain true that a being who never says “I ought,” who acknowledges and manifests no responsibility, to whom goodness does not appeal, and in whom these feelings cannot be awakened, is either not yet or no longer man?  But far more than this, if the character of the individual is to be judged by his tendency more than his present condition, by the way in which he is going more than his momentary position, is not the race to be judged and defined by a tendency, gradually though very slowly becoming realized, and a goal, toward which it looks and which it is surely attaining, rather than by its present realization?  As we rise higher in the animal kingdom the characteristics of the successive higher groups are more and more slow of attainment and difficult of realization, just because of their grander possibilities.  And this is true and important above all in the case of man.  His possibilities are beyond our powers of conception, for, if you will, man is yet only larval man.

We have followed the sequence of functions to its culmination in a mind completely dominated by righteousness and unselfishness, however far above our present attainments this goal may be.  We have found that all attempts to reverse this sequence end in death or degeneration.  Failure to advance, especially in higher forms, results in extinction or retrogression.  We cannot stand still.  Each higher step is longer and more important than any preceding; each last step is essential to life.  Righteousness in the will is the last step essential to man’s progress.  And if a sound mind in a sound body is important or necessary, a sound will, resolutely set on right, is absolutely essential.  Failure to attain this is ruin.

And man can to a great extent place himself so that his surroundings shall aid him to take this last, essential, upward step.  He does this by the choice of his associates.  If he associates himself with men who are tending upward, he will rise ever higher.  If he choose the opposite kind of associates he must sink into ever deeper degradation; he has thereby chosen death.  For his associates, once chosen, make him like themselves.  And thus natural selection makes for the survival of those men who resolutely choose life.  And thoughtless or careless failure to choose is ruin.  The man has preferred degradation; it is only right that he should have it to satiety.

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The Whence and the Whither of Man from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.