Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/792

 776 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

There are prophets, however, who envisage a personal as well as a social problem. They offer redemption. They point out the way of salvation, not for men alone, but even for man. Buddha, believing that man is the dupe of his will to live, pro- vides escape along the eight-fold path. Zeno sees that man is the sport of inherited appetites and affections, and can be saved only by that spark of the Universal Reason, which has been implanted in his breast. Epicurus finds man in bondage to cus- tom, or superstitious fears, or speculative abstractions, and invites him to break away and enter on the quest of happiness. St. Paul beholds the unhappy struggle of the spiritual man with the natural man, and offers salvation by grace.

The genius who is to impress the mind of coming genera- tions, as the hand impresses the waxen tablet, does not commend his ideal on the ground that it is good for society. He does not advertise it as a means of securing order. He knows that men will not do as they would be done by, or forgive injuries, or sub- ject the impulses to reason, for mere utility's sake. The genius that succeeds takes high ground from the first. His way is not merely a better way of getting along together. He declares it the one possible path of life. It is the God-ordained type of living. It is prescribed by man's nature. It is the goal of history. It is the destiny of the race. So it comes to pass that the inventors of right and wrong, the authors of ideals, not only disguise their sociology as ethics, but often go farther and disguise their ethics as religion. The magistral tone of the heaven-sent prophet and the menace of divine wrath drive home the message of Zoroaster or Isaiah or Mahomet. It is possible for a secular thinker like Confucius to succeed. But, for the most part, men of the religious type, men of what we might call the religious tem- perament, are the ones whose ideals are accepted. No doubt hundreds of geniuses have lived who have had the insight into life and society needed to improve on the ideals of their time. But they have failed to score. Their message has not been listened to. The world has hearkened only to the seer of visions and dreamer of dreams.

There is another condition of prophetism that favors the reli- gious enthusiast. Emphasis and the lofty tone can easily be