Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/69

Rh intense longing to emerge from our individual isolation and feel more distinctly our unity with our fellow-men. The chain that unites all men of one race into a race, and binds the species itself into one zoological entity, making of it one individual of a higher order, presses upon every human heart, and is felt by all distinctly as a solidarity. This solidarity is constantly seeking expression. Once in a while every man feels the need of knowing that he is a fragment of a mighty whole, of convincing himself that the great current of race development is flowing through his veins side by side with the current of individual self-development and that his individual existence is but a trivial episode in the grand total of human existence. In this consciousness of his identification with a majestic, supreme organism that is living, flourishing and developing more gloriously from day to day with no saddening end in view, he finds an unspeakably deep and tender consolation for the narrowness, limitations and brevity of his individual span of existence. The man of culture finds a thousand opportunities for satisfying this need without leaving his library or his drawing-room. Study of the development of the human race during the centuries described by history, self oblivion in the works of the great thinkers and poets of all ages, or enjoyment of the harmonies of the universe made audible by science, or if these solitary means are not sufficient, social intercourse with minds of wide and liberal mental horizons,—these opportunities are offered to him, and grant him an outlook and an escape from his own individual and isolated existence into the magnificent realm of humanity. But how is it with the man on a lower social scale? Where does he find an opportunity to merge his separate existence into that of collective mankind? When is it proved to him that he is justified in and capable of elevating the