Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/349



turn sterile rocks and pestilential marshes into cities and gardens.—

(1450)

Human Life Lengthening—See.

Human Means—See.

HUMAN NATURE, INSECURITY OF

On certain parts of the English coast calamitous landslips occur from time to time. Massive cliffs rise far above the level of the sea and seem solidly socketed into the earth below. But these rest, through some geological "fault," on sharply inclined planes of clay. The moisture trickling through the cliffs in course of time tells on the slippery substance below till this becomes like the greased way down which a ship is launched. The day comes when the whole cliff, with its hundreds of feet of buttresses, slides bodily down, crashing to the rocks or into the water. Our human nature has in it a moral stratum of irresolution on which it is not safe to build our character. We must go down to the rock-bed of decision and must rest on the foundation of conviction that can not be shaken. Let us see to it that conviction of truth is formed within us. (Text.)

(1451)

HUMAN NATURE MUCH ALIKE

Charles Somerville, writing of the lower strata of society, that he calls the "underworld," says:

Its inhabitants are not so altogether different from you and me. More wilful in their weaknesses, certainly, they are; more hysterical in their hilarities; blinder in their loves and bitterer in their hatreds; supinely subject to all emotions, good or bad, undoubtedly I remember so well the first time I saw a burglar in flesh and blood. His black mask was off, his revolver was in the possession of the police; he had just been sentenced to ten years' imprisonment and was saying good-by to his wife and three little children. He was wholly like any other grief-stricken human being. His sob was the same. He was a sandy-haired man with rather large, foolish blue eyes. It was hard to imagine those same large blue eyes looking very terrible, even behind a black mask. (Text.)

(1452)

HUMAN PASSION

A teacher abandons her class of boys after some particularly disappointing outbreak, and in the utterance of her despair of doing more for them, discloses her wounded pride which resents such humbling. The reformer who has carried an election only to find the city slipping back into the old ways of corruption, becomes a common scold in his chagrin that all his labor counts for nothing, while his adversaries laugh at his impotence. And now and then a minister flings himself out of the pulpit, storming at the failure of the church, because his plans are balked and his self-denial goes unappreciated. In all this zeal for God that cries for judgment, there is so much of human passion eager for a personal vindication.—"Monday Club, Sermons on the International Sunday-school Lessons for 1904."

(1453)

HUMAN TRAITS IN BIRDS

Our domestic birds often manifest symptoms of passions, whims, and moral aberrations, clearly analogous to those of their biped proprietors; and in the higher animals those manifestations become so unmistakable that a student of moral zoology is often tempted to indorse the view of that school-*girl who defined a monkey as "a very small boy with a tail." According to Arthur Schopenhauer's theory of moral evolution, the conscious prestige of our species first reveals itself in the emotions of headstrong volition that makes a little baby stamp its feet and strike down its fist, "commanding violently before it could form anything like a clear conception of its own wants. Untutored barbarians," he adds, "are apt to indulge in similar methods of self-assertion, and, in settling a controversy, prefer menacing gestures to rational explanations. That tendency, however, is not confined to infants and savages. In his controversies with his cage-mate (a female spaniel), my pet Cutch will lay hold of the dog's tail and enforce his theories with a peremptory pull that never fails to provoke a rough-and-tumble fight; but, long after the dog has relapsed into sullen silence, her antagonist will shake the cage with resounding blows, and every now and then steal a look at the by-*standers, to invite their attention to his 'best method of dealing with heretics.'"—, Popular Science Monthly.

(1454)

HUMAN TRAITS IN DISASTER

Commenting on the great Johnstown flood, Julian Hawthorne wrote:

We know, despite all deprecation, that the heights and depths of humanity can not be overstated. One man rides hand in hand