Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/733

Rh sometimes occur among historians and poets? It seems to me that there are no more serene and admirable intelligences than those which are often found among the true naturalists. How fine and enviable is their lifelong pursuit of their chosen subject. What mind could be happier in its kingdom than that of an Agassiz or a Guyot? What life more beautiful and satisfying than that of a Linnæus or an Audubon?

But for most of us these advanced courses are impossible; what we must content ourselves with is not really worthy to be called nature-study; it is simply nature-kindergarten. We learn a little about the movement of stars and clouds, a few names of trees and flowers and birds; some of the many secrets of their life and growth; just the words of one syllable, that is all; and then if we are wise and teachable, we walk with Nature, and let her breathe into our hearts those lessons of humility, and patience, and confidence, and good cheer, and tranquil resignation, and temperate joy, which are her "moral lore,"—lessons which lead her scholars onward through a merry youth and a strong maturity and a serene old age, and prepare them by the pure fellowship of this world for the enjoyment of a better.

The social environment, the human contact in all its forms, plays a large part in the School of Life. "The city instructs men," said Simonides. Conversation is an exchange of ideas: this is what distinguishes it from gossip or chatter.

The organization of work, the division of labor, implies and should secure a mutual education of the workers. Some day, when this is better understood, the capitalist will be enlightened and the labor-union civilized. Even the vexed problem of domestic service is capable of yielding educational results to those who are busy with it; the employer may learn something of the nature of fair dealing, the responsibilities of command, the essential difference between a carpet-sweeping machine and the girl who pushes it; and the servant may learn something of the dignity of doing any kind of work well, and the virtue of self-respecting obedience, and the sweet reasonableness of performing the task that is paid for.

I do not think much of the analogy between human society and the beehive or the ant-hill, which certain writers are now elaborating in symbolistic fashion. It passes over and ignores the vital problem which is ever pressing upon us humans—the problem of reconciling personal claims with the claims of the race. Among the bees and the ants, so far as we can see, the community is all: the individual is nothing. There are no personal aspirations to suppress; no conscious conflicts of duty and desire; no dreams, even, of a better kind of hive, a new and perfected formicary. It is only to repeat themselves, to keep the machine going, to reproduce the same hive, the same ant-hill, that these perfect communisms blindly strive. But human society is less perfect and therefore more promising. The highest achievements of humanity come from something which, so far as we know, bees and ants do not possess: the sense of imperfection, the desire of advance. Ideals must be personal before they can become communal. It was not until the rights of the individual were perceived and recognized, including the right to the pursuit of happiness, that the vision of a free and noble state, capable of progress, dawned upon mankind.

Life teaches all but the obstinate and mean how to find a place in such a state, and grow therein. A true love of others is twinned with a right love of self—that is, a love for the better part, the finer, nobler self, the man that is

Individualism is a fatal poison. But individuality is the salt of the common life. You may have to live in a crowd, but you do not have to live like it, nor to subsist on its food. You may have your own orchard. You may drink at a hidden spring. Be yourself if you would serve others.

Learn also how to appraise criticism, to value enmity, to get the good of being blamed and evil-spoken of. A soft social life is not likely to be very noble. You can hardly tell whether your faiths and feelings are real until they are attacked.

But take care that you defend them with an open mind and by right reason.