When a Man Comes to Himself, Woodrow Wilson [read aloud txt] 📗

of affairs the former special objects of their zeal

fall into new environments, a better and truer perspective; seem no

longer so susceptible to separate and radical change. The real

nature of the complex stuff of life they were seeking to work in is

revealed to them—its intricate and delicate fiber, and the subtle,

secret interrelationship of its parts—and they work circumspectly,

lest they should mar more than they mend. Moral enthusiasm is not,

uninstructed and of itself, a suitable guide to practicable and

lasting reformation; and if the reform sought be the reformation of

others as well as of himself, the reformer should look to it that he

knows the true relation of his will to the wills of those he would

change and guide. When he has discovered that relation, he has come

to himself: has discovered his real use and planning part in the

general world of men; has come to the full command and satisfying

employment of his faculties. Otherwise he is doomed to live for

ever in a fool’s paradise, and can be said to have come to himself

only on the supposition that he is a fool.

 

VI

 

Every man—if I may adopt and paraphrase a passage from Dr. South—

every man hath both an absolute and a relative capacity: an absolute

in that he hath been endued with such a nature and such parts and

faculties; and a relative in that he is part of the universal

community of men, and so stands in such a relation to the whole.

When we say that a man has come to himself, it is not of his

absolute capacity that we are thinking, but of his relative. He has

begun to realize that he is part of a whole, and to know what part,

suitable for what service and achievement.

 

It was once fashionable—and that not a very long time ago—to speak of

political society with a certain distaste, as a necessary evil, an

irritating but inevitable restriction upon the “natural” sovereignty and

entire self-government of the individual. That was the dream of the

egotist. It was a theory in which men were seen to strut in the proud

consciousness of their several and “absolute” capacities. It would be as

instructive as it would be difficult to count the errors it has bred in

political thinking. As a matter of fact, men have never dreamed of

wishing to do without the “trammels” of organized society, for the very

good reason that those trammels are in reality but no trammels at all,

but indispensable aids and spurs to the attainment of the highest and

most enjoyable things man is capable of. Political society, the life of

men in states, is an abiding natural relationship. It is neither a mere

convenience nor a mere necessity. It is not a mere voluntary

association, not a mere corporation. It is nothing deliberate or

artificial, devised for a special purpose. It is in real truth the

eternal and natural expression and embodiment of a form of life higher

than that of the individual—that common life of mutual helpfulness,

stimulation, and contest which gives leave and opportunity to the

individual life, makes it possible, makes it full and complete.

 

It is in such a scene that man looks about to discover his own place and

force. In the midst of men organized, infinitely cross-related, bound by

ties of interest, hope, affection, subject to authorities, to opinion,

to passion, to visions and desires which no man can reckon, he casts

eagerly about to find where he may enter in with the rest and be a man

among his fellows. In making his place he finds, if he seek

intelligently and with eyes that see, more than ease of spirit and scope

for his mind. He finds himself—as if mists had cleared away about him

and he knew at last his neighborhood among men and tasks.

 

What every man seeks is satisfaction. He deceives himself so long

as he imagines it to lie in self-indulgence, so long as he deems

himself the center and object of effort. His mind is spent in vain

upon itself. Not in action itself, not in “pleasure,” shall it find

its desires satisfied, but in consciousness of right, of powers

greatly and nobly spent. It comes to know itself in the motives

which satisfy it, in the zest and power of rectitude. Christianity

has liberated the world, not as a system of ethics, not as a

philosophy of altruism, but by its revelation of the power of pure

and unselfish love. Its vital principle is not its code, but its

motive. Love, clear-sighted, loyal, personal, is its breath and

immortality. Christ came, not to save Himself, assuredly, but to

save the world. His motive, His example, are every man’s key to his

own gifts and happiness. The ethical code he taught may no doubt be

matched, here a piece and there a piece, out of other religions,

other teachings and philosophies. Every thoughtful man born with a

conscience must know a code of right and of pity to which he ought

to conform; but without the motive of Christianity, without love, he

may be the purest altruist and yet be as sad and as unsatisfied as

Marcus Aurelius.

 

Christianity gave us, in the fullness of time, the perfect image of

right living, the secret of social and of individual well-being; for

the two are not separable, and the man who receives and verifies

that secret in his own living has discovered not only the best and

only way to serve the world, but also the one happy way to satisfy

himself. Then, indeed, has he come to himself. Henceforth he knows

what his powers mean, what spiritual air they breathe, what ardors

of service clear them of lethargy, relieve them of all sense of

effort, put them at their best. After this fretfulness passes away,

experience mellows and strengthens and makes more fit, and old age

brings, not senility, not satiety, not regret, but higher hope and

serene maturity.

 

THE END

 

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