The Chief End of Man. George Spring Merriam

man's little faculties can discern is but a fraction of some sublimer harmony—these emotions have in them a surpassing power to humble, purify, and exalt the spirit.

      The modern mind addresses itself to the highest reality through the actualities of existence, and of those actualities one most significant phase is the procedure and laws of nature. But there is another and more impressive aspect: it is the inner life of humanity; it is man's own conscious existence, with its struggles, victories, defeats, its agonies and raptures, its mirth, its play, its sweetness and bitterness. This to us is the realm of real existence. In this we are at home. The march of the planets, the evolution of a world, the whole process of nature, is like the view from a window; and, gazing upon it, sits feeling, thinking, aspiring man. His consciousness is environed and conditioned by the surrounding world, but is utterly unexplained by it, wholly untranslatable in its terms. Definite and precise is the language of mathematics, of chemistry, of physical procedure. Mystery of mysteries is the human spirit—mystery of mysteries and holy of holies. A new sense of the sacredness of human life has been born in this later age. It is our most precious acquisition. Better could we have waited for modern science than for modern humanity. Better could we spare the telegraph and the steam-engine and anaesthesia than that quickened sense of the value of man as man which inspires the deepest political and social movements of to-day. In all sober minds, in all lofty effort—whatever there may be of despair of God or hopelessness of a personal future—we see a profound recognition of the solemnity and sacredness of human existence. Through the sad pages of George Eliot, through Emerson's exultant psalm, through the reformer's battle, the socialist's scheme, runs this golden link—the value of simple humanity.

      This, then, we may say is the characteristic attitude of the man of to-day—before the processes of nature, awe and reverence; before the life of humanity, sympathy and tenderness.

      But now rises a heart-moving question. The dearest article of religious faith has been a Divine Power, governing the universe and holding to man an intimate relation involving issues of supreme significance to humanity. At this point modern thought falters. The long-familiar expression of that belief is the assertion of a personal, providential, all-just, and all-loving God. What reason have men assigned to themselves for belief in such a God, while confronted all the time by the fearful spectacle of a world in which sin and misery perpetually mingle with goodness and happiness? What has been the resource of the Christian intellect against that mystery of evil which baffled the questioner in the book of Job, and drove Lucretius to virtual atheism, and left Marcus Aurelius in doubt whether there be gods or not? The resource of the Christian thinker has been his belief that Jesus Christ was God incarnate. Here was a soul which was sinless and holy, which loved sinners so as to die for them; and this was God himself. That belief has been the foundation of Christian theology. It left the mysteries of earth's sorrow and sin unexplained; but it offered the assurance, under a most living figure, that the author and final disposer of the whole was one whose nature was love itself.

      When it ceases to be believed that Jesus was God, the corner-stone of this whole structure of belief, as an intellectual conception, is gone. The void is concealed for a while by intermediate theories—that Jesus was a kind of inferior deity, that he was at least a supernatural messenger. Frankly say that he was a man only, and we have really given up that intellectual ground of confidence in a God on which for many centuries men have stood. And, in that involuntary and most regretful surrender, and in the first impression following it, that the only discernible order is a mechanical order, with no room for worship, no hope of immortality, lies the tragedy of the thinking world to-day. For a multitude of minds, God is eclipsed, and the earth lies in shadow. In shadow, but not in despair. For still there is

      "The prophetic soul

       Of the wide world, dreaming of things to come."

      Slowly emerges a new conception. In the lowest depth of his spirit man has found that, in Robertson's words, "it is better to be true than to be false, better to be pure than to be sensual, better to be brave than to be a coward." By that sure and simple creed man lives through his darkest day. When the tree seems dead, that root lives. And presently there grows from it a nobler tree.

      The turning-point from the old thought to the new is this: We see that the imperative task set to every man is not to understand the universe plan, but to live his own life successfully. It will quite suffice for most of us if we can each one do justice to the possibilities of his own existence. Those possibilities are something more than breathing and eating, sleeping and waking, toil and rest. Among his possibilities each man hopes are included contentment, joy, peace. At least there must be possible for him some right conformity to the conditions in which he is placed, some noble and spiritual satisfaction, some imparting of good to his fellow creatures. There is for him some best way of life, which it is his business to find and to follow.

      And as he finds and follows it—as he fills out the best possibilities of his own being—so he must come into the truest relation possible for him with this whole mysterious frame of things we call the universe. As he is himself at his best, so he will get the best, the widest, the truest impression of the whole in which he is a part.

      This, then, is the rational and hopeful way of addressing the supreme problem—the problem, for the individual and for mankind, of a happiness and a success which shall be rooted in the true nature of things and the real order of the universe. We are not to start with any supposed comprehension of the general plan, whether as revealed by miracle or thought out by wise men. We are simply to live our own lives according to the best knowledge we have, the highest examples we know, the most satisfying results of our own experience. And, with whatever discipline and enrichment this process of right living may bring us, we are to hold our whole natures open, attentive, percipient to the world about us, and accept whatever shall disclose itself.

      The two processes—right living and clear vision—blend constantly and intimately. We may distinguish them in our thoughts, but there is constant interplay between life and sight.

      The business of living—how infinitely complex it is, how endlessly laborious, yet how simple and how sure! Its central principle, we may say, is the right fitting of one's self to his surroundings. Modern science has learned that for every creature the condition of success is adaptation to its environment. We may use that way of speaking to express the prime necessity of man. His environment is a vast complexity of material, social, and spiritual realities.

      There is for him a true way of adapting himself to these surrounding facts. He has somehow found it out in the long existence of the race; he has seen it more and more clearly. This true way is expressed by what we call right principles of conduct. It is such traits as we name courage, truth, justice, purity, love, aspiration, reverence. It includes the study of natural laws and conformity to them. It includes the search for knowledge, both for its use and for its own joy. It includes the delighted gaze upon beauty of every kind.