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THE HIGHER HUMANISM.

BY L. CAMPBELL.

NOTHING I have now to say is to detract a hair's breadth from the supremacy of that Universal Religion, which Christ promulgated in revealing the Love of God and the brotherhood of men, so awakening a new consciousness of dependence on the Father of Spirits, and a new and indefeasible hope of immortality. That remains the one absolutely redeeming Power, coming froin above, yet worldpervading, too expansive to be confined in definitions, too essentially vital to be seized in a formula.

But in pervading the world the spirit must take form and substance; the light as it falls makes more or less of shadow and gives birth to varied hues, and we, who only know it from beneath, can but apprehend it fragmentarily through distinctions and oppositions of thought. Hence, if we would avoid mere barren mysticism, the power of intellect must be joined with that of emotion in order that we may understand our true position towards nature, mankind, and God, in such a way that our work in life may be fruitful in wholesome and beneficent result.

My present object is to define in part a general tendency, which seems to me especially rich in promise for our age and generation. To express this I want a word less hackneyed and conveying more of heartsomeness than Culture, of a fuller and more substantial content than the Enthusiasm of Humanity. The "big H" of the Comtist and the "big U" of the Agnostic are both too vague for this. They do not satisfy the requirements of my ideal. I want to describe a spirit "as broad and general as the casing air," yet as strongly based as the everlasting hills; overflowing with emotion and tenderness, yet resolute and clear; ready and willing to immerse itself in practical details, yet never losing hold of principles; too aspiring to be infested with ambitious aims; too dignified for pride; too bent on service to waste a thought on gain or on the race for power.

Now, in selecting the word Humanism for this purpose, I have to separate the term to some extent from its historical meaning. The new birth of time which culminated in the Reformation, was an uprising of the Spirit of Man against Ecclesiasticism and against Scholasticism; that is to say, against a twofold bondage which resulted from the stiffening an I petrifying of forms of thought

themselves once full of life. One chief agency of this uprising had been the Revival of Learning, the immense stimulus afforded by the fresh contact of the human mind with Greek and Roman Literature. And because that Revival was thus associated with the emancipation of the Human Spirit from dogmatism and blind obedience, that Ancient Literature came to be known as Litera Humaniores, and the proficient in it was called Humanist, or Humanitian, to distinguish him from the old-fashioned Divine, whose special learning was more exclusively in the direction of Scholasticism or of the Canon Law. Thus Humanism, if the term had then been employed, would have signified the scholarly and literary aspect of the new movement; and in this at once it would fall short of my present purpose. For what I mean is by no means a mere literary, still less a merely learned spirit, nor could I be content with a term, which, as it was then applied, would have set Shakespeare on a lower level than Ben Jonson.

The Humanism of the sixteenth century was inadequate in another respect. It was a turbid stream that much needed cleansing and purifying. There are enthusiastic readers of Rabelais, I believe, who have found the molten ore beneath the dross and scum that mantle over the surface of his books. That blend is characteristic of the early Humanism. But the spirit of which I now speak has purged away the dross, has taken off the scum. The worship of antiquity was in the earlier phase unscientific and indiscriminate. A change has gradually supervened, which may be not inaptly compared to the alteration in people's views of ancient statuary which has taken place in less than a century. To read Winkelmann, one would suppose that the morbidezza of the Hermaphrodite, or the exact contour of a "belly of Bacchus" were as important and as interesting as the grand pose of Apollo or Jove. Read "Childe Harold, or "Prometheus Unbound," and you find inklings of a nobler conception, yet one in which, as even in Lessing's "Laocoon," there is still too much of a rhetorical or theatrical element. Recent discoveries have made students more fastidious. What was once the top of admiration is discounted as belonging to the decadence of Greco-Roman art, and attention is concentrated on the few undoubted remains of the Great period; and thus the wisdom of Flaxman is justified, who drew his inspiration from two sources only, from the Elgin marbles and from nature.

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Even so the Humanist of the earlier type found an equal interest in the vile gossip of Athenæus or of Petronius Arbiter, and in a play of Eschylus or an ode of Horace or Pindar. We have changed all that. Or, at least, only in so far as we have changed it, can we be said to have entered upon the phase which I am describing, that of the Higher Humanism. It it because the Classics present types of nobleness that are imperishable, images of goodness and ideals of wisdom that can never lose their value

or their charm, that we still cling to them; and also because the ancient still interprets for us so much that lies within the modern world. But the spirit thus engendered is not hemmed in within the penetralia of classic lore. It should be coextensive with knowledge and with intellectual activity. it is of this spirit, so conceived, that I now proceed to speak.

And

1. The first note of the Higher Humanism is Universality. This is finely expressed in one of those great sayings of Heraclitus, which slept in the ear of his own age, but have since been reawakened by the sympathy of kindred minds :

"The Divine word or wisdom is universal, but most men live as if their own private thought were wisdom."

"To be awake is to live in the Universal World, or Order, but individuals slumber and sleep and turn aside into a private world of their own.'

The Humanist has escaped from the Lilliputian bonds of party, he has risen aloof from the blind contentions of parochial strife; while others seem content to struggle in the dark, his prayer is still for light and more light. The picture in Plato may be somewhat overdrawn, but it conveys much of the true spirit of such a life"The philosopher is wholly unacquainted with his next-door neighbour, for he is searching into the essence of man"; and at all events, the contrasted picture well describes that from which he escapes, the picture of one who from being immersed in so-called public life" has become keen and shrewd, has learned to flatter his master (which is 'public opinion') in word and indulge him in deed; but his soul is small and unrighteous. His slavish condition has deprived him of growth and uprightness and independence ; dangers and fears, which were too much for his truth and honesty, came upon him in his early years, and he has been driven into crooked ways; from the first he has practised deception, and has become stunted and warped. And so he has passed from youth to manhood, having no soundness in him"-no soundness, that is to say, from the Platonic point of view.

To maintain through life as large a measure as possible of the contemplative and philosophic temper, is the grand security for fairness and candour of view. It assists our own peace of mind, and makes us independent of the passions and caprices of others; while the independent attitude thus attained is of the greatest value to us when we are called upon to act in any way. And this independence, this peace, this platform of extended survey, is, or ought to be, the first fruits of the Higher Humanism. Our ideal Humanist-in other words, the truly educated man-is living always in the great world; not indeed amongst the worldly great, for he is independent alike of their favours and of their gifts; but the great of all ages, the great of history and of literature, the great in thought, in whose spirit he is steeped to the core, the

quintessence of whose best heritage has passed like iron into his blood.

Not that the imaginary being whom I am describing is by any means passionless or cold. For the note of Universality in him is inseparable from the note of Reality. His feeling is in one sense impersonal, for it is not self-regarding, but it is not on that account less deep and strong. More conscious than other men of his true position, whatever may be his special responsibilities, he realizes them completely, and meets them with a free and ready will. The absence of petty bias, of parti-pris, of interest in private and parochial intrigues, enables him to concentrate all his energies of heart and mind on that which with clear, unjaundiced eye he sees and feels to be his duty. If the conclusion of Wordsworth's Sonnet to the Skylark may be extended (as I think it fairly may) beyond the literal domestic application, it is not an inapt expression of what I mean,"Type of the wise, who soar but never roam,

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home."

For the highest and most universal principles are those which are most directly applicable to our immediate duties, however humble they may be. And the intermediate world of jarring claims, whether social or political, amorous or ambitious, claims of party, claims of sect, claims of gain, claims of favour or opinion, however they may distract us temporarily, are really destined to the limbo of nonentity.

If the work of political decentralization, of which we hear many prophecies, is to be carried out, what a blessing it will be, if thereshould be found in every neighbourhood men too enlightened for prejudice, too cultured for party bias, men who cannot be suspected of venality, who are at the same time ready to bring their knowledge to bear on the supply of local wants, and to serve the community to which they happen to belong, as they are called upon to do so, with honest effort and untiring persistency! How fortunate, if their neighbours are willing to call upon them! And this will come from the diffusion of the higher, the more robust, Humanism which I am advocating.

To return to the intellectual aspect of the same Spirit, the Humanist is a lover of first-hand knowledge. He is not contented, as so many are, to be the echo of an echo, as indeed those cannot fail to be, who have never cared for exactness in their education. Nothing can be further from the ideal I am trying to set forth, than the vagueness of aspiration without effort, the fluency of utterance without substance, the facile dogmatism, which may be sincere enough in its first off-going, but is sure, as life goes on, to degenerate into affectation. Very different from this is the lightness of touch which comes of true mastery, the effect of ease which comes of artistic finish, the look of carelessness which is only the concealment of art. No, the Humanist is.

a hard and close worker; he works with a degree of concentration proportioned to his sense of the profound importance of that on which he works.

And it is just this seriousness and this sense of proportion that distinguish the true Humanism from that which is its bane and counterfeit, I mean Pedantry.

He

Pedantry is that false learning which confuses means and ends, and takes the part for the whole; which lives in the particular, and never rises into the universal; or again, dwells securely in generalities which it is powerless to apply and render fruitful. The pedant is like the builder would be, who should care more for the scaffolding than for the house; or the carpenter who should think more of polishing his tools than of acquiring skill to use them. is a stunted scholar, whose growth has been arrested either from without or from within, and whose fault or whose misfortune it is to profess the instruction of others. If the cause of this checked development has been in external circumstances, then he is a ridiculous, indeed, but also a pathetic figure. The genius of Scott has eternalized this aspect of him in Dominie Sampson, a person whom we all laugh at and all love. But there is another species of the genus that is less amiable; for it is produced, not by limitation of circumstances, but through poverty of mind. Having no imagination, such persons judge of opinion and character by cast-iron rules. Having no generosity, they are apt to resent a superiority which they cannot understand. It is especially unfortunate, if such a man is placed in a position in which he can assume the airs of a teacher or ruler. He is sure, unconsciously, in some way to attempt to bind the Spirit, a hopeless and ungracious endeavour. His originality consists in the misapplication of outworn methods. He knows the last thing that has been said in Germany about some monument of literature or art, to whose real beauties he is essentially blind. Or again, he has been educated beyond his powers, and strives after some achievement of which he is incapable. If he writes poetry, his verses are correct, but lifeless; if an historian, he clothes his dry-as-dust acquirements with pomposity of style. He is nothing if not at second or third hand. As a critic he is accomplished in the terms of technique, while to natural or essential graces he is "high gravel blind."

But to return to our ideal Humanist. He is free from the opposite yet kindred vices of pedantry and charlatanry; from the first, because he has risen into the upper air of universal thought; from the latter, because he counts nothing as knowledge that is not exact and accurate both in principle and detail, and because he despises no labour. Not to seem, but to be wise and good is his desire. And thus, like the sublime figure of Contention in Homer, his head is in the sky, but his feet are on the solid ground.

He likewise combines what may seem the opposite qualities of

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