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In early times when we knew of no forces to handle but our own, and no object to exercise them on but our fellow-men, there were feuds, tyrannies, wars, and general desolation. In the Thirty Years' War the population of Germany was starved and murdered down from sixteen millions to less than five millions.
In transactions between fellow-men it is well to consider a little, in the first place, what is fair and kind towards the person immediately concerned, before we spit and roast him on behalf of the next century but one. Wide-reaching motives, blessed and glorious as they are, and of the highest sacramental virtue, have their dangers, like all else that touches the mixed life of the earth.
But he who hardens his heart: he who says proudly, 'We are they that ought to speak; who is Lord over us? he who says carelessly, 'Soul, take thine ease; thou hast much goods laid up for many years' he who halts between two opinions, and believes to the last that he can serve both God and mammon he, especially, who fancies that falsehood, injustice, covetousness, and neglect of his fellow-men, can properly be his interest, or help his interest in any wise of all such it is written, 'On whomsoever that Rock' even the eternal laws of Christ the Judge 'On whomsoever that Rock shall fall, it shall grind him to powder.
Hundreds of millions of the human race pass lives of a kind of dull monotonous toil which develops only the muscular, at the expense of the higher, faculties of the body; they are almost entirely cut off from social intercourse with their fellow-men, and they sink prematurely into decrepitude simply by reason of the lack of a cheap and abundant supply of mechanical power, ready at hand wherever it is wanted.
Now, if the question were, Can you account for your own existence, or for the existence of the world around you, without having recourse to a supreme First Cause? we would answer, No: but if the question be, Can there be any Certitude prior to the idea of God, not deduced from it, and capable of existing without it? we would answer, Yes: the little child is certain of its mother's existence before it is capable of knowing God, and the veriest Atheist is certain of his own existence and that of his fellow-men, even when he professes to doubt or to disbelieve the existence of God.
The consequence was the selection of men of superior talent and character: none could aspire to the high position whose names had not become familiar for services to the State, or for the display of talent and character at the bar, or other conspicuous positions, their virtues and attainments distinguishing them above their fellow-men of the country.
It is still stirring and vibrant, but passages of almost bald narrative are interposed, shadows upon the shining floor of his original zeal. He has become increasingly reiterative, too, a quality easily attained by those who have but one message, in this case a message of warning and exhortation, and are feverishly anxious to brand its urgency upon the hearts of their fellow-men.
If it degrades the Prince to receive the gun from the gamekeeper, it is degrading to the nobleman in waiting to execute that service. He acts as a Snob towards the keeper, whom he keeps from communication with the Prince a Snob to the Prince, to whom he pays a degrading homage. The King-Consort of Portugal is a Snob for insulting fellow-men in this way.
On the contrary, it widened the gulf between me and my fellow-men. I formed no friendships. I kept up no correspondence. A sojourner in hotels, I became more and more withdrawn from all tender and social impulses, and almost forgot the very name of home.
There is a freedom from the frivolities of fashion, from arbitrary restrictions, and from the frenzy of competition: we meet our fellow-men in more hearty, sincere and genial relations; kindred spirits are not separated by artificial conventional barriers; there is more personal independence and a wider sphere for its exercise; the soul is warmed in the sunshine of a true social equality; we are not brought into the rough and disgusting contact with uncongenial persons which is such a genuine source of misery in the common intercourse of society; there is a greater variety, of employment, a more constant demand for the exertion of all the faculties, and a more exquisite pleasure in effort, from the consciousness that we are not working for personal ends, but for a holy principle.
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