turn sterile rocks and pestilential marshes into cities and gardens.—Macaulay.
(1450)
Human Life Lengthening—See Longevity Increasing.
Human Means—See Evangelization.
HUMAN NATURE, INSECURITY OF
On certain parts of the English coast
calamitous landslips occur from time to time.
Massive cliffs rise far above the level of the
sea and seem solidly socketed into the earth
below. But these rest, through some geological
"fault," on sharply inclined planes
of clay. The moisture trickling through the
cliffs in course of time tells on the slippery
substance below till this becomes like the
greased way down which a ship is launched.
The day comes when the whole cliff, with its
hundreds of feet of buttresses, slides bodily
down, crashing to the rocks or into the
water. Our human nature has in it a moral
stratum of irresolution on which it is not
safe to build our character. We must go
down to the rock-bed of decision and must
rest on the foundation of conviction that
can not be shaken. Let us see to it that conviction
of truth is formed within us. (Text.)
(1451)
HUMAN NATURE MUCH ALIKE
Charles Somerville, writing of the lower strata of society, that he calls the "underworld," says:
Its inhabitants are not so altogether different
from you and me. More wilful in
their weaknesses, certainly, they are; more
hysterical in their hilarities; blinder in their
loves and bitterer in their hatreds; supinely
subject to all emotions, good or bad, undoubtedly. . . .
I remember so well the first
time I saw a burglar in flesh and blood. His
black mask was off, his revolver was in the
possession of the police; he had just been
sentenced to ten years' imprisonment and
was saying good-by to his wife and three
little children. He was wholly like any other
grief-stricken human being. His sob was
the same. He was a sandy-haired man with
rather large, foolish blue eyes. It was hard
to imagine those same large blue eyes looking
very terrible, even behind a black mask.
(Text.)
(1452)
HUMAN PASSION
A teacher abandons her class of boys after
some particularly disappointing outbreak,
and in the utterance of her despair of doing
more for them, discloses her wounded pride
which resents such humbling. The reformer
who has carried an election only to find the
city slipping back into the old ways of corruption,
becomes a common scold in his
chagrin that all his labor counts for nothing,
while his adversaries laugh at his impotence.
And now and then a minister flings himself
out of the pulpit, storming at the failure of
the church, because his plans are balked and
his self-denial goes unappreciated. In all this
zeal for God that cries for judgment, there
is so much of human passion eager for a
personal vindication.—"Monday Club, Sermons
on the International Sunday-school
Lessons for 1904."
(1453)
HUMAN TRAITS IN BIRDS
Our domestic birds often manifest symptoms
of passions, whims, and moral aberrations,
clearly analogous to those of their
biped proprietors; and in the higher animals
those manifestations become so unmistakable
that a student of moral zoology is often
tempted to indorse the view of that school-*girl
who defined a monkey as "a very small
boy with a tail." According to Arthur
Schopenhauer's theory of moral evolution,
the conscious prestige of our species first reveals
itself in the emotions of headstrong
volition that makes a little baby stamp
its feet and strike down its fist, "commanding
violently before it could form anything
like a clear conception of its own wants.
Untutored barbarians," he adds, "are apt to
indulge in similar methods of self-assertion,
and, in settling a controversy, prefer menacing
gestures to rational explanations.
That tendency, however, is not confined to
infants and savages. In his controversies
with his cage-mate (a female spaniel), my
pet Cutch will lay hold of the dog's tail and
enforce his theories with a peremptory pull
that never fails to provoke a rough-and-tumble
fight; but, long after the dog has relapsed
into sullen silence, her antagonist will
shake the cage with resounding blows, and
every now and then steal a look at the by-*standers,
to invite their attention to his 'best
method of dealing with heretics.'"—Felix
Oswald, Popular Science Monthly.
(1454)
HUMAN TRAITS IN DISASTER
Commenting on the great Johnstown flood, Julian Hawthorne wrote:
We know, despite all deprecation, that the
heights and depths of humanity can not be
overstated. One man rides hand in hand
