the cash and let the credit go—to fasten upon them some obvious and agreeable meaning which, as a rule, will prove restrictive and untenable in due course of time.
When men first came to know those crucial and individualizing experiences which we now call ethical, they sought the sympathy and guidance of higher powers. In the new trials they invoked the powers whose aid they had always sought for the security of life and health, their triumph over enemies, and their good fortune in all their enterprises. In such outward and tangible matters as these, they had sought, says Mr. Marett, "communion with something sacred, something full of mana, that is to say, supernatural power or 'grace'; for, thus strengthened [they could] face the future with good hope." As perhaps the simplest method of establishing such communion, they might make "solemn mention" of that with which communion was sought; and here says Mr. Marett was the "birth of humility," a birth in which as yet no specifically moral interest or motive had a part.[1] But when morality awoke in men, they could still call upon higher powers for guidance. Humility held over into the new experience, coloring it with a sense of new perfections in the beings to whom the new appeal was made. In our present age, men depend less for guidance upon direct communications of Divinity than upon other voices. Unless our patience is too sorely tried, we willingly acknowledge at least a presumption of funded wisdom in any institution of long standing. We no longer distrust, as a matter of definite principle, the spontaneous impulsions of human nature. We conceive sympathy for other persons less as a duty than as means for sustaining and enlarging life. And towards these guiding factors in our experience which in a time of stress seem to speak to men from without and to carry them beyond themselves, men still hold themselves in a humility that finds voice in "solemn mention."[2]
- ↑ R. R. Marett, "The Birth of Humility" in The Threshold of Religion, (2d ed.), p. 171.
- ↑ Cf. Mill, Utilitarianism, pp. 46-51 ; Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace, Chap. III; Coit, The Soul of America, Chap. XX; Follett, The New State, pp. 103-4 and Chap. XIX. Also Sorel, Reflections on Violence (Engl. trans.), pp. 279-295.
