The Ascent of the SoulBradford, Amory H. (Amory Howe)
Religion
The Ascent of the Soul
Bradford, Amory H. (Amory Howe)
Ascension of the soul; Soul
Equally prophetic is the advance which has been made from the passion
of savage barbarism, or infantile wilfulness, to the moral reason of the
present day as seen in the highest types of humanity in civilized lands.
Wilfulness characterizes the childish nature and passion the savage
nature. But with the growth of the soul choices are differentiated from
impulses, and more and more regularly are inspired by intelligence and
unselfish affection. This progress toward intelligent and unselfish
choice distinguishes the movement toward civilization. Here, again, the
advance made by the individual soul and by the race are equally
prophetic. With the years the choices become more rational and loving.
Time mellows all men somewhat, and forces a little wisdom into the
hardest heads. Even slight growth prophesies that which shall be swifter
when conditions are more favorable.
The soul is a prediction of clearer vision, truer thought, more
unselfish love and wiser choices. It is a prophecy of the perfect man.
History is also prophetic of larger souls. The stream of human history,
after it has been followed backward a few thousand years, leads into the
region of legend and myth--that is, to a time when history could not be
written because there was no writing, and when all truth was conveyed in
symbolical forms. That means toward a time of narrow experience, and of
knowledge far more limited than the present. Memory, in those days, was
enormously and abnormally capacious and retentive, but there was no
appreciation of humanity. Few lessons from the experiences of others
were possible, because the mind was filled with merely tribal legends.
What was called early civilization was only relatively splendid. There
was unsurpassed poetry but no science, ample brawn but diminutive brain,
much passion but little love. Out of the darkness of the past the stream
of history, very narrow and shallow at first, has emerged and steadily
expanded and deepened. Men are now equally intense but far clearer in
vision, nobler in purpose, and purer in character. Their laws year by
year have become more humane, their sympathies less contracted, their
institutions more civilized. Nature's secret drawers have been unlocked.
We are sometimes told that science has added much to the store of man's
knowledge but nothing to the strength of his mind or the nobility of his
character. That is a serious mistake. With the enlarged visions of the
universe, with clearer conceptions of our cosmic relations, with the
national neighborliness which is now a necessity, the capacity and the
quality of the soul must change. Nay, it has already changed, for we
inhabit the same lands over which savages formerly roamed, and we find
in the earth and air what they never found; and when we look up into the
great wide sky and say, "The Heavens declare the glory of God," we are
not thinking of a tribal Deity, or a partial, and more or less
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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