After all, what lives in this world? Is it thought pulsations alone or
deeds done? If thought alone, then the lowest thought coordinated in
the brain of man would live. Something must be combined with thought
in order to have a lasting effect. There must be thought and deeds and
sentiment. Sentiment must go to the very existence of the race. On
these forces may be built up structures that live and breathe a
benediction on all mankind. I ask you to cast your eye over the world
and note the permanency of such institutions as have come down to us,
and are alive, and such as we say will live. I venture your first
question will be: "What is the foundation on which they rest? Why,
through the slow, revolving years have these institutions lived and
thrived and grown? Have they lived on greed, or a desire for pelf or
power, or out of human desire for adulation and praise? Or have they
lived because of man's needs, and out of human wants?" If we probe to
the bottom we will find this the corner-stone of all laudable
ambitions, because man needs man, and needs help into a higher plane of
usefulness and activities.
We find institutions coming down to us from a date which the memory of
man runs not to the contrary; indeed, some so old that the musty
volumes of the long ago reveal not their origin. But simply the need
of man for man would not entirely account for the duration of society
in its ancient form. There must be still other underlying principles.
There must be love and the acknowledgment of the brotherhood of man all
along the way of life, or the family would go to ruin, society would
dissolve, citizenship would not exist, states and principalities,
kingdoms and powers would exist only as an idea in the brain. There
would be no command to be our brother's keeper, no plighted vow that
"The Lord be between thee and me, and between my seed and thy seed
forever." Man would, as an individual, stand absolutely alone, like an
atom dropped from the abyssmal depths onto this earth of ours. The
little wild flower struggles through leafy mold, endures the
tempestuous blast of winter, that when spring comes it may bloom to
gladden the earth and scatter sweet incense all around. But without
the cementing influence that runs like a thread all through society,
man would not, could not, cast a sweet odor even on his own life, and
dying would leave no benediction on the lives of others. And here the
command comes, "Gather into thy quiver the lives and aspirations of
others, that fitted to thy bow they may go forth scattering blessings
by your help and by your kindly influence." So all great achievements
have been based on great fundamental principles, and each principle has
for its object the betterment of the conditions of mankind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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