If through trade only the material result is sought, the ends it were
intended to subserve are missed. Its bulk may be large, the machinery
through which it is carried on manifold and complicated, but with the
emphasis on the money side of it, no manhood will be reached through it.
The man side of a button machine is infinitely more important than the
button side. The buttons which fall on one side may conform precisely to
an approved and an exquisite pattern, but if the person who stands on the
other side does not, through the process of making buttons, get a man out
of himself, the whole thing is a disastrous failure. Human spirits are
too valuable to be used up in making buttons. More respect is to be had
to the human side of the loom than to the cloth side. The most beautiful
pattern of silk ever woven loses its power to please the eye when it is
remembered that the soul of a woman has been drawn into its threads and
colors. The sacrifice of individual life is impressive and noble, if the
object for which it is made is worthy. This kind of sacrifice is not the
means of losing life, but of gaining it. But no material result to be
used up in the passing season of fashion is worth such costly sacrifice.
Through forces we name capillarity, cohesion, and gravitation, matter
accomplishes the purposes of thought. They are but manifestations of the
power of mind working through them, to build up the mineral, vegetable,
and animal kingdoms. They look beyond themselves. They work for higher
ends. Thus all the industries we see in nature look to lifting and
refining matter, and force high enough to serve the uses of human life.
So the industries established on the plane of human life are to elevate
man another step in the scale of being. Through sowing and reaping,
through grinding and sawing, through spinning and weaving, through buying
and selling, through building and furnishing, he is to be carried on in
the march of progress.
The history of the physical universe culminates in man, finds its
interpreter and its interpretation in him. Never was the thought of him
absent from her movements through Pliocene, Miocene, Eocene, Cretaceous,
Jurassic, Triassic, Carboniferous, Devonian, Silurian, or Cambrian ages.
In all her awful cosmic emotion to reach order and form, it was the
anticipation of man that moved her, for he it is at last that comes of
it. So, through all the course of her tumultuous history, nature was
pregnant with man. The stars which sang together in the early morning of
the world, caught the inspiration which gave melody to their song from
the thought of him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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