What is the correlate to the social side of man’s nature? Where is the
domain that matches it? Where is the vast realm, large enough to furnish
sufficient scope for all the possibilities which seem to lie folded
within it? A study of the eye reveals the fact that the light of the
sun is necessary to furnish an element wide and ethereal enough for the
exercise of its functions. By a study of the ear, we learn that it is
related to sound with all its possibilities of harmony. The fin of the
fish is related to the waters of the sea. The bird’s wing is a prophecy
of the sky. The migrating instinct of the wild goose is related to the
South, with its soft skies and balmy air.
In the calculations of Adams, in England, and of Leverrier, in France,
the perturbations of the planet Uranus were in correspondence with the
planet Neptune.
On the side of himself as individual, as we have seen, man is related to
the earth with all it contains to satisfy the needs of the body. We wish
also to determine the nature and dimensions of the sphere to which he is
related as social.
We have seen that, even within national boundaries, human life comes to
be fertile in great men, great deeds, and great art, when the expression
of it is social, rather than individual. With such disposition of her
national life force, Greece reached an unparalleled height of grandeur
and influence. But all outside of Greece were esteemed as barbarians. The
barbarian hordes around her state were like so many walls, which kept
the waves of national life from passing out into any world-wide sea.
The limits were soon reached, then the waves receded, to be thrown back
again in quick succession against the encompassing walls. Was this not in
violation of the law and nature of the expression which the social side
of man, by its very structure, is inclined to give of itself? Is it not,
by its nature, disposed to pass out in accordance with moral laws, which
have no boundaries and limits? And were not the walls they permitted
their hate to build of the barbarians on the outside to arrest the
outward flow of their national life, the evidence of a tacit treaty with
their selfishness? Did these not, after all, bear witness to a hampered
and halted surrender to the nobler side of their nature? Did they not
show that the Greeks were only willing to give social expression to their
national life, as far as the boundary lines of Achai? Too noble to permit
the emphasis to rest on the individual side of her people, as separate
members of the state, she lifted narrowness and selfishness into greater
place by giving them national form.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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