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 ON BEING HUMAN
 
 Books by 
 WOODROW WILSON 
 
 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 
 
 INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 
 
 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 WHY WE ARE AT WAR 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF 
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS. NEW YORK 
 [Established 1817]
 
 ON 
 BEING HUMAN 
 
 WOODROW WILSON 
 
 Ph.D., Litt.D., LL.D. 
 PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON
 
 From the Atlantic Monthly 
 Copyright, 1897, by Houghton Mifflin St Co. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America
 
 ON BEING HUMAN
 
 SRLF 
 YHL 
 
 6C/ L \ 
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 THE rarest sort of a book," says 
 Mr. Bagehot, slyly, is "a book 
 to read"; and "the knack in style is 
 to write like a human being." It is 
 painfully evident, upon experiment, 
 that not many of the books which 
 come teeming from our presses every 
 year are meant to be read. They are 
 meant, it may be, to be pondered ; it is 
 hoped, no doubt, they may instruct, 
 or inform, or startle, or arouse, or re- 
 form, or provoke, or amuse us; but 
 we read, if we have the true reader's 
 [i]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 zest and palate, not to grow more 
 knowing, but to be less pent up and 
 bound within a little circle, — as those 
 who take their pleasure, and not as 
 those who laboriously seek instruc- 
 tion, — as a means of seeing and 
 enjoying the world of men and af- 
 fairs. We wish companionship and 
 renewal of spirit, enrichment of 
 thought and the full adventure of 
 the mind; and we desire fair com- 
 pany, and a large world in which to 
 find them. 
 
 No one who loves the masters 
 who may be communed with and 
 read but must see, therefore, and 
 resent the error of making the text 
 of any one of them a source to draw 
 grammar from, forcing the parts of 
 speech to stand out stark and cold 
 from the warm text; or a store of 
 
 [21
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 samples whence to draw rhetorical 
 instances, setting up figures of speech 
 singly and without support of any 
 neighbor phrase, to be stared at 
 curiously and with intent to copy 
 or dissect! Here is grammar done 
 without deliberation: the phrases 
 carry their meaning simply and by a 
 sort of limpid reflection ; the thought 
 is a living thing, not an image in- 
 geniously contrived and wrought. 
 Pray leave the text whole: it has no 
 meaning piecemeal; at any rate, not 
 that best, wholesome meaning, as of 
 a frank and genial friend who talks, 
 not for himself or for his phrase, 
 but for you. It is questionable 
 morals to dismember a living frame 
 to seek for its obscure fountains of 
 life! 
 
 When you say that a book was 
 
 [3]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 meant to be read, you mean, for one 
 thing, of course, that it was not 
 meant to be studied. You do not 
 study a good story, or a haunting 
 poem, or a battle song, or a love 
 ballad, or any moving narrative, 
 whether it be out of history or out 
 of fiction — nor any argument, even, 
 that moves vital in the field of ac- 
 tion. You do not have to study 
 these things; they reveal them- 
 selves, you do not stay to see how. 
 They remain with you, and will not 
 be forgotten or laid by. They cling 
 like a personal experience, and be- 
 come the mind's intimates. You 
 devour a book meant to be read, not 
 because you would fill yourself or 
 have an anxious care to be nourished, 
 but because it contains such stuff as 
 it makes the mind hungry to look 
 
 [4]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 upon. Neither do you read it to kill 
 time, but to lengthen time, rather, 
 adding to it its natural usury by 
 living the more abundantly while 
 it lasts, joining another's life and 
 thought to your own. 
 
 There are a few children in every 
 generation, as Mr. Bagehot reminds 
 us, who think the natural thing to 
 do with any book is to read it. 
 "There is an argument from design 
 in the subject," as he says; "if the 
 book was not meant for that pur- 
 pose, for what purpose was it 
 meant?" These are the young eyes 
 to which books yield up a great 
 treasure, almost in spite of them- 
 selves, as if they had been pene- 
 trated by some swift, enlarging pow- 
 er of vision which only the young 
 know. It is these youngsters to 
 
 [5]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 whom books give up the long ages of 
 history, "the wonderful series going 
 back to the times of old patriarchs 
 with their flocks and herds" — I am 
 quoting Mr. Bagehot again — "the 
 keen -eyed Greek, the stately Roman, 
 the watching Jew, the uncouth Goth, 
 the horrid Hun, the settled picture 
 of the unchanging East, the restless 
 shifting of the rapid West, the rise 
 of the cold and classical civilization, 
 its fall, the rough impetuous Middle 
 Ages, the vague warm picture of our- 
 selves and home. When did we 
 learn these? Not yesterday nor to- 
 day, but long ago, in the first dawn 
 of reason, in the original flow of 
 fancy." Books will not yield to us 
 so richly when we are older. The 
 argument from design fails. We re- 
 turn to the staid authors we read 
 
 [6]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 long ago, and do not find in them the 
 vital, speaking images that used to 
 lie there upon the page. Our own 
 fancy is gone, and the author never 
 had any. We are driven in upon 
 the books meant to be read. 
 
 These are books written by human 
 beings, indeed, but with no general 
 quality belonging to the kind — with 
 a special tone and temper, rather, a 
 spirit out of the common, touched 
 with a light that shines clear out of 
 some great source of light which 
 not every man can uncover. We call 
 this spirit human because it moves 
 us, quickens a like life in ourselves, 
 makes us glow with a sort of ardor of 
 self -discovery. It touches the springs 
 of fancy or of action within us, and 
 makes our own life seem more quick 
 and vital. We do not call every book 
 
 [7]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 that moves us human. Some seem 
 written with knowledge of the black 
 art, set our base passions aflame, dis- 
 close motives at which we shudder — 
 the more because we feel their reality 
 and power; and we know that this 
 is of the devil, and not the fruitage 
 of any quality that distinguishes us 
 as men. We are distinguished as 
 men by the qualities that mark us 
 different from the beasts. When we 
 call a thing human we have a spirit- 
 ual ideal in mind. It may not be an 
 ideal of that which is perfect, but it 
 moves at least upon an upland level 
 where the air is sweet; it holds an 
 image of man erect and constant, 
 going abroad with undaunted steps, 
 looking with frank and open gaze 
 upon all the fortunes of his day, feel- 
 ing ever and again — 
 
 [8]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 "the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things." 
 
 Say what we may of the errors and 
 the degrading sins of our kind, we do 
 not willingly make what is worst in 
 us the distinguishing trait of what is 
 human. When we declare, with 
 Bagehot, that the author whom we 
 love writes like a human being, we 
 are not sneering at him; we do not 
 say it with a leer. It is in token of 
 admiration, rather. He makes us 
 like our humankind. There is a noble 
 passion in what he says, a wholesome 
 humor that echoes genial comrade-
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 ships; a certain reasonableness and 
 moderation in what is thought and 
 said; an air of the open day, in which 
 things are seen whole and in their 
 right colors, rather than of the close 
 study or the academic class-room. 
 We do not want our poetry from 
 grammarians, nor our tales from phi- 
 lologists, nor our history from theo- 
 rists. Their human nature is subtly 
 transmuted into something less broad 
 and catholic and of the general world. 
 Neither do we want our political 
 economy from tradesmen nor our 
 statesmanship from mere politicians, 
 but from those who see more and 
 care for more than these men see or 
 care for.
 
 n 
 
 ONCE — it is a thought which 
 troubles us — once it was a 
 simple enough matter to be a human 
 being, but now it is deeply difficult; 
 because life was once simple, but is 
 now complex, confused, multifarious. 
 Haste, anxiety, preoccupation, the 
 need to specialize and make machines 
 of ourselves, have transformed the 
 once simple world, and we are ap- 
 prised that it will not be without ef- 
 fort that we shall keep the broad 
 human traits which have so far made 
 the earth habitable. We have seen 
 our modern life accumulate, hot and 
 
 2 [11]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 restless, in great cities — and we can- 
 not say that the change is not nat- 
 ural: we see in it, on the contrary, 
 the fulfilment of an inevitable law 
 of change, which is no doubt a law 
 of growth, and not of decay. And 
 yet we look upon the portentous 
 thing with a great distaste, and doubt 
 with what altered passions we shall 
 come out of it. The huge, rushing, 
 aggregate life of a great city — the 
 crushing crowds in the streets, where 
 friends seldom meet and there are 
 few greetings; the thunderous noise 
 of trade and industry that speaks of 
 nothing but gain and competition, 
 and a consuming fever that checks 
 the natural courses of the kindly 
 blood; no leisure anywhere, no quiet, 
 no restful ease, no wise repose — all 
 this shocks us. It is inhumane. It 
 
 [121
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 does not seem human. How much 
 more likely does it appear that we 
 shall find men sane and human about 
 a country fireside, upon the streets 
 of quiet villages, where all are neigh- 
 bors, where groups of friends gather 
 easily, and a constant sympathy 
 makes the very air seem native! 
 Why should not the city seem infi- 
 nitely more human than the hamlet ? 
 Why should not human traits the 
 more abound where human beings 
 teem millions strong? 
 
 Because the city curtails man of 
 his wholeness, specializes him, quick- 
 ens some powers, stunts others, gives 
 him a sharp edge, and a temper like 
 that of steel, makes him unfit for 
 nothing so much as to sit still. Men 
 have indeed written like human be- 
 ings in the midst of great cities, but 
 
 [13]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 not often when they have shared the 
 city's characteristic life, its struggle 
 for place and for gain. There are not 
 many places that belong to a city's 
 life to which you can "invite your 
 soul." Its haste, its preoccupations, 
 its anxieties, its rushing noise as of 
 men driven, its ringing cries, distract 
 you. It offers no quiet for reflection; 
 it permits no retirement to any who 
 share its life. It is a place of little 
 tasks, of narrowed functions, of ag- 
 gregate and not of individual 
 strength. The great machine dom- 
 inates its little parts, and its Soci- 
 ety is as much of a machine as its 
 business. 
 
 "This tract which the river of Time 
 Now flows through with us, is the plain. 
 Gone is the calm of its earlier shore. 
 Border 'd by cities, and hoarse 
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 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 With a thousand cries is its stream. 
 
 And we on its breasts, our minds 
 
 Are confused as the cries which we hear, 
 
 Changing and shot as the sights which we see. 
 
 "And we say that repose has fled 
 Forever the course of the river of Time, 
 That cities will crowd to its edge 
 In a blacker, incessanter line; 
 That the din will be more on its banks, 
 Denser the trade on its stream, 
 Flatter the plain where it flows, 
 Fiercer the sun overhead, 
 That never will those on its breast 
 See an ennobling sight, 
 Drink of the feeling of quiet again. 
 
 "But what was before us we know not, 
 And we know not what shall succeed. 
 
 "Haply, the river of Time — 
 As it grows, as the towns on its marge 
 Fling their wavering lights 
 On a wider, statelier stream — 
 [15]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 May acquire, if not the calm 
 Of its early mountainous shore, 
 Yet a solemn peace of its own. 
 
 "And the width of the waters, the hush 
 Of the gray expanse where he floats, 
 Freshening its current and spotted with foam 
 As it draws to the Ocean, may strike 
 Peace to the soul of the man on its breast — 
 As the pale waste widens around him, 
 As the banks fade dimmer away, 
 As the stars come out, and the night-wind 
 Brings up the stream 
 Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea." 
 
 We cannot easily see the large 
 measure and abiding purpose of the 
 novel age in which we stand young 
 and confused. The view that shall 
 clear our minds and quicken us to 
 act as those who know their task and 
 its distant consummation will come 
 with better knowledge and completer 
 
 [16]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 self-possession. It shall not be a 
 night-wind, but an air that shall 
 blow out of the widening east and 
 with the coming of the light, that 
 shall bring us, with the morning, 
 "murmurs and scents of the infinite 
 sea." Who can doubt that man has 
 grown more and more human with 
 each step of that slow process which 
 has brought him knowledge, self- 
 restraint, the arts of intercourse, and 
 the revelations of real joy? Man 
 has more and more lived with his 
 fellow -men, and it is society that has 
 humanized him — the development of 
 society into an infinitely various 
 school of discipline and ordered skill. 
 He has been made more human by 
 schooling, by growing more self- 
 possessed — less violent, less tumul- 
 tuous; holding himself in hand, and 
 
 [17]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 moving always with a certain poise 
 of spirit; not forever clapping his 
 hand to the hilt of his sword, but 
 preferring, rather, to play with a 
 subtler skill upon the springs of 
 action. This is our conception of 
 the truly human man: a man in 
 whom there is a just balance of 
 faculties, a catholic sympathy — no 
 brawler, no fanatic, no pharisee; not 
 too credulous in hope, not too des- 
 perate in purpose; warm, but not 
 hasty; ardent, and full of definite 
 power, but not running about to be 
 pleased and deceived by every new 
 thing. 
 
 It is a genial image, of men we 
 love — an image of men warm and 
 true of heart, direct and unhesitat- 
 ing in courage, generous, magnani- 
 mous, faithful, steadfast, capable of 
 
 [18]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 a deep devotion and self-forgetful- 
 ness. But the age changes, and with 
 it must change our ideals of human 
 quality. Not that we would give up 
 what we have loved: we would add 
 what a new life demands. In a new 
 age men must acquire a new capacity, 
 must be men upon a new scale, and 
 with added qualities. We shall need 
 a new Renaissance, ushered in by a 
 new "humanistic" movement, in 
 which we shall add to our present 
 minute, introspective study of our- 
 selves, our jails, our slums, our nerve- 
 centers, our shifts to live, almost as 
 morbid as mediaeval religion, a re- 
 discovery of the round world, and of 
 man's place in it, now that its face 
 has changed. We study the world, 
 but not yet with intent to school our 
 hearts and tastes, broaden our na- 
 
 [19]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 tures, and know our fellow-men as 
 comrades rather than as phenomena; 
 with purpose, rather, to build up 
 bodies of critical doctrine and pro- 
 vide ourselves with theses. That, 
 surely, is not the truly humanizing 
 way in which to take the air of the 
 world. Man is much more than a 
 "rational being," and lives more by 
 sympathies and impressions than by 
 conclusions. It darkens his eyes and 
 dries up the wells of his humanity to 
 be forever in search of doctrine. We 
 need wholesome, experiencing na- 
 tures, I dare affirm, much more than 
 we need sound reasoning.
 
 Ill 
 
 TAKE life in the large view, and 
 we are most reasonable when 
 we seek that which is most whole- 
 some and tonic for our natures as a 
 whole; and we know, when we put 
 aside pedantry, that the great middle 
 object in life — the object that lies 
 between religion on the one hand, 
 and food and clothing on the other, 
 establishing our average levels of 
 achievement — the excellent golden 
 mean, is, not to be learned, but to 
 be human beings in all the wide and 
 genial meaning of the term. Does 
 the age hinder? Do its mazy inter- 
 
 [21]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 ests distract us when we would plan 
 our discipline, determine our duty, 
 clarify our ideals? It is the more 
 necessary that we should ask our- 
 selves what it is that is demanded of 
 us, if we would fit our qualities to 
 meet the new tests. Let us remind 
 ourselves that to be human is, for 
 one thing, to speak and act with a 
 certain note of genuineness, a qual- 
 ity mixed of spontaneity and intel- 
 ligence. This is necessary for whole- 
 some life in any age, but particularly 
 amidst confused affairs and shifting 
 standards. Genuineness is not mere 
 simplicity, for that may lack vitality, 
 and genuineness does not. We ex- 
 pect what we call genuine to have 
 pith and strength of fiber. Gen- 
 uineness is a quality which we some- 
 times mean to include when we speak 
 
 [22]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 of individuality. Individuality is 
 lost the moment you submit to pass- 
 ing modes or fashions, the creations 
 of an artificial society; and so is 
 genuineness. No man is genuine 
 who is forever trying to pattern his 
 life after the lives of other people — 
 unless, indeed, he be a genuine dolt. 
 But individuality is by no means the 
 same as genuineness; for individ- 
 uality may be associated with the 
 most extreme and even ridiculous 
 eccentricity, while genuineness we 
 conceive to be always wholesome, 
 balanced, and touched with dignity. 
 It is a quality that goes with good 
 sense and self-respect. It is a sort 
 of robust moral sanity, mixed of el- 
 ements both moral and intellectual. 
 It is found in natures too strong to 
 be mere trimmers and conformers, 
 
 [281
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 too well poised and thoughtful to 
 fling off into intemperate protest and 
 revolt. Laughter is genuine which 
 has in it neither the shrill, hysterical 
 note of mere excitement nor the hard, 
 metallic twang of the cynic's sneer — 
 which rings in the honest voice of 
 gracious good humor, which is inno- 
 cent and unsatirical. Speech is gen- 
 uine which is without silliness, affec- 
 tation, or pretense. That character 
 is genuine which seems built by na- 
 ture rather than by convention, 
 which is stuff of independence and 
 of good courage. Nothing spurious, 
 bastard, begotten out of true wed- 
 lock of the mind; nothing adulter- 
 ated and seeming to be what it is 
 not; nothing unreal, can ever get 
 place among the nobility of things 
 genuine, natural, of pure stock and 
 
 [24]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 unmistakable lineage. It is a pre- 
 rogative of every truly human being 
 to come out from the low estate of 
 those who are merely gregarious and 
 of the herd, and show his innate 
 powers cultivated and yet unspoiled 
 — sound, unmixed, free from imita- 
 tion; showing that individualization 
 without extravagance which is genu- 
 ineness. 
 
 But how? By what means is this 
 self-liberation to be effected — this 
 emancipation from affectation and 
 the bondage of being like other peo- 
 ple? Is it open to us to choose to be 
 genuine? I see nothing insuperable 
 in the way, except for those who are 
 hopelessly lacking in a sense of hu- 
 mor. It depends upon the range 
 and scale of your observation wheth- 
 er you can strike the balance of 
 
 [25]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 genuineness or not. If you live in a 
 small and petty world, you will be 
 subject to its standards; but if you 
 live in a large world, you will see 
 that standards are innumerable — 
 some old, some new, some made by 
 the noble-minded and made to last, 
 some made by the weak-minded and 
 destined to perish, some lasting from 
 age to age, some only from day to 
 day — and that a choice must be 
 made among them. It is then that 
 your sense of humor will assist you. 
 You are, you will perceive, upon a 
 long journey, and it will seem to you 
 ridiculous to change your life and 
 discipline your instincts to conform 
 to the usages of a single inn by the 
 way. You will distinguish the essen- 
 tials from the accidents, and deem 
 the accidents something meant for 
 
 [26]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 your amusement. The strongest na- 
 tures do not need to wait for these 
 slow lessons of observation, to be 
 got by conning life: their sheer vigor 
 makes it impossible for them to con- 
 form to fashion or care for times and 
 seasons. But the rest of us must 
 cultivate knowledge of the world in 
 the large, get our offing, reach a 
 comparative point of view, before we 
 can become with steady confidence 
 our own masters and pilots. The 
 art of being human begins with the 
 practice of being genuine, and follow- 
 ing standards of conduct which the 
 world has tested. If your life is not 
 various and you cannot know the 
 best people, who set the standards 
 of sincerity, your reading at least 
 can be various, and you may look at 
 your little circle through the best 
 
 3 [27]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 books, under the guidance of writers 
 who have known life and loved the 
 truth.
 
 IV 
 
 A ND then genuineness will bring 
 ilL serenity — which I take to be an- 
 other mark of the right development 
 of the true human being, certainly in 
 an age passionate and confused as 
 this in which we live. Of course se- 
 renity does not always go with gen- 
 uineness. We must say of Dr. John- 
 son that he was genuine, and yet we 
 know that the stormy tyrant of the 
 Turk's Head Tavern was not serene. 
 Carlyle was genuine (though that is 
 not quite the first adjective we should 
 choose to describe him), but of se- 
 renity he allowed cooks and cocks 
 
 [29]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 and every modern and every ancient 
 sham to deprive him. Serenity is a 
 product, no doubt, of two very dif- 
 ferent things, namely, vision and di- 
 gestion. Not the eye only, but the 
 courses of the blood must be clear, 
 if we would find serenity. Our word 
 "serene" contains a picture. Its im- 
 age is of the calm evening when the 
 stars are out and the still night comes 
 on ; when the dew is on the grass and 
 the wind does not stir; when the 
 day's work is over, and the evening 
 meal, and thought falls clear in the 
 quiet hour. It is the hour of reflec- 
 tion — and it is human to reflect. 
 Who shall contrive to be human 
 without this evening hour, which 
 drives turmoil out, and gives the soul 
 its seasons of self -recollection? Se- 
 renity is not a thing to beget in- 
 
 [30]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 action. It only checks excitement 
 and uncalculating haste. It does not 
 exclude ardor or the heat of battle: 
 it keeps ardor from extravagance, 
 prevents the battle from becoming a 
 mere aimless melee. The great cap- 
 tains of the world have been men 
 who were calm in the moment of 
 crisis; who were calm, too, in the 
 long planning which preceded crisis; 
 who went into battle with a serenity 
 infinitely ominous for those whom 
 they attacked. We instinctively as- 
 sociate serenity with the highest 
 types of power among men, seeing in 
 it the poise of knowledge and calm 
 vision, that supreme heat and mas- 
 tery which is without splutter or 
 noise of any kind. The art of power 
 in this sort is no doubt learned in 
 hours of reflection, by those who are 
 
 [31]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 not born with it. What rebuke of 
 aimless excitement there is to be got 
 out of a little reflection, when we 
 have been inveighing against the 
 corruption and decadence of our own 
 days, if only we have provided our- 
 selves with a little knowledge of 
 the past wherewith to balance our 
 thought! As bad times as these, or 
 any we shall see, have been reformed, 
 but not by protests. They have been 
 made glorious instead of shameful by 
 the men who kept their heads and 
 struck with sure self-possession in the 
 fight. No age will take hysterical re- 
 form. The world is very human, not 
 a bit given to adopting virtues for 
 the sake of those who merely bemoan 
 its vices, and we are most effective 
 when we are most calmly in posses- 
 sion of our senses. 
 
 [32]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 So far is serenity from being a 
 thing of slackness or inaction that it 
 seems bred, rather, by an equable 
 energy, a satisfying activity. It may 
 be found in the midst of that alert 
 interest in affairs which is, it may be, 
 the distinguishing trait of developed 
 manhood. You distinguish man from 
 the brute by his intelligent curiosity, 
 his play of mind beyond the narrow 
 field of instinct, his perception of 
 cause and effect in matters to him 
 indifferent, his appreciation of mo- 
 tive and calculation of results. He 
 is interested in the world about him, 
 and even in the great universe of 
 which it forms a part, not merely as 
 a thing he would use, satisfy his 
 wants and grow great by, but as a 
 field to stretch his mind in, for love 
 of journeyings and excursions in the 
 
 [33]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 large realm of thought. Your full- 
 bred human being loves a run afield 
 with his understanding. With what 
 images does he not surround himself 
 and store his mind ! With what fond- 
 ness does he con travelers' tales and 
 credit poets' fancies! W T ith what 
 patience does he follow science and 
 pore upon old records, and with what 
 eagerness does he ask the news of the 
 day! No great part of what he 
 learns immediately touches his own 
 life or the course of his own affairs: 
 he is not pursuing a business, but 
 satisfying as he can an insatiable 
 mind. No doubt the highest form 
 of this noble curiosity is that which 
 leads us, without self-interest, to look 
 abroad upon all the field of man's 
 life at home and in society, seeking 
 more excellent forms of government, 
 
 [34]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 more righteous ways of labor, more 
 elevating forms of art, and which 
 makes the greater among us states- 
 men, reformers, philanthropists, art- 
 ists, critics, men of letters. It is 
 certainly human to mind your neigh- 
 bor's business as well as your own. 
 Gossips are only sociologists upon a 
 mean and petty scale. The art of 
 being human lifts to a better level 
 than that of gossip; it leaves mere 
 chatter behind, as too reminiscent of 
 a lower stage of existence, and is 
 compassed by those whose outlook 
 is wide enough to serve for guidance 
 and a choosing of ways.
 
 LUCKILY we are not the first 
 _J human beings. We have come 
 into a great heritage of interesting 
 things, collected and piled all about 
 us by the curiosity of past genera- 
 tions. And so our interest is select- 
 ive. Our education consists in learn- 
 ing intelligent choice. Our energies 
 do not clash or compete: each is free 
 to take his own path to knowledge. 
 Each has that choice, which is man's 
 alone, of the life he shall live, and 
 finds out first or last that the art in 
 living is not only to be genuine and 
 one's own master, but also to learn 
 
 [36]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 mastery in perception and prefer- 
 ence. Your true woodsman needs 
 not to follow the dusty highway 
 through the forest nor search for any 
 path, but goes straight from glade to 
 glade as if upon an open way, having 
 some privy understanding with the 
 taller trees, some compass in his 
 senses. So there is a subtle craft in 
 finding ways for the mind, too. Keep 
 but your eyes alert and your ears 
 quick, as you move among men and 
 among books, and you shall find 
 yourself possessed at last of a new 
 sense, the sense of the pathfinder. 
 Have you never marked the eyes of 
 a man who has seen the world he has 
 lived in: the eyes of the sea-captain, 
 who has watched his life through the 
 changes of the heavens; the eyes of 
 the huntsman, nature's gossip and 
 
 [37]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 familiar; the eyes of the man of 
 affairs, accustomed to command in 
 moments of exigency? You are at 
 once aware that they are eyes which 
 can see. There is something in them 
 that you do not find in other eyes, 
 and you have read the life of the 
 man when you have divined what it 
 is. Let the thing serve as a figure. 
 So ought alert interest in the world 
 of men and thought to serve each 
 one of us that we shall have the 
 quick perceiving vision, taking mean- 
 ings at a glance, reading suggestions 
 as if they were expositions. You 
 shall not otherwise get full value of 
 your humanity. What good shall it 
 do you else that the long generations 
 of men which have gone before you 
 have filled the world with great store 
 of everything that may make you 
 
 [38]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 wise and your life various? Will you 
 not take usury of the past, if it may 
 be had for the taking? Here is the 
 world humanity has made: will you 
 take full citizenship in it, or will you 
 live in it as dull, as slow to receive, 
 as unenfranchised, as the idlers for 
 whom civilization has no uses, or the 
 deadened toilers, men or beasts, 
 whose labor shuts the door on choice? 
 That man seems to me a little less 
 than human who lives as if our life 
 in the world were but just begun, 
 thinking only of the things of sense, 
 recking nothing of the infinite throng- 
 ing and assemblage of affairs the 
 great stage over, or of the old wisdom 
 that has ruled the world. That is, if 
 he have the choice. Great masses of 
 our fellow-men are shut out from 
 choosing, by reason of absorbing toil, 
 
 [39]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 and it is part of the enlightenment of 
 our age that our understandings are 
 being opened to the workingman's 
 need of a little leisure wherein to 
 look about him and clear his vision 
 of the dust of the workshop. We 
 know that there is a drudgery which 
 is inhuman, let it but encompass the 
 whole life, with only heavy sleep be- 
 tween task and task. We know that 
 those who are so bound can have no 
 freedom to be men, that their very 
 spirits are in bondage. It is part of 
 our philanthropy — it should be part 
 of our statesmanship — to ease the 
 burden as we can, and enfranchise 
 those who spend and are spent for 
 the sustenance of the race. But what 
 shall we say of those who are free 
 and yet choose littleness and bond- 
 age, or of those who, though they 
 
 [40]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 might see the whole face of society, 
 nevertheless choose to spend all a 
 life's space poring upon some single 
 vice or blemish? I would not for the 
 world discredit any sort of philan- 
 thropy except the small and churl- 
 ish sort which seeks to reform by 
 nagging — the sort which exaggerates 
 petty vices into great ones, and runs 
 atilt against windmills, while every- 
 where colossal shams and abuses go 
 unexposed, unrebuked. Is it be- 
 cause we are better at being common 
 scolds than at being wise advisers 
 that we prefer little reforms to big 
 ones? Are we to allow the poor per- 
 sonal habits of other people to absorb 
 and quite use up all our fine indigna- 
 tion? It will be a bad day for society 
 when sentimentalists are encouraged 
 to suggest all the measures that shall 
 
 •ii
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 be taken for the betterment of the 
 race. I, for one, sometimes sigh for 
 a generation of "leading people" and 
 of good people who shall see things 
 steadily and see them whole; who 
 shall show a handsome justness and 
 a large sanity of view, an opportune 
 tolerance for the details, that happen 
 to be awry, in order that they may 
 spend their energy, not without self- 
 possession, in some generous mission 
 which shall make right principles 
 shine upon the people's life. They 
 would bring with them an age of large 
 moralities, a spacious time, a day of 
 vision. 
 
 Knowledge has come into the 
 world in vain if it is not to emancipate 
 those who may have it from narrow- 
 ness, censoriousness, fussiness, an in- 
 temperate zeal for petty things. It 
 
 [42]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 would be a most pleasant, a truly 
 humane world, would we but open 
 our ears with a more generous wel- 
 come to the clear voices that ring in 
 those writings upon life and affairs 
 which mankind has chosen to keep. 
 Not many splenetic books, not many 
 intemperate, not many bigoted, have 
 kept men's confidence; and the mind 
 that is impatient, or intolerant, or 
 hoodwinked, or shut in to a petty 
 view shall have no part in carrying 
 men forward to a true humanity, 
 shall never stand as examples of the 
 true humankind. What is truly hu- 
 man has always upon it the broad 
 light of what is genial, fit to support 
 life, cordial, and of a catholic spirit of 
 helpfulness. Your true human being 
 has eyes and keeps his balance in the 
 world; deems nothing uninteresting 
 
 4 [43]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 that comes from life; clarifies his 
 vision and gives health to his eyes by 
 using them upon things near and 
 things far. The brute beast has but 
 a single neighborhood, a single, nar- 
 row round of existence; the gain of 
 being human accrues in the choice of 
 change and variety and of experi- 
 ence far and wide, with all the world 
 for stage — a stage set and appointed 
 by this very art of choice — all future 
 generations for witnesses and audi- 
 ence. When you talk with a man 
 who has in his nature and acquire- 
 ments that freedom from constraint 
 which goes with the full franchise of 
 humanity, he turns easily from topic 
 to topic; does not fall silent or dull 
 when you leave some single field of 
 thought such as unwise men make a 
 prison of. The men who will not 
 
 44
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 be broken from a little set of subjects, 
 who talk earnestly, hotly, with a 
 sort of fierceness, of certain special 
 schemes of conduct, and look coldly 
 upon everything else, render you in- 
 finitely uneasy, as if there were in 
 them a force abnormal and which 
 rocked toward an upset of the mind; 
 but from the man whose interest 
 swings from thought to thought with 
 the zest and poise and pleasure of 
 the old traveler, eager for what is 
 new, glad to look again upon what 
 is old, you come away with faculties 
 warmed and heartened — with the 
 feeling of having been comrade for 
 a little with a genuine human being. 
 It is a large world and a round 
 world, and men grow human by see- 
 ing all its play of force and folly.
 
 VI 
 
 LET no one suppose that effi- 
 .J ciency is lost by such breadth 
 and catholicity of view. We deceive 
 ourselves with instances, look at 
 sharp crises in the world's affairs, 
 and imagine that intense and narrow 
 men have made history for us. Poise, 
 balance, a nice and equable exercise 
 of force, are not, it is true, the things 
 the world ordinarily seeks for or most 
 applauds in its heroes. It is apt to 
 esteem that man most human who 
 has his qualities in a certain exagger- 
 ation, whose courage is passionate, 
 whose generosity is without deliber- 
 ation, whose just action is with- 
 
 [46]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 out premeditation, whose spirit runs 
 toward its favorite objects with an 
 infectious and reckless ardor, whose 
 wisdom is no child of slow prudence. 
 We love Achilles more than Diome- 
 des, and Ulysses not at all. But 
 these are standards left over from a 
 ruder state of society: we should 
 have passed by this time the Ho- 
 meric stage of mind — should have 
 heroes suited to our age. Nay, we 
 have erected different standards, and 
 do make a different choice, when we 
 see in any man fulfilment of our 
 real ideals. Let a modern instance 
 serve as test. Could any man hesi- 
 tate to say that Abraham Lincoln 
 was more human than William Lloyd 
 Garrison? Does not every one know 
 that it was the practical Free-Soilers 
 who made emancipation possible, 
 
 [47]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 and not the hot, impracticable Aboli- 
 tionists; that the country was infi- 
 nitely more moved by Lincoln's tem- 
 perate sagacity than by any man's 
 enthusiasm, instinctively trusted the 
 man who saw the whole situation and 
 kept his balance, instinctively held 
 off from those who refused to see 
 more than one thing? We know how 
 serviceable the intense and headlong 
 agitator was in bringing to their feet 
 men fit for action; but we feel un- 
 easy while he lives, and vouchsafe 
 him our full sympathy only when he 
 is dead. We know that the genial 
 forces of nature which work daily, 
 equably, and without violence are in- 
 finitely more serviceable, infinitely 
 more admirable, than the rude vio- 
 lence of the storm, however necessary 
 or excellent the purification it may 
 
 [48]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 have wrought. Should we seek to 
 name the most human man among 
 those who led the nation to its strug- 
 gle with slavery, and yet was no 
 statesman, we should, of course, 
 name Lowell. We know that his 
 humor went further than any man's 
 passion toward setting tolerant men 
 atingle with the new impulses of the 
 day. We naturally hold back from 
 those who are intemperate and can 
 never stop to smile, and are deeply 
 reassured to see a twinkle in a re- 
 former's eye. We are glad to see 
 earnest men laugh. It breaks the 
 strain. If it be wholesome laughter, 
 it dispels all suspicion of spite, and is 
 like the gleam of light upon running 
 water, lifting sullen shadows, sug- 
 gesting clear depths. 
 
 Surely it is this soundness of na- 
 
 [49]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 ture, this broad and genial quality, 
 this full-blooded, full-orbed sanity of 
 spirit, which gives the men we love 
 that wide-eyed sympathy which gives 
 hope and power to humanity, which 
 gives range to every good quality 
 and is so excellent a credential of 
 genuine manhood. Let your life and 
 your thought be narrow, and your 
 sympathy will shrink to a like scale. 
 It is a quality which follows the see- 
 ing mind afield, which waits on ex- 
 perience. It is not a mere sentiment. 
 It goes not with pity so much as with 
 a penetrative understanding of other 
 men's lives and hopes and tempta- 
 tions. Ignorance of these things 
 makes it worthless. Its best tutors 
 are observation and experience, and 
 these serve only those who keep clear 
 eyes and a wide field of vision. 
 
 [50]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 It is exercise and discipline upon 
 such a scale, too, which strengthen, 
 which for ordinary men come near 
 to creating, that capacity to reason 
 upon affairs and to plan for action 
 which we always reckon upon finding 
 in every man who has studied to 
 perfect his native force. This new 
 day in which we live cries a challenge 
 to us. Steam and electricity have 
 reduced nations to neighborhoods; 
 have made travel pastime, and news 
 a thing for everybody. Cheap print- 
 ing has made knowledge a vulgar 
 commodity. Our eyes look, almost 
 without choice, upon the very world 
 itself, and the word "human" is 
 filled with a new meaning. Our 
 ideals broaden to suit the wide day 
 in which we live. We crave, not 
 cloistered virtue — it is impossible any 
 
 [51]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 longer to keep to the cloister — but a 
 robust spirit that shall take the air 
 in the great world, know men in all 
 their kinds, choose its way amid 
 the bustle with all self-possession, 
 with wise genuineness, in calmness, 
 and yet with the quick eye of inter- 
 est and the quick pulse of power. It 
 is again a day for Shakespeare's 
 spirit — a day more various, more ar- 
 dent, more provoking to valor and 
 every large design, even than "the 
 spacious times of great Elizabeth," 
 when all the world seemed new; and 
 if we cannot find another bard, come 
 out of a new Warwickshire, to hold 
 once more the mirror up to nature, 
 it will not be because the stage is not 
 set for him. The time is such an one 
 as he might rejoice to look upon ; and 
 if we would serve it as it should be 
 
 [52]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 served, we should seek to be human 
 after his wide-eyed sort. The seren- 
 ity of power; the naturalness that is 
 nature's poise and mark of genuine- 
 ness; the unsleeping interest in all 
 affairs, all fancies, all things believed 
 or done; the catholic understanding, 
 tolerance, enjoyment, of all classes 
 and conditions of men; the conceiv- 
 ing imagination, the planning pur- 
 pose, the creating thought, the whole- 
 some, laughing humor, the quiet 
 insight, the universal coinage of the 
 brain — are not these the marvelous 
 gifts and qualities we mark in Shake- 
 speare when we call him the greatest 
 among men? And shall not these 
 rounded and perfect powers serve us 
 as our ideal of what it is to be a fin- 
 ished human being? 
 
 We live for our own age — an age 
 
 [53]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 like Shakespeare's, when an old 
 world is passing away, a new world 
 coming in — an age of new specula- 
 tion and every new adventure of the 
 mind ; a full stage, an intricate plot, 
 a universal play of passion, an out- 
 come no man can foresee. It is to 
 this world, this sweep of action, that 
 our understandings must be stretched 
 and fitted; it is in this age we 
 must show our human quality. We 
 must measure ourselves by the task, 
 accept the pace set for us, make shift 
 to know what we are about. How 
 free and liberal should be the scale 
 of our sympathy, how catholic our 
 understanding of the world in which 
 we live, how poised and masterful 
 our action in the midst of so great 
 affairs ! We should school our ears to 
 know the voices that are genuine, 
 
 [54]
 
 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
 our thought to take the truth when 
 it is spoken, our spirits to feel the 
 zest of the day. It is within our 
 choice to be with mean company or 
 with great, to consort with the wise 
 or with the foolish, now that the 
 great world has spoken to us in the 
 literature of all tongues and voices. 
 The best selected human nature will 
 tell in the making of the future, and 
 the art of being human is the art of 
 freedom and of force. 
 
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