Elbert Hubbard - "Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Volume 14"

James Whitcomb Riley - "A Child World"

Wilhelm Hauff - "Maerchen Almanach auf das Jahr 1828"

Charlotte Mary Yonge - "The Chosen People"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

What Is and What Might Be

E >> Edmond Holmes >> What Is and What Might Be




And in proportion as this mundane conception of salvation tends to
establish itself, so does the drift towards social and political
anarchy, which is now beginning to alarm all the lovers of order and
"progress," tend to widen its range and accelerate its movement. For
though the current idea of achieving salvation through "success" is a
comfortable doctrine for the successful few, it is the reverse of
comfortable for the unsuccessful many, among whom the idea is gaining
ground that as salvation is the reward, not of virtue, but of a
judicious blend of cleverness, unscrupulousness, selfishness, and
greed, there is no reason, in the moral order of things, why it
should not be wrested from those who are enjoying it, either by
organised social warfare or by open violence and crime. And even if
an anarchical outbreak should result in perdition all round instead
of salvation all round, it would at least be some consolation to the
"lost" to feel that they had dragged the "saved" down into their own
bottomless pit. This would not be a lofty sentiment; yet I do not
see who is in a position to condemn it,--not the supporter of the
existing social order, which legalises a general scramble, first for
the "prizes" of life and then for the bare means of subsistence, and
is well content that in that scramble the weak, the ignorant, and
the unfortunate should go to the wall,--not the exponent of the
conventional theology, which has taught men to dream of a Heaven in
which the happiness of the "elect" will be unruffled by the knowledge
that an eternity of misery is the doom of perhaps a majority of their
fellow-men.

In the West, then, there are two conceptions of salvation,--a
selfish, worldly conception which is daily becoming more effective,
and a selfish other-worldly conception which is daily becoming more
ineffective, and is therefore less and less able to compete with or
control its rival. Out of the attempts that are made to realise
both these conceptions and to keep them on friendly terms with one
another, there is emerging a state of chaos--political, social,
moral, spiritual,--a weltering chaos of new and old ideals, new and
old theories of life, new and old standards of values, new and old
centres of authority, new and old ambitions and dreams. And in this
chaos there are only two principles of order, the first (which is
also the ultimate cause of all our disorder) being the pathetic fact
that nearly all the actors in the bewildering drama are still seeking
for happiness outside themselves, the second being the fundamental
goodness of man's heart.

I will now go back to Utopia. There a new conception of salvation is
implicit in the new theory of education which has revolutionised the
life of the school. Humble as is the sphere and small as is the scale
of Egeria's labours, her work is, I firmly believe, of world-wide
importance and lasting value, for she has provided an experimental
basis for the idea that salvation is to be achieved by growth, and
growth alone.

I will now try to interpret that idea.

The education of the child in school begins when he is four or five
years old, and lasts till he is thirteen or fourteen. But he enters
the path of salvation the day he is born. He comes into the world a
weak, helpless baby; but, like every other seedling, he has in him
all the potencies of perfection,--the perfection of his kind.
To realise those potencies, so far as they can be realised within
the limits of one earth-life, is to achieve salvation. Are those
potencies worth realising? To this question I can but answer: "Such
as they are, they are our all." We might ask the same question with
regard to an acorn or a grain of wheat; and in each case the answer
would be the same. There are, indeed, plants and animals which are
noxious _from our point of view_. But that is not the view which they
take of themselves. Each of them regards his own potencies in the
light of a sacred trust, and strives with untiring energy to realise
them. If the potencies of our nature are not worth realising we had
better give up the business of living. If they are, we had better
fall into line with other living things.

An unceasing pressure is being put upon us to do so. The perfect
manhood which is present in embryo in the new-born infant, just as
the oak-tree is present in embryo in the acorn, will struggle
unceasingly to evolve itself. With the dawn of self-consciousness, we
shall gradually acquire the power of either co-operating with, or
thwarting, the spontaneous energies that are welling up in us and
making for our growth. In this respect we stand, in some sort, apart
from the rest of living things. But the power to co-operate with
our own spontaneous energies is to the full as natural as are the
energies themselves. To fathom the mystery of self-consciousness is
beyond my power and beside my present purpose; but we may perhaps
regard our power of interfering, for good or ill, with the
spontaneous energies of our nature, as the outcome of a successful
effort which our nature has made both to widen the sphere of its own
life and to accelerate the process of its own growth. But just
because we possess that power, it is essential that we, above all
other living things, should believe in ourselves, should believe in
the intrinsic value of our natural potencies, with a whole-hearted
faith. For if we do not, we shall hinder instead of helping the
forces that are at work in us, and we shall retard instead of
accelerating the process of our growth.

We have seen that education in the West has hitherto been a failure
because, owing to the ascendency of the doctrine of original sin, it
has been based on distrust of human nature; and we have seen that in
Utopia, where Egeria's faith in human nature is so profound that she
has allowed the children to go far towards educating themselves, the
results achieved have gone beyond my wildest dream of what was
practicable, at any rate within the limits of the school life of
village children. What is true of education is true _a fortiori_ of
salvation. If it is impossible to construct a satisfactory scheme of
education on the basis of distrust of human nature, it is even more
impossible (if there are degrees in impossibility) to construct on
the same basis a satisfactory scheme of salvation. I have already
contended that if education is to be reformed, the doctrine of
original sin must go; and I now contend that if our philosophy of
life is to be reformed, we must abandon, not that doctrine only, but
the whole dualistic philosophy which centres in the opposition of
Nature to the Supernatural. For trust in human nature--the
microcosm--is impossible, so long as Nature--the macrocosm--is liable
to be disparaged and discredited (in our minds) by the visionary
splendours of the Supernatural world; and to devise a harmonious
scheme of life is impossible so long as an inharmonious conception
of the Universe dominates our thought,--a conception so inharmonious
that it divides the Universe, the All of Being, into two hostile
camps, and in doing so introduces the "war of the worlds" into each
individual life.

When a fruit-grower plants a fruit-tree, he does three things for it.
By choosing an appropriate soil and aspect, he brings adequate
supplies of _nourishment_ within reach of it. By manuring it at the
right season, he both adds to its store of nourishment and gives
it the _stimulus_ which will help it to absorb and assimilate the
nourishment that is immediately available for its use. And, by
pruning and training it judiciously, he gives it the _guidance_ which
will enable it to develop itself to the best advantage from the
fruit-bearing point of view (fruit-bearing being the end which he
sets it). He does these three things for it, but he does no more than
these. He realises that in all these operations he is only taking
advantage of the innate powers and tendencies of the tree, and
enabling these to deploy themselves under as favourable conditions
as possible; and he is therefore well content to leave the rest to
the tree itself, feeling sure that its own spontaneous effort to
achieve perfection will do all that is needed. His trust in the
ability and willingness of the tree to work out its salvation is
complete.

These are the lines on which the farmer and the fruit-grower conduct
their business,--lines, the neglect of which would involve them in
early disaster and in ultimate ruin. And these are the lines on which
human nature ought to be trained, in school and out of school, from
the day of birth to the day of death. But they are lines on which it
will never be trained so long as the doctrine of the depravity of
Nature in general and human nature in particular controls our
philosophy of life.

The doctrine of natural depravity, or original sin, is the outcome of
Man's attempt to explain to himself the glaring fact of his own
imperfection. The doctrine grew up in an age when men were ignorant
of the fundamental laws of Nature, and among a people who, though
otherwise richly gifted, had no turn for sustained thought. So long
as men were ignorant of Nature's master law of evolution, it was but
natural that they should account for their own imperfection by
looking back to a Golden Age,--a state of innocence and bliss from
which they had somehow fallen, and to which they could not, by any
effort or process of their corrupted nature, hope to return. While
this idea--half myth and half doctrine--was growing up in the mind
of Israel, the counter idea of the evolution or growth of the soul,
of its ascent from "weak beginnings" towards a state of spiritual
perfection, was growing up among the thinkers of India, and the
derivative doctrine of salvation through the natural process of
soul-growth was being gradually elaborated. But though the philosophy
of India produced some impression on the conscious thought, and a
far deeper impression on the subconscious thought, of the West, its
master idea of spiritual evolution--_through a long sequence of
lives_--was wholly foreign to the genius of Christendom, which had
borrowed its _ideas_ from the commonplace philosophy of Israel; and
it was not till the nineteenth century of our era that the idea of
evolution began to make its way, from the quarter of physical
science, into Western thought.

The doctrine of original sin must once have had a meaning and a
purpose. For one thing, it must have been generated by a sudden rise
in Man's moral standard; and as such it must have had a salutary
influence on his conduct and inward life. But it is now outstaying
its welcome. The Biblical story of the Fall, in virtue of which it
was once authoritatively taught, is ceasing to be regarded as serious
history; and the doctrine must therefore either justify itself to
critical thought or resign itself to rejection as inadequate and
unsound. But there is only one line of defence which its supporters
can take. As the doctrine was the outcome of Man's premature attempt
to explain the fact of his own imperfection, if it is to survive in
the world of ideas it must be able to show, first and foremost, that
the fact in question cannot be accounted for on other grounds. Will
it be able to do this, at a time when the idea of evolution is
beginning to impregnate our mental atmosphere, and in doing so is
making us realise that we are near of kin to all other living things,
and that our lives, like theirs, are dominated by the master-law of
_growth_?

That there is much moral evil in the world is undeniable. Are we
therefore to predicate original depravity of man's heart and soul?
But there is also much physical evil in the world,--pain, weakness,
disease, decay, and death. Are we therefore to predicate original
depravity of man's body? And this physical evil, this liability to
disease, is not confined to man, but also affects all other living
things. Are we therefore to predicate original depravity of a
new-born lamb, of a new-laid egg, of an acorn, of a grain of wheat?

Let us consider certain typical forms of moral evil, and see if we
can account for them, without having recourse to the hypothesis of
original sin. The vicious propensities which manifest themselves in
children and "young persons" may be divided into two main classes,
_apparent_ and _actual_.[25] Of the former class the chief cause is,
in a word, _immaturity_. Of the latter, _environment_.

Analogies drawn from plant life may help us to understand how these
causes operate.

_Immaturity._ If an Englishman who had never before tasted an apple
were to eat one in July, he would probably come to the conclusion
that it was a hard, sour, indigestible fruit, "conceived in sin and
shapen in iniquity," and fit only to be consigned to perdition (on a
dustheap, or elsewhere). But if the same man were to wait till
October and then eat an apple from the same tree, he would form a
wholly different conception of its value. He would find that the
sourness had ripened into wholesome and refreshing acidity; the
hardness into that firmness of fibre which, besides being pleasant to
the palate, makes the apple "keep" better than any other fruit; the
indigestibility into certain valuable dietetic qualities; and so on.
It is the same with the growing child. _Most of his vices are virtues
in the making_. During the first year or so of his life he is a
monster of selfishness; and selfishness is the most comprehensive and
far-reaching of all vicious tendencies. Does this mean that he has
been conceived in sin? Not in the least. It means that he is making a
whole-hearted effort to guard and unfold the potencies of life--in
the first instance, of physical life--which have been entrusted to
him. It means that he has entered the path of self-realisation, and
that if he will be as faithful to that path during the rest of his
life as he has been during those early months of uncompromising
selfishness, he will be able at last to scale the loftiest heights of
self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice.

_Environment._ The influences which environment exerts seem to fall
under three heads--

(1) General influences of a more or less permanent character, such as
home, neighbourhood, social grade, etc.

(2) General influences of a more or less variable character, such as
education, employment, friendship, etc.

(3) Particular influences, such as companionship (good or bad),
literature (wholesome or pernicious), places of amusement (elevating
or debasing), special opportunities for self-sacrifice or
self-indulgence, etc.

Corresponding to these in plant-life we have--

(1) Soil, situation, and climate:
(2) Cultivation and weather:
(3) The various insects and micro-organisms which are ready to
assail or protect growing life.

(1) If two acorns from the same tree were sown, the one in a deep
clay soil and a favourable situation, the other in a light sandy soil
and an unfavourable situation, the former would in time develop into
a large and shapely, the latter into a puny and misshapen oak-tree.
It would be the same, _mutatis mutandis_, with two human beings who
were exposed from their earliest days to widely different permanent
influences.

(2) If wheat of a certain strain were sown on the same day in two
adjoining fields, one of which was well farmed and the other badly
farmed, the resulting crops would differ widely in yield and value.
It would be the same with two human beings, one of whom (to take a
pertinent example) attended a school of Utopian tendencies, and the
other a school of a more conventional type. Of all moralising (or
demoralising) influences education is by far the most important,
owing to the fact that it can do more, and is in a position to do
more, than any other influence either to foster or to hinder growth.

The influence of weather on plant-life is, of course, enormous. In
one year the fruit-crop in a given neighbourhood is a failure: in
another year it gluts the market. One explanation of this fact,
which has its exact analogies in human life, will be given in the
next paragraph.

(3) All forms of life are exposed to the attacks of enemies of
various kinds. Whether they shall beat off those attacks or succumb
to them depends in large measure on the nature of the growth that
they are making; and this again depends, largely if not wholly, on
the nature of the general influences to which they have been exposed.
For many years I lived in a district in which hops were grown on a
large scale; and I naturally took an interest in the staple industry
of my adopted county. I noticed that whenever (during the summer
months) there came a spell of cold winds from the north-east--winds
which tend to arrest plant-growth--the hop-bines were at once
assailed by blight and other pests, and the safety of the growing
crop was imperilled. And I noticed further that when the wind got
round to the south-west, and warm showers began to stimulate the
growth of the flagging plants, the pests that had assailed them
disappeared as if by magic, and the anxieties of the growers were
relieved. As it is with plants, so it is with human beings. They too
have their enemies,--temptations of various kinds and other evil
influences that "war against the soul." And they too will be able to
beat off their assailants just so far as their own growth is vigorous
and healthy; and will succumb to their attacks, to their own serious
detriment, just so far as their own growth is feeble and sickly.

The bearing of this fact on the problem of the origin of moral evil
is obvious. That the evils which assail the organism, be it a plant
or a human being, are not inherent in its nature, is proved by the
fact that when the growth of the organism is normal and unimpeded,
the assailants are always beaten off. As it is the growth of the
organism--the development of its own nature--which enables it to
resist the evils that threaten it, we must assume that its nature is
good. Indeed the evils that threaten it are called evils for no other
reason than that they imperil its well-being; and it follows that in
calling them evils we imply that the organism is intrinsically good.

When we have eliminated from human nature the vicious tendencies
which are due either to immaturity or to the numberless influences
that come under the general head of environment, we shall find that a
very small percentage remain to be accounted for. We need not have
recourse to the doctrine of original sin in order to account for
these. So far I have said nothing about heredity, partly because its
influence on the moral development of the individual is, I think,
very small compared with that of environment, and partly because it
is impossible to consider the extent and character of its influence,
without going deeply into certain large and complicated problems. For
example, it would be impossible for me to say much about the current,
though gradually waning, belief in the force of heredity, without
saying something about its Far Eastern equivalent, the belief in
re-incarnation,--in other words, without asking whether a man
inherits from his parents and other ancestors, or from his former
selves. That different persona are born with widely different moral
tendencies and propensities, is as certain as that some strains of
wheat are hardier and more productive than others. And it is
possible, and even probable, that there are exceptional cases of
moral evil which point to congenital depravity, and cannot otherwise
be accounted for. But in these admissions I am making no concession
to the believer in original sin; for he regards human nature as such
as congenitally depraved, and therefore can take no cognisance of
exceptional cases of congenital depravity, cases which by breaking
the rule that the new-born child is morally and spiritually healthy,
may be said to prove it.

In fine, then, all moral evil can be accounted for on grounds which
are quite compatible with the assumption that the normal child is
healthy, on all the planes of his being, at the moment of his birth.
That he carries with him into the world the capacity for being
affected by adverse influences of various kinds, is undeniable; but
so does every other living thing; and if congenital depravity is to
be predicated of him for that reason, it must also be predicated of
every new-born animal and plant.

But the final proof that Man is by nature a child of God, is one
which has already been hinted at, and will presently be further
developed,--namely, that growth--the healthy, vigorous growth of the
whole human being, the harmonious development of his whole nature--is
in its essence a movement towards moral and spiritual perfection. And
the final proof that the doctrine of Man's congenital depravity is
false is the practical one that the doctrine is ever tending to
fulfil its own gloomy predictions, and to justify its own low
estimate of human nature,--in other words, that by making education
repressive and devitalising, by introducing externalism, with its
endless train of attendant evils, into Man's daily life, and by
making him disbelieve in and even despair of himself, it has done
more perhaps than all other influences added together to deprave his
heart and to wreck his life.

To one who has convinced himself that human nature is fundamentally
good, in the sense that the new-born child is as a rule sound and
healthy on all the planes of his being, it must be clear that the
path of soul-growth or self-realisation is the only way of salvation.
What salvation means, what the path of self-realisation will do for
him who enters it, is a theme to which I could not hope to do justice
within the limits of this work. I will therefore content myself
with indicating certain typical aspects of the process which I
have called self-realisation, and saying something about each of
these. Four aspects suggest themselves to me as worthy of special
consideration,--the _mental_, the _moral_, the _social_, and the
_religious_.[26]


_The Mental Aspect of Self-realisation._

There are two features of the process of self-realisation, on the
importance of which I cannot insist too often or too strongly. The
first is that the growth which the life of self-realisation fosters
is, in its essence, harmonious and many-sided. The second is that
the life of self-realisation is, from first to last, a life of
self-expression, and that self-expression and perception are the face
and obverse of the same mental effort.

If the life of self-realisation did not provide for the growth of the
self in its totality, the self as a living whole, it would not be
worthy of its name. One-sided growth, inharmonious growth, growth in
which some faculties are hypertrophied and others atrophied, is not
self-realisation. When trees are planted close together, as in the
beech-forests of the Continent, they climb to great heights in their
struggle for air and light, but they make no lateral growth. When
trees are pollarded, they make abundant lateral growth, but they
cease to climb upward. When trees are exposed to the prevailing winds
of an open sea-coast, they are blown over away from the sea, and make
all their growth, such as it is, on the landward side. When trees
are on the border of a thick plantation, they make all their growth
towards the open air, and are bare and leafless on the opposite side.
In each of these cases the growth made is inharmonious and one-sided:
the balance between the two intersecting planes of growth, or between
the two opposite sides, has been lost. But when a tree is planted in
the open, and when all the other conditions of growth are favourable,
it grows harmoniously in all directions,--upward, outward, and all
around. In other words, it is growing as a whole, growing, as it
ought to grow, through every fibre of its being, and yet maintaining
a perfect symmetry of form and the harmony of true proportion among
its various parts.

This is the kind of growth which the soul makes in the life of
self-realisation; and if it falls appreciably short of this standard,
if it develops itself on this side or that, to the neglect of all
other sides, then we must say of it that, though it is realising this
or that faculty or group of faculties, it is not realising itself. I
have spoken of the six great expansive instincts which indicate the
main lines of the child's natural growth, and I have shown that in
Utopia the cultivation of all those instincts is duly provided for.
In the life of self-realisation the soul would continue to grow on
the lines which those instincts had marked out for it. I do not mean
that when the child goes out into the work-a-day world, he must give
to all six instincts the systematic training which they received, or
ought to have received, in school. The exigencies of the daily round
of life are such as to make that impossible, in all but the most
exceptional cases. But that is all the more reason why the expansive
instincts should be carefully and skilfully trained in school. For
where they are so trained, an impetus is given to each of them which
will keep it alive and active long after the direct influence of
the school has ceased, and will enable it to absorb and assimilate
whatever nutriment may come in its way. If the Utopian training
cannot be followed up, in its entirety, in the child's after-life, it
can at least initiate a movement which need never be arrested,--a
movement in the direction of the triune goal of Man's being, the goal
towards which his expansive instincts are ever tending to take him,
the goal of Love, Beauty, and Truth.

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