Dignity of Human Nature
The philosopher is fond of talking to me about what he calls “the dignity of human nature.” The pains he takes to bolster himself up in this shaky belief of his, would do credit to a better cause. Obstinacy of course is at the bottom of it, for he no more believes in it than I do. How can he, and he living and breathing in this sublunary sphere himself? That’s just what I said to him this morning; for, thank Providence, I can generally speak my mind on most points. What did he say? That’s my affair; suffice it to say, he sticks to it. I made him sit down; then I sat down on his knee, to make sure of a listener. Then I took in my hand the morning papers. In the first place, there was a man of sixty who had been coaxed in where he shouldn’t go, and robbed while there. Secondly, there was a justice of the peace sentenced to the Penitentiary for robbery. Thirdly, there was a clergyman convicted of bigamy. Fourthly, there was a husband, who had been trying, with an iron shovel, to find out whether his wife had any brains. Fifthly, there was another who had decided an argument by biting off a portion of his antagonist’s nose. Sixthly, there were two lads, of the respective ages of eight and thirteen, who had been murderously perforating each other’s intestines with sharp penknives. Seventhly, there was a man in Massachusetts who had lately numbered his twenty-fifth child. Eighthly, there was a “gentleman” found, in the small hours, sitting on the cold sidewalk in —— street, hiccupping for a waiter “to bring him another bottle of champagne.”
“Well,” says the philosopher, when I stopped to take breath, “these are only the exceptions that prove the rule.” Exceptions, quotha! when I hadn’t yet dug into the nauseous kennel of the advertising list! Exceptions? but what’s the use of talking? Does not every morning’s new issue furnish similar “exceptions”? Certainly. Besides, didn’t I put this catechism to him? How came —— to give the wife of an official high in power that splendid grand piano? There’s a dignified way to secure, through a wheedling female tongue, a fat office. Not to mention a carriage and horses unexpectedly placed at the disposal of Senator ——’s wife. Last, but not least, look at “Jeff.,” first and last, from his attempted flight to his boyish refusal to eat his prison fare, bestowing it gratuitously in the faces of his guards; and then kicking and swearing, while his naughty little hands and feet were being fastened together therefor. Dignity? when I look at human beings, and think of what they daily and hourly do, I am seized with convulsions of laughter at the idea. Sometimes the devil possesses me, in the presence of some solemn “hark from the tombs” kind of an individual, to picture it, till I am tied up with cramps trying to keep from laughing. Nobody will ever know what I’ve suffered in this way. Dignity? You should see it with its boots up on the window-sill of some hotel lounging-room facing Broadway, with its mouth wide open, thus—O; its hat rakishly set on one temple, and its eyes somnolently closed to the charms of the lady pedestrians, who wouldn’t miss the picture for sixpence. Dignity? Yesterday I saw a man nearly cut in two with corsets. Another trying to hop round hilariously in a pair of corn-murdering boots. Another roaring out in an omnibus like a mad bull because the cold-fingered driver gave him a “soiled stamp.”
Dignity of human nature? Where is it when a man is in the dentist’s chair? Where, when a waiter spills coffee on his shirt-bosom or hot soup on his trousers? One might as well not stiffen himself up against facts like these, said I to the philosopher. We don’t stop being children, this side the grave, that ever I could find out. The toys we mostly scramble for, like those that dangle from the Christmas-tree, suit but the present hour, and, with all their gilding and glittering lights, will one day be but broken rubbish on our hands. When a man is dead he looks dignified; but while he is alive, with a pipe stereotyped to his lips, or alternately dipping his soup-erfluous mustache in a plate of soup and sopping it with a napkin; or, as the country-woman said of her pet minister, “sitting down, spitting round socionable,” I really can’t entertain the idea of “Dignity.” The more I try the more I laugh. Frivolous, I grant; but what were woman without frivolity? Not a man would speak to us.
What Ministers Need.—We have often thought that ministers need their congregations as much, if not more, than congregations need their ministers. Parishioners are not apt to look at it in this way. The matter of salary nowadays, thank God, is, as a general thing, properly considered; but the matter of “holding up his hands” spiritually, is not. Remember, he is a man like yourselves, subject to discouragement, and needs—oh, more often than you know who only look on his face once a week—that affectionate relationship which you delight in between your own children and yourself. You wish their respect, but would you be satisfied with only that? Do you not delight in the beaming eye and constant, kindly, heartfelt recognition of your presence? Just so your minister feels toward you, else he were no minister. Then do not treat him as you would a Fourth-of-July orator, or a stray lecturer, to be paid and dismissed, and forgotten when his message is delivered, careless after that whether he be crushed or shipwrecked on his way home. Remember the phrase, “holding up his hands.” It has a world of significance, looked at in this light.