First Man

“ Rejecting then all such impediments, I begin by telling you that amongst every people which I have visited in my travels, I have found a great curiosity to know the origin and first condition of mankind, and to learn the changes which have made men what they now are. Accordingly in every country some person has undertaken to gratify this desire, and disclose the first beginning of man, and his progress to the present condition; so that there is not a race to be found, however savage and destitute of literature, which has not some legend of the early circumstances of the world. ”

“ The man, the human being, the first one who came." He walks all day over the moors in the great stillness, turning the sod occasionally to examine its possibilities, then walks again until night comes. ”

“ Thus have we endeavoured to pre-figure the whole Earthly Life of Man by a comprehension of its purpose;—to perceive why our Race had to begin its Existence here, and by this means to describe the whole present Life of humankind:—this is what we wished to do,—it was our first task. ”

“ In a little while there are eyes full of interest and clutching hands full of purpose, smiles and frowns, the babbling beginning of expression and affections and aversions. Before the first year is out there is obedience and rebellion, choice and self-control, speech has commenced, and the struggle of the newcomer to stand on his feet in this world of men. ”

“ Everywhere the material conditions of life were essentially the same for the man of the Eighteenth Century that they had been for the man of the First. Then began the amazing work of the brain and hand of man, by which he has been refashioning and refitting the planet he inhabits, and making a new world for his dwelling. ”

“ I would not imply that being first is necessarily a merit in itself. There must be a beginning to everything and to magnify the man who felled the first tree or reared the first shanty is no honor if unaccompanied by moral worth. ”

“ It may be true that a first class did not always mean a first-class man, but it always seemed to mean a man who had learned how to work honestly, whether he became Prime Minister or Archbishop, or spent his days in one of the public offices, or even in a counting-house or newspaper office. ”

“ There are, indeed, one or two legendary stories concerning the Great-Great, relating to the creation of man, and to the duration of human life. The man is supposed to have been created by splitting a reed, from which the first parents of the human race proceeded. ”

“ Instructed by anthropologists, we know how poor and mean were the beginnings of humanity on earth. But of that other term of progress—the goal of progress,{6} the divine man of whom the cave man was the germ, the first rough draft—of the man who is to be, our notions are vague. ”

“ In this manner they wended their way, from nation to nation, and clime to clime, until they had made the circuit of the universe. Wherever they came, they found the human race, which at this time was all young—it being not many years since the first creation of mankind—repining at the present, and looking forward to a riper age for happiness. ”

“ The beginning holds within it the end; the first start on the road of life determines the direction and the destination of the journey; ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte. “Remember,” said Lord Collingwood to a young man whom he loved, “before you are five-and-twenty you must establish a character that will serve you all your life.” ”

“ In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first. This in no sense, however, implies that great men are not needed. On the contrary, the first object of any good system must be that of developing first-class men; ”

“ Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken. ”

“ But since then they have silently studied the world's history and manners; they have wandered far and wide and observed life for themselves. They have thought much. The great change has come about; the work has been done, whether poorly or otherwise, and, upon the whole, the good will prevail. ”

“ All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man had taken their first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first. ”

“ First love is like a revolution; the uniformly regular routine of ordered life is broken down and shattered in one instant; youth mounts the barricade, waves high its bright flag, and whatever awaits it in the future—death or a new life—all alike it goes to meet with ecstatic welcome. ”

“ It was at first a wondrous Being, called the 'Initiator," and after him a group of semi-divine and semi-human beings." Without at all attempting to explain the real nature of this mysterious Being or Race, we may assume that one of the things hinted at is the consciousness of united being possessed by these ancient Adepts. Walking abroad over the earth as instructors of a less progressed humanity, their wisdom and power had a common root. They taught truth from a heart-perception of life, ever fresh and eternal, everywhere pervading nature and welling up in themselves. ”

“ Long years of preparation mark the pathway for the splendid souls, And generations live and die and seem no nearer to their goals, And yet the purpose of it all, the fleeting pleasure and the woe, The laughter and the grief of life that all who come to earth must know May be to pave the way for one—one man to serve the Will Divine And it is possible that he may be your little boy or mine. Some day the world will need a man! ”

“ But if our ancestors at the close of the first century could look back with joy and even admiration, at the progress of the country, what emotions must we not feel, when, from the point on which we stand, we also look back and run along the events of the century which has now closed! ”

“ Men may be divided into two classes,—those who have a "one thing," and those who have no "one thing," to do; those with aim, and those without aim, in their lives: and practically it turns out that almost all of the success, and, therefore, the greater part of the happiness, go to the first class. ”

“ “Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside,” is a safe rule for those who would always retain the good opinion of that all-powerful, but somewhat unintelligent, incubus, “the average person,” but the pioneer, the guide, is necessary. That is, if the world is to move forward. ”

“ Is it not, on the contrary, a clear presumption that the great career of earthly nations is but on the point of opening, that life is but just beginning to kindle, when the great obstacles to effectual locomotion, and therefore to extensive human intercourse, are first of all beginning to give way? ”

“ Some men advance, the soul pushing the body with more or less effort; some with the soul first, trailing the body; some in unison, and these are they who make the best progress as to the real advancement. Anderson moved, on the whole, in the last way. ”

“ This era was one of development and promise, and richly were the promises fulfilled in the achievements of his later years. A careful study of his life to this point is sufficient to show that, with health and time, such a nature would certainly leave a mark wide and deep on the world in which it was placed. His characteristics were such that achievement was the very essence of life, and, with the promise and potency as revealed in this first twenty-three years of his life, we may be well prepared for the brilliant record of the remaining sixty-three. ”

“ From the moment that the capabilities and the attractions of the new realm fixed the thoughts and engaged the energies of wise and earnest men, these fair expanses began to open themselves — as, by a continuous course of adventure and exploration, they have been doing ever since — to the noblest uses of man. ”

“ But in the first place the greatest minds of the first generation of which we have to take account, who were born about the beginning of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, were, partly by time and partly by chance, directed for the most part either into poetry, or into politics, or into active life ”

“ If we put together all that we have learned from anthropology and ethnography about primitive men and primitive society, we perceive that the first task of life is to live. Men begin with acts, not with thoughts. ”

“ The progress of a generation across the span of life might be made so serene and well-ordered and fruitful an affair! What else had man to concern himself about than this one thing—that “peace on earth, good will to men,” should rule in his time? ”

“ In the last stage of civilization, poetry, religion, and philosophy will be one, and there are glimpses of this truth in the first. ”

“ This is shown by the savages, who consider the future life merely as the second volume, the new testament of the first, and make no greater distinction between the first and second life than between youth and age: they easily believe in all their hopes ”

“ Its achievements in one generation, though deemed wonderful, are outstripped in the next; and the latest successful efforts of courage and skill serve to give us confidence that much or all which yet baffles man’s sagacity and power in the realm of nature shall be eventually subjected to him; he is a being of Enterprise. ”

“ Amid such fleeting emotions nothing so resembles love as the young passion of an artist who tastes the first delicious anguish of his destined fame and woe,—a passion daring yet timid, full of vague confidence and sure discouragement. Is there a man, slender in fortune, rich in his springtime of genius, whose heart has not beaten loudly as he approached a master of his art? If there be, that man will for ever lack some heart-string, some touch, I know not what, of his brush, some fibre in his creations, some sentiment in his poetry. ”

“ A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted,
Hast thou the master mistress of my passion,
A woman’s gentle heart but not acquainted
With shifting change as is false women’s fashion,
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling:
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth,
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. ”

“ Yes, I will welcome the new man, although I shall see more of the old one in him than you perhaps think,—nor would I have it otherwise. We don't change the bases of our lives, after all: the forces are differently combined, otherwise developed, but they hang, I fancy, to the same roots. ”

“ Now, if we want to work for this kingdom, and to bring it, and enter into it, there's just one condition to be first accepted. You must enter it as children, or not at all; ”

“ It’s who first thought the thought. You’re searching, Joe,
For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings––there are no such things.
There are only middles.” ”

“ We pause to look back upon our past today, not as an old man grown reminiscent, but as a prudent man still in his youth and lusty prime and at the threshold of new tasks, who would remind himself of his origin and lineage, re call the pledges of his youth, assess as at a turning in his life the duties of his station. ”

“ We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek—not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace. ”

“ And you will, by the dignity of your conduct, afford occasion for posterity to say, when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to mankind, "Had this day been wanting, the world had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining." ”

“ Then it was that he realized his manhood—knew that he was a man—and understood that manhood is not a matter of only twenty-one years. And then it was—as he sat there alone on the brow of the little hill with his boyhood years dead behind him and the years of his manhood before—that his manhood life began, even as the manhood life of every man really begins, with his Dreams. ”

“ The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered. ”

“ The discovery of this set of facts, slowly emerging into consciousness, is the culmination of all past history, and the beginning of all man's higher life. It is the turning point in the history of the human race. Every onward step in man's preceding life, whereby he has united to form higher and higher groups, has been leading onward and upward to the development of strong personality, to the development of individuals competent to make this great discovery. ”

“ PREFACE. These records of the Triumphs of Perseverance and Enterprise have been written with the view to inspire the youthful reader with a glow of emulation, and to induce him to toil and to advance in the peaceful achievements of science and benevolence, remembering the adage, “Whatever man has done, man may do.” ”

“ But that which transpires during the period between conception and birth, as the foundation of character in the future man or woman, as an index to their thoughts, feelings, plans, motives, actions, to their virtues and vices, to successes and failures in life’s conflict, has been entirely overlooked by biographers and historians, by poets and novelists, in their efforts to delineate human life as manifested in individuals, or in civil and ecclesiastical combinations. ”

“ May we not, then, look forward to the time when “the best that has anywhere been in the [Pg 106] world shall be the lot of every man born into it”—that is to say, the lot of every man who desires the best? ”