But Franklin
does it. The man of faith is sometimes mistaken, but he is always
experimenting, because he always believes that man to-morrow will
be more than man is to-day or was yesterday. And all progress in
civilization has its secret in this great faith in man as a being
that has a mastery, not yet interpreted, not yet understood, not yet
comprehended in its fulness, over all the powers of nature.
Now, is there any ground or basis for this faith in man? Have we a
right to believe that man is more than he seems to be, as we can see
him in the street to-day? Have we a right to build our institutions
and fabrics on this belief? Have we a right to think that man can
govern himself, or must we go back and say with Carlyle and Ruskin
and Voltaire that the great body of men are incompetent to govern
themselves, and a few wise rulers must govern them? Have we a right to
believe that all the progress that has thus far been made in
science is but an augury of progress far greater, reaching into the
illimitable? Have we a right to say that these portraits of a possible
humanity, this Portia, this Toby Veck, this Tiny Tim, this ideal man
and woman, are real men and real women in possibility, if not in
the actualities of life? Or are we to think of them as simply
phantasmagoria hung up for the delectation of a passing moment? The
Bible makes answer to that question,--the Bible preeminently, but
the great poets and the great prophets of all religions; the Bible,
because the poets and the prophets of the Bible transcend the poets
and the prophets of all other religions.
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