Only By Helping Others Can You Help Yourself

( Originally Published 1908 )

The Zeitgeist

MAURICE MAETERLINK says that one bee can never make honey, for the reason that a bee alone has no intelligence. Bees succeed only by working for the good of other bees. A single bee, separated from the hive, is absolutely helpless, yet a hive of bees has a very great and well-defined purpose and intelligence.

And this intelligence, Maeterlink calls, "The Spirit of the Hive."

Occasionly a bee will go off to the fields and come back gorged with honey, bringing nothing for the common stock, and this bee is quickly killed--stung to death by a self-appointed committee who sit on the case, and seem to consider that any bee that loses sight of the Spirit of the Hive and works for private good is sick, criminally insane, and cannot be allowed longer to cumber good space.

Now it is quite probable that if we could communicate with a bee, and ask it why it makes honey, it would say, "I make honey because I choose to," just as Schopenhauer's boulder that rolled down hill explained that it did so because it found a peculiar pleasure and satisfaction in so doing.

Men think they do certain things because they choose, but the actual fact is they simply succumb to the strongest attraction and call it choice Is n't a man under the domain of Natural Law just as much as a bee ? I think so. The recognition of this great truth concerning the Solidarity of the Race, marks a mental epoch in the onward and upward march With the bee, there is seemingly no evolution.

The Spirit of the Hive is fixed within narrow limits.

With man, the Spirit of the Hive, or if you prefer, the Spirit of the Times, or the " Zeitgeist, is a constantly changing spiritual entity.

Ancient Athens was made and controlled by fourteen men. But these masterly men lid not represent the "Zeitgeist," nor were they strong enough to form the Spirit of the Hive. They kept the many in subjection by the seductive ecclesiasticon—by shows, spectacles, pomps, processions, and when danger at home became imminent, the mob was diverted by a foreign wars.

As long as the actual " Zeitgeist" of Greece was saturated with religious fanaticism, superstition, a childish tantrum tendency, a Harry Thaw and Harry Lehr propensity, and an Old Harry atmosphere, the fourteen great men of Athens who for just thirty-six years sat on the lid, were in a very dangerous position.

The miracle is that they kept the beast down and under long enough to build the temples and embellish them with undying works of art.

But they were allowed to do their work only by pandering to the hoi polloi idea that the statues represented the gods in Elysium, and that the Pantheon was for the habitation of Zeus Himself. To find the Deity in yourself by producing Art, was a truth the many could not comprehend, and when Praxitiles hinted at it, his temerity cost him his life.

When Phidias placed his own portrait with that of Pericles upon a sacred shield, the glory that was Greece got its death sentence.

The mumble of discontent grew into a roar.

Socrates was passed the hemlock, and all of the fourteen actual gods who made the glory were either killed or ostracized—robbed, disgraced, undone

The " Zeitgeist" had its way. Socrates, Euclid, Pericles, Phidias, Herodotus, Empedocles and Sophocles no more represented the Spirit of the Hive that existed at Athens, than Jesus represented the "Zeitgeist" of Jerusalem in the age of Augustus.

Savonarola, Tyndale, Ridley, Huss, Wyclif, George Wishart, were martyrs, all to the Spirit of the Times.

Yet Socrates, Jesus, Savonarola, Old John Brown, and none of Freedom's illustrious dead died in vain. They died that we might live; and as a single drop of analine will tint an entire cask of water, so has the blood of martyrs tinted the Spirit of the Times and given us a peculiar and different "Zeitgeist" from that which we would otherwise have had.

The death of Lincoln created a sentiment which the living man could not, and which in time brought the entire South to an acknowledgment of the righteousness of his cause.

The "Zeitgeist" not being able to understand or assimilate the doctrines of the seers and prophets, killed them. The man who preaches doctrines or performs deeds contrary to the Spirit of the Times is ever regarded as the enemy of the State, a menace to society, and is snuffed out. Whether he be above the law or below it, matters not : the saviours of the world have always been hanged between thieves. This full, frank, free expression which we now enjoy is the precious legacy of a bloodstained past. And it is for us, the living, to see that these dead shall not have died in vain.

But this we know—we have a Spirit of the Hive now that is making honey honestly, and that too, of a satisfactory quality, while the honey of Hymettus was made by that immortal fourteen who worked by stealth, plot, plan and connivance.

Our Spirit of the Times is of a kind unequalled in history. We have thousands upon thousands of men and women who are thinking great and noble thoughts and doing great and splendid work.

Our "Zeitgeist" is sensitive, restless, alert, impressionable, progressive, and is making for righteousness. The man who can imagine a better religion than now exists, is allowed to throw his vision on the screen, and he who can imagine a better government than we now have, is not hanged for his pains, but is allowed to express his dream.

Public opinion rules. No law that is contrary to the " Zeitgeist" can be enforced. Judges translate and interpret the laws to suit the Spirit of the Times.