By DONALD DeMARCO
The story is told of a great feast that was to be held in a medieval village. To ensure its success, a huge cask was built into which each participant was to pour a bottle of wine. One villager, thinking to himself that one bottle of water would go unnoticed in a sea of wine, poured in his share of the more common and less expensive beverage. When the big day arrived, the cask was tapped. But all that flowed from it was water, Adam’s ale, aqua pura, H20. Each participant had reasoned the same way, “My small contribution would be drowned out by the contributions of others.”
This story illustrates the selfishness not only of the individual but of a whole community of individuals. It is the kind of story that feeds the notion that, after all, people are only human, and they tend to think of themselves first at the expense of others. It gives permission to use one’s humanity as an excuse for one’s wrongdoing.
But it is not humanity that is at fault. Human nature should not take the blame. One may say, “What do you expect, I am only human.” Yet, one never hears a person say, “I am not a humanitarian because, after all, I am only human.” Here, the contradiction between one’s nature and errant behavior becomes more apparent.
The pagan philosopher Terence put things in the proper perspective when he said, “I am a human being: I regard nothing of human interest as foreign to me” (“Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.”). This Latin thinker understood the profound and obligatory bond between being a human being and involving oneself in human concerns. He would, most likely, have added his best bottle of wine to the great cask at the medieval feast.
Perhaps no one expressed the matter more eloquently than Hamlet, who, despite his sour mood, spoke of man in glorious terms: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!. . . . [the] quintessence of dust?”
The last phrase warrants amplification. The ancient Greeks believed the world to be composed of four elements: air, earth, fire, and water. The fifth essence (quinta essentia) was imperishable and believed to be the substance of the imperishable stars. Man is a paradox, therefore, a composite of a perishable body and an imperishable soul. Therefore, man can be viewed in two radically different ways: as being mistake prone or as aspiring to the heavens. Gerard Manley Hopkins took the high road, referring to man as “immortal diamond.”
The distinguished French existentialist philosopher, Gabriel Marcel, writes of a remarkable experience he had. “I was coming home from a concert,” he wrote, “where I had heard Bach played and I experienced in myself a revival of a feeling or rather of a certainty that seems to have been lost in our time: the honor of being human.”
Human beings are dispatched these days, through abortion and euthanasia, with increasing ease. Was Marcel right? Have we, indeed, we citizens of the modern world, lost that sense of “the honor of being human”? The temptation to suicide among high school students, according to recent sociological studies, is alarmingly high. Do these students understand the great honor it is to be a human being? Or are they more interested in getting ahead, looking better than others, or being popular? The best of art reminds us of our unalienable dignity as human beings. It reminds us of what our focus should be.
I have been informed that in some zoos throughout the world, humans are now on display along with other species of the animal kingdom. The honor of being human, of course, is not something that can be observed by onlookers. It is something that one can sense, and with certainty, within himself.
Bing Crosby, in the 1944 movie, Going My Way, used his enchanting voice to convey a message to each boy in his charge that “you can be better off than you are” because you can do great things that animals cannot possibly do. You can “swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar.” You do not want to be a “mule” or a “pig” or a “fish” or a “monkey.” If you “hate to go to school, you may grow up to be a mule”; “if you don’t care a feather or a fig, you may grow up to be a pig”; “if that sort of life is what you wish, you may grow up to be a fish.” Nor is the monkey worthy of emulation.
In closing his musical instruction, without ignoring the human paradox, the inimitable crooner tells the youth of America: “So, you see it’s all up to you. You can be better than you are. You could be swinging on a star.”
We should not blame human nature for our failings, for it is up to us to follow our better angels, the loftier impulses of our humanity. We need not follow the example of the medieval villagers, but listen to the philosophy of Terence and Marcel, the poetry of Shakespeare and Hopkins, the music of Bach and, yes, even that of a blue-eyed baritone more formally known as Harry Lillis Crosby Jr.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Ten Major Moral Mistakes and How They Are Destroying Society; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com.
(Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
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