No More Learning

Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of many men, is but a
sort of locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and man, by his
machinery, is meeting the horse and the ox half-way. Whatever part the
whip has touched is thenceforth palsied. Who would ever think of a
_side_ of any of the supple cat tribe, as we speak of a _side_ of
beef?

I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be
made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats
still left to sow before they become submissive members of society.
Undoubtedly, all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization;
and because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited
disposition, this is no reason why the others should have their
natures broken that they may be reduced to the same level. Men are in
the main alike, but they were made several in order that they might be
various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly or quite
as well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be
regarded. Any man can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other
man could serve so rare a use as the author of this illustration did.
Confucius says, "The skins of the tiger and the leopard, when they are
tanned, are as the skins of the dog and the sheep tanned. " But it is
not the part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to
make sheep ferocious; and tanning their skins for shoes is not the
best use to which they can be put.

* * * * *

When looking over a list of men's names in a foreign language, as of
military officers, or of authors who have written on a particular
subject, I am reminded once more that there is nothing in a name. The
name Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more
human than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the
Poles and Russians are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they
had been named by the child's rigmarole, _Iery wiery ichery van,
tittle-tol-tan_. I see in my mind a herd of wild creatures swarming
over the earth, and to each the herdsman has affixed some barbarous
sound in his own dialect.
The names of men are, of course, as cheap
and meaningless as _Bose_ and _Tray_, the names of dogs.

Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named
merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to
know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the
individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier
in a Roman army had a name of his own,--because we have not supposed
that he had a character of his own.

At present our only true names are nicknames. I knew a boy who, from
his peculiar energy, was called "Buster" by his playmates, and this
rightly supplanted his Christian name. Some travelers tell us that an
Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was
his fame; and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new
exploit. It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely,
who has earned neither name nor fame.

I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still see
men in herds for all them. A familiar name cannot make a man less
strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his
own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a
savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours. I see that my
neighbor, who bears the familiar epithet William or Edwin, takes it
off with his jacket. It does not adhere to him when asleep or in
anger, or aroused by any passion or inspiration. I seem to hear
pronounced by some of his kin at such a time his original wild name in
some jaw-breaking or else melodious tongue.

* * * * *

Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all
around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the
leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to
that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,--a
sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English
nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.