Thus the individual conforms to the
needs and wisdom of the group. Humanism, at its best, has something
heroic, unselfish, noble about it. Its votaries do not eat to their
liking nor drink to their thirst. They learn deep lessons almost
unconsciously; to conquer their desires, to make light of toil and
pain and discomfort; the true humanist is well aware that Spartan
discipline is incomparably superior to Greek accidence. This is what
one of the greatest of them, Goethe, meant when he said: "Anything
which emancipates the spirit without a corresponding growth in
self-mastery is pernicious."
All humanists then have two characteristics in common: first,
they assume that man is his own arbiter, has both the requisite
intelligence and the moral ability to control his own destiny;
secondly, they place the source and criterion of this power in
collective wisdom, not in individual vagary and not in divine
revelation. They assert, therefore, that the law of the group, the
perfected and wrought out code of human experience, is all that is
binding and all that is essential. To be sure, and most significantly,
this authority is not rigid, complete, fixed. There is nothing
complete in the humanist's world. Experience accumulates and man's
knowledge grows; the expectation and joy in progress is a part of it;
man's code changes, emends, expands with his onward marching.
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