--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Naisbitt, H. W. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 2 number: 1 published: 1898-11 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'H. W. Naisbitt, "The Building of a Man", *Improvement Era* 2, no. 1 (November 1898): 21–26.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera21unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera21unse start_page: 21 end_page: 26 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1898-11) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera21unse publication_year: 1898 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1898, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Building of a Man THE BUILDING OF A MAN. BY ELDER H. W. NAISBITT. In all divine procedure as seen or revealed there is nothing superfluous; everything has its uses, and where human observation has failed as yet to apprehend this, the conclusion from things known is, that final discovery is inevitable. Now man, it is said, is the highest, the most important product of this earth at least; to him all things are subservient; for him all things were made. So far as other creations are concerned, he may be, is, "a little lower than the angels," and Shakespeare's immortal apostrophe may not be strictly applicable to every phase of tribal or national development; yet the highest, the brightest, the best, are simply the outgrowth of faculty inherent in the lowest, however dormant or incapable of present manifestation; for throughout the fleeing centuries it has not been found that any new faculty has been engrafted into man's constitution or forced upon him by any outside pressure; the normal powers, faculties, etc., have but been quickened, cultivated, enlarged by necessities and use. It is easy to perceive that while the Creator "made man upright, he hath sought out many inventions," and the legitimate action of personal endowment has been dwarfed, perverted, or abused at the instance of power, whatever form that power might assume. Holy writ affirms that "God hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth," but Science presumes to classify and by inference at least, would establish a series of creative efforts, ignoring all the forces of ages and conditions which with isolation and fostered enmity between the parts, made new types possible in the human, as modifications and types within the memory of a genera- tion, have been made easy in the animal kingdom. Not that new forms of animal life have been evolved or created, but variety at the instance of intelligence has established the type. The further inference follows, that when the primitive unity or homogeneity of humanity was infringed upon; when sin entered into the world and human passions began to exert themselves; when war and collision suggested dispersion; isolation, climate, diet, kingcraft and priestcraft operating upon sensitive faculty created bias, prejudice, hatred, and war, even to the death. Is it then possible that the present diversity, while subject to and no doubt utilized in the divine purpose, is it possible, we ask, that the nationalities and tribal relations of the earth are truly artificial, the product of human device, and sustained today by the plausible theories of nationalities? Or do they exist at the instance of conquest, of which there are quite modern instances in plenty, where power has overthrown old institutions, compelled the change of language, and subjected past loyalty to strain so severe and far reaching, that a later generation would be unfamiliar with the tongue, the habits, and the institutions of their fathers? For men are the product of institutions. The Mongolian, Americanized for a generation, is unlike his fathers; the Hawaiian is not what hewas before the advent of Captain Cook; our aborigines are but a shadow of what they were when the Pioneers crossed the plains. The processes of modification and amalgamation are going on in these United States under the same law that operates in Alsace and Lorraine under German rule, in Hungary and Poland under Russian domination, and everywhere else, as observation will establish. The agencies of modern civilization, however, are only beginning to be felt in the breaking down of the antiquated barriers erected by usurpation; schools and culture, the printing press and books; facilities of travel and the attrition of contact, are demonstrating on a colossal scale, that there is no essential enmity between the varied sections of mankind. World's fairs, international exhibitions, commerce and barter, travel and experience are the alchemists which are dissolving the crust formed of craft and solidified by age; men are appearing before each other in the guise of friends; free intercourse and interchange of products are impressing THE BUILDING OF A MAN. 23 upon the universal mind the idea that humanity is one, that the hitherto isolated individualities and nationalities are a necessity, and can be a blessing to each other. Even the preaching of persecuted, emasculated Christianity, has been a potent factor in creating international comity; in uprooting superstition; in broadening the thought; and preparing the way under Providence, for the revealment and propagation of that higher — — because purer and more potent doctrine of the Gospel, which alone presents the unity of divine purpose and of divine procedure, and applies this to [the almost obsolete idea of man's unity by creation and brotherhood. Hence the irrefragable conclusion that revelation from the Creator is absolutely needed for the working out of human destiny as it appears to the prescient mind of "Him with whom we have to do!" All the organizations and institutions of man's wisdom have been the outgrov/th of special intention to perpetuate a special type. French institutions and rule have been used expressly; English methods have been used successfully; and our young nation prides itself, as its predecessors did, in securing the love and allegiance of the subject, his loyalty and life, to the support and furtherance of this nationality. Even the iconoclast in either country evinces no intention of nullifjdng but rather of increasing, establishing, perpetuating, consolidating, or extending this local national thought beyond the boundaries of its original domain. In all this there is little thought of manhood building in the abstract, but the Englishman per se, the German, the Frenchman, the American is the desired product of friction, discipline, training, and education. Travel and experience obliterate this narrowness, and the intelligent man of opportunity becomes generous, cosmopolitan, "a man of the world," assimilating to the type of a veritable child of God, although early association may have woven its poetic tendrils into the very fibres of his heart. It would appear to the looker-on as if these ideas should be fundamental in this glorious country of ours, and that in the education of its future citizens, every part of man or woman nature should be certain of all needed culture; not the mental only, but the industrial; not the two combined alone, but the spiritual or religious also; because the religious faculty is imbedded in human nature. It is this which gives man preeminence over the animal kingdom; it is the crown of humanity; perverted, it becomes superstition; becomes Christian, or why enlightened, it boast ourselves as being a Christian nation? Why, engage in a war the essence of which was declared to be Christianized humanitarianism? Besides, if God is a myth, if religion is a nonentity, if there is nothing beyond local responsibility differing in China and America, in Spain and Cuba, upon what does the superstructure of social morality, integrity, and righteousness rest, or can society simply fall back upon the heathenish thought, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die"? Not only should "man-building" be based upon the culture of his whole nature, but all his preceptors, his educators should understand this nature and what he hopes to accomplish by its culture. A teacher who is deficient or ignorant of this, is hardly fitted for his high and sanctified office. If great things can be compared with meaner ones, the question might be asked, if a wise man would entrust a valuable farm to one knowing nothing of land or crops? Would he entrust the building of a house to one unacguainted with lumber, brick, mortar, and the intended uses of that house? Or in the arrangement and completion of a dwelling, would an architect be justified in overlooking the room or rooms which typify best the meaning of the word home? Or would it be wisdom to spend all a person's means in embellishing the upper parts, if the foundation was defective, neglected, or unsafe? The comer-stone of a magnificent edifice always commands special attention; the corner-stone of man-building in the image of God, is the intelligent cultivation of the religious sentiment. And it may be asserted broadly, without fear of contradiction, that no man is a thoroughly competent educator unless he understands the nature, the purpose, the destiny of that rare element of manhood which he may direct or pervert as his ignorance or intelli- gence may determine. It is a pleasant thing to contemplate, it is a grand thought to cherish, it will be sublime when universal and heavenly in its full fruition, for it can hardly be appreciated or realized now. But the Church Schools of Utah have seized upon this idea in the spirit thereof. Many professors and teachers are now grappling with THE BUILDING OF A MAN. 25 this essential dogma; theology is being taught systematically; young men and women are learning the alphabet of life; "the powers of the world to come" are being invoked in the acquisition of knowledge; they now see (if dimly) the outlines of their earthly mission. A few are "seeking wisdom as for hidden treasure;" impressions are being formed, and there are already indications of the development of a new type of manhood and womanhood, the product of new and effectual institutions, because divine. The day is not far distant when traversing the continents and isles of the sea, men shall say of such, "that man (or woman) was born in Zion," just as the world have said, "that man is a Jew," or of Israel. The influence of God-given institutions is written on his forehead where faithfulness and obedience have been the maxim of his generations. It is religion (true religion) that must save the world; sectar- ianism cannot do it; education (intellectual) cannot do it; super- stition cannot do it; nor science, nor politics, nor wealth. God hath determined that it shall be done by Jesus Christ; by the preaching of His Gospel; by the aid of His Priesthood and the growth of His Church, with the aids and auxiliaries thereof; among which are all organizations "from the kindergarten to the university," each breathed upon by His Spirit, illuminated by inspiration, guided by principles revealed from heaven, and applied to every condition of man upon the earth, from "the hewer of wood and drawer of water" to the statesmen and rulers in the high places of the earth! It is a great thing to have made a beginning; to hold the keys; to con the alphabet, and to study the science of eternal life. The intelligent workers may be few; they may only know from hour to hour what they shall do next, yet if they know the voice of God, if susceptible to the whisperings of "the still small voice," there will be advancement, "slow but sure," "without observation," yet like the temple of Solomon "rising like an exhalation," "without even the sound of ax or hammer or any tool of iron being heard therein." It is the mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to solve this educational problem.It was no empty boast made by the Prophet when he said, "/ combat the errors of ages; I meet the violence of mobs; I cope with illegal proceedings from executive authority; I cut the Gordian knot of powers; I solve mathematical problems of universities with truth —diamond truth, and God is my right hand man!" There is a mania for enlightenment which is one-sided, in that it only considers material things. The world is becoming "heady, highminded, lovers of themselves, rather than lovers of God;" selflaudation and personal aggrandisement is the spirit of the age; "great /and little u" foreshadows trouble; men are left to themselves, having no use for God, for faith, for religion, for truth, or their fellow-man, only as he may be used as a lever to lift themselves to power. Mormonism is God's protest against this drift; the teachings of His servants are a protest against selfishness, and the asserted shrewdness of worldly wisdom. The Church Schools are a protest against education without religion, against the cultivation of the head and neglect of the heart; and (shall it be deemed presumptuous to say) unless "the little leaven can leaven the whole lump," the boasted education of this age, scholastic, political, financial, and religious, will fail to stem the flood of immorality which threatens us this very day. Our institutions will go down, our liberties will be overthrown, and our example will perish from the earth. The homes, the schools, the pulpits, the forums of the land must stand for purity, for honor, for manhood, for faith and God, or catastrophe is as inevitable as the fate of the nations of old, who gave themselves up to pleasure and "perverted the right way of the Lord."