In 1850 he declared that "the real test of a man is not what he knows, but what he is in himself and in his relation to others.” 25 Men may condemn the poet's judgment in speaking such splendid eulogy of Wellington or Havelock or Prince Albert as ideal men, but no one can truly say that he ever forgot the possible divinity of humanity, or neglected to call man to the realization of his great possibilities.

That Tennyson was a firm believer in the freedom of man's will is evidenced by his poems and by his biography. The lines most frequently quoted by him upon this subject are these:

This main miracle that thou art thou

With power on thine own act and on the world." Miss E. R. Chapman who published A Companion to In Memoriam in 1888 quotes the poet's words upon the first stanza of the last section of the great elegy beginning, "O living will, that shalt endure." "I did not mean," said Tennyson, "the divine will, as you say. I meant will in man free will. You know there is free will. It is limited, of course.

in a cage, but we can hop from till the roof is taken off." 27

25 Memoir, Vol. I, p. 318.

28 Ibid., p. 317.

We are like birds

perch to perch

It is not necessary

27 W. T. Stead, "Character Sketch of Tennyson," Re

to quote further in support of this statement of the poet's belief in free will. Attention is called to it here because, without this conviction, no one can consistently believe in the responsibility of the individual for his own progress and for the progress of society.

Tennyson's careful study of science naturally made him a firm adherent of the doctrine of evolution. He believed every man to be the heir of all ages in the foremost files of time." 28 There is really

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nothing lost to man;

So that still garden of the souls

In many a figured leaf enrolls
The total world since life began."

Many a million of ages have gone to the making of man; " 30 and these ages of making indicate the value of the product. Edgar, in "The Promise of May," " 31 speaks of "the man, the child of evolution." The countless years of the past that have gone toward the making of man as he is today have not completed their task. Man still is being made. Other countless years must come and go before it can be said that the work is finished and man is made.

Science has in its vast conceptions tended to belittle man. He is lost in the vast cosmic world. The poet recalls us to the truth that the cosmic forces are focused upon the human being. The making of a man by evolution is a slow process, but it gives hope. It works out the beast, and lets the ape and tiger die. The great zones of sculpture that girded the hall of Camelot with their mystic symbols represent four stages in the progress of man.

In the lowest beasts are slaying men,

And in the second men are slaying beasts, And on the third are warriors, perfect men, And on the fourth are men with growing wings." Now" we are far from the noon of man, there is time for the race to grow.' "933 Tennyson's whole philosophy of the onward march of man from the lowest level up to the very summit of his grandest destiny is summed up in "The Making of Man.34

Where is one that, born of woman, altogether can escape

From the lower world within him, moods of tiger or of ape?

Man as yet is being made, and ere the crowning Age

of ages,

Shall not æon after æon pass and touch him into shape?

32 " The Holy Grail,” p. 422.

❝ "The Dawn,” p. 889.

All about him shadows still, but, while the races flower and fade,

Prophet-eyes may catch a glory slowly gaining on the shade,

Till the peoples all are one, and all their voices blend in choric

Hallelujah to the Maker, "It is finished. Man is made."

This triumphant message of the poet, philosopher, and idealist prophesies the increasing glory of the individual as well as that of the race. Bishop Westcott wrote that what impressed him most in "In Memoriam " was Tennyson's splendid faith (in the face of the frankest acknowledgment of every difficulty) in the growing purpose of the sum of life, and in the noble destiny of the individual man as he offers himself for the fulfilment of his little part.” 35

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We may now summarize briefly the poet's teaching concerning man, "the social unit." Man is a spirit dwelling in a body. He is a product of evolution and carries in himself the history of the past; yet he is free and

Strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield."

He has aspirations the highest, hopes the grandest, and comes to self-realization largely through

He pos

action in service of his fellow-men. sesses reason and is by nature a doubter; yet he is largely influenced by emotions, conventions, nature, environment. He is capable of education, longs for knowledge, purity, love. He is at once capable of the sublimest heroism in the performance of duty, and of most awful degeneration through selfishness and sin. Even failure nobly used may become a stepping-stone in his progress. Faith, obedience, sorrow, suffering, struggle, self-sacrifice, each in its own way ministers to the advancement and highest achievement of the man whose noble destiny is proclaimed by his wondrous possibilities. That destiny is so great that it passes the bounds of earth and finds its perfect fulfilment only in the immortal life. This is the man of whom the poet thinks and sings, the man who puts himself into all his social compacts in family, government, church, and society. This is the unit which remains constant in every computation of social values.