The So-Called “Mass” of Humanity* – Sunday, May 23, 1948
Quite frequently we hear people who express themselves as wanting to do something for the great mass of mankind, perhaps for their further enlightenment, or their physical comfort, or their political well being. Sometimes the motives of these would-be benefactors are sincere and unselfish. Sometimes they may not be. But any person whose purpose it is to improve all mankind en masse should not overlook this point: Fundamentally speaking, there is no such thing as, a mass of humanity.
The term is often used to describe a large number of, people, but men are still men, individually, as are women and children, with all of their separate and distinct differences of countenance and character and body and mind and spirit. You cannot make a mass of people comfortable. A man is comfortable as an individual or he isn’t comfortable. You cannot feed a mass of people. A child is well nourished as an individual or he isn’t well nourished. You can’t educate a mass of people. You can only educate men and women and children as individual entities. Men cannot believe en masse. They must have faith, they must believe, they must give obedience to prescribed principles with each thinking and acting for himself as a child of God with an immortal spirit, an eternal destiny, and an individual intelligence and personality—which is and was and shall always be. Such is the basic principle of democracy; such is the essence of immortality and eternal life: the dignity and enduring identity of each individual man. And that is why those false philosophies and political systems are untenable which seek to move and mold men en masse and which seek to violate the dignity and the identity of the individual man.
The condition of humanity does not change as the tide rises and falls. Whenever there is any change in this so-called mass of humanity, it is because men and women have changed individually. For convenience we sometimes say that we teach a class. But men only learn as individual men; men only feel as individual men; and men only think as individual men. And so, when you want to help humanity, help the individual man to help himself, and the problem of the mass will steadily disappear.
*Revised
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, May 28, 1948, 11:30 am. to 12:00 noon, EDST Copyright 1948.
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May 23, 1948
Broadcast Number 0,979