I was relating the experience of the Columbian. In his case there had been much time, so there could be no mistake. He had devoted himself to making and keeping a rather magnificent set of muscles which manifested even through white man's clothing. He did this with long days of sailing and swimming, cultivating his body with the assiduity of a convalescent.... I told him in various ways he was not getting himself out of his work; explained that true preparation is a tearing off of husks one after another; that he was a fine creation in husk, but that he must get down to the quick before he could taste or feel or see with that sensitiveness which would make any observation of his valuable. With all this body-building, he was in reality only covering himself the thicker. If a man does this sort of thing for a woman's eye, he can only attract a creature ofblood and iron whose ideal is a policeman—a very popular ideal....
For two or three days he would work terrifically, then, his weight besetting, he would placate himself with long tissue-feeding sports. I told him that he had everything to build upon; that true strength really begins where physical strength ends; that all that he had in equipment must be set in order and integrated with his own intrinsic powers, it being valueless otherwise. I pointed out that he was but a collector of things he could not understand, because he did not use them; that the great doers of the world had toiled for years upon years, as he did not toil for one week's days successively.... It would not do, except for short intervals, and it came to me that my best service was to get out from under. I told him so, and the manliness of his acceptance choked me. I told him to go away, but to come again later if he mastered Inertia in part.... It was not all his fault. From somewhere, an income reached him regularly, a most complete and commanding curse for any boy.
... I do not believe in long vacations. Children turned loose to play for ten weeks without their tasks, are most miserable creatures at the end of the first fortnight. They become more at ease as the vacation period advances, but that is because the husk is thickening, a most dangerous accretion. The restlessness is less apparentbecause the body becomes heavy with play. It all must be worn down again, before the fitness of faculty can manifest.
If one's body is ill from overexertion, it must rest; if one's mind is ill from nervousness, stimulation, or from excessive brain activity, it must rest; but if one's soul is ill, and this is the difference, nothing but activity will help it, and this activity can only be expressed through the body and mind. Surplus rest of body or mind is a process of over-feeding, which is a coarsening and thickening of tissue, which in its turn causes Inertia, and this word I continually capitalise, for it is the first devil of the soul.
Before every spiritual illumination, this Inertia, in a measure, must be overcome. If you could watch the secret life of the great workers of the world, especially those who have survived the sensuous periods of their lives, you would find them in an almost incessant activity; that their sleep is brief and light, though a pure relaxation; that they do not eat heartily more than once a day; that they reach at timesa great calm, another dimension of calm entirely from that which has to do with animal peace and repletion. It is the peace of intensive production—and the spectacle of it is best seen when you lift the super from a hive of bees, the spirit of which animates every moving creature to one constructive end. That which emanates from this intensity of action iscalm, is harmony, and harmony is rest. A man does not have to sink into a stupor in order to rest. The hours required for rest have more to do with the amount of food one takes, and the amount of tissue one tears down from bad habits, than from the amount of work done. Absolutely this is true if a man's work is his own peculiar task, for the work a man loves replenishes.
Desire tears down tissue. There is no pain more subtle and terrifying than to want something with fury. To the one who is caught in the rhythm of his task, who can lose himself in it, even the processes which so continually tear down the body are suspended. In fact, if we could hold this rhythm, we could not die.
This is what I would tell you: Rhythm of work is joy. This is the full exercise—soul and brain and body in one. Time does not enter; the self does not enter; all forces of beautifying play upon the life. There is a song from it—that some time all shall hear, the song that mystics have heard from the bees, and from open nature at sunrise, and from all selfless productivity.
One cannot play until one has worked—that is the whole truth. Ask that restless child to put a room in order, to cleanse a hard-wood floor, to polish the bath fixtures. Give him the ideal of cool, flyless cleanliness in a room. Hold the picture of what you want in mind and detail it to him, saying that you will come again and inspecthis work. Watch, if you care, the mystery of it. There will be silence until the thing begins to unfold for him—until the polish comes to wood or metal, until the thing begins to answer and the picture of completion bursts upon him. Then you will hear a whistle or a hum, and nothing will break his theme until the end.
The ideal is everything. You may impress upon him that the light falls differently upon clean things, that the odour is sweet from clean things; that the hand delights to touch them, that the heart is rested when one enters a clean room, because its order is soothing.... It isn't the room, after all, that gets all the order and cleansing. The whistle or the hum comes from harmony within.
A man who drank intolerably on occasion told me that the way he "climbed out" was to get to cleaning something; that his thoughts freshened up when he had some new surface to put on an object. He meant that the order came to his chaos, and the influx of life began to cleanse away the litter of burned tissue and the debris of debauch. One cannot keep on thinking evil thoughts while he makes a floor or a gun or a field clean. The thing is well known in naval and military service where bodies of men are kept in order by continual polishing of brasses and decks and accoutrements. A queer, good answer comes to some from softening and cleansing leather. There is alittle boy here whose occasional restlessness is magically done away with, if he is turned loose with sponge and harness-dressing upon a saddle and bridle. He sometimes rebels at first (before the task answers and the picture comes) but presently he will appear wide-eyed and at peace, bent upon showing his work.
Play is a drug and a bore, until one has worked. I do not believe in athletics for athletics' sake. Many young men have been ruined by being inordinately praised for physical prowess in early years. Praise for bodily excellence appeals to deep vanities and is a subtle deranger of the larger faculties of man. The athlete emerges into the world expectant of praise. It is not forthcoming, and his real powers have been untrained to earn the greater reward. Moreover the one-pointed training for some great momentary physical stress, in field events, is a body-breaker in itself, a fact which has been shown all too often and dramatically. Baseball and billiards are great games, but as life-quests—except for the few consummately adapted players whose little orbit of powers finds completion in diamond or green-baized rectangle—the excessive devotion to such play is desolating, indeed, and that which is given in return is fickle and puerile adulation.
A man's work is the highest play. There is nothing that can compare with it, as any of the world's workmen will tell you. It is the thing heloves best to do—constructive play—giving play to his powers, bringing him to that raptness which is full inner breathing and timeless.... We use the woods and shore, water and sand and sun and garden for recreation. In the few hours of afternoon after Chapel until supper, no one here actually produces anything but vegetables and tan, yet the life-theme goes on. We are lying in the sun, and some one speaks; or some one brings down a bit of copy. We listen to the Lake; the sound and feel of water is different every day. We find the stingless bees on the bluff-path on the way to the bathing shore. It is all water and shore, but there is one place where the silence is deeper, the sun-stretch and sand-bar more perfect. We are very particular. One has found that sand takes magnetism from the human body, as fast as sunlight can give it, and he suggests that we rest upon the grass above—that fallow lands are fruitful and full of giving. We test it out like a wine, and decide there is something in it.
There is something in everything.
The Dakotan said (in his clipped way and so low-voiced that you have to bend to hear him) that the birds hear something in the morning that we don't get. He says there is a big harmony over the earth at sunrise, and that the birds catch the music of it, and that songs are their efforts to imitate it. An afternoon was not badly spent in discussing this. We recall the fact that it isn't thehuman ear-drum exactly which will get this—if it ever comes to us—and that Beethoven was stone-deaf when heheardhis last symphonies, the great pastoral and dance and choral pieces, and that he wrote them from his inner listening. Parts of them seem to us strains from that great harmony that the birds are trying to bring out.
We thought there must be such a harmony in a gilding wheat-field. Wheat is good; even its husk is good; beauty and order and service have come to it. There is dissonance from chaos; the song clears as the order begins. Order should have a Capital too. All rising life is a putting of surfaces and deeps in Order. The word Cosmos means Order.... Wheat has come far, and one does well to be alone for a time in a golden afternoon in a wheat-field just before cutting. One loves the Old Mother better for that adventure. She must give high for wheat. She must be virgin and strong and come naked and unashamed to the sun to bring forth wheat. She must bring down the spirit of the sun and blend it with her own—for wheat partakes of thealkahest. Wheat is a master, an aristocrat.
The Dakotan said that once when he was on the Open Road through the northwest, he slept for two days in a car of wheat, and that it was a bath of power.... We thought we would make our beds in wheat, thereafter—but that would be sacrilege.
Then we talked of that mysterious harmony from the beehives, and we saw at once that it has to do with Order, that Inertia was mastered there—that the spirit of wheat has mastered Inertia—so that there is a nobility, even about the golden husk. It occurred to us, of course, then, that all the aristocrats of Nature—rose and wheat and olives and bees and alabaster and grapes—must all have their part of the harmony, for Order has come to their chaos. Their spirit has come forth, as in the face of a far-come child—the brute earth-bound lines of self gone—the theme of life, Service.
I am at the end of Capitals now.
One afternoon we talked about corn—from the fields where the passionate mystic Ruth gleaned, to our own tasseled garden plot. And another day we found the ants enlarging the doors of their tunnels, to let out for the nuptial flight certain winged mistresses. There is something in everything.
Each of us sees it differently. Each of us can take what he sees, after all the rest have told their stories, and make a poem of that. The first wonder of man cannot be conceived until this is realised.
There is an inner correspondence in the awakened human soul for every movement and mystery of Nature. When the last resistance of Inertia is mastered, we shall see that there is noseparateness anywhere, no detachment; that the infinite analogies all tell the same story—that the plan is one.
There was a row of us preparing for sleep out under the stars—the Dakotan at one side, then two small boys, the little girl and the old man.... It was one of those nights in which we older ones decided to tell stories instead of writing them. We had talked long, like true Arabs around a fire on the beach. A South Wind came in and the Lake received and loved it. I asked the Dakotan what the Lake was saying.
"It isn't—it's listening."
It made me think at once of the first movement of Beethoven's sonata, calledAppassionata. There is one here who plays that, and because it tells him a story, he plays it sometimes rather well and makes the others see.... The slow movement is deeply rich; the inspiration seems to go out of the sonata after that, but of the first movement we never tire, and the drama is always keen. It tells the story (to us) of a woman—of loveand life and death. She wants the earth in her love—but her lover is strange and hears persistently a call that is not of earth. The woman tries to hold him. All earth beauty is about her—her love a perfume, a torrent. The voice of destiny speaks to her that it must not be. She rebels. The story rushes on, many voices coming to her re-stating the inexorable truth that he must go.
The same story is told in Coventry Patmore'sDeparture—to us the most magic of all the great little poems. But inDepartureit is the woman who is called.
... Again and again in theAppassionata, the word comes to the woman, saying that she will be greater if she speeds him on his way. She will not hear. We sense her splendid tenure of beauty—all the wonder that Mother Earth has given her.... One after another the lesser voices have told her that it must be, but she does not obey—and then the Master comes down.
It is one of the most glowing passages in all the literature of tone. Thechelashave spoken and have not availed. Now theGuruspeaks. Out of vastness and leisure, out of spaciousness of soul and wisdom, out of the deeps and heights of compassion, theGuruspeaks—and suddenly the woman's soul turns to him listening. That miracle of listening is expressed in the treble—a low light rippling receptivity. It is like a cup heldforth—or palms held upward. TheGuruspeaks. His will is done.
And that is what I thought of, when the Dakotan said that the Lake was listening. It was listening to the South Wind.... That night we talked of Ireland. It may have been the fairies that the little girl always brings; or it may have been that a regiment of Irish troops had just been slaughtered in a cause that had far less significance to Ireland than our child talk by the fire; or it may have been the South Wind that brought us closer to the fairy Isle, for it is the Irish peasants who say to a loved guest at parting:
"May you meet the South Wind."
" ... There isn't really an Ireland any more—just a few old men and a few old, haunting mothers. Ireland is here in America, and the last and stiffest of her young blood is afield for England. Her sons have always taken the field—that is their way—and the mothers have brought in more sons born of sorrow—magic-eyed sons from the wombs of sorrow. Elder brothers afield—fathers gone down overseas—only the fairies left by the hearth for the younger sons to play with.... So they have sung strange songs and seen strange lights and moved in rhythms unknown to many men. It is these younger sons who are Ireland now. Not a place, but a passion; not a country, but a romance.... They are in the love stories of the world, and they are always looking fortheir old companions, the fairies. They find the fairies in the foreign woodlands; they bring the fairies to the new countries. They are in the songs that hush the heart; they are in the mysticism that is moving the sodden world. Because they played with fairies, they were taught to look past and beyond the flesh of faces—past metals and meals and miles. Of the reds and greys and moving golds which they see, the soul of the world loves to listen, for the greatest songs and stories of all are from the Unseen——"
It was the old man dreaming aloud.
"Ireland isn't a place any more. It is a passion infused through the world," he added.
"But the fairies are still there," the little girl said.
"Some are left with the old mothers—yes, some are left. But many have taken the field, and not for the wars."
A four-day moon was dropping fast in the low west. Jupiter was climbing the east in imperial purple—as if to take command.... The littlest boy stirred in the arms of the Dakotan and began to speak, staring at the fire. We all turned and bent to listen—and it was that very thing that spoiled it—for the sentence faltered and flew away.
We all wanted to know what had been born in that long silence, for the firelight was bright in two eyes that were very wide and wise—but thebrain was only seven.... I left the circle and went up the cliff to find a book in the study—a well-used book, an American book. Returning, I read this from it, holding the page close to the fire:
OLD IRELANDFar hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty,Crouching over a grave, an ancient, sorrowful mother,Once a queen—now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground,Her old white hair drooping dishevel'd round her shoulders;Long silent—she too long silent—mourning her shrouded hope and heir;Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow, because most full of love.Yet a word, ancient mother;You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground, with forehead betweenyour knees;O you need not sit there, veil'd in your old white hair, so dishevel'd;For know you, the one you mourn is not in that grave;It was an illusion—the heir, the son you love, was not really dead;The Lord is not dead—he is risen, young and strong, in another country;Even while you wept there by your fallen harp, by the grave,What you wept for, was translated, pass'd from the grave,The winds favoured and the sea sail'd it,And now with rosy and new blood,Moves to-day in a new country.
OLD IRELAND
Far hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty,Crouching over a grave, an ancient, sorrowful mother,Once a queen—now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground,Her old white hair drooping dishevel'd round her shoulders;Long silent—she too long silent—mourning her shrouded hope and heir;Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow, because most full of love.Yet a word, ancient mother;You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground, with forehead betweenyour knees;O you need not sit there, veil'd in your old white hair, so dishevel'd;For know you, the one you mourn is not in that grave;It was an illusion—the heir, the son you love, was not really dead;The Lord is not dead—he is risen, young and strong, in another country;Even while you wept there by your fallen harp, by the grave,What you wept for, was translated, pass'd from the grave,The winds favoured and the sea sail'd it,And now with rosy and new blood,Moves to-day in a new country.
One by one they dropped off asleep, the little ones first, as the moon went down—their thoughts so full of stars, asking so dauntlessly all questions of world and sky. What I could, I answered, but I felt as young as any. It seemed their dreams were fresher than mine, and their closeness to God.... The little girl touched me, as we drifted away——
"May you meet the South Wind!" she whispered.
It is a thankless job to raise a voice in the din of things as they are, a voice saying things are wrong. One may do this for years without penetrating the din, so long as he does not become specific. Or one may become a specialist in a certain wrong, gain recognition as a gentle fanatic on a certain subject, do much good with his passion, find certain friends and sterling enemies—and either lose or win, ultimately, according to change in the styles of his time.
Or, with one-pointed desire to change the spirit of things, one may reach the gloomy eminence from which it is perceived that all things are wrong, because the present underlying motive of the whole is wrong. He sees one body of men scrubbing one spot on the carpet, another sewing earnestly at a certain frayed selvage, another trying to bring out the dead colour from a patch that wear and weather have irrevocably changed. Heblesses them all, but his soul cries out for a new carpet—at least, a wholesome and vigorous tubbing of the entire carpet, and a turning over of the whole afterward.
Unless our life here is a sort of spontaneous ebullition out of the bosom of nature, without significance to us before and after, we are moving about our business of house and country and world in a most stupid, cruel and short-sighted fashion. I realise, and this is the wine of life, that the hearts of men are tender and lovable, naturally open and subject by nature to beauty and faith; that the hearts of men, indeed, yearn for that purity of condition in which truth may be the only utterance, and the atmosphere of untruth as revolting as bad air to the nostrils.
But with this realisation appears the facts that the activities in the world of men have little to do with this purity and heart-giving—but with an evil covering, the integument of which is the lie born of self-desire, and the true skin of which is the predatory instinct which has not remotely to do with an erect spine.
Higher days are coming for the expression of the human spirit. There is no doubt about that. But still the men who do the most to hurry them along, find a fight on each ledge of the cliff. Philosophically, it may be said that wars have brought great benefits to the race; that materialism has taught us our place here below as no other passioncould; that trade has wrought its incomparable good to the races of men; that Fear has been the veritable mother of our evolution, its dark shadow forever inciting us, breaking our Inertia, bringing swiftness and strength first to the body, then to brain. Even desire for self, on the long road behind, has been the good angel of our passage, for we had to become splendid beasts before the dimension of man could be builded.... All good; mistakes nowhere in the plan.
But the trouble is, the passage of the many from grade to grade is intolerably slow. We had thought the many had finished with war. The few already are many grades ahead of that; the few have seen the virtues die out of patriotism and trade; they have watched the desire for self turn reptile, and hearkened to this truth which is beginning to reverberate around the world:What is good for beasts is not of necessity good for men.... One recent caller here, male, middle-aged, smilingly discussed all things from the philosophical point of view. I was saying:
"From the nursery to world-clutched retirement from public affairs, a man nowadays is taught more and more to keep his heart-principle locked——"
He smiled: "We have all the time there is. It will all come out right. You fellows excite yourselves and try to change things overnight. Others of us think them over quietly by our fires. Thatis the whole difference. Scratch off the veneer, and we are all the same kind of God-yearning animal underneath."
Few sayings ever have hit me harder.
I studied the years' offerings from this man—to his house, to his acquaintances, to the world in general. An irony filled the room, and so intense was it that it seemed to have a colour, a kind of green and yellow vapour. It emanated from the centre of his face. I think the point that animated me especially was that he was in the habit of talking to young men. He had no children of his own. I changed the subject and opened the door—not to hasten his departure but because the air was close.
By every law which makes us hold fast to the memory of saviours and great men, the finest fabric of any race is its pioneers. We are living and putting into action now the dreams of brave spirits who have gone before. Philosophically, even they may have found that the plan is good, but that did not prevent them from giving their lives to lift the soddenness and accelerate the Inertia of the crowds. They took their joy in the great goodness of the plan—only after they had done their best to bring the race more swiftly into its higher destiny. A man does not sit back and allow his children to spend years in learning that which he can explain in a moment from his own experience.... I did not answer the philosopher, but many things that occurred from that little talkwere brought out in Chapel during the days which followed—matters that had to do with America and literary workmanship in particular. Certain of the matters we discussed have been written down for expression here:
If some one announced that there lived in the Quattuor Islands a man who knew the exact way to bring into the world, not only the spirit, but the action ofbrotherhoodandfatherland, there would be some call for maps and steamship passages. If the Quattuor Islands were not already on the maps, they would presently appear, but not before the first pilgrims had set out. And if some one should add that all expression of the arts so far in the world is addled and unsightly compared to that which is about to be, if a certain formula is followed, and that this man in the Quattuor group has the formula—many more would start on the quest, or send their most trusted secretaries.
And yet the truth and the way is all here, and has been uttered again and again by every voice that has lifted itself above the common din.
The wise men carried gifts. You would expect to give something for the secret. You might expect to be called upon to sell all you have and give to the poor. You would not be surprised even if the magnetic Islander said:
"It is not your frankincense and myrrh that I want, though I thank you. That which I have isfor you. I am more anxious for you to know and live it, than you can be to have and hold it. But the mystery is that it will not come to abide with you, while you are passionate for possession. The passion to give to others must be established within you before you can adequately receive——"
You are beginning to see how ancient is the gospel. Itisold, older than that. It belongs to the foundations. Personally and nationally, the law works the same way. That which is true, is true in all its parts. There is an adjustment by which that which is good for the whole is good for the part; but each, whole and part, nation and man, must have for the first thought, not self-good, but the general good. One nation, so established in this conviction that its actions are automatically founded upon the welfare of the world, could bring about the true world-fatherland in a generation; and one human heart so established begins to touch from the first moment the profound significances of life.
Personally and nationally, this plain but tremendous concept is beginning to manifest itself here in America. I do not write as a patriot. It is notmy countrythat is of interest, but humankind. America's political interests, her trade, all her localisations as a separate and bounded people, are inimical to the new enthusiasm. The new social order cannot concern itself as a country apart. American predatory instincts, herself-worship, her attempt at neutrality while supplying explosives for the European slaughter arenas, her deepening confinement in matter during the past fifty years, have prepared her for the outright demoralisation of war, just as surely as Europe is meeting to-day the red harvest from such instincts and activities. For action invariably follows the thought.
Yet the hearts of men in America are changing. I do not write as a religionist, but as one very much of the world. For the hearts of men do change, and it is only through such changes that the material stagnation of a people can be relieved without deluges of blood.
The high hope is upon us. In being apart from war, America has been enabled to see. One must always remove himself from the ruck to see its movement. Within these western shores, the voices of true inspiration have recently been heard. From a literary standpoint alone, this is the most significant fact since Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau and Lanier took pen in hand, forgetting themselves a little while each day. There is a peculiar strength upon American production of all kinds as a result of the very act of getting out from under European influence.
England and France and Germany have fallen into mere national voices. The voice of the partisan is but a weak treble, against the basic rumble of war. War in this century is a confession, assuicide is a confession, as every act of blood and rage is a confession, of the triumph of the animal in the human mind.... If you received letters from friends in England or Germany or France during the war—friends whom formerly you admired for their culture and acumen—you were struck by the dulness and misery of the communications, the uncentred points of view, the incapacity of human vision in the midst of the heaviness and blackness of life there; if, indeed, you read the newspapers and periodicals of those countries, you required no further proof of the fact—that a nation at war is an obscene nation, its consciousness all driven down into the physical, its voice tonally imperfect from hate and fear, its eyes open to red illusion and not to truth.
Even in America the voice of the nationalist is a part of the old and the unclean. The new social order does not recognise the rights and desires of any isolated people. Humankind is basicallyonein meaning, in aim and in destiny. The differences of nations in relation to the sun's rays and in character of country, environment, race, colour and structure of mind—these are primal values, the very values that will sum up into the essential grandeur of the whole. Personally and nationally there are no duplicates in the social scheme. The instruments of this magnificent orchestra are of infinite diversity, but the harmony is one.
The spiritual source of all human achievementis already a harmonic whole. That globe is complete. It is our business as men to make a pattern of it in matter—to make the dream come true in flesh, each man and each nation bringing his labour.
If a certain plant, bird, insect, beast, man or nation, rises by intrinsic force and predation to dangerous increase, a devouring parasite, or formidable rival, is invariably fostered within its shadow. In good time there is war to the death.
In a doctor's office in Canada, I saw the picture of a bull-dog standing large against the background of the accepted flag, and beneath was this line:
"What we have, we'll hold."
I found that the picture had a national popularity. Yet a child stopping to think would have seen breakers ahead for a nation so lost in material things, as thus to challenge the Fates.... There is a fairy-tale of a man building a great boat for the air. It looked to win, and in the effrontery of achievement, he set forth to conquer God. Just then a hornet stung him.
It is a conviction held here that the darkest period of American materialism came to its end with the beginning of the war. The generation of literary producers in manifestation at that time was responsible for the bleakest products whichAmerica will ever have the shame of showing to future generations.
It was not so devoid of genius as would appear; the first cause was the difficulty in getting the best work "through." This again was not because the public was not ready for the good, but because the public taste was brutalised by men who stood between the public and the producers. These middlemen insisted, by the right of more direct contact, that the public should have what they fancied the public desire to be.
I sat in Union Square recently with a beggar who studied me, because it appeared to be my whim to help him with a coin. Back of his temples was a great story—sumptuous drama and throbbing with the first importance of life. He did not tell me that story, and I could not draw it from him. Rather he told me the story that he fancied I would want. There was a whine in it. He chose to act, and he was not a good actor. His offering hurt, not because he was filthy and a failure, but because he lied to himself and to me, because he did not dare to be himself, though the facts were upon him, eye and brow and mouth. So I did not get his story, but I got a thrilling picture of the recent generation in American letters—I, being the public; the truth of his story representing the producer, and the miserable thing he fancied I was ready for, being the middleman's part.
All workmen of the last generation—all who would listen—were taught to bring forth their products with an intervening lie between the truth and their expression—the age of advertising heavy in all production.
I recall from those days what was to me a significant talk with an American novelist who wanted sales, who was willing to sacrifice all but the core of his character to get sales, and who found himself at that time in a challenging situation. As he expressed it:
"Along about page two hundred in the copy of the novel I am on, the woman's soul wakes up."
"A woman's novel?" I asked.
"Meant to be," said he. "Study of a woman all through. Begins as a little girl—different, you know—sensitive, does a whole lot of thinking that her family doesn't follow. Tries to tell 'em at first, but finds herself in bad. Then keeps quiet for years—putting on power and beauty in the good old way of bumps and misunderstanding. She's pure white fire presently—body and brain and something else asleep. She wants to be a mother, but the ghastly sordidness of the love stories of her sisters to this enactment, frightens her from men and marriage as the world conducts it——"
"I follow you," said I.
"Well, I'm not going to do the novel here for you," he added. "You wouldn't think there wasa ray of light in it from this kind of telling. A man who spends five months of his best hours of life in telling a story, can't do it over in ten minutes and drive a machine at the same time——"
"We're getting out of the crowd. What did the girl do?" I asked.
"Well, she wanted a little baby—was ready to die for it, but had her own ideas of what the Father should be. A million women—mostly having been married and failed, have thought the same thing here in America—pricked the unclean sham of the whole business. Moreover, they're the best women we've got. There are——"
He purposely shook the hat from his head—back into the seat—at this point.
"There are some young women coming up into maturity here in America—God bless 'em—who are almost brave enough to set out on the quest for the Father of the baby that haunts them to be born.... That's what she did. He was a young man doing his own kind of work—doctoring among the poor, let us say, mainly for nothing—killing himself among men and women and babies; living on next to nothing, but having a half-divine kind of madness to lift the world.... She saw him. You can picture that. They were two to make one—and a third. She knew. There was a gold light about his head which she saw—and some of the poverty-folk saw—but which he didn'tknow the meaning of, and the world missed altogether.
"She went to him. It's cruel to put it in this way.... I'm not saying anything about the writing or about what happened, but the scene as it came to me was the finest thing I ever tried to put down. We always fall down in the handling, you know.... I did it the best I could.... No, I'm not going to tell you what happened. Only this: a little afterward—along about page two hundred of the copy—the woman's soul woke up."
"Why not, in God's name?" I asked.
He glanced quickly at me as a man does from ahead when his car is pressing the limit.
"Ever have a book fail?" he asked.
"Seven," said I.
He cleared his throat and the kindest smile came into his eyes:
"They tell me at my publishers' that I slowed up my last book badly—by taking a woman's soul out for an airing—just a little invalid kind of a soul, too. Souls don't wake up in American novels any more. You can't do much more in print nowadays than you can do on canvas—I meanmoviecanvas. You can paintsoulbut you can't photograph it—that's the point. The movies have put imagination to death. We have to compete. You can't see a soul without imagination—or some sort of madness—and the good people who wantimagination in their novels don't buy 'em. They rent or borrow. It's the crowds that go to the movies that have bright-coloured strings of American novels as the product runs—on their shelves—little shiny varnished shelves—red carpets—painted birds on the lamp-shades and callers in the evenings."
There was a good silence.
"Do you know," he added presently, "I've about come to the conclusion that a novel must play altogether on sensuous tissue to catch the crowd. Look at the big movie pictures—the actors make love like painted animals.... I'm not humorous or ironical. It's a big problem to me——"
"Why, you can't touch the hem of the garment of a real love story until you are off the sensuous," I offered. "The quest only begins there. I'm not averse to that. It belongs in part. We are sensuous beings—in part. But I am averse to letting it contain all. Why, the real glow comes to a romance when a woman's soul wakes up. There's a hotter fire than that which burns blood-red——"
"I know," he said quickly. "I know. That blood-red stuff is the cheapest thing in the world.... I'm sure of this story until her soul wakes up. She stirs in her sleep, and I see a giantess ahead—the kind of a woman who could whistle to me or to you—and we'd follow her out—dazed by the draw of her. They are in the world. I reckon souls do wake up—but I can feel the publicdropping off every page after two hundred—like chilled bees—dropping off page by page—and the old familiar battle ahead for me. I can feel that tight look of poverty about the eyes again——"
"Are you going to put her soul back to sleep?" I asked, as we turned again into the crowd.
I wasn't the least lordly in this question. I knew his struggle, and something of the market, too. I was thinking of tradesmen—how easy it is to be a tradesman; in fact, how difficult it is to be otherwise—when the very passion of the racial soul moves in the midst of trade.
"She's beautiful—even asleep," he said. "I'm afraid I'll have to give her something. I'm building a house. She's in the comprehension of the little varnished shelves—asleep."
"Doesn't a tight look come about the eyes—from much use of that sort of anæsthetic?" I asked.
"Let's get a drink," he answered.
But the stroke of death has fallen upon such pandering, and the war put it there. The big names of the last generation are now magazine and movie men; all save the few whose sutures have not entirely closed, and they are making their last frenzied turn to meet the new social order, as they met the floating vogues and whims so long. But this is a difficult turn for panderers and caterers, because it does not have to do with the surface matter, nothing to do with dance and dress and appetite, but with the depths of the human spirit, quickened to animation afresh by the agony of the world.
Only the rarest few of the greatest names of England and Europe have escaped the fatal partisanship. They have become little national voices, and in the coming years this will be remembered against them bitterly. The truly liberated soul does not fall into lying attempts at national exoneration. The truly liberated soul is no longer a nationalist. A few of the young men haveescaped this curse, but the older had their training, as has been told, in the blackest age of man. Men have been diminished in more spacious times than these by becoming laureates; they cannot but be degraded by becoming nationalists in these abandoned hours.
Genius, in the last generation, met a destructive force in the material world, almost as deadly and vindictive as that encountered by Copernicus. The voices of very few heralds were even heard, but there is a battle-line of genius in the new generation, timed for the great service years following the chaos of war. They will bring in the liberation of religion from mammon; they will bring in the religion of work, the equality of women, not on a mere suffrage matter alone, but in spirit and truth; they will bring in their children unaccursed.
... There's always a squeaking when a wagon climbs out of a rut, which is another way of saying that a time of transition is a time of pain.
This is a notable and constructive generation now beginning its work in America, and joining hands with the few remaining Undefiled of Europe. They are not advertisers, nor self-servers. They do not believe in intellect alone. Their genius isintuitionallydriven, not intellectually. Just as steam has reached its final limitations as a force, and is being superseded by electricity (thelimitations of which have not yet been sensed so far even by the most audacious), so the intellect, as a producing medium, has had its period—a period of style-worship, vanities of speech and action, of self-service, of parading, of surface-show and short-sightedness, without parallel in the world.
For the intellect is a product of sunlight, its energy supplied by human blood, a temporal heat. Intuition is driven from the fountain-head of spiritual energy. Its great conception is the unity of all nature. The intellect is as old as your body is; the giant that is awakening from sleep in the breasts of the rising generation is immortal.
In all times, second-class artists have dealt in the form and matter of the age, talked of its effects and paraded its styles. Only the very greatest above them have realised that the true story of the thing, as any given man sees it, is the one important thing in the world for him to produce; that the nearness of the expression to the thought is the measure of his success; in a word, that his thought must be put into words (or tones or paint or stone) without an intervening lie from the medium.
The race of men and women in their twenties, now at work in America, are doing these things. Especially in the new poetry is the fine consummation apparent. These are the leaders of the new social order. Before the war, such as had developed a voice had to shout through shut doors. The war has beaten down the doors. Acomparable race of young workmen (more men than women there; more women than men here) has appeared in Russia and raised its voice. It is not altogether a dream that a unifying span will stretch across the pillars raised by these two groups of builders.
In America this rising generation shall return to us the prestige which Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau and Lanier so superbly attracted. Indeed, Whitman is the master of the new poetry; his free verse lives in every line of the modern production, a point that would not be significant if it were alone of manner; but his broad human spirit, the infusing brotherhood which was his passion, and the same universal toleration, are the inspiring energies of the new workmanship.
What is the vision of this new social order?
These workmen recognise that no saint's blood, nor the power of any God, is going to interfere before a heavenly throne to save sinners who have wasted their lives in predatory accomplishment, instead of saving themselves;
That the re-distribution of the world's wealth will not bring about the new order and beauty of life; that the rich man is to be pitied as much as the poor (God knows that intrinsically he is to be pitied more, because his shell is thicker) that the time is at hand when the vulgarity of being rich in material wealth will be a sense of the common mind;That women are not golden fleeces, nor clinging vines, but human adults with separate principles from men, which make them equally valuable in the social scheme; that women should be their own law in all matters of mating and reproduction, because the male has not the mental organism to cope authoritatively with these affairs;
That heretofore as educators, as fathers, mothers and bringers-forth of children, humankind, in the large, has shown itself less than the animals, inasmuch as it does not fulfil its possibilities as animals do;
That the time is past for cults and creeds, for separate interests and national boundaries, for patriotism and all the otherisms; that we are all one in the basic meaning of existence; that there is an adjustment founded upon the principles of liberty and brotherhood, in which that which is good for the one is good for all; that this adjustment can only be attained by a reversal of the old form, personally and nationally—of thinking not of the self first in all things, but of the general good;
Finally, the new social order of workmen, having come up through the blear and sickness of lies, has arrived at the high vantage which reveals that there is nothing so potent as a straight statement of fact, nothing so strategically the masterstroke.