To the Innermost
Margaret C. Anderson
Thepopular translation of that dangerous term, individualism, is “selfishness.” Self-dependence is a pompous phrase, and self-completion a huge negation. The average mind seems never to grasp the fact that individualism and democracy are synonymous terms; that self-dependence is merely the first of one’s intricate obligations to his universe, and self-completion the first step toward that wider consciousness which makes the giving-out of self valuable.
I am always feeling that some one will point out to me, with the most embarrassing justice, the obviousness of observations like these. But invariably, after a resolve to keep to those high levels which stretch out beyond the boundaries of the accepted, some one engages me in a discussion—some one who still believes in the antique theory that life proceeds for the sake of immortality, or that a woman must choose between her charm and the ballot; and I emerge therefrom convinced that the highest mission in life is the dedication of oneself to the obvious, and that a valiant preaching of truisms is the only way to get at the root of intellectual evils. It has itsfascinations, besides: to convince a reactionary (not that I’ve ever done it) that renunciation is not an ultimate end, or that truth is a good thing for all people, is better than discovering a kindred soul. And so I proceed, without further apology: that human being is of most use to other people who has first become of most use to himself.
It is the war that has emphasized so overwhelmingly the triviality of trivial things. Out of such utter dehumanization one has a vision of the race which might emerge—a race purified of small struggles, small causes, small patriotisms; a race animated by those big impulses which have always made up the dreams of men. And then would come the more subtle personal development: a race of human units purged of small ideals and ambitions, cleansed to the point where education can at least proceed with economy—that is, without having to destroy two ounces of superstition to produce one ounce of knowledge. And at the foundation of such a race structure, I believe, will be a corner stone of Individualism—or whatever you may choose to call it. What it means is very simple: it is a matter of heightened inner life.
Our culture—or what little we have of such a thing—is clogged by masses of dead people who have no conscious inner life. The man who asked, “Did you ever see an old artist?” put a profound question. People get old because they have no vision. And they have no vision because they have no inner life. Of course, any sort of inner life is impossible to the man or woman who must be a slave instead of a human being. And this brings us, of course, to a discussion of economic emancipation—which I shall not take advantage of; because I want to talk here not of what the individual should have done for him, but of what he might very well do for himself. There are so many slaves whose bondage can be traced to no cause except their refusal or their inability to come to life; and the significance of the fact that spiritual resourcefulness is most rare among those persons who have the most leisure to cultivate it need not be emphasized even in an article devoted to the apparent.
Human weakness is reducible to so many causes beside that much-abused one of “circumstance.” We talk so much nonsense about people not being able to help themselves. The truth is that people can help themselves out of nine-tenths of all the trouble they get into. (We’ll leave the other tenth to circumstance.) If they could only be made to realize this, or that if they are helped out by some one else they might as well stay in trouble! To be dragged out is more desirable than starving to death, because it is more sensible, and because people are so sentimental in their attitude toward receiving that one welcomes almost any emergency which drives them to accepting aid with grace and honesty:anythingto teach a man that he need not smirk about taking what he himself would like to give without being smirked at! But in spite of this, one must help himself to anything which is to be of positive value to him; and mustlearn that personality gets what it demands. However, this begins to sound like a pamphlet from East Aurora....
As a result of our shabby thinking on the subject of self-dependence we have lowered our standards of the exceptional to an alarming degree. We call that person exceptional who does what almost any one might do—but doesn’t. For instance:
The average girl of twenty in a conventional home hates to be told that she must not read Havelock Ellis or make friends with those dreadful persons known vaguely as “socialists,” or that she must not work when she happens to believe that work is a beautiful thing. She is submerged in the ghastly sentimentalities of a tradition-soaked atmosphere—and heaven knows that sentimentalities of that type are difficult to break away from. It takes not only brains, but what William James called the fundamental human virtue—bravery—to do it. And so the girl gives up the fight and moans that circumstances were too much for her. The next stage of her development shows her passing around gentle advice to all her friends on the noble theme of not being “hard” and living only for oneself; how one must sacrifice to the general good—never having had the courage or the insight to find out what the general good might really be. Thus are our incapacities extended. The girl who did break away she regards secretly as remarkable—which is not necessarily true. It is not that the second girl is remarkable, but that the first one is inadequate.
The average man of thirty-five slaves all day in an office and comes home at night to wheel the baby around the block and fall asleep over the newspaper. He has lost any feeling of rebellion, simply because he feels that he must. His permanent attitude is that all men are more or less in the same condition (or should be, if they’re well-behaved), and that to part with a vision after college is what any man of sense must do. His neighbor with an eye on something beyond an office desk and a go-cart is a dreamer or a fool; if the neighbor makes good with his dream, then he is a remarkable man of extraordinary capabilities. Which is not necessarily true, either; the dreamer has simply scorned that attitude which has been so aptly epitomized as “the second choice.”
There are as many phlegmatic radicals as there are conservatives; and there is no type among them more exasperating than the one that is content to sit around andberadical—and be nothing else. The lazy evasiveness of the “revolutionary” with his the-world-owes-me-a-living air positively sicken me. Why should the world owe anybody anything except a protection against thatlack of strugglewhich cramps one’s intellectual muscles so hideously?
And then there is that most unpleasant type of all—the man who boasts of how he will use his chance when he gets it. He always gets it, of course; but he doesn’t know it. And when it comes out boldly and takes him by the ear he becomes terrified and slips back under the cover ofthings as they are. His is the most unattractive kind of intellectual cowardice, because it involves so many lies; it is simply a rapid sequence of boasting and fright and refusing to meet the truth.
Here they all are—the uncourageous company of the second choice: the half-people, the makeshifts, the compromisers, the near-adventurers. How pale and ambling they look; how they crawl through the world with their calculating side looks, ready to take any second-rate thing when the first-rate one costs too much. Oh, it is a sad sight!
We must be more brave! We must be more fine! We must be more demanding! The saddest aspect of the whole thing is that choice is such a tiny element in the process of becoming. It is after one has chosen highly that his real struggle—and his real joy—begins. And only on such a basis is built up that intensity of inner life which is the sole compensation one can wrest from a world of mysterious terrors ... and of ecstasies too dazzling to be shared.
Souls are weighed in silence, as gold and silver are weighed in pure water, and the words which we pronounce have no meaning except through the silence in which they are bathed.—Maeterlinck.
Souls are weighed in silence, as gold and silver are weighed in pure water, and the words which we pronounce have no meaning except through the silence in which they are bathed.—Maeterlinck.