ELEVENTH MEETING
I read Virginia’s paper of two weeks ago:
DISCUSSION ON ART“Anything to be really beautiful must be complete. The reason for this is that it gives us that idea of completeness which the universe possesses. A picture in which every detail is painted may be pretty, but it is not beautiful. When you look at a person you look at his face and the expression of it. In anything on which you set your eyes, you see only the part that interests you. Therefore a good picture or a book should only have that part brought forth, and the rest and unimportant parts should be kept in the background. In fact, they should only be there to make the important thing more interesting; to make it stand out.”
DISCUSSION ON ART
“Anything to be really beautiful must be complete. The reason for this is that it gives us that idea of completeness which the universe possesses. A picture in which every detail is painted may be pretty, but it is not beautiful. When you look at a person you look at his face and the expression of it. In anything on which you set your eyes, you see only the part that interests you. Therefore a good picture or a book should only have that part brought forth, and the rest and unimportant parts should be kept in the background. In fact, they should only be there to make the important thing more interesting; to make it stand out.”
Then I read Henry’s paper:
“At our last meeting we reviewed all that we had said about art. We spoke of the three kinds of life, the artistic, philosophic and scientific, and agreed that the artistic life is the one we care for. We made a list of those things which are necessary in art, so that we can refer to them, and apply them in judging life.
“Good art
1. is a symbol of completeness in a definite form.
2. is self-expression and self-fulfilment.
3. must leave out unimportant detail.
4. must have variety and many-sidedness.
5. must not be partisan, and must be sympathetic.
6. gives the impression of truth.
7. ——”
The last law, the idea of aloofness, of being above as well as within life, of being actor and spectator at once, they do not understand, and I made no further effort to explain. Henry said he left it out—for that reason—when writing his paper.
I said Henry had mentioned we did prefer and choose the artistic life. But why? I suspected, from something they said, that they did not grasp the reasons.
Virginia said she didn’t care what the reasons were, she knew she liked it best. The reasons, at any rate, had not impressed them. So I repeated what I had said, of the artistic life including the other two, of how the artist must know science and love goodness before he can create beauty.
“Then,” said Florence, “the great artists were philosophers?”
“Always,” I answered. “Take the ancient religious writings, such as the Vedas and the Bible. They were always poems, the work of artists who were also philosophers and scientists.”
“Scientists?” asked Marian incredulously.
“Surely,” I answered, “men such as Moses, who gave laws on sanitation and daily life, were the scientists of their time.”
“An artist must understand science,” said Virginia, “natural science, if he wants to paint. And he must know physiology, too. I am beginning to realize that at school.”
Some one mentioned Franklin. “Was he more scientist, or philosopher, or artist in his life?”
“I think he was a philosopher,” said Virginia.
“No,” Marian answered, “he just gathered a lot of bromidic proverbs, that were as old as the world, and said them over in an impressive way.”
“But they were philosophical,” Virginia protested.
“No,” said Marian, “I don’t think so. They were scientific, for they dealt with little disjointed parts of life.”
I told them I wanted to paraphrase a certain verse in the Bible, the verse:
“Faith, Hope and Charity, but the greatest of these is Charity.”
“How?” asked Ruth, much interested.
“I would say,” I went on, “‘Truth, Goodness and Beauty, but the greatest of these is Beauty’—because it includes the other two.”
Now I changed the first law into terms of life:
“Life is a symbol of the complete Self, in a definite shape.”
Life must express that Self in definite and individual lines, that is, in beauty.
I spoke again of small and great genius, of art expressing a lesser or a greater completeness, of “Jenny Kissed Me” and “Faust,” Florence’s examples. “With people you must have noticed the same thing. Some people whose lives seem very limited, who understand and know little, still have such harmonious natures that in their spheres they seem complete. But with still other people you feel that their lives are much larger, that they grasp more of life and possess more, because they understand more. The more we understand, sympathize and love, the larger is our life.”
Marian looked puzzled.
“What is it, Marian?” I asked.
“Why,” she said, “should some people be larger and more complete than others?”
“How do you mean, Marian?”
“Why is it so? Why aren’t we all alike?”
“If we were,” said Henry, “it would be very monotonous.”
“Oh, I know that,” said Marian. “But why is it so, anyway?”
“Marian always asks the unanswerable,” I said. “And still—if we believe in progress, in the evolution of self, don’t you see?—some selves are more developed than others.”
“If we believed in transmigration,” said Marian, “it would be easy to understand.”
“You know,” I answered, “what I think of transmigration. But whether there be transmigration in the usual sense, or not, I think we all believe that in some way we have lived until now, that we are not created in one moment, that we evolve throughout all time.”
And now I made a mistake, tried an experiment that was not successful. I have had misgivings, now and then—unfounded ones, I believe to-day—as to the value, to young people, of a philosophy of life which does not at once directly and concretely affect their manner of living, but does so indirectly and slowly through affecting their tastes, opinions and desires.
One of the girls happened to speak of the relation of parents and children. I had realized for a long time that this was among the pressing problems of youth—especially of some of these particular young people—and instead of keeping to my prepared work, I took advantage of the remark, and launched off into that bottomless subject—without a pilot.
I said: “I think it is one of the gravest—perhaps the only grave problem—of your lives, and we might as well try to solve it now, if we can. What shall we do with our parents?”
There came a flood of ideas and confessions. I made so personal a call upon each one, and intimated that I already knew so much of their lives, that they were frank and open with me, and said to me, without thinking, much more, I am sure, than they would willingly and deliberately have said to each other. They spoke as if to me alone, even mentioned personal circumstances of which I alone had knowledge. Naturally, I will not write down that conversation.
I told them the difficulty arose from a change for the better in the relation between children and parents, and that neither one nor the other had fully realized the change. The old relation of fearing reverence had been changed to that of love and companionship. I said, mock-seriously:
“Of course, we do know more than our parents can possibly know, and we are quite able to judge everything for ourselves, and so we resent being told to do things——”
Marian interrupted me with a solemn: “Oh, no!” and it was a moment before they all realized that I was joking.
“But, truly,” I went on, “we are so used to having, and fond of having, our own way, that we do chafe and even feel contradictory the moment we are ordered to do anything. Don’t you, Alfred?”
“No,” said Alfred; “only I don’t like to stop if I have anything else to do.”
“I hate,” Marian said, “to be told to do anything which I don’t want to do, and for which I see no reason: going to see people whom I dislike, and who bore me, for instance.”
“There,” I answered, “the reason is clear. I remember feeling so myself, and I am not glad that I was given my own way. Young people must know and see and tolerate all sorts of folks, even pokey old relations, so that they may learn to know people and be able to choose for themselves as they grow older. To know many is to find some.”
With that they agreed.
“But,” I went on, “the trouble is not so much with what you want or don’t want to do, as with irritability and impudence.”
“You mean ‘sassing’ your parents?” asked Virginia.
“Yes.”
“I ‘sass’ mine,” she said, “when I think they will like it. I wheedle my parents, and so I get what I want without being disagreeable.”
“Oh,youdon’t count, Virginia,” I went on, “but what I mean is answering back, being unkind and contradictory when we would rather not, doing all sorts of regrettable things because we are in a temper, and then afterward feeling mean, sore and despicable, and knowing that we were wrong. That sort of ugliness and irritation, if it’s not stopped, makes mean, ugly, irritable characters.”
“I know just what you mean,” said Marian, “and I know exactly what I think of other people who are like that.”
“It is ugly,” I said. “I dislike it, because it is not beautiful. How can any one live a beautiful, harmonious life who begins by being out of harmony in his relation with the person whom he loves? For that is the truth. Children often love dearly the parent with whom they are always disagreeing. How shall we get understanding and unity and sympathy in life if we cannot get it with those nearest us, those we love?”
“Of course,” said Henry, “our idea of life, of complete sympathy, is against all that kind of thing.”
“It is much easier,” said Marian, “to know what is right than to do it.”
We all agreed.
“But why,” I said, “should we suffer regrets, and do ugly things, when there must be some way to stop it?”
“What way?” asked Marian.
“Well, first, what is our feeling toward older people?”
“Pity,” said Virginia.
“How?” we all asked rather indignantly.
“Well,” she went on, “you get up for an old woman in the car, because you are sorry for her, so that she shouldn’t flop all over your shins.”
“Pity for the other people!” said Florence.
(We are always undecided in the club whether to put Virginia out of the room or whether to hug her. So, in our indecision, we leave her alone.)
I said: “We used to be told to reverence the old. I say to you, reverence every one. If you think of self as a symbol of the complete Self, as the holy thing, then you will reverence the self in every human being, in every creature.”
“I don’t think,” said Virginia, “that we have much sympathy with the self in animals we kill to eat.”
“That,” I answered, “is another question. It has nothing to do with what we are saying now.”
“I think it has,” she protested.
“Then,” I said, “if you reverence self, and understand and respect the self in every person, how could you quarrel with any one?”
“You expect us to know an awful lot,” said Virginia, “to know every one.”
“Certainly,” I answered. “Is not that our idea, to reach what we desire through understanding and sympathy with every one?”
They said they couldn’t respect every one. Some people they couldn’t help, as Henry said, pitying.
I objected strenuously to that word. All but Henry agreed with me. It is always a word of scorn.
They spoke of “feeling sorry for” people who had suffered some loss, feeling sorry, but not pitying.
“Then,” said Marian, “one ought not to say ‘sorry for’ but ‘sorry with.’”
Virginia said if a girl’s mother had died, and one had not known the mother, one might be sorry for her, but not sorry with her. They had a little argument, and to stop it I said one might be both sorry for and sorry with, but certainly one would have the “with” feeling.
Ruth objected that when there was an argument I always made both sides right.
“Why not?” I asked. “By the light of complete vision we do see most things as true which first seemed contradictory. Our idea of completeness is to include many truths, and show them to be the same truth.”
She admitted that.
Marian spoke of people she liked, but could not respect.
“If you knew them from the inside,” I said, “as they know themselves, you might feel otherwise.”
“Yes,” said Virginia, “I have always thought that if anybody knew all about me, knew me just as I know myself, they could not help liking me.”
I said: “It seems not much to expect of us, to understand our parents, who are so anxious for an understanding, and whom we love. After all, we do owe them something—when you consider that but for them we would not be here; and we are most of us rather glad that we are here.”
“Yes,” said Marian, “I would like to stay a while longer.”
Now we spoke of many things, many personal things, of quarrels and how to avoid them. Virginia amused us by saying people often quarreled with her, but she never quarreled with them.
Marian said: “If there’s one thing which makes people feel mean, angry, self-reproachful and small, it is to try to quarrel with some one who won’t be made angry.”
“Naturally,” I said, “they can’t help comparing themselves with the other person.”
“Yes,” said Florence, “I am always sorry and angry at myself when the other person keeps cool or is hurt. But when the other person gets angry, too, I feel as if I were right.”
“It’s an ugly thing to be angry,” I said; “it makes us so small, shuts us in.”
“How do you mean?” asked Marian.
“It cuts us off from that other person, makes it impossible to understand at least him, and so keeps us from completeness and harmony, actually robs us of part of ourself.”
Was it all the children’s fault, they asked, when children and parents failed to understand each other?
“As it takes two to make a quarrel,” I answered, “so it takes two to make a misunderstanding. Butonecan stop it. Remember that older people have often gone through trials in life that have shaken their nerves and made them sensitive and irritable to little annoyances.”
Marian asked: “Do you mean fussy?”
“Yes,” I said, “and it is easy to understand. But the fact that in many families some of the children get along well with the parents, and others do not, proves that at least some of the responsibility rests with the children.”
We spoke of self-control, of standing, as it were, outside and above ourselves—the idea of aloofness—and not working like a machine for the impulse of the moment. I said I had known people who had this trouble in youth, and stopped it with a strong resolution, because they saw it was a bad, an ugly and a controllable thing. Henry spoke of the old plan of counting a hundred before saying anything. We none of us liked the idea, possibly because we were tired of it; I said, for one, that I did not see how counting a hundred could make me change my mind, whereas thinking might. I said the best plan was to put one’s self at once, as it were, inside the other person, and then one could not possibly say the disagreeable thing. Henry, it seems, has only one difficulty, that of wanting to express or keep his own opinion at the expense of contradicting his elders. I said one had always the right to express one’s opinion, but one might also do it as an opinion, say “I think,” or “I believe”; that one might always consider how the thing said would impress the person listening. Marian spoke of people who irritate you by their presence, whom you dislike and who grate on you, no matter what they may do or say. Then I told them of the saving sense of humor; how, if we resolve to be amused by people in a pleasant, genial way, to see the humor in human life, we may avoid being hurt by them or hurting them in return.
Virginia especially agreed with me, cited incidents of being amused by the disagreeable, and spoke of Dickens as one who could be amused by all sorts of people, even the most “bromidic” or disagreeable. Marian said Dickens was amused by every one but his heroes and heroines. They almost always seemed a hardship to him and to others.
I said we must use every one for our good. That word to “use people” had been employed in a bad sense, but I meant it in a good sense.
“Whenever you are with any one you don’t like, think at once what you can get out of that meeting. Every human being has something for you, and you for him. Self always wants to find self.”
Marian and Ruth immediately thought of people from whom they could get nothing. Virginia, who does get something from everything, remarked that some people seemed to have very little self.
“To be a human being at all,” I answered, “how much of self one must have, compared with the animals!”
“I suppose,” said she; “that is why some people, who have not much, remind me of animals.”
I said I was sorry we had digressed so far, and feared we had not arrived anywhere, after all. Florence said she liked to confess her sins. And Marian answered her that it was a bad habit.
“It is all,” said Marian, “what I have heard before, and know to be true, and don’t do, anyway.”
“Nothing new?” I asked. “Not even the plan of trying to feel at once just what the other person is feeling?”
“Oh, yes, that, perhaps,” she said.
Marian seemed to think I had given her a great many dreadful “slams”; but I could not see it so. “I am sure I did not,” I said. “Oh, no,” she answered quite sarcastically, “not at all.” But she seemed to bear me no ill-will. Virginia said I wanted them to be good and virtuous. No, I said, I had not thought of that.
“Perhaps,” she suggested, “good but not virtuous, or virtuous but not good?”
I answered: “All I want you to do is to satisfy yourselves.”
“Is that all!” exclaimed Marian. “After you told us how we could never be wholly satisfied, how we should always want something more!”
“The beautiful life must be harmonious,” I said. “Disjointed beauty is not beautiful. You remember, we spoke of the city, how a beautiful house might be made to look not at all beautiful by being placed next to a high wall, or in any position where it did not fit; how the city could not be beautiful until all the people combined to build a harmonious city.”
“By itself the house would be beautiful, anyway,” they said.
“Yes,” I answered, “but in ugly surroundings its beauty would be half lost.”
Virginia said: “If I saw a very beautiful little girl between two ugly monkeys, I think the little girl would look all the more beautiful.”
Marian answered: “I would immediately imagine her petting or fondling the two monkeys, and then it would look beautiful.”
It turned out, however, that Virginia’s monkeys were figurative, and that she meant ugly children. This was disconcerting to Ruth, Marian and Florence, and caused prolonged giggles.
I said that would simply be contrast, not discord, that contrast might please and make even the ugly look beautiful, but discord, two beautiful houses so placed together that neither looked well, two colors that “killed” each other, these were ugly. Beauty had to find for itself or make for itself the right surroundings, in order to be truly beautiful.
Florence said: “I think it is a shame people should be liked just for their looks. I know girls who are liked just because they are pretty, when there’s nothing to them, and others who are homely, but much nicer, who are liked less. I try never to let it influence me.”
Henry said he never did let it; that he always liked people for what they really were, and not for looks.
“I can’t help it,” said Virginia. “I know a girl who is horrid in every way, and when she is away I can’t bear her; but the minute I see her I forgive her, because she is so beautiful.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “if you knew her from the inside, as she knows herself, you might think that no one could help liking her.”
“No,” said Virginia; “she’s one of the people who, I feel sure, cannot think that of herself.”
Marian agreed with Virginia. She said when she met people she was interested in the good-looking ones, and always judged them by their faces.
“That is different,” I said, “to judge people by the character written in their faces, as we judge them by all things. But though all beauty is good, the beauty of the personality, of life itself, is surely best.”
TWELFTH MEETING
Through inevitable circumstances the club had been discontinued for six weeks. But I was in personal touch with all the members during this interval.
“We have not met for so long,” I said, “I wonder whether you have forgotten anything of what we had done?”
They all assured me that it was clear in their minds. Henry said: “It has had time to sink in.”
“I am glad,” I went on, “that we happened to stop at the end of a part; that now we begin anew at a new thing. But I am a little afraid to go on. For now we are going to speak of morals, of goodness.”
“Why are you afraid?” asked Marian.
“Because I am so afraid we are going to moralize, to become petty.”
“Don’t be afraid of that,” said Marian; “I have had too much experience to be likely to do it.”
“Well, then,” I said, “first of all we must find out what we consider good, what we mean by the good—that misused word—and to distinguish between the true and the artificial good. Have you any ideas about it?”
None of them had any definite idea of what they meant by the good, or of the distinction between the goody-goodiness which repelled them, and the goodness which they loved. They thought immediately of “good” people who are unlovable or stupid. Virginia and Marian exchanged remarks about a girl they had met that morning at Sunday-school; and all through the meeting, until I found effective means to stop them, they referred to her as an example.
“Now,” I said, “I will tell you of the true good, and by the light of it you will clearly distinguish the artificial. You remember the first law of art.”
Henry had the paper with him. It was: “Art is a symbol of completeness in a definite shape.”
“So the good, too, is a symbol of completeness in a definite shape,” I said. “Goodness is always of relation. It means the right relation, sympathy and unity of those who know each other. And the good man is the man who makes a complete world, a symbol of the perfect awakened universe, out of those few people whom he knows—that is, of whose existence he is aware—and of all that he knows in the universe, which is a small part of the whole. He makes it complete and perfect, by making all his relations with life complete, and understanding and beautiful. You realize that a Robinson Crusoe, alone on his desert island, if he never expected to see human beings again, could not be either good or bad.”
“Yes, he could,” said Virginia, “in the way he treated the animals.”
“That is right,” I answered. “If you include the animals as selves, he could still be good or bad in his relation with them. But you see that goodness is of relation. It is having our relations right, good and sympathetic, as far as they reach.
“That, then, is the law, the only law. All moralities and systems were made to uphold and fulfil that law, and they all change with the needs of man and his circumstances, but that one law is always the same, is always true, is the spirit which makes all actions either good or bad. For I believe there is no action in itself either good or bad, but all must be tested by this law. ‘Is it good?’ means: Does it make for true and understanding relations between men? Do you agree with me?”
“Yes,” they said.
“Take the laws of Moses, or any system of laws,” I went on, “and you will see that they were made by men, who realized in themselves the one supreme law, the law of progress toward the human whole. These systems of laws, if followed by people incapable of seeing the broad way for themselves, would lead toward that end. But the lesser laws change with circumstance, as a path changes with the landscape. Take the Mosaic laws. The first laws, ‘Thou shalt have no other God,’ ‘Thou shalt not take his name in vain,’ and ‘Thou shalt keep the Sabbath,’ seem to us now much less important than some later laws, such as ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and so on. But if you stop to think, you will see that these first were most necessary; for the people’s idea of God, so much more limited than ours, was still, like ours, the reason for their morality, the law of laws, the ‘I Am’ that gave meaning to goodness. In their condition, if they had not reverenced and feared God, they would not have kept the laws of Moses. The actions or ways of life we often hear called good, but which arouse in us a feeling of contempt, as if it were goody-goodiness, or self-righteousness, are actions according to petty laws of goodness, by people who do not know the spirit, the great law above all laws. Sometimes they are actions no longer good at all, acted according to petty laws that we have passed. Do you see what I mean?”
“Give me an example of what you mean,” Marian said.
“Many conventions are an example,” said Henry.
“Yes, they may be,” I answered.
“Conventions,” said Virginia, “are neither right nor wrong.”
“No,” I answered, “they are usually a matter of convenience. But some people do make the mistake of calling them right or wrong. Then again you will hear people argue whether or not it is right to tell the truth, under all circumstances.”
“You mean,” Henry said, “that they argue whether or not it is good to tell the truth as truth, not whether the truth will help us toward better relation.”
“Exactly.”
“I think,” said Virginia, “to tell the truth to hurt people’s feelings is wicked.”
Now they were just going to have an argument as to truth-telling, when I reminded them that this was what we did not want to do.
Marian spoke of school laws, and said that these were often without force or reason, and that she saw no great harm in breaking them. When I remembered the folly of laws in many schools, I could not disagree with her. “Of course,” she said, “one gets out of sympathy with that class of mortals called teachers.”
“Hardly,” said I, “if one is honest at all times. And perhaps the meanest, most cowardly lie is the lie of evasion and shirking of punishment in such a case.”
Henry said: “Teachers ought not to ask boys and girls, ‘did you do this or that?’”
“You are right,” I answered; “but, again, no boy or girl of spirit, courage and character would hesitate to answer truthfully.
“Self-sacrifice,” I said, “is a good example of the sort of action that is called good in itself, when it is not at all so, but has only a definite and limited purpose in the scheme. I wish to explain it to you. But first I want to be sure that you understand this idea of good. Is it new to you?”
“Yes,” said Marian, “I never thought of it in that way before.”
“You all have said so little,” I went on, “I am afraid you may not fully understand.”
“There is nothing to say,” answered Marian, “for it grows so naturally out of everything we have done.”
“Our whole thought is like a chain,” said Virginia, “link within link.”
“Alfred,” I said, “you are so silent, you don’t give us a chance to see how bright you are. Now, tell me, what is the good? What do I mean? I want to be sure you understand.”
He hesitated. “The good is completeness, harmony.”
“Yes,” I said, “but I want it more definitely. The good is a sign of that completeness. To the truly good man, as much as he knows of the world, or dreams of it, is his whole self. And he wants that whole self to be right. The good man cannot be wholly good until every one else is so. The world must be perfect to satisfy his desire for good.”
Ruth said: “It is what you told us before, that we cannot be perfect unless the universe is perfect. But it seems to me that a man may be just as good, though others are bad.”
“Yes,” I said, “he can do his best to fill out the gaps and make his relations right, but his goodness will not wholly satisfy him. On the other hand, the self-righteous man, who lives according to precepts and rules, is easily satisfied with himself. Goodness is beauty. The good is always the beautiful action. But goodness, according to laws and precepts which are outworn, which we have left behind us, is no longer beautiful for us.”
Virginia pointed out that in this, then, goodness differed from art, for the objects of art remained beautiful through hundreds of years.
“Six hundred years ago,” she said, “men painted pictures which probably cannot be equalled to-day.”
“But,” I answered, “a man trying to paint like Raphael now, would not paint beautifully.”
“No,” said she; “but if he tried to paint like Franz Hals or Rembrandt he might.”
“Not at all,” I answered.
“Of course,” she admitted, “he would have to paint like himself, to be himself.”
“Surely,” said I, “and so with goodness. Each man has his own particular goodness, according to his circumstances and nature. But, just as a beautiful picture is eternally beautiful, so goodness in the past, though it no longer seems good to us for practice, is always delightful to think of, though it would be horrible to imitate. For instance, the self-imposed poverty of St. Francis of Assisi.”
We spoke of asceticism and the ideals of self-sacrifice, and then of self-sacrifice itself, as preached in our own lives.
“In the first place,” I said, “we must get clear in our minds the meaning of happiness. People will say to you again and again that the aim of life is happiness. But if each one of us were to speak of happiness, and use the same word, we would each mean something different. Now, what is happiness?”
“It is having fun,” said Virginia.
“Yes,” I said, “that is all right. But that’s only repeating the same thing. What is it that makes us happy?”
Florence answered: “Having what you like.”
“Yes,” I said, “but more than that. It is having what you want most. If you liked pie, but you liked ice cream better, then pie wouldn’t satisfy you, would it?”
“No.”
“What would?”
“Ice cream and pie both,” said Florence.
We decided, however, after some thought, that we would give up pie for ice cream. “And this,” I said, “is the meaning of self-sacrifice. It is giving up what we want for something we want still more. And as the thing we want most of all, and for which we would give up everything else, is complete harmony, sympathy and understanding, you see that in all our self-sacrifices we are giving up what we want for what we want still more. We are giving up our smaller for our larger self.”
“That is just what Booker T. Washington said at the lecture this morning,” Virginia went on. “He said he had never made a single sacrifice, but he had always done the thing he loved to do most. It is fun to do good. It makes us feel so virtuous. And we do it because we like most to see other people happy.”
“That is what I mean, Virginia.”
“I don’t think it is so, always,” said Ruth. “I think often people are just forced to give up things and sacrifice themselves, when they don’t like it at all.”
“That’s different,” I said, “if it is enforced. I meant voluntary self-sacrifice.”
“Even so,” she went on, “suppose you are going out somewhere, and you have to stay at home with some person who is ill, just because you are asked to do it. You don’t like it, but you do it, anyway.”
“Probably,” I answered, “you love that person and that person’s pleasure far more than you do, say, the theatre.”
“No,” said Ruth, “perhaps you don’t love the person at all.”
“But you love to feel virtuous,” Virginia said, “and all the time you stay at home you are saying bad things, mentally, about that person.”
“But you stay from choice, you please your bigger self and its demands for beauty,” I went on; “you give up what you want for what you want more.”
“Yes,” Virginia said, “for you would be uncomfortable and unhappy if you went.”
“You see how silly and childish it is,” I continued, “to give up anything for nothing, to deny yourself pleasures, to make sacrifices for their own sake. That is one of the false virtues which make people self-righteous, ‘goody-goody’ and ridiculous. I know a girl who gave up eating butter during Lent because she liked butter, and she thought it noble to deny herself.”
“Yes,” said Virginia, “and I know girls who won’t take sundaes during Lent, but drink sodas instead, because they like sundaes better.”
I read aloud to them a Ruskin quotation that Ruth had brought some time ago:
“Recollect that ‘mors’ means death, and delaying; and ‘vita’ means life, and growing; and try always, not to mortify yourself, but to vivify yourself.”
“You see,” I said, “I believe in being selfish, in the very largest sense. I believe the whole world, all that I know and love, to be my whole self, and I want to make that as good, as true, as harmonious as I can. What people usually call selfishness is only self-limitation, cutting yourself off.”
“Yes; it is making yourself little.”
“Exactly. Take selfish people, and you will find that they are not only making others unhappy, but making their own lives very small and narrow.”
“They are unhappy themselves,” said Florence.
I told them a story of three apple seedlings. The first said: “I will not grow; there is so little room; I will not help crowd out the others.” He died, a weakling. The second said: “I will not bear apples, because the effort might spoil the glossy appearance and fulness of my foliage.” He was good to look at, but—useless. The third one said: “Apple-trees were made to bear apples. I like to do it, I want to do it, and I will.” And he did, and so served himself and many beside.
“I never could understand the morality,” I said, “that tells us to live only for others.”
“It would be impossible,” said Henry; “one has to live first for one’s self.”
“And last for one’s self,” I went on, “for that biggest self which is our own life in relation with all that we know. If we lived only for others, others would still live for others, and so on, with no end and no sense. It is like that idea of living for future generations.”
“What of it?” asked Marian. “I am particularly interested.”
“That we shall live for future generations, and the future generations shall live also for future generations, and so on forever and ever!”
“Unless it were all for the last generation,” said Henry.
“But that will never come,” I answered, “or, if it does, it will surely not be worth while. I believe that whoever lives the best life for himself, and does the thing he is most impelled to do, for his whole big self, is also best for all others. He must be, since they are a part of him.”
“It seems to me,” said Marian, who had been dreaming, “that there is no absolute truth. When people claim that they have found the whole truth, and try to explain it to me, I never feel convinced.”
“Does our idea strike you so, Marian?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” she said, “not at all. You never make positive statements.”
“No,” I answered, “I am willing to grant that what seems true to me now may one day be included in a larger truth.”
We spoke a few words, here, of envy. They agreed at once that artistic envy, the envying of capabilities and talents, was impossible to one who felt that others were doing things for him, that what he lacked in himself he would find in others, for his satisfaction.
“But,” said Florence, “there are so many other kinds of envy, where other people having the thing does you no good.”
“That’s true,” I said; “a beggar, for instance, envying the rich people in a restaurant for their food, will not lose his hunger through seeing them eat.”
I told them of the danger and difficulty of our philosophy of right and wrong, how I hesitated to tell it to them for fear they might misuse it, and how much harder it was to guide one’s self by so big a standard than by an unbeautiful, ready-made morality of little laws and precepts. He must take the straight and narrow path, who cannot guide himself across the prairies by the path of stars and planets.
Virginia insisted on my repeating some facts I had told her lately. A young French girl of good education, made desperate by poverty and lack of work, slashed a picture in the Louvre, in order to be arrested, get shelter and food, and attract attention to the injustice of her lot. We discussed such cases, and decided that where society did so great a wrong, the lesser wrong might be part of the cure.
“I cannot judge people,” I said, “when circumstances drive them to do wrong in self-defence.”
We came near forgiving every one, when I reminded them of the sternness of our standard. It made us lenient with others, who did not—and perhaps could not—know that they might master circumstance, and that the whole world was their whole self. But with ourselves it made us terribly exacting.
“Some people are like animals,” said Virginia. “I can’t understand them, and cannot sympathize with them.”
“That,” I said, “is your loss, you superior animal. Ruskin says somewhere, and quite truly, that who cannot sympathize with the lower cannot sympathize with the higher.”
Now Virginia plunged off into a stream of delightful nonsense, told us how she sometimes loved and sometimes hated herself, how, if she was very happy, she had to pay the penalty of reaction, and how interesting she was, altogether. As a punishment we made her keep still for five minutes by the watch. I hoped Alfred would talk instead. Suppose we punished him by making him talk for five minutes!
Florence said: “What I like most of all is to be liked. I often envy people their lovableness.”
“Naturally,” said I, “that is what we all like most, isn’t it?
“And the truly good person, in our sense of good, is also the lovable, beloved person.”
Marian and Virginia exchanged glances. They were thinking again of that girl in Sunday-school, who, they said, was thoroughly good, but not at all lovable.
“The good person,” I said, “is also the intelligent, sympathetic person. Sympathy, understanding love, is the great virtue. I have made a list of seven virtues. Would you like to hear them? First, Love.”
That, they said, included all the others.
Yes, I answered, it was the chief. Second, Courage. Courage, they said, to do as we believed. Third, Trustworthiness. They all agreed. Fourth, love of knowledge. Fifth, love of beauty. Sixth, insight. Seventh, a sense of humor!
During this time Virginia and Marian were fitting each virtue to that girl, and found her lacking only in the latter ones, but no more lovable or interesting than before.
“Ruth,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure they are not speaking of you or me?”
“I don’t know,” she answered; “perhaps.”
They protested.
“Do you know the girl, Ruth?” I asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“Well,” I said, “please bring her to the next meeting. She interests me.”
Ruth promised, despite the protestations and explanations of Marian and Virginia. “You would know, then, of whom we had been talking,” they said.
“Very well,” I answered, “she shall stay away on one condition.”
“What is that?”
“That you don’t mention her again. I always feel,” I went on, “that when any one is badly spoken of, I am being criticized behind my back. Just as when a race, such as the negroes, for instance, is unjustly spoken of, I feel like fighting for my rights; for I take it as a mere matter of chance that I didn’t happen to be one of them.
“Florence,” I continued, “is quite right in wanting to be loved. It is the best thing in the world.”
“Except loving,” said Virginia.
“Of course,” I answered; “but to want to be loved by those we love for what we really are, and truly to wish to be what they can truly love, that is the whole of goodness, I believe. The only difference between vanity and true worth is that the vain person wishes to appear to be what is lovable—which is very unsafe—and the truly good person wishes to be it.”
“You mean,” said Henry, “that vanity is company manners?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know,” Florence said. “I have liked people who used ‘company manners’ for some company, and not for others.”
“I have known people,” said Marian, “who were always agreeable and sweet, and appeared to want every one to like them, and yet were not a bit lovable.”
“Naturally,” I said, “the person who wishes to be loved for what he is, is also willing to be hated for it, if he must, by those who think otherwise.” I said there was a man of whom we had heard much during the last days (because of his centenary) who seemed to be exactly what we meant by good. This was Abraham Lincoln. We spent some time speaking of him, the man who, it seems to me, might have inspired a new American religion.
“We always sympathize most with those,” said Henry, “who sympathize with us.”
“We love them most,” I said, “but the man of large heart will often sympathize with people who understand him no better than they understand the sunshine: with the bad man, for instance.”
“That is true.”
“In the drama of life,” I said, “he who loves beauty and his whole self will live so as to make that whole beautiful, and for this joy and beauty will gladly give up his petty satisfactions. For remember that the good life is the beautiful life, and the influential life. Indeed, every life in this drama has immense influence.”
“For good or bad,” said Henry.
“Yes, surely.”
“I thought not,” answered Florence; “each one has a very, very small influence.”
“In the universe, perhaps, but we know nothing, and can know nothing, of that. We cannot make comparisons with infinity. But with those we love, who know us, in our own family, our own circle of friends, the influence of each one is immense. Think of any family you know, of your own family, and see how much difference each one makes in the whole, how each one changes the whole. Each one influences all the others, and makes the tone and color of life, whether he will or not.”
“I suppose,” said Henry, “that even those who have no influence, who do nothing, could have an influence.”
“They can’t help having it, for good or bad. And people can know they have this influence, and use it consciously, to make life about them as they wish it to be. As a woman who comes into a house, if she loves beauty and order, will set it in order at once and make it beautiful, so that it will be all changed because of her, and for her pleasure, so in life we can set all things in order and change them to our wish, by our presence and character.”
“I don’t think,” Ruth said, “that the good is always beautiful. Often the thing we have to do is disagreeable.”
“For instance, what?” I asked.
“In school work, for example. We have to study subjects that are hard and disagreeable, simply to pass.”
“You mean that you have to do disagreeable things to get what you want. Naturally. That is self-sacrifice. And you cannot always do things as you would like to do them. The woman in the house might find ugly wallpaper, and not be able to change that. But she would find other means of making things look better. People can have conscious influence; and the difference between those who make life good and beautiful, and those who attract attention to themselves, is the difference between the play in which all the actors are good, and combine to make a beautiful play, and the one where there is a star who wants a poor cast to set off her charms, and produces an inartistic and uneven play.”
“I don’t see how one could have conscious influence,” said Marian; “it seems to me one lives unconsciously all the time. I like to dream. I am not fond of acting. I don’t believe I would ever have any conscious influence.”
“To dream and dream and keep on dreaming, and not act, is impossible,” I said.
“But,” asked Florence, “isn’t it just the dreamers who do all the great things?”
“Surely,” I answered, “one cannot help influencing people, even by one’s dreams. But you, Florence, you must realize how much difference each member of a family makes.”
“Yes, I do.”
“And Virginia, I believe, has often made conscious effort toward cheerful influence, and knows what I mean. You, too, Ruth; I am certain you know exactly what I mean, and I hope you and Marian will talk it over; for it is an interesting subject.”
“Yes, I know well what you mean.”
As we left I asked Alfred to write a paper for me. “For,” I said, “they will begin to think you stupid if you show no sign of intelligence. And even I would like a tangible proof of what I really know, that you do grasp exactly the spirit of what we say.”