What Is Man? and Other Essays
by Mark Twain · English · Gutenberg #70 · 550,804 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: What Is Man? and Other Essays
Author: Mark Twain
Release date: September 13, 2004 [eBook #70]
Most recently updated: May 26, 2022
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS ***
WHAT IS MAN?
AND OTHER ESSAYS
By Mark Twain
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910)
CONTENTS
WHAT IS MAN?
THE DEATH OF JEAN
THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE
HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK
THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION
A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY
SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY
AT THE SHRINE OF ST. WAGNER
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT
A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET
AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY
CONCERNING TOBACCO
THE BEE
TAMING THE BICYCLE
IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
WHAT IS MAN?
I
a. Man the Machine. b. Personal Merit
[The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing. The Old Man had
asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more.
The Young Man objected, and asked him to go into particulars and
furnish his reasons for his position.]
Old Man. What are the materials of which a steam-engine is made?
Young Man. Iron, steel, brass, white-metal, and so on.
O.M. Where are these found?
Y.M. In the rocks.
O.M. In a pure state?
Y.M. No—in ores.
O.M. Are the metals suddenly deposited in the ores?
Y.M. No—it is the patient work of countless ages.
O.M. You could make the engine out of the rocks themselves?
Y.M. Yes, a brittle one and not valuable.
O.M. You would not require much, of such an engine as that?
Y.M. No—substantially nothing.
O.M. To make a fine and capable engine, how would you proceed?
Y.M. Drive tunnels and shafts into the hills; blast out the iron ore;
crush it, smelt it, reduce it to pig-iron; put some of it through the
Bessemer process and make steel of it. Mine and treat and combine
several metals of which brass is made.
O.M. Then?
Y.M. Out of the perfected result, build the fine engine.
O.M. You would require much of this one?
Y.M. Oh, indeed yes.
O.M. It could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches, polishers, in a
word all the cunning machines of a great factory?
Y.M. It could.
O.M. What could the stone engine do?
Y.M. Drive a sewing-machine, possibly—nothing more, perhaps.
O.M. Men would admire the other engine and rapturously praise it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. But not the stone one?
Y.M. No.
O.M. The merits of the metal machine would be far above those of the
stone one?
Y.M. Of course.
O.M. Personal merits?
Y.M. _Personal_ merits? How do you mean?
O.M. It would be personally entitled to the credit of its own
performance?
Y.M. The engine? Certainly not.
O.M. Why not?
Y.M. Because its performance is not personal. It is the result of the
law of construction. It is not a _merit_ that it does the things which
it is set to do—it can’t _help_ doing them.
O.M. And it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine that it does
so little?
Y.M. Certainly not. It does no more and no less than the law of its
make permits and compels it to do. There is nothing _personal_ about
it; it cannot choose. In this process of “working up to the matter” is
it your idea to work up to the proposition that man and a machine are
about the same thing, and that there is no personal merit in the
performance of either?
O.M. Yes—but do not be offended; I am meaning no offense. What makes
the grand difference between the stone engine and the steel one? Shall
we call it training, education? Shall we call the stone engine a savage
and the steel one a civilized man? The original rock contained the
stuff of which the steel one was built—but along with a lot of sulphur
and stone and other obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from
the old geologic ages—prejudices, let us call them. Prejudices which
nothing within the rock itself had either _power_ to remove or any
_desire_ to remove. Will you take note of that phrase?
Y.M. Yes. I have written it down; “Prejudices which nothing within the
rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove.” Go on.
O.M. Prejudices must be removed by _outside influences_ or not at all.
Put that down.
Y.M. Very well; “Must be removed by outside influences or not at all.”
Go on.
O.M. The iron’s prejudice against ridding itself of the cumbering rock.
To make it more exact, the iron’s absolute _indifference_ as to whether
the rock be removed or not. Then comes the _outside influence_ and
grinds the rock to powder and sets the ore free. The _iron_ in the ore
is still captive. An _outside influence_ smelts it free of the clogging
ore. The iron is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent to further
progress. An _outside influence_ beguiles it into the Bessemer furnace
and refines it into steel of the first quality. It is educated, now—its
training is complete. And it has reached its limit. By no possible
process can it be educated into _gold_. Will you set that down?
Y.M. Yes. “Everything has its limit—iron ore cannot be educated into
gold.”
O.M. There are gold men, and tin men, and copper men, and leaden men,
and steel men, and so on—and each has the limitations of his nature,
his heredities, his training, and his environment. You can build
engines out of each of these metals, and they will all perform, but you
must not require the weak ones to do equal work with the strong ones.
In each case, to get the best results, you must free the metal from its
obstructing prejudicial ones by education—smelting, refining, and so
forth.
Y.M. You have arrived at man, now?
O.M. Yes. Man the machine—man the impersonal engine. Whatsoever a man
is, is due to his _make_, and to the _influences_ brought to bear upon
it by his heredities, his habitat, his associations. He is moved,
directed, _commanded_, by _exterior_ influences—_solely_. He
_originates_ nothing, not even a thought.
Y.M. Oh, come! Where did I get my opinion that this which you are
talking is all foolishness?
O.M. It is a quite natural opinion—indeed an inevitable opinion—but
_you _did not create the materials out of which it is formed. They are
odds and ends of thoughts, impressions, feelings, gathered
unconsciously from a thousand books, a thousand conversations, and from
streams of thought and feeling which have flowed down into your heart
and brain out of the hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors.
_Personally_ you did not create even the smallest microscopic fragment
of the materials out of which your opinion is made; and personally you
cannot claim even the slender merit of _putting the borrowed materials
together_. That was done _automatically_—by your mental machinery, in
strict accordance with the law of that machinery’s construction. And
you not only did not make that machinery yourself, but you have _not
even any command over it_.
Y.M. This is too much. You think I could have formed no opinion but
that one?
O.M. Spontaneously? No. And _you did not form that one_; your machinery
did it for you—automatically and instantly, without reflection or the
need of it.
Y.M. Suppose I had reflected? How then?
O.M. Suppose you try?
Y.M. (_After a quarter of an hour_.) I have reflected.
O.M. You mean you have tried to change your opinion—as an experiment?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. With success?
Y.M. No. It remains the same; it is impossible to change it.
O.M. I am sorry, but you see, yourself, that your mind is merely a
machine, nothing more. You have no command over it, it has no command
over itself—it is worked _solely from the outside_. That is the law of
its make; it is the law of all machines.
Y.M. Can’t I _ever_ change one of these automatic opinions?
O.M. No. You can’t yourself, but _exterior influences_ can do it.
Y.M. And exterior ones _only_?
O.M. Yes—exterior ones only.
Y.M. That position is untenable—I may say ludicrously untenable.
O.M. What makes you think so?
Y.M. I don’t merely think it, I know it. Suppose I resolve to enter
upon a course of thought, and study, and reading, with the deliberate
purpose of changing that opinion; and suppose I succeed. _That _is not
the work of an exterior impulse, the whole of it is mine and personal;
for I originated the project.
O.M. Not a shred of it. _It grew out of this talk with me_. But for
that it would not have occurred to you. No man ever originates
anything. All his thoughts, all his impulses, come _from the outside_.
Y.M. It’s an exasperating subject. The _first_ man had original
thoughts, anyway; there was nobody to draw from.
O.M. It is a mistake. Adam’s thoughts came to him from the outside.
_You_ have a fear of death. You did not invent that—you got it from
outside, from talking and teaching. Adam had no fear of death—none in
the world.
Y.M. Yes, he had.
O.M. When he was created?
Y.M. No.
O.M. When, then?
Y.M. When he was threatened with it.
O.M. Then it came from _outside_. Adam is quite big enough; let us not
try to make a god of him. _None but gods have ever had a thought which
did not come from the outside_. Adam probably had a good head, but it
was of no sort of use to him until it was filled up _from the outside_.
He was not able to invent the triflingest little thing with it. He had
not a shadow of a notion of the difference between good and evil—he had
to get the idea _from the outside_. Neither he nor Eve was able to
originate the idea that it was immodest to go naked; the knowledge came
in with the apple _from the outside_. A man’s brain is so constructed
that _it can originate nothing whatsoever_. It can only use material
obtained _outside_. It is merely a machine; and it works automatically,
not by will-power. _It has no command over itself, its owner has no
command over it_.
Y.M. Well, never mind Adam: but certainly Shakespeare’s creations—
O.M. No, you mean Shakespeare’s _imitations_. Shakespeare created
nothing. He correctly observed, and he marvelously painted. He exactly
portrayed people whom _God_ had created; but he created none himself.
Let us spare him the slander of charging him with trying. Shakespeare
could not create. _He was a machine, and machines do not create_.
Y.M. Where _was_ his excellence, then?
O.M. In this. He was not a sewing-machine, like you and me; he was a
Gobelin loom. The threads and the colors came into him _from the
outside_; outside influences, suggestions, _experiences_ (reading,
seeing plays, playing plays, borrowing ideas, and so on), framed the
patterns in his mind and started up his complex and admirable
machinery, and _it automatically_ turned out that pictured and gorgeous
fabric which still compels the astonishment of the world. If
Shakespeare had been born and bred on a barren and unvisited rock in
the ocean his mighty intellect would have had no _outside material_ to
work with, and could have invented none; and _no outside influences_,
teachings, moldings, persuasions, inspirations, of a valuable sort, and
could have invented none; and so Shakespeare would have produced
nothing. In Turkey he would have produced something—something up to the
highest limit of Turkish influences, associations, and training. In
France he would have produced something better—something up to the
highest limit of the French influences and training. In England he rose
to the highest limit attainable through the _outside helps afforded by
that land’s ideals, influences, and training_. You and I are but
sewing-machines. We must turn out what we can; we must do our endeavor
and care nothing at all when the unthinking reproach us for not turning
out Gobelins.
Y.M. And so we are mere machines! And machines may not boast, nor feel
proud of their performance, nor claim personal merit for it, nor
applause and praise. It is an infamous doctrine.
O.M. It isn’t a doctrine, it is merely a fact.
Y.M. I suppose, then, there is no more merit in being brave than in
being a coward?
O.M. _Personal_ merit? No. A brave man does not _create_ his bravery.
He is entitled to no personal credit for possessing it. It is born to
him. A baby born with a billion dollars—where is the personal merit in
that? A baby born with nothing—where is the personal demerit in that?
The one is fawned upon, admired, worshiped, by sycophants, the other is
neglected and despised—where is the sense in it?
Y.M. Sometimes a timid man sets himself the task of conquering his
cowardice and becoming brave—and succeeds. What do you say to that?
O.M. That it shows the value of _training in right directions over
training in wrong ones_. Inestimably valuable is training, influence,
education, in right directions—_training one’s self-approbation to
elevate its ideals_.
Y.M. But as to merit—the personal merit of the victorious coward’s
project and achievement?
O.M. There isn’t any. In the world’s view he is a worthier man than he
was before, but _he_ didn’t achieve the change—the merit of it is not
his.
Y.M. Whose, then?
O.M. His _make_, and the influences which wrought upon it from the
outside.
Y.M. His make?
O.M. To start with, he was _not_ utterly and completely a coward, or
the influences would have had nothing to work upon. He was not afraid
of a cow, though perhaps of a bull: not afraid of a woman, but afraid
of a man. There was something to build upon. There was a _seed_. No
seed, no plant. Did he make that seed himself, or was it born in him?
It was no merit of _his_ that the seed was there.
Y.M. Well, anyway, the idea of _cultivating_ it, the resolution to
cultivate it, was meritorious, and he originated that.
O.M. He did nothing of the kind. It came whence _all_ impulses, good or
bad, come—from _outside_. If that timid man had lived all his life in a
community of human rabbits, had never read of brave deeds, had never
heard speak of them, had never heard any one praise them nor express
envy of the heroes that had done them, he would have had no more idea
of bravery than Adam had of modesty, and it could never by any
possibility have occurred to him to _resolve_ to become brave. He
_could not originate the idea_—it had to come to him from the
_outside_. And so, when he heard bravery extolled and cowardice
derided, it woke him up. He was ashamed. Perhaps his sweetheart turned
up her nose and said, “I am told that you are a coward!” It was not
_he_ that turned over the new leaf—she did it for him. _He_ must not
strut around in the merit of it —it is not his.
Y.M. But, anyway, he reared the plant after she watered the seed.
O.M. No. _Outside influences_ reared it. At the command—and
trembling—he marched out into the field—with other soldiers and in the
daytime, not alone and in the dark. He had the _influence of example_,
he drew courage from his comrades’ courage; he was afraid, and wanted
to run, but he did not dare; he was _afraid_ to run, with all those
soldiers looking on. He was progressing, you see—the moral fear of
shame had risen superior to the physical fear of harm. By the end of
the campaign experience will have taught him that not _all_ who go into
battle get hurt—an outside influence which will be helpful to him; and
he will also have learned how sweet it is to be praised for courage and
be huzza’d at with tear-choked voices as the war-worn regiment marches
past the worshiping multitude with flags flying and the drums beating.
After that he will be as securely brave as any veteran in the army—and
there will not be a shade nor suggestion of _personal merit_ in it
anywhere; it will all have come from the _outside_. The Victoria Cross
breeds more heroes than—
Y.M. Hang it, where is the sense in his becoming brave if he is to get
no credit for it?
O.M. Your question will answer itself presently. It involves an
important detail of man’s make which we have not yet touched upon.
Y.M. What detail is that?
O.M. The impulse which moves a person to do things—the only impulse
that ever moves a person to do a thing.
Y.M. The _only_ one! Is there but one?
O.M. That is all. There is only one.
Y.M. Well, certainly that is a strange enough doctrine. What is the
sole impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing?
O.M. The impulse to _content his own spirit_—the _necessity_ of
contenting his own spirit and _winning its approval_.
Y.M. Oh, come, that won’t do!
O.M. Why won’t it?
Y.M. Because it puts him in the attitude of always looking out for his
own comfort and advantage; whereas an unselfish man often does a thing
solely for another person’s good when it is a positive disadvantage to
himself.
O.M. It is a mistake. The act must do _him_ good, _first_; otherwise he
will not do it. He may _think_ he is doing it solely for the other
person’s sake, but it is not so; he is contenting his own spirit
first—the other’s person’s benefit has to always take _second_ place.
Y.M. What a fantastic idea! What becomes of self—sacrifice? Please
answer me that.
O.M. What is self-sacrifice?
Y.M. The doing good to another person where no shadow nor suggestion of
benefit to one’s self can result from it.
II
Man’s Sole Impulse—the Securing of His Own Approval
Old Man. There have been instances of it—you think?
Young Man. _Instances_? Millions of them!
O.M. You have not jumped to conclusions? You have examined
them—critically?
Y.M. They don’t need it: the acts themselves reveal the golden impulse
back of them.
O.M. For instance?
Y.M. Well, then, for instance. Take the case in the book here. The man
lives three miles up-town. It is bitter cold, snowing hard, midnight.
He is about to enter the horse-car when a gray and ragged old woman, a
touching picture of misery, puts out her lean hand and begs for rescue
from hunger and death. The man finds that he has a quarter in his
pocket, but he does not hesitate: he gives it her and trudges home
through the storm. There—it is noble, it is beautiful; its grace is
marred by no fleck or blemish or suggestion of self-interest.
O.M. What makes you think that?
Y.M. Pray what else could I think? Do you imagine that there is some
other way of looking at it?
O.M. Can you put yourself in the man’s place and tell me what he felt
and what he thought?
Y.M. Easily. The sight of that suffering old face pierced his generous
heart with a sharp pain. He could not bear it. He could endure the
three-mile walk in the storm, but he could not endure the tortures his
conscience would suffer if he turned his back and left that poor old
creature to perish. He would not have been able to sleep, for thinking
of it.
O.M. What was his state of mind on his way home?
Y.M. It was a state of joy which only the self-sacrificer knows. His
heart sang, he was unconscious of the storm.
O.M. He felt well?
Y.M. One cannot doubt it.
O.M. Very well. Now let us add up the details and see how much he got
for his twenty-five cents. Let us try to find out the _real_ why of his
making the investment. In the first place _he_ couldn’t bear the pain
which the old suffering face gave him. So he was thinking of _his_
pain—this good man. He must buy a salve for it. If he did not succor
the old woman _his_ conscience would torture him all the way home.
Thinking of _his_ pain again. He must buy relief for that. If he didn’t
relieve the old woman _he_ would not get any sleep. He must buy some
sleep—still thinking of _himself_, you see. Thus, to sum up, he bought
himself free of a sharp pain in his heart, he bought himself free of
the tortures of a waiting conscience, he bought a whole night’s
sleep—all for twenty-five cents! It should make Wall Street ashamed of
itself. On his way home his heart was joyful, and it sang—profit on top
of profit! The impulse which moved the man to succor the old woman
was—_first_—to _content his own spirit_; secondly to relieve _her_
sufferings. Is it your opinion that men’s acts proceed from one central
and unchanging and inalterable impulse, or from a variety of impulses?
Y.M. From a variety, of course—some high and fine and noble, others
not. What is your opinion?
O.M. Then there is but _one_ law, one source.
Y.M. That both the noblest impulses and the basest proceed from that
one source?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Will you put that law into words?
O.M. Yes. This is the law, keep it in your mind. _From his cradle to
his grave a man never does a single thing which has any_ FIRST AND
FOREMOST _object_ _but one_—_to secure peace of mind, spiritual
comfort_, _for_ HIMSELF.
Y.M. Come! He never does anything for any one else’s comfort, spiritual
or physical?
O.M. No. _except on those distinct terms_—that it shall _first_ secure
_his own_ spiritual comfort. Otherwise he will not do it.
Y.M. It will be easy to expose the falsity of that proposition.
O.M. For instance?
Y.M. Take that noble passion, love of country, patriotism. A man who
loves peace and dreads pain, leaves his pleasant home and his weeping
family and marches out to manfully expose himself to hunger, cold,
wounds, and death. Is that seeking spiritual comfort?
O.M. He loves peace and dreads pain?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then perhaps there is something that he loves _more_ than he loves
peace—_the approval of his neighbors and the public_. And perhaps there
is something which he dreads more than he dreads pain—the _disapproval_
of his neighbors and the public. If he is sensitive to shame he will go
to the field—not because his spirit will be _entirely_ comfortable
there, but because it will be more comfortable there than it would be
if he remained at home. He will always do the thing which will bring
him the _most_ mental comfort—for that is _the sole law of his life_.
He leaves the weeping family behind; he is sorry to make them
uncomfortable, but not sorry enough to sacrifice his _own_ comfort to
secure theirs.
Y.M. Do you really believe that mere public opinion could force a timid
and peaceful man to—
O.M. Go to war? Yes—public opinion can force some men to do _anything_.
Y.M. _Anything_?
O.M. Yes—anything.
Y.M. I don’t believe that. Can it force a right-principled man to do a
wrong thing?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Can it force a kind man to do a cruel thing?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Give an instance.
O.M. Alexander Hamilton was a conspicuously high-principled man. He
regarded dueling as wrong, and as opposed to the teachings of
religion—but in deference to _public opinion_ he fought a duel. He
deeply loved his family, but to buy public approval he treacherously
deserted them and threw his life away, ungenerously leaving them to
lifelong sorrow in order that he might stand well with a foolish world.
In the then condition of the public standards of honor he could not
have been comfortable with the stigma upon him of having refused to
fight. The teachings of religion, his devotion to his family, his
kindness of heart, his high principles, all went for nothing when they
stood in the way of his spiritual comfort. A man will do _anything_, no
matter what it is, _to secure his spiritual comfort_; and he can
neither be forced nor persuaded to any act which has not that goal for
its object. Hamilton’s act was compelled by the inborn necessity of
contenting his own spirit; in this it was like all the other acts of
his life, and like all the acts of all men’s lives. Do you see where
the kernel of the matter lies? A man cannot be comfortable without _his
own_ approval. He will secure the largest share possible of that, at
all costs, all sacrifices.
Y.M. A minute ago you said Hamilton fought that duel to get _public_
approval.
O.M. I did. By refusing to fight the duel he would have secured his
family’s approval and a large share of his own; but the public approval
was more valuable in his eyes than all other approvals put together—in
the earth or above it; to secure that would furnish him the _most_
comfort of mind, the most _self_—approval; so he sacrificed all other
values to get it.
Y.M. Some noble souls have refused to fight duels, and have manfully
braved the public contempt.
O.M. They acted _according to their make_. They valued their principles
and the approval of their families _above_ the public approval. They
took the thing they valued _most_ and let the rest go. They took what
would give them the _largest_ share of _personal contentment and
approval_—a man _always_ does. Public opinion cannot force that kind of
men to go to the wars. When they go it is for other reasons. Other
spirit-contenting reasons.
Y.M. Always spirit-contenting reasons?
O.M. There are no others.
Y.M. When a man sacrifices his life to save a little child from a
burning building, what do you call that?
O.M. When he does it, it is the law of _his_ make. _He_ can’t bear to
see the child in that peril (a man of a different make _could_), and so
he tries to save the child, and loses his life. But he has got what he
was after—_his own approval_.
Y.M. What do you call Love, Hate, Charity, Revenge, Humanity,
Magnanimity, Forgiveness?
O.M. Different results of the one Master Impulse: the necessity of
securing one’s self approval. They wear diverse clothes and are subject
to diverse moods, but in whatsoever ways they masquerade they are the
_same person_ all the time. To change the figure, the _compulsion_ that
moves a man—and there is but the one—is the necessity of securing the
contentment of his own spirit. When it stops, the man is dead.
Y.M. That is foolishness. Love—
O.M. Why, love is that impulse, that law, in its most uncompromising
form. It will squander life and everything else on its object. Not
_primarily_ for the object’s sake, but for _its own_. When its object
is happy _it_ is happy—and that is what it is unconsciously after.
Y.M. You do not even except the lofty and gracious passion of
mother-love?
O.M. No, _it _is the absolute slave of that law. The mother will go
naked to clothe her child; she will starve that it may have food;
suffer torture to save it from pain; die that it may live. She takes a
living _pleasure_ in making these sacrifices. _She does it for that
reward_—that self-approval, that contentment, that peace, that comfort.
_She would do it for your child_ IF SHE COULD GET THE SAME PAY.
Y.M. This is an infernal philosophy of yours.
O.M. It isn’t a philosophy, it is a fact.
Y.M. Of course you must admit that there are some acts which—
O.M. No. There is _no_ act, large or small, fine or mean, which springs
from any motive but the one—the necessity of appeasing and contenting
one’s own spirit.
Y.M. The world’s philanthropists—
O.M. I honor them, I uncover my head to them—from habit and training;
and _they_ could not know comfort or happiness or self-approval if they
did not work and spend for the unfortunate. It makes _them_ happy to
see others happy; and so with money and labor they buy what they are
after—_happiness, self-approval_. Why don’t miners do the same thing?
Because they can get a thousandfold more happiness by _not_ doing it.
There is no other reason. They follow the law of their make.
Y.M. What do you say of duty for duty’s sake?
O.M. That _it does not exist_. Duties are not performed for duty’s
_sake_, but because their _neglect_ would make the man _uncomfortable_.
A man performs but _one_ duty—the duty of contenting his spirit, the
duty of making himself agreeable to himself. If he can most
satisfyingly perform this sole and only duty by _helping_ his neighbor,
he will do it; if he can most satisfyingly perform it by _swindling_
his neighbor, he will do it. But he always looks out for Number
One—_first_; the effects upon others are a _secondary_ matter. Men
pretend to self-sacrifices, but this is a thing which, in the ordinary
value of the phrase, _does not exist and has not existed_. A man often
honestly _thinks_ he is sacrificing himself merely and solely for some
one else, but he is deceived; his bottom impulse is to content a
requirement of his nature and training, and thus acquire peace for his
soul.
Y.M. Apparently, then, all men, both good and bad ones, devote their
lives to contenting their consciences.
O.M. Yes. That is a good enough name for it: Conscience—that
independent Sovereign, that insolent absolute Monarch inside of a man
who is the man’s Master. There are all kinds of consciences, because
there are all kinds of men. You satisfy an assassin’s conscience in one
way, a philanthropist’s in another, a miser’s in another, a burglar’s
in still another. As a _guide_ or _incentive_ to any authoritatively
prescribed line of morals or conduct (leaving _training_ out of the
account), a man’s conscience is totally valueless. I know a
kind-hearted Kentuckian whose self-approval was lacking—whose
conscience was troubling him, to phrase it with exactness—_because he
had neglected to kill a certain man_—a man whom he had never seen. The
stranger had killed this man’s friend in a fight, this man’s Kentucky
training made it a duty to kill the stranger for it. He neglected his
duty—kept dodging it, shirking it, putting it off, and his unrelenting
conscience kept persecuting him for this conduct. At last, to get ease
of mind, comfort, self-approval, he hunted up the stranger and took his
life. It was an immense act of _self-sacrifice_ (as per the usual
definition), for he did not want to do it, and he never would have done
it if he could have bought a contented spirit and an unworried mind at
smaller cost. But we are so made that we will pay _anything_ for that
contentment—even another man’s life.
Y.M. You spoke a moment ago of _trained_ consciences. You mean that we
are not _born_ with consciences competent to guide us aright?
O.M. If we were, children and savages would know right from wrong, and
not have to be taught it.
Y.M. But consciences can be _trained_?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Of course by parents, teachers, the pulpit, and books.
O.M. Yes—they do their share; they do what they can.
Y.M. And the rest is done by—
O.M. Oh, a million unnoticed influences—for good or bad: influences
which work without rest during every waking moment of a man’s life,
from cradle to grave.
Y.M. You have tabulated these?
O.M. Many of them—yes.
Y.M. Will you read me the result?
O.M. Another time, yes. It would take an hour.
Y.M. A conscience can be trained to shun evil and prefer good?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. But will it for spirit-contenting reasons only?
O.M. It _can’t_ be trained to do a thing for any _other_ reason. The
thing is impossible.
Y.M. There _must_ be a genuinely and utterly self-sacrificing act
recorded in human history somewhere.
O.M. You are young. You have many years before you. Search one out.
Y.M. It does seem to me that when a man sees a fellow-being struggling
in the water and jumps in at the risk of his life to save him—
O.M. Wait. Describe the _man_. Describe the _fellow-being_. State if
there is an _audience_ present; or if they are _alone_.
Y.M. What have these things to do with the splendid act?
O.M. Very much. Shall we suppose, as a beginning, that the two are
alone, in a solitary place, at midnight?
Y.M. If you choose.
O.M. And that the fellow-being is the man’s daughter?
Y.M. Well, n-no—make it someone else.
O.M. A filthy, drunken ruffian, then?
Y.M. I see. Circumstances alter cases. I suppose that if there was no
audience to observe the act, the man wouldn’t perform it.
O.M. But there is here and there a man who _would_. People, for
instance, like the man who lost his life trying to save the child from
the fire; and the man who gave the needy old woman his twenty-five
cents and walked home in the storm—there are here and there men like
that who would do it. And why? Because they couldn’t _bear_ to see a
fellow-being struggling in the water and not jump in and help. It would
give _them_ pain. They would save the fellow-being on that account.
_They wouldn’t do it otherwise_. They strictly obey the law which I
have been insisting upon. You must remember and always distinguish the
people who _can’t bear_ things from people who _can_. It will throw
light upon a number of apparently “self-sacrificing” cases.
Y.M. Oh, dear, it’s all so disgusting.
O.M. Yes. And so true.
Y.M. Come—take the good boy who does things he doesn’t want to do, in
order to gratify his mother.
O.M. He does seven-tenths of the act because it gratifies _him_ to
gratify his mother. Throw the bulk of advantage the other way and the
good boy would not do the act. He _must_ obey the iron law. None can
escape it.
Y.M. Well, take the case of a bad boy who—
O.M. You needn’t mention it, it is a waste of time. It is no matter
about the bad boy’s act. Whatever it was, he had a spirit-contenting
reason for it. Otherwise you have been misinformed, and he didn’t do
it.
Y.M. It is very exasperating. A while ago you said that man’s
conscience is not a born judge of morals and conduct, but has to be
taught and trained. Now I think a conscience can get drowsy and lazy,
but I don’t think it can go wrong; if you wake it up—
_A Little Story_
O.M. I will tell you a little story:
Once upon a time an Infidel was guest in the house of a Christian widow
whose little boy was ill and near to death. The Infidel often watched
by the bedside and entertained the boy with talk, and he used these
opportunities to satisfy a strong longing in his nature—that desire
which is in us all to better other people’s condition by having them
think as we think. He was successful. But the dying boy, in his last
moments, reproached him and said:
“_I believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away, and
my comfort. Now I have nothing left, and I die miserable; for the
things which you have told me do not take the place of that which I
have lost_.”
And the mother, also, reproached the Infidel, and said:
“_My child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. How could you do
this cruel thing? We have done you no harm, but only kindness; we made
our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our
reward.”_
The heart of the Infidel was filled with remorse for what he had done,
and he said:
“_It was wrong—I see it now; but I was only trying to do him good. In
my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth_.”
Then the mother said:
“_I had taught him, all his little life, what I believed to be the
truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. Now he is
dead,—and lost; and I am miserable. Our faith came down to us through
centuries of believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to
disturb it? Where was your honor, where was your shame_?”
Y.M. He was a miscreant, and deserved death!
O.M. He thought so himself, and said so.
Y.M. Ah—you see, _his conscience was awakened_!
O.M. Yes, his Self-Disapproval was. It _pained_ him to see the mother
suffer. He was sorry he had done a thing which brought _him_ pain. It
did not occur to him to think of the mother when he was misteaching the
boy, for he was absorbed in providing _pleasure_ for himself, then.
Providing it by satisfying what he believed to be a call of duty.
Y.M. Call it what you please, it is to me a case of _awakened
conscience_. That awakened conscience could never get itself into that
species of trouble again. A cure like that is a _permanent_ cure.
O.M. Pardon—I had not finished the story. We are creatures of _outside
influences_—we originate _nothing_ within. Whenever we take a new line
of thought and drift into a new line of belief and action, the impulse
is _always_ suggested from the _outside_. Remorse so preyed upon the
Infidel that it dissolved his harshness toward the boy’s religion and
made him come to regard it with tolerance, next with kindness, for the
boy’s sake and the mother’s. Finally he found himself examining it.
From that moment his progress in his new trend was steady and rapid. He
became a believing Christian. And now his remorse for having robbed the
dying boy of his faith and his salvation was bitterer than ever. It
gave him no rest, no peace. He _must_ have rest and peace—it is the law
of nature. There seemed but one way to get it; he must devote himself
to saving imperiled souls. He became a missionary. He landed in a pagan
country ill and helpless. A native widow took him into her humble home
and nursed him back to convalescence. Then her young boy was taken
hopelessly ill, and the grateful missionary helped her tend him. Here
was his first opportunity to repair a part of the wrong done to the
other boy by doing a precious service for this one by undermining his
foolish faith in his false gods. He was successful. But the dying boy
in his last moments reproached him and said:
“_I believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away, and
my comfort. Now I have nothing left, and I die miserable; for the
things which you have told me do not take the place of that which I
have lost_.”
And the mother, also, reproached the missionary, and said:
“_My child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. How could you do
this cruel thing? We had done you no harm, but only kindness; we made
our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our
reward_.”
The heart of the missionary was filled with remorse for what he had
done, and he said:
“_It was wrong—I see it now; but I was only trying to do him good. In
my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth_.”
Then the mother said:
“_I had taught him, all his little life, what I believed to be the
truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. Now he is
dead—and lost; and I am miserable. Our faith came down to us through
centuries of believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to
disturb it? Where was your honor, where was your shame_?”
The missionary’s anguish of remorse and sense of treachery were as
bitter and persecuting and unappeasable, now, as they had been in the
former case. The story is finished. What is your comment?
Y.M. The man’s conscience is a fool! It was morbid. It didn’t know
right from wrong.
O.M. I am not sorry to hear you say that. If you grant that _one_ man’s
conscience doesn’t know right from wrong, it is an admission that there
are others like it. This single admission pulls down the whole doctrine
of infallibility of judgment in consciences. Meantime there is one
thing which I ask you to notice.
Y.M. What is that?
O.M. That in both cases the man’s _act_ gave him no spiritual
discomfort, and that he was quite satisfied with it and got pleasure
out of it. But afterward when it resulted in _pain_ to _him_, he was
sorry. Sorry it had inflicted pain upon the others, _but for no reason
under the sun except that their pain gave him pain_. Our consciences
take _no_ notice of pain inflicted upon others until it reaches a point
where it gives pain to _us_. In _all_ cases without exception we are
absolutely indifferent to another person’s pain until his sufferings
make us uncomfortable. Many an infidel would not have been troubled by
that Christian mother’s distress. Don’t you believe that?
Y.M. Yes. You might almost say it of the _average_ infidel, I think.
O.M. And many a missionary, sternly fortified by his sense of duty,
would not have been troubled by the pagan mother’s distress—Jesuit
missionaries in Canada in the early French times, for instance; see
episodes quoted by Parkman.
Y.M. Well, let us adjourn. Where have we arrived?
O.M. At this. That we (mankind) have ticketed ourselves with a number
of qualities to which we have given misleading names. Love, Hate,
Charity, Compassion, Avarice, Benevolence, and so on. I mean we attach
misleading _meanings_ to the names. They are all forms of
self-contentment, self-gratification, but the names so disguise them
that they distract our attention from the fact. Also we have smuggled a
word into the dictionary which ought not to be there at
all—Self-Sacrifice. It describes a thing which does not exist. But
worst of all, we ignore and never mention the Sole Impulse which
dictates and compels a man’s every act: the imperious necessity of
securing his own approval, in every emergency and at all costs. To it
we owe all that we are. It is our breath, our heart, our blood. It is
our only spur, our whip, our goad, our only impelling power; we have no
other. Without it we should be mere inert images, corpses; no one would
do anything, there would be no progress, the world would stand still.
We ought to stand reverently uncovered when the name of that stupendous
power is uttered.
Y.M. I am not convinced.
O.M. You will be when you think.
III
Instances in Point
Old Man. Have you given thought to the Gospel of Self—Approval since we
talked?
Young Man. I have.
O.M. It was I that moved you to it. That is to say an _outside
influence_ moved you to it—not one that originated in your head. Will
you try to keep that in mind and not forget it?
Y.M. Yes. Why?
O.M. Because by and by in one of our talks, I wish to further impress
upon you that neither you, nor I, nor any man ever originates a thought
in his own head. _The utterer of a thought always utters a second-hand
one_.
Y.M. Oh, now—
O.M. Wait. Reserve your remark till we get to that part of our
discussion—tomorrow or next day, say. Now, then, have you been
considering the proposition that no act is ever born of any but a
self-contenting impulse—(primarily). You have sought. What have you
found?
Y.M. I have not been very fortunate. I have examined many fine and
apparently self-sacrificing deeds in romances and biographies, but—
O.M. Under searching analysis the ostensible self-sacrifice
disappeared? It naturally would.
Y.M. But here in this novel is one which seems to promise. In the
Adirondack woods is a wage-earner and lay preacher in the lumber-camps
who is of noble character and deeply religious. An earnest and
practical laborer in the New York slums comes up there on vacation—he
is leader of a section of the University Settlement. Holme, the
lumberman, is fired with a desire to throw away his excellent worldly
prospects and go down and save souls on the East Side. He counts it
happiness to make this sacrifice for the glory of God and for the cause
of Christ. He resigns his place, makes the sacrifice cheerfully, and
goes to the East Side and preaches Christ and Him crucified every day
and every night to little groups of half-civilized foreign paupers who
scoff at him. But he rejoices in the scoffings, since he is suffering
them in the great cause of Christ. You have so filled my mind with
suspicions that I was constantly expecting to find a hidden
questionable impulse back of all this, but I am thankful to say I have
failed. This man saw his duty, and for _duty’s sake_ he sacrificed self
and assumed the burden it imposed.
O.M. Is that as far as you have read?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Let us read further, presently. Meantime, in sacrificing
himself—_not_ for the glory of God, _primarily_, as _he_ imagined, but
_first_ to content that exacting and inflexible master within him—_did
he sacrifice anybody else_?
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. He relinquished a lucrative post and got mere food and lodging in
place of it. Had he dependents?
Y.M. Well—yes.
O.M. In what way and to what extend did his self-sacrifice affect
_them_?
Y.M. He was the support of a superannuated father. He had a young
sister with a remarkable voice—he was giving her a musical education,
so that her longing to be self-supporting might be gratified. He was
furnishing the money to put a young brother through a polytechnic
school and satisfy his desire to become a civil engineer.
O.M. The old father’s comforts were now curtailed?
Y.M. Quite seriously. Yes.
O.M. The sister’s music-lessens had to stop?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. The young brother’s education—well, an extinguishing blight fell
upon that happy dream, and he had to go to sawing wood to support the
old father, or something like that?
Y.M. It is about what happened. Yes.
O.M. What a handsome job of self-sacrificing he did do! It seems to me
that he sacrificed everybody _except_ himself. Haven’t I told you that
no man _ever_ sacrifices himself; that there is no instance of it upon
record anywhere; and that when a man’s Interior Monarch requires a
thing of its slave for either its _momentary_ or its _permanent_
contentment, that thing must and will be furnished and that command
obeyed, no matter who may stand in the way and suffer disaster by it?
That man _ruined his family_ to please and content his Interior
Monarch—
Y.M. And help Christ’s cause.
O.M. Yes—_secondly_. Not firstly. _He_ thought it was firstly.
Y.M. Very well, have it so, if you will. But it could be that he argued
that if he saved a hundred souls in New York—
O.M. The sacrifice of the _family_ would be justified by that great
profit upon the—the—what shall we call it?
Y.M. Investment?
O.M. Hardly. How would _speculation_ do? How would _gamble_ do? Not a
solitary soul-capture was sure. He played for a possible
thirty-three-hundred-per-cent profit. It was _gambling_—with his family
for “chips.” However let us see how the game came out. Maybe we can get
on the track of the secret original impulse, the _real_ impulse, that
moved him to so nobly self—sacrifice his family in the Savior’s cause
under the superstition that he was sacrificing himself. I will read a
chapter or so.... Here we have it! It was bound to expose itself sooner
or later. He preached to the East-Side rabble a season, then went back
to his old dull, obscure life in the lumber-camps “_hurt to the heart,
his pride humbled_.” Why? Were not his efforts acceptable to the
Savior, for Whom alone they were made? Dear me, that detail is _lost
sight of_, is not even referred to, the fact that it started out as a
motive is entirely forgotten! Then what is the trouble? The authoress
quite innocently and unconsciously gives the whole business away. The
trouble was this: this man merely _preached_ to the poor; that is not
the University Settlement’s way; it deals in larger and better things
than that, and it did not enthuse over that crude Salvation-Army
eloquence. It was courteous to Holme—but cool. It did not pet him, did
not take him to its bosom. “_Perished were all his dreams of
distinction, the praise and grateful approval_—” Of whom? The Savior?
No; the Savior is not mentioned. Of whom, then? Of “his
_fellow-workers_.” Why did he want that? Because the Master inside of
him wanted it, and would not be content without it. That emphasized
sentence quoted above, reveals the secret we have been seeking, the
original impulse, the _real_ impulse, which moved the obscure and
unappreciated Adirondack lumberman to sacrifice his family and go on
that crusade to the East Side—which said original impulse was this, to
wit: without knowing it _he went there to show a neglected world the
large talent that was in him, and rise to distinction_. As I have
warned you before, _no_ act springs from any but the one law, the one
motive. But I pray you, do not accept this law upon my say-so; but
diligently examine for yourself. Whenever you read of a
self-sacrificing act or hear of one, or of a duty done for _duty’s
sake_, take it to pieces and look for the _real_ motive. It is always
there.
Y.M. I do it every day. I cannot help it, now that I have gotten
started upon the degrading and exasperating quest. For it is hatefully
interesting!—in fact, fascinating is the word. As soon as I come across
a golden deed in a book I have to stop and take it apart and examine
it, I cannot help myself.
O.M. Have you ever found one that defeated the rule?
Y.M. No—at least, not yet. But take the case of servant—tipping in
Europe. You pay the _hotel_ for service; you owe the servants
_nothing_, yet you pay them besides. Doesn’t that defeat it?
O.M. In what way?
Y.M. You are not _obliged_ to do it, therefore its source is compassion
for their ill-paid condition, and—
O.M. Has that custom ever vexed you, annoyed you, irritated you?
Y.M. Well, yes.
O.M. Still you succumbed to it?
Y.M. Of course.
O.M. Why of course?
Y.M. Well, custom is law, in a way, and laws must be submitted
to—everybody recognizes it as a _duty_.
O.M. Then you pay for the irritating tax for _duty’s_ sake?
Y.M. I suppose it amounts to that.
O.M. Then the impulse which moves you to submit to the tax is not _all_
compassion, charity, benevolence?
Y.M. Well—perhaps not.
O.M. Is _any_ of it?
Y.M. I—perhaps I was too hasty in locating its source.
O.M. Perhaps so. In case you ignored the custom would you get prompt
and effective service from the servants?
Y.M. Oh, hear yourself talk! Those European servants? Why, you wouldn’t
get any at all, to speak of.
O.M. Couldn’t _that_ work as an impulse to move you to pay the tax?
Y.M. I am not denying it.
O.M. Apparently, then, it is a case of for-duty’s-sake with a little
self-interest added?
Y.M. Yes, it has the look of it. But here is a point: we pay that tax
knowing it to be unjust and an extortion; yet we go away with a pain at
the heart if we think we have been stingy with the poor fellows; and we
heartily wish we were back again, so that we could do the right thing,
and _more_ than the right thing, the _generous_ thing. I think it will
be difficult for you to find any thought of self in that impulse.
O.M. I wonder why you should think so. When you find service charged in
the _hotel_ bill does it annoy you?
Y.M. No.
O.M. Do you ever complain of the amount of it?
Y.M. No, it would not occur to me.
O.M. The _expense_, then, is not the annoying detail. It is a fixed
charge, and you pay it cheerfully, you pay it without a murmur. When
you came to pay the servants, how would you like it if each of the men
and maids had a fixed charge?
Y.M. Like it? I should rejoice!
O.M. Even if the fixed tax were a shade _more_ than you had been in the
habit of paying in the form of tips?
Y.M. Indeed, yes!
O.M. Very well, then. As I understand it, it isn’t really compassion
nor yet duty that moves you to pay the tax, and it isn’t the _amount_
of the tax that annoys you. Yet _something_ annoys you. What is it?
Y.M. Well, the trouble is, you never know _what_ to pay, the tax varies
so, all over Europe.
O.M. So you have to guess?
Y.M. There is no other way. So you go on thinking and thinking, and
calculating and guessing, and consulting with other people and getting
their views; and it spoils your sleep nights, and makes you distraught
in the daytime, and while you are pretending to look at the sights you
are only guessing and guessing and guessing all the time, and being
worried and miserable.
O.M. And all about a debt which you don’t owe and don’t have to pay
unless you want to! Strange. What is the purpose of the guessing?
Y.M. To guess out what is right to give them, and not be unfair to any
of them.
O.M. It has quite a noble look—taking so much pains and using up so
much valuable time in order to be just and fair to a poor servant to
whom you owe nothing, but who needs money and is ill paid.
Y.M. I think, myself, that if there is any ungracious motive back of it
it will be hard to find.
O.M. How do you know when you have not paid a servant fairly?
Y.M. Why, he is silent; does not thank you. Sometimes he gives you a
look that makes you ashamed. You are too proud to rectify your mistake
there, with people looking, but afterward you keep on wishing and
wishing you _had_ done it. My, the shame and the pain of it! Sometimes
you see, by the signs, that you have it _just right_, and you go away
mightily satisfied. Sometimes the man is so effusively thankful that
you know you have given him a good deal _more_ than was necessary.
O.M. _Necessary_? Necessary for what?
Y.M. To content him.
O.M. How do you feel _then_?
Y.M. Repentant.
O.M. It is my belief that you have _not_ been concerning yourself in
guessing out his just dues, but only in ciphering out what would
_content_ him. And I think you have a self-deluding reason for that.
Y.M. What was it?
O.M. If you fell short of what he was expecting and wanting, you would
get a look which would _shame you before folk_. That would give you
_pain_. _You_—for you are only working for yourself, not _him_. If you
gave him too much you would be _ashamed of yourself_ for it, and that
would give _you_ pain—another case of thinking of _yourself_,
protecting yourself, _saving yourself from discomfort_. You never think
of the servant once—except to guess out how to get _his approval_. If
you get that, you get your _own _approval, and that is the sole and
only thing you are after. The Master inside of you is then satisfied,
contented, comfortable; there was _no other_ thing at stake, as a
matter of _first_ interest, anywhere in the transaction.
_Further Instances_
Y.M. Well, to think of it; Self-Sacrifice for others, the grandest
thing in man, ruled out! non-existent!
O.M. Are you accusing me of saying that?
Y.M. Why, certainly.
O.M. I haven’t said it.
Y.M. What did you say, then?
O.M. That no man has ever sacrificed himself in the common meaning of
that phrase—which is, self-sacrifice for another _alone_. Men make
daily sacrifices for others, but it is for their own sake _first_. The
act must content their own spirit _first_. The other beneficiaries come
second.
Y.M. And the same with duty for duty’s sake?
O.M. Yes. No man performs a duty for mere duty’s sake; the act must
content his spirit _first_. He must feel better for _doing_ the duty
than he would for shirking it. Otherwise he will not do it.
Y.M. Take the case of the _Berkeley Castle_.
O.M. It was a noble duty, greatly performed. Take it to pieces and
examine it, if you like.
Y.M. A British troop-ship crowded with soldiers and their wives and
children. She struck a rock and began to sink. There was room in the
boats for the women and children only. The colonel lined up his
regiment on the deck and said “it is our duty to die, that they may be
saved.” There was no murmur, no protest. The boats carried away the
women and children. When the death-moment was come, the colonel and his
officers took their several posts, the men stood at shoulder-arms, and
so, as on dress-parade, with their flag flying and the drums beating,
they went down, a sacrifice to duty for duty’s sake. Can you view it as
other than that?
O.M. It was something as fine as that, as exalted as that. Could you
have remained in those ranks and gone down to your death in that
unflinching way?
Y.M. Could I? No, I could not.
O.M. Think. Imagine yourself there, with that watery doom creeping
higher and higher around you.
Y.M. I can imagine it. I feel all the horror of it. I could not have
endured it, I could not have remained in my place. I know it.
O.M. Why?
Y.M. There is no why about it: I know myself, and I know I couldn’t
_do_ it.
O.M. But it would be your _duty_ to do it.
Y.M. Yes, I know—but I couldn’t.
O.M. It was more than thousand men, yet not one of them flinched. Some
of them must have been born with your temperament; if they could do
that great duty for duty’s _sake_, why not you? Don’t you know that you
could go out and gather together a thousand clerks and mechanics and
put them on that deck and ask them to die for duty’s sake, and not two
dozen of them would stay in the ranks to the end?
Y.M. Yes, I know that.
O.M. But you _train_ them, and put them through a campaign or two; then
they would be soldiers; soldiers, with a soldier’s pride, a soldier’s
self-respect, a soldier’s ideals. They would have to content a
_soldier’s_ spirit then, not a clerk’s, not a mechanic’s. They could
not content that spirit by shirking a soldier’s duty, could they?
Y.M. I suppose not.
O.M. Then they would do the duty not for the _duty’s_ sake, but for
their _own _sake—primarily. The _duty_ was _just the same_, and just as
imperative, when they were clerks, mechanics, raw recruits, but they
wouldn’t perform it for that. As clerks and mechanics they had other
ideals, another spirit to satisfy, and they satisfied it. They _had_
to; it is the law. _Training _is potent. Training toward higher and
higher, and ever higher ideals is worth any man’s thought and labor and
diligence.
Y.M. Consider the man who stands by his duty and goes to the stake
rather than be recreant to it.
O.M. It is his make and his training. He has to content the spirit that
is in him, though it cost him his life. Another man, just as sincerely
religious, but of different temperament, will fail of that duty, though
recognizing it as a duty, and grieving to be unequal to it: but he must
content the spirit that is in him—he cannot help it. He could not
perform that duty for duty’s _sake_, for that would not content his
spirit, and the contenting of his spirit must be looked to _first_. It
takes precedence of all other duties.
Y.M. Take the case of a clergyman of stainless private morals who votes
for a thief for public office, on his own party’s ticket, and against
an honest man on the other ticket.
O.M. He has to content his spirit. He has no public morals; he has no
private ones, where his party’s prosperity is at stake. He will always
be true to his make and training.
IV
Training
Young Man. You keep using that word—training. By it do you particularly
mean—
Old Man. Study, instruction, lectures, sermons? That is a part of
it—but not a large part. I mean _all _the outside influences. There are
a million of them. From the cradle to the grave, during all his waking
hours, the human being is under training. In the very first rank of his
trainers stands _association_. It is his human environment which
influences his mind and his feelings, furnishes him his ideals, and
sets him on his road and keeps him in it. If he leave[s] that road he
will find himself shunned by the people whom he most loves and esteems,
and whose approval he most values. He is a chameleon; by the law of his
nature he takes the color of his place of resort. The influences about
him create his preferences, his aversions, his politics, his tastes,
his morals, his religion. He creates none of these things for himself.
He _thinks _he does, but that is because he has not examined into the
matter. You have seen Presbyterians?
Y.M. Many.
O.M. How did they happen to be Presbyterians and not
Congregationalists? And why were the Congregationalists not Baptists,
and the Baptists Roman Catholics, and the Roman Catholics Buddhists,
and the Buddhists Quakers, and the Quakers Episcopalians, and the
Episcopalians Millerites and the Millerites Hindus, and the Hindus
Atheists, and the Atheists Spiritualists, and the Spiritualists
Agnostics, and the Agnostics Methodists, and the Methodists Confucians,
and the Confucians Unitarians, and the Unitarians Mohammedans, and the
Mohammedans Salvation Warriors, and the Salvation Warriors
Zoroastrians, and the Zoroastrians Christian Scientists, and the
Christian Scientists Mormons—and so on?
Y.M. You may answer your question yourself.
O.M. That list of sects is not a record of _studies_, searchings,
seekings after light; it mainly (and sarcastically) indicates what
_association _can do. If you know a man’s nationality you can come
within a split hair of guessing the complexion of his religion:
English—Protestant; American—ditto; Spaniard, Frenchman, Irishman,
Italian, South American—Roman Catholic; Russian—Greek Catholic;
Turk—Mohammedan; and so on. And when you know the man’s religious
complexion, you know what sort of religious books he reads when he
wants some more light, and what sort of books he avoids, lest by
accident he get more light than he wants. In America if you know which
party-collar a voter wears, you know what his associations are, and how
he came by his politics, and which breed of newspaper he reads to get
light, and which breed he diligently avoids, and which breed of
mass-meetings he attends in order to broaden his political knowledge,
and which breed of mass-meetings he doesn’t attend, except to refute
its doctrines with brickbats. We are always hearing of people who are
around _seeking after truth_. I have never seen a (permanent) specimen.
I think he had never lived. But I have seen several entirely sincere
people who _thought _they were (permanent) Seekers after Truth. They
sought diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly,
with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment—until they believed
that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. _That was the
end of the search. _The man spent the rest of his life hunting up
shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather. If he was
seeking after political Truth he found it in one or another of the
hundred political gospels which govern men in the earth; if he was
seeking after the Only True Religion he found it in one or another of
the three thousand that are on the market. In any case, when he found
the Truth _he sought no further; _but from that day forth, with his
soldering-iron in one hand and his bludgeon in the other he tinkered
its leaks and reasoned with objectors. There have been innumerable
Temporary Seekers of Truth—have you ever heard of a permanent one? In
the very nature of man such a person is impossible. However, to drop
back to the text—training: all training is one form or another of
_outside influence, _and _association _is the largest part of it. A man
is never anything but what his outside influences have made him. They
train him downward or they train him upward—but they _train _him; they
are at work upon him all the time.
Y.M. Then if he happen by the accidents of life to be evilly placed
there is no help for him, according to your notions—he must train
downward.
O.M. No help for him? No help for this chameleon? It is a mistake. It
is in his chameleonship that his greatest good fortune lies. He has
only to change his habitat—his _associations_. But the impulse to do it
must come from the _outside _—he cannot originate it himself, with that
purpose in view. Sometimes a very small and accidental thing can
furnish him the initiatory impulse and start him on a new road, with a
new idea. The chance remark of a sweetheart, “I hear that you are a
coward,” may water a seed that shall sprout and bloom and flourish, and
ended in producing a surprising fruitage—in the fields of war. The
history of man is full of such accidents. The accident of a broken leg
brought a profane and ribald soldier under religious influences and
furnished him a new ideal. From that accident sprang the Order of the
Jesuits, and it has been shaking thrones, changing policies, and doing
other tremendous work for two hundred years—and will go on. The chance
reading of a book or of a paragraph in a newspaper can start a man on a
new track and make him renounce his old associations and seek new ones
that are _in sympathy with his new ideal_: and the result, for that
man, can be an entire change of his way of life.
Y.M. Are you hinting at a scheme of procedure?
O.M. Not a new one—an old one. Old as mankind.
Y.M. What is it?
O.M. Merely the laying of traps for people. Traps baited with
_initiatory impulses toward high ideals. _It is what the
tract-distributor does. It is what the missionary does. It is what
governments ought to do.
Y.M. Don’t they?
O.M. In one way they do, in another they don’t. They separate the
smallpox patients from the healthy people, but in dealing with crime
they put the healthy into the pest-house along with the sick. That is
to say, they put the beginners in with the confirmed criminals. This
would be well if man were naturally inclined to good, but he isn’t, and
so _association _makes the beginners worse than they were when they
went into captivity. It is putting a very severe punishment upon the
comparatively innocent at times. They hang a man—which is a trifling
punishment; this breaks the hearts of his family—which is a heavy one.
They comfortably jail and feed a wife-beater, and leave his innocent
wife and family to starve.
Y.M. Do you believe in the doctrine that man is equipped with an
intuitive perception of good and evil?
O.M. Adam hadn’t it.
Y.M. But has man acquired it since?
O.M. No. I think he has no intuitions of any kind. He gets _all _his
ideas, all his impressions, from the outside. I keep repeating this, in
the hope that I may impress it upon you that you will be interested to
observe and examine for yourself and see whether it is true or false.
Y.M. Where did you get your own aggravating notions?
O.M. From the _outside_. I did not invent them. They are gathered from
a thousand unknown sources. Mainly _unconsciously _gathered.
Y.M. Don’t you believe that God could make an inherently honest man?
O.M. Yes, I know He could. I also know that He never did make one.
Y.M. A wiser observer than you has recorded the fact that “an honest
man’s the noblest work of God.”
O.M. He didn’t record a fact, he recorded a falsity. It is windy, and
sounds well, but it is not true. God makes a man with honest and
dishonest _possibilities _in him and stops there. The man’s
_associations _develop the possibilities—the one set or the other. The
result is accordingly an honest man or a dishonest one.
Y.M. And the honest one is not entitled to—
O.M. Praise? No. How often must I tell you that? _He _is not the
architect of his honesty.
Y.M. Now then, I will ask you where there is any sense in training
people to lead virtuous lives. What is gained by it?
O.M. The man himself gets large advantages out of it, and that is the
main thing—to _him_. He is not a peril to his neighbors, he is not a
damage to them—and so _they _get an advantage out of his virtues. That
is the main thing to _them_. It can make this life comparatively
comfortable to the parties concerned; the _neglect _of this training
can make this life a constant peril and distress to the parties
concerned.
Y.M. You have said that training is everything; that training is the
man _himself_, for it makes him what he is.
O.M. I said training and _another _thing. Let that other thing pass,
for the moment. What were you going to say?
Y.M. We have an old servant. She has been with us twenty—two years. Her
service used to be faultless, but now she has become very forgetful. We
are all fond of her; we all recognize that she cannot help the
infirmity which age has brought her; the rest of the family do not
scold her for her remissnesses, but at times I do—I can’t seem to
control myself. Don’t I try? I do try. Now, then, when I was ready to
dress, this morning, no clean clothes had been put out. I lost my
temper; I lose it easiest and quickest in the early morning. I rang;
and immediately began to warn myself not to show temper, and to be
careful and speak gently. I safe-guarded myself most carefully. I even
chose the very word I would use: “You’ve forgotten the clean clothes,
Jane.” When she appeared in the door I opened my mouth to say that
phrase—and out of it, moved by an instant surge of passion which I was
not expecting and hadn’t time to put under control, came the hot
rebuke, “You’ve forgotten them again!” You say a man always does the
thing which will best please his Interior Master. Whence came the
impulse to make careful preparation to save the girl the humiliation of
a rebuke? Did that come from the Master, who is always primarily
concerned about _himself_?
O.M. Unquestionably. There is no other source for any impulse.
_Secondarily _you made preparation to save the girl, but _primarily
_its object was to save yourself, by contenting the Master.
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. Has any member of the family ever implored you to watch your
temper and not fly out at the girl?
Y.M. Yes. My mother.
O.M. You love her?
Y.M. Oh, more than that!
O.M. You would always do anything in your power to please her?
Y.M. It is a delight to me to do anything to please her!
O.M. Why? _You would do it for pay, solely _—for _profit_. What profit
would you expect and certainly receive from the investment?
Y.M. Personally? None. To please _her _is enough.
O.M. It appears, then, that your object, primarily, _wasn’t _to save
the girl a humiliation, but to _please your mother. _It also appears
that to please your mother gives _you _a strong pleasure. Is not that
the profit which you get out of the investment? Isn’t that the _real
_profits and _first _profit?
Y.M. Oh, well? Go on.
O.M. In _all _transactions, the Interior Master looks to it that _you
get the first profit. _Otherwise there is no transaction.
Y.M. Well, then, if I was so anxious to get that profit and so intent
upon it, why did I throw it away by losing my temper?
O.M. In order to get _another _profit which suddenly superseded it in
value.
Y.M. Where was it?
O.M. Ambushed behind your born temperament, and waiting for a chance.
Your native warm temper suddenly jumped to the front, and _for the
moment its influence _was more powerful than your mother’s, and
abolished it. In that instance you were eager to flash out a hot rebuke
and enjoy it. You did enjoy it, didn’t you?
Y.M. For—for a quarter of a second. Yes—I did.
O.M. Very well, it is as I have said: the thing which will give you the
_most _pleasure, the most satisfaction, in any moment or _fraction _of
a moment, is the thing you will always do. You must content the
Master’s _latest _whim, whatever it may be.
Y.M. But when the tears came into the old servant’s eyes I could have
cut my hand off for what I had done.
O.M. Right. You had humiliated _yourself_, you see, you had given
yourself _pain_. Nothing is of _first _importance to a man except
results which damage _him _or profit him—all the rest is _secondary_.
Your Master was displeased with you, although you had obeyed him. He
required a prompt _repentance_; you obeyed again; you_ had _to—there is
never any escape from his commands. He is a hard master and fickle; he
changes his mind in the fraction of a second, but you must be ready to
obey, and you will obey, _always_. If he requires repentance, you
content him, you will always furnish it. He must be nursed, petted,
coddled, and kept contented, let the terms be what they may.
Y.M. Training! Oh, what’s the use of it? Didn’t I, and didn’t my mother
try to train me up to where I would no longer fly out at that girl?
O.M. Have you never managed to keep back a scolding?
Y.M. Oh, certainly—many times.
O.M. More times this year than last?
Y.M. Yes, a good many more.
O.M. More times last year than the year before?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. There is a large improvement, then, in the two years?
Y.M. Yes, undoubtedly.
O.M. Then your question is answered. You see there _is _use in
training. Keep on. Keeping faithfully on. You are doing well.
Y.M. Will my reform reach perfection?
O.M. It will. Up to _your _limit.
Y.M. My limit? What do you mean by that?
O.M. You remember that you said that I said training was _everything_.
I corrected you, and said “training and _another _thing.” That other
thing is _temperament _—that is, the disposition you were born with.
_You can’t eradicate your disposition nor any rag of it _—you can only
put a pressure on it and keep it down and quiet. You have a warm
temper?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. You will never get rid of it; but by watching it you can keep it
down nearly all the time. _Its presence is your limit. _Your reform
will never quite reach perfection, for your temper will beat you now
and then, but you come near enough. You have made valuable progress and
can make more. There _is _use in training. Immense use. Presently you
will reach a new stage of development, then your progress will be
easier; will proceed on a simpler basis, anyway.
Y.M. Explain.
O.M. You keep back your scoldings now, to please _yourself _by pleasing
your _mother_; presently the mere triumphing over your temper will
delight your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and
satisfaction upon you than even the approbation of your _mother
_confers upon you now. You will then labor for yourself directly and at
_first hand, _not by the roundabout way through your mother. It
simplifies the matter, and it also strengthens the impulse.
Y.M. Ah, dear! But I sha’n’t ever reach the point where I will spare
the girl for _her _sake _primarily_, not mine?
O.M. Why—yes. In heaven.
Y.M. (_After a reflective pause) _Temperament. Well, I see one must
allow for temperament. It is a large factor, sure enough. My mother is
thoughtful, and not hot-tempered. When I was dressed I went to her
room; she was not there; I called, she answered from the bathroom. I
heard the water running. I inquired. She answered, without temper, that
Jane had forgotten her bath, and she was preparing it herself. I
offered to ring, but she said, “No, don’t do that; it would only
distress her to be confronted with her lapse, and would be a rebuke;
she doesn’t deserve that—she is not to blame for the tricks her memory
serves her.” I say—has my mother an Interior Master?—and where was he?
O.M. He was there. There, and looking out for his own peace and
pleasure and contentment. The girl’s distress would have pained _your
mother. _Otherwise the girl would have been rung up, distress and all.
I know women who would have gotten a No. 1 _pleasure _out of ringing
Jane up—and so they would infallibly have pushed the button and obeyed
the law of their make and training, which are the servants of their
Interior Masters. It is quite likely that a part of your mother’s
forbearance came from training. The _good _kind of training—whose best
and highest function is to see to it that every time it confers a
satisfaction upon its pupil a benefit shall fall at second hand upon
others.
Y.M. If you were going to condense into an admonition your plan for the
general betterment of the race’s condition, how would you word it?
_Admonition_
O.M. Diligently train your ideals _upward _and _still upward _toward a
summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which,
while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your
neighbor and the community.
Y.M. Is that a new gospel?
O.M. No.
Y.M. It has been taught before?
O.M. For ten thousand years.
Y.M. By whom?
O.M. All the great religions—all the great gospels.
Y.M. Then there is nothing new about it?
O.M. Oh yes, there is. It is candidly stated, this time. That has not
been done before.
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. Haven’t I put _you first, _and your neighbor and the community
afterward?
Y.M. Well, yes, that is a difference, it is true.
O.M. The difference between straight speaking and crooked; the
difference between frankness and shuffling.
Y.M. Explain.
O.M. The others offer you a hundred bribes to be good, thus conceding
that the Master inside of you must be conciliated and contented first,
and that you will do nothing at _first hand _but for his sake; then
they turn square around and require you to do good for _other’s _sake
_chiefly_; and to do your duty for duty’s _sake_, chiefly; and to do
acts of _self_-_sacrifice_. Thus at the outset we all stand upon the
same ground—recognition of the supreme and absolute Monarch that
resides in man, and we all grovel before him and appeal to him; then
those others dodge and shuffle, and face around and unfrankly and
inconsistently and illogically change the form of their appeal and
direct its persuasions to man’s _second-place _powers and to powers
which have _no existence _in him, thus advancing them to _first _place;
whereas in my Admonition I stick logically and consistently to the
original position: I place the Interior Master’s requirements _first_,
and keep them there.
Y.M. If we grant, for the sake of argument, that your scheme and the
other schemes aim at and produce the same result—_right living—_has
yours an advantage over the others?
O.M. One, yes—a large one. It has no concealments, no deceptions. When
a man leads a right and valuable life under it he is not deceived as to
the _real _chief motive which impels him to it—in those other cases he
is.
Y.M. Is that an advantage? Is it an advantage to live a lofty life for
a mean reason? In the other cases he lives the lofty life under the
_impression _that he is living for a lofty reason. Is not that an
advantage?
O.M. Perhaps so. The same advantage he might get out of thinking
himself a duke, and living a duke’s life and parading in ducal fuss and
feathers, when he wasn’t a duke at all, and could find it out if he
would only examine the herald’s records.
Y.M. But anyway, he is obliged to do a duke’s part; he puts his hand in
his pocket and does his benevolences on as big a scale as he can stand,
and that benefits the community.
O.M. He could do that without being a duke.
Y.M. But would he?
O.M. Don’t you see where you are arriving?
Y.M. Where?
O.M. At the standpoint of the other schemes: That it is good morals to
let an ignorant duke do showy benevolences for his pride’s sake, a
pretty low motive, and go on doing them unwarned, lest if he were made
acquainted with the actual motive which prompted them he might shut up
his purse and cease to be good?
Y.M. But isn’t it best to leave him in ignorance, as long as he _thinks
_he is doing good for others’ sake?
O.M. Perhaps so. It is the position of the other schemes. They think
humbug is good enough morals when the dividend on it is good deeds and
handsome conduct.
Y.M. It is my opinion that under your scheme of a man’s doing a good
deed for his _own _sake first-off, instead of first for the _good
deed’s _sake, no man would ever do one.
O.M. Have you committed a benevolence lately?
Y.M. Yes. This morning.
O.M. Give the particulars.
Y.M. The cabin of the old negro woman who used to nurse me when I was a
child and who saved my life once at the risk of her own, was burned
last night, and she came mourning this morning, and pleading for money
to build another one.
O.M. You furnished it?
Y.M. Certainly.
O.M. You were glad you had the money?
Y.M. Money? I hadn’t. I sold my horse.
O.M. You were glad you had the horse?
Y.M. Of course I was; for if I hadn’t had the horse I should have been
incapable, and my _mother _would have captured the chance to set old
Sally up.
O.M. You were cordially glad you were not caught out and incapable?
Y.M. Oh, I just was!
O.M. Now, then—
Y.M. Stop where you are! I know your whole catalog of questions, and I
could answer every one of them without your wasting the time to ask
them; but I will summarize the whole thing in a single remark: I did
the charity knowing it was because the act would give _me _a splendid
pleasure, and because old Sally’s moving gratitude and delight would
give _me _another one; and because the reflection that she would be
happy now and out of her trouble would fill _me _full of happiness. I
did the whole thing with my eyes open and recognizing and realizing
that I was looking out for _my _share of the profits _first_. Now then,
I have confessed. Go on.
O.M. I haven’t anything to offer; you have covered the whole ground.
Can you have been any _more _strongly moved to help Sally out of her
trouble—could you have done the deed any more eagerly—if you had been
under the delusion that you were doing it for _her _sake and profit
only?
Y.M. No! Nothing in the world could have made the impulse which moved
me more powerful, more masterful, more thoroughly irresistible. I
played the limit!
O.M. Very well. You begin to suspect—and I claim to _know _—that when a
man is a shade _more strongly moved _to do _one _of two things or of
two dozen things than he is to do any one of the _others_, he will
infallibly do that _one _thing, be it good or be it evil; and if it be
good, not all the beguilements of all the casuistries can increase the
strength of the impulse by a single shade or add a shade to the comfort
and contentment he will get out of the act.
Y.M. Then you believe that such tendency toward doing good as is in
men’s hearts would not be diminished by the removal of the delusion
that good deeds are done primarily for the sake of No. 2 instead of for
the sake of No. 1?
O.M. That is what I fully believe.
Y.M. Doesn’t it somehow seem to take from the dignity of the deed?
O.M. If there is dignity in falsity, it does. It removes that.
Y.M. What is left for the moralists to do?
O.M. Teach unreservedly what he already teaches with one side of his
mouth and takes back with the other: Do right _for your own sake, _and
be happy in knowing that your _neighbor _will certainly share in the
benefits resulting.
Y.M. Repeat your Admonition.
O.M. _Diligently train your ideals upward and still upward toward a
summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which,
while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your
neighbor and the community._
Y.M. One’s _every _act proceeds from _exterior influences_, you think?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. If I conclude to rob a person, I am not the _originator _of the
idea, but it comes in from the _outside_? I see him handling money—for
instance—and _that _moves me to the crime?
O.M. That, by itself? Oh, certainly not. It is merely the _latest
_outside influence of a procession of preparatory influences stretching
back over a period of years. No _single _outside influence can make a
man do a thing which is at war with his training. The most it can do is
to start his mind on a new tract and open it to the reception of _new
_influences—as in the case of Ignatius Loyola. In time these influences
can train him to a point where it will be consonant with his new
character to yield to the _final _influence and do that thing. I will
put the case in a form which will make my theory clear to you, I think.
Here are two ingots of virgin gold. They shall represent a couple of
characters which have been refined and perfected in the virtues by
years of diligent right training. Suppose you wanted to break down
these strong and well-compacted characters—what influence would you
bring to bear upon the ingots?
Y.M. Work it out yourself. Proceed.
O.M. Suppose I turn upon one of them a steam-jet during a long
succession of hours. Will there be a result?
Y.M. None that I know of.
O.M. Why?
Y.M. A steam-jet cannot break down such a substance.
O.M. Very well. The steam is an _outside influence, _but it is
ineffective because the gold _takes no interest in it. _The ingot
remains as it was. Suppose we add to the steam some quicksilver in a
vaporized condition, and turn the jet upon the ingot, will there be an
instantaneous result?
Y.M. No.
O.M. The _quicksilver _is an outside influence which gold (by its
peculiar nature—say _temperament, disposition) cannot be indifferent
to. _It stirs up the interest of the gold, although we do not perceive
it; but a _single _application of the influence works no damage. Let us
continue the application in a steady stream, and call each minute a
year. By the end of ten or twenty minutes—ten or twenty years—the
little ingot is sodden with quicksilver, its virtues are gone, its
character is degraded. At last it is ready to yield to a temptation
which it would have taken no notice of, ten or twenty years ago. We
will apply that temptation in the form of a pressure of my finger. You
note the result?
Y.M. Yes; the ingot has crumbled to sand. I understand, now. It is not
the _single _outside influence that does the work, but only the _last
_one of a long and disintegrating accumulation of them. I see, now, how
my _single _impulse to rob the man is not the one that makes me do it,
but only the _last _one of a preparatory series. You might illustrate
with a parable.
_A Parable_
O.M. I will. There was once a pair of New England boys—twins. They were
alike in good dispositions, feckless morals, and personal appearance.
They were the models of the Sunday—school. At fifteen George had the
opportunity to go as cabin-boy in a whale-ship, and sailed away for the
Pacific. Henry remained at home in the village. At eighteen George was
a sailor before the mast, and Henry was teacher of the advanced Bible
class. At twenty-two George, through fighting-habits and
drinking-habits acquired at sea and in the sailor boarding-houses of
the European and Oriental ports, was a common rough in Hong-Kong, and
out of a job; and Henry was superintendent of the Sunday-school. At
twenty-six George was a wanderer, a tramp, and Henry was pastor of the
village church. Then George came home, and was Henry’s guest. One
evening a man passed by and turned down the lane, and Henry said, with
a pathetic smile, “Without intending me a discomfort, that man is
always keeping me reminded of my pinching poverty, for he carries heaps
of money about him, and goes by here every evening of his life.” That
_outside influence _—that remark—was enough for George, but _it _was
not the one that made him ambush the man and rob him, it merely
represented the eleven years’ accumulation of such influences, and gave
birth to the act for which their long gestation had made preparation.
It had never entered the head of Henry to rob the man—his ingot had
been subjected to clean steam only; but George’s had been subjected to
vaporized quicksilver.
V
More About the Machine
Note.—When Mrs. W. asks how can a millionaire give a single dollar to
colleges and museums while one human being is destitute of bread, she
has answered her question herself. Her feeling for the poor shows that
she has a standard of benevolence; there she has conceded the
millionaire’s privilege of having a standard; since she evidently
requires him to adopt her standard, she is by that act requiring
herself to adopt his. The human being always looks down when he is
examining another person’s standard; he never find one that he has to
examine by looking up.
_The Man-Machine Again_
Young Man. You really think man is a mere machine?
Old Man. I do.
Y.M. And that his mind works automatically and is independent of his
control—carries on thought on its own hook?
O.M. Yes. It is diligently at work, unceasingly at work, during every
waking moment. Have you never tossed about all night, imploring,
beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to
sleep?—you who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must
obey your orders, think what you tell it to think, and stop when you
tell it to stop. When it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it
still for an instant. The brightest man would not be able to supply it
with subjects if he had to hunt them up. If it needed the man’s help it
would wait for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning.
Y.M. Maybe it does.
O.M. No, it begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to
give it a suggestion. He may go to sleep saying, “The moment I wake I
will think upon such and such a subject,” but he will fail. His mind
will be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough
awake to be half conscious, he will find that it is already at work
upon another subject. Make the experiment and see.
Y.M. At any rate, he can make it stick to a subject if he wants to.
O.M. Not if it find another that suits it better. As a rule it will
listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all
persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle
dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes
chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. You
cannot keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not
you.
_After an Interval of Days_
O.M. Now, dreams—but we will examine that later. Meantime, did you try
commanding your mind to wait for orders from you, and not do any
thinking on its own hook?
Y.M. Yes, I commanded it to stand ready to take orders when I should
wake in the morning.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. No. It went to thinking of something of its own initiation,
without waiting for me. Also—as you suggested—at night I appointed a
theme for it to begin on in the morning, and commanded it to begin on
that one and no other.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. No.
O.M. How many times did you try the experiment?
Y.M. Ten.
O.M. How many successes did you score?
Y.M. Not one.
O.M. It is as I have said: the mind is independent of the man. He has
no control over it; it does as it pleases. It will take up a subject in
spite of him; it will stick to it in spite of him; it will throw it
aside in spite of him. It is entirely independent of him.
Y.M. Go on. Illustrate.
O.M. Do you know chess?
Y.M. I learned it a week ago.
O.M. Did your mind go on playing the game all night that first night?
Y.M. Don’t mention it!
O.M. It was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in the
combinations; you implored it to drop the game and let you get some
sleep?
Y.M. Yes. It wouldn’t listen; it played right along. It wore me out and
I got up haggard and wretched in the morning.
O.M. At some time or other you have been captivated by a ridiculous
rhyme-jingle?
Y.M. Indeed, yes!
“I saw Esau kissing Kate,
And she saw I saw Esau;
I saw Esau, he saw Kate,
And she saw—”
And so on. My mind went mad with joy over it. It repeated it all day
and all night for a week in spite of all I could do to stop it, and it
seemed to me that I must surely go crazy.
O.M. And the new popular song?
Y.M. Oh yes! “In the Swee-eet By and By”; etc. Yes, the new popular
song with the taking melody sings through one’s head day and night,
asleep and awake, till one is a wreck. There is no getting the mind to
let it alone.
O.M. Yes, asleep as well as awake. The mind is quite independent. It is
master. You have nothing to do with it. It is so apart from you that it
can conduct its affairs, sing its songs, play its chess, weave its
complex and ingeniously constructed dreams, while you sleep. It has no
use for your help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either,
whether you be asleep or awake. You have imagined that you could
originate a thought in your mind, and you have sincerely believed you
could do it.
Y.M. Yes, I have had that idea.
O.M. Yet you can’t originate a dream-thought for it to work out, and
get it accepted?
Y.M. No.
O.M. And you can’t dictate its procedure after it has originated a
dream-thought for itself?
Y.M. No. No one can do it. Do you think the waking mind and the dream
mind are the same machine?
O.M. There is argument for it. We have wild and fantastic day-thoughts?
Things that are dream-like?
Y.M. Yes—like Mr. Wells’s man who invented a drug that made him
invisible; and like the Arabian tales of the Thousand Nights.
O.M. And there are dreams that are rational, simple, consistent, and
unfantastic?
Y.M. Yes. I have dreams that are like that. Dreams that are just like
real life; dreams in which there are several persons with distinctly
differentiated characters—inventions of my mind and yet strangers to
me: a vulgar person; a refined one; a wise person; a fool; a cruel
person; a kind and compassionate one; a quarrelsome person; a
peacemaker; old persons and young; beautiful girls and homely ones.
They talk in character, each preserves his own characteristics. There
are vivid fights, vivid and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there
are tragedies and comedies, there are griefs that go to one’s heart,
there are sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole
thing is exactly like real life.
O.M. Your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently and
artistically develops it, and carries the little drama creditably
through—all without help or suggestion from you?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. It is argument that it could do the like awake without help or
suggestion from you—and I think it does. It is argument that it is the
same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help. I think the
mind is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent machine, an
automatic machine. Have you tried the other experiment which I
suggested to you?
Y.M. Which one?
O.M. The one which was to determine how much influence you have over
your mind—if any.
Y.M. Yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it. I did as you
ordered: I placed two texts before my eyes—one a dull one and barren of
interest, the other one full of interest, inflamed with it, white-hot
with it. I commanded my mind to busy itself solely with the dull one.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. Well, no, it didn’t. It busied itself with the other one.
O.M. Did you try hard to make it obey?
Y.M. Yes, I did my honest best.
O.M. What was the text which it refused to be interested in or think
about?
Y.M. It was this question: If A owes B a dollar and a half, and B owes
C two and three-quarter, and C owes A thirty—five cents, and D and A
together owe E and B three-sixteenths of—of—I don’t remember the rest,
now, but anyway it was wholly uninteresting, and I could not force my
mind to stick to it even half a minute at a time; it kept flying off to
the other text.
O.M. What was the other text?
Y.M. It is no matter about that.
O.M. But what was it?
Y.M. A photograph.
O.M. Your own?
Y.M. No. It was hers.
O.M. You really made an honest good test. Did you make a second trial?
Y.M. Yes. I commanded my mind to interest itself in the morning paper’s
report of the pork-market, and at the same time I reminded it of an
experience of mine of sixteen years ago. It refused to consider the
pork and gave its whole blazing interest to that ancient incident.
O.M. What was the incident?
Y.M. An armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of twenty
spectators. It makes me wild and murderous every time I think of it.
O.M. Good tests, both; very good tests. Did you try my other
suggestion?
Y.M. The one which was to prove to me that if I would leave my mind to
its own devices it would find things to think about without any of my
help, and thus convince me that it was a machine, an automatic machine,
set in motion by exterior influences, and as independent of me as it
could be if it were in some one else’s skull. Is that the one?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. I tried it. I was shaving. I had slept well, and my mind was very
lively, even gay and frisky. It was reveling in a fantastic and joyful
episode of my remote boyhood which had suddenly flashed up in my
memory—moved to this by the spectacle of a yellow cat picking its way
carefully along the top of the garden wall. The color of this cat
brought the bygone cat before me, and I saw her walking along the
side-step of the pulpit; saw her walk on to a large sheet of sticky
fly-paper and get all her feet involved; saw her struggle and fall
down, helpless and dissatisfied, more and more urgent, more and more
unreconciled, more and more mutely profane; saw the silent congregation
quivering like jelly, and the tears running down their faces. I saw it
all. The sight of the tears whisked my mind to a far distant and a
sadder scene—in Terra del Fuego—and with Darwin’s eyes I saw a naked
great savage hurl his little boy against the rocks for a trifling
fault; saw the poor mother gather up her dying child and hug it to her
breast and weep, uttering no word. Did my mind stop to mourn with that
nude black sister of mine? No—it was far away from that scene in an
instant, and was busying itself with an ever-recurring and disagreeable
dream of mine. In this dream I always find myself, stripped to my
shirt, cringing and dodging about in the midst of a great drawing-room
throng of finely dressed ladies and gentlemen, and wondering how I got
there. And so on and so on, picture after picture, incident after
incident, a drifting panorama of ever-changing, ever-dissolving views
manufactured by my mind without any help from me—why, it would take me
two hours to merely name the multitude of things my mind tallied off
and photographed in fifteen minutes, let alone describe them to you.
O.M. A man’s mind, left free, has no use for his help. But there is one
way whereby he can get its help when he desires it.
Y.M. What is that way?
O.M. When your mind is racing along from subject to subject and strikes
an inspiring one, open your mouth and begin talking upon that
matter—or—take your pen and use that. It will interest your mind and
concentrate it, and it will pursue the subject with satisfaction. It
will take full charge, and furnish the words itself.
Y.M. But don’t I tell it what to say?
O.M. There are certainly occasions when you haven’t time. The words
leap out before you know what is coming.
Y.M. For instance?
O.M. Well, take a “flash of wit”—repartee. Flash is the right word. It
is out instantly. There is no time to arrange the words. There is no
thinking, no reflecting. Where there is a wit-mechanism it is automatic
in its action and needs no help. Where the wit-mechanism is lacking, no
amount of study and reflection can manufacture the product.
Y.M. You really think a man originates nothing, creates nothing.
_The Thinking-Process_
O.M. I do. Men perceive, and their brain-machines automatically combine
the things perceived. That is all.
Y.M. The steam-engine?
O.M. It takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it. One meaning of
invent is discover. I use the word in that sense. Little by little they
discover and apply the multitude of details that go to make the perfect
engine. Watt noticed that confined steam was strong enough to lift the
lid of the teapot. He didn’t create the idea, he merely discovered the
fact; the cat had noticed it a hundred times. From the teapot he
evolved the cylinder—from the displaced lid he evolved the piston-rod.
To attach something to the piston-rod to be moved by it, was a simple
matter—crank and wheel. And so there was a working engine.
One by one, improvements were discovered by men who used their eyes,
not their creating powers—for they hadn’t any—and now, after a hundred
years the patient contributions of fifty or a hundred observers stand
compacted in the wonderful machine which drives the ocean liner.
Y.M. A Shakespearean play?
O.M. The process is the same. The first actor was a savage. He
reproduced in his theatrical war-dances, scalp—dances, and so on,
incidents which he had seen in real life. A more advanced civilization
produced more incidents, more episodes; the actor and the story-teller
borrowed them. And so the drama grew, little by little, stage by stage.
It is made up of the facts of life, not creations. It took centuries to
develop the Greek drama. It borrowed from preceding ages; it lent to
the ages that came after. Men observe and combine, that is all. So does
a rat.
Y.M. How?
O.M. He observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and finds. The
astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and that to the
this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an invisible planet,
seeks it and finds it. The rat gets into a trap; gets out with trouble;
infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles with that trap no
more. The astronomer is very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud
of his. Yet both are machines; they have done machine work, they have
originated nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit
belongs to their Maker. They are entitled to no honors, no praises, no
monuments when they die, no remembrance. One is a complex and elaborate
machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but they are alike in
principle, function, and process, and neither of them works otherwise
than automatically, and neither of them may righteously claim a
_personal _superiority or a personal dignity above the other.
Y.M. In earned personal dignity, then, and in personal merit for what
he does, it follows of necessity that he is on the same level as a rat?
O.M. His brother the rat; yes, that is how it seems to me. Neither of
them being entitled to any personal merit for what he does, it follows
of necessity that neither of them has a right to arrogate to himself
(personally created) superiorities over his brother.
Y.M. Are you determined to go on believing in these insanities? Would
you go on believing in them in the face of able arguments backed by
collated facts and instances?
O.M. I have been a humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker.
Y.M. Very well?
O.M. The humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker is always
convertible by such means.
Y.M. I am thankful to God to hear you say this, for now I know that
your conversion—
O.M. Wait. You misunderstand. I said I have _been _a Truth-Seeker.
Y.M. Well?
O.M. I am not that now. Have your forgotten? I told you that there are
none but temporary Truth-Seekers; that a permanent one is a human
impossibility; that as soon as the Seeker finds what he is thoroughly
convinced is the Truth, he seeks no further, but gives the rest of his
days to hunting junk to patch it and caulk it and prop it with, and
make it weather-proof and keep it from caving in on him. Hence the
Presbyterian remains a Presbyterian, the Mohammedan a Mohammedan, the
Spiritualist a Spiritualist, the Democrat a Democrat, the Republican a
Republican, the Monarchist a Monarchist; and if a humble, earnest, and
sincere Seeker after Truth should find it in the proposition that the
moon is made of green cheese nothing could ever budge him from that
position; for he is nothing but an automatic machine, and must obey the
laws of his construction.
Y.M. And so—
O.M. Having found the Truth; perceiving that beyond question man has
but one moving impulse—the contenting of his own spirit—and is merely a
machine and entitled to no personal merit for anything he does, it is
not humanly possible for me to seek further. The rest of my days will
be spent in patching and painting and puttying and caulking my
priceless possession and in looking the other way when an imploring
argument or a damaging fact approaches.
1. The Marquess of Worcester had done all of this more than a century
earlier.
VI
Instinct and Thought
Young Man. It is odious. Those drunken theories of yours, advanced a
while ago—concerning the rat and all that—strip Man bare of all his
dignities, grandeurs, sublimities.
Old Man. He hasn’t any to strip—they are shams, stolen clothes. He
claims credits which belong solely to his Maker.
Y.M. But you have no right to put him on a level with a rat.
O.M. I don’t—morally. That would not be fair to the rat. The rat is
well above him, there.
Y.M. Are you joking?
O.M. No, I am not.
Y.M. Then what do you mean?
O.M. That comes under the head of the Moral Sense. It is a large
question. Let us finish with what we are about now, before we take it
up.
Y.M. Very well. You have seemed to concede that you place Man and the
rat on a level. What is it? The intellectual?
O.M. In form—not a degree.
Y.M. Explain.
O.M. I think that the rat’s mind and the man’s mind are the same
machine, but of unequal capacities—like yours and Edison’s; like the
African pygmy’s and Homer’s; like the Bushman’s and Bismarck’s.
Y.M. How are you going to make that out, when the lower animals have no
mental quality but instinct, while man possesses reason?
O.M. What is instinct?
Y.M. It is merely unthinking and mechanical exercise of inherited
habit.
O.M. What originated the habit?
Y.M. The first animal started it, its descendants have inherited it.
O.M. How did the first one come to start it?
Y.M. I don’t know; but it didn’t _think _it out.
O.M. How do you know it didn’t?
Y.M. Well—I have a right to suppose it didn’t, anyway.
O.M. I don’t believe you have. What is thought?
Y.M. I know what you call it: the mechanical and automatic putting
together of impressions received from outside, and drawing an inference
from them.
O.M. Very good. Now my idea of the meaningless term “instinct” is, that
it is merely _petrified thought; _solidified and made inanimate by
habit; thought which was once alive and awake, but is become
unconscious—walks in its sleep, so to speak.
Y.M. Illustrate it.
O.M. Take a herd of cows, feeding in a pasture. Their heads are all
turned in one direction. They do that instinctively; they gain nothing
by it, they have no reason for it, they don’t know why they do it. It
is an inherited habit which was originally thought—that is to say,
observation of an exterior fact, and a valuable inference drawn from
that observation and confirmed by experience. The original wild ox
noticed that with the wind in his favor he could smell his enemy in
time to escape; then he inferred that it was worth while to keep his
nose to the wind. That is the process which man calls reasoning. Man’s
thought-machine works just like the other animals’, but it is a better
one and more Edisonian. Man, in the ox’s place, would go further,
reason wider: he would face part of the herd the other way and protect
both front and rear.
Y.M. Did you stay the term instinct is meaningless?
O.M. I think it is a bastard word. I think it confuses us; for as a
rule it applies itself to habits and impulses which had a far-off
origin in thought, and now and then breaks the rule and applies itself
to habits which can hardly claim a thought-origin.
Y.M. Give an instance.
O.M. Well, in putting on trousers a man always inserts the same old leg
first—never the other one. There is no advantage in that, and no sense
in it. All men do it, yet no man thought it out and adopted it of set
purpose, I imagine. But it is a habit which is transmitted, no doubt,
and will continue to be transmitted.
Y.M. Can you prove that the habit exists?
O.M. You can prove it, if you doubt. If you will take a man to a
clothing-store and watch him try on a dozen pairs of trousers, you will
see.
Y.M. The cow illustration is not—
O.M. Sufficient to show that a dumb animal’s mental machine is just the
same as a man’s and its reasoning processes the same? I will illustrate
further. If you should hand Mr. Edison a box which you caused to fly
open by some concealed device he would infer a spring, and would hunt
for it and find it. Now an uncle of mine had an old horse who used to
get into the closed lot where the corn-crib was and dishonestly take
the corn. I got the punishment myself, as it was supposed that I had
heedlessly failed to insert the wooden pin which kept the gate closed.
These persistent punishments fatigued me; they also caused me to infer
the existence of a culprit, somewhere; so I hid myself and watched the
gate. Presently the horse came and pulled the pin out with his teeth
and went in. Nobody taught him that; he had observed—then thought it
out for himself. His process did not differ from Edison’s; he put this
and that together and drew an inference—and the peg, too; but I made
him sweat for it.
Y.M. It has something of the seeming of thought about it. Still it is
not very elaborate. Enlarge.
O.M. Suppose Mr. Edison has been enjoying some one’s hospitalities. He
comes again by and by, and the house is vacant. He infers that his host
has moved. A while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter a
house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire.
Here, now, is the experience of a gull, as related by a naturalist. The
scene is a Scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated.
This particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was
fed again; came into the house, next time, and ate with the family;
kept on doing this almost daily, thereafter. But, once the gull was
away on a journey for a few days, and when it returned the house was
vacant. Its friends had removed to a village three miles distant.
Several months later it saw the head of the family on the street there,
followed him home, entered the house without excuse or apology, and
became a daily guest again. Gulls do not rank high mentally, but this
one had memory and the reasoning faculty, you see, and applied them
Edisonially.
Y.M. Yet it was not an Edison and couldn’t be developed into one.
O.M. Perhaps not. Could you?
Y.M. That is neither here nor there. Go on.
O.M. If Edison were in trouble and a stranger helped him out of it and
next day he got into the same difficulty again, he would infer the wise
thing to do in case he knew the stranger’s address. Here is a case of a
bird and a stranger as related by a naturalist. An Englishman saw a
bird flying around about his dog’s head, down in the grounds, and
uttering cries of distress. He went there to see about it. The dog had
a young bird in his mouth—unhurt. The gentleman rescued it and put it
on a bush and brought the dog away. Early the next morning the mother
bird came for the gentleman, who was sitting on his veranda, and by its
maneuvers persuaded him to follow it to a distant part of the
grounds—flying a little way in front of him and waiting for him to
catch up, and so on; and keeping to the winding path, too, instead of
flying the near way across lots. The distance covered was four hundred
yards. The same dog was the culprit; he had the young bird again, and
once more he had to give it up. Now the mother bird had reasoned it all
out: since the stranger had helped her once, she inferred that he would
do it again; she knew where to find him, and she went upon her errand
with confidence. Her mental processes were what Edison’s would have
been. She put this and that together—and that is all that thought _is
_—and out of them built her logical arrangement of inferences. Edison
couldn’t have done it any better himself.
Y.M. Do you believe that many of the dumb animals can think?
O.M. Yes—the elephant, the monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot, the
macaw, the mocking-bird, and many others. The elephant whose mate fell
into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom
was raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped
with the reasoning quality. I conceive that all animals that can learn
things through teaching and drilling have to know how to observe, and
put this and that together and draw an inference—the process of
thinking. Could you teach an idiot the manual of arms, and to advance,
retreat, and go through complex field maneuvers at the word of command?
Y.M. Not if he were a thorough idiot.
O.M. Well, canary-birds can learn all that; dogs and elephants learn
all sorts of wonderful things. They must surely be able to notice, and
to put things together, and say to themselves, “I get the idea, now:
when I do so and so, as per order, I am praised and fed; when I do
differently I am punished.” Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a
Congressman can.
Y.M. Granting, then, that dumb animals are able to think upon a low
plane, is there any that can think upon a high one? Is there one that
is well up toward man?
O.M. Yes. As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage
race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the
superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental
qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!
Y.M. Oh, come! you are abolishing the intellectual frontier which
separates man and beast.
O.M. I beg your pardon. One cannot abolish what does not exist.
Y.M. You are not in earnest, I hope. You cannot mean to seriously say
there is no such frontier.
O.M. I do say it seriously. The instances of the horse, the gull, the
mother bird, and the elephant show that those creatures put their
this’s and thats together just as Edison would have done it and drew
the same inferences that he would have drawn. Their mental machinery
was just like his, also its manner of working. Their equipment was as
inferior to the Strasburg clock, but that is the only difference—there
is no frontier.
Y.M. It looks exasperatingly true; and is distinctly offensive. It
elevates the dumb beasts to—to—
O.M. Let us drop that lying phrase, and call them the Unrevealed
Creatures; so far as we can know, there is no such thing as a dumb
beast.
Y.M. On what grounds do you make that assertion?
O.M. On quite simple ones. “Dumb” beast suggests an animal that has no
thought-machinery, no understanding, no speech, no way of communicating
what is in its mind. We know that a hen _has _speech. We cannot
understand everything she says, but we easily learn two or three of her
phrases. We know when she is saying, “I have laid an egg”; we know when
she is saying to the chicks, “Run here, dears, I’ve found a worm”; we
know what she is saying when she voices a warning: “Quick! hurry!
gather yourselves under mamma, there’s a hawk coming!” We understand
the cat when she stretches herself out, purring with affection and
contentment and lifts up a soft voice and says, “Come, kitties,
supper’s ready”; we understand her when she goes mourning about and
says, “Where can they be? They are lost. Won’t you help me hunt for
them?” and we understand the disreputable Tom when he challenges at
midnight from his shed, “You come over here, you product of immoral
commerce, and I’ll make your fur fly!” We understand a few of a dog’s
phrases and we learn to understand a few of the remarks and gestures of
any bird or other animal that we domesticate and observe. The clearness
and exactness of the few of the hen’s speeches which we understand is
argument that she can communicate to her kind a hundred things which we
cannot comprehend—in a word, that she can converse. And this argument
is also applicable in the case of others of the great army of the
Unrevealed. It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an
animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. Now as to the
ant—
Y.M. Yes, go back to the ant, the creature that—as you seem to
think—sweeps away the last vestige of an intellectual frontier between
man and the Unrevealed.
O.M. That is what she surely does. In all his history the aboriginal
Australian never thought out a house for himself and built it. The ant
is an amazing architect. She is a wee little creature, but she builds a
strong and enduring house eight feet high—a house which is as large in
proportion to her size as is the largest capitol or cathedral in the
world compared to man’s size. No savage race has produced architects
who could approach the ant in genius or culture. No civilized race has
produced architects who could plan a house better for the uses proposed
than can hers. Her house contains a throne-room; nurseries for her
young; granaries; apartments for her soldiers, her workers, etc.; and
they and the multifarious halls and corridors which communicate with
them are arranged and distributed with an educated and experienced eye
for convenience and adaptability.
Y.M. That could be mere instinct.
O.M. It would elevate the savage if he had it. But let us look further
before we decide. The ant has soldiers—battalions, regiments, armies;
and they have their appointed captains and generals, who lead them to
battle.
Y.M. That could be instinct, too.
O.M. We will look still further. The ant has a system of government; it
is well planned, elaborate, and is well carried on.
Y.M. Instinct again.
O.M. She has crowds of slaves, and is a hard and unjust employer of
forced labor.
Y.M. Instinct.
O.M. She has cows, and milks them.
Y.M. Instinct, of course.
O.M. In Texas she lays out a farm twelve feet square, plants it, weeds
it, cultivates it, gathers the crop and stores it away.
Y.M. Instinct, all the same.
O.M. The ant discriminates between friend and stranger. Sir John
Lubbock took ants from two different nests, made them drunk with
whiskey and laid them, unconscious, by one of the nests, near some
water. Ants from the nest came and examined and discussed these
disgraced creatures, then carried their friends home and threw the
strangers overboard. Sir John repeated the experiment a number of
times. For a time the sober ants did as they had done at first—carried
their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. But finally they
lost patience, seeing that their reformatory efforts went for nothing,
and threw both friends and strangers overboard. Come—is this instinct,
or is it thoughtful and intelligent discussion of a thing
new—absolutely new—to their experience; with a verdict arrived at,
sentence passed, and judgment executed? Is it instinct?—thought
petrified by ages of habit—or isn’t it brand-new thought, inspired by
the new occasion, the new circumstances?
Y.M. I have to concede it. It was not a result of habit; it has all the
look of reflection, thought, putting this and that together, as you
phrase it. I believe it was thought.
O.M. I will give you another instance of thought. Franklin had a cup of
sugar on a table in his room. The ants got at it. He tried several
preventives; and ants rose superior to them. Finally he contrived one
which shut off access—probably set the table’s legs in pans of water,
or drew a circle of tar around the cup, I don’t remember. At any rate,
he watched to see what they would do. They tried various
schemes—failures, every one. The ants were badly puzzled. Finally they
held a consultation, discussed the problem, arrived at a decision—and
this time they beat that great philosopher. They formed in procession,
cross the floor, climbed the wall, marched across the ceiling to a
point just over the cup, then one by one they let go and fell down into
it! Was that instinct—thought petrified by ages of inherited habit?
Y.M. No, I don’t believe it was. I believe it was a newly reasoned
scheme to meet a new emergency.
O.M. Very well. You have conceded the reasoning power in two instances.
I come now to a mental detail wherein the ant is a long way the
superior of any human being. Sir John Lubbock proved by many
experiments that an ant knows a stranger ant of her own species in a
moment, even when the stranger is disguised—with paint. Also he proved
that an ant knows every individual in her hive of five hundred thousand
souls. Also, after a year’s absence one of the five hundred thousand
she will straightway recognize the returned absentee and grace the
recognition with an affectionate welcome. How are these recognitions
made? Not by color, for painted ants were recognized. Not by smell, for
ants that had been dipped in chloroform were recognized. Not by speech
and not by antennae signs nor contacts, for the drunken and motionless
ants were recognized and the friend discriminated from the stranger.
The ants were all of the same species, therefore the friends had to be
recognized by form and feature—friends who formed part of a hive of
five hundred thousand! Has any man a memory for form and feature
approaching that?
Y.M. Certainly not.
O.M. Franklin’s ants and Lubbuck’s ants show fine capacities of putting
this and that together in new and untried emergencies and deducting
smart conclusions from the combinations—a man’s mental process exactly.
With memory to help, man preserves his observations and reasonings,
reflects upon them, adds to them, recombines, and so proceeds, stage by
stage, to far results—from the teakettle to the ocean greyhound’s
complex engine; from personal labor to slave labor; from wigwam to
palace; from the capricious chase to agriculture and stored food; from
nomadic life to stable government and concentrated authority; from
incoherent hordes to massed armies. The ant has observation, the
reasoning faculty, and the preserving adjunct of a prodigious memory;
she has duplicated man’s development and the essential features of his
civilization, and you call it all instinct!
Y.M. Perhaps I lacked the reasoning faculty myself.
O.M. Well, don’t tell anybody, and don’t do it again.
Y.M. We have come a good way. As a result—as I understand it—I am
required to concede that there is absolutely no intellectual frontier
separating Man and the Unrevealed Creatures?
O.M. That is what you are required to concede. There is no such
frontier—there is no way to get around that. Man has a finer and more
capable machine in him than those others, but it is the same machine
and works in the same way. And neither he nor those others can command
the machine—it is strictly automatic, independent of control, works
when it pleases, and when it doesn’t please, it can’t be forced.
Y.M. Then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental
machinery, and there isn’t any difference of any stupendous magnitude
between them, except in quality, not in kind.
O.M. That is about the state of it—intellectuality. There are
pronounced limitations on both sides. We can’t learn to understand much
of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand
a very great deal of ours. To that extent they are our superiors. On
the other hand, they can’t learn reading, writing, etc., nor any of our
fine and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them.
Y.M. Very well, let them have what they’ve got, and welcome; there is
still a wall, and a lofty one. They haven’t got the Moral Sense; we
have it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them.
O.M. What makes you think that?
Y.M. Now look here—let’s call a halt. I have stood the other infamies
and insanities and that is enough; I am not going to have man and the
other animals put on the same level morally.
O.M. I wasn’t going to hoist man up to that.
Y.M. This is too much! I think it is not right to jest about such
things.
O.M. I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple
truth—and without uncharitableness. The fact that man knows right from
wrong proves his _intellectual _superiority to the other creatures; but
the fact that he can _do _wrong proves his _moral _inferiority to any
creature that _cannot_. It is my belief that this position is not
assailable.
_Free Will_
Y.M. What is your opinion regarding Free Will?
O.M. That there is no such thing. Did the man possess it who gave the
old woman his last shilling and trudged home in the storm?
Y.M. He had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her
to suffer. Isn’t it so?
O.M. Yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the
one hand and the comfort of the spirit on the other. The body made a
strong appeal, of course—the body would be quite sure to do that; the
spirit made a counter appeal. A choice had to be made between the two
appeals, and was made. Who or what determined that choice?
Y.M. Any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in
doing it he exercised Free Will.
O.M. We are constantly assured that every man is endowed with Free
Will, and that he can and must exercise it where he is offered a choice
between good conduct and less-good conduct. Yet we clearly saw that in
that man’s case he really had no Free Will: his temperament, his
training, and the daily influences which had molded him and made him
what he was, _compelled _him to rescue the old woman and thus save
_himself _—save himself from spiritual pain, from unendurable
wretchedness. He did not make the choice, it was made _for _him by
forces which he could not control. Free Will has always existed in
_words_, but it stops there, I think—stops short of _fact_. I would not
use those words—Free Will—but others.
Y.M. What others?
O.M. Free Choice.
Y.M. What is the difference?
O.M. The one implies untrammeled power to _act _as you please, the
other implies nothing beyond a mere _mental process: _the critical
ability to determine which of two things is nearest right and just.
Y.M. Make the difference clear, please.
O.M. The mind can freely _select, choose, point out _the right and just
one—its function stops there. It can go no further in the matter. It
has no authority to say that the right one shall be acted upon and the
wrong one discarded. That authority is in other hands.
Y.M. The man’s?
O.M. In the machine which stands for him. In his born disposition and
the character which has been built around it by training and
environment.
Y.M. It will act upon the right one of the two?
O.M. It will do as it pleases in the matter. George Washington’s
machine would act upon the right one; Pizarro would act upon the wrong
one.
Y.M. Then as I understand it a bad man’s mental machinery calmly and
judicially points out which of two things is right and just—
O.M. Yes, and his _moral _machinery will freely act upon the one or the
other, according to its make, and be quite indifferent to the _mind’s
_feeling concerning the matter—that is, _would _be, if the mind had any
feelings; which it hasn’t. It is merely a thermometer: it registers the
heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing about either.
Y.M. Then we must not claim that if a man _knows _which of two things
is right he is absolutely _bound _to do that thing?
O.M. His temperament and training will decide what he shall do, and he
will do it; he cannot help himself, he has no authority over the
matter. Wasn’t it right for David to go out and slay Goliath?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then it would have been equally _right _for any one else to do it?
Y.M. Certainly.
O.M. Then it would have been _right _for a born coward to attempt it?
Y.M. It would—yes.
O.M. You know that no born coward ever would have attempted it, don’t
you?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. You know that a born coward’s make and temperament would be an
absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying such a thing,
don’t you?
Y.M. Yes, I know it.
O.M. He clearly perceives that it would be _right _to try it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. His mind has Free Choice in determining that it would be _right
_to try it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply can _not
_essay it, what becomes of his Free Will? Where is his Free Will? Why
claim that he has Free Will when the plain facts show that he hasn’t?
Why contend that because he and David _see _the right alike, both must
_act _alike? Why impose the same laws upon goat and lion?
Y.M. There is really no such thing as Free Will?
O.M. It is what I think. There is _will_. But it has nothing to do with
_intellectual perceptions of right and wrong, _and is not under their
command. David’s temperament and training had Will, and it was a
compulsory force; David had to obey its decrees, he had no choice. The
coward’s temperament and training possess Will, and _it _is compulsory;
it commands him to avoid danger, and he obeys, he has no choice. But
neither the Davids nor the cowards possess Free Will—will that may do
the right or do the wrong, as their _mental _verdict shall decide.
_Not Two Values, But Only One_
Y.M. There is one thing which bothers me: I can’t tell where you draw
the line between _material _covetousness and _spiritual _covetousness.
O.M. I don’t draw any.
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. There is no such thing as _material _covetousness. All
covetousness is spiritual.
Y.M. _All _longings, desires, ambitions _spiritual, _never material?
O.M. Yes. The Master in you requires that in _all _cases you shall
content his _spirit _—that alone. He never requires anything else, he
never interests himself in any other matter.
Y.M. Ah, come! When he covets somebody’s money—isn’t that rather
distinctly material and gross?
O.M. No. The money is merely a symbol—it represents in visible and
concrete form a _spiritual desire. _Any so-called material thing that
you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for _itself_, but because
it will content your spirit for the moment.
Y.M. Please particularize.
O.M. Very well. Maybe the thing longed for is a new hat. You get it and
your vanity is pleased, your spirit contented. Suppose your friends
deride the hat, make fun of it: at once it loses its value; you are
ashamed of it, you put it out of your sight, you never want to see it
again.
Y.M. I think I see. Go on.
O.M. It is the same hat, isn’t it? It is in no way altered. But it
wasn’t the _hat _you wanted, but only what it stood for—a something to
please and content your _spirit_. When it failed of that, the whole of
its value was gone. There are no _material _values; there are only
spiritual ones. You will hunt in vain for a material value that is
_actual, real—_there is no such thing. The only value it possesses, for
even a moment, is the spiritual value back of it: remove that end and
it is at once worthless—like the hat.
Y.M. Can you extend that to money?
O.M. Yes. It is merely a symbol, it has no _material _value; you think
you desire it for its own sake, but it is not so. You desire it for the
spiritual content it will bring; if it fail of that, you discover that
its value is gone. There is that pathetic tale of the man who labored
like a slave, unresting, unsatisfied, until he had accumulated a
fortune, and was happy over it, jubilant about it; then in a single
week a pestilence swept away all whom he held dear and left him
desolate. His money’s value was gone. He realized that his joy in it
came not from the money itself, but from the spiritual contentment he
got out of his family’s enjoyment of the pleasures and delights it
lavished upon them. Money has no _material _value; if you remove its
spiritual value nothing is left but dross. It is so with all things,
little or big, majestic or trivial—there are no exceptions. Crowns,
scepters, pennies, paste jewels, village notoriety, world-wide
fame—they are all the same, they have no _material _value: while they
content the _spirit _they are precious, when this fails they are
worthless.
_A Difficult Question_
Y.M. You keep me confused and perplexed all the time by your elusive
terminology. Sometimes you divide a man up into two or three separate
personalities, each with authorities, jurisdictions, and
responsibilities of its own, and when he is in that condition I can’t
grasp it. Now when _I_ speak of a man, he is _the whole thing in one,
_and easy to hold and contemplate.
O.M. That is pleasant and convenient, if true. When you speak of “my
body” who is the “my”?
Y.M. It is the “me.”
O.M. The body is a property then, and the Me owns it. Who is the Me?
Y.M. The Me is _the whole thing; _it is a common property; an undivided
ownership, vested in the whole entity.
O.M. If the Me admires a rainbow, is it the whole Me that admires it,
including the hair, hands, heels, and all?
Y.M. Certainly not. It is my _mind _that admires it.
O.M. So _you _divide the Me yourself. Everybody does; everybody must.
What, then, definitely, is the Me?
Y.M. I think it must consist of just those two parts—the body and the
mind.
O.M. You think so? If you say “I believe the world is round,” who is
the “I” that is speaking?
Y.M. The mind.
O.M. If you say “I grieve for the loss of my father,” who is the “I”?
Y.M. The mind.
O.M. Is the mind exercising an intellectual function when it examines
and accepts the evidence that the world is round?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Is it exercising an intellectual function when it grieves for the
loss of your father?
Y.M. That is not cerebration, brain-work, it is a matter of _feeling_.
O.M. Then its source is not in your mind, but in your _moral
_territory?
Y.M. I have to grant it.
O.M. Is your mind a part of your _physical _equipment?
Y.M. No. It is independent of it; it is spiritual.
O.M. Being spiritual, it cannot be affected by physical influences?
Y.M. No.
O.M. Does the mind remain sober with the body is drunk?
Y.M. Well—no.
O.M. There _is _a physical effect present, then?
Y.M. It looks like it.
O.M. A cracked skull has resulted in a crazy mind. Why should it happen
if the mind is spiritual, and _independent _of physical influences?
Y.M. Well—I don’t know.
O.M. When you have a pain in your foot, how do you know it?
Y.M. I feel it.
O.M. But you do not feel it until a nerve reports the hurt to the
brain. Yet the brain is the seat of the mind, is it not?
Y.M. I think so.
O.M. But isn’t spiritual enough to learn what is happening in the
outskirts without the help of the _physical _messenger? You perceive
that the question of who or what the Me is, is not a simple one at all.
You say “I admire the rainbow,” and “I believe the world is round,” and
in these cases we find that the Me is not speaking, but only the
_mental _part. You say, “I grieve,” and again the Me is not all
speaking, but only the _moral _part. You say the mind is wholly
spiritual; then you say “I have a pain” and find that this time the Me
is mental _and _spiritual combined. We all use the “I” in this
indeterminate fashion, there is no help for it. We imagine a Master and
King over what you call The Whole Thing, and we speak of him as “I,”
but when we try to define him we find we cannot do it. The intellect
and the feelings can act quite _independently _of each other; we
recognize that, and we look around for a Ruler who is master over both,
and can serve as a _definite and indisputable “I,” _and enable us to
know what we mean and who or what we are talking about when we use that
pronoun, but we have to give it up and confess that we cannot find him.
To me, Man is a machine, made up of many mechanisms, the moral and
mental ones acting automatically in accordance with the impulses of an
interior Master who is built out of born-temperament and an
accumulation of multitudinous outside influences and trainings; a
machine whose _one _function is to secure the spiritual contentment of
the Master, be his desires good or be they evil; a machine whose Will
is absolute and must be obeyed, and always _is _obeyed.
Y.M. Maybe the Me is the Soul?
O.M. Maybe it is. What is the Soul?
Y.M. I don’t know.
O.M. Neither does any one else.
_The Master Passion_
Y.M. What is the Master?—or, in common speech, the Conscience? Explain
it.
O.M. It is that mysterious autocrat, lodged in a man, which compels the
man to content its desires. It may be called the Master Passion—the
hunger for Self-Approval.
Y.M. Where is its seat?
O.M. In man’s moral constitution.
Y.M. Are its commands for the man’s good?
O.M. It is indifferent to the man’s good; it never concerns itself
about anything but the satisfying of its own desires. It can be
_trained _to prefer things which will be for the man’s good, but it
will prefer them only because they will content _it _better than other
things would.
Y.M. Then even when it is trained to high ideals it is still looking
out for its own contentment, and not for the man’s good.
O.M. True. Trained or untrained, it cares nothing for the man’s good,
and never concerns itself about it.
Y.M. It seems to be an _immoral _force seated in the man’s moral
constitution.
O.M. It is a _colorless _force seated in the man’s moral constitution.
Let us call it an instinct—a blind, unreasoning instinct, which cannot
and does not distinguish between good morals and bad ones, and cares
nothing for results to the man provided its own contentment be secured;
and it will _always _secure that.
Y.M. It seeks money, and it probably considers that that is an
advantage for the man?
O.M. It is not always seeking money, it is not always seeking power,
nor office, nor any other _material _advantage. In _all _cases it seeks
a _spiritual _contentment, let the _means _be what they may. Its
desires are determined by the man’s temperament—and it is lord over
that. Temperament, Conscience, Susceptibility, Spiritual Appetite, are,
in fact, the same thing. Have you ever heard of a person who cared
nothing for money?
Y.M. Yes. A scholar who would not leave his garret and his books to
take a place in a business house at a large salary.
O.M. He had to satisfy his master—that is to say, his temperament, his
Spiritual Appetite—and it preferred books to money. Are there other
cases?
Y.M. Yes, the hermit.
O.M. It is a good instance. The hermit endures solitude, hunger, cold,
and manifold perils, to content his autocrat, who prefers these things,
and prayer and contemplation, to money or to any show or luxury that
money can buy. Are there others?
Y.M. Yes. The artist, the poet, the scientist.
O.M. Their autocrat prefers the deep pleasures of these occupations,
either well paid or ill paid, to any others in the market, at any
price. You _realize _that the Master Passion—the contentment of the
spirit—concerns itself with many things besides so-called material
advantage, material prosperity, cash, and all that?
Y.M. I think I must concede it.
O.M. I believe you must. There are perhaps as many Temperaments that
would refuse the burdens and vexations and distinctions of public
office as there are that hunger after them. The one set of Temperaments
seek the contentment of the spirit, and that alone; and this is exactly
the case with the other set. Neither set seeks anything _but _the
contentment of the spirit. If the one is sordid, both are sordid; and
equally so, since the end in view is precisely the same in both cases.
And in both cases Temperament decides the preference—and Temperament is
_born_, not made.
_Conclusion_
O.M. You have been taking a holiday?
Y.M. Yes; a mountain tramp covering a week. Are you ready to talk?
O.M. Quite ready. What shall we begin with?
Y.M. Well, lying abed resting up, two days and nights, I have thought
over all these talks, and passed them carefully in review. With this
result: that... that... are you intending to publish your notions about
Man some day?
O.M. Now and then, in these past twenty years, the Master inside of me
has half-intended to order me to set them to paper and publish them. Do
I have to tell you why the order has remained unissued, or can you
explain so simple a thing without my help?
Y.M. By your doctrine, it is simplicity itself: outside influences
moved your interior Master to give the order; stronger outside
influences deterred him. Without the outside influences, neither of
these impulses could ever have been born, since a person’s brain is
incapable or originating an idea within itself.
O.M. Correct. Go on.
Y.M. The matter of publishing or withholding is still in your Master’s
hands. If some day an outside influence shall determine him to publish,
he will give the order, and it will be obeyed.
O.M. That is correct. Well?
Y.M. Upon reflection I have arrived at the conviction that the
publication of your doctrines would be harmful. Do you pardon me?
O.M. Pardon _you_? You have done nothing. You are an instrument—a
speaking-trumpet. Speaking-trumpets are not responsible for what is
said through them. Outside influences—in the form of lifelong
teachings, trainings, notions, prejudices, and other second-hand
importations—have persuaded the Master within you that the publication
of these doctrines would be harmful. Very well, this is quite natural,
and was to be expected; in fact, was inevitable. Go on; for the sake of
ease and convenience, stick to habit: speak in the first person, and
tell me what your Master thinks about it.
Y.M. Well, to begin: it is a desolating doctrine; it is not inspiring,
enthusing, uplifting. It takes the glory out of man, it takes the pride
out of him, it takes the heroism out of him, it denies him all personal
credit, all applause; it not only degrades him to a machine, but allows
him no control over the machine; makes a mere coffee-mill of him, and
neither permits him to supply the coffee nor turn the crank, his sole
and piteously humble function being to grind coarse or fine, according
to his make, outside impulses doing the rest.
O.M. It is correctly stated. Tell me—what do men admire most in each
other?
Y.M. Intellect, courage, majesty of build, beauty of countenance,
charity, benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness, heroism, and—and—
O.M. I would not go any further. These are _elementals_. Virtue,
fortitude, holiness, truthfulness, loyalty, high ideals—these, and all
the related qualities that are named in the dictionary, are _made of
the elementals, _by blendings, combinations, and shadings of the
elementals, just as one makes green by blending blue and yellow, and
makes several shades and tints of red by modifying the elemental red.
There are several elemental colors; they are all in the rainbow; out of
them we manufacture and name fifty shades of them. You have named the
elementals of the human rainbow, and also one _blend _—heroism, which
is made out of courage and magnanimity. Very well, then; which of these
elements does the possessor of it manufacture for himself? Is it
intellect?
Y.M. No.
O.M. Why?
Y.M. He is born with it.
O.M. Is it courage?
Y.M. No. He is born with it.
O.M. Is it majesty of build, beauty of countenance?
Y.M. No. They are birthrights.
O.M. Take those others—the elemental moral qualities—charity,
benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness; fruitful seeds, out of which
spring, through cultivation by outside influences, all the manifold
blends and combinations of virtues named in the dictionaries: does man
manufacture any of those seeds, or are they all born in him?
Y.M. Born in him.
O.M. Who manufactures them, then?
Y.M. God.
O.M. Where does the credit of it belong?
Y.M. To God.
O.M. And the glory of which you spoke, and the applause?
Y.M. To God.
O.M. Then it is _you _who degrade man. You make him claim glory,
praise, flattery, for every valuable thing he possesses—_borrowed
_finery, the whole of it; no rag of it earned by himself, not a detail
of it produced by his own labor. _You _make man a humbug; have I done
worse by him?
Y.M. You have made a machine of him.
O.M. Who devised that cunning and beautiful mechanism, a man’s hand?
Y.M. God.
O.M. Who devised the law by which it automatically hammers out of a
piano an elaborate piece of music, without error, while the man is
thinking about something else, or talking to a friend?
Y.M. God.
O.M. Who devised the blood? Who devised the wonderful machinery which
automatically drives its renewing and refreshing streams through the
body, day and night, without assistance or advice from the man? Who
devised the man’s mind, whose machinery works automatically, interests
itself in what it pleases, regardless of its will or desire, labors all
night when it likes, deaf to his appeals for mercy? God devised all
these things. _I_ have not made man a machine, God made him a machine.
I am merely calling attention to the fact, nothing more. Is it wrong to
call attention to the fact? Is it a crime?
Y.M. I think it is wrong to _expose _a fact when harm can come of it.
O.M. Go on.
Y.M. Look at the matter as it stands now. Man has been taught that he
is the supreme marvel of the Creation; he believes it; in all the ages
he has never doubted it, whether he was a naked savage, or clothed in
purple and fine linen, and civilized. This has made his heart buoyant,
his life cheery. His pride in himself, his sincere admiration of
himself, his joy in what he supposed were his own and unassisted
achievements, and his exultation over the praise and applause which
they evoked—these have exalted him, enthused him, ambitioned him to
higher and higher flights; in a word, made his life worth the living.
But by your scheme, all this is abolished; he is degraded to a machine,
he is a nobody, his noble prides wither to mere vanities; let him
strive as he may, he can never be any better than his humblest and
stupidest neighbor; he would never be cheerful again, his life would
not be worth the living.
O.M. You really think that?
Y.M. I certainly do.
O.M. Have you ever seen me uncheerful, unhappy.
Y.M. No.
O.M. Well, _I_ believe these things. Why have they not made me unhappy?
Y.M. Oh, well—temperament, of course! You never let _that _escape from
your scheme.
O.M. That is correct. If a man is born with an unhappy temperament,
nothing can make him happy; if he is born with a happy temperament,
nothing can make him unhappy.
Y.M. What—not even a degrading and heart-chilling system of beliefs?
O.M. Beliefs? Mere beliefs? Mere convictions? They are powerless. They
strive in vain against inborn temperament.
Y.M. I can’t believe that, and I don’t.
O.M. Now you are speaking hastily. It shows that you have not
studiously examined the facts. Of all your intimates, which one is the
happiest? Isn’t it Burgess?
Y.M. Easily.
O.M. And which one is the unhappiest? Henry Adams?
Y.M. Without a question!
O.M. I know them well. They are extremes, abnormals; their temperaments
are as opposite as the poles. Their life-histories are about alike—but
look at the results! Their ages are about the same—about around fifty.
Burgess had always been buoyant, hopeful, happy; Adams has always been
cheerless, hopeless, despondent. As young fellows both tried country
journalism—and failed. Burgess didn’t seem to mind it; Adams couldn’t
smile, he could only mourn and groan over what had happened and torture
himself with vain regrets for not having done so and so instead of so
and so—_then _he would have succeeded. They tried the law—and failed.
Burgess remained happy—because he couldn’t help it. Adams was
wretched—because he couldn’t help it. From that day to this, those two
men have gone on trying things and failing: Burgess has come out happy
and cheerful every time; Adams the reverse. And we do absolutely know
that these men’s inborn temperaments have remained unchanged through
all the vicissitudes of their material affairs. Let us see how it is
with their immaterials. Both have been zealous Democrats; both have
been zealous Republicans; both have been zealous Mugwumps. Burgess has
always found happiness and Adams unhappiness in these several political
beliefs and in their migrations out of them. Both of these men have
been Presbyterians, Universalists, Methodists, Catholics—then
Presbyterians again, then Methodists again. Burgess has always found
rest in these excursions, and Adams unrest. They are trying Christian
Science, now, with the customary result, the inevitable result. No
political or religious belief can make Burgess unhappy or the other man
happy. I assure you it is purely a matter of temperament. Beliefs are
_acquirements_, temperaments are _born_; beliefs are subject to change,
nothing whatever can change temperament.
Y.M. You have instanced extreme temperaments.
O.M. Yes, the half-dozen others are modifications of the extremes. But
the law is the same. Where the temperament is two-thirds happy, or
two-thirds unhappy, no political or religious beliefs can change the
proportions. The vast majority of temperaments are pretty equally
balanced; the intensities are absent, and this enables a nation to
learn to accommodate itself to its political and religious
circumstances and like them, be satisfied with them, at last prefer
them. Nations do not _think_, they only _feel_. They get their feelings
at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation
can be brought—by force of circumstances, not argument—to reconcile
itself to _any kind of government or religion that can be devised; _in
time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later, it will
prefer them and will fiercely fight for them. As instances, you have
all history: the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians, the Egyptians, the
Russians, the Germans, the French, the English, the Spaniards, the
Americans, the South Americans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindus,
the Turks—a thousand wild and tame religions, every kind of government
that can be thought of, from tiger to house-cat, each nation _knowing
_it has the only true religion and the only sane system of government,
each despising all the others, each an ass and not suspecting it, each
proud of its fancied supremacy, each perfectly sure it is the pet of
God, each without undoubting confidence summoning Him to take command
in time of war, each surprised when He goes over to the enemy, but by
habit able to excuse it and resume compliments—in a word, the whole
human race content, always content, persistently content,
indestructibly content, happy, thankful, proud, _no matter what its
religion is, nor whether its master be tiger or house-cat. _Am I
stating facts? You know I am. Is the human race cheerful? You know it
is. Considering what it can stand, and be happy, you do me too much
honor when you think that _I_ can place before it a system of plain
cold facts that can take the cheerfulness out of it. Nothing can do
that. Everything has been tried. Without success. I beg you not to be
troubled.
THE DEATH OF JEAN
The death of Jean Clemens occurred early in the morning of December 24,
1909. Mr. Clemens was in great stress of mind when I first saw him, but
a few hours later I found him writing steadily.
“I am setting it down,” he said, “everything. It is a relief to me to
write it. It furnishes me an excuse for thinking.” At intervals during
that day and the next I looked in, and usually found him writing. Then
on the evening of the 26th, when he knew that Jean had been laid to
rest in Elmira, he came to my room with the manuscript in his hand.
“I have finished it,” he said; “read it. I can form no opinion of it
myself. If you think it worthy, some day—at the proper time—it can end
my autobiography. It is the final chapter.”
Four months later—almost to the day—(April 21st) he was with Jean.
Albert Bigelow Paine.
Stormfield, Christmas Eve, 11 A.M., 1909.
JEAN IS DEAD!
Has any one ever tried to put upon paper all the little happenings
connected with a dear one—happenings of the twenty-four hours preceding
the sudden and unexpected death of that dear one? Would a book contain
them? Would two books contain them? I think not. They pour into the
mind in a flood. They are little things that have been always happening
every day, and were always so unimportant and easily forgettable
before—but now! Now, how different! how precious they are, how dear,
how unforgettable, how pathetic, how sacred, how clothed with dignity!
Last night Jean, all flushed with splendid health, and I the same, from
the wholesome effects of my Bermuda holiday, strolled hand in hand from
the dinner-table and sat down in the library and chatted, and planned,
and discussed, cheerily and happily (and how unsuspectingly!)—until
nine—which is late for us—then went upstairs, Jean’s friendly German
dog following. At my door Jean said, “I can’t kiss you good night,
father: I have a cold, and you could catch it.” I bent and kissed her
hand. She was moved—I saw it in her eyes—and she impulsively kissed my
hand in return. Then with the usual gay “Sleep well, dear!” from both,
we parted.
At half past seven this morning I woke, and heard voices outside my
door. I said to myself, “Jean is starting on her usual horseback flight
to the station for the mail.” Then Katy[1] entered, stood quaking and
gasping at my bedside a moment, then found her tongue:
[1] Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens family for
twenty-nine years.
“MISS JEAN IS DEAD!”
Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes
through his heart.
In her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon
the floor and covered with a sheet. And looking so placid, so natural,
and as if asleep. We knew what had happened. She was an epileptic: she
had been seized with a convulsion and heart failure in her bath. The
doctor had to come several miles. His efforts, like our previous ones,
failed to bring her back to life.
It is noon, now. How lovable she looks, how sweet and how tranquil! It
is a noble face, and full of dignity; and that was a good heart that
lies there so still.
In England, thirteen years ago, my wife and I were stabbed to the heart
with a cablegram which said, “Susy was mercifully released today.” I
had to send a like shot to Clara, in Berlin, this morning. With the
peremptory addition, “You must not come home.” Clara and her husband
sailed from here on the 11th of this month. How will Clara bear it?
Jean, from her babyhood, was a worshiper of Clara.
Four days ago I came back from a month’s holiday in Bermuda in
perfected health; but by some accident the reporters failed to perceive
this. Day before yesterday, letters and telegrams began to arrive from
friends and strangers which indicated that I was supposed to be
dangerously ill. Yesterday Jean begged me to explain my case through
the Associated Press. I said it was not important enough; but she was
distressed and said I must think of Clara. Clara would see the report
in the German papers, and as she had been nursing her husband day and
night for four months[2] and was worn out and feeble, the shock might
be disastrous. There was reason in that; so I sent a humorous paragraph
by telephone to the Associated Press denying the “charge” that I was
“dying,” and saying “I would not do such a thing at my time of life.”
[2] Mr. Gabrilowitsch had been operated on for appendicitis.
Jean was a little troubled, and did not like to see me treat the matter
so lightly; but I said it was best to treat it so, for there was
nothing serious about it. This morning I sent the sorrowful facts of
this day’s irremediable disaster to the Associated Press. Will both
appear in this evening’s papers?—the one so blithe, the other so
tragic?
I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother—her incomparable
mother!—five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in
Europe; and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich!
Seven months ago Mr. Rogers died—one of the best friends I ever had,
and the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, I have yet met among my
race; within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and Laffan—old,
old friends of mine. Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers
under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night—and
it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit
here—writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How
dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a
mockery.
Seventy-four years old twenty-four days ago. Seventy-four years old
yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?
I have looked upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as
her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long
ago. The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep.
I saw her mother buried. I said I would never endure that horror again;
that I would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me. I
have kept to that. They will take Jean from this house tomorrow, and
bear her to Elmira, New York, where lie those of us that have been
released, but I shall not follow.
Jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago. She was
at the door, beaming a welcome, when I reached this house the next
evening. We played cards, and she tried to teach me a new game called
“Mark Twain.” We sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, and
she wouldn’t let me look into the loggia, where she was making
Christmas preparations. She said she would finish them in the morning,
and then her little French friend would arrive from New York—the
surprise would follow; the surprise she had been working over for days.
While she was out for a moment I disloyally stole a look. The loggia
floor was clothed with rugs and furnished with chairs and sofas; and
the uncompleted surprise was there: in the form of a Christmas tree
that was drenched with silver film in a most wonderful way; and on a
table was a prodigal profusion of bright things which she was going to
hang upon it today. What desecrating hand will ever banish that
eloquent unfinished surprise from that place? Not mine, surely. All
these little matters have happened in the last four days. “Little.”
Yes—_then_. But not now. Nothing she said or thought or did is little
now. And all the lavish humor!—what is become of it? It is pathos, now.
Pathos, and the thought of it brings tears.
All these little things happened such a few hours ago—and now she lies
yonder. Lies yonder, and cares for nothing any more.
Strange—marvelous—incredible! I have had this experience before; but it
would still be incredible if I had had it a thousand times.
“MISS JEAN IS DEAD!”
That is what Katy said. When I heard the door open behind the bed’s
head without a preliminary knock, I supposed it was Jean coming to kiss
me good morning, she being the only person who was used to entering
without formalities.
And so—
I have been to Jean’s parlor. Such a turmoil of Christmas presents for
servants and friends! They are everywhere; tables, chairs, sofas, the
floor—everything is occupied, and over-occupied. It is many and many a
year since I have seen the like. In that ancient day Mrs. Clemens and I
used to slip softly into the nursery at midnight on Christmas Eve and
look the array of presents over. The children were little then. And now
here is Jean’s parlor looking just as that nursery used to look. The
presents are not labeled—the hands are forever idle that would have
labeled them today. Jean’s mother always worked herself down with her
Christmas preparations. Jean did the same yesterday and the preceding
days, and the fatigue has cost her her life. The fatigue caused the
convulsion that attacked her this morning. She had had no attack for
months.
Jean was so full of life and energy that she was constantly in danger
of overtaxing her strength. Every morning she was in the saddle by half
past seven, and off to the station for her mail. She examined the
letters and I distributed them: some to her, some to Mr. Paine, the
others to the stenographer and myself. She dispatched her share and
then mounted her horse again and went around superintending her farm
and her poultry the rest of the day. Sometimes she played billiards
with me after dinner, but she was usually too tired to play, and went
early to bed.
Yesterday afternoon I told her about some plans I had been devising
while absent in Bermuda, to lighten her burdens. We would get a
housekeeper; also we would put her share of the secretary-work into Mr.
Paine’s hands.
No—she wasn’t willing. She had been making plans herself. The matter
ended in a compromise, I submitted. I always did. She wouldn’t audit
the bills and let Paine fill out the checks—she would continue to
attend to that herself. Also, she would continue to be housekeeper, and
let Katy assist. Also, she would continue to answer the letters of
personal friends for me. Such was the compromise. Both of us called it
by that name, though I was not able to see where any formidable change
had been made.
However, Jean was pleased, and that was sufficient for me. She was
proud of being my secretary, and I was never able to persuade her to
give up any part of her share in that unlovely work.
In the talk last night I said I found everything going so smoothly that
if she were willing I would go back to Bermuda in February and get
blessedly out of the clash and turmoil again for another month. She was
urgent that I should do it, and said that if I would put off the trip
until March she would take Katy and go with me. We struck hands upon
that, and said it was settled. I had a mind to write to Bermuda by
tomorrow’s ship and secure a furnished house and servants. I meant to
write the letter this morning. But it will never be written, now.
For she lies yonder, and before her is another journey than that.
Night is closing down; the rim of the sun barely shows above the
sky-line of the hills.
I have been looking at that face again that was growing dearer and
dearer to me every day. I was getting acquainted with Jean in these
last nine months. She had been long an exile from home when she came to
us three-quarters of a year ago. She had been shut up in sanitariums,
many miles from us. How eloquently glad and grateful she was to cross
her father’s threshold again!
Would I bring her back to life if I could do it? I would not. If a word
would do it, I would beg for strength to withhold the word. And I would
have the strength; I am sure of it. In her loss I am almost bankrupt,
and my life is a bitterness, but I am content: for she has been
enriched with the most precious of all gifts—that gift which makes all
other gifts mean and poor—death. I have never wanted any released
friend of mine restored to life since I reached manhood. I felt in this
way when Susy passed away; and later my wife, and later Mr. Rogers.
When Clara met me at the station in New York and told me Mr. Rogers had
died suddenly that morning, my thought was, Oh, favorite of
fortune—fortunate all his long and lovely life—fortunate to his latest
moment! The reporters said there were tears of sorrow in my eyes.
True—but they were for _me_, not for him. He had suffered no loss. All
the fortunes he had ever made before were poverty compared with this
one.
Why did I build this house, two years ago? To shelter this vast
emptiness? How foolish I was! But I shall stay in it. The spirits of
the dead hallow a house, for me. It was not so with other members of my
family. Susy died in the house we built in Hartford. Mrs. Clemens would
never enter it again. But it made the house dearer to me. I have
entered it once since, when it was tenantless and silent and forlorn,
but to me it was a holy place and beautiful. It seemed to me that the
spirits of the dead were all about me, and would speak to me and
welcome me if they could: Livy, and Susy, and George, and Henry
Robinson, and Charles Dudley Warner. How good and kind they were, and
how lovable their lives! In fancy I could see them all again, I could
call the children back and hear them romp again with George—that
peerless black ex-slave and children’s idol who came one day—a flitting
stranger—to wash windows, and stayed eighteen years. Until he died.
Clara and Jean would never enter again the New York hotel which their
mother had frequented in earlier days. They could not bear it. But I
shall stay in this house. It is dearer to me tonight than ever it was
before. Jean’s spirit will make it beautiful for me always. Her lonely
and tragic death—but I will not think of that now.
Jean’s mother always devoted two or three weeks to Christmas shopping,
and was always physically exhausted when Christmas Eve came. Jean was
her very own child—she wore herself out present-hunting in New York
these latter days. Paine has just found on her desk a long list of
names—fifty, he thinks—people to whom she sent presents last night.
Apparently she forgot no one. And Katy found there a roll of
bank-notes, for the servants.
Her dog has been wandering about the grounds today, comradeless and
forlorn. I have seen him from the windows. She got him from Germany. He
has tall ears and looks exactly like a wolf. He was educated in
Germany, and knows no language but the German. Jean gave him no orders
save in that tongue. And so when the burglar-alarm made a fierce clamor
at midnight a fortnight ago, the butler, who is French and knows no
German, tried in vain to interest the dog in the supposed burglar. Jean
wrote me, to Bermuda, about the incident. It was the last letter I was
ever to receive from her bright head and her competent hand. The dog
will not be neglected.
There was never a kinder heart than Jean’s. From her childhood up she
always spent the most of her allowance on charities of one kind and
another. After she became secretary and had her income doubled she
spent her money upon these things with a free hand. Mine too, I am glad
and grateful to say.
She was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all, birds,
beasts, and everything—even snakes—an inheritance from me. She knew all
the birds; she was high up in that lore. She became a member of various
humane societies when she was still a little girl—both here and
abroad—and she remained an active member to the last. She founded two
or three societies for the protection of animals, here and in Europe.
She was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my correspondence out
of the waste-basket and answered the letters. She thought all letters
deserved the courtesy of an answer. Her mother brought her up in that
kindly error.
She could write a good letter, and was swift with her pen. She had but
an indifferent ear for music, but her tongue took to languages with an
easy facility. She never allowed her Italian, French, and German to get
rusty through neglect.
The telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far and wide, now, just
as they did in Italy five years and a half ago, when this child’s
mother laid down her blameless life. They cannot heal the hurt, but
they take away some of the pain. When Jean and I kissed hands and
parted at my door last, how little did we imagine that in twenty-two
hours the telegraph would be bringing words like these:
“From the bottom of our hearts we send our sympathy, dearest of
friends.”
For many and many a day to come, wherever I go in this house,
remembrancers of Jean will mutely speak to me of her. Who can count the
number of them?
She was in exile two years with the hope of healing her
malady—epilepsy. There are no words to express how grateful I am that
she did not meet her fate in the hands of strangers, but in the loving
shelter of her own home.
“MISS JEAN IS DEAD!”
It is true. Jean is dead.
A month ago I was writing bubbling and hilarious articles for magazines
yet to appear, and now I am writing—this.
CHRISTMAS DAY. NOON.—Last night I went to Jean’s room at intervals, and
turned back the sheet and looked at the peaceful face, and kissed the
cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in Florence so long
ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when I crept downstairs
so many times, and turned back a sheet and looked at a face just like
this one—Jean’s mother’s face—and kissed a brow that was just like this
one. And last night I saw again what I had seen then—that strange and
lovely miracle—the sweet, soft contours of early maidenhood restored by
the gracious hand of death! When Jean’s mother lay dead, all trace of
care, and trouble, and suffering, and the corroding years had vanished
out of the face, and I was looking again upon it as I had known and
worshiped it in its young bloom and beauty a whole generation before.
About three in the morning, while wandering about the house in the deep
silences, as one does in times like these, when there is a dumb sense
that something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must
be sought, if only for the employment the useless seeking gives, I came
upon Jean’s dog in the hall downstairs, and noted that he did not
spring to greet me, according to his hospitable habit, but came slow
and sorrowfully; also I remembered that he had not visited Jean’s
apartment since the tragedy. Poor fellow, did he know? I think so.
Always when Jean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when
she was in the house he was with her, in the night as well as in the
day. Her parlor was his bedroom. Whenever I happened upon him on the
ground floor he always followed me about, and when I went upstairs he
went too—in a tumultuous gallop. But now it was different: after
patting him a little I went to the library—he remained behind; when I
went upstairs he did not follow me, save with his wistful eyes. He has
wonderful eyes—big, and kind, and eloquent. He can talk with them. He
is a beautiful creature, and is of the breed of the New York
police-dogs. I do not like dogs, because they bark when there is no
occasion for it; but I have liked this one from the beginning, because
he belonged to Jean, and because he never barks except when there is
occasion—which is not oftener than twice a week.
In my wanderings I visited Jean’s parlor. On a shelf I found a pile of
my books, and I knew what it meant. She was waiting for me to come home
from Bermuda and autograph them, then she would send them away. If I
only knew whom she intended them for! But I shall never know. I will
keep them. Her hand has touched them—it is an accolade—they are noble,
now.
And in a closet she had hidden a surprise for me—a thing I have often
wished I owned: a noble big globe. I couldn’t see it for the tears. She
will never know the pride I take in it, and the pleasure. Today the
mails are full of loving remembrances for her: full of those old, old
kind words she loved so well, “Merry Christmas to Jean!” If she could
only have lived one day longer!
At last she ran out of money, and would not use mine. So she sent to
one of those New York homes for poor girls all the clothes she could
spare—and more, most likely.
CHRISTMAS NIGHT.—This afternoon they took her away from her room. As
soon as I might, I went down to the library, and there she lay, in her
coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes she wore when she stood at
the other end of the same room on the 6th of October last, as Clara’s
chief bridesmaid. Her face was radiant with happy excitement then; it
was the same face now, with the dignity of death and the peace of God
upon it.
They told me the first mourner to come was the dog. He came uninvited,
and stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore paws upon the
trestle, and took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him,
then went his way as silently as he had come. _He knows._
At mid-afternoon it began to snow. The pity of it—that Jean could not
see it! She so loved the snow.
The snow continued to fall. At six o’clock the hearse drew up to the
door to bear away its pathetic burden. As they lifted the casket, Paine
began playing on the orchestrelle Schubert’s “Impromptu,” which was
Jean’s favorite. Then he played the Intermezzo; that was for Susy; then
he played the Largo; that was for their mother. He did this at my
request. Elsewhere in my Autobiography I have told how the Intermezzo
and the Largo came to be associated in my heart with Susy and Livy in
their last hours in this life.
From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road
and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and
presently disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come
back any more. Jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were
babies together—he and her beloved old Katy—were conducting her to her
distant childhood home, where she will lie by her mother’s side once
more, in the company of Susy and Langdon.
DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o’clock this morning. He
was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will be his quarters
hereafter.
The storm raged all night. It has raged all the morning. The snow
drives across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime—and Jean
not here to see.
2:30 P.M.—It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four hundred
miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The scene is
the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean’s coffin stands where her
mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where Susy’s
coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother’s stood five years
and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time.
FIVE O’CLOCK.—It is all over.
When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe, it was hard, but
I could bear it, for I had Jean left. I said _we_ would be a family. We
said we would be close comrades and happy—just we two. That fair dream
was in my mind when Jean met me at the steamer last Monday; it was in
my mind when she received me at the door last Tuesday evening. We were
together; WE WERE A FAMILY! the dream had come true—oh, precisely true,
contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days.
And now? Now Jean is in her grave!
In the grave—if I can believe it. God rest her sweet spirit!
THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE
I
If I understand the idea, the _Bazar _invites several of us to write
upon the above text. It means the change in my life’s course which
introduced what must be regarded by me as the most _important
_condition of my career. But it also implies—without intention,
perhaps—that that turning-point _itself _was the creator of the new
condition. This gives it too much distinction, too much prominence, too
much credit. It is only the _last _link in a very long chain of
turning-points commissioned to produce the cardinal result; it is not
any more important than the humblest of its ten thousand predecessors.
Each of the ten thousand did its appointed share, on its appointed
date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all necessary; to have
left out any one of them would have defeated the scheme and brought
about _some other_ result. I know we have a fashion of saying “such and
such an event was the turning-point in my life,” but we shouldn’t say
it. We should merely grant that its place as LAST link in the chain
makes it the most _conspicuous _link; in real importance it has no
advantage over any one of its predecessors.
Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the
crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says:
Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a
while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on
the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, “We may
still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for
us but to fight it out in arms.”
This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big
and little, of Caesar’s previous life had been leading up to it, stage
by stage, link by link. This was the _last _link—merely the last one,
and no bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the
inflating mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of
Neptune.
You, the reader, have a _personal _interest in that link, and so have
I; so has the rest of the human race. It was one of the links in your
life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. We may wait, now, with
bated breath, while Caesar reflects. Your fate and mine are involved in
his decision.
While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person
remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand,
sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a
number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters
among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river
with it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to
the other side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: “Let us go whither the
omens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. _The Die Is
Cast_.”
So he crossed—and changed the future of the whole human race, for all
time. But that stranger was a link in Caesar’s life-chain, too; and a
necessary one. We don’t know his name, we never hear of him again; he
was very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he
was there by compulsion of HIS life-chain, to blow the electrifying
blast that was to make up Caesar’s mind for him, and thence go piping
down the aisles of history forever.
If the stranger hadn’t been there! But he WAS. And Caesar crossed. With
such results! Such vast events—each a link in the _human race_’s
life-chain; each event producing the next one, and that one the next
one, and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the
empire; the breaking up of the empire; the rise of Christianity upon
its ruins; the spread of the religion to other lands—and so on; link by
link took its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of
America being one of them; our Revolution another; the inflow of
English and other immigrants another; their drift westward (my
ancestors among them) another; the settlement of certain of them in
Missouri, which resulted in ME. For I was one of the unavoidable
results of the crossing of the Rubicon. If the stranger, with his
trumpet blast, had stayed away (which he _couldn’t_, for he was an
appointed link) Caesar would not have crossed. What would have
happened, in that case, we can never guess. We only know that the
things that did happen would not have happened. They might have been
replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but their nature and
results are beyond our guessing. But the matter that interests me
personally is that I would not be _here _now, but somewhere else; and
probably black—there is no telling. Very well, I am glad he crossed.
And very really and thankfully glad, too, though I never cared anything
about it before.
II
To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature. I
have been professionally literary something more than forty years.
There have been many turning-points in my life, but the one that was
the last link in the chain appointed to conduct me to the literary
guild is the most _conspicuous _link in that chain. _because _it was
the last one. It was not any more important than its predecessors. All
the other links have an inconspicuous look, except the crossing of the
Rubicon; but as factors in making me literary they are all of the one
size, the crossing of the Rubicon included.
I know how I came to be literary, and I will tell the steps that lead
up to it and brought it about.
The crossing of the Rubicon was not the first one, it was hardly even a
recent one; I should have to go back ages before Caesar’s day to find
the first one. To save space I will go back only a couple of
generations and start with an incident of my boyhood. When I was twelve
and a half years old, my father died. It was in the spring. The summer
came, and brought with it an epidemic of measles. For a time a child
died almost every day. The village was paralyzed with fright, distress,
despair. Children that were not smitten with the disease were
imprisoned in their homes to save them from the infection. In the homes
there were no cheerful faces, there was no music, there was no singing
but of solemn hymns, no voice but of prayer, no romping was allowed, no
noise, no laughter, the family moved spectrally about on tiptoe, in a
ghostly hush. I was a prisoner. My soul was steeped in this awful
dreariness—and in fear. At some time or other every day and every night
a sudden shiver shook me to the marrow, and I said to myself, “There,
I’ve got it! and I shall die.” Life on these miserable terms was not
worth living, and at last I made up my mind to get the disease and have
it over, one way or the other. I escaped from the house and went to the
house of a neighbor where a playmate of mine was very ill with the
malady. When the chance offered I crept into his room and got into bed
with him. I was discovered by his mother and sent back into captivity.
But I had the disease; they could not take that from me. I came near to
dying. The whole village was interested, and anxious, and sent for news
of me every day; and not only once a day, but several times. Everybody
believed I would die; but on the fourteenth day a change came for the
worse and they were disappointed.
This was a turning-point of my life. (Link number one.) For when I got
well my mother closed my school career and apprenticed me to a printer.
She was tired of trying to keep me out of mischief, and the adventure
of the measles decided her to put me into more masterful hands than
hers.
I became a printer, and began to add one link after another to the
chain which was to lead me into the literary profession. A long road,
but I could not know that; and as I did not know what its goal was, or
even that it had one, I was indifferent. Also contented.
A young printer wanders around a good deal, seeking and finding work;
and seeking again, when necessity commands. N. B. Necessity is a
CIRCUMSTANCE; Circumstance is man’s master—and when Circumstance
commands, he must obey; he may argue the matter—that is his privilege,
just as it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with
the attraction of gravitation—but it won’t do any good, he must OBEY. I
wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of
Circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of Iowa, where I worked
several months. Among the books that interested me in those days was
one about the Amazon. The traveler told an alluring tale of his long
voyage up the great river from Para to the sources of the Madeira,
through the heart of an enchanted land, a land wastefully rich in
tropical wonders, a romantic land where all the birds and flowers and
animals were of the museum varieties, and where the alligator and the
crocodile and the monkey seemed as much at home as if they were in the
Zoo. Also, he told an astonishing tale about COCA, a vegetable product
of miraculous powers, asserting that it was so nourishing and so
strength-giving that the native of the mountains of the Madeira region
would tramp up hill and down all day on a pinch of powdered coca and
require no other sustenance.
I was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon. Also with a longing to
open up a trade in coca with all the world. During months I dreamed
that dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to Para and spring that
splendid enterprise upon an unsuspecting planet. But all in vain. A
person may PLAN as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is
likely to come of it until the magician _circumstance _steps in and
takes the matter off his hands. At last Circumstance came to my help.
It was in this way. Circumstance, to help or hurt another man, made him
lose a fifty-dollar bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me
find it. I advertised the find, and left for the Amazon the same day.
This was another turning-point, another link.
Could Circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to
the Amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fifty-dollar basis
and been obeyed? No, I was the only one. There were other fools
there—shoals and shoals of them—but they were not of my kind. I was the
only one of my kind.
Circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a
partner. Its partner is man’s _temperament_—his natural disposition.
His temperament is not his invention, it is _born _in him, and he has
no authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts. He cannot
change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify it—except
temporarily. But it won’t stay modified. It is permanent, like the
color of the man’s eyes and the shape of his ears. Blue eyes are gray
in certain unusual lights; but they resume their natural color when
that stress is removed.
A Circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man
of a different temperament. If Circumstance had thrown the bank-note in
Caesar’s way, his temperament would not have made him start for the
Amazon. His temperament would have compelled him to do something with
the money, but not that. It might have made him advertise the note—and
WAIT. We can’t tell. Also, it might have made him go to New York and
buy into the Government, with results that would leave Tweed nothing to
learn when it came his turn.
Very well, Circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told
me what to do with it. Sometimes a temperament is an ass. When that is
the case the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one.
Training, experience, association, can temporarily so polish him,
improve him, exalt him that people will think he is a mule, but they
will be mistaken. Artificially he IS a mule, for the time being, but at
bottom he is an ass yet, and will remain one.
By temperament I was the kind of person that DOES things. Does them,
and reflects afterward. So I started for the Amazon without reflecting
and without asking any questions. That was more than fifty years ago.
In all that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade. I
have been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things
and reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to
me; I still do the thing commanded by Circumstance and Temperament, and
reflect afterward. Always violently. When I am reflecting, on those
occasions, even deaf persons can hear me think.
I went by the way of Cincinnati, and down the Ohio and Mississippi. My
idea was to take ship, at New Orleans, for Para. In New Orleans I
inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for Para. Also, that
there never had BEEN one leaving for Para. I reflected. A policeman
came and asked me what I was doing, and I told him. He made me move on,
and said if he caught me reflecting in the public street again he would
run me in.
After a few days I was out of money. Then Circumstance arrived, with
another turning-point of my life—a new link. On my way down, I had made
the acquaintance of a pilot. I begged him to teach me the river, and he
consented. I became a pilot.
By and by Circumstance came again—introducing the Civil War, this time,
in order to push me ahead another stage or two toward the literary
profession. The boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone.
Circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point and a fresh
link. My brother was appointed secretary to the new Territory of
Nevada, and he invited me to go with him and help him in his office. I
accepted.
In Nevada, Circumstance furnished me the silver fever and I went into
the mines to make a fortune, as I supposed; but that was not the idea.
The idea was to advance me another step toward literature. For
amusement I scribbled things for the Virginia City _Enterprise_. One
isn’t a printer ten years without setting up acres of good and bad
literature, and learning—unconsciously at first, consciously later—to
discriminate between the two, within his mental limitations; and
meantime he is unconsciously acquiring what is called a “style.” One of
my efforts attracted attention, and the _Enterprise _sent for me and
put me on its staff.
And so I became a journalist—another link. By and by Circumstance and
the Sacramento _union _sent me to the Sandwich Islands for five or six
months, to write up sugar. I did it; and threw in a good deal of
extraneous matter that hadn’t anything to do with sugar. But it was
this extraneous matter that helped me to another link.
It made me notorious, and San Francisco invited me to lecture. Which I
did. And profitably. I had long had a desire to travel and see the
world, and now Circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me
upon the platform and furnished me the means. So I joined the “Quaker
City Excursion.”
When I returned to America, Circumstance was waiting on the pier—with
the _last _link—the conspicuous, the consummating, the victorious link:
I was asked to _write a book_, and I did it, and called it _The
Innocents Abroad_. Thus I became at last a member of the literary
guild. That was forty-two years ago, and I have been a member ever
since. Leaving the Rubicon incident away back where it belongs, I can
say with truth that the reason I am in the literary profession is
because I had the measles when I was twelve years old.
III
Now what interests me, as regards these details, is not the details
themselves, but the fact that none of them was foreseen by me, none of
them was planned by me, I was the author of none of them. Circumstance,
working in harness with my temperament, created them all and compelled
them all. I often offered help, and with the best intentions, but it
was rejected—as a rule, uncourteously. I could never plan a thing and
get it to come out the way I planned it. It came out some other
way—some way I had not counted upon.
And so I do not admire the human being—as an intellectual marvel—as
much as I did when I was young, and got him out of books, and did not
know him personally. When I used to read that such and such a general
did a certain brilliant thing, I believed it. Whereas it was not so.
Circumstance did it by help of his temperament. The circumstance would
have failed of effect with a general of another temperament: he might
see the chance, but lose the advantage by being by nature too slow or
too quick or too doubtful. Once General Grant was asked a question
about a matter which had been much debated by the public and the
newspapers; he answered the question without any hesitancy. “General,
who planned the march through Georgia?” “The enemy!” He added that the
enemy usually makes your plans for you. He meant that the enemy by
neglect or through force of circumstances leaves an opening for you,
and you see your chance and take advantage of it.
Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our
temperaments. I see no great difference between a man and a watch,
except that the man is conscious and the watch isn’t, and the man TRIES
to plan things and the watch doesn’t. The watch doesn’t wind itself and
doesn’t regulate itself—these things are done exteriorly. Outside
influences, outside circumstances, wind the MAN and regulate him. Left
to himself, he wouldn’t get regulated at all, and the sort of time he
would keep would not be valuable. Some rare men are wonderful watches,
with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some
men are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys. I am a Waterbury.
A Waterbury of that kind, some say.
A nation is only an individual multiplied. It makes plans and
Circumstance comes and upsets them—or enlarges them. Some patriots
throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy a Bastille. The
PLANS stop there; then Circumstance comes in, quite unexpectedly, and
turns these modest riots into a revolution.
And there was poor Columbus. He elaborated a deep plan to find a new
route to an old country. Circumstance revised his plan for him, and he
found a new _world_. And _he _gets the credit of it to this day. He
hadn’t anything to do with it.
Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of
yours) was the Garden of Eden. It was there that the first link was
forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me
into the literary guild. Adam’s TEMPERAMENT was the first command the
Deity ever issued to a human being on this planet. And it was the only
command Adam would NEVER be able to disobey. It said, “Be weak, be
water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable.” The latter command,
to let the fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam
himself, but by his _temperament_—which he did not create and had no
authority over. For the _temperament _is the man; the thing tricked out
with clothes and named Man is merely its Shadow, nothing more. The law
of the tiger’s temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the law of the sheep’s
temperament is Thou shalt not kill. To issue later commands requiring
the tiger to let the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to
imbue its hands in the blood of the lion is not worth while, for those
commands _can’T_ be obeyed. They would invite to violations of the law
of _temperament_, which is supreme, and takes precedence of all other
authorities. I cannot help feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve. That
is, in their temperaments. Not in _them_, poor helpless young
creatures—afflicted with temperaments made out of butter; which butter
was commanded to get into contact with fire and _be melted_. What I
cannot help wishing is, that Adam and EVE had been postponed, and
Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place—that splendid pair
equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos. By
neither sugary persuasions nor by hell fire could Satan have beguiled
_them _to eat the apple. There would have been results! Indeed, yes.
The apple would be intact today; there would be no human race; there
would be no YOU; there would be no _me_. And the old, old creation-dawn
scheme of ultimately launching me into the literary guild would have
been defeated.
HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK
These chapters are for children, and I shall try to make the words
large enough to command respect. In the hope that you are listening,
and that you have confidence in me, I will proceed. Dates are difficult
things to acquire; and after they are acquired it is difficult to keep
them in the head. But they are very valuable. They are like the
cattle-pens of a ranch—they shut in the several brands of historical
cattle, each within its own fence, and keep them from getting mixed
together. Dates are hard to remember because they consist of figures;
figures are monotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don’t take
hold, they form no pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to
help. Pictures are the thing. Pictures can make dates stick. They can
make nearly anything stick—particularly _if you make the pictures
yourself_. Indeed, that is the great point—make the pictures
_yourself_. I know about this from experience. Thirty years ago I was
delivering a memorized lecture every night, and every night I had to
help myself with a page of notes to keep from getting myself mixed. The
notes consisted of beginnings of sentences, and were eleven in number,
and they ran something like this:
“_In that region the weather_—”
“_at that time it was a custom_—”
“_but in california one never heard_—”
Eleven of them. They initialed the brief divisions of the lecture and
protected me against skipping. But they all looked about alike on the
page; they formed no picture; I had them by heart, but I could never
with certainty remember the order of their succession; therefore I
always had to keep those notes by me and look at them every little
while. Once I mislaid them; you will not be able to imagine the terrors
of that evening. I now saw that I must invent some other protection. So
I got ten of the initial letters by heart in their proper order—I, A,
B, and so on—and I went on the platform the next night with these
marked in ink on my ten finger-nails. But it didn’t answer. I kept
track of the fingers for a while; then I lost it, and after that I was
never quite sure which finger I had used last. I couldn’t lick off a
letter after using it, for while they could have made success certain
it would also have provoked too much curiosity. There was curiosity
enough without that. To the audience I seemed more interested in my
fingernails than I was in my subject; one or two persons asked me
afterward what was the matter with my hands.
It was now that the idea of pictures occurred to me; then my troubles
passed away. In two minutes I made six pictures with a pen, and they
did the work of the eleven catch-sentences, and did it perfectly. I
threw the pictures away as soon as they were made, for I was sure I
could shut my eyes and see them any time. That was a quarter of a
century ago; the lecture vanished out of my head more than twenty years
ago, but I could rewrite it from the pictures—for they remain. Here are
three of them: (Fig. 1).
The first one is a haystack—below it a rattlesnake—and it told me where
to begin to talk ranch-life in Carson Valley. The second one told me
where to begin to talk about a strange and violent wind that used to
burst upon Carson City from the Sierra Nevadas every afternoon at two
o’clock and try to blow the town away. The third picture, as you easily
perceive, is lightning; its duty was to remind me when it was time to
begin to talk about San Francisco weather, where there IS no
lightning—nor thunder, either—and it never failed me.
I will give you a valuable hint. When a man is making a speech and you
are to follow him don’t jot down notes to speak from, jot down
PICTURES. It is awkward and embarrassing to have to keep referring to
notes; and besides it breaks up your speech and makes it ragged and
non-coherent; but you can tear up your pictures as soon as you have
made them—they will stay fresh and strong in your memory in the order
and sequence in which you scratched them down. And many will admire to
see what a good memory you are furnished with, when perhaps your memory
is not any better than mine.
Sixteen years ago when my children were little creatures the governess
was trying to hammer some primer histories into their heads. Part of
this fun--if you like to call it that--consisted in the memorizing of
the accession dates of the thirty-seven personages who had ruled over
England from the Conqueror down. These little people found it a bitter,
hard contract. It was all dates, they all looked alike, and they
wouldn’t stick. Day after day of the summer vacation dribbled by, and
still the kings held the fort; the children couldn’t conquer any six of
them.
With my lecture experience in mind I was aware that I could invent some
way out of the trouble with pictures, but I hoped a way could be found
which would let them romp in the open air while they learned the kings.
I found it, and then they mastered all the monarchs in a day or two.
The idea was to make them _see _the reigns with their eyes; that would
be a large help. We were at the farm then. From the house-porch the
grounds sloped gradually down to the lower fence and rose on the right
to the high ground where my small work-den stood. A carriage-road wound
through the grounds and up the hill. I staked it out with the English
monarchs, beginning with the Conqueror, and you could stand on the
porch and clearly see every reign and its length, from the Conquest
down to Victoria, then in the forty-sixth year of her reign—_eight
hundred and seventeen years of_ English history under your eye at once!
English history was an unusually live topic in America just then. The
world had suddenly realized that while it was not noticing the Queen
had passed Henry VIII., passed Henry VI. and Elizabeth, and gaining in
length every day. Her reign had entered the list of the long ones;
everybody was interested now—it was watching a race. Would she pass the
long Edward? There was a possibility of it. Would she pass the long
Henry? Doubtful, most people said. The long George? Impossible!
Everybody said it. But we have lived to see her leave him two years
behind.
I measured off 817 feet of the roadway, a foot representing a year, and
at the beginning and end of each reign I drove a three-foot white-pine
stake in the turf by the roadside and wrote the name and dates on it.
Abreast the middle of the porch-front stood a great granite flower-vase
overflowing with a cataract of bright-yellow flowers—I can’t think of
their name. The vase was William the Conqueror. We put his name on it
and his accession date, 1066. We started from that and measured off
twenty-one feet of the road, and drove William Rufus’s stake; then
thirteen feet and drove the first Henry’s stake; then thirty-five feet
and drove Stephen’s; then nineteen feet, which brought us just past the
summer-house on the left; then we staked out thirty-five, ten, and
seventeen for the second Henry and Richard and John; turned the curve
and entered upon just what was needed for Henry III.—a level, straight
stretch of fifty-six feet of road without a crinkle in it. And it lay
exactly in front of the house, in the middle of the grounds. There
couldn’t have been a better place for that long reign; you could stand
on the porch and see those two wide-apart stakes almost with your eyes
shut. (Fig. 2.)
That isn’t the shape of the road—I have bunched it up like that to save
room. The road had some great curves in it, but their gradual sweep was
such that they were no mar to history. No, in our road one could tell
at a glance who was who by the size of the vacancy between stakes—with
_locality _to help, of course.
Although I am away off here in a Swedish village[3] and those stakes
did not stand till the snow came, I can see them today as plainly as
ever; and whenever I think of an English monarch his stakes rise before
me of their own accord and I notice the large or small space which he
takes up on our road. Are your kings spaced off in your mind? When you
think of Richard III. and of James II. do the durations of their reigns
seem about alike to you? It isn’t so to me; I always notice that
there’s a foot’s difference. When you think of Henry III. do you see a
great long stretch of straight road? I do; and just at the end where it
joins on to Edward I. I always see a small pear-bush with its green
fruit hanging down. When I think of the Commonwealth I see a shady
little group of these small saplings which we called the oak parlor;
when I think of George III. I see him stretching up the hill, part of
him occupied by a flight of stone steps; and I can locate Stephen to an
inch when he comes into my mind, for he just fi
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