... I should like to relate one incident in the history of my father's
relations with myself--an incident which was eminently characteristic
of certain aspects of his nature.
From my earliest years it was his endeavor to teach me to understand
and believe in the religion of Auguste Comte. One of my first
recollections is that of an excursion to Central Park on one bright
Sunday afternoon in the spring; there, sitting under the trees, he
talked to me on the theme which lay always nearest his heart--that of
the solidarity of mankind. There never, indeed, was a time throughout
my whole youth, when we were alone together, that he did not return to
the same text and impress upon me that a selfish life was no life at
all, that "no man liveth for himself, that no man dieth for himself."
His teachings were as largely negative as positive. While never,
perhaps, understanding the Christian religion as a man with a weaker
faith in the truth of his own convictions might have understood it,
his attitude was one, I judge, of sympathetic scepticism. He was
always endeavoring to impress upon me that, while there must
necessarily have been something great and good in a faith that had
been the inspiration of so many souls, and comfort of mankind through
so many centuries, yet at the same time it was incomplete; that very
often the followers of Christ gave more to the doctrine than they
received from it; and that the teaching of Auguste Comte supplied what
was lacking in the teaching of Jesus Christ. His desire to impress
upon me a belief which he held himself with all the force of religious
conviction led him to attempt explanations which the mind of a child
could neither grasp nor retain. He even discussed, for my benefit,
theoretical questions as to the existence and nature of the Supreme
Being; discussions, of course, that I could so little understand that
it was like pouring water on a flat board. It was simply the fulness
of his belief that led him to do this. His desire was that, surrounded
as I was by people who burnt their candles at the altars of the
Christian faith, I should have full opportunity to compare the
Positivist _Grand Être_ with the Christian Cross. Under such
instruction it was not strange that in time I dropped insensibly into
his mode of thinking, or, more correctly, into his mode of believing.
While I was at college I was surrounded by other influences, and while
retaining everything that was positive and constructive in his
teaching, I dropped the negative cloth in which it was shrouded. My
change in opinion was a bitter disappointment to him, as several
letters which he wrote at the time testify. But intense as was his
disappointment, it never took the form of a reproach. This is very
remarkable when we consider what an essential part of his character
his beliefs constituted. Here was an end, for which he had striven
through many years, failing at the very time when it should have
become most fruitful. And his disappointment must have been all the
more severe because he exaggerated the differences that existed
between us. It was his opinion that his negative opinions were
necessarily connected with those which were positive; and that it was
impossible truly to hold the one without the other. Yet, as I said,
his disappointment never took the form of a reproach. "It is your
right; nay, it is even your duty," he used continually to say, "to
work your own salvation. It has turned out to be different from mine.
Well, then, mine is the loss."
From an abstract point of view it may not seem to be so much of a
virtue that a father should consider his son's intellectual honesty to
be of more importance than his own opinions. But I am not writing from
an abstract point of view. We are all but children of the earth; not
good, but simply better than the bad. So it was with David G. Croly.
His opinions, crystallized by the opposition which they met on every
side, were so very much the truth to him that he wished his son to
perceive them clearly and cherish them as devoutly as he did. That
wish became impossible of fulfilment. Part of his life-work had
failed. "Mine is the loss."