intellect, we hear, and hear again, a voice which says: "Arise and get
thee hence, for this is not thy rest." And the greater and nobler and
more sublime the spirit, the more constant is the discontent. Discontent
may come from various causes, so it will not do to assume that the
discontented ones are always the pure in heart, but it is a fact that
the wise and excellent have all known the meaning of world-weariness.
The more you study and appreciate this life, the more sure you are that
this is not all. You pillow your head upon Mother Earth, listen to her
heart-throb, and even as your spirit is filled with the love of her,
your gladness is half pain and there comes to you a joy that hurts. To
look upon the most exalted forms of beauty, such as sunset at sea, the
coming of a storm on the prairie, or the sublime majesty of the
mountains, begets a sense of sadness, an increasing loneliness. It is
not enough to say that man encroaches on man so that we are really
deprived of our freedom, that civilization is caused by a bacillus, and
that from a natural condition we have gotten into a hurly-burly where
rivalry is rife--all this may be true, but beyond and outside of all
this there is no physical environment in way of plenty which earth can
supply, that will give the tired soul peace. They are the happiest who
have the least; and the fable of the stricken king and the shirtless
beggar contains the germ of truth. The wise hold all earthly ties very
lightly--they are stripping for eternity.
World-weariness is only a desire for a better spiritual condition. There
is more to be written on this subject of world-pain--to exhaust the
theme would require a book. And certain it is that I have no wish to say
the final word on any topic. The gentle reader has certain rights, and
among these is the privilege of summing up the case.
But the fact holds that world-pain is a form of desire. All desires are
just, proper and right; and their gratification is the means by which
nature supplies us that which we need.
Desire not only causes us to seek that which we need, but is a form of
attraction by which the good is brought to us, just as the amoebae
create a swirl in the waters that brings their food within reach.
Every desire in nature has a fixed and definite purpose in the Divine
Economy, and every desire has its proper gratification. If we desire the
close friendship of a certain person, it is because that person has
certain soul-qualities that we do not possess, and which complement
our own.
Through desire do we come into possession of our own; by submitting to
its beckonings we add cubits to our stature; and we also give out to
others our own attributes, without becoming poorer, for soul is not
limited. All nature is a symbol of spirit, and so I am forced to believe
that somewhere there must be a proper gratification for this mysterious
nostalgia of the soul.
The Valhalla of the Norseman, the Nirvana of the Hindu, the Heaven of
the Christian are natural hopes of beings whose cares and
disappointments here are softened by belief that somewhere, Thor, Brahma
or God gives compensation.
The Eternal Unities require a condition where men and women shall be
permitted to love and not to sorrow; where the tyranny of things hated
shall not prevail, nor that for which the heart yearns turn to ashes at
our touch.
Art and Religion
While this seems true in the main, I am not sure it will hold in every
case. Please think it out for yourself, and if I happen to be wrong,
why, put me straight.
The proposition is this: the artist needs no religion beyond his work.
That is to say, art is religion to the man who thinks beautiful thoughts
and expresses them for others the best he can. Religion is an emotional
excitement whereby the devotee rises into a state of spiritual
sublimity, and for the moment is bathed in an atmosphere of rest, and
peace, and love. All normal men and women crave such periods; and
Bernard Shaw says that we reach them through strong tea, tobacco,
whiskey, opium, love, art or religion.
I think Bernard Shaw a cynic, but there is a glimmer of truth in his
idea that makes it worth repeating. But beyond the natural religion,
which is a passion for oneness with the Whole, all formalized religions
engraft the element of fear, and teach the necessity of placating a
Supreme Being. Our idea of a Supreme Being is suggested to us by the
political government under which we live. The situation was summed up by
Carlyle, when he said that Deity to the average British mind was simply
an infinite George IV. The thought of God as a terrible Supreme Tyrant
first found form in an unlimited monarchy; but as governments have
become more lenient so have the gods, until you get them down (or up) to
a republic, where God is only a president, and we all approach Him in
familiar prayer, on an absolute equality.
Then soon, for the first time, we find man saying, "I am God, and you
are God, and we are all simply particles of Him," and this is where the
president is done away with, and the referendum comes in. But the
absence of a supreme governing head implies simplicity, honesty,
justice, and sincerity. Wherever plottings, schemings and doubtful
methods of life are employed, a ruler is necessary; and there, too,
religion, with its idea of placating God has a firm hold. Men whose
lives are doubtful feel the need of a strong government and a hot
religion. Formal religion and sin go hand in hand. Formal religion and
slavery go hand in hand. Formal religion and tyranny go hand in hand.
Formal religion and ignorance go hand in hand.
And sin, slavery, tyranny and ignorance are one--they are never
separated.
Formal religion is a scheme whereby man hopes to make peace with his
Maker; and a formal religion also tends to satisfy the sense of
sublimity where the man has failed to find satisfaction in his work.
Voltaire says, "When woman no longer finds herself acceptable to man,
she turns to God," When man is no longer acceptable to himself he goes
to church. In order to keep this article from extending itself into a
tome, I purposely omitted saying a single thing about the Protestant
Church as a useful Social Club and have just assumed for argument's sake
that the church is really a religious institution.
A formal religion is only a cut 'cross lots--an attempt to bring about
the emotions and the sensations that come to a man by the practice of
love, virtue, excellence and truth. When you do a splendid piece of work
and express your best, there comes to you, as reward, an exaltation of
soul, a sublimity of feeling that puts you for the time being in touch
with the Infinite. A formal religion brings this feeling without your
doing anything useful, therefore it is unnatural.
Formalized religion is the strongest where sin, slavery, tyranny and
ignorance abound. Where men are free, enlightened and at work, they find
all the gratification in their work that their souls demand--they cease
to hunt outside themselves for something to give them rest. They are at
peace with themselves, at peace with man and with God.
But any man chained to a hopeless task, whose daily work does not
express himself, who is dogged by a boss, whenever he gets a moment of
respite turns to drink or religion.
Men with an eye on Saturday night, who plot to supplant some one else,
who can locate an employer any hour of the day, who use their wit to
evade labor, who think only of their summer vacation when they will no
longer be compelled to work, are apt to be sticklers for Sabbath-keeping
and church-going.
Gentlemen in business who give eleven for a dozen, and count thirty-four
inches a yard, who are quick to foreclose a mortgage, and who say
"business is business," generally are vestrymen, deacons and church
trustees. Look about you! Predaceous real estate dealers who set nets
for all the unwary, lawyers who lie in wait for their prey, merchant
princes who grind their clerks under the wheel, and oil magnates whose
history was never written, nor could be written, often make peace with
God, and find a gratification for their sense of sublimity by building
churches, founding colleges, giving libraries, and holding firmly to a
formalized religion. Look about you!
To recapitulate: if your life-work is doubtful, questionable or
distasteful, you will hold the balance true by going outside your
vocation for the gratification that is your due, but which your daily
work denies, and you find it in religion, I do not say this is always
so, but it is very often. Great sinners are apt to be very religious;
and conversely, the best men who have ever lived have been at war with
established religions. And further, the best men are never found
in churches.
Men deeply immersed in their work, whose lives are consecrated to doing
things, who are simple, honest and sincere, desire no formal religion,
need no priest nor pastor, and seek no gratification outside their daily
lives. All they ask is to be let alone--they wish only the privilege
to work.
When Samuel Johnson, on his death bed, made Joshua Reynolds promise he
would do no more work on Sunday, he of course had no conception of the
truth that Reynolds reached through work the same condition of mind that
he, Johnson, had reached by going to church. Johnson despised work and
Reynolds loved it; Johnson considered one day in the week holy; to
Reynolds all days were sacred--sacred to work; that is, to the
expression of his best. Why should you cease to express your holiest and
highest on Sunday? Ah, I know why you don't work on Sunday! It is
because you think that work is degrading, and because your sale and
barter is founded on fraud, and your goods are shoddy. Your week-day
dealings lie like a pall upon your conscience, and you need a day in
which to throw off the weariness of that slavery under which you live.
You are not free yourself, and you insist that others shall not be free.
You have ceased to make work gladsome, and you toil and make others
toil with you, and you all well nigh faint from weariness and disgust.
You are slave and slave-owner, for to own slaves is to be one.
But the artist is free and he works in joy, and to him all things are
good and all days are holy. The great inventors, thinkers, poets,
musicians and artists have all been men of deep religious natures; but
their religion has never been a formalized, restricted, ossified
religion. They did not worship at set times and places. Their religion
has been a natural and spontaneous blossoming of the intellect and
emotions--they have worked in love, not only one day in the week, but
all days, and to them the groves have always and ever been God's
first temples.
Let us work to make men free! Am I bad because I want to give you
freedom, and have you work in gladness instead of fear?
Do not hesitate to work on Sunday, just as you would think good thoughts
if the spirit prompts you. For work is, at the last, only the expression
of your thought, and there can be no better religion than good work.
Initiative
The world bestows its big prizes, both in money and honors, for but one
thing. And that is Initiative. What is Initiative? I'll tell you: It is
doing the right thing without being told. But next to doing the right
thing without being told is to do it when you are told once. That is to
say, carry the Message to Garcia! There are those who never do a thing
until they are told twice: such get no honors and small pay. Next, there
are those who do the right thing only when necessity kicks them from
behind, and these get indifference instead of honors, and a pittance for
pay. This kind spends most of its time polishing a bench with a
hard-luck story. Then, still lower down in the scale than this, we find
the fellow who will not do the right thing even when some one goes along
to show him how, and stays to see that he does it; he is always out of a
job, and receives the contempt he deserves, unless he has a rich Pa, in
which case Destiny awaits near by with a stuffed club. To which class do
you belong?
The Disagreeable Girl
England's most famous dramatist, George Bernard Shaw, has placed in the
pillory of letters what he is pleased to call "The Disagreeable Girl."
And he has done it by a dry-plate, quick-shutter process in a manner
that surely lays him liable for criminal libel in the assize of
high society.
I say society's assize advisedly, because it is only in society that the
Disagreeable Girl can play a prominent part, assuming the center of the
stage. Society, in the society sense, is built upon vacuity; its favors
being for those who reveal a fine capacity to waste and consume. Those
who would write their names high on society's honor roll, need not be
either useful or intelligent--they need only seem.
And this gives to the Disagreeable Girl her opportunity. In the paper
box factory she would have to make good; Cluett, Coon & Co. ask for
results; the stage demands at least a modicum of intellect, in addition
to shape, but society asks for nothing but pretense, and the palm is
awarded to palaver. But do not, if you please, imagine that the
Disagreeable Girl does not wield an influence. That is the very
point--her influence is so far-reaching in its effect that George
Bernard Shaw, giving cross-sections of life in the form of dramas,
cannot write a play and leave her out.
She is always with us, ubiquitous, omniscient and omnipresent--is the
Disagreeable Girl. She is a disappointment to her father, a source of
humiliation to her mother, a pest to her brothers and sisters, and when
she finally marries, she slowly saps the inspiration of her husband and
very often converts a proud and ambitious man into a weak and
cowardly cur.
Only in society does the Disagreeable Girl shine--everywhere else she is
an abject failure. The much-vaunted Gibson Girl is a kind of de luxe
edition of Shaw's Disagreeable Girl. The Gibson Girl lolls, loafs,
pouts, weeps, talks back, lies in wait, dreams, eats, drinks, sleeps and
yawns. She rides in a coach in a red jacket, plays golf in a secondary
sexual sweater, dawdles on a hotel veranda, and can tum-tum on a piano,
but you never hear of her doing a useful thing or saying a wise one.
She plays bridge whist, for "keeps" when she wins, and "owes" when she
loses, and her picture in flattering half-tone often adorns a page of
the Sunday Yellow.
She reveals a beautiful capacity for avoiding all useful effort.
Gibson gilds the Disagreeable Girl.
Shaw paints her as she is.
In the _Doll's House_ Henrik Ibsen has given us _Nora Hebler_, a
Disagreeable Girl of mature age, who, beyond a doubt, first set George
Bernard Shaw a-thinking. Then looking about, Shaw saw her at every turn
in every stage of her moth-and-butterfly existence.
And the Disagreeable Girl being everywhere, Shaw, dealer in human
character, cannot write a play and leave her out, any more than the
artist Turner could paint a picture and leave man out, or Paul Veronese
produce a canvas and omit the dog.
The Disagreeable Girl is a female of the genus homo persuasion, built
around a digestive apparatus that possesses marked marshmallow
proclivities. She is pretty, pug-nosed, pink, pert and poetical; and at
first glance, to the unwary, she shows signs of gentleness and
intelligence. Her age is anywhere from eighteen to twenty-eight. At
twenty-eight she begins to evolve into something else, and her capacity
for harm is largely curtailed, because by this time spirit has written
itself in her form and features, and the grossness and animality which
before were veiled are becoming apparent.
Habit writes itself on the face, and body is an automatic recording
machine.
To have a beautiful old age, you must live a beautiful youth, for we
ourselves are posterity, and every man is his own ancestor. I am to-day
what I am because I was yesterday what I was. The Disagreeable Girl is
always pretty, at least we have been told she is pretty, and she fully
accepts the dictum.
She has also been told she is clever, and she thinks she is.
The actual fact is she is only "sassy."
The fine flaring up of youth has tended to set sex rampant, but she is
not "immoral" save in her mind.
She has caution to the verge of cowardice, and so she is sans reproche.
In public she pretends to be dainty; but alone, or with those for whose
good opinion she does not care, she is gross, coarse and sensual in
every feature of her life. She eats too much, does not exercise enough
and considers it amusing to let other people wait on her and do for her
the things she should do for herself. Her room is a jumble of disorder.
The one gleam of hope for her lies in the fact that out of shame, she
allows no visitor to enter her apartments if she can help it. Concrete
selfishness is her chief mark. She will avoid responsibility, side-step
every duty that calls for honest effort; is untruthful, secretive,
indolent and dishonest.
"What are you eating?" asks Nora Hebler's husband as she enters the
room, not expecting to see him.
"Nothing," is the answer, and she hides the box of bonbons behind her,
and soon backs out of the room.
I think Mr. Hebler had no business to ask her what she was eating--no
man should ask any woman such a question, and really it was no
difference anyway. But Nora is always on the defensive and fabricates
when it is necessary, and when it isn't, just through habit. She will
hide a letter written by her grandmother as quickly and deftly as if it
were a missive from a guilty lover. The habit of her life is one of
suspicion, for being inwardly guilty herself, she suspects everybody
although it is quite likely that crime with her has never broken through
thought into deed. Nora will rifle her husband's pockets, read his
note-book, examine his letters, and when he goes on a trip she spends
the day checking up his desk, for her soul delights in duplicate keys.
At times she lets drop hints of knowledge concerning little nothings
that are none of hers, just to mystify folks.
She does strange, annoying things simply to see what others will do.
In degree, Nora's husband fixed the vice of finesse in her nature, for
when even a "good" woman is accused she parries by the use of trickery
and wins her point by the artistry of the bagnio. Women and men are
never really far apart anyway, and women are largely what men have
made them.
We are all just getting rid of our shackles; listen closely, anywhere,
even among honest and intellectual people, if such there be, and you can
detect the rattle of chains.
The Disagreeable Girl's mind and soul have not kept pace with her body.
Yesterday she was a slave, sold in a Circassian mart, and freedom to her
is so new and strange that she is unfamiliar with her environment, and
she does not know what to do with it.
The tragedy she works, according to George Bernard Shaw, is through the
fact that very often good men, blinded by the glamour of sex, imagine
they love the Disagreeable Girl, when what they love is their own
ideal--an image born in their own minds.
Nature is both a trickster and a humorist, and ever sets the will of the
species beyond the discernment of the individual. The picador has to
blindfold his horse in order to get him into the bull-ring, and
likewise, Dan Cupid does the myopic to a purpose.
For aught we know, the lovely Beatrice of Dante was only a Disagreeable
Girl, clothed in a poet's fancy, and idealized by a dreamer. Fortunate
was Dante that he worshipped her afar, that he never knew her well
enough to be undeceived, and so walked through life in love with love,
sensitive, saintly, sweetly sad and most divinely happy in his
melancholy.
The Neutral
There is known to me a prominent business house that by the very force
of its directness and worth has incurred the enmity of many rivals. In
fact, there is a very general conspiracy on hand to put the institution
down and out. In talking with a young man employed by this house, he
yawned and said, "Oh, in this quarrel I am neutral."
"But you get your bread and butter from this firm, and in a matter where
the very life of the institution is concerned, I do not see how you can
be a neutral."
And he changed the subject.
I think that if I enlisted in the Japanese army I would not be a
neutral.
Business is a fight--a continual struggle--just as life is. Man has
reached his present degree of development through struggle. Struggle
there must be and always will be. The struggle began as purely physical;
as man evolved it shifted ground to the mental, psychic, and the
spiritual, with a few dashes of cave-man proclivities still left. But
depend upon it, the struggle will always be--life is activity. And when
it gets to be a struggle in well-doing, it will still be a struggle.
When inertia gets the better of you it is time to telephone to the
undertaker.
The only real neutral in this game of life is a dead one.
Eternal vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of every other
good thing.
A business that is not safeguarded on every side by active, alert,
attentive, vigilant men is gone. As oxygen is the disintegrating
principle of life, working night and day to dissolve, separate, pull
apart and dissipate, so there is something in business that continually
tends to scatter, destroy and shift possession from this man to that. A
million mice nibble eternally at every business venture.
The mice are not neutrals, and if enough employes in a business house
are neutrals, the whole concern will eventually come tumbling about
their ears.
I like that order of Field-Marshal Oyama: "Give every honorable neutral
that you find in our lines the honorable jiu-jitsu hikerino."
Reflections on Progress
Renan has said that truth is always rejected when it comes to a man for
the first time, its evolution being as follows:
First, we say the thing is rank heresy, and contrary to the Bible.
Second, we say the matter really amounts to nothing, anyway.
Third, we declare that we always believed it.
Two hundred years ago partnerships in business were very rare. A man in
business simply made things and sold them--and all the manufacturing was
done by himself and his immediate family. Soon we find instances of
brothers continuing the work the father had begun, as in the case of the
Elzevirs and the Plantins, the great bookmakers of Holland. To meet this
competition, four printers, in 1640, formed a partnership and pooled
their efforts. A local writer by the name of Van Krugen denounced these
four men, and made savage attacks on partnerships in general as wicked
and illegal, and opposed to the best interests of the people. This view
seems to have been quite general, for there was a law in Amsterdam
forbidding all partnerships in business that were not licensed by the
state. The legislature of the State of Missouri has recently made war on
the department store in the same way, using the ancient Van Krugen
argument as a reason, for there is no copyright on stupidity.
In London in the seventeenth century men who were found guilty of
pooling their efforts and dividing profits, were convicted by law and
punished for "contumacy, contravention and connivance," and were given a
taste of the stocks in the public square.
When corporations were formed for the first time, only a few years ago,
there was a fine burst of disapproval. The corporation was declared a
scheme of oppression, a hungry octopus, a grinder of the individual. And
to prove the case various instances of hardship were cited; and no doubt
there was much suffering, for many people are never able to adjust
themselves to new conditions without experiencing pain and regret.
But we now believe that corporations came because they were required.
Certain things the times demanded, and no one man, or two or three men
could perform these tasks alone--hence the corporation. The rise of
England as a manufacturing nation began with the plan of the
stock company.
The aggregation known as the joint-stock company, everybody is willing
now to admit, was absolutely necessary in order to secure the machinery,
that is to say, the tools, the raw stock, the buildings, and to provide
for the permanence of the venture.
The railroad system of America has built up this country--on this thing
of joint-stock companies and transportation, our prosperity has hinged.
"Commerce, consists in carrying things from where they are plentiful to
where they are needed," says Emerson.