By Samuel M. Crothers
THE PARDONER’S WALLET. 12mo, $1.25, _net_. Postage extra.
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THE PARDONER’S WALLET
The Pardoner’s
Wallet
BY SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1905
COPYRIGHT 1905 BY SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published November 1905_
TO KATHARINE
WITH WHOM THESE THINGS HAVE
BEEN TALKED OVER
PREFACE
[Illustration]
There is a well-grounded prejudice against a volume which exhibits no
marks of design and which turns out to be only a fortuitous collection
of essays. It is felt that the chapters brought together under the
cover of a single book should have something in common. When one sees
a number of subjects, each standing aloof from the others, he predicts
infelicity. It suggests incompatibility of temper.
The essays brought together in “the Pardoner’s Wallet” have at least a
certain community of interest. They treat of aspects of human nature
which, while open to friendly criticism, are excusable. If the author
sometimes touches upon the foibles of his betters, he at least has the
grace to know that they are his betters.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE PARDONER 1
UNSEASONABLE VIRTUES 23
AN HOUR WITH OUR PREJUDICES 46
HOW TO KNOW THE FALLACIES 82
THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE PEACEMAKERS 119
THE LAND OF THE LARGE AND CHARITABLE
AIR 140
A COMMUNITY OF HUMORISTS 176
A SAINT RECANONIZED 199
AS HE SEES HIMSELF 221
A MAN UNDER ENCHANTMENT 249
THE CRUELTY OF GOOD PEOPLE 267
THE PARDONER
[Illustration]
With him ther rood a gentil Pardoner
Of Rouncival, his freend and his compeer,
That streight was comen fro the Court of Rome.
* * * * *
A vernicle hadde he sowed on his cappe
His walet lay biforn him in his lappe
Bretful of pardoun.
I have no plea to make for this fourteenth-century pardoner. He was an
impudent vagabond, trafficking in damaged goods. One did not need to
be a Lollard in order to see that he was a reprehensible character.
Discerning persons in need of relics would go to responsible dealers
where they could be assured of getting their money’s worth. This
glib-tongued fellow peddling religious articles from door to door lived
on the credulity of untraveled country people. He took advantage of
their weaknesses. Many a good wife would purchase a pardon she had
no need of, simply because he offered it as a bargain. This was all
wrong. We all know how the business of indulgence-selling was overdone.
There was a general loss of confidence on the part of the purchasing
public; and at last in the days of the too enterprising Tetzel there
came a disastrous slump. There was no market for pardons, even of the
gilt-edged varieties. Since then very little has been doing in this
line, at least among the northern nations.
The pardoner richly deserved his fate. And yet there are times when one
would give something to see the merry knave coming down the road.
I suppose that the nature of each individual has its point of moral
saturation. When this point is reached, it is of no use to continue
exhortation or rebuke or any kind of didactic effort. Even the finest
quality of righteous indignation will no longer soak in. With me
the point of moral saturation comes when I attend successively more
meetings of a reformatory and denunciatory character than nature
intended me to profit by. If they are well distributed in point of
time, I can take in a considerable number of good causes and earnestly
reprobate an equal number of crying evils. But there is a certain
monotony of rebuke which I am sure is not beneficial to persons of
my disposition. That some things are wrong I admit, but when I am
peremptorily ordered to believe that everything is wrong, it arouses
in me a certain obstinacy of contradiction. I might be led to such a
belief, but I will not be driven to it. I rebel against those censors
of manners and morals who treat all human imperfectnesses with equal
rigor. To relax even for an instant the righteous frown over the things
that are going wrong, into an indulgent smile at the things that are
not nearly so bad as they seem, is in their eyes nothing less than
compounding a felony. If they would allow proper intervals between
protests, so that the conscience could cool down, all would be well.
But this is just what they will not allow. The wheels must go round
without intermission until progress is stopped by the disagreeable
accident of “a hot box.”
You remember after Mrs. Proudie had given her guests a severe lesson in
social ethics, the Signora asked in her hearing,--
“‘Is she always like this?’
“‘Yes--always--madam,’ said Mrs. Proudie, returning; ‘always the
same--always equally adverse to impropriety of conduct of every
description.’”
Mrs. Proudie was an excellent woman according to her light, yet
Barchester would have been a happier place to live in had her light
been less constant. A little flicker now and then, a momentary relief
from the glare, would have been appreciated.
It is when the note of personal responsibility has been forced beyond
my ability that I feel beneath my inherited Puritanism the stirring
of a vague Papistry. Instead of joining another protesting society
beginning with that feverish particle “anti,” how delightful it would
be to go out and dicker with a well-conditioned pardoner
Streight comen fro the Court of Rome!
Wearied with diatribes and resolutions, one falls back upon the
guileless bargainings of Simple Simon.
“Let me taste your ware,” say I.
“Show me first your penny,” says the pardoner.
There is a renewal of one’s youth in this immortal repartee.
There is no greater relief than to go out and buy something,
especially if one can buy it cheap. A great part of the attractiveness
of the mediæval indulgences lay in the fact that you could buy them.
They would not have seemed the same if they had been given away, or if
you had to work them out like a road tax. To go out and buy a little
heart’s ease was an enticement.
Then again, the natural man, when he has to do with an institution, is
in a passive rather than in an active mood. If it is instituted for his
betterment, he says, “Let it better me.” It seems too bad that in the
end it should throw all the responsibility back upon himself.
A delightful old English traveler criticises the methods of
transportation he found in vogue in parts of Germany. He says that on
the Rhine it was customary to make the passengers do the rowing. “Their
custome is that the passengers must exercise themselves with oares
and rowing, _alternis vicibus_, a couple together. So that the master
of the boate (who methinks in honestie ought either to do it himself
or to procure some others to do it for him) never roweth but when his
turne commeth. This exercise both for recreation and health sake is I
confesse very convenient for man. But to be tied unto it by way of
strict necessitie when one payeth well for his passage was a thing that
did not a little distaste my humour.”
This is the trouble which many of us find in the modern methods of
doing good. There are all sorts of organizations which promise well.
But no sooner have we embarked on a worthy undertaking than we find
that we are expected to work our passage. The officers of the boat
disclaim all further responsibility, leaving that to private judgment.
It is the true Protestant way and it works excellently well, when it
works at all. It offers a fine challenge to disinterested virtue. But
there are occasions when the natural man rebels. To have so much put
upon him doth “not a little distaste his humour.” He longs for the good
old times when there were thinkers who were not above their business,
and who when he was at his wit’s end would do his thinking for him.
It’s the same way with being excused for his shortcomings. Of course
on a pinch he can excuse himself, but he generally makes a pretty
poor job of it. It would be much more satisfactory to have a duly
authorized person who, for a consideration, would assume the whole
responsibility. Of course if he had done something that was really
unpardonable, that would be another matter. The law would have to take
its course. But there are a great many venial transgressions. What he
wants is some one who can assure him that they are venial.
Let no good Protestant take offense at the finding of a Pardoner’s
Wallet in this twentieth century. It is only a wallet containing
tentative suggestions concerning things pardonable. Nothing is
authoritatively signed and sealed.
Of one thing let the good Protestant take notice. I would have my
pardoner know his place. He must not meddle with things too high for
him. He has no right to deal with the graver sins or to speak for a
higher power. He must not speak even in the name of the Church, which
has worthier spokesmen than he. In a book on indulgences the author
says, “On the subject of elongated, centenary, and millenary pardons,
it would take too much space to enlarge.” I should rule out all such
ambitious plans, not only from lack of space but on conscientious
grounds.
My pardoner should confine himself to a more modest task. He should
be the spokesman not of any ecclesiastical power, but only of ordinary
and errant human nature. There are sins against eternal law that must
at all times be taken seriously. The trouble with us poor mortals is
that, even in our remorse, we do not take very long views. The judgment
that seems most terrible to us is that of the people who live next
door. The transgressions which loom largest are offenses against social
conventions and against our own sensitive vanity. The pangs of remorse
for an act of remembered awkwardness are likely to be more poignant
than those which come as retribution for an acknowledged crime.
Here is ample room for a present-day pardoner. I should like to hear
him make the cheery proclamation of his trade.
“Good friends: You are not what you would like to be. You are not what
you think you are. You are not what your neighbors think you are,--or
rather, you are not what you think your neighbors think you are. Your
foibles, your peccadillos, your fallacies, and your prejudices are
more numerous than you imagine. But take heart of grace, good people.
These things are not unpardonable. We indulgencers have learned to
make allowances for human nature. Let’s see what’s in my wallet! No
crowding! Each will be served in his turn.”
* * * * *
If I were a duly licensed pardoner, I should have a number of nicely
engraved indulgences for what are called sins of omission. Not that
I should attempt to extenuate the graver sort. I should not hold out
false hopes to thankless sons or indifferent husbands. To be followed
by such riff-raff would spoil my trade with the better classes. I
should not have anything in my wallet for the acrimonious critic, who
brings a railing accusation against his neighbor, and omits to sign his
name. Some omissions are unpardonable.
I should, at the beginning, confine my traffic to those sins which
easily beset conscientious persons about half past two in the morning.
We have warrant for thinking that the sleep of the just is refreshing.
This is doubtless true of the completely just; but with the just man
in the making it is frequently otherwise. There is a stage in his
strenuous moral career which is conducive to insomnia.
Having gone to sleep because he was tired, he presently awakes for the
same reason. He is, however, only half awake. Those kindly comforters,
Common-sense, Humor, and Self-esteem, whose function it is to keep him
on reasonably good terms with himself while he is doing his necessary
work, are still dozing.
Then Conscience appears,--a terrible apparition. There is a vague
menace in her glance. The poor wretch cowers beneath it. Then is
unrolled the lengthening list of the things left undone which ought to
have been done. Every unwritten letter and uncalled call and unattended
committee meeting and unread report emerges from the vasty deep and
adds its burden of unutterable guilt. The Thing That Was Not Worth
Doing arises and demands with insatiate energy that it be done at once.
The Thing Half-done, because there was no time to finish it, appears
with wan face accusing him of its untimely taking off. The Stitch not
Taken in Time appears with its pitiful ninefold progeny all doomed
because of a moment’s inattention. It seems that his moral raiment,
instead of being put together with an eye to permanency, has been
stitched on a single-thread machine and the end of the seam never
properly fastened. Now he is pulling at the thread, and he sees the
whole fabric unraveling before his eyes.
His past existence looms before him as a battlefield with a perpetual
conflict of duties,--each duty cruelly slain by its brother duty.
While the wailing of these poor ghosts is in his ears he cannot rest.
And yet he knows full well that at half past two in the morning the
one inexorable duty is that he should go to sleep. Conscience points
to this as another duty left undone. Then begins a new cycle of
self-reproach.
At such times the sight of an indulgence neatly framed hanging upon
the bedroom wall would be worth more than it would cost. It would save
doctor’s bills.
Even in our waking hours there is a tendency for the sins of omission
and the sorrows of omission to pile up in monstrous fashion. There
is a curious ingenuity which some persons have in loading themselves
with burdens which do not belong to them, and in extracting melancholy
reflections out of their good fortune. They will not frankly accept a
blessing in its own proper form,--it must come to them in a mournful
disguise. Poets seem particularly subject to these inversions of
feeling. Here are some lines entitled “Two Sorrows:”--
Before Love came my eyes were dim with tears
Because I had not known her gentle face.
Softly I said, “But when across the years
Her smile illumes the darkness of my place,
All grief from my poor heart she will efface.”
Now Love is mine--she walks with me for aye
Down paths of primrose and blue violet,
But on my heart at every close of day
A grief more keen than my old grief is set.
I weep for those who have not found Love yet.
There is a fine altruism about this sentiment that one cannot but
respect; yet I should hate to live with a person who felt that way.
One would not venture on any little kindness for fear of opening a new
floodgate of tears.
I should feel like urging another point of view. It is true that you
are happy, happier than you deserve. But don’t get morbid about it;
take it cheerfully. It’s not your fault. It seems selfish, you say, to
enjoy your blessings when there aren’t enough to go round among all
your fellow beings. Why, my dear fellow, that’s the only way to make
them go around. What if, theoretically, it is a little selfish? We will
readily pardon that for the sake of the satisfaction we get out of
seeing you have a good time. We much prefer that you should allow us
to sympathize with you in your happiness, rather than that you should
inflict upon us too much sympathy for our deprivations.
* * * * *
There is opportunity for a thriving trade in indulgences for
necessarily slighted work. I emphasize the idea of necessity, for I am
aware of the danger of gross abuse if poets and painters should get
the notion that they may find easy absolution for the sin of offering
to the public something less than their best. Their best is none too
good. We must not, through misdirected charity, lower the standards of
self-respecting artists.
But some of us are not artists. The ordinary man is compelled to spend
most of his time on pot-boilers of one kind or another. When the pot
is merrily boiling, and all the odds and ends are being mingled in a
savory stew, I would allow the ordinary man some satisfaction. As
fingers were made before forks, so mediocrity was made before genius.
Has mediocrity no right to enjoy its own work, just because it is not
the very best?
We of the commonalty who are fitted to live happily in the comparative
degree, allow ourselves to be bullied by the superlative. There are
uneasy spirits who trouble Israel. They continually quote the maxim
that whatever is worth doing is worth doing well. It is a good maxim in
its way, and causes no particular hardship until our eyes are opened
and we see what it means to do anything superlatively well. When we
are shown by example the technical excellence which is possible in the
simplest forms of activity, and the extent to which we fall short, we
are appalled. It is a wonder that we keep going at all when we consider
the slovenly way we breathe. And yet breathing, though it well might
engage all our attention, is only one of the things we have to do.
I attribute a good deal of the sense of stress in modern life to the
new standards of excellence that are set in regard to the multifarious
activities which make up our daily lives. We have to do a hundred
different things. This is not particularly trying so long as it is
merely touch and go. In our amateurish way we rather enjoy the variety.
But when a hundred experts beset us, each one of whom has made a life
study of a particular act, we are bowed in contrition. There is no good
in us but good intentions, and they cannot save us. Our life story is
summed up like that of the unfortunate sparrow in the tragical history
of Cock Robin:
His aim then he took
But he took it not right.
Our capacity for imperfectness seems absolutely unlimited. The effort
taken to achieve success in one direction is from another point of
view a dissipation of energy. It is so much power withdrawn from
another possible achievement. The most versatile men do not do all
things equally well, and while the world calls them successful they are
inwardly conscious of their manifold failures. Mr. Balfour as Prime
Minister of the British Empire has had much to gratify his ambition,
but he takes the public into his confidence and confesses that he is a
bitterly disappointed man. For, in addition to other accomplishments,
he plays golf, a game that develops a conscience of its own. He plays
well, but his conscience tells him that he does not play as well as he
might. “I belong,” he says, “to that unhappy class of beings forever
pursued by remorse, who are conscious that they threw away in youth
opportunities that were open to them of beginning golf at a time of
life when alone the muscles can be attuned to the full perfection
required by the most difficult game that perhaps exists.”
Surely there must be a way by which such vain regrets may be stilled.
Life has its inevitable compromises. We cannot always be at our best.
Take such a simple matter as that of masticating our food. Before I
had given much thought to it, I should have said that it was something
worth doing and worth doing well. When I learned that Mr. Gladstone was
accustomed to chew each morsel of food thirty-two times, I thought it
greatly to his credit. For a man who had so many other things to do,
that seemed enough.
But when I read a book of some three hundred pages containing the whole
duty of man in regard to chewing, I was disheartened. Mr. Gladstone
appeared to be a mere tyro guilty of bolting his food. “The author has
found that one fifth of the midway section of the garden young onion,
sometimes called shallot, has required seven hundred and twenty-two
mastications before disappearing through involuntary swallowing.”
The author evidently did his whole duty by that young onion, and yet I
should have pardoned him if he had done something less. That doctrine
of his about involuntary swallowing being the only kind that is morally
justifiable, seems to me to be too austere. If we have to swallow in
the end, why not show a cheerful willingness?
* * * * *
Not only do those need comfort who do less than is expected of
them, those who do more are often in an equally sorry plight. Their
excellences make them obnoxious to their neighbors, and are treated
as unpardonable offenses. I would have a special line of indulgences
for that class of people known as the “unco guid.” I know no persons
more in need of charity, and who get so little of it. Every man’s hand
is against them, especially every hand that wields the pen of a ready
writer. They seem predestinated to literary reprobation, and that
without regard to their genuinely good works or to their continuance
in the same. And yet the whole extent of their crime is that, being in
some respects better than their neighbors, they are painfully aware of
the fact. It is because they have tasted of the forbidden knowledge of
their own moral superiority that their fall is deemed irremediable.
I confess that, in spite of all that has been said against them, I have
a tender feeling for them. They are persecuted for self-righteousness
without the benefit of any beatitude. Why should we consider it
unpardonable to be fully cognizant of one’s undoubted virtues? Of
course unconscious virtue is the more paradisiacal, while conscious
virtue often rubs one the wrong way. But while there are so many worse
things in the world, why should we mind a little thing like that?
We listen to Dumas’ swashbuckling heroes recounting their
transgressions. We know that they are not so bad as they would have us
believe, but we think no worse of them for that. But let a thoroughly
respectable man draw attention to his own fine qualities, and we treat
every deviation from exact fact as a crime. When he indulges in some
exaggeration and pictures himself as rather better than he is, we cry,
“Hypocrite!” If he claims possession of some single virtue which does
not, in our judgment, harmonize with some of his other characteristics,
we treat him as if he had stolen it. And yet, poor fellow! he may have
come honestly by this bit of finery, though he has not been able to get
other things to match it. All this is unkind.
Whatever one may think of the “unco guid,” every right-minded person
must agree with me that something ought to be done for the peace of
mind of the quiet, respectable, good people who bear the heat and
burden of the day. I have in mind the people who pay taxes, and build
homes, and support churches and schools and hospitals, and now and then
go to the theatre. They are as likely as not to be moderately well to
do, and if they are not, nobody knows it. When times are hard with
them, they keep their own counsels and go about with head erect and the
best foot forward. You may see multitudes of these people every day.
As a class, these people are sadly put upon. They are criticised
not only for their own shortcomings, but for those of all their
irresponsible fellow citizens. If anything goes wrong they are sure to
hear about it, for they listen to sermons, and read the newspapers,
and attend meetings. No reformer can be truly eloquent who does not
point his finger at his hearer, and say, “Thou art the man!” Now,
unfortunately, the real delinquents are usually absent, and the
right-minded, conscientious hearer of the word, who is doing all he
can for social regeneration, even to the verge of nervous prostration,
has to act as substitute. He has been so often assured that he is the
guilty man that, by and by, he comes to believe it.
He walks to church with his family only to be told that it is his
fault, and the fault of those like him, that other people have gone
off in their automobiles. Perhaps, if he had walked differently, he
might have made church-going more attractive to them. The evils of
intemperance are laid at his door. It is not worth while to blame
the drunkard or the saloon-keeper; they are not within ear-shot. As
to pauperism and vice, every one knows that they arise from social
conditions; and pray who is responsible for these conditions unless it
be the meek man who sits in the pew,--at least, he is the only one who
can readily be made to assume the responsibility.
There is something wholesome in all this if it be not overdone. I,
myself, like to have my fling at the man who is trying to do his duty,
and to twit him occasionally for not doing more. It keeps him from
self-righteousness. But sometimes it is carried too far, and the poor
man staggers under a load of vicarious guilt.
I especially hate to see the man who is trying to do his duty given
over to the censures of those who do not try. There is something very
harsh in the judgment of the ne’er-do-well upon his well-to-do brother.
His attitude is the extreme of phariseeism, as he contrasts his own
generous and care-free nature with the pickayunish prudence which he
scorns. To be sure, his brother in the end pays his debts for him, but
he does it with a narrow scrutiny which robs the act of its natural
charm. His acts of helpfulness are marred by a tendency to didacticism.
All these things are laid up against him.
But allowance should be made for the difference in condition.
Ne’er-do-wellness is an expansive state. There are no natural limits
to it. It develops broad views, and its peculiar virtues have a free
field. It is different with well-to-doness, which is a precarious
condition with a very narrow margin of safety. The ne’er-do-well can
afford to be generous, seeing that his generosity costs him nothing.
He is free from all belittling calculations necessary to those who are
compelled to adjust means to ends,--he is indifferent to ends and he
has no means.
When the morally responsible person finds himself too much put upon, I
would grant him a generous indulgence. After all, I would tell him, the
prudential virtues are not so bad. It is a good deal of an achievement
to make both ends meet. I am not disposed to be too hard on those who
accomplish this, even though I may think a little fullness in their
moral garments might be more becoming.
I should also make provision for the pardon of those good people who
are harshly judged because their virtues are unseasonable. But their
case involves delicate considerations that can best be treated in
another chapter.
UNSEASONABLE VIRTUES
[Illustration]
There are certain philosophers who have fallen into the habit of
speaking slightingly of Time and Space. Time, they say, is only a poor
concept of ours corresponding to no ultimate reality, and Space is
little better. They are merely mental receptacles into which we put our
sensations. We are assured that could we get at the right point of view
we should see that real existence is timeless. Of course we cannot get
at the right point of view, but that does not matter.
It is easy to understand how philosophers can talk in that way, for
familiarity with great subjects breeds contempt; but we of the laity
cannot dismiss either Time or Space so cavalierly. Having once acquired
the time-habit, it is difficult to see how we could live without it. We
are accustomed to use the minutes and hours as stepping-stones, and we
pick our way from one to another. If it were not for them, we should
find ourselves at once beyond our depth. It is the succession of events
which makes them interesting. There is a delightful transitoriness
about everything, and yet the sense that there is more where it all
comes from. To the unsophisticated mind Eternity is not the negation
of Time; it is having all the time one wants. And why may not the
unsophisticated mind be as nearly right in such matters as any other?
In a timeless existence there would be no distinction between now and
then, before and after. Yesterdays and to-days would be merged in one
featureless Forever. When we met one another it would be impertinent
to ask, “How do you do?” The chilling answer would be: “I do not do;
I am.” There would be nothing more to say to one who had reduced his
being to such bare metaphysical first principles.
I much prefer living in Time, where there are circumstances and
incidents to give variety to existence. There is a dramatic instinct
in all of us that must be satisfied. We watch with keen interest for
what is coming next. We would rather have long waits than to have no
shifting of the scenes, and all the actors on the stage at once, doing
nothing.
An open-minded editor prints the following question from an anxious
reader in regard to a serial story appearing in his paper: “Does
it make any difference in reading the serial whether I begin with
Saturday’s chapter and read backward toward Monday, or should the tale
be read as the chapters appear?”
The editor assures his subscriber that the story is of such uniform
excellence that it would read well in either direction. In practical
affairs our dramatic instinct will not allow us this latitude. We
insist upon certain sequences. There is an expectancy that one thing
will lead up to another. We do not take kindly to an anti-climax or
to an anachronism. The Hebrew sage declares, “He hath made everything
beautiful in his time.” That is in the right time, but alas for the
beautiful thing that falls upon the wrong time! It is bewitched beyond
all recognition by the old necromancer who has power to make “ancient
good uncouth.”
It is just here that charity requires that we should discriminate.
There is a situation that demands the services of a kind-hearted
indulgencer. Ethics has to do with two kinds of offenses: one is
against the eternal and unchanging standards of right and wrong, and
the other against the perpetually varying conditions of the passing
day. We are continually confusing the two. We visit upon the ancient
uncouth good which comes honestly stumbling on its belated journey
toward the perfect, all the condemnation that properly belongs to
willful evil. It is lucky if it gets off so easily as that, for we are
likely to add the pains and penalties which belong to hypocritical
pretense. As for a premature kind of goodness coming before there is
time properly to classify it, that must expect martyrdom. Something of
the old feeling about strangers still survives in us. We think it safer
to treat the stranger as an enemy. If he survives our attacks we may
make friends with him.
Those good people who, in their devotion to their own ideals, have
ignored all considerations of timeliness, have usually passed
through sore tribulations. They have been the victims of cruel
misunderstandings. Such, for example, was Saint Cerbonius. Cerbonius
is one of the October saints. October is a good month for saints. The
ecclesiastical calendar gives us a sense of spiritual mellowness and
fruitfulness. The virtues celebrated are without the acidity which
belongs to some other seasons: witness Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint
Teresa, Saint Luke, the beloved physician, Saint John Capistran,
of whom it is written, “he had a singular talent for reconciling
inveterate enemies and inducing them to love one another.” Cerbonius
has a modest place in this autumnal brotherhood; indeed, in some Lives
of the Saints, he is not even mentioned, and yet he had the true
October spirit. Nevertheless, his good was evil spoken of, and he came
near to excommunication, and all because of his divergence from popular
custom in the matter of time.
It seems that he lived towards the end of the sixth century, and that
he was bishop of Piombino. Very soon a great scandal arose, for it was
declared that the bishop was neglecting his duties. At the accustomed
hour the citizens came to the cathedral for their devotions, only to
find the chancel devoid of clergy. Cerbonius and his priests were at
that moment comfortably seated at breakfast. Each succeeding morning
witnessed the same scene. The bishop was evidently an infidel scoffing
at the rites of religion. Appeal was made to Rome, and legates were
appointed who confirmed the astounding rumors. At last Cerbonius went
to Rome to plead his cause; but only by a special miracle was his
character cleared. The miracle induced the authorities to look into
the matter more carefully, and it was found that Cerbonius, instead of
neglecting his duties, had been carried away by holy zeal. While the
people of Piombino were still in their beds, Cerbonius and his clergy
would be celebrating mass. As for breakfast, that was quite late in the
day.
It is easy to be wise after the event, and now that the matter has
been cleared up it is evident that all the religion was not on one
side. Taking a large view of the subject, we see that in the course of
the twenty-four hours the bishop spent as much time in the church as
the most scrupulous parishioner could ask. But it was just this large
view that they were unwilling to take. With them it was now or never.
They judged his character by the cross-section which they took at one
particular hour.
I suppose that, had I lived in Piombino, I should have been a moderate
anti-Cerbonian. Cerbonius was in error, but not in mortal sin. He
was guilty of a heresy that disturbed the peace of the church,--that
of early rising. So long as early rising is held only as a creed for
substance of doctrine and set forth as a counsel of perfection, it may
be tolerated, but when the creed becomes a deed it awakens fanatical
opposition. This breeds schism. A person cannot be popular who gets
the reputation of being a human alarm clock. The primitive instinct
in regard to an alarm clock is to stop it. If Cerbonius had possessed
the tact necessary to a man in his position, he would not only have
done his duty, but he would have done it at the time most convenient
to the greatest number. His virtue was unseasonable; but between a man
of unseasonable virtue and an abandoned character who has no virtue
at all, there is a great difference. It is just this difference which
the majority of people will not see. They make no distinction between
one who deliberately offends against the eternal verities and one who
accidentally tramples upon a temporary verity that he didn’t know was
there.
Most of our quarrels do not concern absolute right and wrong; they
arise from disputes about the time of day. Two persons may have the
same qualities and convictions and yet never agree. An ironical fate
sets them at cross purposes and they never meet without irritating
contradictions. It is all because their moods do not synchronize. One
is always a little too slow, the other a little too fast. When one
is in fine fettle the other is just beginning to get tired. They are
equally serious, but never on the same occasion, and so each accuses
the other of heartless frivolity. They have an equal appreciation of a
pleasantry, but they never see it at the same instant. One gives it an
uproarious welcome when the other is speeding the parting guest.
Two quick-tempered people may live together very comfortably so long
as they lose their tempers simultaneously; they are then ready to
make up at the same time. They get on like an automobile, by a series
of small explosions accurately timed. But when a quick-tempered
person is unequally yoked with one who is slow to wrath, the case is
difficult. The slowness causes continual apprehension. The fuse burns
so deliberately that it seems to have gone out and then the explosion
comes. In such cases there can be no adequate explanation. The offender
would apologize if he could remember what the offense was, and he
doesn’t dare to ask.
Said one theologian to another: “The difference between us is that
your God is my Devil.” This involved more than the mere matter of
nomenclature. It upset the spiritual time-table and caused disastrous
collisions. When one good man set forth valiantly to fight the Devil,
the other would charge him with disturbing his worship.
The fact that one man’s work is another man’s play is equally fruitful
in misunderstandings. The proverbial irritability of the literary and
artistic tribes arises in part from this cause. They feel that they are
never taken seriously. When we go to a good play we find it so easy to
be amused that we do not realize what hard work it is for those whose
business it is to be amusing. The better the work, the more effortless
it seems to us. On a summer afternoon we take up a novel in a mood
which to the conscientious novelist seems sacrilege. He has thrown all
the earnestness of his nature into it, and he wants his message to be
received in the same spirit. We have earnestness of nature too, but
we have expended it in other directions. Having finished our work, we
take our rest by reading his. It is a pleasant way to pass the time.
This enrages the novelist, and he writes essays to rebuke us. He calls
us Philistines and other hard names, and says that we are incapable of
appreciating literary art.
But what is our offense? We have used his work for our own purpose,
which was to rest our minds. We got out of it what at the time we
needed. Does he not act in very much the same way? Did we not see
him at the town-meeting when a very serious question concerning the
management of the town poor-house was to be settled? It was a time
when every good citizen should have shown his interest by speaking an
earnest word. Unmindful of all this, he sat through the meeting with
the air of an amused outsider. He paid little attention to the weighty
arguments of the selectmen, but noted down all their slips in grammar.
He confessed unblushingly that he attended the meeting simply to get a
little local color. What is to become of the country when a tax-payer
will take the duties of citizenship so lightly?
These recriminations go on endlessly. Because we do not see certain
qualities in action, we deny their existence. The owl has a reputation
for sedentary habits and unpractical wisdom, simply because he keeps
different business hours from those to which we are accustomed. Could
we look in on him during the rush time, we would find him a hustling
fellow. He has no time to waste on unremunerative meditation. This is
his busy night. How ridiculous is the sleepiness of the greater part
of the animal world! There is the lark nodding for hours on his perch.
They say he never really wakes up--at least, nobody has seen him awake.
* * * * *
There is a pedagogical theory according to which each individual in his
early life repeats quite accurately the history of mankind up to date.
He passes through all the successive stages in the history of the race,
with a few extra flourishes now and then to indicate the surprises
which the future may have in store for us. The history of civilization
becomes, for the initiated, the rehearsal of the intensely interesting
drama of the nursery and the schoolroom. It lacks the delicacy of the
finished performance, but it presents the argument clearly enough and
suggests the necessary stage business. The young lady who attempts to
guide a group of reluctant young cave-dwellers from one period in human
culture to another is not surprised at any of their tantrums. Her only
anxiety is lest some form of barbarism appropriate to their condition
may have been skipped. Her chief function is like that of the chorus in
the Greek tragedy, to explain to the audience each dramatic situation
as it unfolds.
I should not like to take the responsibility of running such an
excellent theory into the ground, yet it does seem to me that it might
be carried further. Granted that childhood is innocent savagery and
that adolescence is gloriously barbaric, what is the matter with mature
life? Does it not have any remnants of primitiveness? Does not Tennyson
write of “the gray barbarian”?
The transitions from primitive savagery to civilization which took
the race centuries to accomplish are repeated by the individual, not
once but many times. After we get the knack of it, we can run over the
alphabet of human progress backwards as well as forwards.
Exit Troglodyte. Enter Philosopher discoursing on disinterested virtue.
Reënter Troglodyte. Such dramatic transformations may be expected by
merely changing the subject of the conversation.
I remember sitting, one Sunday afternoon, on a vine-covered piazza
reading to a thoughtful and irascible friend. The book was Martineau’s
“Endeavors after the Christian Life.” In the middle of the second
discourse my friend’s dog rushed into the street to attack the dog of
a passer-by. It was one of those sudden and unpredictable antipathies
to which the members of the canine race are subject. My friend, instead
of preserving a dignified neutrality, rushed into the fray in the
spirit of offensive partisanship, and instantly became involved in an
altercation with the gentleman on the sidewalk. Canes were brandished,
fierce threats were exchanged, and only by the greatest efforts were
the Homeric heroes separated. Returning to his chair, my friend handed
me the book, saying, “Now let us go on with our religion.” The religion
went on as placidly as aforetime. There was no sense of confusion. The
wrath of Achilles did not disturb the calm spirituality of Martineau.
Each held the centre of the stage for his own moment, and there was no
troublesome attempt to harmonize them. Why should there be? Martineau
was not talking about dogs.
I know no greater luxury than that of thinking well of my fellow-men.
It is a luxury which a person in narrow circumstances, who is compelled
to live within the limits of strict veracity, sometimes feels to
be beyond his means. Yet I think it no harm to indulge in a little
extravagance in this direction. The best device for seeing all sorts
and conditions of men to advantage is to arrange them in their proper
chronological order.
For years it was the custom to speak disparagingly of the “poor whites”
of our Southern mountains. Shut off from the main currents of modern
life, they seemed unpardonably unprogressive. They were treated as
mere degenerates. At last, however, a keener and kindlier observer
hit upon a happy phrase. These isolated mountaineers, he said, have
retained the characteristic habits of a former generation. They are
our “contemporary ancestors.” Instantly everything was put in a more
favorable light; for we all are disposed to see the good points in
our ancestors. After all, the whole offense with which these mountain
people are charged is that they are behind the times. In our bona-fide
contemporaries this is a grave fault, but in our ancestors it is
pardonable. We do not expect them to live up to our standards, and so
we give them credit for living up to their own.
In this case we agree to consider fifty miles of mountain roads,
if they be sufficiently bad, as the equivalent of rather more than
a hundred years of time. Behind the barrier the twentieth century
does not yet exist. Many things may still be winked at for which the
later generation may be sternly called to repentance. Then, too, the
end of the eighteenth century has some good points of its own. These
contemporary ancestors of ours are of good old English stock, and we
begin to look upon them with a good deal of family pride.
But when we once accept poor roads as the equivalent of the passage of
time, putting people at the other end into another generation, there
is no knowing what we may come to in our charitable interpretations.
For there are other equally effective non-conductors of thought.
By the simple device of not knowing how to read, a man cuts off
some thousands of culture years and saves himself from no end of
intellectual distractions. He becomes the contemporary of “earth’s
vigorous, primitive sons.” If to his illiteracy he adds native talent
and imagination, there is a chance for him to make for himself some
of those fine old discoveries which we lose because we got the answer
from some blabbing book before we had come to the point of asking the
question. Of course the danger is that if he has native talent and
imagination he will learn to read, and it must be confessed that for
this reason we do not get such a high order of illiterates as formerly.
I once made the acquaintance of an ancient Philosopher. His talents
were for cosmogony, and his equipment would have been deemed ample in
the days when cosmogony was the fashion. He had meditated much on the
genesis of things and had read nothing, so that his speculations were
uncontaminated by the investigations of others. He was just the man to
construct a perfectly simple and logical theory of the universe, and he
did it. His universe was not like that of which our sciences give us
imperfect glimpses, but it was very satisfactory to him. He was very
fair in dealing with facts; he explained all that could be explained
by his system. As the only criterion of a fact which he recognized was
that it agreed with his system, there was none left over to trouble
him. His manner of thought was so foreign to that of our time that his
intellectual ability was not widely appreciated; yet had his birth not
been so long delayed, he might have been the founder of a school and
have had books written about him. For so far as I could learn, his
views of the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water, were very
much like those of the early Greek physicists. Had I taken him as a
fellow American, I should have dismissed him as not up to date; but
considering him in the light of an ancient sage, I found much in him to
admire.
Once upon the coast of Maine I came upon a huge wooden cylinder.
Within it was a smaller one, and in the centre, seated upon a swinging
platform, was the owner of the curious contrivance. He was a mild-eyed,
pleasant-spoken man, whom it was a pleasure to meet. He explained that
this was “The Amphibious Vehicle,” and that it would move equally well
on land or sea.
“You know,” said he, “what the prophet Ezekiel said about the ‘wheel in
the middle of a wheel’?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Well, this is it.”
There was something convincing in this matter-of-fact statement. The
“wheel within a wheel” had been to me little more than a figure of
speech, but here it was made out of good pine lumber, with a plank
in the middle for the living creature to sit on. It was as if I had
fallen through a trap door into another age. Here was a literal-minded
contemporary of Ezekiel, who, having heard of the wheel within a wheel,
had proceeded at once to make one. I ascended into the precarious seat,
and we conversed upon the spiritual and temporal possibilities of the
vehicle. I found that on the scriptural argument he was clearly ahead
of me, being able to quote chapter and verse with precision, while my
references were rather vague. In the field of mechanics he was also my
superior. I could not have made the vehicle, having not yet emerged
beyond the stone age. As we talked I forgot that we were at the mouth
of the Penobscot. We were on the “river of Chebar,” and there was no
knowing what might happen.
* * * * *
The belated philosophers and inventors, who think the thoughts of the
ancient worthies after them, live peaceful lives. What matters it that
they are separated by a millennium or two from the society in which
they were fitted to shine? They are self-sufficing, and there are few
who care to contradict them. It is not so with one who is morally
belated. There is something pathetic in the condition of one who
cherishes the ambition of being a good man, but who has not informed
himself of the present “state of the art.”
Now and then an ethical revolution takes place. New ideals are
proclaimed, and in their light all things are judged. The public
conscience becomes sensitive in regard to courses of conduct which
heretofore had been unchallenged. Every such advance involves a waste
in established reputations. There are always excellent men who are not
aware of what has been going on. They keep on conforming scrupulously
to the old standards, being good in the familiar ways that were
commended in their youth. After a time they find themselves in an alien
world, and in that world they are no longer counted among the best
people. The tides of moral enthusiasm are all against them. The good
man feels his solid ground of goodness slipping away from under him.
Time has played false with his moral conventionalities. He is like a
polar bear on a fast-diminishing iceberg, growling at the Gulf Stream.