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BY THE CHRISTMAS FIRE
by
SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS
[Illustration]
Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
MCMXII
Copyright, 1908, by Samuel Mcchord Crothers
All Rights Reserved
Published November 1908
To O. L. F.
A CHEERFUL FIRE-WORSHIPER
Contents
I. THE BAYONET-POKER 1
II. ON BEING A DOCTRINAIRE 43
III. CHRISTMAS AND THE LITERATURE OF DISILLUSION 97
IV. THE IGNOMINY OF BEING GROWN-UP 131
V. CHRISTMAS AND THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 191
"Christmas and the Spirit of Democracy" appeared originally in
_Everybody's Magazine_, the four other essays in the _Atlantic
Monthly_. Acknowledgments are due to the editors of these
periodicals for permission to reprint them here.
I
The Bayonet-Poker
[Illustration]
As I sit by my Christmas fire I now and then give it a poke with a
bayonet. It is an old-fashioned British bayonet which has seen worse
days. I picked it up in a little shop in Birmingham for two shillings. I
was attracted to it as I am to all reformed characters. The hardened old
sinner, having had enough of war, was a candidate for a peaceful
position. I was glad to have a hand in his reformation.
To transform a sword into a pruning hook is a matter for a skilled
smith, but to change a bayonet into a poker is within the capacity of
the least mechanical. All that is needed is to cause the bayonet to
forsake the murderous rifle barrel and cleave to a short wooden handle.
Henceforth its function is not to thrust itself into the vitals of men,
but to encourage combustion on winter nights.
The bayonet-poker fits into the philosophy of Christmas, at least into
the way I find it easy to philosophize. It seems a better symbol of what
is happening than the harps of gold and the other beautiful things of
which the hymn-writers sing, but which ordinary people have never seen.
The golden harps were made for no other purpose than to produce
celestial harmony. They suggest a scene in which peace and good-will
come magically and reign undisturbed. Everything is exquisitely fitted
for high uses. It is not so with the bayonet that was, and the poker
that is. For it peace and good-will are afterthoughts. They are not even
remotely suggested in its original constitution. And yet, for all that,
it serves excellently as an instrument of domestic felicity.
The difficulty with the Christmas message is not in getting itself
proclaimed, but in getting itself believed; that is, in any practicable
fashion. Every one recognizes the eminent desirability of establishing
more amicable relations between the members of the human family. But is
this amiable desire likely to be fulfilled in this inherently bellicose
world?
The argument against Christmas has taken a menacingly scientific form. A
deluge of cold water in the form of unwelcome facts has been thrown upon
our enthusiasm for humanity.
"Peace on earth," it is said, "is against Nature. It flies in the face
of the processes of evolution. You have only to look about you to see
that everything has been made for a quite different purpose. For ages
Mother Nature has been keeping house in her own free-and-easy fashion,
gradually improving her family by killing off the weaker members, and
giving them as food to the strong. It is a plan that has worked
well--for the strong. When we interrogate Nature as to the 'reason why'
of her most marvelous contrivances, her answer has a grim simplicity. We
are like Red Riding-Hood when she drew back the bed-curtains and saw the
wolfish countenance.--'What is your great mouth made for,
grandmother?'--'To eat you with, my dear.'
"To eat, while avoiding the unpleasant alternative of being eaten, is a
motive that goes far and explains much. The haps and mishaps of the
hungry make up natural history. The eye of the eagle is developed that
it may see its prey from afar, its wings are strong that it may pounce
upon it, its beak and talons are sharpened that it may tear it in
pieces. By right of these superiorities, the eagle reigns as king among
birds.
"The wings of the eagle, the sinews of the tiger, the brain of the man,
are primarily weapons. Each creature seizes the one that it finds at
hand, and uses it for offense and defense. The weapon is improved by
use. The brain of the man has proved a better weapon than beak or
talons, and so it has come to pass that man is lord of creation. He is
able to devour at will creatures who once were his rivals.
"By using his brain, he has sought out many inventions. The sum total of
these inventions we call by the imposing name Civilization. It is a
marvelously tempered weapon, in the hands of the strong races. Alas,
for the backward peoples who fall beneath it. One device after another
has been added for the extermination of the slow-witted.
"Even religion itself assumes to the anthropologist a sinister aspect.
The strong nations have always been religious. Their religion has helped
them in their struggle for the mastery. There are many unpleasant
episodes in history. Spiritual wealth, like material wealth, is often
predatory.
"In the Book of Judges there is a curious glimpse into a certain kind of
religiousness. A man of Mt. Ephraim named Micah had engaged a young
Levite from Bethlehem-Judah as his spiritual adviser. He promised him a
modest salary, ten shekels of silver annually, and a suit of clothes,
and his board. 'And the Levite was content to dwell with the man; and
the young man was unto him as one of his sons. And Micah consecrated the
Levite, and the young man became his priest, and was in the house of
Micah. Then said Micah, Now know I that the Lord will do me good, seeing
I have a Levite to my priest.'
"This pleasant relation continued till a freebooting party of Danites
appeared. They had discovered a bit of country where the inhabitants
'dwelt in security, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure;
for there was none in the land, possessing authority, that might put
_them_ to shame in any thing, and they were far from the Zidonians.' It
was just the opportunity for expansion which the children of Dan had
been waiting for, so they marched merrily against the unprotected
valley. On the way they seized Micah's priest. 'And they said unto him,
Hold thy peace, lay thine hand upon thy mouth, and go with us, and be to
us a father and a priest: is it better for thee to be priest unto the
house of one man, or to be priest unto a tribe and a family in Israel?
And the priest's heart was glad, and he took the ephod, and the
teraphim, and the graven image, and went in the midst of the people.'
"Of course, Micah didn't like it, and called out, 'Ye have taken away my
gods which I made, and the priest, and are gone away, and what have I
more?' The Danites answered after the manner of the strong, 'Let not thy
voice be heard among us, lest angry fellows fall upon you, and thou lose
thy life, with the lives of thy household. And the children of Dan went
their way: and when Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he
turned and went back unto his house.'
"Is not that the way of the world? The strong get what they want and the
weak have to make the best of it. Micah, when he turned back from a
hopeless conflict, was a philosopher, and the young Levite when he went
forward was a pietist. Both the philosophy and the piety were
by-products of the activity of the children of Dan. They sadly needed
the priest to sanctify the deeds of the morrow when 'they took that
which Micah had made, and the priest which he had, and came unto Laish,
unto a people quiet and secure, and smote them with the edge of the
sword; and they burnt the city with fire. And there was no deliverer,
because it was far from Zidoh, and they had no dealings with any man;
and it was in the valley that lieth by Beth-rehob.'
"The wild doings in the little valley that lieth by Beth-rehob have been
repeated endlessly. Whittier describes the traditional alliance between
Religion and sanguinary Power:--
Feet red from war fields trod the church aisles holy,
With trembling reverence, and the oppressor there
Kneeling before his priest, abased and lowly,
Crushed human hearts beneath the knee of prayer.
"When we inquire too curiously about the origin of the things which we
hold most precious, we come to suspect that we are little better than
the receivers of stolen goods. How could it be otherwise with the
descendants of a long line of freebooters? How are we to uphold the
family fortunes if we forsake the means by which they were obtained? Are
we not fated by our very constitutions to continue a predatory life?"
There are lovers of peace and of justice to whom such considerations
appeal with tragic force. They feel that moral ideals have arisen only
to mock us, and to put us into hopeless antagonism to the world in
which we live. In the rude play of force, many things have been
developed that are useful in our struggle for existence. But one faculty
has developed that is destined to be our undoing,--it is Conscience.
Natural history does not give any satisfactory account of it. It runs
counter to our other tendencies. It makes us miserable just when we are
getting the advantage of others. Now, getting the advantage of others we
had understood was the whole of the exciting game of life. To plot for
this has marvelously sharpened human wit. But Conscience, just at the
critical moment, cries "For shame!" It is an awkward situation. Not only
the rules of the game, but the game itself, is called in question.
As a consequence, many conscientious persons lose all the zest of
living. The existing world seems to them brutal, its order, tyranny; its
morality, organized selfishness; its accepted religion, a shallow
conventionality. In such a world as this, the good man stands like a
gladiator who has suddenly become a Christian. He is overwhelmed with
horror at the bloody sports, yet he is forced into the arena and must
fight. That is his business, and he cannot rise above it.
I cannot, myself, take such a gloomy view of the interesting little
planet on which I happen to find myself. I take great comfort in the
thought that the world is still unfinished, and that what we see lying
around us is not the completed product, but only the raw material. And
this consolation rises into positive cheer when I learn that there is a
chance for us to take a hand in the creative work. It matters very
little at this stage of the proceedings whether things are good or bad.
The question for us is, What is the best use to which we can put them?
We are not to be bullied by facts. If we don't like them as they are, we
may remould them nearer to our heart's desire. At least we may try.
Here is my bayonet. A scientific gentleman, seeing it lying on my
hearth, might construct a very pretty theory about its owner. A bayonet
is made to stab with. It evidently implies a stabber. To this I could
only answer, "My dear sir, do not look at the bayonet, look at me. Do I
strike you as a person who would be likely to run you through, just
because I happen to have the conveniences to do it with? Sit down by the
fire and we will talk it over, and you will see that you have nothing to
fear. What the Birmingham manufacturer designed this bit of steel for
was his affair, not mine. When it comes to design, two can play at that
game. What I use this for, you shall presently see."
Now, here we have the gist of the matter. Most of the gloomy
prognostications which distress us arise from the habit of attributing
to the thing a power for good or evil which belongs only to the person.
It is one of the earliest forms of superstition. The anthropologist
calls it "fetichism" when he finds it among primitive peoples. When the
same notion is propounded by advanced thinkers, we call it "advanced
thought." We attribute to the Thing a malignant purpose and an
irresistible potency, and we crouch before it as if it were our master.
When the Thing is set going, we observe its direction with awe-struck
resignation, just as people once drew omens from the flight of birds.
What are we that we should interfere with the Tendencies of Things?
The author of "The Wisdom of Solomon" gives a vivid picture of the
terror of the Egyptians when they were "shut up in their houses, the
prisoners of darkness, and fettered with the bonds of a long night,
they lay there exiled from eternal providence." Everything seemed to
them to have a malign purpose. "Whether it were a whistling wind, or a
melodious noise of birds among the spreading branches, or a pleasing
fall of water running violently, or a terrible sound of stones cast
down, or a running that could not be seen of skipping beasts, or a
roaring voice of most savage wild beasts, or a rebounding echo from the
hollow mountains; these things made them swoon for fear." For, says the
author, "fear is nothing else than a betraying of the succours that
reason offers."
We have pretty generally risen above the primitive forms of this
superstition. We do not fear that a rock or tree will go out of its way
to harm us. We are not troubled by the suspicion that some busybody of
a planet is only waiting its chance to do us an ill turn. We are
inclined to take the dark of the moon with equanimity.
But when it comes to moral questions we are still dominated by the idea
of the fatalistic power of inanimate things. We cannot think it possible
to be just or good, not to speak of being cheerful, without looking at
some physical fact and saying humbly "By your leave." We personify our
tools and machines, and the occult symbols of trade, and then as abject
idolaters we bow down before the work of our own hands. We are
awe-struck at their power, and magnify the mystery of their existence.
We only pray that they may not turn us out of house and home, because
of some blunder in our ritual observance. That they will make it very
uncomfortable for us, we take for granted. We have resigned ourselves to
that long ago. They are so very complicated that they will make no
allowance for us, and will not permit us to live simply as we would
like. We are really very plain people, and easily flurried and worried
by superfluities. We could get along very nicely and, we are sure, quite
healthfully, if it were not for our Things. They set the pace for us,
and we have to keep up.
We long for peace on earth, but of course we can't have it. Look at our
warships and our forts and our great guns. They are getting bigger
every year. No sooner do we begin to have an amiable feeling toward our
neighbors than some one invents a more ingenious way by which we may
slaughter them. The march of invention is irresistible, and we are being
swept along toward a great catastrophe.
We should like very much to do business according to the Golden Rule. It
strikes us as being the only decent method of procedure. We have no ill
feeling toward our competitors. We should be pleased to see them
prosper. We have a strong preference for fair play. But of course we
can't have it, because the corporations, those impersonal products of
modern civilization, won't allow it. We must not meddle with them, for
if we do we might break some of the laws of political economy, and in
that case nobody knows what might happen.
We have a great desire for good government. We should be gratified if we
could believe that the men who pave our streets, and build our
school-houses, and administer our public funds, are well qualified for
their several positions. But we cannot, in a democracy, expect to have
expert service. The tendency of politics is to develop a Machine. The
Machine is not constructed to serve us. Its purpose is simply to keep
itself going. When it once begins to move, it is only prudent in us to
keep out of the way. It would be tragical to have it run over us.
So, in certain moods, we sit and grumble over our formidable fetiches.
Like all idolaters, we sometimes turn iconoclasts. In a short-lived fit
of anger we smash the Machine. Having accomplished this feat, we feel a
little foolish, for we don't know what to do next.
Fortunately for the world there are those who are neither idolaters nor
iconoclasts. They do not worship Things, nor fear them, nor despise
them,--they simply use them.
In the Book of Baruch there is inserted a letter purporting to be from
Jeremiah to the Hebrew captives in Babylon. The prophet discourses on
the absurdity of the worship of inanimate things, and incidentally draws
on his experience in gardening. An idol, he says, is "like to a white
thorn in an orchard, that every bird sitteth upon." It is as powerless,
he says, to take the initiative "as a scarecrow in a garden of cucumbers
that keepeth nothing." In his opinion, one wide-awake man in the
cucumber patch is worth all the scarecrows that were ever constructed.
"Better therefore is the just man that hath none idols."
What brave air we breathe when we join the company of the just men who
have freed themselves from idolatry! Listen to Governor Bradford as he
enumerates the threatening facts which the Pilgrims to New England
faced. He mentions all the difficulties which they foresaw, and then
adds, "It was answered that all great and honorable actions were
accompanied with great difficulties, and must be enterprised with
answerable courages."
What fine spiritual audacity! Not courage, if you please, but courages.
There is much virtue in the plural. It was as much as to say, "All our
eggs are not in one basket. We are likely to meet more than one kind of
danger. What of it? We have more than one kind of courage. It is well to
be prepared for emergencies."
It was the same spirit which made William Penn speak of his colony on
the banks of the Delaware as the "Holy Experiment." In his testimony to
George Fox, he says, "He was an original and no man's copy. He had not
learned what he said by study. Nor were they notional nor speculative,
but sensible and practical, the setting up of the Kingdom of God in
men's hearts, and the way of it was his work. His authority was inward
and not outward, and he got it and kept it by the love of God. He was a
divine and a naturalist, and all of God Almighty's making."
In the presence of men of such moral originality, ethical problems take
on a new and exciting aspect. What is to happen next? You cannot find
out by noting the trend of events. A peep into a resourceful mind would
be more to the purpose. That mind perceives possibilities beyond the ken
of a duller intelligence.
I should like to have some competent person give us a History of Moral
Progress as a part of the History of Invention. I know there is a
distrust of Invention on the part of many good people who are so
enamored of the ideal of a simple life that they are suspicious of
civilization. The text from Ecclesiastes, "God made man upright; but
they have sought out many inventions," has been used to discourage any
budding Edisons of the spiritual realm. Dear old Alexander Cruden
inserted in his Concordance a delicious definition of invention as here
used: "Inventions: New ways of making one's self more wise and happy
than God made us."
It is astonishing how many people share this fear that, if they exert
their minds too much, they may become better than the Lord intended them
to be. A new way of being good, or of doing good, terrifies them.
Nevertheless moral progress follows the same lines as all other
progress. First there is a conscious need. Necessity is the mother of
invention. Then comes the patient search for the ways and means through
which the want may be satisfied. Ages may elapse before an ideal may be
realized. Numberless attempts must be made, the lessons of the
successive failures must be learned. It is in the ability to draw the
right inference from failure that inventive genius is seen.
"It would be madness and inconsistency," said Lord Bacon, "to suppose
that things which have never yet been performed can be performed without
using some hitherto untried means." The inventor is not discouraged by
past failures, but he is careful not to repeat them slavishly. He may be
compelled to use the same elements, but he is always trying some new
combination. If he must fail once more, he sees to it that it shall be
in a slightly different way. He has learned in twenty ways how the thing
cannot be done. This information is very useful to him, and he does not
begrudge the labor by which it has been obtained. All this is an
excellent preparation for the twenty-first attempt, which may possibly
reveal the way it _can_ be done. When thousands of good heads are
working upon a problem in this fashion, something happens.
For several generations the physical sciences have offered the most
inviting field for inventive genius. Here have been seen the triumphs
of the experimental method. There are, however, evidences that many of
the best intellects are turning to the fascinating field of morals.
Indeed, the very success of physical research makes this inevitable.
When in 1783 the brothers Montgolfier ascended a mile above the earth in
a balloon there was a thrill of excitement, as the spectators felt that
the story of Dædalus had been taken from the world of romance into the
world of fact. But, after all, the invention went only a little way in
the direction of the navigation of the air. It is one thing to float,
and another thing to steer a craft toward a desired haven. The balloon
having been invented, the next and more difficult task was to make it
dirigible. It was the same problem that had puzzled the inventors of
primitive times who had discovered that, by making use of a proper log,
they could be carried from place to place on the water. What the landing
place should be was, however, a matter beyond their control. They had to
trust to the current, which was occasionally favorable to them. In the
first exhilaration over their discovery they were doubtless thankful
enough to go down stream, even when their business called them up
stream. At least they had the pleasant sensation of getting on. They
were obeying the law of progress. The uneasy radical who wanted to
progress in a predetermined direction must have seemed like a
visionary. But the desire to go up stream and across stream and beyond
sea persisted, and the log became a boat, and paddles and oars and
rudder and sail and screw propeller were invented in answer to the ever
increasing demand.
But the problem of the dirigibility of a boat, or of a balloon, is
simplicity itself compared with the amazing complexity of the problems
involved in producing a dirigible civilization. It falls under Bacon's
category of "things which never yet have been performed." Heretofore
civilizations have floated on the cosmic atmosphere. They have been
carried about by mysterious currents till they could float no longer.
Then their wreckage has furnished materials for history.
But all the time human ingenuity has been at work attacking the great
problem. Thousands of little inventions have been made, by which we gain
temporary control of some of the processes. We are coming to have a
consciousness of human society as a whole, and of the possibility of
directing its progress. It is not enough to satisfy the modern intellect
to devise plans by which we may become more rich or more powerful. We
must also tax our ingenuity to find ways for the equitable division of
the wealth and the just use of power. We are no longer satisfied with
increase in the vast unwieldy bulk of our possessions, we eagerly seek
to direct them to definite ends. Even here in America we are beginning
to feel that "progress" is not an end in itself. Whether it is desirable
or not, depends on the direction of it. Our glee over the census reports
is chastened. We are not so certain that it is a clear gain to have a
million people live where a few thousand lived before. We insist on
asking, How do they live? Are they happier, healthier, wiser? As a city
becomes bigger, does it become a better place in which to rear children?
If it does not, must not civic ambition seek to remedy the defect?
The author of Ecclesiastes made the gloomy comment upon the civilization
of his own day: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not
to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the
wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of
skill." In so far as that is true to-day, things are working badly. It
must be within our power to remedy such an absurd situation. We have to
devise more efficient means for securing fair play, and for enforcing
the rules of the game. We want to develop a better breed of men. In
order to do so, we must make this the first consideration. In proportion
as the end is clearly conceived and ardently desired, will the effective
means be discovered and employed.
Why has the reign of peace and good-will upon the earth been so long
delayed? We grow impatient to hear the bells
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand.
The answer must be that "the valiant man and free" must, like every one
else, learn his business before he can expect to have any measure of
success. The kindlier hand must be skilled by long practice before it
can direct the vast social mechanism.
The Fury in Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" described the predicament in
which the world has long found itself:--
The good want power but to weep barren tears.
The powerful goodness want; worse need for them.
The wise want love, and those who love want wisdom;
And all best things are thus confused to ill.
This is discouraging to the unimaginative mind, but the very confusion
is a challenge to human intelligence. Here are all the materials for a
more beautiful world. All that is needed is to find the proper
combination. Goodness alone will not do the work. Goodness grown strong
and wise by much experience is, as the man on the street would say,
"quite a different proposition." Why not try it?
We may not live to see any dramatic entrance of the world upon "the
thousand years of peace," but we are living in a time when men are
rapidly learning the art of doing peacefully many things which once
were done with infinite strife and confusion. We live in a time when
intelligence is applied to the work of love. The children of light are
less content than they once were to be outranked in sagacity by the
children of this world. The result is that many things which once were
the dreams of saints and sages have come within the field of practical
business and practical politics. They are a part of the day's work. A
person of active temperament may prefer to live in this stirring period,
rather than to have his birth postponed to the millennium.
It is only the incorrigible doctrinaire who refuses to sympathize with
the illogical processes by which the world is gradually being made
better. With him it is the millennium or nothing. He will tolerate no
indirect approach. He will give no credit for partial approximations. He
insists on holding every one strictly to his first fault. There shall be
no wriggling out of a false position, no gradual change in function, no
adaptations of old tools to new uses.
In the next essay I shall have something to say about this way of
looking at things. It would do no harm to stir up the doctrinaire
assumptions with the bayonet-poker.
II
On Being a Doctrinaire
[Illustration]
The question is sometimes asked by those who devise tests of literary
taste, "If you were cast upon a desert island and were allowed but one
book, what book would you choose?"
If I were in such a predicament I should say to the pirate chief who was
about to maroon me, "My dear sir, as this island seems, for the time
being, to have been overlooked by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, I must ask the
loan of a volume from your private library. And if it is convenient for
you to allow me but one volume at a time, I pray that it may be the
Unabridged Dictionary."
I should choose the Unabridged Dictionary, not only because it is big,
but because it is mentally filling. One has the sense of rude plenty
such as one gets from looking at the huge wheat elevators in
Minneapolis. Here are the harvests of innumerable fields stored up in
little space. There are not only vast multitudes of words, but each word
means something, and each has a history of its own, and a family
relation which it is interesting to trace.
But that which I should value most on my desert island would be the
opportunity of acquainting myself with the fine distinctions which are
made between different human qualities. It would seem that the Aggregate
Mind which made the language is much cleverer than we usually suppose.
The most minute differences are infallibly registered in tell-tale
words. There are not only words denoting the obvious differences between
the good and the bad, the false and the true, the beautiful and the
ugly, but there are words which indicate the delicate shades of goodness
and truth and beauty as they are curiously blended with variable
quantities of badness and falseness and ugliness. There are not only
words which tell what you are, but words which tell what you think you
are, and what other people think you are, and what you think they are
when you discover that they are thinking that you are something which
you think you are not.
In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as "fail," but the
dictionary makes up for this deficiency. It is particularly rich in
words descriptive of our failures. As the procession of the virtues
passes by, there are pseudo-virtues that tag on like the small boys who
follow the circus. After Goodness come Goodiness and Goody-goodiness; we
see Sanctity and Sanctimoniousness, Piety and Pietism, Grandeur and
Grandiosity, Sentiment and Sentimentality. When we try to show off we
invariably deceive ourselves, but usually we deceive nobody else.
Everybody knows that we are showing off, and if we do it well they give
us credit for that.
A scholar has a considerable amount of sound learning, and he is afraid
that his fellow citizens may not fully appreciate it. So in his
conversation he allows his erudition to leak out, with the intent that
the stranger should say, "What a modest, learned man he is, and what a
pleasure it is to meet him." Only the stranger does not express himself
in that way, but says, "What an admirable pedant he is, to be sure."
Pedantry is a well-recognized compound, two thirds sound learning and
one third harmless vanity.
Sometimes on the street you see a man whom you take for an old
acquaintance. You approach with outstretched hand and expectant
countenance, but his stony glare of non-recognition gives you pause. The
fact that he does not know you gives you time to perceive that you do
not know him and have never seen him before. A superficial resemblance
has deceived you. In the dictionary you may find many instances of such
mistakes in the moral realm.
One of the most common of these mistakes in identity is the confusion of
the Idealist and the Doctrinaire. An idealist is defined as "one who
pursues and dwells upon the ideal, a seeker after the highest beauty and
good." A doctrinaire may do this also, but he is differentiated as "one
who theorizes without sufficient regard for practical considerations,
one who undertakes to explain things by a narrow theory or group of
theories."
The Idealist is the kind of man we need. He is not satisfied with things
as they are. He is one
Whose soul sees the perfect
Which his eyes seek in vain.
If a more perfect society is to come, it must be through the efforts of
persons capable of such visions. Our schools, churches, and all the
institutions of a higher civilization have as their chief aim the
production of just such personalities. But why are they not more
successful? What becomes of the thousands of young idealists who each
year set forth on the quest for the highest beauty and truth? Why do
they tire so soon of the quest and sink into the ranks of the
spiritually unemployed.
The answer is that many persons who set out to be idealists end by
becoming doctrinaires. They identify the highest beauty and truth with
their own theories. After that they make no further excursions into the
unexplored regions of reality, for fear that they may discover their
identification to have been incomplete.
The Doctrinaire is like a mason who has mixed his cement before he is
ready to use it. When he is ready the cement has set, and he can't use
it. It sticks together, but it won't stick to anything else. George
Eliot describes such a predicament in her sketch of the Reverend Amos
Barton. Mr. Barton's plans, she says, were, like his sermons,
"admirably well conceived, had the state of the case been otherwise."
By eliminating the "state of the case," the Doctrinaire is enabled to
live the simple life--intellectually and ethically. The trouble is that
it is too simple. To his mind the question, "Is it true?" is never a
disturbing one, nor does it lead to a troublesome investigation of
matters of fact. His definition of truth has the virtue of perfect
simplicity,--"A truth is that which has got itself believed by me." His
thoughts form an exclusive club, and when a new idea applies for
admission it is placed on the waiting list. A single black-ball from an
old member is sufficient permanently to exclude it. When an idea is once
in, it has a very pleasant time of it. All the opinions it meets with
are clubable, and on good terms with one another. Whether any of them
are related to any reality outside their own little circle would be a
question that it would be impolite to ask. It would be like asking a
correctly attired member who was punctilious in paying his club dues,
whether he had also paid his tailor. To the Doctrinaire there seems
something sordid and vulgar in the anxiety to make the two ends--theory
and practice--meet. It seems to indicate that one is not intellectually
in comfortable circumstances.
The Doctrinaire, when he has conceived certain ideals, is not content
that they should be cast upon the actual world, to take their chances
in the rough-and-tumble struggle for existence, proving their right to
the kingdom by actually conquering it, inch by inch. He cannot endure
such tedious delays. He must have the satisfaction of seeing his ideals
instantly realized. The ideal life must be lived under ideal conditions.
And so, for his private satisfaction, he creates for himself such a
world into which he retires.
It is a world of natural law, as he understands natural law. There are
no exceptions, no deviation from general principles, no shadings off, no
fascinating obscurities, no rude practical jokes, no undignified
by-play, no "east windows of divine surprise," no dark unfathomable
abysses. He would not allow such things. In his world the unexpected
never happens. The endless chain of causation runs smoothly. Every event
has a cause, and the cause is never tangled up with the effect, so that
you cannot tell where one begins and the other ends. He is
intellectually tidy, and everything must be in its place. If something
turns up for which he cannot find a place, he sends it to the junk shop.
When the Doctrinaire descends from the homogeneous world which he has
constructed, into the actual world which, in the attempt to get itself
made, is becoming more amazingly heterogeneous all the time, he is in
high dudgeon. The existence of these varied contradictorinesses seems to
him a personal affront.
It is as if a person had lived in a natural history museum, where every
stuffed animal knew his place, and had his scientific name painted on
the glass case. He is suddenly dropped into a tropical jungle where the
animals act quite differently. The tigers won't "stay put," and are
liable to turn up just when he doesn't want to see them.
I should not object to his unpreparedness for the actual state of things
if the Doctrinaire did not assume the airs of a superior person. He lays
all the blame for the discrepancy between himself and the universe on
the universe. He has the right key, only the miserable locks won't fit
it. Having formed a very clear conception of the best possible world, he
looks down patronizingly upon the commonplace people who are trying to
make the best out of this imperfect world. Having large possessions in
Utopia, he lives the care-free life of an absentee landlord. His praise
is always for the dead, or for the yet unborn; when he looks on his
contemporaries he takes a gloomy view. That any great man should be now
alive, he considers a preposterous assumption. He treats greatness as if
it were a disease to be determined only by post-mortem examination.
One of the earliest satires on the character of the Doctrinaire is to be
found in the Book of Jonah. Jonah was a prophet by profession. He
received a call to preach in the city of Nineveh, which he accepted
after some hesitation. He denounced civic corruption and declared that
in forty days the city would be destroyed. Having performed this
professional duty, Jonah felt that there was nothing left for him but to
await with pious resignation the fulfillment of his prophecy. But in
this case the unexpected happened, the city repented and was saved. This
was gall and wormwood to Jonah. His orderly mind was offended by the
disarrangement of his schedule. What was the use of being a prophet if
things did not turn out as he said? So we are told "it displeased Jonah
exceedingly, and he was angry," Still he clung to the hope that, in the
end, things might turn out badly enough to justify his public
utterances. "Then Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side
of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the
shadow, till he might see what would become of the city."
Poor grumpy old Jonah! Have we not sat under his preaching, and read his
editorials, and pondered his books, full of solemn warnings of what will
happen to us if we do not mend our ways? We have been deeply impressed,
and in a great many respects we have mended our ways, and things have
begun to go better. But Jonah takes no heed of our repentance. He is
only thinking of those prophecies of his. Just in proportion as things
begin to look up morally, he gets low in his mind and begins to despair
of the Republic.
The trouble with Jonah is that he can see but one thing at a time, and
see that only in one way. He cannot be made to appreciate the fact that
"the world is full of a number of things," and that some of them are not
half bad. When he sees a dangerous tendency he thinks that it will
necessarily go on to its logical conclusion. He forgets that there is
such a thing as the logic of events, which is different from the logical
processes of a person who sits outside and prognosticates. There is one
tendency which all tendencies have in common, that is, to develop
counter tendencies.
There is, for example, a tendency on the part of the gypsy-moth
caterpillar to destroy utterly the forests of the United States. But
were I addressing a thoughtful company of these caterpillars I should
urge them to look upon their own future with modest self-distrust.
However well their programme looks upon paper, it cannot be carried out
without opposition. Long before the last tree has been vanquished, the
last of the gypsy moths may be fighting for its life against the enemies
it has made.
The Doctrinaire is very quick at generalizing. This is greatly to his
credit. One of the powers of the human mind on which we set great store
is that of entertaining general ideas. This is where we think we have
the advantage of the members of the brute creation. They have particular
experiences which at the time are very exciting to them, but they have
no abstract notions,--or, at least, no way of expressing them to us. We
argue that if they really had these ideas they would have invented
language long ago, and by this time would have had Unabridged
Dictionaries of their own. But we humans do not have to be content with
this hand-to-mouth way of thinking and feeling. When we see a hundred
things that strike us as being more or less alike, we squeeze them
together into one mental package, and give a single name to the whole
lot. This is a great convenience and enables us to do our thinking on a
large scale. By organizing our various impressions into a union, and
inducing them to work together, we are enabled to do collective
bargaining with the Universe.
If, for example, I were asked to tell what I think of the individuals
inhabiting the United States, I should have to give it up. Assuming a
round eighty million persons, all of whom it would be a pleasure to
meet, there must be, at the lowest computation, seventy-nine million,
nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, three hundred and seventy-five
people of whose characters I do not know enough to make my opinion of
any value. Of the remaining fragment of the population, my knowledge is
not so perfect as I would wish. As for the whole eighty million, suppose
I had to give a single thought to each person, I have not enough
cogitations to go around.
What we do is to stop the ruinous struggle of competing thoughts by
recognizing a community of interests and forming a merger, under the
collective term "American." Then all difficulties are minimized. Almost
all our theorizing about human affairs is carried on by means of these
symbols. Millions of different personalities are merged in one mental
picture. We talk of a class even more readily than we talk of an
individual.
This is all very well so long as we do not take these generalizations
too seriously. The mistake of the Doctrinaire lies not in classifying
people, but in treating an individual as if he could belong to only one
class at a time. The fact is that each one of us belongs to a thousand
classes. There are a great many ways of classifying human beings, and
as in the case of the construction of tribal lays, "every single one of
them is right," as far as it goes. You may classify people according
to race, color, previous condition of servitude, height, weight,
shape of their skulls, amount of their incomes, or their ability to
write Latin verse. You may inquire whether they belong to the class
that goes to church on Sunday, whether they are vaccinationists or
anti-vaccinationists, whether they like problem plays, whether they are
able to read a short passage from the Constitution of the United States,
whether they have dyspepsia or nervous prostration or only think they
have; or, if you will, you may make one sweeping division between the
sheep and the goats, and divide mankind according to location, as did
the good Boston lady who was accustomed to speak of those who lived out
of sight of the Massachusetts State House as "New Yorkers and that kind
of people."
Such divisions do no harm so long as you make enough of them. Those who
are classed with the goats on one test question will turn up among the
sheep when you change the subject. Your neighbor is a wild radical in
theology, and you look upon him as a dangerous character. Try him on the
tariff, and you find him conservative to a fault.
I have listened, of a Monday morning, to an essay in a ministers'
meeting on the problem of the "Unchurched." The picture presented to the
imagination was a painful one. In the discussion that followed, the
class of the Unchurched was not clearly differentiated from the other
unfortunate class of the Unwashed. In the evening I attended a lecture
by a learned professor who, as I happened to know, was not as regular in
church attendance as he should be. As I listened to him I said to
myself, "Who would have suspected that he is one of the Unchurched?"
Fortunately, all the disabilities pertaining to the Unwashed and
Unchurched and Uncultivated and Unvaccinated and Unskilled and
Unbaptized and Unemployed do not necessarily rest upon the same person.
Usually there are palliating circumstances and compensating advantages
that are to be taken into account. In a free country there is a career
for all sorts of talent, and if one fails in one direction he may reach
great dignity in another. I may be a mere nobody, so far as having had
ancestors in the Colonial Wars is concerned, and yet I may be high up in
the Knights of Pythias. A good lady who goes to the art class is able to
talk of Botticelli. But she has no right to look down upon her husband
as an inferior creature because he supposes that Botticelli is one of
Mr. Heinz's fifty-seven kinds of pickles. He may know some things which
she does not, and they may be fully as important.
The great abuse of the generalizing faculty comes in the arraying class
against class. Among the University Statutes of Oxford in the Middle
Ages was one directed against this evil. Dire academic punishments were
threatened to students who made "odious comparisons of country to
country, nobility to ignobility, Faculty to Faculty." I sympathize
deeply with rules against such "unhonest garrulities." It is a pity that
they cannot be enforced.
The mischief comes in reducing all differences to the categories of the
Inferior and Superior. The fallacy of such division appears when we ask,
Superior in what? Inferior in what? Anybody can be a superior person if
he can only choose his ground and stick to it. That is the trick that
royal personages have understood. It is etiquette for kings to lead the
conversation always. One must be a very stupid person not to shine
under such circumstances.
Suppose you have to give an audience to a distinguished archæologist who
has spent his life in Babylonian excavations. Fifteen minutes before his
arrival you take up his book and glance through it till you find an easy
page that you can understand. You master page 142. Here you are secure.
You pour into the astonished ear of your guest your views upon the
subject. Such ripe erudition in one whose chief interests lie elsewhere
seems to him almost superhuman. Your views on page 142 are so sound that
he longs to continue the conversation into what had before seemed the
more important matter contained in page 143. But etiquette forbids. It
is your royal prerogative to confine yourself to the safe precincts of
page 142, and you leave it to his imagination to conceive the wisdom
which might have been given to the world had it been your pleasure to
expound the whole subject of archæology.
I had myself, in a very humble way, an experience of this kind. In a
domestic crisis it was necessary to placate a newly arrived and
apparently homesick cook. I am unskilled in diplomacy, but it was a case
where the comfort of an innocent family depended on diplomatic action. I
learned that the young woman came from Prince Edward Island. Up to that
moment I confess that Prince Edward Island had been a mere geographical
expression. All my ideas about it were wrong, I having mixed it up with
Cape Breton, which as I now know is quite different. But instantly
Prince Edward Island became a matter of intense interest. Our daily
bread was dependent on it. I entered my study and with atlas and
encyclopædia sought to atone for the negligence of years. I learned how
Prince Edward Island lay in relation to Nova Scotia, what were its
principal towns, its climate, its railroad and steam-boat connections,
and acquired enough miscellaneous information to adorn a five-minutes
personally conducted conversation. Thus freshly furnished forth, I
adventured into the kitchen.
Did she take the boat from Georgetown to Pictou? She did. Isn't it too
bad that the strait is sometimes frozen over in winter? It is. Some
people cross to New Brunswick on ice boats from Cape Traverse; that must
be exciting and rather cold. She thought so too. Did she come from
Charlottetown? No. Out Tignish way? Yes; halfway from Charlottetown to
Tignish. Queen's County? Good apple country? Yes, she never saw such
good apples as they raise in Queen's County. When I volunteered the
opinion that the weather on Prince Edward Island is fine but changeable,
I was received on the footing of an old inhabitant.