unmitigated gloom in his representations of life, we on our part have
the right of not taking him too seriously. Speaking of disillusion, two
can play at that game. We must get over our too romantic attitude toward
literature. We must not exaggerate the significance of what is
presented to us, and treat that which is of necessity partial as if it
were universal. When we are presented with a poor and shabby world,
peopled only with sordid self-seekers, we need not be unduly depressed.
We take the thing for what it is, a fragment. We are not looking
directly at the world, but only at so much of it as has been mirrored in
one particular mind. The mirror is not very large, and there is an
obvious flaw in it which more or less distorts the image. Still let us
be thankful for what is set before us, and make allowance for the
natural human limitations. In this way one can read almost any sincere
book, not only with profit, but with a certain degree of pleasure.
Let us remember that only a very small amount of good literature falls
within Shelley's definition of poetry as "the record of the best and
happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." For these rare
outpourings of joyous, healthy life we are duly thankful. They are to be
received as gifts of the gods, but we must not expect too many of them.
Even the best minds often leave no record of their happiest moments,
while they become garrulous over what displeases them. The cave of
Adullam has always been the most prolific literary centre. Every man who
has a grievance is fiercely impelled to self-expression. He is not
content till his grievance is published to the unheeding world. And it
is well that it is so. We should be in a bad way if it were not for
these inspired Adullamites who prevent us from resting in slothful
indifference to evil.
Most writers of decided individuality are incited by a more or less
iconoclastic impulse. There is an idol they want to smash, a
conventional lie which they want to expose. It is the same impulse which
moves almost every right-minded citizen, once or twice in his life, to
write a letter of protest to the newspaper. Things are going wrong in
his neighborhood, and he is impatient to set them right.
There are enough real grievances, and the full expression of them is a
public service. But the trouble is that any one who develops a decided
gift in that direction is in danger of becoming the victim of his own
talent. Eloquent fault-finding becomes a mannerism. The original
grievance loses its sharp outlines; it, as it were, passes from the
solid to the gaseous state. It becomes vast, pervasive, atmospheric. It
is like the London fog, enveloping all objects, and causing the eyes of
those who peer through it to smart.
This happened, in the last generation, to Carlyle and Ruskin, and in a
certain degree to Matthew Arnold. Each had his group of enthusiastic
disciples who responded eagerly to their master's call. They renounced
shams or machine-made articles or middle-class Philistinism as the case
might be. They went in for sincerity, or Turner, or "sweetness and
light," with all the ardor of youthful neophytes. And it was good for
them. But after a while they became, if not exactly weary in well-doing,
at least a little weary of the unintermittent tirades against ill-doing.
They were in the plight of the good Christian who goes to church every
Sunday only to hear the parson rebuke the sins of the people who are not
there. The man who dated his moral awakening from "Sartor Resartus"
began to find the "Latter Day Pamphlets" wear on his nerves. It is good
to be awakened; but one does not care to have the rising bell rung in
his ears all day long. One must have a little ease, even in Zion.
Ruskin had a real grievance, and so had Matthew Arnold. It is too bad
that so much modern work is poorly done; and it is too bad that the
middle-class Englishman has a number of limitations that are quite
obvious to his candid friends,--and that his American cousin is no
better.
But when all this has been granted, why should one talk as if everything
were going to the dogs? Why not put a cheerful courage on as we work for
better things? Even the Philistine has his good points, and perhaps may
be led where he cannot be driven. At any rate, he is not likely to be
improved by scolding.
I am beginning to feel the same way even about Ibsen. Time was when he
had an uncanny power over my imagination. He had the wand of a
disenchanter. Here, I said, is one who has the gift of showing us the
thing as it is. There is not a single one of these characters whom we
have not met. Their poor shifts at self-deceit are painfully familiar to
us. In the company of this keen-eyed detective we can follow human
selfishness and cowardice through all their disguises. The emptiness of
conventional respectabilities and pieties and the futility of the
spasmodic attempts at heroism are obvious enough.
It was an eclipse of my faith in human nature. The eclipse was never
total because the shadow of the book could not quite hide the thought of
various men and women whom I had actually known.
After a while I began to recover my spirits. Why should I be so
depressed? This is a big world, and there is room in it for many
embodiments of good and evil. There are all sorts of people, and the
existence of the bad is no argument against the existence of quite
another sort.
Let us take realism in literature for what it is and no more. It is, at
best, only a description of an infinitesimal bit of reality. The more
minutely accurate it is, the more limited it must be in its field. You
must not expect to get a comprehensive view through a high-powered
microscope. The author is severely limited, not only by his choice of a
subject, but by his temperament and by his opportunities for
observation. He is doing us a favor when he focuses our attention upon
one special object and makes us see it clearly.
It is when the realistic writer turns philosopher and begins to
generalize that we must be on our guard against him. He is likely to use
his characters as symbols, and the symbolism becomes oppressive. There
are some businesses which ought not to be united. They hinder healthful
competition and produce a hateful monopoly. Thus in some states the
railroads that carried coal also went into the business of coal-mining.
This has been prohibited by law. It is held that the railroad, being a
common carrier, must not be put into a position in which it will be
tempted to discriminate in favor of its own products. For a similar
reason it may be argued that it is dangerous to allow the dramatist or
novelist to furnish us with a "philosophy of life." The chances are
that, instead of impartially fulfilling the duties of a common carrier,
he will foist upon us his own goods, and force us to draw conclusions
from the samples of human nature he has in stock. I should not be
willing to accept a philosophy of life even from so accomplished a
person as Mr. Bernard Shaw. It is not because I doubt his cleverness in
presenting what he sees, but because I have a suspicion that there are
some very important things which he does not see, or which do not
interest him.
It is really much more satisfactory for each one to gather his life
philosophy from his own experience rather than from what he reads out of
a book, or from what he sees on the stage. "The harvest of a quiet eye"
is, after all, more satisfying than the occasional discoveries of the
unquiet eye that seeks only the brilliantly novel.
The inevitable discrepancy between the literary representations of life
and life itself has been the cause of the ancient feud between teachers
of morals and writers of fiction. Because of this Plato would banish
poets from his Republic and the Puritans would exclude novelists and
play-actors from their conventicles. But it is curious to observe how
the character of the complaints varies with the change in literary
fashions. The argument of serious persons against works of fiction used
to be that they put too many romantic ideas into the reader's head.
This was the charge made by Mrs. Tabitha Tenney, one of the first of the
long line of American novelists. She wrote a novel entitled "Female
Quixotism; exhibited in the Romantic Opinions and Extravagant Adventures
of Dorcasina Sheldon." The work was addressed "to all Columbian Young
Ladies who read Novels and Romances." To these young ladies the solemn
advice of Mrs. Tabitha Tenney was, "Don't."
Miss Dorcasina was certainly a distressing example. "At the age of three
years this child had the misfortune to lose an excellent mother, whose
advice would have pointed out to her the plain, rational path of life,
and prevented her imagination from being filled with the airy delusions
and visionary dreams of love and raptures, darts, fire and flames, with
which the indiscreet writers of that fascinating kind of books
denominated Novels fill the heads of artless young girls to their great
injury, and sometimes to their utter ruin." Her father allowed her to
indulge her fancy, "never considering their dangerous tendency to a
young, inexperienced female mind." The various calamities into which
Miss Dorcasina Sheldon fell may be imagined by those who have not the
patience to search for them upon the printed pages. Her parting words to
those who had the guardianship of female minds had great solemnity.
"Withhold from their eyes the pernicious volumes, which while they
convey false ideas of life, and inspire illusory expectations, will
tend to keep them ignorant of everything worth knowing; and which if
they do not eventually render them miserable may at least prevent them
from becoming respectable. Suffer not their imaginations to be filled
with ideas of happiness, particularly in the connubial state, which can
never be realized."
If Mrs. Tabitha Tenney were to come to life in our day I think she would
hardly feel like warning the Columbian young ladies against the effect
of works of fiction in exaggerating the happiness of life in general or
of the connubial state in particular. The young ladies are much more in
danger of having their spirits depressed by the painstaking
representation of miseries they are never likely to experience. The
gloomy views of average human nature which once were conscientiously
expounded by "painful preachers" are now taken up by painful
play-wrights and story-tellers. Under the spell of powerful imaginations
it is quite possible to see this world as nothing but a vale of tears.
Happily there is always a way of escape for those who are quick-witted
enough to think of it in time. When fiction offers us only arid
actualities, we can flee from it into the romance of real life.
I sympathize with a young philosopher of my acquaintance. He took great
joy in a Jack-o-lantern. The ruddy countenance of the pumpkin was the
very picture of geniality. Good-will gleamed from the round eyes, and
the mouth was one luminous smile. No wonder that he asked the privilege
of taking it to bed with him. He shouted gleefully when it was left on
the table.
But when he was alone Mr. Jack-o-lantern assumed a more grimly realistic
aspect. There was something sinister in the squint of his eye, and
uncanny in the way his rubicund nose gleamed. On entering the room a
little while after I found it in darkness.
"What has become of your Jack-o-lantern?"
"He was making faces at me. I looked at him till I 'most got scared, so
I just got up and blew him out."
I commended my philosopher for his good sense. It is the way to do with
Jack-o-lanterns when they become unmannerly.
And I believe that it is the best way to treat distressing works of the
imagination, though I know that their authors, who take themselves
solemnly, will resent this advice.
We can't blow out a reality, just because it happens to make us
miserable. We must face it. It is a part of the discipline of life. But
a book or a play has no such right to domineer over us. Our own
imagination has the first rights in its own home. If some other person's
imagination intrudes and "makes faces," it is our privilege to blow it
out.
IV
The Ignominy of Being Grown-up
[Illustration]
As I have already intimated, my greatest intellectual privilege is my
acquaintance with a philosopher. He is not one of those unsocial
philosophers who put their best thoughts into books to be kept in cold
storage for posterity. My Philosopher is eminently social, and is
conversational in his method. He belongs to the ancient school of the
Peripatetics, and the more rapidly he is moving the more satisfactory is
the flow of his ideas.
He is a great believer in the Socratic method. He feels that a question
is its own excuse for being. The proper answer to a question is not a
stupid affirmation that would close the conversation, but another
question. The questions follow one another with extreme rapidity. He
acts upon my mind like an air pump. His questions speedily exhaust my
small stock of acquired information. Into the mental vacuum thus
produced rush all sorts of irrelevant ideas, which we proceed to share.
In this way there comes a sense of intellectual comradeship which one
does not have with most philosophers.
For four years my Philosopher has been interrogating Nature, and he has
not begun to exhaust the subject. Though he has accumulated a good deal
of experience, he is still in his intellectual prime. He has not yet
reached the "school age," which in most persons marks the beginning of
the senile decay of the poetic imagination.
In my walks and talks with my Philosopher I have often been amazed at my
own limitations. Things which are so easy for him are so difficult for
me. Particularly is this the case in regard to the more fundamental
principles of philosophy. All philosophy, as we know, is the search for
the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. These words represent only the
primary colors of the moral spectrum. Each one is broken up into any
number of secondary colors. Thus the Good ranges all the way from the
good to eat to the good to sacrifice one's self for; the Beautiful
ascends from the most trifling prettiness to the height of the
spiritually sublime; while the True takes in all manner of verities,
great and small. In comparing notes with my Philosopher I am chagrined
at my own color-blindness. He recognizes so many superlative excellences
to which I am stupidly oblivious.
In one of our walks we stop at the grocer's, I having been asked to fill
the office of domestic purveyor. It is a case where the office has
sought the man, and not the man the office. Lest we forget, everything
has been written down so that a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not
err therein,--baking-powder and coffee and a dozen eggs, and last and
least, and under no circumstances to be forgotten, a cake of condensed
yeast. These things weigh upon my spirits. The thought of that little
yeastcake shuts out any disinterested view of the store. It is nothing
to me but a prosaic collection of the necessaries of life. I am
uncheered by any sense of romantic adventure.
Not so with my Philosopher. He is in the rosy dawn of expectation. The
doors are opened, and he enters into an enchanted country. His eyes grow
large as he looks about him. He sees visions of the Good, the True, and
the Beautiful in all their bewildering, concrete variety. They are in
barrels and boxes and paper bundles. They rise toward the sky in shelves
that reach at last the height of the gloriously unattainable. He walks
through the vales of Arcady, among pickles and cheeses. He lifts up his
eyes wonderingly to snowy Olympus crowned with Pillsbury's Best. He
discovers a magic fountain, not spurting up as if it were but for a
moment, but issuing forth with the mysterious slowness that befits the
liquefactions of the earlier world. "What is that?" he asks, and I can
hardly frame the prosaic word "Molasses."
"Molasses!" he cries, gurgling with content; "what a pretty word!" I
hadn't thought about it, but it is a pretty word, and it has come
straight down from the Greek word for honey.
He discovers works of art. Surprising pictures, glowing in color, are on
the walls. These are cherubs rioting in health, smiling old men,
benignant matrons, radiant maidens, all feasting on nectar and ambrosia.
Here and there is a pale ascetic, with a look of agony on his emaciated
face.
"What makes that man feel so bad?" asks my Philosopher, anxious to
extract a story from the picture. It seems like an inadequate
explanation to say that he is only a martyr to his own folly in not
getting the right kind of breakfast food.
For one thing, my Philosopher has a great physical advantage over me
when it comes to seeing things. His eyes are only two feet ten inches
from the ground, while mine are some five feet ten. Three feet do not
count for much when we are considering astronomical distances, but they
make a great difference in the way things seem. There is a difference in
the horizon line, and the realm of mystery begins much nearer. There is
no disenchanting bird's-eye view of the counter with all things thereon.
There are alluring glimpses of piled-up wealth.
There particularly is the land of the heart's desire in a square
glass-covered case. There are many beautiful things in the store to be
admired from below; but one supremely beautiful and delectable object is
the crowning glory of the place.
The artist who spends his life in attempting to minister to dull adult
sensibilities never created a masterpiece that gave such pure delight as
the candy dog which my Philosopher spies.
"See the dog!" It is, indeed, a miracle of impressionist art. It is not
like the dogs that bite. It offers itself alluringly to the biter,--or
rather to one who would leisurely absorb it. Even now there is a
vagueness of outline that suggests the still vaguer outlines it will
have when it comes into the possession of a person of taste.
This treasure can be procured for one copper cent. My Philosopher feels
that it is a wise investment, and I thoroughly agree with him. However
much the necessaries of life may have advanced in price, the prime
luxuries are still within the reach of all. We still have much to be
thankful for when with one cent we can purchase a perfect bliss.
It is all so interesting and satisfactory that we feel that the visit to
the grocer's has been a great success. It is only when we are halfway
home that we remember the yeastcake.
Sometimes my Philosopher insists upon my telling him a story. Then I am
conscious of my awkwardness. It is as if my imagination were an old
work-horse suddenly released from its accustomed tip-cart and handed
over to a gay young knight who is setting forth in quest of dragons. It
is blind of both eyes, and cannot see a dragon any more, and only
shies, now and then, when it comes to a place where it saw one long ago.
There is an element of insincerity in these occasional frights which
does not escape the clear-eyed critic. It gets scared at the wrong
times, and forgets to prance when prancing is absolutely demanded by the
situation.
When my Philosopher tells a story, it is all that a story ought to be.
There is no labored introduction, no tiresome analysis. It is pure
story, "of imagination all compact." Things happen with no long waits
between the scenes. Everything is instantly moulded to the heart's
desire.
"Once upon a time there was a little boy. And he wanted to be a
cock-a-doodle-doo. So he was a cock-a-doodle-doo. And he wanted to fly
up into the sky. So he did fly up into the sky. And he wanted to get
wings and a tail. So he did get some wings and a tail."
Physiologists tell us that the trouble with advancing years is that the
material which in youth went directly to building up the vital organs is
diverted to the connective tissue, so that after a time there gets to be
too much connective tissue and too little to connect. When the
imagination is in its first freshness, a story is almost without
connective tissue. There seems hardly enough to hold it together. There
is nothing to take our minds off the successive happenings. If it is
deemed desirable that a little boy should be a cock-a-doodle-doo, then
he is a cock-a-doodle-doo. All else is labor and sorrow.
As a listener my Philosopher is no less successful than as an
improviser. He is not one of those fickle hearers whose demands for some
new thing are the ruination of literary art. When he finds something
beautiful it is a joy to him forever, and its loveliness increases with
each repetition. In a classic tale he is quick to resent the slightest
change in phraseology. There is a just severity in his rebuke when, in
order to give a touch of novelty, I mix up the actions appropriate to
the big bear, the little bear, and the middle-sized bear. This clumsy
attempt at originality by means of a willful perversion of the truth
offends him. If a person can't be original without making a mess of it,
why try to be original at all?
With what keen expectancy he awaits each inevitable word, and how
pleased he is to find that everything comes out as he expected! He
reserves his full emotion for the true dramatic climax. If a great
tragedian could be assured of having such an appreciative audience, how
pleasant would be the pathway of art! The tragedy of Cock Robin reaches
its hundredth night with no apparent falling off in interest. It is
followed as only the finest critic will listen to the greatest actor of
an immortal drama. He is perfectly familiar with the text, and knows
where the thrills come in. When the fatal arrow pierces Cock Robin's
breast, it never fails to bring an appreciative exclamation, "He's
killed Cock Robin!"
Of the niceties of science my Philosopher takes little account, yet he
loves to frequent the Museum of Natural History, and is on terms of
intimacy with many of the stuffed animals. He walks as a small Adam in
this Paradise, giving to each creature its name. His taste is catholic,
and while he delights in the humming birds, he does not therefore scorn
the less brilliant hippopotamus. He has no repugnance to an ugliness
that is only skin deep. He reserves his disapprobation for an ugliness
that seems to be a visible sign of inner ungraciousness. The small
monkeys he finds amusing; but he grows grave as he passes on to the
larger apes, and begins to detect in them a caricature of their
betters. When we reach the orang-outang he says, "Now let's go home."
Once outside the building, he remarks, "I don't like mans when they're
not made nice." I agree with him; for I myself am something of a
misanthropoidist.
There is nothing unusual about my Philosopher. He is not a prodigy or a
genius. He is what a normal human being is at the age of four, when he
is still in possession of all his faculties. Having eyes he sees with
them, and having ears he hears with them. Having a little mind of his
own, he uses it on whatever comes to hand, trying its edge on
everything, just as he would try a jackknife if I would let him. He
wants to cut into things and see what they are made of. He wants to try
experiments. He doesn't care how they come out; he knows they will come
out some way or other. Having an imagination, he imagines things, and
his imagination being healthy, the things he imagines are very pleasant.
In this way he comes to have a very good time with his own mind.
Moreover, he is a very little person in a very big world, and he is wise
enough to know it. So instead of confining himself to the things he
understands, which would not be enough to nourish his life, he manages
to get a good deal of pleasure out of the things he does not understand,
and so he has "an endless fountain of immortal drink."
What becomes of these imaginative, inquisitive, myth-making,
light-hearted, tender-hearted, and altogether charming young adventurers
who start out so gayly to explore the wonder-world?
The solemn answer comes, "They after a while are grown-up." Did you ever
meditate on that catastrophe which we speak of as being "grown-up"?
Habit has dulled our perception of the absurd anti-climax involved in
it. You have only to compare the two estates to see that something has
been lost.
You linger for a moment when the primary school has been dismissed. For
a little while the stream of youthful humanity flows sluggishly as
between the banks of a canal, but once beyond the school limits it
returns to nature. It is a bright, foaming torrent. Not a moment is
wasted. The little girls are at once exchanging confidences, and the
little boys are in Valhalla, where the heroes make friends with one
another by indulging in everlasting assault and battery, and continually
arise "refreshed with blows." There is no question about their being all
alive and actively interested in one another. All the natural reactions
are exhibited in the most interesting manner.