found in the purest form in the heart of a child, and that it consists
in nurture and development of this early grace through all the years
that may be allotted. The same thing is true of all that concerns the
ideal life. The artist, the reformer, the inventor, the poet, the man of
pure science, the really fruitful and original man of affairs,--these
are the incorrigibles. They refuse to accept the hard-and-fast rules
that are laid down for them. They insist upon finding time and room for
activities that are not conceived of as tasks, but as the glorious play
of their own faculties. They are full of a great, joyous impulse, and
their work is but the expression of this impulse. They somehow have time
for the unexpected. They see that which
Gives to seas and sunset skies
The unspent beauty of surprise.
The world is in their eyes ever fresh and sparkling. Life is full of
possibilities. They see no reason to give up the habit of wonder. They
never outgrow the need of asking questions, though the final answers do
not come.
When to a person of this temper you repeat the hard maxims of workaday
wisdom, he escapes from you with the smiling audacity of a truant boy.
He is one who has awakened right early on a wonderful morning. There is
a spectacle to be seen by those who have eyes for it. He is not willing
out of respect for you to miss it. He hears the music, and he follows
it. It is the music of the
Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young,
And always keep us so.
V
Christmas and the Spirit of Democracy
[Illustration]
"Times have changed," said old Scrooge, as he sat by my fireside on
Christmas Eve. "The Christmas Carol" had been read, as our custom was,
and the children had gone to bed, so that only Scrooge and I remained to
watch the dying embers.
"Times have changed, and I am not appreciated as I was in the middle of
the last century. People don't seem to be having so good a time. You
remember the Christmas when I was converted? What larks! Up to that time
I had been 'a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching,
covetous old sinner.' Those were the very words that described me. Then
the Christmas Spirit took possession of me and--presto! change! All at
once I became a new creature. I began to hurry about, giving all sorts
of things to all sorts of people. You remember how I scattered turkeys
over the neighborhood, shouting, 'Here's the turkey! Hello! Whoop! How
are you! Merry Christmas!' And then I sat down and chuckled over my
generosity till I cried. I was having the time of my life. You see, I
hadn't been used to that sort of thing, and it went to my head.
"And how grateful everybody was! They took everything in the spirit in
which it was offered, and asked no questions. Everywhere there was an
outstretched hand and a fervent God-bless-you for every gift. Nobody
twitted me about the past. I was all at once elevated to the position of
an earthly Providence.
"Talk of fun! Was there ever such a practical joke as to scare Bob
Cratchit within an inch of his life and then raise his salary before he
could say Jack Robinson! You should have seen him jump! How the little
Cratchits shouted for joy! And when the thing was written up, all
Anglo-Saxondom was smiling through its tears and saying: 'That's just
like us. God bless us, every one.'
"But it's different now. Something has got into the Christmas Spirit.
Doing good doesn't seem such a jolly thing as it once was, and you can't
carry it off with a whoop and hello. People are getting critical. In
these days a charitable shilling doesn't go so far as it used to, and
doesn't buy nearly so many God-bless-you's. You complain of the rise in
the price of the necessaries of life. It isn't a circumstance to the
increase in the cost of luxuries like benevolence. Almost every one
looks forward to the time when he can afford to be generous. And when he
is generous he likes to feel generous, and to have other people
sympathize with him. It's only human nature. A man can't be thinking
about himself all the time; he gets that tired feeling that your
scientific people in these days call altruism. It is an inability to
concentrate his mind on his own concerns. In spite of himself his
thoughts wander off to other people's affairs, and he has an impulse to
do them good. Now in my day it was the easiest thing in the world to do
good. The only thing necessary was to feel good-natured, and there you
were! Nowadays, the way of the benefactor is hard. It's so difficult
that I understand you actually have Schools of Philanthropy."
Scrooge shrugged his shoulders and seemed to shrivel at the thought of
these horrible institutions.
"Just fancy," he continued, "how I should have felt on that blessed
Christmas night, if, instead of starting off as an amateur angel,
feeling my wings growing every moment, I had been compelled to prepare
for an entrance examination. I suppose I should have been put with the
backward pupils whose early education had been neglected, and should
have had to learn the A B C's of charity. School of Philanthropy! Ugh!
And in the holidays, too!
"I have been visiting some elderly gentlemen who have had something of
my experience with the Spirit of Christmas. Like me, they were converted
somewhat late in life. They never were in as bad a way as I was, for I
did business, you may remember, in a narrow street with quite sordid
surroundings, while they were financiers in a large way. Yet I suppose
that they, too, were 'squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping,
clutching, covetous old sinners,' though nobody had the courage to tell
them so. Then they got tired of clutching, and their hearts warmed and
their hands relaxed and they began to give. Never was such giving known
before. It was a perfect deluge of beneficence. A mere catalogue of the
gifts would make a Christmas carol of itself.
"But would you believe it, they never have got the fun out of it that I
got when I filled the cab full of turkeys and set out for Camden town.
The old Christmas feeling seems to have been chilled. The public has
grown critical. Instead of dancing for joy, it looks suspiciously at
the gifts and asks: 'Where did they get them?' It has been so impressed
by the germ theory of disease that it foolishly fears that even money
may be tainted. It's a preposterous situation. Generosity is a drug on
the market, and gratitude can't be had at any reasonable price."
"Yes," I said, "you are quite right, public sentiment has changed.
Gratitude is not so easily won as it was in your day, and it takes
longer to transform a clutching, covetous old sinner into a serviceable
philanthropist. But I do not think, Scrooge, that the Christmas Spirit
has really vanished. He is only a little chastened and subdued by the
Spirit of Democracy."
"I don't see what Democracy has to do with it," said Scrooge. "I'm sure
that nobody ever accused me of being an aristocrat. What I am troubled
about is the decay of gratitude. If I give a poor fellow a shilling, I
ought to be allowed the satisfaction of having him remove his hat and
say, 'Thank'ee, sir,' and he ought to say it as if he meant it. The
heartiness of his thanksgiving is half the fun. It makes one feel good
all over."
"But," I answered, "if the fellow happens to have a good memory he may
recall the fact that yesterday you took two shillings from him, and he
may think that the proper response to your sudden act of generosity is,
'Where's that other shilling?' That's what the Spirit of Democracy puts
him up to. It's not so polite, but you must admit that it goes right to
the point."
"I don't like it," said Scrooge.
"I thought you wouldn't. There are a great many people who don't like
it. It's a twitting on facts that takes away a good deal of the pleasure
of being generous."
"I should say it did," grumbled Scrooge. "It makes you feel mean just
when you are most sensitive. Just think how I should have felt if, when
I gave Bob Cratchit a dig in the waistcoat and told him that I had
raised his salary, he had taken the opportunity to ask for back pay. It
would have been most inopportune."
"You owed it to him, didn't you?"
"Yes, I suppose I did, if you choose to put it that way. But Bob
wouldn't have put it that way; he wouldn't take such liberties. He took
what I gave him; and when I gave him more than he expected, he was all
the happier, and so was I. That's what made it all seem so nice and
Christmasy. We were not thinking about rights and duties; it was all
free grace."
"Now, Scrooge, you are getting at the point. There is no concealing the
fact that the Spirit of Democracy makes himself unpleasant sometimes. He
breaks up the old pleasant relations existing not only between the Lords
and the Commons, but between you and Bob Cratchit. Man is naturally a
superstitious creature, and is prone to worship the first thing that
comes in his way. When a poor fellow sees a person who is better off
than himself, he jumps to the conclusion that he is a better man, and
bows down before him, as before a wonder-working Providence. When this
Providence smiles upon him, he is glad, and receives the bounty with
devout thankfulness. It is what the old theologians used to call 'an
uncovenanted mercy.'
"All this is very pleasant to one who can sign himself by the grace of
God king, or president of a coal company, or some such thing as that.
The gratification extends to all the minor grades of greatness as well.
The great man is ordained to give as it pleases him and the little men
to receive with due meekness. The great man is always the man who has
something. I suppose, Scrooge, that in your busy life, first scraping
money together and then dispensing it in your joyous Christmasy way, you
have not had much time for general reading or even for listening to
sermons?"
"I have always attended Divine Service since my conversion," answered
Scrooge, piously; "as for listening--"
"What I was going to say was that if you had attended to such matters,
you must have noticed how much of the literature of good-will is devoted
to the praise of the Blessed Inequalities. How the changes are rung on
the Strong and the Weak, the Wise and the Ignorant, the Rich and the
Poor; especially the Poor, who form the hub of the philanthropic
universe. Nobody seems to meet another on the level. Everybody is
either looking up or looking down, and they are taught how to do it. I
remember attending the annual meeting of the Society for the Relief of
Indigent Children. The indigent children were first fed and then
insulted by a plethoric gentleman, who addressed to them a long
discourse on indigence and the various duties that it entailed. And no
one of the children was allowed to throw things at the speaker. They had
all been taught to look grateful.
"Now these inequalities do exist, and so long as they exist all sorts of
helpful offices have place. The trouble is that good people are all the
time doing their best to make the inequalities permanent. You have
heard how divines have interpreted the text, 'The poor ye have always
with you.' The good old doctrine has been that the relation between
those who have not and those who have should be that of one-sided
dependence. The Ignorant must depend upon the Wise, the Weak upon the
Strong, the Poor upon the Rich. As for the black, yellow, and various
parti-colored races, they must depend upon the White Man, who gayly
walks off with their burdens without so much as saying 'By your leave.'
"Now it is against this whole theory, however beautifully or piously
expressed, that the protest has come. The Spirit of Democracy is a bold
iconoclast, and goes about smashing our idols. He laughs at the
pretensions of the Strong and the Wise and the Rich to have created the
things they possess. They are not the masters of the feast. They are
only those of us who have got at the head of the line, sometimes by
unmannerly pushing, and have secured a place at the first table. We are
not here by their leave, and we may go directly to the source of
supplies. They are not benefactors, but beneficiaries. The Spirit of
Democracy insists that they shall know their place. He rebukes even the
Captains of Industry, and when they answer insolently, he suggests that
they be reduced to the ranks. Even toward bishops and other clergy his
manner lacks that perfect reverence that belonged to an earlier time;
yet he listens to them respectfully when they talk sense.
"It is this spirit that plays the mischief with many of the merry old
ways of doing good. To scatter turkeys or colleges among a multitude of
gratefully dependent folks is the very poetry of philanthropy. But to
satisfy the curiosity of an independent citizen as to your title to
these things is a different matter. The more independent people are, the
harder it is to do good to them. They are apt to have their own ideas of
what they want."
"It's a pity, then, to have them so independent," said Scrooge; "it
spoils people to get above their proper station in life."
"Ah! there you are," I answered; "I feared it would come to that. With
all your exuberant good-will you haven't altogether got beyond the
theory that has come down from the time when the first cave-dweller
bestowed on his neighbor the bone he himself didn't need, and
established the pleasant relation of benefactor and beneficiary. It gave
him such a warm feeling in his heart that he naturally wanted to make
the relation permanent. First Cave-dweller felt a little disappointed
next day when Second Cave-dweller, instead of coming to him for another
bone, preferred to take his pointed stick and go hunting on his own
account. It seemed a little ungrateful in him, and First Cave-dweller
felt that it would be no more than right to arrange legislation in the
cave so that this should not happen again.
"Christian Charity is a very beautiful thing, but sometimes it gets
mixed up with these ideas of the cave-dwellers. Sometimes it perpetuates
the very evils that it laments. Perhaps you won't mind my reading a bit
from a homily of St. Augustine on this very subject. St. Augustine was a
man who was a good many centuries ahead of his time. He begins his
argument by saying: 'All love, dear brethren, consists in wishing well
to those who are loved.' This seems like a harmless proposition. It is
the sort of thing you might hear in a sermon and think no more about.
But St. Augustine goes to the root of the matter, and asks what it means
to wish well to the person you are trying to help. He comes to the
conclusion that if you really wish him well, you must wish him to be at
least as well off and as well able to take care of himself as you are.
The first thing you know, you are wishing to have him reach a point
where he will not look up to you at all. 'There is a certain
friendliness by which we desire at one time or another to do good to
those we love. But how if there be no good that we can do? We ought not
to wish men to be wretched that we may be enabled to practice works of
mercy. Thou givest bread to the hungry, but better were it that none
hungered and thou hadst none to give to. Thou clothest the naked; oh,
that all men were clothed and that this need existed not! Take away the
wretched, and the works of mercy will be at an end, but shall the ardor
of charity be quenched? With a truer touch of love thou lovest the happy
man to whom there is no good office that thou canst do; purer will that
love be and more unalloyed. For if thou hast done a kindness to the
wretched, perhaps thou wishest him to be subject to thee. He was in
need, thou didst bestow; thou seemest to thyself greater because thou
didst bestow than he upon whom it was bestowed. Wish him to be thine
equal.'
"There, Scrooge, is the text for the little Christmas sermon that I
should like to preach to you and to your elderly wealthy friends who
feel that they are not so warmly appreciated as they once were. 'Wish
him to be thine equal'--that is the test of charity. It is all right to
give a poor devil a turkey. But are you anxious that he shall have as
good a chance as you have to buy a turkey for himself? Are you really
enthusiastic about so equalizing opportunities that by and by you shall
be surrounded by happy, self-reliant people who have no need of your
benefactions?
"Do you know, Scrooge, I sometimes think that it is time for some one to
write a new 'Christmas Carol,' a carol that will make the world know how
people are feeling and some of the best things they are doing in these
days. It should be founded on Justice and not on Mercy. We should feed
up Bob Cratchit and put some courage into him, and he should come to
you and ask a living wage not as a favor, but as a right. And you,
Scrooge, would not be offended at him, but you would sit down like a
sensible man and figure it out with him. And when the talk was over, you
wouldn't feel particularly generous, and he wouldn't feel particularly
grateful; it would be simple business. But you would like each other
better, and the business would seem more worth while.
"And then, when you went out with the Spirit of Christmas, you would ask
the Spirit of Democracy to go with you and show you the new things that
are most worth seeing. He wouldn't wait for the night, for the cheeriest
things would be those that go on during business hours. He would show
you some sights to make your heart glad. He would show you vast numbers
of persons who have got tired of the worship of the Blessed
Inequalities, and who are going in for the Equalities. They have a
suspicion that there is not so much difference between the Great and the
Small as has been supposed, and that what difference there is does not
prevent a frank comradeship and a perfect understanding. They think it
is better to work with people than to work for them. They think that one
of the inalienable rights of man is the right to make his own mistakes
and to learn the lesson from them without too much prompting. So they
are a little shy of many of the more intrusive forms of philanthropy.
But you should see what they are up to.
"The Spirit of Democracy will take you to visit a school that is not at
all like the school you used to go to, Scrooge. The teacher has
forgotten his rod and his rules and his airs of superiority. He is not
teaching at all, so far as you can see. He is the centre of a group of
eager learners, who are using their own wits and not depending on his.
They are so busy observing, comparing, reasoning, and finding out things
for themselves that he can hardly get in a word edgewise. And he seems
to like it, though it is clear that if they keep on at this rate they
will soon get ahead of their teacher.
"And the Spirit of Democracy will take you to a children's court, where
the judge does not seem like a judge at all, but like a big brother who
shows the boys what they ought to do and sees that they do it. He will
take you to a little republic, where boys and girls who have defied laws
that they did not understand are making laws of their own and enforcing
them in a way that makes the ordinary citizen feel ashamed of himself.
They do it all so naturally that you wonder that nobody had thought of
the plan before. He will take you to pleasant houses in unpleasant parts
of the city, and there you will meet pleasant young people who are
having a very good time with their neighbors and who are getting to be
rather proud of their neighborhood. After you have had a cup of tea,
they may talk over with you the neighborhood problems. If you have any
sensible suggestion to make, these young people will listen to you; but
if you begin to talk condescendingly about the Poor, they will change
the subject. They are not philanthropists--they are only neighbors.
"I hope he may take you, Scrooge--this Spirit of Democracy--to some of
the charity organizations I know about. I realize that you are
prejudiced against that sort of thing, it seems so cold and calculating,
compared with your impulsive way of doing good. And you will probably
quote the lines about
Organized charity scrimped and iced
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.
"Never mind about the statistics; they only mean that these people are
doing business on a larger scale than did the good people who could
carry all the details in their heads. What I want you to notice is the
way in which the scientific interest does away with that patronizing
pity that was the hardest thing to bear in the old-time charities. These
modern experts go about mending broken fortunes in very much the same
way in which surgeons mend broken bones. The patient doesn't feel under
any oppressive weight of obligation, he has given them such a good
opportunity to show their skill. And the doctors have caught the spirit,
too. Instead of looking wise and waiting for people to come to them in
the last extremity, they have enlisted in Social Service. You should
see them going about opening windows, and forcing people to poke their
heads out into the night air, and making landlords miserable by their
calculations about cubic feet, and investigating sweat-shops and
analyzing foodstuffs. It's their way of bringing in a Merry Christmas.
"And the Spirit of Democracy will take you to workshops, where you may
see the new kind of Captain of Industry in friendly consultation with
the new kind of Labor Leader. For the new Captain is not a chief of
banditti, interested only in the booty he can get for himself, and the
new Leader is not a conspirator waiting for a chance to plunge his knife
into the more successful bandit's back. These two are responsible
members of a great industrial army, and they realize their
responsibility. They have not met to exchange compliments. They are not
sentimentalists, but shrewd men of affairs who have met to plan a
campaign for the common welfare. They don't take any credit for it, for
they do not expect to give to any man any more than his due; yet there
are a good many Christmas dinners involved in the cool, business-like
consultation.
"Afterward, the Spirit of Democracy will take you to a church where the
minister is preaching from the text, 'Ye are all kings and priests,' as
if he believed it; and you will believe it too, and go on your way
wondering at the many sacred offices in the world.
"You will hurry on from the church to shake hands with the new kind of
politician. He is not the dignified 'statesman' you have read about and
admired afar off, who has every qualification for high office except the
ability to get himself elected. This man knows the game of politics. He
is not fastidious, and likes nothing better than to be in the thick of a
scrimmage. He has not the scholar's scorn of 'the aggregate mind.' He
thinks that it is a very good kind of mind if it is only rightly
interpreted. He has the idea that what all of us want is better than
what some few of us want, and that when all of us make up our minds to
work together we can get what we want without asking anybody's leave. He
thinks that what all of us want is fair play, and so he goes straight
for that without much regard for special interests. It is a simple
programme, but it's wonderful what a difference it makes.
"There never was a time, Scrooge, when the message of good-will was so
widely interpreted in action, or when it took hold of so many kinds of
men. Perhaps you wouldn't mind my reading another little bit from St.
Augustine: 'Two are those to whom thou doest alms; two hunger, one for
bread, the other for righteousness. Between these two famishing persons
thou, the doer of the good work, art set. The one craves what he may
eat, the other craves what he may imitate. Thou feedest the one, give
thyself as a pattern to the other, so hast thou given to both. The one
thou hast caused to thank thee for satisfying his hunger, the other thou
hast made to imitate thee by setting him a worthy example.'