is cut down one way or the other, and knows it whether any one else
suspects it or not. He may be a rich man and a philanthropist, and
he may get a great send-off, with a splendid funeral and a mausoleum
set over his grave; but if his fortune was built upon widows’ mites
and the bread taken from the poor, if he swindled and cheated, if he
practiced usury, he went down to his dust a very poor man and knows it.
Because the Word is written in him and only copied in the Bible.
The Baptists are not so far wrong about their notions of predestination
and election, though far be it from me to travel my days encompassed
about by their doctrines. That would be too nerve-racking to the mortal
mind. Give me a creed with more elbow room in it for my transient
transgressions and more encouragement for believing I have a chance to
save my own soul by growing my own virtues according to the Word, which
I could not have if I got the notion that I was damned or elected from
the foundation of the world.
The place where the makers of these sterner creeds miss their cue, in
my opinion, is when they fail to realize that the Scriptures are a sort
of key to which we may refer and find the answer to the equation we
are. They contain the history of all dead men and the prophecies of all
living men and men to come. The smallest little squinched-up fraction
of a saint can look in that Book and find out exactly what he is equal
to and even how to become the whole unit of one. But we turn the trick.
We do make ourselves according to the mind we use in the business. I
do not know any more terrifyingly liberal provision made by Providence
in our behalf. I have often wondered why the preachers do not say more
about it, for it is far more convincing than the damnation gospel with
which they used to set us afire.
I had no such wisdom of the Word as this, however, in the days of
which I am now writing. I was a sort of Protestant Catholic, if you
know what I mean. I accepted Lundy’s interpretations of the Gospels as
a devout Catholic gets his from the priest. And I was not very much
worried about not being able to live up to his ideals in the Christian
life. Who has ever kept pace with the piety of a good priest? I did
not feel obliged to do so. I existed in a state of mental obedience
to certain religious convictions which were not my own. This was bad
for me mentally and morally. I had considerable natural ability, but I
remember distinctly being afraid to cut loose and think thoughts kin
to my kind of mind lest I should sin against my husband’s faith. The
virtues that one gets under such conditions do not really belong to
her, but to the church or priest who imposes them. You are trained to
them as a leopard is trained to jump through fiery hoops in a circus
without singeing his tail. Without suspecting such a thing, I was that
artificial in my Christian life during this period, a pathetically
accomplished trick saint.
I have sometimes wondered if the stampede of human souls from the
tyranny of creeds accounts for the strange mental and moral disorders
of our times, and that presently, being as we are, forever immortal
and close kin to God, we shall discover righteousness for ourselves
and choose goodness as the great vocation of man, as it surely is.
One thing is certain--in every age when the people have not been
permitted to study the Scriptures, but have been obliged to accept
a church’s interpretation of the Word, there followed a period of
animal simplicity of mind in the masses, ignorance, loss of ambition,
initiative, and all the poverty, follies, and meanness of mind which
issue from such conditions.
Without every kind of liberty, men must perish, and they do. The
only knowledge that really counts in character is the knowledge we
get for ourselves tested by experience. This is the reason why some
very cultured people remain so ignorant and ineffective. The only law
that ever will actually control men is the will to obey their own
conscience. Therefore the primary object of every preacher and teacher
should be to set up the ideal of courage and an honest mind. Such
people are safe citizens in this world and the next one. But they are
not safe under doctrines, creeds, and laws arbitrarily imposed, whether
they get them from the Bible or the Bolsheviks.
Consider the condition of our own country now. The democratic form of
government is the best form for patriots. We were patriots when we
signed the Declaration of Independence. Now we are not in principle or
conduct. We are getting a commercialized conscience and covering the
snare of it with philanthropy. So it turns out that the Constitution we
made back there in the days when we were plain Christian patriots does
not control the mind or illustrate the character of this nation now.
A monarchal form of government would be no better. Mankind seems to be
outgrowing kings, not by growing better but less good. We are turning
our back upon conscience and the Ten Commandments. No system of laws
will govern such a people. I do not know what the political economists
think of this situation, but as an old woman who looks at it through
the passages of many Scriptures, I see the shadows of terrible events
lengthening across the world. It is coming, that fearful punishment men
inflict upon men for their sins. It is coming because it is not in us
to endure too long our own unrighteousness. This is the law of moral
economy written in us which we cannot escape.
The big knot in this whole problem is human nature. But once in so
often we do untie it and straighten things out, not so much by the
grace of God, but by the perverted righteousness of ferocity. Then we
react and turn out once more to be the children of God--not lost after
all, only chastened.
The secret of all things is as far from us as the East is from the West
and as His ways are from our ways. Therefore, the higher standard we
reach in pure romance the nearer we are to truth. I prefer Milton’s
poetry, the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, my choice of the Psalms,
and a few of the elder hymns to anything Mr. H. G. Wells can think or
write about the beginnings of life or the history of Christianity. It
is interesting copy and contains much entrancing information, but Mr.
Wells has too much sense and too little faith in the right direction
to be the medium of the Lord’s divine illusion, which clothes us like
a garment and is the only protection we have against the destructive
rationalism of the mortal mind.
We have daily examples now of an educational system which encourages
license in thinking along these lines. Two youths who graduated with
distinction from two leading universities developed such unscrupulous
intellects that they planned a monstrous crime. They had an ambition
to commit a ‘perfect crime,’ as formerly Christian education inspired
men to achieve honor. They executed a murder and proceeded with their
plans for blackmail, ransom, and the scientific torture of their
victims. They were not originally perverts. Now they must be regarded
as criminally insane. They are the products of the rational system in
education and of the ever-increasing intellectual slums produced by the
license of this system.
I think Mr. William Jennings Bryan has the wrong bull by the horns
when he assails the theory of evolution. It is not a theory, but a
fact distinctly recorded in Genesis and proved by the whole history of
creation down to the present time. But he might become a benefactor of
youth if he would exercise the same energy in getting an interstate
alienist commission appointed to test the moral sanity of many learned
professors in our schools and universities. The findings of such a
commission would go far toward revealing the sources of the wave of
criminal insanity that is showing its crest in every court in this
country. Too many learned doctors without any faith in the law which
God is, are teaching young people how to think. They become criminals
mentally whether they ever commit a crime or not.
XX
CONFESSION AND THE CHURCH
But what about the Church in all this moral confusion? More and more
active, more and more prosperous, without having much effect upon the
situation! What has become of that note of authority with which it
formerly controlled in so great a measure the conduct of men? Well, it
turns out to be a sort of spiritual bluff the Church put up, now no
longer effective because men have learned how to think.
This is a dangerous discovery in view of the fact that we do not know
enough or fear enough to think righteously. But less than at any time
for the last two thousand years are we listening to the voice of the
preachers. It is they who have their ear to the ground listening to the
rumbling demands of the world. They are cats fighting over modernism.
I do not know what a modernist is, but my impression is that it is an
element in the ministry of some churches anxious to accommodate its
members and keep them cordial by yielding to their demands for less
piety and more diversion. One pastor has introduced the ‘sacred dance’
about his church altar and quotes David’s example as his justification.
David was a great singer, but not a good man. This preacher might take
another man’s wife as David took Uriah’s and be quite as plausible in
his contention.
The Methodist Church has just lifted the ban on worldly amusements
for its members. And we are just now getting the news of a fine old
bishop about to be tried for heresy who strode into the court of
bishops accompanied by his radical lawyer. He looks as queer and out of
drawing as Socrates must have appeared going off with that young rascal
Alcibiades to make a night of it!
What I mean is that the Church is losing its dignity and authority as
a holy institution. The debacle was inevitable, because its oppressive
methods over the minds and imaginations of men were at variance with
the wisdom of God. His Word was split into doctrines and creeds. No one
denomination of us could use the whole of it. The plan of salvation
varied according to the Church to which you belonged, and the doctrines
by which we were to be damned varied even more. A good deal was taught
concerning deliverance from sin, and nothing much was proved concerning
freedom in Christ, which is the whole thing.
Jesus was of all men the mildest and tenderest in his relation to men,
but the prelates, dignitaries, and princes of all the churches with
which I am familiar have been overbearing either in their own personal
character or in their interpretation of the will of God. This was their
method during the Church’s period of power to frighten men into the
Kingdom of Heaven, as now during its decline we find the disposition to
coax people into the Church by offering indulgences.
There is no warrant in the Scriptures for such practices. They
contain the laws of righteousness, the rules of living set down plain
enough for a wayfaring man to understand. We are left free to enjoy
the rewards of our virtues and to suffer the consequences of our
transgression. The rest is silence. This is where the Church made its
mistake--too much preaching and terrorizing, not enough teaching of
just the Word. Now we have the reaction.
XXI
LUNDY AND I WALK AND TALK
It is queer how thoughts you had long ago and the very scene of these
thoughts come back to you after you have lived a dozen later lives.
I recall something now that indicates how narrow the margin was then
between me and one of the threadbare fallacies of my sex:
Lundy and I were walking late in the afternoon through the college
campus. I remember the deepening twilight beneath the trees. I wore a
dark dress. I was young, slender, pale, homely--what I mean is that
I remember feeling this way, sad and put upon. Lundy was stepping
along innocently beside me, gracefully silent, no doubt enjoying this
silence, for he was one who never practiced speech as a relief for
intellectual hysteria. He could retain his thoughts like a gentleman.
Suddenly I let out what I was thinking about the world’s injustice to
women. We were the victims of the whole social and domestic order of
mankind. We were the bond servants of a civilization which we had no
part in making. We had no rights, only duties to perform, and so on and
so forth. I cannot think now how I came by such thoughts. I must have
read something along this line, and, like D---- was suffering from,
mental regurgitation.
What brought me to my own personal senses was the look Lundy gave me,
not reproachful, but startled, as if he had received a thrust and
wondered if he deserved it.
We walked on, staring straight ahead; but I could feel my husband
searching himself, looking for his sins against me, and his harshness.
This was unendurable. I sat down beside the road and made haste to
renege. All at once it was clear how good this man had been to me, how
hard he worked that I might be a little more comfortable, how patient
he was with my ruffian mind, and how he had given me all the love he
could spare from his jealous God. And now--appalling thought--what if
he went off on one of his remorseful tangents, his ever uncertain peace
destroyed by my complaint?
Never did a woman praise her husband more fervently than I did for
the next few minutes. I laughed and stroked his legs. He would not
sit down! He had the rigid air of a man who preferred to take his
punishment standing up. I vowed I was only teasing him. As a matter of
fact, I was not thinking of my own husband at all when I began to drool
about the wrongs of women. I must have been seeking martyrdom at large.
This was one of those little epochs we make in living. I passed as
quick as a flash through an enlightening mental process. From that
moment I escaped the idea of grievances from which many women suffer
too much in their imaginations. I have been a sluggard ever since about
correcting the abuses from which women suffer. I have never been able
to cast myself or my pen whole-heartedly into a campaign to clean up
the men and bring them to repentance for their trespasses against us.
Let somebody else do it! Because, of course, it must be done before
we repent of the wrongs we practice against them, such as headaches,
indifference, inefficiency, and extravagance. Upon those occasions
when I have been even slightly moved to do my duty toward chastening
them, I always think of Lundy, the astonished blue look he gave me that
time on the campus in Oxford, as if this was the first he knew of his
unkindness and injustice to the woman rib in his side. I remember him,
the whole mind the man of him had at that moment, and I cannot believe
in the light of his kind heart that men really mean to be unfair to
women, any more than we mean to be as exasperating as we are to them
sometimes.
We are both the victims of some secret plan of Nature in this business.
Men are overbearing on account of the kind of gender they are, and
women have nervous squalls on account of the kind of gender they are.
If they were entirely compatible, the one to the other, their children
might be poor, spiritless creatures. For love certainly is a fearfully
eager, exacting, and destructive influence upon the dead level of
peace. Therefore incompatibility never seemed to me reasonable grounds
for divorce. On the contrary, it must be in Nature the best of all
genealogical grounds for those two afflicted people to continue to live
together.
The success of marriage does not depend upon how well it is financed
with money or social position, but almost entirely upon how much love
and wit you can put into it. Maybe there is some grave inequality
of mind or spirit or quality between you in the beginning, but go on
living together and presently there will be six of one and half a dozen
of the other. You will develop practically the same horse power of
perversity, even if the man becomes ferociously impatient and the wife
sinks away into cowardly patience.
There is nothing known to man as exasperating as an infernally patient
woman. She is either mean or lacking in wit. She never seems to realize
that domestic temper in a man is a form of hysteria and should be
treated accordingly with a dash of cold water, figuratively speaking,
or some sort of shock, which is not meant to be a suggestion of license
in conduct. He would ask no better excuse for a tantrum or a tyranny
than for his wife to commit a fault. But there are a thousand ways of
twisting the tail of a perverse man’s temper without ceasing to be an
artless lady. All you have to do is to put your mind on it. The Lord
has endowed every woman with special talents for this emergency.
I know one charming little gentlewoman who married a very ordinary man
who never had the opportunity to control anything or anybody until he
achieved this lovely wife. Then he set in to exercise his powers along
this line. If he had been the warden of a penitentiary he could not
have been more exacting than he was as the master of his own house and
the husband of this woman. The marvel was the sweet way she went on
showing her admiration and affection for him. Some of us were disposed
to pity her as a poor creature without spirit. Then I caught on to her
game.
When her husband was present she never ceased to augment him by telling
what he would permit her to do, or more particularly what he would
not allow her to do, say or think. Each revelation was, of course,
accompanied by an exchange of eye-flashing intelligence between those
present and frequently by an embarrassed flush on the husband’s face.
Nothing could stop her from making these revelations of his meanness
and tyranny, always as if she approved of him to the point of boasting.
We heard that when he reprimanded her for exposing his private
authority she remained artless and too simple to be managed.
‘But you know, dear, you did say I should not go to that meeting, and
I wanted them to understand why I would not accept their invitation,’
and so on and so forth. In the course of two years she let in the light
of so much public opinion on this man and his methods as an overbearing
husband that now he practically runs to open the door to her every
wish. He is tremendously concerned that his neighbors shall know his
wife may do as she almighty pleases. And so she does. It was one of the
most diverting and enlightening dramas of married life I have seen in
years, played without a single mis-said line, and ended, you may say,
with much secret applause.
If it appears that I have turned my light too far forward through the
years in the immediately preceding pages, I can only say that we must
follow the beam while it shines when one is trailing the mind, even if
it is your own mind. This was as good a place as any to set down the
effects of that first and last interview with my husband concerning
the grievances of women. The reader will recognize it as the veracious
record of a strictly feminine mind whatever else he may think.
If I may be permitted to comment upon my own copy in thinking, I should
say that once a woman’s mind is divorced from her affections it is
a trifle unbalanced and untrustworthy no matter how brilliantly and
broadly she uses it. It ricochets like a ball fired at a low angle of
elevation which is apt to fall back upon her own destiny disastrously.
A good many of these duds are already dropping behind the Nineteenth
Amendment. I cannot see much improvement in the character of women,
though they are more alert mentally and less satisfied. They have
gained something they wanted and they have lost something they needed
personally and privately. I have felt obliged for conscience’ sake to
believe in equal rights for women, but the best success I ever had
along this line has been to go out and win by my own works and wits the
rights I preferred and that would be the most becoming to me in the end.
XXII
WE CONSIDER GREEK CULTURE
My husband was not only a distinguished scholar and a great preacher
but he had a brilliant, gallant mind of his own. Let him have it, and
God be thanked, was my attitude. Whenever he flared intellectually, I
turned out my light and watched with admiration such an aurora borealis
of fine, cold, clear thinking as I have never seen in any book or
heard from another man. Some radiance of his mind will remain upon the
horizon of mine as long as I live. I can never tell how much of it has
brightened the edges of the copy I have produced since those days. For
I have been a cheerful plagiarist of light whenever I found it.
But if we came to loggerheads in an argument, as frequently happened,
on any subject, whether it was religion, philosophy, poetry, or the
fatalistic mind of the ancient Greeks, I stepped out with gaffs on
the legs of my native wit and met him as an unscrupulous wrestler
meets an honest big man. I had all the advantages, because I was never
constrained in the exercise of my mind by much real knowledge of the
subject or by those precedents which govern a scrupulously trained
intellect. I left him to furnish the information. My business was to
digest it quick as a flash and use it, then to prove my contention or
to reject it for the same reason. I do not know what a casuist is, but
he frequently accused me of being one, as if this was a fault of which
I should be ashamed. But I never was. This grieved him. I am sure he
felt that I would not overcome a certain vulgar insolence of ignorance,
because I had no native reverence for learning.
Once when I was belaying the ancient Greeks like a ruffian he assumed
the dignified manner of a gentleman and a scholar who must be patient
with a Smart Aleck. As near as I can recall, this is the gist of that
altercation:
‘You do yourself discredit when you speak disparagingly of an
illustrious people,’ he said.
I knew nothing of their civilization, art, or literature. Then he
went on to pay a tribute to the Greek intellect. It was symmetrical,
dignified, and beautiful as their architecture. Had I ever studied
the glory and simplicity of the Parthenon? I admitted that I had not,
but I was willing to concede that they had highly developed artistic
instincts. Which, I had to infer, was the wrong phrase to use.
‘They had brains, brains!’ he retorted hotly.
‘I would no more revere a man for his brains than for the hair on his
head,’ I shot back; ‘the quality and quantity of both are determined
by purely physical conditions, the climate, the food they eat, their
habits as human beings. I judge the Greeks by what they have produced.’
‘That is precisely what you cannot do intelligently, because you do not
know what they produced.’
‘Yes, I know the effects--’
‘You are profoundly ignorant of the effects of Greek culture upon the
world,’ he interrupted.
‘Culture’ was one of Lundy’s words, never a favorite with me. I am not
denying there is such a thing, but whether it is beneficent depends in
my opinion upon the moderation with which you absorb it and balance it
with better, sturdier elements of character, like honest bigotry and
hard-headed convictions. It is a boastful word with a bad reputation in
advanced stages of civilization. It too frequently became the elegance
by which the distance between morality and immorality is shortened.
Lundy, however, loved it, with no such barbaric instincts as I had to
warn him against it. And I suffered much from the personal uses he made
of it during what may be called the Hellenic period of our married life.
This time I made a clean sweep and cut Greek culture to the bone.
‘There was something wrong with their culture,’ I returned, ‘because
they did not survive it as a nation. Men are destroyed by their own
minds, their systems of thought. What the ancient Greeks produced with
all their art and learning and culture are these modern Greeks. I do
not think much of them. Neither do you. They have the same hair, the
same brains. They are out of the same stock, but virtue has gone out of
them. They are no longer sculptors and philosophers. Nobody quotes them
or imitates them. The fatalistic mind back of all their culture made
slaves and little men of their descendants.’
Lundy regarded me for a moment in regretful silence, as we sometimes
measure some one who is dear to us who is determined not to be like us.
‘Corra,’ he said reproachfully, ‘you have an underhanded mind. You
deliberately missed my point.’
‘I made my own point, which was better than being run through by
yours,’ I laughed.