became less savage. He made implements for himself, and lived in
tribes with his fellow men; and the more highly civilized man
becomes, the more will he sympathize with the rest of mankind,
so that when the highest civilization arrives, it will only mean
complete love of all living things.”
I insisted that the theory of germ transmission was not a fact. I said
she seemed to have avoided natural selection, that I thought she did not
like it because it was too mathematical and too logical for her. Ruth
thought perhaps that was why she did not like it much, either, though it
interested her. I said: “It seems at first so ‘cruel’ a theory; it
repels us until we remember that what is cruel in a man is not so in a
beast.” Virginia answered that she did not think it cruel, because it
was not meant cruelly. “They had to kill each other,” she said. Henry
asked me whether I thought it cruel to eat animals. I answered it was
not cruel, unless they were cruelly killed. Ruth added that some time we
would get beyond the need of eating animals. “To hunt for fun is
wicked,” said Virginia.
Marian said: “Perhaps we think natural selection not so cruel among
animals, because we did not do the suffering.”
The children all said they did not remember just what relation evolution
had to our idea of life. I answered that the very fact that we could not
go on in our thought without it proved its relation, and that we would
constantly come back to it, that I did not need to explain it now.
Then we spoke of prayer. I asked each one in turn what and how much they
had thought of it.
Alfred said he had never thought of it, that he had prayed as a baby,
but had stopped early and never felt the need. Florence said the same.
Henry said he believed in prayer, especially in prayer for strength in
any undertaking. “Of course,” he went on, “I don’t expect to be helped
against the other fellow, but I get strength in praying for strength.”
“I agree with you,” said Ruth, “only don’t you pray to know whether you
are right or not? For you might be wrong.”
“If I thought I might be wrong,” he answered, “I wouldn’t be doing the
thing I was doing.” They argued it a bit. “But,” he went on, “I have no
set formula for prayer, nor a definite time.”
Virginia said: “I have always prayed. When I was little I got in the
habit of saying a silly little German prayer, so that I could not go to
sleep without saying something. So when the little prayer seemed too
silly to me, I began saying each evening the stanza of a poem.”
“What poem?” I asked.
“The last stanza of the ‘Chambered Nautilus.’ I could not go to sleep
unless I said it.”
She recited it for us.
Marian said: “It depends on what you mean by prayer. I never learned to
say any, nor ever wanted to, but I do have a prayer-feeling.”
We all agreed that the prayer which asked for something definite was
folly. I said prayer was getting into oneness with the vast Self around
and behind us, and drawing strength from that which was ours for the
asking, which _was_ ourself.
Marian said it was getting into harmony with the world.
We thought every one had that feeling of vastness, of oneness with God,
at times. Virginia said she got it especially when she was by the sea.
“I feel it most,” said Marian, “when I am out of doors, and feel my
close relation with nature.”
Henry said he felt it most in a big crowd of people.
“Yes,” answered Ruth; “then you feel how little all this is, and the
vast, big life above it all.”
“You don’t mean, Ruth,” I asked “that you feel the crowd to be a little
thing?”
“Oh, no,” she answered. “I feel it in the crowd.”
Henry said: “To be among people always arouses that feeling of
sympathy.”
There are many ways of praying, I said; to speak certain words that
aroused in us the prayer-feeling was a good way; but that the words were
only to awaken the feeling in us, and were worth nothing by themselves.
If one could feel the prayer without any words whatever, it would be
just as well. Florence thought it very hard not to get to repeat words
by rote. Henry said he always made a particular effort to think of the
meaning of the words as he said them.
“I don’t believe,” said Virginia, “that it is so much thought as
feeling. I don’t always think of the meaning of those words when I say
them, but I get from them the feeling that I must have, to go to sleep.”
“And now,” I went on, “it seems especially important to get into this
frame of mind just before we go to sleep. For during sleep it seems as
if the bigger self were working for us. And as we go to sleep, so shall
we be next day. I think that if, as you fall asleep, you ask—your vast
self—for strength, for the power to do whatever you know you must do
next day, and to solve whatever problems you have to solve, and then get
the deep sense of prayer, you usually awaken with the strength you need,
and your problems solved. Is it not so?”
Virginia said she always found that if she wanted to learn something,
she had only to read it over to herself at night, without learning it,
and in the morning, when she awoke, she knew it. Ruth said she found it
so; that she always felt next day according to the way she had fallen
asleep at night. They had various opinions. Marian said it did not
matter how she fell asleep at night; if things went well in the morning,
the whole day went well; if ill, then the day went ill. She loves the
power of each new day. Alfred said he thought that our brains worked for
us in sleep, because then the mind was free from all obstructing
thoughts.
I repeated for them a little prayer I had written for a baby:
“Great Lord of life, who lives in me,
And lives in all I know,
With happy thoughts I go to sleep;
And while I sleep I grow.
“I hope to wake this coming morn
More strong, and brave and bright;
While you shall stay, both night and day,
With all I love to-night.”
They said it did not seem babyish to them. Henry, especially, liked it,
and several of them wished to copy it.
I said one might have the “prayer-feeling,” the sense of the whole, so
constantly that one would not need to pray, that one’s whole life might
be a prayer.
The children objected to this, because they thought it would be
impossible now, in our imperfect condition. Virginia said: “A person who
lived that way would be a perfect saint.” Henry thought it would make
one cold and unsympathetic.
“How is that possible,” I asked, “when it would be a state of constant
sympathy and understanding of life?”
“No,” said Ruth; “such a person would be too much above us. I don’t
think one could live so, at present. It would imply a perfection
physical and mental that we have not yet reached.”
Florence said she not only thought such a state possible, but she
believed there were people who lived in this way now, and that she knew
such people.
Some one suggested that they must be unspeakably happy.
“No,” answered Florence; “not necessarily happy, at all.”
I said that I thought such a life would be a state of happiness.
They all agreed; Florence, too, after a moment.
Marian and Henry said they had never met people without limitations.
Florence insisted she had; whereupon Marian called her a hero-worshiper.
I said people’s limitations were where they failed to understand, and
that we none of us understood everything. The sense of oneness would not
imply, however, either perfection or apartness or superiority. One might
feel everything in this way, whenever one thought of it.
Henry answered: “But how often is one not occupied? Little things
distract us constantly.”
Marian said: “It means having always the sense of oneness, sympathy and
understanding, and always acting, thinking and judging according to
that.”
“Yes,” said I, “and there is another thing that seems to me a prayer.
Every creative action; that is, everything we do which brings us into
relation with the world, is a prayer because it is an expression of
oneness.”
Marian said: “It seems as if there were two kinds of prayer, one
strength-giving and one strength-getting.”
I don’t know how we came upon the subject of circles. I said that the
smallest things, as well as the largest, were prone to express
themselves in a universal way, that every drop of water naturally formed
itself into a sphere.
“Yes,” said Marian; “and the circle seems to stand for all life.”
Now we spoke of immortality. I asked each to tell me what he or she
thought.
Virginia did not want to express her opinion. Ruth and Henry vaguely
implied that they believed in immortality. Alfred said:
“I think it is very good for people, if they can believe in it.”
“That is not the question,” said I. “I believe nothing but the truth is
truly good for people. What do _you_ believe?”
“I don’t believe I am immortal,” he answered, “because I see no reason
to believe it.”
Florence said: “We must be immortal, because nothing dies, but is passed
on. And there is something in us—I mean that which loves and knows
sympathy—which we do not pass on. So I think it must be immortal.”
Marian said: “I am, so I don’t see how I could not be.”
I answered them: “Marian’s and Florence’s ideas seem to me very good.
One cannot prove immortality. I have good reasons to believe it. But my
best reason is not a reason at all; and if you don’t understand it, I
cannot explain it to you. If I am, I must be forever. ‘I am’ means
immortality. That is what Marian said, and what I believe. If I believe
in the whole Self of the universe, and that Self is in me, and I am in
it, then how can I die unless that Self dies? And if I believe in
progress, which is toward complete understanding and wholeness of the
Self, how can that progress be without me who am a part of it? Do you
know who Robert Ingersoll was? Well, he, who passed for such a
scoffer—though in reality he expressed only his own realization of his
ignorance and his contempt for dogmatic faiths—once said: ‘I am a part
of the world. Without me the world would be incomplete. In this there is
hope.’ Hope, he meant, of eternal life with the world.”
The children were much impressed.
Marian said: “How can one face the horrible thought of extinction? It is
unimaginable. What answer would you give,” she asked, “to those people
who claim that we are immortal only in our children, in the race? I
never know what to answer them, and yet I feel sure they are not right.”
“I think there are two good answers,” I said. “First, it is extremely
unlikely that the race is immortal. Even if we thought our immortality
unlikely, it is far more likely, and much less of an act of faith, to
believe in it than to believe in race-immortality. We know that every
planet dies and parches. We know that every race, every physical
manifestation comes to an end, but we know that the spirit of life lives
forever, and forever grows. I have heard people say that when this
planet dries and freezes, men will have advanced so far in science that
they will find their way in airships to another planet. But to me it
seems far more unlikely than that the spirit of life, the self within
us, should go on forever. The second answer seems to me to be Florence’s
answer, that we are not immortal in the race, that although we give our
children much, we give to no one our power of love, of understanding, of
sympathy.”
Henry asked: “Don’t we give it through example and teaching?”
“We give much,” I said. “We can teach and train, but we give no one that
understanding self, the power for love and sympathy, which is in us, and
cannot be made.”
Henry did not see how one could find satisfaction in living for the
race, since forever and ever each successive generation would be mortal
and would disappear.
I said I did not believe that in a world which to us was all intellect,
the intellect could die. Then I read aloud the following passage from
“John Percyfield,” by C. Hanford Henderson:
“It is an old mistake, that of calling desires beliefs. But I think I
have allowed for this. I have said, if death end all, if that be the
truth of it, then that is what I want to believe. For no man in his
right senses wishes to be either self-deceived, or other-deceived. I
have doubted immortality, even disbelieved it, but now I believe it on
as strong warrant as I have for any of my scientific beliefs. In one
sense, immortality cannot be experienced; it is not a fact of experience
in the same immediate way that certain minor scientific facts are. But
neither can the paleozoic age be experienced, nor space, nor time, nor
cause and effect. They are inductions from experience. And so to me is
immortality. It is an induction from experience. In a world where every
reality is essentially spiritual, or intellectual, whichever term you
prefer, where even the study of nature, as soon as it passes from mere
observation into orderly science, becomes a mental rather than a
physical fact, I can only imagine the disappearance of spirit by
picturing the annihilation of the universe itself. Without the mental
part that we give to all of our so-called facts, they would cease to
exist. It is possible that the universe does shrivel up in this way and
disappear, but it is less probable, I think, than any one of the great
possibilities which science rejects, and feels warranted in accepting
their opposite as fact.”
I said that to me as to him it seemed as if, were there not immortality
for the self, the world itself might shrivel up and disappear. A world
without immortality would be a mad world, without reason; and, as
everything else seems reasonable to me, I believe the world to be
reasonable. I spoke, too, of the danger of believing things simply
because we liked them. I told them how I had disbelieved in immortality
at one time, because I suddenly found I had only believed what pleased
me.
Virginia said: “I believe things because I like them. But may not that
liking, that feeling, in itself be a sign of truth?”
“No,” I answered; “liking is no proof or sign.”
Marian said: “But it is only because we care, because we wish to
believe, that we begin to think of these things.”
“Yes,” I replied, “we must care. But then we must bravely face the
truth.”
Marian told us she had never been taught anything on this subject, but
that gradually her belief had grown, and that her talks with Ruth had
helped her from her ideas.
I said many people believed in “personal” immortality; that is,
immortality with memory, and the meeting of those we love. I do not
pretend to know, or to have a definite opinion. But I think the results
of life are eternal, even if not in precise memories. I asked the
children for opinions. None of them seemed to believe, or care to
believe, in distinct personal immortality.
Ruth said: “We would surely meet those we had loved, in that complete
whole self, even though it were not as persons.”
I was surprised and glad to hear her say it. I had said to the children
that they probably believed, and might easily believe, much beyond what
I told them, but this was all which I believed; I would tell them no
theories or surmises of mine, of which I could not feel certain. They
were urgent in asking me please to tell them some theories, but I
refused.
Virginia said she believed in transmigration. I think it possible, as I
told her; it is in every way consistent with progress and all things in
life, but I have no reason for feeling sure of it. She said: “It must be
true, for if there is just so much spirit in the world, forever and
ever, and if it must express itself through matter, how can there be
anything but transmigration? Some time we may all live again on some
other planet, in some other shape.” I said it might be so.
The children asked me whether I believed animals were immortal. I
answered that as much life and self as is in them must be immortal. I
observed that this idea of animal-immortality was consistent with
Virginia’s belief in transmigration, that so each least creature might
rise through successive stages toward its complete self.
Then I said to the children that, of course, if we believed we had been
nothing before we were born, we could easily believe in extinction. But
I, for one, believed, yes, knew, that I had been forever, that I was not
“made” in these few years.
“Yes,” said Marian, “I could not have grown to be what I am, just since
I was born.”
Henry said: “We are not concerned with the past, but with the future.”
Virginia, and the others, brought up instances of seeming to remember
things from a former life, of feeling as if they had done some
particular thing before, in the dim past.
Alfred had not spoken at all during this time. He now said he very much
wished he could believe in immortality, but could not see any reason for
doing so. I said we should have to spend the next meeting in convincing
Alfred. I went on: “If we believe in the vast Self of life, and if we
are a part of that awakening Self, how can we die?”
Then I read aloud Emily Brontë’s “Last Lines.”
I was glad to leave the subject open in this fashion, to give them a
week for thought, and I said little more.
SIXTH MEETING
I began by reading the children’s papers. Virginia wrote the following:
“Some people have the idea that to pray means to fall upon one’s knees,
fold one’s hands, lift one’s eyes to heaven, and mutter some words one
doesn’t understand, sometimes in a foreign tongue. I don’t agree with
them. Unconscious prayer is the only true prayer; at least, so I
believe. In a great crisis a man does not go on his knees, or, if he
does, he is not praying what he is saying, which is a mere parrot-cry.
His prayer is what he is thinking, and what is in his heart.
“Many people say a prayer every night. In most cases this is not a true
prayer, but still it brings peace and calmness, and it is lovely to be
in a calm state before going to sleep. I think the reason for this is
that the person who prays before going to sleep thinks himself so
virtuous that he is at peace with the whole world. Then again, the
person who goes to church every time he commits a sin, and prays for
forgiveness, becomes careless of the wrong he does. For can he not pray
and be forgiven without the least trouble?”
We had a good laugh over Virginia’s idea of prayer, which seemed to be
chiefly her idea of other people’s prayer.
Then I read Henry’s paper:
“Every man must decide for himself whether or not he shall pray, for no
one else can tell him, since it is a matter of feeling. If a man is
relieved by prayer, then let him pray; but if he only prays from habit,
he is doing wrong.
“We must not expect that our prayers will be answered by that superior
power which we call God, for this will only happen when we make up our
minds to gain our end, and put our heart and spirit in the work. There
is a saying, ‘God helps those who help themselves.’
“Some people like to put their prayers in words, while others like to
think them and feel them. Still others like to put out of their minds
for a time all earthly troubles, and just think of and feel that
kindness and sympathy for their fellow man; and to think of the great
spiritual questions which should have such great influence on the lives
of everybody, and in this way let that spirit within them get complete
control of them, and that is their way of praying.
“No one can say which way is the right way, but if you do it in that way
which does you the most good, for you it will be the right way.”
Henry said he thought kneeling, and the attitude of prayer, were a
“pretty” custom. They were the attitude of supplication. I questioned
whether the best “prayer” was a supplication, said I did not like the
word “prayer” for that reason. Virginia said she thought we often “felt”
a supplication, even if we did not pray nor expect an answer.
Marian had tried to get the “prayer-feeling” each night last week, but
had not succeeded. She could not get calm, but thought of everything
under the sun, and then fell asleep.
Virginia said: “You can’t make your mind a blank.”
I answered: “Making your mind a blank is not prayer.”
Henry thought it good to consider our spiritual problems just before
going to sleep, and so get into the right state of mind. Ruth agreed.
Now I read Marian’s paper:
“At a meeting of the Seekers on November 8th, we discussed the subject
of Prayer. Prayer is really a feeling. When we feel truly in harmony
with our inner and our bigger self, the feeling we have is prayer.
Prayer can be made a source of strength. If we find some way to get into
the prayer-feeling every day or at night, it will be a great help to us.
As we reached a conclusion on this subject very soon, we began a
discussion on Immortality, which we expect to finish next week.”
Now we spoke of immortality. Although the six of us believed in it, by
trying to convince Alfred we might gain much.
I asked why, or whether, it was important to have an opinion concerning
immortality.
Marian said it was important for us to know, because we were interested,
because we cared so much. I answered, that was one reason, and then
there was another. Ruth said the other reason was that we acted
according to our ideas of death, that it influenced our morality.
“Yes,” I answered, “we live according to our expectations. Think of how
the false or true ideas of a future life influenced morality in ages
past, of the morals, good and bad, which sprang from the idea of heaven
and hell! Alfred, do you think it is important to know?”
“Yes,” said he, “it is important; but I can’t come to any conclusion. I
am not convinced.”
Some people feel sure one cannot know anything about immortality, and
that therefore it is not worth thinking of it at all.
Henry said: “Because one does not know a thing now is no reason why one
should not try to find out. And I believe we shall know, some time. If
people had felt so about other equally difficult things, we would never
have got on.”
I said: “What is knowledge? We cannot _know_ immortality as an
experience, through our senses; but I believe we can _know_ through our
reason, just as so much other scientific knowledge is a matter of
reason, of analogy, of deduction. It can’t be proved, as one might prove
that two and two are four. But then I once read in a book that nothing
could be proved, except the things not worth proving.
“If we saw a red rose, and we all called it a red rose, there would be
no doubt of its redness. But if we differed, and some called it red,
some pink, some yellow, we should soon be in grave doubt. Our eyes might
be wrong. There have been so many opinions regarding immortality,
because people had different ‘eyes,’ that now we are full of doubts.”
We spoke of the time when the earth was thought flat because it looked
flat.
Alfred said: “Immortality of what, do you mean?”
“Immortality of everything,” I answered. “We might, of course, believe
that the universe will die, will be extinct. But it is an unthinkable
thought. We all believe in something eternal. We know that force does
not die, but is changed and transmitted; we know that no substance is
destroyed; we know that every action, every circumstance has endless
consequences and endless antecedents. They—and I—are forever a part of
the universe. How could we be destroyed? Why should we think that
everything is immortal, excepting self, which seems the motive force?”
Alfred said: “I don’t believe it is destroyed; but it goes out of me,
and that is the end of me.”
The others asked how Alfred could have agreed with us all so far, and
not agree now, since it seemed to them that what we had said before, the
idea of progress, implied immortality. How could he believe in the Self
as God, the vast Self which comes to complete understanding, and yet
believe that he, who was a part of it, that in him, and he in that,
could be utterly destroyed?
He said he believed new self was always coming into the universe, and
old self going out.
“Where would it come from, where would it go?” asked Virginia.
I said: “There is nothing but the universe. Everything is in it.”
He answered that he believed in progress, progress toward unity and
understanding, but it passed from one person to another; it would not be
himself.
“How could the whole of Self be complete unless you were there?” I
asked.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I don’t see how it could be. It would
not be myself.”
“No, not you, in any definite sense, but self, and yourself in that. But
it does not matter whether you disagree, if you can really go onward
with us, and believe with us, without believing you are immortal. For
all that matters is how we live now. It is not necessary to know the
future, unless you need it for the present. When I say ‘immortal’ I mean
we are immortal, now, because the universe is here.”