that all progress, all goodness would have no sense. She said: “One
might live to do good, just to be kind to others, who were also mortal.
But if that were the end, there would be no meaning in it.”
Henry agreed with her, and most of the others expressed similar ideas. I
said this did not prove we were immortal. But I, too, felt a limited
life to be meaningless. Still, I wanted to know the truth.
Alfred saw he could not consistently believe in race immortality, but he
wanted to.
Virginia said: “You know the sun will burn down some time. Every fire
burns itself out. Then the world will get cold and dark. And then what
becomes of the human race?”
“But,” I said, “the energy that was the sun will be in the universe, and
will light other suns.”
“Energy never dies,” said Virginia. “If I put out my arm like this,” and
she stretched forth her hand, “the energy that goes out from me never
dies. It bounds and rebounds, and in some way goes on forever.”
“As it has been forever until now,” I said.
“No, I think it dies out,” said Alfred. “If you bounce a ball, it bounds
and rebounds and then stops.”
I explained to him how energy is not destroyed, but transmitted; how
nothing is ever destroyed, but all things are changed.
He believed the physical part changed and was not destroyed. Still, it
was not life any more.
He said: “It is not the same thing. I am myself now, but I am not the
same person I was as a little child. I am all changed.”
“Yes,” I answered him, “your body is different material, your brain and
your thoughts are not the same, your shape is changed, but you are still
self, and you were self then.”
“But when I die, where will I be?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I know that somehow you must be.”
Virginia and Alfred—in fact, all the children—had a long discussion.
Alfred said, in speaking of a horse which had been buried in the woods,
and over which ferns had grown, “but the ferns were not the horse”—a
sensible remark. He said: “When you move your hand, the energy that goes
onward is not the hand. And so, when I die, the self that goes out of me
may be a force, but it will go out of me, it will not be I.”
“But you yourself,” I said, “are the life, the force, the self, which
goes forth, which moves all things.”
Here the children, being left to themselves, went up into thin air. They
argued the possibility of nothingness. Virginia told how when she was a
little child she used to imagine what would happen if there were no
earth. They each described how they couldn’t imagine nothing, and what
happened when they tried. Ruth told how one couldn’t imagine perfect
unity and understanding, either. I stopped them, and said it made not
the least difference in any fact whether they could or couldn’t imagine
it. Virginia, the little artist and mystic, said she thought in
childhood one touched the truth unconsciously. The others all denied
this. I said it was a pleasant and comfortable thought.
Now I said there was one other interesting thing I wanted to speak of,
and that was memory. Most people believe we remember nothing from before
birth. This is not true. Our whole body, our very being, is a memory.
Florence said: “It is a race memory. Often we find it easy to do a thing
we never did before, because our ancestors did it.”
“Yes,” I answered, “instinct is a memory. The fact that we are here at
all, our minds, our thinking, as well as our bodies, are a memory. We
ourselves, our present bodies, are a consequence of the lives before us,
a memory from the endless past.”
“We are what they lived,” said Ruth, “as our bodies shall be what we
live, not what we think on the surface, but what we live.”
“Yes,” I answered, “but after a while we do live our thoughts.”
Henry said life was a repetition with progress. “But in the one-celled
animal,” he asked, “was life an expression of mind?”
“I don’t know,” I said; “but it seems to me self or will must be at the
bottom of all motion. I read a theory lately, in an ‘evolution’ book,
that was very interesting. It is this: That consciousness or desire is
the source of all development, and that lower creatures are conscious of
acts which to us are automatic. The lowest creature, which is a mere bag
or stomach, would then be conscious of itself, whereas in us the
consciousness of primal organs is swamped and lost in our more intense
nervous consciousness. Thus, from the first, consciousness and will
might be the source of progress, as they are now.”[2]
They all thought it a plausible and interesting theory. Marian said:
“It seems likely. For do not babies have difficulty in walking, and are
conscious of every step, whereas we do it almost automatically?”
“Yes,” I said; “it might be the same with the race.”
I insisted that one could know the truth in certain directions, if one
were willing to admit absolute ignorance in others. I felt sure I was
immortal, but I had not the least idea how. I would not build up a
heaven, hell or universe of the dead, because all these conjectures were
likely to be false. I said one could know much and learn more only by
admitting one’s limitations.
Of course one could not know, I said, but I myself did not believe in
personal immortality with definite memory. It might be so, or it might
not.
“I think it is not so,” said Marian, “for we remember nothing definite
from before birth.”
“But,” I said, “I feel sure that memory, the essence of memory, will go
on; just as our bodies and selves are a memory, so whatever we are in
this life will have its consequences, and we will be forever according
to what we are now. All progress is a memory—and a prophecy.”
I spoke, too, of the endless stream of every least action, how the least
word, once spoken, is a spring of eternal consequence, how each moment
is tremendously important. I reminded Marian how she had once said
school was so short, it did not much matter what one did; and I had
answered her, all life was short.
“Some people think actions under certain conditions—in foreign lands,
for instance—do not count.”
Virginia said she lived to enjoy herself, no matter what death might be,
but her enjoyment included making others happy. I said, that was the
only good way to live, to enjoy oneself, and have a very big idea of
what enjoyment meant.
In talking we stumbled across difficult, confusing words, “God,”
“truth,” “eternity.” Ruth said: “We ought to invent a new language, a
code of symbols, for everything in the old language has so many acquired
meanings, is so used up.”
“We have made almost a code of our own,” said Marian.
Alfred had said nothing to let me know whether or not he had been
convinced of immortality. It will be interesting to hear what he has
thought during the week.
We had now finished the first and fundamental part of what we meant to
do; we would now test everything by that standard.
“It is strange,” said Marian, “how everything we have said has sprung
from just one thing.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“Our idea of God,” she answered.
I said that, according to my prediction, we scarcely found it necessary
to use the word God.
Marian answered: “It is because the word has so many meanings, is so
easily misunderstood. But we know what we mean without saying it. My
Sunday-school teacher said God took a personal interest in each one. I
don’t believe that,” she went on, “except as we are in ourselves, and
take an interest in ourselves. That idea of hers puts God, as it were,
outside and apart.”
I questioned Ruth concerning Christian Science. She said our idea
corresponded altogether with hers; it was the application which would
probably differ, and we had not yet spoken of that. “We will do so now,”
I answered. I asked the others if they would not like to have Ruth
speak, in a meeting later on, of Christian Science. They all said that
they would like it.
Next we will consider art, creative genius, in relation to our idea. I
was glad the children agreed with me in preferring this to moral
disputations. I said I thought the longer we waited to speak of moral
questions, the larger view we would take of them. I wanted to avoid
pettiness.
Our subject for next week grew naturally out of this week’s talk. I
said: “As a drop of water can be a sphere as perfect as the suns and
planets, so each smallest thing, if it be perfect in itself, typifies
the universe. You must realize that in an infinite universe there is
really no such thing as size.”
“There is only comparative size,” said Virginia.
“Yes,” I answered; “and it is with this idea in mind that I wish to
consider beauty, and the definite separate creation. I shall want to
know next week what each of you means by beauty, or thinks beautiful.”
Marian—thinking of the personal side immediately—said: “I think it’s
because most people are homely, that we think some beautiful.”
We were amused at that. I said I did not mean personal beauty in
particular. Then they asked, did I mean artistic beauty? I meant beauty
in anything. I would want to know what made certain things seem
beautiful to us.
Virginia said: “I think there is nothing so beautiful as taking a deep,
deep breath. That brings beautiful thoughts into my head, and makes
everything right.”
This remark did not seem pertinent to any of us. Virginia insisted, too,
that she thought a man was an artist, even if he could not express
himself; that to have artistic thoughts made one an artist. I answered,
it might be so; work itself was not good art unless it was a good
expression, no matter what the artist might be. Virginia explained: “I
mean an artist is more interesting than his work, sometimes.”
Florence said: “A beautiful thing—in art—is a complete thing, complete
and perfect in itself.”
“I don’t think so,” answered Virginia. “If you were to sketch a
tree—without finishing it at all—and that sketch were your whole idea
of the tree as you saw it, then it would be no sketch, but a finished
picture. A thing is a sketch until you have altogether expressed your
idea. But then, no matter how sketchy it may look, it is finished.”
I had to interpret Florence to Virginia. I said: “Florence did not mean
completeness in the sense of exactness. She meant that the tree, no
matter how indicated, must seem to us so complete, in a world of its
own, as to leave nothing lacking or intruding; that everything in the
picture is there in relation to the tree, and the whole makes a perfect
little world. If there were suggestions of other things which had
nothing to do with the tree, such as there always are in life, it would
not be a perfect picture. You said it must be a complete expression of
the artist’s thought. That is just the completeness Florence means. It
must be a complete, self-sufficient harmonious vision of a tree. And
harmony means wholeness, doesn’t it?”
“For instance,” said Florence, “even the smallest and most trivial poem
would be beautiful if it were perfect in itself—and complete. Take
Leigh Hunt’s ‘Jenny Kissed Me,’ such a little thing, and yet beautiful,
telling the delights of a kiss. And then take ‘Faust,’ which is much
larger and deeper; and yet each is perfect in its way, though ‘Faust’
expresses so much more.”
“Have you read ‘Faust’?” I answered her.
“No,” she said, “but I know all about it.” _I_ knew that she had got her
ideas ready-made from “brother Arthur,” and I was amused. But I did not
wish to be hurried into the midst of my subject without beginning at the
beginning, so I cut the discussion as short as might be.
Marian said: “I don’t understand what they mean.”
I told her she would understand when we had talked it over, that I only
wanted her, before next week, to settle her own ideas as to what she
thought beautiful.
Florence repeated: “Beauty is completeness.”
“I think,” said Marian, “I begin to see what Florence means by that.
Like the drop of water.”
I like to suggest the subject for the following week at the close of
each meeting, and, if possible, to speak enough of it to give them a
starting-place for their thoughts.
-----
[2] Cope’s theory, in “Darwinism To-day,” Kellog, p. 287.
SEVENTH MEETING
Ruth brought with her a “Christian Science” prayer. I said I would read
it aloud at the meeting on Christian Science. One line in the prayer
was, “purified from the flesh.” Ruth guessed, before I said anything,
that I objected to this line. She believes the body is “something to be
overcome.” All the others and myself disagreed with her.
I said: “I, who believe in endless progress, believe the means
themselves to be good and wonderful. Unless this moment were good,
nothing it led to could be wholly good.”
Ruth said: “The body is something unreal, unessential, which we do not
keep.”
I answered: “We keep nothing but what we always possessed, the power of
growth.” Ruth says we get certain new truths, and then keep them. She
tries to think that my idea and Christian Science agree in every way,
except that we use different language. But she has doubts and qualms.
Then we spoke of “New Thought.” I said I thought most of what is called
so was unanswerably true, only there seemed to be an enmity between “New
Thought” and good English. Marian agreed with me. She said she could
have no respect for a man who used poor English. I would not say that,
for I had received too much information from men who did not know how to
give it. But, I said, I had often missed information rather than rewrite
a book for myself mentally, before I could read it. Marian’s father had
read aloud to her, from a “New Thought” book, this sentence: “The seen
is unreal, and the unseen is real.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said. “Do you?”
“No,” I answered; “I believe everything is real, the seen and the
unseen. There is nothing but reality.”
I also said my chief objection to all these cults was that they insisted
too often on physical health as the aim of life. Virginia said: “But
just think, if we had not to be concerned about our bodies any more, if
we were perfectly well, how much we could do!”
“Yes,” I answered, “that is true; but still it is not an end, but only a
means.”
This was all before the meeting. Alfred had come very early, as usual,
and told me he “thought” he believed as I did concerning immortality.
I opened the meeting by reading Marian’s paper:
“On Sunday, November 15th, the Seekers held a regular meeting. Our
discussion was on Immortality. Most of us agreed that our self, our real
or inner self, is immortal. In the first place, if this self in us and
in every one should die there would be nothing left, because that is the
real, the life-giving power. Moreover, if we were not immortal, what
would be the use of life? Some people argue that we leave part of
ourselves and the impressions of our characters to other generations,
and so on. However, science has (almost) proved that the race is not
immortal, and at least, it is harder to believe that it is, than to
believe in the immortality of the real self. Personally, I feel that my
real self is immortal, and that I will go on being. We do not attempt to
picture any future state. This discussion is the only one in which we
did not all agree.”
Next I read Henry’s paper:
“To-day we continued our talk on Immortality. Immortality is entirely a
matter of faith, but the different ideas concerning it have influenced
the fates of nations.
“The mind realizes so much that it does not accomplish, that it seems as
though there must be a continuance of spiritual action after what we
call death. If the spirit did not continue to exist, what would be the
purpose of our life? Some say our purpose is to pave the walk of life
for our descendants. Indeed, we do want those who come after us to find
life pleasant and worth while living, but that alone would not be a
sufficient purpose, for why need there be descendants? Why was there
anybody in the beginning? And besides this, we have more reason to
believe in the mortality of the race than for any of our beliefs in
regard to the soul. Science teaches us that certain of the planets,
which were once habitable, are now no longer so. This may some day
happen to our planet, and then the race for which we have worked will
cease to be. Although we do live for the race, we live more for the
spirit. We have already said that we are part of one great union. If
this is true there must be immortality, for when part of the spirit
ceased to be, there would no longer be a great, perfect union.”
I said to Henry: “Your papers never begin as if they were going to be
right, but they end especially well. You always keep the best for the
last.”
Now we went on to our subject of beauty. What, I asked, was the one
truly beautiful perfect thing, the thought of which gives us more
delight than any other?
They said—bit by bit—that it was complete understanding, unity,
sympathy.
I said I believed every beautiful thing was one which symbolized this
completeness, something that in itself seemed complete and perfect and
fulfilled. It took some time to explain this. Florence, of course,
already understood it. Virginia and Marian caught at it as a new and
elusive and valuable idea. All except Henry saw what I meant. Marian had
said, even before I expressed this idea, that beauty was symmetry.
Henry said: “I don’t see what you mean, or why you need question it. A
beautiful thing is one that gives us a thrill of delight.”
“Yes,” I answered, “certainly. That is like saying a thing is red
because it has a red color. What I want to know is why things delight us
with their beauty, so that we may make a standard from these, whereby to
judge all things.”
I stopped them when they began to speak of special works of art,
because, I insisted, we would first speak of beauty in all things in the
world.
Virginia said: “When I am in a field among animals, playing with them
all, that to me seems beautiful. I do feel sympathy with them, but it
isn’t completeness.”
“No,” I answered, “and it isn’t beautiful, though it is delightful in
another way. Beauty is something apart from us, which we see and hear,
and which wakes in us a sense of completeness, of harmony within itself,
as if _there_ were the whole world, nothing lacking, nor yet too much. A
landscape, for instance.”
“It is sometimes not beautiful at all,” said Henry.
“No,” I answered, “surely not. A landscape, no matter how beautiful and
wonderful, would be spoiled by a big sign on the nearest tree,
advertising ‘Babbitt’s Soap.’”
“Or a sign ‘To Let,’” said Henry.
“Yes,” I answered, “though that might not be as bad, yet that, too,
would be inharmonious, and suggest all sorts of irrelevant things.”
“But,” said Henry, “a burnt wood is harmonious, I suppose, and yet it
would be ugly.”
“Not always,” said I, “not if it were blended into the landscape, and
mellowed.”
“No,” Henry answered, “perhaps not, if the colors were beautiful.”
“But if it were ugly,” I said, “it would be inharmonious. A newly burnt
forest suggests death and desolation in the midst of life and summer—an
incongruity. It suggests destruction where the thought is most unwelcome
and horrible.”
“Then,” said Marian, “it is not the thing itself, but the feeling which
it gives us, that is beautiful.”
“Yes,” I said, “it gives us the thrill of that complete joy. We seem to
see something which is what cannot be; complete harmony. The sight of
the sea makes Virginia feel so. And you, the out-of-doors.”
Virginia said: “I have sometimes thought beauty is light, because the
sun is most beautiful—and, at night, the moon.”
“But,” said I, “if there were no shadows and no darkness, sun and moon
would not be beautiful.”
“Then contrast?” she asked.
I said: “There must be contrast in all beautiful things, because without
contrast we could not have completeness.”
“Yes,” she said, “in pictures it is so.”
“A small thing,” I went on, “might symbolize completeness, as well as a
large one. A dog, in his way, a beautiful Scotch collie, for instance,
might be as beautiful as a man.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Ruth.
We criticized, and found lacking, according to our standard, the beauty
of prize bulldogs; the teeth were too suggestive of strife and biting,
the spots unsymmetrical, and so on. They spoke of many instances of
beauty in things, especially the beauty of little children, and fitted
them to this new standard.
Marian said: “A drop of water is so symmetrical and harmonious, so
beautiful in the sunshine; and yet, on a dark day, on the sidewalk, it
is not beautiful.”
I explained even that. I showed her how a drop on the sidewalk was not a
drop, but a daub, how it suggested all sorts of ugly and incongruous
things. “But,” I said, “if we take the trouble to look at a drop hanging
from anything, say from a leaf, we shall always find it beautiful.”
She agreed to that. Then she said: “Don’t you think we sometimes do
think of our own life as a beautiful thing?”
“Yes,” I answered. “There are moments when our own life suddenly seems
complete, when we feel an artist’s delight in it, and for a while we,
and the whole world with us, seem to have reached what we longed for.”
Florence asked: “Don’t you think it is usually when we are having a very
good, jolly time?”
Marian answered quickly: “No, not at all.”
I understood what Marian meant, and did not attempt, naturally, to
explain it to the others.
Now we all agreed, every one of us, that completeness and harmony were
beauty. But the children had started time and again to bring up
instances in art which to them seemed not to fit, and which they
thoroughly misunderstood.
“You see,” I said, “that the beautiful thing is the same as that which
seems to us most true and good.”
Marian said again that one idea seemed to cover everything, and that we
came to conclusions quickly.
“Now I will tell you,” I said, “what I mean by art and the artist. In
speaking of art here to-day I mean not only painting—as one of you
thought—but everything which expresses beauty; poetry, the novel and
drama, sculpture, music, acting. You see the difference between science
and art?”
“Science gives us knowledge,” said Marian.
“Yes,” I answered, “or, rather, science gives us facts, truths, but
never at all the complete truth. It gives us parts as parts, never the
whole. Philosophy, on the other hand, does what we are doing here. It
reaches out for the complete whole, for understanding, for unity, but it
knows well that it can never attain the end. It reaches out for the
complete good, and is satisfied with nothing less than that unattainable
whole. But art does another thing; it tells us a lie—the most wonderful
lie in the world—truer than any truth. It says: Look, here is
completeness, harmony, wholeness, in this one small shape. And we know
it cannot be so, but still we feel it to be there. That lie gives us, as
no truth can, the thing we long for, and know to be most true.
“Now, what do you mean by the word genius? What is genius?” I asked.
“Usually,” said Virginia, “a genius is a crank. There is a girl in my
art class who is the frousiest, queerest crank in the world, and every
one calls her a genius.”
“Geniuses are often queer,” said Henry.
Ruth said, too, that many geniuses were anything but great and good in
their private lives.
“Well,” I answered, “I am surprised by your definition of a genius. But
perhaps you will be more surprised, and sorry you said so much, when I
tell you that I consider every one of you a genius.”
“Oh, my,” said Virginia, “how nice! I wish I were.”
I said: “What we usually call genius is but a larger power of
understanding, a sense of unity, of the relations of things. And we all
have that, in some degree. So we all have genius. It is not a matter of
quality but of quantity. We are all the same stuff, only some more and
some less.”
Henry said I might use the word in that sense, but he didn’t think it
was the true meaning. He said: “What definition is in the dictionary?”
We had no dictionary at hand, so I tried to prove my definition true
without a dictionary, and I succeeded.
I said: “There is no gulf between the genius and the stupid looker-on.
Don’t you see why there could not be?”
“I see,” said Marian; “it is because the looker-on would have to have
some genius, or else——” She could not finish.
“Just so, Marian,” I went on; “or else he could not appreciate the
artist’s work. It is the genius in the onlooker that appreciates the
genius in the artist. And in so far as you can appreciate the genius of
Shakespeare, in so far you have the same sort of genius.”
“Then,” said she, “art makes us recognize ourselves.”
“Yes,” I answered, “our bigger selves.”