right—no, no—I didn’t mean that exactly. Of course I’ve done millions of
wrong things—but I mean—Oh Hattie dear, Heaven is such a vague term! All
we know is that it is a beautiful place where we’ll be happy, and that
we’re going there.
THE GIRL. How do you know we’re goin’?
THE LADY. I don’t know, I believe.
THE GIRL. But how do you know the wrong things you done won’t keep you
out?
THE LADY. Now I’m afraid you’re exciting yourself—
THE GIRL. Oh Lord, cut that out! I’m excited all right, all right! Guess
you’d be if you had the thoughts I got goin’ ’round in your head all the
time—but there’s no sense talking them out. Nobody can’t do nothin’ for
me now!
THE LADY. Oh you mustn’t say that!
THE GIRL. Well, can ye?
THE LADY. I’ll try if you will tell me what is troubling you.
THE GIRL. Oh Gawd! She wants to know what’s troubling me, she does!
THE LADY. Can’t you tell me? Perhaps I could help you.
THE GIRL. You said you done wrong things.—What was they?
THE LADY. I—I don’t know exactly.
THE GIRL. You don’t _know_?
THE LADY. Why I suppose I could think of lots of things but—
THE GIRL. She could “think of lots o’ things”! Has to stop to remember—O
gee—guess she’ll get in.
THE LADY. Oh _please_ don’t laugh like that! Listen—Whatever you have
done, no matter how dreadful, if you are sorry it will be all
right—Don’t be afraid.
THE GIRL. Is that true?
THE LADY. Yes.
THE GIRL. I don’t believe it.
THE LADY. It is true nevertheless.
THE GIRL. Well, if you aint sorry?
THE LADY. But surely you are—You must be!
THE GIRL. No I aint. It was better dead.
THE LADY. What do you mean?
THE GIRL. I tell ye, it was better to be dead. Say, Lady—in them wrong
things you done you _can’t remember_ did ye—did ye ever kill a kid that
hadn’t hardly breathed—Say, did ye—did ye?
THE LADY. Oh, oh—What shall I do? Hattie! Hattie! Try and stop crying.
I’m so grieved for you. Tell me what you wish—only don’t cry so!
THE GIRL. I aint sorry.
THE LADY. No, no, never mind that. Tell me if you want to, tell me—about
it.
THE GIRL. An’ I aint sorry for what cum first—him—it was all I ever had;
that time, that little weeny time!
THE LADY. Wait a moment—wouldn’t you rather have a clergyman?
THE GIRL. _No!_ There’s one comes ’round here. I don’ want to tell him
nothin’.
THE LADY. Very well—go on.
THE GIRL. It was so little, and it squawked! It squawked awful!
THE LADY. Oh—don’t!
THE GIRL. You don’t want me to tell ye?
THE LADY. Yes, yes.
THE GIRL. Oh what’s the use? What’s the use? You can’t do nothin’.
Nobody kin. I aint sorry! The kid’s better dead, lots better. It’s what
cum after—I’m so dirty! I’m so dirty! I’ll never get clean! Oh, what’s
gona happen when I die? What’s gona happen? An’ I gotta die soon!
THE LADY. You mustn’t feel so, you mustn’t! God is kind and good and
merciful. He will forgive you—Ask Him to!
THE GIRL. I did ask Him to—lots o’ times. It don’ do no good. I aint
sorry! Everybody says you gotta feel sorry, an’ I aint. A girl kid’s
better dead, I tell ye! That’s why I done it. I loved it, ’fore it came,
’cause it was hisn. After I done it nothin’ mattered—nothin’! So I—And I
gotta die soon—what’s gona happen?
(During the preceding the sound of a tambourine and singing has been
heard outside. As the girl cries out the last words, the Lady,
finding no answer, goes to the window. She has a sudden thought.)
THE LADY. I’ll be back in a moment! (She goes out.)
(Nothing is heard but the girl’s sobs for a moment. Then the Lady
ushers in a Salvation Army Lassie—her tambourine held tightly, but
jingling a little. She stands embarrassed by the foot of the bed.
The Girl stares at her.)
THE GIRL. I know them kind too.
THE LASSIE. Can’t I do something for you?
THE GIRL. No—not now—You’re a good sort enough—but—I aint sorry—I tell
ye—I aint, I aint!
THE LASSIE (to Lady). What d’ye want me for? What’ll I do?
THE LADY. Couldn’t you sing something brave and cheerful? You were
singing so nicely out there.
THE LASSIE (to Girl). Shall I?
THE GIRL. No—they won’t let ye. It ’ud make a noise.
THE LADY. Sing it low.
THE LASSIE. (In a sing-song voice—swaying, half chanting, half
speaking:) “Shall we gather at the river—the beautiful, the beautiful
river, etc.”
THE GIRL (after trying to listen for a stanza or two). Oh cut it out! I
don’ want ye to sing to me—I want ye to tell me what’s gona happen. Oh,
don’ nobody know? I’m so afraid—so ’fraid! (As her voice rises the
nurse, who has, unobserved, looked in during the singing, enters with
the doctor. He bows slightly to the Lady and the Lassie, then goes
quickly to the girl, putting his hand on her forehead.)
THE DOCTOR. Why child—what troubles you?
THE GIRL (clinging to his hand). Doctor! Everybody says I got to be
sorry to get in. I aint sorry, an’ I’m ’fraid, I’m ’fraid.
THE DOCTOR. To get in where?
THE GIRL. Heaven, where you’ll be happy.
THE DOCTOR. That is very interesting, how do you suppose they found that
out? How do they know, I mean?
THE LADY. Doctor, I didn’t tell her that.
THE DOCTOR. Didn’t you? She seems strangely excited. (He seats himself
by the bed.) Come child, let’s talk about it. (He motions—to the nurse
that she is not needed. She goes out. The Salvation Army Lassie, makes
an awkward little bow and gets herself out. The Lady stands at the foot
of the bed listening for a few moments, then slips quietly out.)
THE DOCTOR. Now, tell me what is on your mind, but try and stop crying
and speak plainly, for I want to understand what you say.
THE GIRL. I’m gona die, aint I?
THE DOCTOR. Yes.
THE GIRL. When?
THE DOCTOR. I don’t know.
THE GIRL. _Soon?_
THE DOCTOR. Yes.
THE GIRL. How soon? Tomorrow?
THE DOCTOR. No, not tomorrow. Perhaps in a month, perhaps longer.
THE GIRL. Will I get sorry ’fore I go?
THE DOCTOR. How can I tell? But what does it matter? Why do you want to
be sorry especially? What good would it do? It is all passed, isn’t it?
Nothing can change that.
THE GIRL. But I gotta be—to get in.
THE DOCTOR. You seem very sure on that point.
THE GIRL. But everybody says I gotta be.
THE DOCTOR. What is the use saying it or thinking it when nobody knows?
THE GIRL. What you sayin’?
THE DOCTOR. You and I can believe differently if we want to. But why in
the world should you be asking me all these hard questions? I’ve never
been to Heaven have I? I don’t know whether you have to be sorry to get
in or not. How do you suppose _they_ found all that out?
THE GIRL. But aint I gotta be punished somewhere till I git sorry?
THE DOCTOR. Do you remember the other night when the pain was so bad?
THE GIRL. Yep.
THE DOCTOR. And I told you you would have to bear it, that I could do
nothing for you, and that you must be quiet not to disturb the others?
THE GIRL. Oh, don’t I remember!
THE DOCTOR. I guess that’s about enough punishment for one little girl.
You’ve been pretty unhappy lately, haven’t you, with the pain and the
terrible thoughts? I think it’s about time something else turned up for
you that would be nicer, don’t you?
THE GIRL. Turned up?
THE DOCTOR. Yes, something that would make up for all this. Do you know,
child, as I’ve gone through these wards day after day ’tending to all
you sick folks, I’ve about come to the conclusion that there must
be—something nicer—
THE GIRL. Tell me more about it.
THE DOCTOR. Well now—there’s another queer question. Didn’t I tell you I
don’t know anything to tell? I’ve never been there. I should think _you_
would have found out a _little_ something since you’re planning to go so
soon. But no, I don’t suppose you know much more than the rest of us.
And when you get there you will probably forget all about me and how
much I’d like to know what’s happening to my little patient. No use I
suppose asking you to tie a red string on your finger and say “that’s to
send Dr. Carroll a little message.” Is there any way, do you think you
could remember?
THE GIRL. You’re kiddin’ me!
THE DOCTOR. Indeed I am not. I long to know with all my heart, and I
suppose it will be years and years before I do. Why just think, you, you
are going to have a great adventure—You are going on a journey to a far
country where you’ll find out lots of things, and here am I, jogging
along up and down, to and fro, between my office and this hospital and
wondering and wondering and wondering! What a lucky little girl you are!
THE GIRL. And I don’t have to be sorry—to get in?
THE DOCTOR. Didn’t I tell you you were going soon anyway? You can be
sorry if you want to—but I think it is more interesting to dream about
the strange things there will be to discover, at the end of the journey.
THE GIRL. Will there be gates of gold that open wide, and angels
standin’ by with shinin’ wings?
THE DOCTOR. Wouldn’t you like to know? And so would I. You mustn’t
forget to send that message, will you? Do be careful to be accurate and
try to speak distinctly. You know that a great many wise men have
promised to send messages back, yet all that seems to come are foolish
words. If you will look at everything carefully and find a way of
telling me, I’ll write it down for all the world to ponder. Oh—then we
should really _know_ something—not just be groping—groping—groping in
the dark. If you only could, if you only could! I wonder— (In his turn
he gazes at her intently, then rises abruptly.) Well, child, I must go
on. Shall I teach you a few questions before you go, so you’ll be sure
and find out for me the most important things?
THE GIRL. Oh Doctor!
THE DOCTOR. You’d like to do something for me, wouldn’t you child?
(The girl reaches out for his hand and kisses it humbly, then gazes
at him.)
THE DOCTOR. Well, that would be the most wonderful thing in the world,
only you must be very very careful and you must do a lot of thinking
before you go, about what I’ve said. It is important to understand.
Don’t waste any time thinking about what is passed, will you?
THE GIRL. No, Doctor.
THE DOCTOR. We must talk it all over. There aren’t many people I could
trust to remember exactly all the things I want to know. But you can if
you try hard. (He touches the bell, the nurse appears.) Now, Miss
Bryant, Miss Hattie and I have several important things to discuss and
there isn’t much time left, so if she wants me at any time call me and
I’ll come. And I think while she has so much thinking on hand about what
I’m asking her to do for me, she had better not see other visitors. You
don’t mind, do you?
THE GIRL. No no! I don’ want ’em! Doctor, when will it come? Doctor,
will I know soon?
THE DOCTOR. Soon I think—Very soon. (He takes her hand a second, then
goes out, motioning the nurse to precede him.)
THE GIRL (raptly). Soon! He said it would be very soon—and I’m so tired!
I’d like something nicer.
(She settles herself with a little sigh, and falls asleep.)
CURTAIN.
[3] From _The Century, March, 1914_.
The Schoolmaster
GEORGE BURMAN FOSTER
The history of the world has not known a greater movement than that
which seized the hearts of men when the old culture was borne to its
grave, _and a new fresh Spring-life,—the Christ-life_, as it came to be
called,—of humanity, welled up from hidden and mysterious sources of
power. In the commerce of thought diverse folk-spirits were
cross-fertilized and bounds once held to be insurmountable were
transcended as vision grew wider. Customs came to be more human. Man
himself grew greater, deeper, freer. Man learned to practice virtues
which hitherto he had hated as vices: mercifulness, meekness,
peaceableness. Man prayed to a new God who made his sun to shine upon
the evil and the good. He ever created sacreder names for his God.
Taking his cue from the adorable will of this new God he framed ever
more earnest and more sacred rules of life. These were radical and
revolutionary novelties to the old culture, which speedily scented the
dangers menacing it, and as speedily dispatched executioners to the
rescue. In the language of its old theology, the language of St.
Augustine, this was called the war of the Kingdom of the World against
the Kingdom of God. Any well-informed scholar can recall what were said
to be the hindrances which the Kingdom of God had at first to overcome,
and how today these hindrances still offer the same resistance;
degenerate paganism, with its powers of unbelief, and with its supremacy
of the “flesh”; judaism, apostate from God, with its priests and
scribes.
It is not within the scope of my task to inquire how far this
traditional _schema_ of the upheavals at the tumultuous beginnings of
our era coincide with the facts. Only one consideration concerns me at
this time, and that one is not open to question: change as the phenomena
of history may, the _laws_ of those phenomena remain ever the same.
Accordingly, even the resistances which time’s new unfolding life has to
surmount, ever return—usually under a changed name, indeed,—and they
will continue to do so as long as there is a history of human culture in
the life of the world.
Passing on, now, to speak of the forces which the most modern prophet of
a new culture, _Friedrich Nietzsche_, looks upon as the most grievous
hindrances to a _new kind of man_, we shall surely expect to see first
of all, quite other faces than those which the pious fathers of the old
church saw in the foes of the _civitas die_; still, we shall
re-discover, significantly enough, many an old acquaintance behind the
strange re-modeled mask. As in that old day, so in ours, we shall
perceive in these foes of a new life, nothing of their hostility to
life. In part, they appear quite harmless; in part, they are the
universally dined and wined celebrities of the day at whom the masses
stare as the special pioneers of our culture, and in whom the masses
applaud the bearers and promoters of the best achievements of our
culture. It would be certainly a very one-sided and unhistorical way of
looking at things were we to hold those particular individuals, who did
duty in the olden days in synagogues of the scribe’s learning, primarily
responsible for the warfare which ancient Christianity had to sustain
against the dominant religious parties, especially against the scribes
and their followers. The war was not waged against _persons_, but
against a _system_. The synagogue was the _school_ of the Jews; the
scribes were the _masters_ in that school. Viewed from this side,
Christianity seemed to be rebellion against the authority of the school,
and an emancipation of humanity from the influence which the toasted
masters of the school exercised over spirits.
Approaching the problem, then, as to how far such an emancipation would
be serviceable today, one need scarcely say that one does not at all
have in mind the institutions which, in a narrower sense, we now have
come to call “schools.” As, for broad gauge philosophers, the concept
priesthood is by no means identical with a definite office, the
so-called clerical office, so what we understand by school and its
masters, in Nietzsche’s sense, embraces a much wider circle than we are
wont to think. There are schoolmasters in all vocations and callings and
positions, not alone among scholars, but also among artists,
politicians, laborers and merchants. We find them in the household and
in the nursery; for schoolmaster-ism is a _certain kind of spirit_, and
it is this kind of spirit which, under various names, Nietzsche pursues
with his bitterest scorn and ridicule; which he stigmatizes as the most
perilous hindrance in the path of the new culture.
We modern men must concede that Nietzsche is right at this point; that
mastery on the part of “school” signifies decay, stuntedness, of the
very human essence itself.
School gives _knowledge_. In all knowledge, man confronts nature. Man
elaborates nature in his thoughts, and thus lifts himself _above_
nature. With his rules, he becomes master of nature. But, now, if a man
abides in his school, a time comes, irremediably, when he is estranged
from nature, estranged from life. His knowledge grows, indeed, his world
of thought enlarges; but the “thoughts” which he calls his “knowledge”
narrow and cramp him! The more he learns to work exclusively with his
thoughts, the more he mislearns whence he derives his thoughts. He
thinks about things, but he no longer finds his way into things, right
into the innermost life of things. He thinks _after_, not _with_, not
before. He thinks the alien, not his own. He knows names, not souls.
Yes, life is so great, so infinite; and the school, our knowledge of
life, is so paltry, so limited! Once man stood with his soul in this big
wide world. Intimations of its abysses, unfathomable and awful, haunted
him. Once man felt his hot cheeks fanned by the breezes of an eternal
life of the world, by a divine breath that breathed and blew through the
world. Once on some calm crest where mountain kissed sky, one of those
blissful moments came over him when he felt himself so small, so great,
so alone, so companioned,—inwardly seized by the miracle and mystery of
life surrounding him, pervading him, at once bowing him down and lifting
him up. Now all this is changed. Now he hears voices, loud, raucous,
zealous, parading their wisdom as regards this august wealth of God.
They speak, these voices, so wisely and cleverly, concerning that which
no man’s wisdom and sagacity has ever plumbed. They out-trump each other
with their oceanic learnedness. But once yet again let the soul take a
deep breath, and cry, “I am a man, not a scholar. I dare to be a man,
not a knower, the masters of the school smother and deaden me with their
science of the sublime and free world of the deep and the divine and the
eternal,”—let the soul that “thought” has kept from _seeing_ and
_hearing_ and _feeling_, so cry, and how childish, how ridiculously
petty, how weak and pathological, will all schoolmasterism come to seem!
Nature is also _Art_, genuine, true art. It is an inner nature, a
soul-nature, a soul-life. This art-life which gushes forth like a spring
from secret depths, this enraptures the heart glowing with Dionysiac
enthusiasm, and steals over men like sweet images of a dream, which will
not fade even from his waking soul. Then it sings in us in a wonderful
way, in an unheard-of manner,—in jubilant bliss, aye, in heartbreaking
lamentations, longing for death! Life smites the strings of our soul,
life itself, and makes them resound in secret and hidden depths. It is
this rich, overflowing life which mirrors all its colorful magnificence
in the soul, and reveals to us its height and depth in dazzling light or
midnight darkness.
But even here, here most of all perhaps, even out of this art men have
made a “school” and a schoolmasterism. Men try to measure according to
rules—measure what most of all mocks rules. Rules for poetry, rules for
song, rules for color, for light and shade, rules for the creation
(copying?) of pencil and brush and chisel and square, rules, rules, ever
rules—until one would think that art was for the sake of the rules of
the school, and not _vice versa_. There was a time—and for the matter of
that, there still is—when the born master had a slim chance and short
shrift among the “learned” masters. Who did not know a “school” by whose
name he could proudly name himself, thus guaranteeing his art to be
artistic; who beheld the world with his own free eyes, unfitted with
spectacles by some one of the “masters”; who with listening soul
eavesdropped life, asking never what was “written in the law” of art’s
scribes and pharisees upon the subject, let him set his house in order,
for he must die and not live, at least he must be cast out of the
synagogue, excluded from the artists’ guild, he must expect the
“masters” to pounce upon him—at least with the hoary weapons of obloquy
and ridicule and ostracism and starvation—until all the joy has gone out
of his life. _Vers libre_—did not, does not, the “master” antecedently
and dogmatically know how “rotten” that is? Ah, but what if that
attitude of the finishedness and finality of art, especially in its
form, should replace art and artists with schools and scholars? Are we
to have only “masters” of schools, or also _Masters_ who belong to no
school, and who cannot be tagged as scholars of another “master.”
Nature, life, this is also _religion_, genuine, true religion at least.
We have not created it in us yet—this overpowering longing and striving
to surrender ourselves to another, a higher. To be sure, we have
received it as a heritage from our mother. At first a flood of love and
longing flowed through our souls from her eyes and heart. But her gift
to us was in turn a gift to her. In that gift all love’s beams focused,
gathered together, from all the ends of the earth and the eternities. In
that gift all life was wedded to the waking spirit—all life, sleeping
and dreaming, found its existence. And as this life awoke in us, we
called it “inspiration,” we felt that a Stronger had come upon us,
against which we could do nothing; we called it happiness, heart, love,
God—the name was noise and sound—and yet it was all feeling, veiled in
heavenly glow.
Then the name became everything. On this name scribes exercised their
wits. They wrote it in their books and taught it in their schools. Then
the schoolmasters became the lords of faith. What was once original life
was now to be taught and learned—forgetting that while the psychology,
or history, or philosophy of religion can be taught, _religion_ cannot
be, any more than you can teach grass to grow, or flowers to bloom, or
birds to sing, or lovers to love. So, religion came to be a thing of
grades, like the “grades” of a school—the more grades, the more
religion! At last the scholar in turn becomes a master! Verily, nowhere
in the world has schoolmasterism done so much harm as in religion. No
scoff of the scoffer, and no sword of the executioner, has dealt so deep
and deadly wounds upon the religious life, as has the folly of the wise
and the understanding who press their school knowledge and their school
system upon men as religious faith, and so overspin the entrance to the
garden of the heart with their spider-webs that no one can find the path
any more to its bloom and fragrance.
To be sure, objections to all this bristle. Is not the blessing of the
school—so this or that objector might urge—so manifest that, on account
of the blessing, all its evils might be very well put up with? The
school makes the unintelligible intelligible. The school widens the bed
of the spiritual life, so that its stream no longer devastatingly
overflows its banks. The school builds canals everywhere, that the
watering of the land of the human may be as extensive as possible, and
the spirit of life be universally fertilized with the achievements of
civilization and culture. We may thank our schools that all the world
today has learned to read and write. And, for him who can read and
write, the way is open to all the treasures of the human spirit—and
where is there a civilization that equals ours in the effort to provide
schools corresponding to all the spheres of life? Ought we not to bless
such effort, promote and support it, with all the means in our power?
Now, looking upon life more seriously and profoundly, we shall not be
able to show that the censor of these schools is entirely in the wrong,
when he declares that the spirit is perverted and corrupted by them.
School is model, is a uniform of the spirit which all individuals are to
don and wear. Hence as this school business spreads there is a dying-out
of spiritual originality, a monotony of manufactured personality.