KUMAMOTO, May, 1894.
DEAR HENDRICK,--So far from your letters not being interesting,
they are always full of interest--first, simply because they are _your_
letters; secondly, because they tell the evolution of you--showing
how, after all, we are made by the eternal forces. That you become a
business man, in every sense of the word, is inevitable. It would be
wrong if you did not. It would be wrong not to love your profession. The
evil of becoming a business man exists only for small men--dries small
men up. Surely you are not small! There is nothing to regret--except
perhaps a temporary darkness which may yield to enormous light later on.
Some would say to you, "Always keep one little place in your heart from
hardening." I would say nothing of the kind now: I think you are too
large to be talked to in that way.
[Illustration]
Suppose I try to illustrate by reference to the scope of human thinking
in general. Ethical theology might be represented then as an inverted
pyramid,--thus [Illustration: inverted triangle]; hard, skeptical
science by a larger figure, pressing it down; the highest philosophy
by a circle,--something like this figure. The largest thought accepts
all, surrounds all, absorbs all,--like light itself. The ugly and the
beautiful, the ignorant and the wise, the virtuous and the vile,--all
come within its recognition; nature and sins as well as societies and
clubs,--prisons and churches, brothels and houses. The very duties of
observation forced upon you compel two things: the study of all moral
and material details; the study of all combinations and wholes. And the
larger the grasp of the whole the larger must become your power and
value; for you will have to see eternal laws working down out of the
unknown and thereafter ramifying and inter-ramifying into innumerable
actions, reactions, disintegrations, and crystallizations. The horrible
thing about business, men say, is that it considers men as pawns. But if
your sight becomes large enough,--if your thought widens enough,--you
_must_ look upon men as pawns. To be a brother to all you cannot. To be
a friend to many you cannot. You become the agent--not of the Commercial
Union Assurance Co. only,--but the special agent of infinite laws; and
if you act efficiently in that capacity, you cannot do very wrong. The
Cosmos will be responsible for you.
The business man to-day is the king of the earth; merchants and bankers
are the rulers, and will for all time be, while industrialism continues
necessary. They seek and win power, and all the good things of life;
they also prevent others from getting either. They may not be poets,
philosophers, didactic teachers, artists; but their mental organization
is undoubtedly the highest,--because its achievements represent the
mastery of the highest difficulties, the deepest problems, the most
intricate riddles. Certainly this higher organization is obtained
at a heavy cost in the majority of cases. The emotions dry up in
the evolution of it, and the moral sense weakens. But because this
must happen in the majority of cases when any _new_ faculty is being
developed, it is far from happening in all. The man whose vision is vast
enough can scarcely do more evil than a god. He cannot injure his world
voluntarily without suffering from his own action. He must study his
world as a naturalist his ant-hill. And even as a God he must feel the
ultimate evil and good is not of him; but is being forever viewlessly
woven in Shadow by the Fates of the Infinite,--whose distaff twists the
thread of his own life, and whose will guides his own courses.
The great desire would be for the combination of emotion with knowledge,
of philosophy with mathematics, of Plato with a Napoleon, or Spinoza
with a Gould. This will come. Now it is very rare....
You might reply, "In the present order of things the combination would
ruin the working-power of the man. The Gould could not act the Gould if
combined with the Spinoza,--nor could the Napoleon _se foule de la vie
d'un million d'hommes_ if crossed with a Plato."
I would answer, "Not in the elder generation, but why not to-day? If
the moral laws that in a Spinoza would have checked a Gould, or in a
Plato checked a Napoleon, were essentially limited in other years, are
they so to-day? If the two philosophers had had larger horizons of
thinking, would they have recognized a tether,--or would they not rather
have viewed themselves as mere force-atoms in an infinite electric
stream? Are there not now recognitions of laws transcending all human
ethics?--laws of which Goethe threw out such weird suggestions?--and
must not business, from its very nature, drift into the knowledge of
these laws?"
To-day, it is true, the highest possible type of business man would
have to follow the small policy of the majority. But certainly he can
be like one of those compound double-engines,--whereof the best half is
kept idle in reserve,--always oiled and speckless and ready for rare
emergencies or opportunities. If something within you regrets something
else that is passing away, that need not be any alarming sign. The mere
fact that the regret exists, indicates higher possibilities. Don't you
remember Emerson's extraordinary lines,--
"Though thou love her as thyself--
As a self of purer clay,--
Though her parting dim the day
Stealing grace from all alive,--
_Heartily know,
When half-gods go
The Gods arrive!_"
The dear little psyche is going? Well, let her go! Regret her a
little--that is sweet and good. Feel lonesome for her awhile. Wait. Then
make yourself a new soul, large enough to wrap round the whole world,
like the Æther.
Faithfully ever,
LAFCADIO HEARN.