Howard went on, "I have been thinking a great deal about our talk
yesterday, and it's a new light to me. I do not think I fully
understand, but I feel that there is something very big behind it all,
which I want to understand. This great force you speak of--is it an
AIM?"
"That's a good question," said Mrs. Graves. "No, it's not an aim at
all. It's too big for that; an aim is quite on a lower level. There's
no aim in the big things. A man doesn't fall ill with an aim--he
doesn't fall in love with an aim. It just comes upon him."
"But then," said Howard, "is it more than a sort of artistic gift which
some have and many have not? I have known a few real artists, and they
just did not care for anything else in the world. All the rest of life
was just a passing of time, a framework to their work. There was an
artist I knew, who was dying. The doctor asked him if he wanted
anything. 'Just a full day's work,' he said."
"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "it is like that in a way; it is the one thing
worth doing and being. But it isn't a conscious using of minutes and
opportunities--it isn't a plan; it is just a fulness of life, rejoicing
to live, to see, to interpret, to understand. It doesn't matter what
life you live--it is how you live it. Life is only the cup for the
liquor which must else be spilled. I can only use an old phrase--it is
being 'in the spirit': when you ask whether it is a special gift, of
course some people have it more strongly and consciously than others.
But it is the thing to which we are all tending sooner or later; and
the mysterious thing about it is that so many people do not seem to
know they have it. Yet it is always just the becoming aware of what is
there."
"How do you account for that?" said Howard.
"Why," said Mrs. Graves, "to a great extent because religion is in such
an odd state. It is as if the people who knew or suspected the secret,
did all they could to conceal it--just as parents try to keep their
children ignorant of the ideas of sex. Religion has got so horribly
mixed up with other things, with respectability, social order,
conventions, doctrines, metaphysics, ceremony, music--it has become so
specialised in the hands of priests who have a great institution to
support, that dust is thrown in people's eyes--and just as they begin
to think they perceive the secret, they are surrounded by tiresome
dogmatists saying, 'It is this and that--it is this doctrine, that
tradition.' Well, that sort of religion IS a very special
accomplishment--ecclesiastical religion. I don't deny that it has
artistic qualities, but it is a poor narrow product; and then the
technically religious make such a fuss if they see the shoal of fish
escaping the net, and beat the water so vehemently that the fish think
it safer to stay where they are, and so you get sardines in tins!" said
Mrs. Graves with a smile--"by which I mean the churches."
"Yes," said Howard, "that is perfectly true! Christianity was at first
the most new, radical, original, anarchical force in the world--it was
the purest individualism; it was meant to over-ride all human
combinations by simply disregarding them; it was not a social reform,
and still less a political reform; it was a new spirit, and it was
meant to create a new kind of fellowship, the mere existence of which
would do away with the need for organisation; it broke meekly, like
water, through all human partitions, and I suppose it has been tamed."
"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "it is not now the world against religion. It
is organised religion against real religion, because religion is above
and apart from all institutions. Christ said, 'When they persecute you
in one city, flee into another'; and the result of that is the Monroe
doctrine!"
"But are you not a Christian?" said Howard.
"I believe myself to be one," said Mrs. Graves; "and no doubt you will
say, 'Why do you live in wealth and comfort?' That's a difficulty,
because Christ meant us to be poor. But if one hands over one's money
to Christian institutions now, one is subsidising the forces of the
world--at least so I think. It's very difficult. Christ said that we
should bestow our goods upon the poor; but if I were to divide my goods
to-morrow among my neighbours, they would be only injured by it--it
would not be Christian of them to take them--they have enough. If they
have not, I give it them. It does less harm to me than to them. But
this I know is very irrational; and the point is not to be affected by
that. I could live in a cottage tomorrow, if there was need."
"Yes, I believe you could," said Howard.
"As long as one is not dependent upon money," said Mrs. Graves, "it
doesn't very much matter. The real point is to take the world as it
comes, and to be sure that one is on the side of what is true and
simple and sincere; but I do not pretend to have solved everything, and
I am hoping to learn more. I do learn more every day. One can't
interfere with the lives of people; poverty is not the worst evil. It
is nice to be clean, but I sometimes think that the only good I get
from money is cleanliness--and that is only a question of habit! The
real point is to be in life, to watch life, to love it, to live it; to
be in direct relations with everyone, not to be superior, not to be
KIND--that implies superiority. I just plod along, believing, fearing,
hoping, loving, glad to live while I may, not afraid to die when I
must. The only detachment worth having is the detachment from the idea
of making things one's own. I can't appropriate the sunset and the
spring, the loves and cares of others; it is all divided up, more
fairly than we think. I have had many sorrows and sufferings; but I am
more interested than ever in life, glad to help and be helped, ready to
change, desiring to change. It isn't a great way of living; but one
must not want that--and believe me, dear Howard, it is the only way."