THE MASTER.
"I spoke as I saw.
I report, as a man may report God's work--all's Love,
yet all's Law."
-- BROWNING.
I have spoken of Ariadne, and promised to re-introduce her to you. You
will remember her as the graceful girl who accompanied Clytia and her
husband to Thursia. She had not made quite so strong an impression
upon me as had the elder woman, perhaps because I was so preoccupied
with, and interested in watching the latter's meeting with Elodia.
Certainly there was nothing in the young woman herself, as I speedily
ascertained, to justify disparagement even with Clytia. I was
surprised to find that she was a member of our charming household.
She was an heiress; but she taught in one of the city schools, side by
side with men and women who earned their living by teaching. I rather
deprecated this fact in conversation with Clytia one day; I said that
it was hardly fair for a rich woman to come in and usurp a place which
rightfully belonged to some one who needed the work as a means of
support,--alas! that _I_ should have presumed to censure anything in
that wonderful country. With knowledge came modesty.
Clytia's cheeks crimsoned with indignation. "Our teachers are not
beneficiaries," she replied; "nor do we regard the positions in our
schools--the teachers' positions--as charities to be dispensed to the
needy. The profession is the highest and most honorable in our land,
and only those who are fitted by nature and preparation presume to
aspire to the office. There is no bar against those who are so
fitted,--the richest and the most distinguished stand no better, and
no poorer, chance than the poorest and most insignificant. We must
have the best material, wherever it can be found."
We had but just entered the house, Clytia and I, when Ariadne glided
down the stairs into the room where we sat, and approached me with the
charming frankness and unaffectedness of manner which so agreeably
characterizes the manners of all these people. She was rather tall,
and slight; though her form did not suggest frailty. She resembled
some elegant flower whose nature it is to be delicate and slender. She
seemed even to sway a little, and undulate, like a lily on its stem.
I regarded her with attention, not unmixed with curiosity,--as a man
is prone to regard a young lady into whose acquaintance he has not yet
made inroads.
My chief impression about her was that she had remarkable eyes. They
were of an indistinguishable, dark color, large horizontally but not
too wide open,--eyes that drew yours continually, without your being
able to tell whether it was to settle the question of color, or to
find out the secret of their fascination, or whether it was simply
that they appealed to your artistic sense--as being something finer
than you had ever seen before. They were heavily fringed at top and
bottom, and so were in shadow except when she raised them toward the
light. Her complexion was pale, her hair light and fluffy; her brows
and lashes were several shades darker than the hair. Her hands were
lovely. Her dress was of course white, or cream, of some soft,
clinging material; and she wore a bunch of blue flowers in her belt,
slightly wilted.
There is this difference in women: some produce an effect simply, and
others make a clear-cut, cameo-like impression upon the mind. Ariadne
was of the latter sort. Whatever she appropriated, though but a tiny
blossom, seemed immediately to proclaim its ownership and to swear its
allegiance to her. From the moment I first saw her there, the blue
flowers in her belt gave her, in my mind, the supreme title to all of
their kind. I could never bear to see another woman wear the same
variety,--and I liked them best when they were a little wilted! Her
belongings suggested herself so vividly that if one came unexpectedly
upon a fan, a book, a garment of hers, he was affected as by a
presence.
I soon understood why it was that my eyes sought her face so
persistently, drawn by a power infinitely greater than the mere power
of beauty; it was due to the law of moral gravitation,--that by which
men are attracted to a leader, through intuitive perception of a
quality in him round which their own energies may nucleate. We all
recognize the need of a centre, of a rallying-point,--save perhaps the
few eccentrics, detached particles who have lost their place in the
general order, makers of chaos and disturbers of peace.
It is this power which constitutes one of the chief qualifications of
a teacher in Lunismar; because it rests upon a fact universally
believed in,--spiritual royalty; an august force which cannot be
ignored, and is never ridiculed--as Galileo was ridiculed, and
punished, for his wisdom; because there ignorance and prejudice do not
exist, and the superstition which planted the martyr's stake has never
been known.
Ariadne said that she had been up in the observatory, and that there
were indications of an approaching storm.
"I hope it may be a fine one!" exclaimed Clytia.
I thought this rather an extraordinary remark--coming from one of the
sex whose formula is more likely to be, "I hope it will not be a
severe one."
At that moment a man appeared in the doorway, the majesty of whose
presence I certainly felt before my eyes fell upon him. Or it might
have been the reflection I saw in the countenances of my two
companions,--I stood with my back to the door, facing them,--which
gave me the curious, awe-touched sensation.
I turned round, and Clytia immediately started forward. Ariadne
exclaimed in an undertone, with an accent of peculiar sweetness,--a
commingling of delight, and reverence, and caressing tenderness:
"Ah! the Master!"
Clytia took him by the hand and brought him to me, where I stood
rooted to my place.
"Father, this is our friend," she said simply, without further
ceremony of introduction. It was enough. He had come on purpose to see
me, and therefore he knew who I was. As for him--one does not explain
a king! The title by which Ariadne had called him did not at the
moment raise an inquiry in my mind. I accepted it as the natural
definition of the man. He was a man of kingly proportions, with eyes
from which Clytia's had borrowed their limpid blackness. His glance
had a wide compresiveness, and a swift, sure, loving insight.
He struck me as a man used to moving among multitudes, with his head
above all, but his heart embracing all.
You may think it strange, but I was not abashed. Perfect love casteth
out fear; and there was in this divine countenance--I may well call it
divine!--the lambent light of a love so kindly and so tender, that
fear, pride, vanity, egotism, even false modesty--our pet
hypocrisy--surrendered without a protest.
I think I talked more than any one else, being delicately prompted to
furnish some account of the world to which I belong, and stimulated
by the profound interest with which the Master attended to every word
that I said. But I received an equal amount of information
myself,--usually in response to the questions with which I rounded up
my periods, like this: We do so, and so, upon the Earth; how is it
here? The replies threw an extraordinary light upon the social order
and conditions there.
I naturally dwelt upon the salient characteristics of our people,--I
mean, of course, the American people. I spoke of our enormous grasp of
the commercial principle; of our manipulation of political and even
social forces to great financial ends; of our easy acquisition of
fortunes; of our tremendous push and energy, directed to the
accumulation of wealth. And of our enthusiasms, and institutions; our
religions and their antagonisms, and of the many other things in which
we take pride.
And I learned that in Caskia there is no such thing as speculative
enterprise. All business has an actual basis most discouraging to the
adventurous spirit in search of sudden riches. There is no monetary
skill worthy the dignified appellation of financial management,--and
no use for that particular development of the talent of ingenuity.
All the systems involving the use of money conduct their affairs upon
the simplest arithmetical rules in their simplest form; addition,
subtraction, multiplication, division. There are banks, of course, for
the mutual convenience of all, but there are no magnificent delusions
called "stocks;" no boards of trade, no bulls and bears, no "corners,"
no mobilizing of capital for any questionable purposes; no gambling
houses; no pitfalls for unwary feet; and no mad fever of greed and
scheming coursing through the veins of men and driving them to
insanity and self-destruction. More than all, there are no fictitious
values put upon fads and fancies of the hour,--nor even upon works of
art. The Caskians are not easily deceived. An impostor is impossible.
Because the people are instructed in the quality of things
intellectual, and moral, and spiritual, as well as in things physical.
They are as sure of the knowableness of art, as they are--and as we
are--of the knowableness of science. Art is but refined science, and
the principles are the same in both, but more delicately, and also
more comprehensively, interpreted in the former than in the latter.
One thing more: there are no would-be impostors. The law operates no
visible machinery against such crimes, should there be any. The Master
explained it to me in this way:
"The Law is established in each individual conscience, and rests
securely upon self-respect."
"Great heavens!" I cried, as the wonder of it broke upon my
understanding, "and how many millions of years has it taken your race
to attain to this perfection?"
"It is not perfection," he replied, "it only approximates perfection;
we are yet in the beginning."
"Well, by the grace of God, you are on the right way!" said I. "I am
familiar enough with the doctrines you live by, to know that it is the
right way; they are the same that we have been taught, theoretically,
for centuries, but, to tell the truth, I never believed they could be
carried out literally, as you appear to carry them out. We are
tolerably honest, as the word goes, but when honesty shades off into
these hair-splitting theories, why--we leave it to the preachers,
and--women."
"Then you really have some among you who believe in the higher
truths?" the Master said, and his brows went up a little in token of
relief.--My picture of Earth-life must have seemed a terrible one to
him!
"O, yes, indeed," said I, taking my cue from this. And I proceeded to
give some character sketches of the grand men and women of Earth whose
lives have been one long, heroic struggle for truth, and to whom a
terrible death has often been the crowning triumph of their faith. I
related to him briefly the history of America from its discovery four
hundred years ago; and told him about the splendid material
prosperity,--the enormous wealth, the extraordinary inventions, the
great population, the unprecedented free-school system, and the
progress in general education and culture,--of a country which had its
birth but yesterday in a deadly struggle for freedom of conscience;
and of our later, crueller war for freedom that was not for ourselves
but for a despised race. I described the prodigious waves of public
and private generosity that have swept millions of money into burned
cities for their rebuilding, and tons of food into famine-stricken
lands for the starving.
I told him of the coming together in fellowship of purpose, of the
great masses, to face a common danger, or to meet a common necessity;
and of the moral and intellectual giants who in outward appearance and
in the seeming of their daily lives are not unlike their fellows, but
to whom all eyes turn for help and strength in the hour of peril. But
I did not at that time undertake any explanation of our religious
creeds, for it somehow seemed to me that these would not count for
much with a people who expressed their theology solely by putting into
practice the things they believed. I had the thought in mind though,
and determined to exploit it later on. As I have said before, the
Master listened with rapt attention, and when I had finished, he
exclaimed,
"I am filled with amazement! a country yet so young, so far advanced
toward Truth!"
He gave himself up to contemplation of the picture I had drawn, and in
the depths of his eyes I seemed to see an inspired prophecy of my
country's future grandeur.
Presently he rose and went to a window, and, with uplifted face,
murmured in accents of the sublimest reverence that have ever touched
my understanding, "O, God, All-Powerful!"
And a wonderful thing happened: the invocation was responded to by a
voice that came to each of our souls as in a flame of fire, "Here am
I." The velocity of worlds is not so swift as was our transition from
the human to the divine.
But it was not an unusual thing, this supreme triumph of the spirit;
it is what these people call "divine worship,"--a service which is
never perfunctory, which is not ruled by time or place. One may
worship alone, or two or three, or a multitude, it matters not to God,
who only asks to be worshiped in spirit and in truth,--be the time
Sabbath or mid-week, the place temple, or field, or closet.
A little later I remarked to the Master,--wishing to have a point
cleared up,--
"You say there are no fictitious values put upon works of art; how do
you mean?"
He replied, "Inasmuch as truth is always greater than human
achievement--which at best may only approximate the truth,--the value
of a work of art should be determined by its merit alone, and not by
the artist's reputation, or any other remote influence,--of course I
do not include particular objects consecrated by association or by
time. But suppose a man paints a great picture, for which he recieves
a great price, and thereafter uses the fame he has won as speculating
capital to enrich himself,--I beg the pardon of every artist for
setting up the hideous hypothesis!--But to complete it: the moment a
man does that, he loses his self-respect, which is about as bad as
anything that can happen to him; it is moral suicide. And he has done
a grievous wrong to art by lowering the high standard he himself
helped to raise. But his crime is no greater than that of the
name-worshipers, who, ignorantly, or insolently, set up false
standards and scorn the real test of values. However, these important
matters are not left entirely to individual consciences; artists, and
so-called art-critics, are not the only judges of art. We have no
mysterious sanctuaries for a privileged few; all may enter,--all are
indeed made to enter, not by violence, but by the simple, natural
means employed in all teaching. All will not hold the brush, or the
pen, or the chisel; but from their earliest infancy our children are
carefully taught to recognize the forms of truth in all art; the eye
was made to see, the ear to hear, the mind to understand."
The visit was at an end. When he left us it was as though the sun had
passed under a cloud.
Clytia went out with him, her arm lovingly linked in his; and I turned
to Ariadne. "Tell me," I said, "why is he called Master? Is it a
formal title, or was it bestowed in recognition of the quality of the
man?"
"Both," she answered. "No man receives the title who has not the
'quality.' But it is in one way perfunctory; it is the distinguishing
title of a teacher of the highest rank."
"And what are teachers of the highest rank, presidents of colleges?" I
asked.
"O, no," she replied with a smile, "they are not necessarily teachers
of schools--old and young alike are their pupils. They are those who
have advanced the farthest in all the paths of knowledge, especially
the moral and the spiritual."
"I understand," said I; "they are your priests, ministers,
pastors,--your Doctors of Divinity."
"Perhaps," she returned, doubtfully; our terminology was not always
clear to those people.
"Usually," she went on, "they begin with teaching in the schools,--as
a kind of apprenticeship. But, naturally, they rise; there is that
same quality in them which forces great poets and painters to high
positions in their respective fields."
"Then they rank with geniuses!" I exclaimed, and the mystery of the
man in whose grand company I had spent the past hour was solved.
Ariadne looked at me as though surprised that I should have been
ignorant of so natural and patent a fact.
"Excuse me!" said I, "but it is not always the case with us; any man
may set up for a religious teacher who chooses, with or without
preparation,--just as any one may set up for a poet, or a painter, or
a composer of oratorio."
"Genius must be universal on your planet then," she returned
innocently. I suppose I might have let it pass, there was nobody to
contradict any impressions I might be pleased to convey! but there is
something in the atmosphere of Lunismar which compels the truth, good
or bad.
"No," said I, "they do it by grace of their unexampled self-trust,--a
quality much encouraged among us,--and because we do not legislate
upon such matters. The boast of our country is liberty, and in some
respects we fail to comprehend the glorious possession. Too often we
mistake lawlessness for liberty. The fine arts are our playthings, and
each one follows his own fancy, like children with toys."
"Follows-his-own-fancy," she repeated, as one repeats a strange
phrase, the meaning of which is obscure.
"By the way," I said, "you must be rather arbitrary here. Is a man
liable to arrest or condign punishment, if he happens to burlesque any
of the higher callings under the impression that he is a genius?"
She laughed, and I added, "I assure you that this is not an uncommon
occurrence with us."
"It would be impossible here," she replied, "because no one could so
mistake himself, though it seems egotistical for one of us to say so!
but"--a curious expression touched her face, a questioning, doubting,
puzzled look--"we are speaking honestly, are we not?"
I wondered if I had betrayed my American characteristic of hyperbole,
and I smiled as I answered her:
"My countrymen are at my mercy, I know; but had I a thousand grudges
against them, I beg you to believe that I am not so base as to take
advantage of my unique opportunity to do them harm! We are a young
people, as I said awhile ago, a very young people; and in many
respects we have the innocent audacity of babes. Yes," I added, "I
have told you the truth,--but not all of it; Earth, too, is pinnacled
with great names,--of Masters, like yours, and poets, and painters,
and scientists, and inventors. Even in the darkest ages there have
been these points of illumination. What I chiefly wonder at here, is
the universality of intelligence, of understanding. You are a teacher
of children, pray tell me how you teach. How do you get such wonderful
results? I can comprehend--a little--'what' you people are, I wish to
know the 'how,' the 'why'."
"All our teaching," she said, "embraces the three-fold nature. The
physical comes first of course, for you cannot reach the higher
faculties through barriers of physical pain and sickness, hunger and
cold. The child must have a good body, and to this end he is taught
the laws that govern his body, through careful and attentive
observance of cause and effect. And almost immediately, he begins to
have fascinating glimpses of similar laws operating upon a higher
than the physical plane. Children have boundless curiosity, you know,
and this makes the teacher's work easy and delightful,--for we all
love to tell a piece of news! Through this faculty, the desire to
know, you can lead a child in whatever paths you choose. You can
almost make him what you choose. A little experience teaches a child
that every act brings consequences, good or bad; but he need not get
all his knowledge by experience, that is too costly. The reasoning
faculty must be aroused, and then the conscience,--which is to the
soul what the sensatory nerves are to the body. But the conscience is
a latent faculty, and here comes in the teacher's most delicate and
important work. Conscience is quite dependent upon the intellect; we
must know what is right and what is wrong, otherwise conscience must
stagger blindly."
"Yes, I know," I interrupted, "the consciences of some very good
people in our world have burned witches at the stake."
"Horrible!" she said with a shudder.
She continued: "This, then, is the basis. We try, through that simple
law of cause and effect, which no power can set aside, to supply each
child with a safe, sure motive for conduct that will serve him through
life, as well in his secret thought as in outward act. No one with
this principle well-grounded in him will ever seek to throw the blame
of his misdeeds upon another. We teach the relative value of
repentance; that though it cannot avert or annul the effects of
wrong-doing, it may serve to prevent repetition of the wrong."
"Do you punish offenders?" I asked.
She smiled. "Punishment for error is like treating symptoms instead of
the disease which produced them, is it not?--relief for the present,
but no help for the future. Punishment, and even criticism, are
dangerous weapons, to be used, if at all, with a tact and skill that
make one tremble to think of! They are too apt to destroy freedom of
intercourse between teacher and pupil. Unjust criticism, especially,
shuts the teacher from an opportunity to widen the pupil's knowledge.
Too often our criticisms are barriers which we throw about ourselves,
shutting out affection and confidence; and then we wonder why friends
and family are sealed books to us!"
"That is a fact," I assented, heartily, "and no one can keep to his
highest level if he is surrounded by an atmosphere of coldness and
censure. Even Christ, our Great Teacher, affirmed that he could not do
his work in certain localities because of prevailing unbelief."
"There is one thing which it is difficult to learn," went on Ariadne,
"discrimination, the fitness of things. I may not do that which is
proper for another to do,--why? Because in each individual
consciousness is a special and peculiar law of destiny upon which
rests the burden of personal responsibility. It is this law of the
individual that makes it an effrontery for any one to constitute
himself the chancellor of another's conscience, or to sit in judgment
upon any act which does not fall under the condemnation of the common
law. It is given to each of us to create a world,--within ourselves
and round about us,--each unlike all the others, though conforming to
the universal principles of right, as poets, however original,
conform to the universal principles of language. We have choice--let
me give you a paradox!--every one may have first choice of
inexhaustible material in infinite variety. But how to choose!"
I quoted Milton's lines:
"He that has light within his own clear breast,
May sit in the center and enjoy bright day;
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
Himself is his own dungeon."
She thanked me with a fine smile.
Clytia had come in a few moments before, but her entrance had been
such that it had caused no disturbing vibrations in the current of
sympathetic understanding upon which Ariadne and myself were launched.
Now, however, we came ashore as it were, and she greeted us as
returned voyagers love to be greeted, with cordial welcome.
She informed us that dinner was ready, and I was alarmed lest we might
have delayed that important function.
The children had disappeared for the day, having already had their
dinner in the nursery under the supervision of their mother.
Calypso had invited in his friend Fides. He was a man of powerful
frame, and strong, fine physionomy; with a mind as virile as the
former, and as clear-cut as the latter. The woman who had created the
dinner--I do not know of a better word--also sat at table with us, and
contributed many a gem to the thought of the hour. Thought may seem an
odd word to use in connection with a dinner conversation,--unless it
is a "toast" dinner! but even in their gayest and lightest moods these
people are never thoughtless. Their minds instead of being lumbering
machinery requiring much force and preparation to put in motion, are
set upon the daintiest and most delicate wheels. Their mental
equipment corresponds with the astonishing mechanical contrivances for
overcoming friction in the physical world. And this exquisite
machinery is applied in exactly the same ways,--sometimes for utility,
and sometimes for simple enjoyment.
Ariadne's prediction had been correct, the storm-king was mustering
his forces round the mountain-tops, and the Eudosa was answering the
challenge from the valley.
After dinner we went up into the observatory, and from thence passed
out onto the balcony, thrilled by the same sense of delightful
expectancy you see in the unennuied eyes of Youth, waiting for the
curtain to go up at a play. All save myself had of course seen
thunder-storms in Lunismar, but none were _blasé_. There was eagerness
in every face.
We took our station at a point which gave us the best view of the
mountains, and saw the lightning cut their cloud-enwrapped sides with
flaming swords, and thrust gleaming spears down into the darkling
valley, as if in furious spite at the blackness which had gathered
everywhere. For the sun had sunk behind a wall as dense as night and
left the world to its fate. Before the rain began to fall there was an
appalling stillness, which even the angry mutterings of the Eudosa
could not overcome. And then, as though the heavens had marshaled all
their strength for one tremendous assault, the thunder broke forth. I
have little physical timidity, but the shock struck me into a pose as
rigid as death.
The others were only profoundly impressed, spiritually alive to the
majesty of the performance.
That first explosion was but the prelude to the mighty piece played
before us, around us, at our feet, and overhead.
Earth has been spared the awfulness--(without destruction)--and has
missed the glory of such a storm as this.
But the grandest part was yet to come. The rain lasted perhaps twenty
minutes, and then a slight rent was made in the thick and sombre
curtain that covered the face of the heavens, and a single long shaft
of light touched the frozen point of the Spear and turned its crystal
and its snow to gold. The rest of the mountain was still swathed in
cloud. A moment more, and a superb rainbow, and another, and yet
another, were flung upon the shoulder of the Spear, below the
glittering finger. The rent in the curtain grew wider, and beyond, all
the splendors of colors were blazoned upon the shimmering draperies
that closed about and slowly vanished with the sun.
We sat in silence for a little time. I happened to be near Fides, and
I presently turned to him and said:
"That was a most extraordinary manifestation of the Almighty's power!"
He looked at me but did not reply.
Ariadne, who had heard my remark, exclaimed laughingly:
"Fides thinks the opening of a flower is a far more wonderful
manifestation than the stirring up of the elements!"
In the midst of the storm I had discovered the Master standing at the
farther end of the balcony, and beside him a tall, slender woman with
thick, white hair, whom I rightly took to be his wife. I was presented
to her shortly, and the mental comment I made at the moment, I never
afterward reversed,--"She is worthy to be the Master's wife!"
Although the rain had ceased, the sky was a blank, as night settled
upon the world. Not a star shone. But it was cool and pleasant, and
we sat and talked for a couple of hours. Suddenly, a band of music on
the terrace below silenced our voices. It was most peculiar music: now
it was tone-pictures thrown upon the dark background of shadows; and
now it was a dance of sprites; and now a whispered confidence in the
ear. It made no attempt to arouse the emotions, to produce either
sadness or exaltation. It was a mere frolic of music. When it was
over, I went down stairs, with the others, humming an inaudible tune,
as though I had been to the opera.