find the forthcoming ideas of education of any interest) that there is a
sleeping giant within every one of us; a power as great in relation to
our immediate brain faculties, as the endless string is great in
relation to one bead. I believe that every great moment of expression
in poetry and invention and in every craft and bit of memorable human
conduct, is significant of the momentary arousing of this sleeping giant
within. I believe that modern life and modern education of the faculties
of brain and memory are unerringly designed to deepen the sleep of this
giant. I believe, under the influence of modern life on a self-basis,
and modern education on a competitive basis, that the prison-house
closes upon the growing child--that more and more as the years draw on,
the arousing of the sleeping giant becomes impossible; that the lives of
men are common on account of this, because the one perfect thing we are
given to utter remains unexpressed.
I believe by true life and true education that the prison-house can be
prevented from closing upon the growing child; that the giant is eager
to awake; that, awakened, he makes the thoughts, the actions, the smiles
and the words of even a child significant.
I believe that an ordinary child thus awakened within, not only can but
must become an extraordinary man or woman. This has already been proved
for me in the room in which I write. I believe that this very awakening
genius is the thing that has made immortal--shoemakers, blacksmiths and
the humblest men who have brought truth and beauty to our lives from the
past. Moreover the way, although it reverses almost every process of
life and education that now occupies our life and race, is not hard, but
a way of beauty and joyousness, and the way is no secret.
8
THE ABBOT
He was a still boy--the boy who had first shown us the two cottages on
the shore the afternoon his father was ill. You would have thought him
without temperament. I often recalled how little he knew about the
affairs of prospective tenants that afternoon; and how Penelope rescued
me from his silences.... We saw him often, coming down to bathe with
another lad during the afternoons throughout that first summer, but drew
no nearer to acquaintance. Sometimes as I rode to town for mail in the
evening I would see him watching me from his walk or porch; and the
sense that his regard was somehow different, I believe, did impress me
vaguely. It all happened in a leisurely sort of ordained fashion. I
remember his "hello," cheerful but contained, as I would ride by. He was
always still as a gull, and seemed natural with the dusk upon him....
One day his father said to me:
"I have to buy everything you write for him."
"Well, well," said I.
I had not looked for market in the little town, and The Abbot was only
fourteen. (One of the older boys christened him The Abbot afterward,
because he seemed so freshly come from monastic training.) ... Finally I
heard he was interested in the stars and owned a telescope. I called him
over to the Study one day, and we talked star-stuff. He had done all
that I had and more. It appears that in his Sunday School paper when he
was seven or eight, there had been an astronomical clipping of some sort
that awakened him. He had it read to him several times, but his own
reading picked up at that time with an extraordinary leap, as any study
does under driving interest. Presently he was out after the star books
on his own hook. He suggested bringing his telescope to the Study, and
that night I got my first look at the ineffable isolation of Saturn. It
was like some magnetic hand upon my breast. I could not speak. Every
time I shut my eyes afterward I saw that bright gold jewel afar in the
dark. We talked.... Presently I heard that he hated school, but this did
not come from him. The fact is, I heard little or nothing from him.
This generation behind us--at least, the few I have met and loved--is
not made up of explainers. They let you find out. They seem able to
wait. It is most convincing, to have events clean up a fact which you
misunderstood; to have your doubts moved aside, not by words, nor any
glibness, but leisurely afterward by the landmarks of solid matter. He
did not come to the Study unless called for. The little girl brought in
word from him from time to time, and the little girl's mother, and the
boy's father--a very worthy man. I heard again that he was not doing
well in school. I knew he was significant, very much so, having met the
real boy on star-matters. I knew that the trouble was they were making
him look down at school, when he wanted to look up. His parents came
over to dinner one day, and I said:
"You'd better let the boy come to me every day."
It was an impulse. I don't know to this hour why I said it, because at
that time I wasn't altogether sure that I was conducting the little
girl's education on the best possible basis. Moreover, it seemed to me
even then that my own time was rather well filled. Neither his father
nor mother enthused, and I heard no more from the subject for many days.
Meeting The Abbot finally, I asked him what of school.
"It's bad. I'm not doing anything. I hate it."
"Did your father think I didn't mean what I said--about you coming to me
for a time?"
"I don't think he quite thought you meant it. And then he doesn't know
what it would cost."
I told him it wouldn't cost anything. There was a chance to talk with
his father again, but nothing came of that, and The Abbot was still
suffering weeks afterward. Finally his father and uncle came over to the
Study. It seemed impossible for them to open the subject. I had to do it
after an hour's conversation about immediate and interesting matters of
weather and country.
"I would like to try him," I said. "He can come an hour after dinner
each day. He is different. They can't bring him out, when they have to
deal with so many."
"He's a dreamer," they said, as if confessing a curse.
It appears that there had been a dreamer in this family, a well-read man
whose acres and interests had got away from him, long ago.
"That's why I want him," said I.
"But the thing is, we don't want him--a----"
"I know, you don't want an ineffectual. You want some dreams to come
true--even if they are little ones----"
"Yes."
I had my own opinion of a boy who could chart his own constellations,
without meeting for years any one who cared enough about the stars to
follow his processes, but one can't say too much about a boy to his
relatives. Then I had to remember that the little Lake town had only
touched me on terms of trade. They did not know what sort of devil lived
in my heart, and those who were searching my books to find out were in
the main only the more doubtful. Especially, I bewildered these men by
not asking for anything in the way of money.
However, the thing came to be.
My first idea was to take him alone--the little girl coming in the
morning with me, and the boy after dinner, during an hour that I had
been accustomed to read and doze. The first days were hard for us both.
I sat down in a big chair before the fire and talked with him, but there
was no sign. He stared at the stones and stared out of the window, his
eyes sometimes filmy, his body sometimes tense. I seemed to require at
first some sort of recognition that I was talking--but none came,
neither nod of acquiescence, look of mystification nor denial.... They
said as he passed the house farther along the Shore after leaving the
Study, that his head was bowed and that he walked like a man heavy with
years.
I tried afresh each day--feared that I was not reaching him. I told him
the things that had helped me through the darker early years, and some
of the things I had learned afterward that would have helped me had I
known enough. I tried different leads, returning often to the stars, but
couldn't get a visible result. He was writing little things for me at
this time and, though I detected something in the work more than he
showed me, sitting opposite in the Study, his writing was turgid and
unlit--like one playing on an instrument he did not understand; indeed,
it was like a man talking in his sleep. At the end of one of the talks
within the first week, at wit's end as to what I was accomplishing, I
said:
"Write me what you remember of what I said to-day."
I touched upon this earlier. The result shocked me--it came back like a
phonograph, but the thoughts were securely bound by his own
understanding. I once listened to a series of speeches of welcome from
members of the Japanese Imperial court to a group of foreigners in
Tokyo. The interpreter would listen for several minutes and then in the
pause of the speaker put the fragment into English for us, without a
colour of his own, without disturbing even a gesture or an intonation of
the source of eloquence and ideation. Something of the same returned to
me from the boy's work. I tried him again on the plan a few days
later--just to be sure. The result was the same.
I have not done that since, because I do not wish to encourage physical
memory, an impermanent and characterless faculty, developed to excess in
every current theory of education. You cannot lift or assist another, if
your hands are full of objects of your own. One puts aside his
belongings, when called upon to do something with his hands for
another. Free-handed, he may succeed. It is the same with the mind.
One's faculties are not open to revelations from the true origin of all
values, if one's brain is clutching, with all its force, objects that
the volition calls upon to be remembered. The memory is temporal; if
this were not so, we would know the deeps of that great bourne from
which we come. No man is significant in any kind of expression when he
is using merely his temporal faculties. Time ruptures the products of
these faculties as it does the very body and instrument that produces
them.
However, I realised that I had an almost supernatural attention from the
lad who did not deign to grant me even a nod of acquiescence. I began to
tell him a few things about the technical end of writing for others to
read. I encountered resistance here. Until I pressed upon them a little,
the same mistakes were repeated. This should have shown me before it did
that the boy's nature was averse to actual fact-striving--that he could
grasp a concept off the ground far easier than to watch his steps on the
ground--that he could follow the flight of a bird, so to speak, with far
more pleasure than he could pick up pins from the earth, even if
permitted to keep the pins. I was so delighted to awaken the giant,
however, that I was inclined to let pass, for the present, the matters
of fact and technicality.
Finding that he listened so well--that it was merely one of the
inexplicable surfaces of the new generation that dismayed me--I, of
course, learned to give to him more and more freely. I allowed myself to
overlap somewhat each day, gave little or no thought as to what I should
say to him until the hour came. I was sleepy from old habit at first,
but that passed. Presently it occurred to me that things were happening
in the Study with the boy, that the little girl could ill afford to
miss; and also that he would feel more at ease if I could divide my
attention upon him with another, so I rearranged her plans somewhat, and
there were two.
As I recall, The Abbot had been coming about three weeks, when I related
certain occult teachings in regard to the stars; matters very far from
scientific astronomy which conducts its investigations almost entirely
from a physical standpoint. You may be sure I did not speak
authoritatively, merely as one adding certain phases I had found
interesting of an illimitable subject. The next day he slipped in alone
and a bit early, his "hello" hushed. I looked up and he said, almost
trembling:
"I had a wonderful night."
The saying was so emotional for him that I was excited as in the midst
of great happenings.
"Tell me," I said, drawing nearer.
"It's all here," he replied, clearing his voice.
His own work follows, with scarcely a touch of editing. The Abbot called
his paper--
A VOICE THROUGH A LENS
Some people say that by thinking hard of a thing in the
day-time, you may dream about it. Perhaps this that I had
last night was a dream, but it was more than a stomach dream.
I like to think it was a true vision. Before bedtime I was
reading out of two books; a little pamphlet on astronomy
containing the nebular theory, and another that told about
the planetary chain.
The planetary chain was a continuation of the nebular theory,
but in the spiritual form. It was that which threw me into
the vision. I was away from the world; not in the physical
form but in another--the first time I have ever lost my
physical body. When I awoke from the vision, I had my clothes
still on.
As I drifted off into that mighty sleep, the last thing I
heard on earth was my mother playing and singing, "The
Shepherd's Flute." It dulled my worldly senses and I slowly
drifted away into the pleasant spiritual valley. Who could
drift off in a more beautiful way than that?...
I was gradually walking up the side of a large mountain to an
observatory of splendour. The turret was crowned with gold.
As I opened the door and stepped inside, I saw a large
telescope and a few chairs. The observer's chair was
upholstered with velvet. It was not a complicated observatory
like the worldly ones.... I removed the cap of the great
telescope, covering the object-glass, and then uncovered the
eye-piece. As I looked around the heavens to find the great
spiral of planets (the planetary chain told about) I heard a
voice from the lens of the telescope saying: "This is the
way. Follow me."
I looked through the lens and there I saw a long spiral of
planets leading heavenwards. The spiral gradually arose, not
making any indication of steps, but the close connection of
the rise was like the winding around of the threads of a
screw. Towards the top, the spiral began to get larger until
it was beyond sight. Presently I heard the voice again: "This
no doubt is a complicated affair to you."
"Yes."
"Focus your telescope and then look and see if it is any
clearer."
I did so, and upon looking through the glass, I saw a large
globe. It was cold and blank-looking. It seemed to be all
rocks and upon close examination I found that it was mostly
mineral rocks. That globe drifted away and left a small trail
of light until another came in sight. On this globe, there
was a green over-tone, luxuriant vegetation. Everywhere there
were trees and vegetable growths of all kinds. This one
gradually drifted away like the preceding. The third was
covered with animals of every description--a mass, a chaos of
animals. The fourth was similarly crowded with hairy men in
battle, the next two showed the development of these
men--gradual refinement and civilisation. The seventh I did
not see.
I was staring into the dark abyss of the heavens, when I
heard the voice again:
"I suppose you are still amazed."
"Yes."
"Well, then, listen to me and I'll try to explain it all. The
great spiral of planets represents the way man progresses in
the life eternal. Man's life on this earth is the life of a
second, compared with the long evolution. In these six globes
you saw when the telescope was focussed, is represented the
evolution of man. The rocks were first. As they broke up and
melted into earth, vegetable life formed, crawling things
emerged from vegetable life and animals from them. Man grew
and lifted out from the form of lower animals. The lower
globes represented the development of man. In the long cycle
of evolution, man continues in this way. After he finishes
life on the seven globes, he starts over again on another
seven, only the next group he lives on, his life keeps
progressing. It is not the same life over again. Now you may
look at the Seventh, the planet of Spirituality."
When I looked through the telescope again, I saw a beautiful
globe. It was one great garden. In it there was a monastery
of Nature. Overhead the trees had grown together and formed a
roof. Far off to the north stretched a low range of hills,
also to the east and west, but at the south was a small brook
which ran along close to the altar of the monastery. It
seemed to be happy in its course to the lake as it leaped
over rocky shelves and formed small cascades while the
sunbeams shone through the matted branches of the trees whose
limbs stretched far out over the brook, and made it appear
like a river of silver. I was admiring the scenery when I
heard the voice again:
"You must go now, tell the people what you saw, and some
other night you will see the globe of spirituality more
closely."
I awoke and found myself sitting in the big arm-chair of my
room. "Can it be true, am I mistaken?" I pinched myself to
see if I were awake; walked over to the window and looked
out. There the world was just the same. I was so taken with
the wonderful vision that at the hour of midnight I sit here
and scratch these lines off. I have done as the great mystic
voice commanded me, although it is roughly done, I hope to be
able to tell you about the rest of the vision and more about
the seventh globe some time again.
9
THE VALLEY-ROAD GIRL
The Abbot had been with me about three months when he said:
"We were out to dinner yesterday to a house on the Valley Road, and the
girl there is interested in your work. She asked many things about it.
She's the noblest girl I know."
That last is a literal quotation. I remember it because it appealed to
me at the time and set me to thinking.
"How old is she?"
"Seventeen."
"What is she interested in?"
"Writing, I think. She was the best around here in the essays."
"You might ask her to come."
I heard no more for a time. The Abbot does not rush at things. At the
end of a week he remarked:
"She is coming."
It was two or three days after that before I saw them walking down the
lane together.... She took a seat by the door--she takes it still, the
same seat. It was an ordeal for her; also for The Abbot who felt in a
sense responsible; also for me.... I could not begin all over again, in
justice to him. We would have to continue his work and the little girl's
and gradually draw the new one into an accelerating current. We called
her The Valley-Road Girl. She suffered. It was very strange to her. She
had been at school eleven years. I did not talk stars; in fact, I fell
back upon the theme of all themes to me--a man's work, the meaning of
it; what he gets and what the world gets out of it; intimating that this
was not a place to learn how to reach the book and story markets. I said
something the first day, which a few years ago I should have considered
the ultimate heresy--that the pursuit of literature for itself, or for
the so-called art of it, is a vain and tainted undertaking that cannot
long hold a real man; that the real man has but one business: To awaken
his potentialities, which are different from the potentialities of any
other man; to express them in terms of matter the best he can, the
straightest, simplest way he can. I said that there is joy and
blessedness in doing this and in no other activity under the sun; that
it is the key to all good; the door to a man's religion; that work and
religion are the same at the top; that the nearer one reaches the top,
the more tremendous and gripping becomes the conception that they are
one; finally that a man doing his own work for others, losing the sense
of self in his work, is touching the very vitalities of religion and
integrating the life that lasts.
I have said this before in this book--in other books. I may say it
again. It is the truth to me--truth that the world is in need of. I am
sorry for the man who has not his work. A man's work, such as I mean, is
production. Handling the production of others in some cases is
production. There are natural orderers and organisers, natural
synthesisers, shippers, assemblers, and traffic masters. A truth is true
in all its parts; there are workmen for all the tasks.
The Valley-Road Girl's work, in the first days, reminded me of my own
early essay classes. Old friends were here again--Introduction,
Discussion, Conclusion. Her things were rigid, mental. I could see where
they would make very good in a school-room, such as I had known. Her
work was spelled and periodic, phrased and paragraphed. The eyes of the
teachers, that had been upon her these many years, had turned back for
their ideas to authors who, if writing to-day, would be forced to change
the entire order and impulse of their craft.
She was suffused with shyness. Even the little girl so far had not
penetrated it. I was afraid to open the throttle anywhere, lest she
break and drop away. At the end of a week, The Abbot remained a moment
after she was gone, and looked at me with understanding and sorrow.
"I'm afraid I made a mistake in asking her to come," he said.
Just then I was impelled to try harder, because he saw the difficulty.
We had missed for days the joy from the session, that we had come to
expect and delight in. Yet, because he expressed it, I saw the shortness
and impatience of the point of view which had been mine, until he
returned it to me.
"We won't give up," I said. "It didn't happen for nothing."
When he went away I felt better; also I saw that there was a personal
impatience in my case that was not worthy of one who undertook to awaken
the young. I introduced The Valley-Road Girl to Addison's "Sir Roger."
There is an emptiness to me about Addison which I am not sure but
partakes of a bit of prejudice, since I am primarily imbued with the
principle that a writer must be a man before he is fit to be read. If I
could read Addison now for the first time, I should know. The
Valley-Road Girl's discussion of Addison was scholarly in the youthful
sense.
The day that she brought in this paper we got somehow talking about
Fichte. The old German is greatly loved and revered in this Study. He
set us free a bit as we discussed him, and I gave to the newcomer a
portion of one of his essays having to do with the "Excellence of the
Universe." The next day I read her paper--and there was a beam in it.
I shut my eyes in gratitude that I had not allowed my stupidity to get
away. I thanked The Abbot inwardly, too, for saying the words that set
me clearer. The contrast between Addison and Fichte in life, in their
work, in the talk they inspired here, and in The Valley-Road Girl's two
papers--held the substance of the whole matter--stumbled upon as usual.
We had a grand time that afternoon. I told them about Fichte losing his
positions, writing to his countrymen--a wanderer, an awakened soul. And
this brought us the hosts of great ones--the Burned Ones and their
exaltations--George Fox and the Maid of Domremy--the everlasting spirit
behind and above mortal affairs--the poor impotency of wood-fire to
quench such immortality. Her eyes gleamed--and all our hearts burned.
"We do not want to do possible things," I said. "The big gun that is to
deposit a missile twelve miles away does not aim at the mark, but at the
skies. All things that are done--let them alone. The undone things
challenge us. The spiritual plan of all the great actions and devotions
which have not yet found substance--is already prepared for the workmen
of to-day to bring into matter--all great poems and inventions for the
good of the world. They must gleam into being through our minds. The
mind of some workman is being prepared for each. Our minds are darkened
as yet; the sleeping giant awaits the day. He is not loathe to awake.
Inertia is always of matter; never of spirit. He merely awaits the
light. When the shutters of the mind are opened and the grey appears, he
will arise and, looking forth, will discover his work.
"Nothing common awaits the youngest or the oldest. You are called to the
great, _the impossible_ tasks. But the mind must be entered by the
Light--the heavy curtains of the self drawn apart...."
That was the day I found the new, sweet influence in the room. It was
not an accident that the boy had gone to dinner at her house. I saw that
my task with The Valley-Road Girl was exactly opposite to the work with
The Abbot--that he was dynamic within and required only the developed
instrument for his utterances, and that she had been mentalised with
obscuring educational matters and required a re-awakening of a naturally
splendid and significant power; that I must seek to diffuse her real
self through her expression. The time came that when she was absent, we
all deeply missed her presence from the Study.