life-lines of labour upon him; we enjoy his haleness and laughter....
But that is the mask. His mind and its every attribute of consciousness
is designed to smother an awakened soul. You have to bring God to him in
his own terminology, or he will fight you, and believe in his heart that
he is serving his God. His generation is moving slowly now, yet if his
sons and daughters quicken their pace, he is filled with torments of
fear or curses them for straying.
I would not seem ill-tempered. I have long since healed from the chaos
and revelations of building. It brought me a not too swift review of
life as I had met it afield and in the cities for many years. The fact
that one little contract for certain interior installations was strung
over five months, and surprised me with the possibilities of
inefficiency and untruth, is long since forgotten. The water runs. Ten
days after peace was established here, all my wounds were healing by
first intention; and when I saw the carpenters at work on a new contract
the day after they left me, the pity that surged through my breast was
strangely poignant, and it was for them. The conduct of their days was a
drive through the heaviest and most stubborn of materials, an arriving
at something like order against the grittiest odds, and they must do it
again and again. There is none to whom I cannot bow in the evening--but
the idealisation of the village lives is changed and there is knowledge.
I had been getting too comfortable. One cannot do his service in the
world and forget its fundamentals. We have to love before we can serve,
but it is fatuous to love blindly. The things that we want are ahead.
The paths behind do not contain them; the simplicity of peasants and
lowly communities is not merely unlettered. One does not need to deal
with one small town; it is everywhere. The ways of the crowds are small
ways. We wrong ourselves and bring imperfection to our tasks when we
forget that. We love the Indian crossing the stream in the great and
gracious night--but God pity the Indian's dog. We must look close at
life, and not lie to ourselves, because our ways are cushioning a
little.
All idealism that turns back must suffer the fate of mere sentiments. We
must know the stuff the crowds are made of, if we have a hand in
bringing in the order and beauty. You have heard men exclaim:
"How noble are the simple-minded--how sweet the people of the
Countryside--how inevitable and unerring is the voice of the people!" As
a matter of truth, unless directed by some strong man's vision, the
voice of the people has never yet given utterance to constructive truth;
and the same may be said of those who cater to the public taste in
politics or the so-called arts. The man who undertakes to give the
people what the people want is not an artist or a true leader of any
dimension. He is a tradesman and finds his place in his generation.
The rising workman in any art or craft learns by suffering that all good
is ahead and not elsewhere; that he must dare to be himself even if
forced to go hungry for that honour; that he must not lose his love for
men, though he must lose his illusions. Sooner or later, when he is
ready, one brilliant little fact rises in his consciousness--one that
comes to stay, and around which all future thinking must build itself.
It is this:
When one lifts the mask from any crowd, commonness is disclosed in
every change and movement of personality. At the same time, the crowds
of common people are the soil of the future, a splendid mass
potentially, the womb of every heroism and masterpiece to be.
All great things must come from the people, because great leaders of the
people turn their passionate impregnation of idealism upon them. First
the dreamer dreams--and then the people make it action....
What we see that hurts us so as workmen is but the unfinished picture,
the back of the tapestry.
To be worth his spiritual salt, the artist, any artist, must turn every
force of his conceiving into that great restless Abstraction, the many;
he must plunge whole-heartedly in the doing, but cut himself loose from
the thing done; at least, he must realise that what he is willing to
give could not be bought.... When he is quite ready, there shall arise
for him, out of the Abstraction, something finished; something as
absolutely his own as the other half of his circle.
The one relentless and continual realisation which drives home to a man
who has any vision of the betterment of the whole, is the low-grade
intelligence of the average human being. Every man who has ever worked
for a day out of himself has met this fierce and flogging truth. The
personal answer to this, which the workman finally makes, may be of
three kinds: He may desert his vision entirely and return to operate
among the infinite small doors of the many--which is cowardice and the
grimmest failure. He may abandon the many and devote himself to the few
who understand; and this opens the way to the subtler and more powerful
devils which beset and betray human understanding, for we are not
heroically moulded by those who love us but by the grinding of those who
revile. If a key does not fit, it must be ground; and to be ground, its
wards made true and sharp, it must be held somehow in a vise. The
grinding from above will not bite otherwise. So it is with the workman.
He must fix himself first in the knowledge of the world....
The workman of the true way abandons neither his vision nor the world.
Somehow to impregnate the world with his particular vision--all good
comes from that. In a word, the workman either plays to world entirely,
which is failure; to his elect entirely, which is apt to be a greater
failure; or, intrenched in the world and thrilling with aspiration, he
may exert a levitating influence upon the whole, just as surely as wings
beat upward. There are days of blindness, and the years are long, but in
this latest struggle a man forgets himself, which is the primary
victory.
The real workman then--vibrating between compassion and contempt--his
body vised in the world, his spirit struggling upward, performs his
task. When suddenly freed, he finds that he has done well. If one is to
have wings, and by that I don't mean feathers but the intrinsic
levitating force of the spiritual life, be very sure they must be grown
here, and gain their power of pinion in the struggle to lift matter.
13
NATURAL CRUELTY
In dealing with the young, especially with little boys, one of the first
things to establish is gentleness to animals. Between the little boy and
the grown man all the states of evolution are vaguely reviewed, as they
are, in fact, in that more rapid and mysterious passage between
conception and birth. Young nations pass through the same phases, and
some of them are abominable. The sense of power is a dangerous thing.
The child feels it in his hands, and the nation feels it in its first
victory.... In the Chapel during a period of several days we talked
about the wonder of animals (the little boys of the house present) and
the results were so interesting that I put together some of the things
discussed in the following form, calling the paper Adventures in
Cruelty:
As a whole, the styles in cruelty are changing. Certain
matters of charity as we used to regard them are vulgar now.
I remember when a great sign, THE HOME OF THE
FRIENDLESS, used to stare obscenely at thousands of city
school children, as we passed daily through a certain street.
Though it is gone now, something of the curse of it is still
upon the premises. I always think of what a certain observer
said:
"You would not think the Christ had ever come to a world,
where men could give such a name to a house of love-babies."
I remember, too, when there formerly appeared from time to
time on the streets, during the long summers, _different_
green-blue wagons. The drivers were different, too--I recall
one was a hunchback. These outfits formed one of the
fascinating horrors of our bringing-up--the fork, the noose,
the stray dog tossed into a maddened pulp of stray dogs, the
door slammed, and no word at all from the driver--nothing we
could build on, or learn his character by. He was a part of
the law, and we were taught then that the law was
everlastingly right, that we must grind our characters
against it.... But the green-blue wagons are gone, and the
Law has come to conform a bit with the character of youth.
The time is not long since when we met our adventures in
cruelty alone--no concert of enlightened citizens on these
subjects--and only the very few had found the flaw in the
gospel that God had made the animals, and all the little
animals, for delectation and service of man. Possibly there
is a bit of galvanic life still in the teaching, but it
cannot be said to belong to the New Age.
Economic efficiency has altered many styles for the better.
Formerly western drovers used to drive their herds into the
brush for the winters. The few that the winter and the wolves
didn't get were supposed to be hardy enough to demand a
price. It was found, however, that wintering-out cost the
beasts more in vitality than they would spend in seven years
of labour; that the result was decrepit colts and stringy
dwarfs for the beef market. Also there was agitation on the
subject, and the custom passed. City men who owned horses in
large numbers found their _efficiency_ brought to a higher
notch at the sacrifice of a little more air and food, warmth
and rest. There is a far-drive to this appeal, and there are
those who believe that it will see us through to the
millennium.
A woman told this story: "When I was a child in the country
there was an old cow that we all knew and loved. She was red
and white like Stevenson's cow that ate the meadow flowers.
Her name was Mary--Mr. Devlin's Mary. The Devlin children
played with us, and they were like other children in every
way, only a little fatter and ruddier perhaps. The calves
disappeared annually (one of the mysteries) and the Devlin
children were brought up on Mary's milk. It wasn't milk, they
said, but pure cream. We came to know Mary, because she was
always on the roadside--no remote back-pastures for her. She
loved the children and had to know what passed. We used to
deck her with dandelions, and often just as we were getting
the last circlet fastened, old Mary would tire of the game
and walk sedately out of the ring--just as she would when a
baby calf had enough or some novice had been milking too
long. I have been able to understand how much the Hindus
think of their cattle just by thinking of Mary. For years we
passed her--to and from school. It was said that she could
negotiate any gate or lock.
"Well, on one Spring morning, as we walked by the Devlin
house, we saw a crated wagon with a new calf inside, and they
were tying Mary behind. She was led forth. I remember the
whites of her eyes and her twisted head. Only that, in a kind
of sickening and pervading blackness. The calf cried to her,
and Mary answered, and thus they passed.... 'But she is old.
She dried up for a time last summer,' one of the Devlin
children said.
"Devlin wasn't a bad man, a respected churchman.... I spoke
to certain grown-ups, but did not get the sense of tragedy
that was mine. No one criticised Devlin. It was the custom,
they said.... Even the butcher had heard of old Mary.... You
see how ungrippable, how abstract the tragedy was for a
child--but you never can know what it showed me of the world.
None of us who wept that day ate meat for many days. I have
not since. I cannot."
Her story reminded me sharply of a recent personal experience. I had
been thinking of buying a cow. It appears that there are milch-cows and
beef-cows. Country dealers prefer a blend, as you shall see. I said I
wanted butter and milk, intimating the richer the better; also I wanted
a front-yard cow, if possible.... There was a gentle little Jersey lady
that had eyes the children would see fairies in----
"Yes, she's a nice heifer," the man said, "but now I'm a friend of
yours----"
"I appreciate that. Isn't she well?"
"Yes, sound as a trivet."
"A good yielder?"
"All of that."
"What's the matter?"
"Well, a cow is like a peach-tree, she doesn't last forever. After the
milktime, there isn't much left for beef----"
"But I don't want to eat her."
"But as an investment--you see, that's where the Jerseys fall down--they
don't weigh much at the butcher's."
The styles change more slowly in the country.... I found this good
economy so prevalent as to be rather high for humour. In fact, that's
exactly why you can't get "grand" stakes in the country.... I related
the episode to a man interested in the prevention of cruelty. He said:
"Don't blame it all on the country. I saw one of those butcher's
abominations in a city street yesterday--cart with crate, new calf
inside, old moaning mammy dragged after to the slaughter--a very
interesting tumbril, but she hadn't conspired against the government.
For a year she had given the best of her body to nourish that little
bewildered bit of veal--and now we were to eat what was left of her....
Also I passed through a certain railway yard of a big city last
holidays. You recall the zero weather? Tier on tier of crated live
chickens were piled there awaiting shipment--crushed into eight-inch
crates, so that they could not lift their heads. Poe pictured an
atrocious horror like that--a man being held in a torture-cell in such a
position that he could not stand erect. It almost broke a man's nerve,
to say nothing of his neck, just to read about it.... I had seen this
thing before--yet never as this time. Queer how these things happen! A
man must see a thing like that just right, in full meaning, and then
tell it again and again--until enough others see, to make it dangerous
to ship that way. I got the idea then, 'Suppose a man would make it his
life-work to change those crates--to make those crates such a stench and
abomination, that poultry butchers would not dare use them. What a
worthy life work that would be!...' And then I thought, 'Why leave it
for the other fellow?...' The personal relation is everything," he
concluded.
There was something round and equable about this man's talk, and about
his creeds. He was "out for the chickens," as he expressed it. This task
came to him and he refused to dodge. Perhaps he will be the last to see
the big thing that he is doing, for he is in the ruck of it. And then
very often a man sets out to find a passage to India and gets a New
World. In any case, to put four inches on the chicken-crates of America
is very much a man's job, when one considers the relation of tariff to
bulk in freight and express.
Yet there is _efficiency_ even to that added expenditure--a very
thrilling one, if the public would just stop once and think. If you have
ever felt the heat of anger rising in your breast, given way to it, and
suffered the lassitude and self-hatred of reaction, it will be easy for
you to believe the demonstrable truth that anger is a poison. Fear is
another; and the breaking down of tissue as a result of continued
torture is caused by still another poison. The point is that we consume
these poisons. The government is very active in preventing certain
diseased meats from reaching our tables, but these of fear, rage,
blood-madness and last-days-of-agony are subtler diseases which have so
far had little elucidation.
Though this is not a plea for vegetarianism, one should not be allowed
to forget too long the tens of thousands of men and boys who are engaged
in slaughtering--nor the slaughtered.... Long ago there was a story of
an opera cloak for which fifty birds of paradise gave their life and
bloom. It went around the world, that story, and there is much beauty in
the wild to-day because of it. The trade in plumes has suffered. Styles
change--but there is much Persian lamb still worn. Perhaps in good time
the Messiah of the lambs will come forth, as the half-frozen chickens
found theirs in the city yards.
The economical end will not cover all the sins; that is, the repression
of cruelty on an efficiency basis. Repressed cruelty will not altogether
clear the air, nor laws. A true human heart cannot find its peace,
merely because cruelty is concealed. There was a time when we only hoped
to spare the helpless creatures a tithe of their suffering, but that
will not suffice now. A clean-up is demanded and the forces are at work
to bring it about.
Formerly it was granted that man's rise was mainly on the necks of his
beasts, but that conception is losing ground. Formerly, it was enough
for us to call attention on the street to the whip of a brutal driver,
but it has been found that more is required. You may threaten him with
the police, even with lynching; you may frighten him away from his
manhandling for the moment--but in some alley, he is alone with his
horse afterward. His rage has only been flamed by resistance met. It is
he who puts the poor creature to bed.
The fear of punishment has always been ineffectual in preventing crime,
for the reason that the very passion responsible for the crime masters
the fear.... It is difficult to discuss these ravages on a purely
physical basis, for the ramifications of cruelty are cumulatively
intense, the higher they are carried. Ignorance is not alone the lack of
knowing things; it is the coarseness of fibre which resists all the
fairer and finer bits of human reality. Just so long as men fail to
master the animals of which they are composed, the poor beasts about
them will be harrowingly treated.
So there are many arms to the campaign. Specific facts must be supplied
for the ignorant, an increasingly effective effort toward the general
education of the public; but the central energy must be spent in lifting
the human heart into warmth and sensitiveness.
On a recent January night, an animal welfare society had a call to one
of the city freight-yards where a carload of horses was said to be
freezing to death. It was not a false alarm. The agents knew that these
were not valuable horses. Good stock is not shipped in this precarious
fashion. It was a load of the feeble and the aged and maimed--with a few
days' work left in them, if continuously whipped, gathered from the
fields and small towns by buyers who could realise a dollar or two above
the price of the hide--to meet the demand of the alley-minded of the big
city. The hard part is that it costs just as much pain for such beasts
to freeze to death, in the early stages, at least. The investment would
have been entirely spoiled had it been necessary to furnish blankets for
the shipment.
The public reading a story of this adventure, remarks, "Why, I thought
all that was stopped long ago----"
Just as underwriters will gamble on anything, even to insure a ship that
is to run a blockade, if the premium is right--so will a certain element
of trade take a chance on shipping such horses, until the majority of
people are awake and responsive to the impulses of humanity. It isn't
being sanctified to be above cruelty; it is only the beginning of
manhood proper.
The newspapers and all publicity methods are of great service, but the
mightiest effort is to lift the majority of the people out of the
lethargy which renders them immune to pangs of the daily spectacle. The
remarkable part is that the people are ready, but they expect the
stimulus to come from without instead of from within.
Custom is a formidable enemy--that herd instinct of a people which
causes it to accept as right the methods of the many. Farmers to-day
everywhere are following the manner of Devlin; yet the story brings out
the lineaments of most shocking and unforgettable cruelty. How can one
expect effective revulsion on the part of a band of medical students
when the bearded elders bend peering over their vivisections? What are
children to do when their parents shout _mad-dog_ and run for clubs and
pitch-forks at the passing of a thirst-frenzied brute; or the teamster
when the blacksmith does not know the anatomy of a horse's foot?
Ignorance is the mother of cruelty, and custom is the father.
The great truths that will fall in due time upon all the sciences--upon
astronomy, pathology, even upon criminology--are the results of flashes
of intuition. Again and again this is so. The material mind is proof
against intuition, and of necessity cruel. It keeps on with its
burnings, its lancings, its brandings, its collections of skulls and
cadavers, until its particular enlightener appears. The dreadful thing
to consider is that each department of cruelty brings its activity up
into a frightful state of custom and action, before the exposures begin.
Which brings us to the very pith of the endeavour: The child is ready
to change--that is the whole story. The child is fluid, volatile,
receptive to reason. In all our world-life there is nothing so
ostentatiously or calamitously amiss as the ignorance and customs of our
relation to children. The child will change in a day. The child is ready
for the beauty and the mystery of mercy. The prison-house must not be
closed to sensitiveness and intuition. If that can be prevented the
problem of animal welfare is solved, and in the end we will find that
much more has been done for our children than for the animals. So often
again we set out to discover the passage to India and reach the shores
of a New World.
14
CHILDREN CHANGE
The first of the young men to come to Stonestudy followed an attraction
which has never been quite definite to me. He was strongly educated,
having studied art and life at Columbia and other places. His chief
interest at first appeared to be in the oriental philosophy which he
alleged to have found in my work. After that he intimated that he
aspired to write. The second young man came from Dakota, also a
college-bred. A teacher there wrote to me about him. I looked at some of
his work, and I found in it potentialities of illimitable promise. I was
not so excited as I would have been had I not met this discovery in
other cases from the generation behind us. Their fleets are upon every
sea.
The need of a living was somehow arranged, I worked with the two a while
in the evening on short manuscript matters. In fact, the dollar-end has
not pinched so far; and they help a while in the garden in the
afternoons, designating the period, Track, as they named the little
class after mid-day, Chapel. At first, I was in doubt as to whether they
really belonged to the class. It was primarily designed for the younger
minds--and I was unwilling to change that.
You would think it rather difficult--I know I did--to bring the work in
one class for ages ranging from eleven to twice that. I said to the
young men:
"Of course it is _their_ hour. I don't want to bore you, but come if you
like. Be free to discontinue, if what you get isn't worth the time. As
for me--the young ones come first, and I am not yet ready for two
classes."
They smiled. About a week later, they came in a half-hour late. It
happened we had been having an exceptionally good hour.
"I would rather have you not come, if you cannot come on time," I said.
They sat down without any explanation. It was long afterward that I
heard they had been busy about a trunk; that their delay had been
unavoidable in getting it through customs, a barbarous and war-making
inconvenience which cannot flourish much longer. And one day we went out
into the garden together for the hoes, and the Dakota young man said:
"Chapel is the best hour of the day----"