red from the pervading greys of the beach.... I pointed to the Other
Shore--a pearly cloud overhanging the white of breakers at its
point--and the little bay asleep in the hollow. The view was a
fulfilment. That little headland breaks the force of the eastern gales
for all this nearer stretch of shore, but its beauty is completed by the
peace of the cove. The same idea is in the stone-work of the Chapel, and
the completing vine.
Beauty is a globe of meaning. It is a union of two objects which
complete each other and suggest a third--the union of two to make one.
Our minds are satisfied with the sustaining, the masculine in the
stone-work and the gaunt headland, because they are completed by the
trailing vine and the sleeping cove. The suggestion in each is peace,
the very quest of life.
There is always this trinity, to form a globe of beauty. From the union
of matter and spirit, all life is quickened; and this initial formula of
completing a circle, a trinity, pervades all life.
We are thrilled by the symbols of the great original affinity of matter
and spirit, and the very life which we thrill with is its completing
third.
Artists know this deeper than brain. We regarded the elm tree with its
haggard weather-blackened limbs, and springing from it, the delicate
green foliage. It was like the background of a great painting. I brought
forth later some small reproductions of a number of famous paintings.
Among them, we found the stone and the vine often in the background, or
the branch and the leaf, pictured usually with a suggestion of running
water at the base, for action and progress and the ever-onward human
spirit. We didn't find full-leafed trees there (for that would hide the
lineaments of beauty, as the character of a face is concealed in
fatness)--but branch and leaf, the need each of the other, and the
promise of the fruit. It was the globe again--the union of the strong
and the fragile for a finer dimension of power--bow and cord, ship and
sail, man and woman, stalk and leaf, stone and vine--yes, and that which
surprised me at the beginning--that gleam of red in the wash of water
upon the greys. It was the suggestion of warmth and life brought to the
cold, inanimate hues of sand and gravel, that gave us the sense of
beauty in a wet, worn brick.
Firelight in a room is just the same thing--a grey stone fireplace with
red embers is the very heart of a winter house.... If there had not been
a vital significance back of our discovery of the day, our sense of a
brick's beauty would have been untimely and disordered....
Such were the points brought out as we walked. The episode is indicative
of the days here. The best hours are always spontaneous. I am always
occupied with my own affairs until the moment of Chapel, but Nature is
invariably safe and replete. There are a thousand analogies for every
event of the human spirit, even for the resurrection of the human soul.
The plan is one.
The day would have been poorly spent, no matter what I might say,
without an expression from the others on the beauty conception. It is
the union again of receiving and expressing that makes growth and
character. They would not try to remember what I said. Memory is not the
faculty I cared to cultivate. The endeavour here is from the spirit
outward. I do not wish to fill their brains, but to inspire their souls
to fill their own brains. All work is a training for the expression of
the real self. We are infinitely greater than our brains. If I can
arrive at the truth of any subject, I need have no worry about sleepy
heads or Inertia. A disclosure of truth, and the process of it made
clear, is the perfect awakener, for truth is the aliment of the soul. It
is not what I say, but what a truth suggests to them, that determines
the value of their expression of it.
Expression is the triumph. Every time the brain gives expression to the
real self, there is a memorable vitality, not only in the expression,
but strength and authority added to the brain itself. This is training
for writers, but words are the natural implements for us all.... So the
ardent aim of the classes here is to awaken the deeper vitalities of
those who listen. When one awakens a soul interest, you may rely upon
it the brain is open to its full zest and capacity. Pattering of
uncohered facts upon the temporal surface of the brain in the effort to
lodge them in the tentacles of memory, does not construct the character
of man or woman.
The superb flower of any educational work is the occasional disclosure
of the real bent of a student. That is always like the discovery of el
dorado. The most important fact to be considered in any educational
ideal is that the soul of every one has its own especial treasures and
bestowals; and when one succeeds in touching with fresh fire an ancient
facility or proclivity in the breast of a boy or girl--the rest is but
following the gleam.... The world finds us significant, even heroic,
only in so far as we give expression to a power intrinsic.
* * * * *
Another day we found more water-worn bricks. An old brick house long ago
had rubbed itself into the falling bank, and now its parts are spread
along certain portions of the shore and buried in the sand. The boys
brought in a half-bushel of this red treasure, and we set about
constructing a narrow cement walk of quality. Our idea was to carry out
and make perpetual the affinity of the red gleams as insets in a grey
pebble walk.
We worked raptly, even through the hard, dull labour of levelling,
setting the frames and laying the concrete foundation. The finishing
was the absorbing part. The idea was not for a fine-grained sand walk,
but a mixture of all sizes from a penny large down to the finest sand.
The cement makes the most lasting bond in a mixture of this kind;
moreover, the pebbly finish was effective and darker for the insets.
The walk was less than two feet wide and roughly squared by pieces of
shingle laid in the concrete, tip to tip. The final dressing, two inches
of pebble mortar, looked unpromising on account of its coating of white.
It would have hardened a dingy cement colour, instead of the deep,
sparkling grey desired, had we not thought of turning a fine spray from
the hose upon the newly trowelled surface to wash away the top cement.
To make sure, the surface was then lightly sponged until the pebble-tops
were absolutely without the clinging white. The water also erased the
least mark of the trowel.
The red insets were now tamped in with the trowel-handle, the unique
round edges appearing without a touch of stain. The rapidly hardening
mortar was not packed about the brick pieces, but the natural edge of
the grey preserved, as if they had been hurled in. They were placed
without immediate regularity, but with relation to the walk in its
length.... We regarded it afterward in the rain--all frames and shingles
removed, the loam and humus of the rose-soil softening the border--the
red rounded edges of the brick-insets gleaming out of the grey--a walk
that seemed to have been there a thousand years, the red pieces
seemingly worn by the bare feet of centuries.... It satisfied, and the
thought, too, that those who helped to do the work could not be quite
the same after that afternoon.
21
THE HIGHEST OF THE ARTS
One day at Chapel, neither the Abbot nor the Dakotan appeared. The
Columbian had left us. I looked up to see two young girls and another
there. One of the papers brought in that day was upon the joining of two
rivers. Where they came together was a whirlpool, a tremendous vortex
that hushed all surrounding Nature. In the lowlands that lay about the
place of that mighty meeting, a deep verdure came, for the winds carried
the spray from the vortex. Nature loved the sounds of that pouring
together. From the whirlpool, where two met, one great river emerged,
white-maned with rapids for a way--then broad and pure and still, so
that only birds and poets could hear the harmony deep as life. From time
to time it gave forth its tributaries, yet seemingly was undiminished.
Always on, always one, carrying all, making all pure, through the silent
places, past the great mountains--to the sea.
It was not until I had read of this mating of waters that I realised the
slightly different conditions in the Chapel, the young men not being
there.
... The strangest humility stole over me. It had become the
life-theme--to bring a breath from the open splendour of the future to
the matings of men and women. I have never been able to understand how
anything can be expected of men, if women are not great. I have never
been able to understand how men and women can take each other as a
matter of course. Most of all, I have been unable to understand how
women can accept the man-idea of things.
The great killing in Europe was brought about because women have
accepted the man-idea of life. Women are in this sense immediately
responsible for the war, because they have not been true to the
limitless potentialities of their being. Still from the very hour when
man realised his greater bodily strength, continual pressures have
fallen upon woman to break her dream. The Hebrew Scriptures show best
the processes that have been brought to bear upon women--from the
establishment of the patriarchal idea to the final going down into
Egypt.
It is in the nature of women to please men, but they have not been
allowed through the centuries to please men in their own way. Man wanted
to be pleased according to his idea--and women, in accepting that, have
prostituted themselves. Men have united with submissive women to bring
forth children farther and farther from the dream. Man's idea is
possession; that which is possessed is not free. Man's thought is to
make woman conform to his ideas; and that which conforms, at once
betrays the first law of the growth to greatness--that of being true to
one's self.
The veil, the mouth-veil, the crippled foot, the harem, the barred
lattice, the corset, the eunuch, the denial of education to women, the
very text of the marriage-rites in all countries, are man's ideas of
keeping woman for himself, from herself. The Orient is rotted with this
conception.
Would you like to know where man's ideas--man's plan of Conception--is
most utterly outraged? _In the coming of Messiahs._ The Josephs are
mainly dangling. They are in the mere passage of events, having to do
neither with heights nor depths.
One of the deepest human instincts of the male is that woman is a
wanton. It breaks out still in the best of men, wherever the
sex-principle overpowers the mind. This is well-covered ground. I would
suggest only that the present horrible chaos of human affairs, while
directly the fault of the absence of rational idealism in the world, has
been brought about in reality by the man-pressure which for centuries
has fallen upon the nature of woman. I hold it as one of the miracles
that great women still move among us; and that to-day in every movement
and voice of women at large in the world, one perceives that the
transition is on....
The great love story can only be founded upon liberty. Bring the plan of
serfdom to a woman's nature, and one of two things takes place within
her--submission utterly or outwardly. The sons of the submissive are
neither conquerors of self nor takers of cities. The outwardly
submissive woman may inwardly contain and foster a great dream--indeed,
the fruits of these dreams have come to be--but more often the heart is
filled with secret hatreds. Sons of hatred may be sons of strength, but
the fire they burn with is red and not white.
Once I expressed the conviction that if the right man talked to a
roomful of young, unmarried women upon the great ideals of
motherhood--and his words were wise and pure enough--that not one of the
women in the room would bring forth the children afterward that would
have come to them had they not been there to listen. I believe that many
young women of the arriving generation are tremendously eager to listen,
and to answer the dream....
I looked in humility and great tenderness upon those pure feminine
elements in the Chapel, awaiting as usual what I should ask or say. When
I thought that some time they would be mothers, it came with a rush of
emotion--that I had neither words nor art, nor strength nor purity to
make them see the almost divine possibilities of their future. For years
I had written in the hope of lifting the ideals of such as these;
dreamed of writing at last with such clarity and truth that they could
not be the same after reading; but it is different writing to the great
outer Abstraction, than talking face to face in one's Study. Some of the
things said that day are written here without quotations:
... It is all soil and seed again. The world to-day has not entered the
outer courts even of the physical beauty of romance. The lower the
orders of human understanding, the easier it is for the young men and
women to accept their mates. It is often a matter of propinquity--the
handiest. The women of the lower classes do not bring an alabaster bowl
to one certain spring of pure water. There seems to be a red enchantment
upon the many--the nearest will do. The great loves of the world have
not thus come to be. Great women, carrying the whitest fires, have
waited for the One; they have listened for a certain voice. Their hearts
knew. There was no chance. When they were ready, the One arrived.
The lovelier we become in conduct and the higher we turn in
aspiration--the more beautifully are we prepared for the great services
of Romance. As a race we have only touched our lips to the cup of its
beauty and fruitfulness.... Would you, who understand so well what
culture has done for corn and roses, forget the mysteries of your own
great being--rush blindly as the world does into the arms that first
beckon, following the laws that have made you the most superb of
animals, forgetting the laws that have made you living souls?
I would have you study the lineage of Mary, the wonderful care with
which it was written, even to include that blent flame of earth and
heaven which was Ruth; I would have you read again the stories of
Gautama and Jesus, and of the mothers of the prophets. The stories of
the coming of Messiahs are always the greatest stories in the world....
And then we see the great stony fields of humanity--the potential mass
in which the great ones of the future are to rise. Their matings are
makeshifts; their brief honeymoons are matters from which the finer
world turns its eyes.
... For many days you have come in here quietly at this time, taking
your seats together, and listening so cheerfully to what has passed. You
know as well as I that there have been moments in which the stones of
the Chapel walls faded from our eyes, and that which we saw in each
other was not that which we see as we pass in colder moments in the
street. We have had moments here when it seemed that any thought was
easily to be comprehended--that it had but to be spoken to be
embraced.... There have been moments, too, sudden spontaneities when we
were pure givers, when there was love in our hearts for all beings, and
we were strong to answer any call.
It is not that which we pass coldly on the street that has gladdened me
so often and so strangely in your coming--but those mysteries within,
those arousings deeper than brain, that do away so peremptorily with all
systems of teacher and student; which show us one in meaning and one in
aim.... It is tragic that the romances of the world so seldom touch
these high mysteries. We feel the Old Mother drawing us together--all
her great blind forces for renewing her lands and seas and realms of
air. But we forget that the animals follow this; the myriads of
unawakened men and women follow this; the products of this are used for
every waste and violence. Nature brings them in, and then destructive
principles play upon them. They are dealt with in great numbers, because
individuals have not emerged. They have slain them twenty thousand the
day in Europe of late--the bodies of men whose mothers in the main have
followed the blind forces of Nature, and no more. Nature will replenish
these losses.
Perceive, too: The many have not even sensed the beauties of Nature.
This physical being of ours which the Old Mother has raised from the
earth that a God might be built within it--even the beauty of this is
not yet fulfilled--much less the powers of the mind which we have
touched--much less that radiance of spirit which has made our highest
moments together so memorable.
... You would be mothers--that is the highest of the arts. The making of
books is childish and temporal compared to that. Mothering of men--that
is the highest art.... Yet we do not make books blindly. For years we
labour and watch the world; for years we gather together our thoughts
and observations of men and Nature; studiously we travel and willingly
at last we learn to suffer. Suffering brings it all home to us;
suffering connects together all our treasures, so that we see their
inter-relations and our meaning to them all. At last (and this, if we
have been called in the beginning) we dare to write our book. It fails.
Again and again we fail--that is the splendid unifying force, working
upon us. So far, we have only brought into the world our half-gods.
Failures melt us into the solution of the world.... We have learned to
welcome suffering now; we have detached ourselves from the shams that
the world can give. We have learned that the world cannot pay in kind
for any noble action--that the spirit of human hearts alone can answer
any great striving.... We go apart to the wildernesses to listen. In the
summit of our strength, the voice begins to speak--the _Guru's_ voice.
We are but instruments for the making of books. We are but listening
surfaces for the voice to play upon. At last and at best, we have merely
made ourselves fine enough to be used. Then our book is done. We have no
part in it afterward. If we have done well, the world will serve it in
God's good time.... And that is the low and the temporal art. Mere
bodies of books come into the world in thousands. They move their little
season and pass. Even the half-gods only rise and stir and pass away.
But when the half-gods go, the Gods arrive.
... You would not do less than this to bring forth men--you who have the
call.... You must learn the world--be well grounded in the world. You
need not forget the Old Mother. Your feet are of clay--but you must have
the immortal gleam in your eyes. Do not forget the Old Mother--yet it is
only when the Father appears that you can see her as she really is. It
is the light of His spirit that has shown you the passion of the rose,
the goodness of the wheat, the holiness of the forests. By His
quickening you are hushed in the beauty of the Mother.... The myriads of
makers of books have not yet sensed this beauty.
There is a _different_ love of Nature. We cry aloud in our surface
ecstasies--that the Old Mother was never so beautiful, her contours and
colourings. We travel far for a certain vista, or journey alone as if
making a pilgrimage to a certain nave of woodland where a loved hand has
touched us.... But this lifted love of nature is different from the
Pipes of Pan, from all sensuous beauty. The love of Nature that I mean
is different even from wooings and winnings and all that beauteous
bewilderment of sex-opposites--different from all save the immortal
romances.
I wonder if I can suggest what is in the heart; it cannot be more than a
suggestion, for these things have not to do with words. You who have
felt it may know; and in those high moments you were very far from the
weight and symbols of Nature, but very close to her quickening
spirit.... I walked for hours alone, through different small communities
of beech and oak and elm; and on a slope before my eyes there was a
sudden low clearing of vapour, as if a curtain were lifted, and I saw a
thicket of dogwood in the mystery of resurrection, the stone of the
sepulchre rolled away.
I do not know to this day if they were really there. I have never found
the trees again.... I was sitting here one fall night, a South Wind
straight from the great water, and the mignonette came in and
lingeringly passed. The garden was behind to the North. I went to it and
it gave me nothing, moved around it, and there was no respiration of
the heaven-breath. Yet the oneness and the spirit of life had touched me
from the miracle, like the ineffable presence of the dogwood in bloom on
that fairy slope.
The love of Nature, the different love, is a matter of our own
receptivity. If we are brave enough, or sweet enough within, we will not
require the touch of the senses, nor Nature's masterstrokes to awaken
us. We will not need to leave our rooms, for it is all here--in the deep
gleam of polished strength of the hickory axe-handle, in the low light
of the blade, in stone wall and oaken sill, in leather and brass and
pottery, in the respiration of the burning wood, and veritably massed
upon the sweeping distance from the window. It is because we are coarse
and fibrous and confined in the sick weight of flesh that we do not
stand in a kind of creative awe before the lowliest mystery of our
physical sight.
Do you know that there is a different fragrance, a different manner of
burning to each tree, whose parts you bring to the open camp fire or
your own hearth; that some woods shriek at this second death after the
cutting, that others pass with gracious calm, and still others give up
their dearest reality, at the moment of breaking under the fire, like
the released spirit of a saint that was articulate heretofore only in
beautiful deeds?
The willow burns with quiet meagre warmth, like a lamb led to slaughter,
but with innocence feigned, keeping her vain secrets to the last. The
oak resists, as he resists the axe, having spent all his energy in
building a stout and perfect body, proud of his twisted arms and gnarled
hands. The pine rebels, and noisily to the swift end, saying: "I do not
believe in cremation. I believe in breaking down alone and apart, as I
lived. I am clean without the fire. You should let me alone, and now I
shall not let you think nor talk of real things until I am gone...."
Each with its fragrance--the elm, the silentest and sweetest of all. The
elm has forgotten her body in spreading her grace to the stars; the elm
for aspiration, loving the starlight so well that she will not hide it
from the ground; most beautiful of all, save the beech in winter, a
swift and saintly passing of a noble life. The maple warms you in spite
of herself, giving up her secrets which are not all clean--a lover of
fatness, her shade too dense, a hater of winter, because she is bare,
and the secret of all ugliness in her nudity. (The true tree-lover is
never a stranger to the winter woods.)
And the mothering beech, with her soft incense, her heart filling the
room with warmth and light, her will to warm the world; the mothering
beech, a healer and a shelterer, a lover like that Magdalen whose sin
was loving much. She gives her body to Gods and men--and most sweetly to
the fire, her passing naked and unashamed.
The different love of Nature that the child knows instinctively; that
young men and maidens forget in the heat of themselves--but that comes
again to us if we grow decently older; in rock and thicket, in the
voices of running water, in every recess of woodland and arch of
shore--not the Pipes of Pan, but the mysteries of God, not sensuousness,
but the awakening of a spirit that has slumbered--the illumination,
sudden and splendid, _that all is One_--that Nature is the plane of
manifestation for the infinite and perfect story of God; that Nature is
the table which God has filled to overflowing--this is a suggestion, a
beginning of the lifted love of Nature....
If they beckon to you, the trees on the horizon (and God be with you if
there are none); if they seem to be calling to you, do not fail them, do
not wait too long. For surely that time will come when they will cease
to call to your heart. They will not have changed, but you will have
gone too far back among the spectres and illusions of detached things to
know that they are calling. And be very sure you will never find the
love of God in the eyes of passing men--if you have forgotten our
Mother.