interested in the younger generation. A woman friend out in his country
wrote me, and sent on some of his work. I was not thrilled especially,
though the work was good. She tried again, and I took the later
manuscript to bed with me, one night when I was "lifted out," as the
mason said. It did not work as designed. Instead of dropping off on the
first page, I tossed for hours, and a letter asking him to come to
Stonestudy was off in the first mail in the morning.
He is drawing entirely from his own centre of origins. That was
established at once, and has been held. The only guiding required, since
he is a natural writer, has been on the one point of preserving a
childlike directness and clarity of expression. It is not that he wants
the popular market; the quality of his _bent_ precludes that for the
present. Moreover, he can live here on what thousands of men in America
spend for cigars, but our ideal of writing has to do with the straight
line between the thought and the utterance.
A man's style has little or nothing to do with the words, or the
sentence, paragraph or even his native eccentricities of technique; a
man's style has to do with the manner of his thinking. As for words and
the implements of writing, the more nearly they are made to parallel the
run of thought, the better the work.
One does not learn the Dakotan's kind in a day or a year. There is a
continual changing and refining production about our truest friends--the
same thing in a woman that a man can love in the highest--that quickens
us always to higher vision and deeper humanity. The point is that we
must change and increase to be worthy of our truest relations. One must
always be restless and capacious. When our eyes rest on the horizon, and
do not yearn to tear it apart; when the throb of the Quest sinks low in
our breast--it is time to depart. You who in mid-life think you have
_arrived somewhere_--in profession, in trade, in world-standing--know
that death has already touched you, that the look of your face is
dissolute.
I have said to the Dakotan and to the others here: "It was good for you
to come--but the time may arrive, when it will be just as good for you
to go.... When you see me covering old fields; when you come here for
continual reviews of my little story; when your mind winces with the
thought of what I am to do and say next, because you know it well
already--arise and come no more, but in passing, say to me, 'To-day we
did not get out of the circle of yesterday....' I shall know what is
meant, and it shall be good for you to tell me, since one forgets. It
may be that there is still enough strength for another voyage--that I
may be constrained to leave Telemachus and go forth to the edge of the
land "where lights twinkle among the rocks and the deep moans round with
many voices."
Recently the Dakotan told me of a dream, and I asked him to write it. I
think he will draw nearer to you, if you read the story that he brought
me:
"This is the latest and most complete of many under-water
dreams that have come to me. In their thrall as a child I
learned the deeps of fear. I do not know why dreams of mine
are so often associated with water, unless at some time, way
back in the beginnings, the horror of a water-existence has
been so stamped upon me that it has been retained in
consciousness. As a child, water and strong winds drove me to
tears. I can remember no other things that brought marked
fear but these. One incident of wind, on a boat going to
Block Island Light-house, off Newport, remains as vivid to
this day as when it was enacted, and I was not yet five at
the time. Every one wondered at these peculiar fears, but the
explanation is plainer if one can look either back or beyond.
"Knowledge is but a glimmering of past experience. We are the
condensed sum of all our past activities. Normal mind and
memory are only of the immediate present, only as old as our
bodies, but once in a long time we fall by chance into
certain peculiar conditions of body, mind, or
soul--conditions that are invoking to great reaches of
consciousness back into the past. Normally our shell is too
thick; we are too dense and too conscious of our present
physical being and vitality, for the ancient one within us to
interpret to the brain. Even in sleep, the brain is usually
embroiled or littered with daily life matters. The brain has
not yet become a good listener, and the voice of the inner
man is ever a hushed whisper.
"The exceptionally low temperature of my body was the
immediate cause of this dream. Here is a conviction that I
brought up from it: I believe that any one by putting himself
into a state of very low temperature and vibration, almost
akin to hibernation, may be enabled to go back in
consciousness toward the Beginnings. Evidently red blood is
wholly of man, but in some way the white corpuscles of the
blood seem to be related to the cold-blooded animals and
hence to the past. Under conditions, such as sleeping on the
ground or in a cold, damp place, these white corpuscles may
be aided to gain ascendency over the heart, brain, and red
corpuscles. This accomplished, the past may be brought back.
"It was a cold, rainy Fall night that the dream came. A
bleak east wind blowing along the lake-shore, probed every
recess of the 'Pontchartrain,' the tiny open-work cottage I
used. The place was flushed like a sieve with wind and rain.
It leaked copiously and audibly, and there was no burrowing
away from the storm. I sought the blankets early in a state
of very low circulation. The last thing I was conscious of,
as I drifted off, was the cold, the low sound of the wind,
and the rain beating upon the roof....
"There was a cohering line through this dream, every detail
stamped upon my consciousness so deeply that the memory of it
upon awaking was almost as vivid as when I was immersed....
It began very slowly with a growing perception of a low
monotonous lap and wash of water and a slight heaving,
lifting sensation, as of my being swayed gently to and fro.
It was very cold, not the biting cold we know, but a dank,
lifeless, penetrating cold of water and darkness.... The
manner of my own form was not clear to me; I was of too low a
consciousness to be aware of many exterior particulars. I
merely knew I belonged to darkness and deep water. In fact,
during the dream I had hardly a sense of _being_, except
through the outer stimuli of cold and danger. These were
horribly plain. That I was a creature of the depths and dark,
a bleached single-cell, was doubtless a mental conclusion
from the waking contemplation afterward. In the dream, I
seemed of vast size, and I believe all little creatures do,
since they fill their scope as tightly as we. The spark of
consciousness, or life within, seemed so faint that part of
the time my body seemed a dead, immovable bulk. No sense of
self or body in comparison to outer things, was existent,
except when a larger form instilled me with fear.
"My dream seemed a direct reversion back into the Beginnings,
in form, consciousness, state of being, perception and
instinct--everything--so that I actually lived, in infinitely
dwindled consciousness, the terrible water-life.
"All was blackness. I possessed some slight volition of life
that contracted in the cold. I was not in any keen suffering;
I seemed too low and numbed to sense to the full the
unpleasantness of my condition.... Presently there came a
dawning light which gradually grew stronger. I did not seem
to have eyes, but was conscious of the ray seemingly through
the walls of my body. Slowly it increased, to a sickly wan
filter of grey. It was light shining through water, a light
which would have been no light to a human being. To me it was
intense and fearsome, seemed to reach centres of me that were
sensitive beyond expression. Though I was a mere blob,
boneless and quivering, the ray was foreign and I knew what
it was to cringe.
"And now I find the difficulty of interpreting the dream
exactly from the point of the Cell. These things that I write
I could not know then, except in smallest measure. As our
greater forces are diminished by passing through the brain,
these little affairs are increased by adjustment to man's
waking faculties. From now, I shall give the picture as it
appears to me from this distance:
"As the light increased, I contracted and sank slowly into
the depths. The bottom was not far. I descended in a flowing,
undulating fashion and settled softly on the water-bed,
beside a large, up-jutting fang of rock. It was black in the
depths. The cold penetrated all. Torpid and prone, I lay
there numbed into absolute quiescence. It seemed that a
torpid inertia, doomed to be everlasting, had settled upon
me. I knew no want, no desire, had not the slightest will to
move, to rest, to sleep, to eat, even to exist, just the
dimmest sense of watchfulness and fear. It was perfect
hibernation. I had descended into too low a degree of
temperature and vibration to feel the need even of
nourishment. I was becoming dead to the cold; everything was
a pulseless void. I should never have generated an impulse to
move again had not extraneous influences affected me after
seeming ages had passed.
"The bottom on which I now lay was of soft, oozy silt; about
me were rocks, slippery and covered with a coating of
grey-green slime. Spots in the slime moved. I could hear it,
or rather feel it--a sort of bubbling quake, mere beginnings
of the life impulse. The tops and sides of the rocks were
festooned with waving green fringes of growths, which trailed
out into the water. Long, snakelike fronds and stems of
whitish green, half-vegetable, half-animal, grew on the
bottom. They were stationary at their bases, but were lithe
and a-crawl with life in their stems, extending and
contracting into the water at intervals, in a spiral, snakey
manner. Their heads were like white-bleached flowers, with
hairy lips, which contracted and opened constantly, engulfing
the myriads of floating, microscopic forms.
"Upon the heads of some of the creepers were ghostly
phosphorescent lights, which winked on and off at intervals
as the stems waved gently to and fro. I did not have an
instinctive fear of these. They seemed friendly. They lit up
the black depths. They and I seemed of a similar bent; they
feared the forms that I feared and contracted tight to the
bottom when these enemies approached. There were certain
permanent spots about me that gave off other lights at
intervals. The whole bottom was a dim, vast region of
many-coloured lights, or more properly, dim lambent glows, of
blue, green and yellow, which winked and nodded on and off in
the blackness. They seemed to be the decoys of the feeders
that possessed them. Each glow lit up a circle in the depths
and seemed to attract food to the watcher who waved it. They
were all cold lights, mere phosphorescent gleams without the
searching, penetrating qualities of the light I had first
felt, and they did not bother me.
"... The ray was filtering down again. It was this that kept
me alive. It increased until all above was a wan grey. One by
one the many-coloured lights of the bottom winked off, the
long feelers and contractile stems were drawn in, and the
whole bottom became once more a motionless, dead-grey
world.... Little sacks without eyes in that grey light, the
gorging not begun, kept alive by the whip of fear. The low
life would have gone on to death or dissemination had it not
been for exterior forces which reached me in the shape of
Fear. I shall never forget it--the Fear of the Black Bottoms.
"There was a long, hideous suspense, as the Ray held me, and
the thing that I feared was not the Ray, but belonged with
it. In the midst of a kind of freezing paralysis, the
struggle to flee arose within me. Yet I was without means of
locomotion. Through sheer intensity of panic I expanded. Then
there was a thrusting forward of the inner vital centre
against the forward wall of the sack. It was the most vital
part of me that was thrust forward, the heart of a rudiment,
so to speak. That which remained, followed in a kind of flow.
The movement was an undulation forward, brought about by the
terror to escape.
"Fear is always connected with Behind. With the approach of
Danger I had started _forward_. There had been no forward nor
backward before, nor any sides or top to me. Now a back, a
dorsal aspect, came into being, and the vital centre was
thrust forward within the cell, so as to be farthest away
from the danger. It is in this way that the potential centre
of an organism came to be in the front, in the head, looking
forward and always pointed away from the danger--protected to
the last.
"As I flowed forward, the sticky fluid substance of my body
sucked into the oozy bottom. I spatted myself as flat as
possible, seeming to press the tenderest parts closest to the
bottom. And it is in this way that the vital parts of
organisms came to be underneath, on the ventral aspect,
protected from above by the sides and back. As the Fear
increased, I gained in strength and speed of locomotion, the
same parts of my form protruding rhythmically, faster and
easier, until I did not need to concentrate so intensely upon
the moving-act. Doubtless I covered ages of evolution in the
dream. It is in this way through the stimulus of Fear that
the rudiments of organs of locomotion were begun. And they
came in the Beginnings on the ventral side, because that side
was pressed close to the earth. Every sense, volition,
reasoning power--everything--was generated and fostered by
Fear in the Beginnings. So Fear is really the Mother of our
first overcoming of Inertia.
"I do not recall being devoured by that creature of the Ray;
and yet it seems as if half the life in the Bottoms was
clutched in the torture of that danger. The other half was
gorging.... Gorge, gorge, with unappeased appetite, body
bulging to the bursting point, the Devourers all about me,
the larger engulfing the smaller, not with mouths, but
literally enclosing their prey with the walls of their
bodies, so that the smaller flowed into the larger. And often
the engulfed would be of greater length than the engulfer....
"There was a sound made by the gorging, a distinct sound born
of gluttony, not audible, but to be felt by my sensitive
surfaces, a sort of emanation, not from the gorgers, but born
from the engrossing intensity of the gorging act. I shall
always remember it, a distinct 'ummmmmmm,' constant, and
rising and falling at times to a trifle faster or lower
pitch.
"Always, as the Ray would cross above me, there would be a
stoppage of the emanations from the gorgers, a sinking to the
bottom, and a rising again. Also there were Shadows,
sinister, flowing grey forms, that preyed about the rocky
bottom. These were more felt by me than heard or seen, and
instilled more deadly fear than the larger Shadows that
passed above. The drama of the feeding seemed doomed to go on
and on forever. Repletion would never have come to the
Gorgers. Only Fear broke the spell.
"I recall a last glimpse of that ghost-life of the depths.
About the rocks, the long snakelike stems and feelers were
extended, and the luring decoys waved and glowed again at the
ends of the stalks. With the cessation of the feeding, began
the vaster, unquenchable feeding of the engulfing plants. It
was steady, monotonous, inexhaustible--the winking and waving
of the blue-green glows, the clustering of the senseless
prey, a sudden extinguishing of the light, devouring--then
the nodding gleam again. No mercy, no feeling, no reason
existed in this ghost-region of bleached and bloodless
things. The law was the law of Fear and Gluttony. There was a
thrall to the whole drama which I am powerless to express.
"... The embryo in the womb eats and assimilates, all
unconscious. With life there is movement. The first movement
takes the form of sucking-in that which prolongs life. Then
there is the driving forward by Fear from without. Low life
is a vibration between Fear and Gluttony. In every movement
is the gain of power to make another movement. That is the
Law of life.
"I opened my eyes. The wan grey light of morning was shining
In my face. I felt weak and unrested. There were puddles of
water on the foot of the bed. The blankets lay heavily about
my limbs, and circulation was hardly sufficient to hold
consciousness. The effects of the dream oppressed me the rest
of that day and for long afterward."
FOOTNOTES:
[3] H. A. Sturtzel.
31
THE HILL ROCKS
Our tendency is to return to the pioneers for inspiration.... I was
thinking this morning how in all our studies we had passed quickly over
the intellectualists, the simplifiers, the synthesisers and
explainers--back to the sources of philosophy and sanctity. It is there
that we find the flame. We linger and return to such men as Boehme,
Fichte, Romini-Serbati, Froebel, Swedenborg. We delight in the few great
and isolated names of Greece and Rome that are above style. We turn
continually to the perpetual fountains of India, but seldom to Egypt.
We love the prophets of the Old Testament, but despise chosen peoples at
every appearance; we delight in the lineage of the Messiah; we are
stimulated by the Hebrew literature, by its symbolism, its songs and
precepts, the Oriental colour of it, the hierarchy of its saints, the
strange splendour of its women, but as a book of devotion its chief
significance is that of a huge vessel prepared for the coming of a
Master.
The New Testament is our first book. Manhandled and perverted as it has
been by early writers, who still wanted Moses and laboured under the
misconception that Jesus was expounding the doctrines of Moses afresh,
instead of refuting many of them--yet the New Testament stands highest
above all hands pointing heavenward.
In the case of the teacher here, it was not the so-called orthodoxy that
accomplished this allegiance to the New Testament. Modern churches drove
him forth into the Farther East. It was the return from Patanjali and
the Vedas and much of that excellent and ancient wisdom of the Earlier
Arrival, that gave him a fresh surface for understanding the pilgrimage
and the passion of Jesus.
Our own Tolstoi has done much to restore the Son of Mary to a sceptical
generation. To us Tolstoi's great work is not through the vehicle of the
novel. Though comparisons are everywhere questionable, it seems to us
that the Russian's task on the later Scriptures is as significant as
Luther's. Certainly he has prepared them to stand the more searching and
penetrative gaze of the coming generation. Many of the new voices rise
to declare that it is doubtful if there really was an historic Jesus.
Still the man matters less than his influence. His story is emphatically
in the world; the spirit of it lives above all dogma and vulgarity,
even above nationalism. It is the breath of Brotherhood and Compassion.
It is nearer to us and less complex than the story of the Buddha.
Every such coming heightens the voltage of spiritual power in the world.
The greatest stories of the world are the stories of such comings. Of
first importance in the education of children is the institution of an
ideal of the imminence of great helpers, the Compassionates. Children
become starry-eyed as they listen. I think if we could all shake
ourselves clear of the temporal and the unseemly, we should find deep in
our hearts, a strange expectancy. A woman said, as we talked of these
things:
"I seem to have been expectant for centuries."
When such ideals are held in mind, an adjustment of conduct follows at
once. To be ready (I am not talking religiously) for a revered Guest,
one immediately begins to put one's house in order. Indeed, there's a
reproach in finding the need of rushed preparation, in the hastening to
clear corners and hide unseemly objects; and yet, this is well if the
reorganisation is more than a passing thought. To make the ordering of
one's house a life-habit is a very valid beginning in morality.
We talk continually of the greatest of men; sometimes our voices falter,
and sentences are not finished. We have found many things alike about
the Great Ones. First they had mothers who dreamed, and then they had
poverty to acquaint them with sorrow. They came up hard, and they were
always different from other children. They suffered more than the others
about them, because they were more sensitive.
They met invariably the stiffest foe of a fine child--misunderstanding;
often by that time, even the Mother had lost her vision. Because they
could not find understanding in men and women and children, they drew
apart. Such youths are always forced into the silence.... I often think
of the education of Hiawatha by old Nokomis, the endless and perfect
analogies of the forest and stream and field, by which a child with
vision can gain the story of life. Repeatedly we have discussed the
maiden who sustained France--her girlhood in the forests of Domremy. It
was a forest eighteen miles deep to the centre, and so full of fairies
that the priests had to come to the edge and give mass every little
while to keep them in any kind of subjection. That incomparable maiden
did not want the fairies in subjection. She was listening. From the
centres of the forest came to her the messages of power.... Once when
the Chapel group had left, I sat thinking about this maiden; and queerly
enough, my mind turned presently to something in St. Luke, about the
road to Emmaus--the Stranger who had walked with the disciples, and
finally made himself known. And they asked one to the other after He
had vanished: "Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked with us
by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?"
... Returning from their silences, these torture-quickened youths found
work to do--work that people could not understand. The people invariably
thought there must be a trick about the giving--that the eager one
wanted hidden results for self.... Invariably, they were prodigious
workers, men of incredible energy. Thus they ground themselves fine; and
invariably, too, they were men of exalted personal conduct, though often
they had passed before the fact was truly appreciated.
First of all, they were honest--that was the hill-rock. Such men come to
make crooked paths straight, but first they straighten out themselves.
They stopped lying to other men, and what was greater still, they
stopped lying to themselves. Sooner or later men all came to understand
that they had something good to give--those closest to them, not always
seeing it first....
You couldn't buy them--that was first established; then they turned the
energies of their lives outward instead of in. The _something_ immortal
about them was the loss of the love of self. Losing that, they found
their particular _something_ to do. They found their work--the one thing
that tested their own inimitable powers--and that, of course, proved
the one thing that the world needed from them. As self-men they were not
memorable. Self-men try to gather in the results to themselves. The
world-man wants to give something to his people--the best he has from
his hand or brain or spirit. That's the transaction--the most important
in any life--to turn out instead of in.... Here I am repeating the old
formula for the making of men, as if in the thrill of the absolutely
new--the eternal verity of loving one's neighbour.
Each man of us has his own particular knack of expression. Nothing can
happen so important to a man as to find his particular thing to do. The
best thing one man can do for another is to help him find his work. The
man who has found his work gets from it, and through it, a working idea
of God and the world. The same hard preparation that makes him finally
valuable in his particular work, integrates the character that finally
realises _its own religion_. The greatest wrong that has been done us by
past generations is the detachment of work and religion--setting off the
Sabbath as the day for expressing the angel in us, and marking six days
for the progress of the animal.