peace when the task is on, at his best. He is free from envy and desire.
Even his physical organs are healthfully active. The only way to be
well is to give forth. When we give forth work that tests our full
powers, we are replenished by the power that drives the suns. Giving
forth, we automatically ward off the destructive thoughts. Our only safe
inbreathing physically, mentally, and spiritually is from the upper
source of things----not in the tainted atmospheres of the crowds. A
man's own work does not kill. It is stimulus, worry, ambition, the
tension and complication of wanting results for self, that kill.
Each man stands as a fuse between his race and the creative energy that
drives the whole scheme of life. If he doubles this fuse _in_ to self,
he becomes a non-connective. He cannot receive from the clean source,
nor can he give. What he gets is by a pure animal process of struggle
and snatch. He is a sick and immoral creature. Turning the fuse outward,
he gives his service to men, and dynamos of cosmic force throw their
energy through him to his people. He lives. According to the carrying
capacity of his fuse is he loved and remembered and idealised for the
work he does.
A jar of water that has no lower outlet can only be filled so full
before it spills, but open a lower vent and it can be filled according
to the size of the outpouring. Now there is a running stream in the
vessel. All life that does not run is stagnant.
There is a task for every man. We are born with different equipments,
but if we have a gift, be very sure it is not fortuitous. We have earned
it. It should make us the finer workman. But all work is good. The
handle of an axe is a poem.
We would never destroy the natural resources of the earth, if we, as
men, found our work. Rather we would perceive the way of old Mother
Earth who turns to her God for light and power, and from that pure
impregnation, brings forth her living things. We would shudder at all
destruction and greed, and perceive as good workmen the excellent values
of woods and coals and gases, and the finer forces of the soil. We would
perceive that they are to be cared for; that their relation to man is
service; that they have no relation to great individual fortunes. These
are the free gifts from our Mother. As good workmen we would realise
that greed and competition pulls upon, and tortures into activity, all
that is insane within us.
The thing that brings men together in real talk, that makes the hush in
Chapel or where talk is anywhere; the thing that clutches the throat,
and sometimes brings the smart to the eyes--is the quality of men who
have found their work, and who have lost the love of self. They are the
conservers. They see first what is good for us to do and be. We follow
their thoughts in action afterward, as water follows the curve of a
basin. They go after the deep-down men; they dream of the shorter
passages to India; they sense the new power in the world; their faces
are turned to the East for the rising of new stars. Often they die to
make us see, but others spring to finish their work. Our hearts burn
within us when we speak of their work.
32
ASSEMBLY OF PARTS
Others have come; there are fresh wonders to me, but this book must
close.... The development of each young mind is like doing a book--each
a different book. Fascination attends the work. I assure you a teacher
gets more than he can give.... Every mill should be a school. Every
professional man should call for his own. A man's work in the world
should be judged by his constructive contacts with the young minds about
him. A man should learn the inspiration which comes in service for the
great Abstraction, the many, from which there is no answer; but he can
only become powerful and unerring by trying out the results of his
offerings face to face with his own group. It should be as natural for a
matured man to gather his mental and spiritual familiars about him as it
is for him to become the head of a domestic establishment.
There is chance for the tradesmen to turn a little from ledger and
margin, to the faces of the young about them--those who have come for
the wages of bread. Many philanthropists would carve their names on
stone, as great givers to the public. The public will not take these
things personally; the public laughs and lightly criticises. Men who
have nothing but money to give away cannot hope to receive other than
calculating looks and laughter that rings with derision.
The time will come when matters of trade in the large shall be conducted
nationally and municipally. The business of man is to produce something.
The man who produces nothing, but who sits in the midst of other men's
goods, offering them for sale at a price greater than he paid, such a
man moves in the midst of a badly-lit district of many pitfalls. It is
the same with a man at a desk, before whom pass many papers representing
transactions of merchandise and whose business it is to take a
proprietary bite out of each. He develops a perverted look at life, and
a bad bill of moral health. There is no exception to this, though he
conduct a weekly bible lesson for the young, even move his chair to a
church every seventh day.
The drama of the trade mind is yet to be written. It is a sordid story;
the figure at the last is in no way heroic. It would not be a popular
story if done well.
The time is not far off, except to those whose eyes are dim, when
countries will be Fatherlands in the true sense--in the sense of
realising that the real estate is not bounded land, vaulted gold, not
even electrified matter, but the youth of the land. Such is the treasure
of the Fatherland. The development of youth is the first work of man;
the highest ideal may be answered first hand. Also through the
development of the young, the father best puts on his own wisdom and
rectitude.
The ideal of education has already been reversed at the bottom. There is
pandemonium yet; there is colossal stupidity yet, but Order is coming
in. It would be well for all men meditatively to regard a kindergarten
in action. Here are children free in the midst of objects designed to
supply a great variety of attractions. There is that _hum_ in the room.
It is not dissonance. The child is encouraged to be himself and express
himself; never to impinge upon his neighbour's rights, but to lose
himself in the objects that draw him most deeply.
I have mentioned the man who caught the spiritual dream of all this, who
worked it out in life and books. One of his books was published nearly a
hundred years ago. It wasn't a book on kindergarten, but on the
education of man. I have not read this of Froebel's work. I wanted to do
these studies my own way, but I know from what I have seen of
kindergartens, and what teachers of kindergartens have told me, that the
work is true--that "The Education of Man" is a true book. Nor would it
have lived a hundred years otherwise.
The child is now sent to kindergarten and for a year is truly taught.
The process is not a filling of brain, but an encouragement of the
deeper powers, their organisation and direction. At the end of the year,
the child is sent into the first grade, where the barbaric process of
competitive education and brain-cramming is carried on as sincerely as
it was in Froebel's time.... A kindergarten teacher told me in that low
intense way, which speaks of many tears exhausted:
"I dare not look into the first-grade rooms. We have done so differently
by them through the first year. When the little ones leave us, they are
wide open and helpless. They are taken from a warm bath to a cold blast.
Their little faces change in a few days. Do you know the ones that stand
the change best? The commoner children, the clever and hard-headed
children. The little dreamers--the sensitive ones--are hurt and altered
for the worse. Their manner changes to me, when I see them outside. You
do not know how we have suffered."
Some of the greatest teachers in America to-day are the kindergarten
teachers; not that they are especially chosen for quality, but because
they have touched reality in teaching. They have seen, even in the very
little ones, that response which is deeper than brain. If the great
ideal that is carried out through their first year were continued
through seven years, the generation thus directed would meet life with
serenity and without greed. They would make over the world into a finer
place to be.
* * * * *
I wonder if I may dare to say it once more?... It came this way in
Chapel just a few days ago. There was a pencil in my hand, and something
of man's ideal performance here below appeared more than ever clearly. I
am putting down the picture, much as it came then, for the straightest
way to write anything is as you would tell it:
"... This pencil is a man, any man. Above is spirit; below matter. The
world of spirit is finished. The plan is already thought out there, to
the utmost detail. This above is the Breath, the Conception, the
Emanation, the Dream, the Universal Energy--philosophers have called it
by many names, but they mean the God-Idea wrought of necessity in
Spirit, since God is spirit.
"The world of matter below is not finished. Certain parts are completed,
but not all, and the assembly of parts is just begun. The material world
is lost in the making of parts, forgetting that the plan is one--that
the parts of matter must be assembled into a whole--that a replica must
be made in matter of the one great spiritual Conception. So long as men
are identified with parts, there is dissonance from the shops of earth,
a pulling apart instead of together.
"The many are almost ready to grasp the great unifying conception. This
is the next step for the human family as a whole; this the present
planetary brooding. Much we have suffered from identifying ourselves
with parts. Rivalries, boundaries, jealousies, wars--all have to do with
the making of parts. Beauty, harmony, peace and brotherhood have to do
with the assembly of parts into one. That which is good for the many is
good for the one; and that which is good for the one is good for the
many--_the instant_ we leave the part and conceive the whole.
"All the high-range voices for hundreds of years have proclaimed that
the plan is one. The world to-day is roused with the Unifiers--voices of
men in every city and plain crying out that we are all one in aim and
meaning, that the instruments are tuned, the orchestra ready, the music
in place--but the players, alas, lost as yet in frenzy for their own
little parts. The baton of the leader is lifted, but they do not hear.
In their self-promulgation they have not yet turned as one to the
conductor's eyes. The dissonance is at its highest, yet the hour has
struck for the lift of harmony.
"Look again at the pencil that stands for man. Above is the spiritual
plan all finished. Every invention, every song and poem and heroism to
be, is there. One by one for ages, the aspiring intelligence of man has
touched and taken down the parts of this spiritual plan, forced the
parts into matter, making his dream come true. Thus have come into the
world our treasures. We preserve them--every gift from a spiritual
source. Often we preserve them (until they are fully understood) against
our will. The mere matter-models break down and are lost, for matter
changes endlessly until it is immortalised, as our bodies must be
through the refinement of spiritual union.
"Our pioneers, by suffering and labour, even by fasting and prayer, have
made themselves fine enough to contact some little part of that finished
plan. They have lowered it into matter for us to see--step by step--the
song into notes, the poem into words, the angel into paint or stone; and
the saints have touched dreams of great service, bringing down the
pictures of the dream somehow in matter--and their own bodies often to
martyrdom....
"Below the pencil is the world of matter, at this hour of its highest
disorganisation. The very terror and chaos of the world is an
inspiration to every unifying voice. Here below are already many parts;
above, the plan as a whole and the missing parts. Man stands
between--the first creature to realise that there is an above, as well
as a below. All creatures beneath man are driven; they look down. Man
alone has looked up; man has raised himself erect and may take what he
will from the spiritual source to electrify his progress. Man becomes
significant the moment he realises that the plan is not for self, but
for the race; not for the part, but for the whole.
"I have written it in many different ways, and told it in many more.
There are endless analogies. Thousands before me have written and sung
and told the same. It is the great Story. We see it working out even in
these wrecking days. The plan is already in the souls of men.... And
what has this to do with education?
"Everything. The brain sees but the part. The development of brain will
never bring to child or man the conception of the spiritual plan. There
is a man to come for every missing part. Each man, as he develops, is
more and more a specialist. These missing parts shall be taken down from
spirit and put into matter by men whose intrinsic gifts are developed to
contact them. Thus have come the great poems and inventions so far, the
splendid sacrifices of men, and all renunciation for the healing of the
nations.
"I would first find the work for the child. The finer the child the
easier this part of the task. Then I would develop the child to turn to
a spiritual source for his inspiration--his expectation to a spiritual
source for every good and perfect thing. The dream is there; the other
half of the circle is to produce the dream in matter.
* * * * *
"Education is thus religion--but not the man-idea of religion. It has
nothing to do with creeds or cults, with affirmations or observances. It
has to do with establishing connection with the sources of power, and
bringing the energy down into the performance of constructive work in
matter. Religion isn't a feeling of piety or devoutness; it is action.
Spirituality is intellect inspired.
"The mountain is broad at the base only. There are many paths upward.
These paths are far apart only at the base. On the shoulder of the
mountain we hear the voices of those who have taken the other paths.
Still higher, we meet. The Apex is a point; the plan is one.
"I would teach the young mind to find his own voice, his own part, his
own message. It is there above him. True training is the refinement, the
preparing of a surface fine enough to receive his part. That is the
inspiration. The out-breath--the right hand of the process--is action,
making a model in matter of the thing received.
"All training that does not encourage the child to look into the Unseen
for his power, not only holds, but draws him to the commonness of the
herds.
"... Many men to-day can believe in angels who cannot believe in
fairies; but the child who sees the changes of light in the lowliest
shadows, whose fancy is filled with little figures of the conservers and
colourers of nature, shall in good time see the angels--and one of that
host shall come forward (which is more important and to the point)
bringing a task for the child to do.
"I say to the children here: 'I do not see the things you do, and in
that I am your inferior. They shut the doors upon me when I was little,
not meaning to, but the world always does that. That fineness of seeing
went out from my eyes, but it is so good a thing that I do not want you
to lose it. And always I am ready to listen, when you tell me what you
have seen.'"
THE END
BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT
MIDSTREAM
... A hint from the first-year's recognition of a book that was made to
remain in American literature:
_Boston Transcript_: If it be extravagance, let it be so, to say that
Comfort's account of his childhood has seldom been rivaled in
literature. It amounts to revelation. Really the only parallels that
will suggest themselves in our letters are the great ones that occur in
_Huckleberry Finn_.... This man Comfort's gamut is long and he has raced
its full length. One wonders whether the interest, the skill, the
general worth of it, the things it has to report of all life, as well as
the one life, do not entitle _Midstream_ to the very long life that is
enjoyed only by the very best of books.
_San Francisco Argonaut_: Read the book. It is autobiography in its
perfection. It shows more of the realities of the human being, more of
god and devil in conflict, than any book of its kind.
_Springfield Republican_: It is difficult to think of any other young
American who has so courageously reversed the process of writing for the
"market" and so flatly insisted upon being taken, if at all, on his own
terms of life and art. And now comes his frank and amazing revelation,
_Midstream_, in which he captures and carries the reader on to a story
of regeneration. He has come far; the question is, how much farther will
he go?
Mary Fanton Roberts in _The Craftsman_: Beside the stature of this book,
the ordinary novel and biography are curiously dwarfed. You read it with
a poignant interest and close it with wonder, reverence and gratitude.
There is something strangely touching about words so candid, and a
draught of philosophy that has been pressed from such wild and
bitter-sweet fruit. The message it contains is one to sink deep,
penetrating and enriching whatever receptive soul it touches. This man's
words are incandescent. Many of us feel that he is breathing into a
language, grown trite from hackneyed usage, the inspiration of a
quickened life.
Ida Gilbert Myers in _Washington Star_: Courage backs this revelation.
The gift of self-searching animates it. Honesty sustains it. And Mr.
Comfort's rare power to seize and deliver his vision inspires it. It is
a tremendous thing--the greatest thing that this writer has yet done.
George Soule in _The Little Review_: Here is a man's life laid
absolutely bare. A direct, big thing, so simple that almost no one has
done it before--this Mr. Comfort has dared. People who are made
uncomfortable by intimate grasp of anything, to whom reserve is more
important than truth--these will not read _Midstream_ through, but
others will emerge from the book with a sense of the absolute nobility
of Mr. Comfort's frankness.
Edwin Markham in _Hearst's Magazine_: Will Levington Comfort, a novelist
of distinction, has given us a book alive with human interest, with
passionate sincerity, and with all the power of his despotism over
words. He has been a wandering foot--familiar with many strands; he has
known shame and sorrow and striving; he has won to serene heights. He
tells it all without vaunt, relating his experience to the large
meanings of life for all men, to the mystic currents behind life, out of
which we come, to whose great deep we return.
_12mo., Net, $1.25_
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| Transcriber's Note: |
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| Typographical errors corrected in the text: |
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| Page 59 Ile changed to He |
| Page 81 quiesence changed to quiescence |
| Page 132 blurr changed to blur |
| Page 161 unforgetable changed to unforgettable |
| Page 243 became changed to become |
| Page 261 spirtual changed to spiritual |
| Page 262 posessions changed to possessions |
| Page 285 apear changed to appear |
| Page 287 blossome changed to blossoms |
| Page 288 enviroment changed to environment |
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End of Project Gutenberg's Child and Country, by Will Levington Comfort