To confess one’s self to have had a seizure of pure happiness is, by
one theory, to admit one’s self a boob.
And yet we do not know when we have been more happy--in our own secret
definition of that state--than when we set off for the subway yesterday
noon-time. A more timid or more subtle spirit, perhaps, would not dare
the envy of the gods by mentioning it. A fig for the gods!
For, in the first place, that clear pearly light, the patchwork of sun
and shadow down the harsh channel of Broadway, the close embrace of
wintry air (so dartingly cold that it seemed to enfold and surround one
as water does the bather) and the great Singer tower lifting above
the cliffs in a tender wash of blue--these were enough of themselves
to make one lively. Again, we were bound uptown on an errand of pure
generosity, to turn over to a publisher the MS. of a book written by a
friend of ours, which we believe to be a fine book. Further, we even
considered it possible that the publisher might buy our lunch.
We went down into the subway, and clanked through the turnstile. The
thought occurred to us that it seems pretty poor sportsmanship to make
merry--as some of the papers have been doing--over the fact that many
people have devised ways of bilking the turnstiles. We suppose we shall
be accused of having been bought with mickle gold, but we must admit
that we have never had any hankering to cheat the subway. There are
many corporations we would cheat without a qualm, but the subway is
not one of them. It gives us more for a nickel--not only in the way of
transportation, but also privacy, mental relaxation, and scrutiny of
the human scene--than anything else we know.
We stood in the subway express, about to open a book. We noticed,
sitting a little farther along, a young woman whose hat interested
us. It was pierced in front by a pin of silver and brilliants, zigzag
in shape, representing (we supposed) a bolt of lightning. It was
emblematic, we opined, of high-spirited humanity itself, that toys with
lightning in more ways than one. This of itself, while valuable for
meditation, was not the cause of our happiness. We had a book with us,
a book that we have wanted to read for some time. We began to read it.
It was not necessary to travel more than a few lines to be perfectly
happy. Why were we happy? We could write many pages to try to explain
it to you, and even then should probably fail. This is what we read:
About the middle of the nineteenth century, in the quiet
sunshine of provincial prosperity, New England had an Indian
summer of the mind; and an agreeable reflective literature
showed how brilliant that russet and yellow season could be.
There were poets, historians, orators, preachers, most of
whom had studied foreign literatures and had travelled; they
demurely kept up with the times; they were universal humanists.
But it was all a harvest of leaves; these worthies had an
expurgated and barren conception of life; theirs was the purity
of sweet old age. Sometimes they made attempts to rejuvenate
their minds by broaching native subjects; they wished to prove
how much matter for poetry the new world supplied, and they
wrote “Rip van Winkle,” “Hia----”
That was exactly the first page, as we read it; we needed to go no
further to have cause for complete and unblemished satisfaction.
There was the kind of writing that we understand, that speaks to us.
There, barring the fact that Rip was not written in New England, was
that exact, humorous, and telling use of every word--“_demurely_ kept
up with the times”; “the purity of sweet old age”--if you don’t get
pleasure out of that sort of thing, then there is no use trying to
labour it in. And there, in every line and syllable, was exactly what
we had expected to find--a genuine Intellect speaking, and not a pseudo
and jejuvenile “Young Intellectual.” There were urbanity, charm, the
word well-weighed, the strong, reticulated thought. To go into private
minutiæ, we even had additional pleasure from the fact that the usage
of the semicolons (a matter of great delight to some enthusiasts)
conformed to our own private sense of felicity. And we gazed about the
car in a tranquil ecstasy.
The book was George Santayana’s _Character and Opinion in the United
States_.
We said to ourself, in a kind of anger (for truly a certain ingredient
of anger is necessary for complete happiness; a zealous espousal
of what one believes to be worth while carries with it the most
cheerful flush of irritation towards those who have not, one thinks,
sufficiently espoused it)--we said, Why is it that no one has hitherto
driven in upon our mind that this book (published a year ago) is
one that we could not possibly get along without? Why is it that
our admirable colleague L. E. W., from whom we borrowed it, did not
long ago come and sit on our desk and talk to us, endlessly, calmly,
suasively, about it and about?
We went on reading, and stood there in as perfectly felicitous an
absorption as we have ever enjoyed. We could have said to that golden
instant, as Mephistopheles promised Faust he would be able to say,
“Verweile doch, du bist so schön!” We had committed Grand Larceny.
We had achieved what the news headlines daily describe as a “Daring
Robbery.” We had stolen, from uncajolable and endless Time, a Perfect
Moment.
We see you smile gravely, and perhaps pityingly, at our simplicity.
Never mind. We shall never forget the mood of serene peacefulness and
cheer in which we then turned to Mr. Santayana’s preface and began to
read:
Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long
winters that overtake it from time to time. Romantic
Christendom--picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode--may be
coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for
despair....
Ah, we said to ourself, that is the kind of writing that makes us truly
happy!
* * * * *
We cannot remember when we have marvelled more truly at the pregnancy,
the wit, and the exquisite under-piercing insight of any book. We
should like to ask those competent to speak--certainly we ourself are
not competent; and it is the sheerest bumptiousness for us even to
offer an opinion on a book so consummately wise and lovely--whether
there has ever been written any more thrillingly potent examination
of a whole civilization? In a book so packed and rifted with gold one
knows not where to start quoting; but almost at random we seize this
passage--not by any means one of the subtlest, but it will serve to
begin with:
... The American is imaginative; for where life is intense,
imagination is intense also. Were he not imaginative he
would not live so much in the future. But his imagination is
practical, and the future it forecasts is immediate; it works
with the clearest and least ambiguous terms known to his
experience, in terms of number, measure, contrivance, economy,
and speed. He is an idealist working on matter. Understanding
as he does the material potentialities of things, he is
successful in invention, conservative in reform, and quick in
emergencies. All his life he jumps into the train after it has
started and jumps out before it has stopped; and he never once
gets left behind, or breaks a leg.
Or, if you prefer, consider this:
That philosophers should be professors is an accident,
and almost an anomaly. Free reflection about everything
is a habit to be imitated, but not a subject to expound;
and an original system, if the philosopher has one, is
something dark, perilous, untested, and not ripe to be
taught, nor is there much danger that any one will learn
it. The genuine philosopher--as Royce liked to say, quoting
the Upanishads--wanders alone like the rhinoceros.... If
philosophers must earn their living and not beg (which some
of them have thought more consonant with their vocation), it
would be safer for them to polish lenses like Spinoza, or to
sit in a black skull-cap and white beard at the door of some
unfrequented museum, selling the catalogues and taking in the
umbrellas; these innocent ways of earning their breadcard in
the future republic would not prejudice their meditations
and would keep their eyes fixed, without undue affection, on
a characteristic bit of that real world which it is their
business to understand.... At best, the true philosopher can
fulfil his mission very imperfectly, which is to pilot himself
or at most a few voluntary companions who may find themselves
in the same boat. It is not easy for him to shout, or address a
crowd; he must be silent for long seasons; for he is watching
stars that move slowly and in courses that it is possible
though difficult to foresee, and he is crushing all things in
his heart as a winepress until his life and their secret flow
out together.
You understand (don’t you?) that we do not necessarily recommend
Santayana for _you_. As we grow, painfully, in sagacity, we realize the
absurdity of recommending anything to anybody. We are simply saying
that for us he fulfils (both in what we agree with and what we dissent
from) most of the requirements of our private conception of beauty and
happiness.
It is a book that quickens the mind. Continuing it on the train, as
the smoking car spins through those green Long Island meadows, we look
round on our fellow travellers with renewed amazement. Somehow it gives
us a strange pleasure to see them immersed in the _Evening Journal_ or
the _Evening World_, those grotesque monuments of human frailty. How
damnable it would be if they were all reading Santayana. How we should
hate them! We know that all humanity are precious fools, and ourself
the most arrant of the lot; but we like them that way. It adds to the
cheerful comedy of the scene.
Certainly you would have said that two names that sound something
alike are at opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum--Santayana
and Pollyanna. And yet, oddly enough, the thought has come to us that
the foundations of the two philosophies interlock. Santayana’s method
of extracting happiness from life; his perfection of cool, tender,
smiling, grave, cruel, and imperturbable resignation; the exquisitely
sophisticated contentment of his solitude, flight from needless buzbuz,
reverie in places haunted by old association; his noble ridicule of
destiny--all this brings to a reasonably sophisticated mind the same
kind of heavenly refreshment and sense of truth that simpler people
find in literature of the Pollyanna sort.
We vented this tentative idea to some colleagues of ours, and they
leapt upon us with shouts of anger and contradiction.
Yet we think there is something in it. There is no way of assessing
the operations of other people’s minds. But we are inclined to think
that very possibly the pure happiness we experience in Mr. Santayana’s
calm, humorous, disillusioned, and poetic reveries is not essentially
different from the cheerful exaltation some young woman feels reading
either of the Mrs. Porters in the Y. W. C. A.
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