If you wish to be on the ground floor get wisdom, because wisdom is the
ground floor and everything in civilization rests on it. Wisdom begets
wisdom. Therefore the wisdomites are the only ones who can wisdomize
you. They will do it either by getting you a degree, by converting you,
or by getting you a political job. It is honorable to be wise. The wise
are sought after at dinners and public gatherings, are also invited to
head a club list and become honorary members therein. Their opinion is
sought after by corn doctors, patent medicine men, women’s clubs, and
other organizations which work for the uplifting of mankind.
Education, ethics, and law are the fountain trinity whence wisdom
flows. While they each have a channel and a distinct field of operation
of their own, their work is very closely allied. Their work so blends
and overlaps that one cannot tell where the work of each begins or
ends. So they encroach on each other’s fields at times, but as they are
not members of any labor unions, it is permissible.
Wisdom is great! It is constantly misunderstood because of its
greatness. While we, too, would like to be wise, and we applaud
wisdom, yet the wisdom of the wise is a mystery to us--we do not
understand the why and wherefore. Professor Triggs, when told that the
“Women’s Aid” complained that they could not understand what he was
driving at, in a lecture he delivered to them, replied, “The lecture
was too deep; I guess I talk over their heads.” By that he meant that
they were not wise enough to understand him. While I confess that
even I am not yet initiated in its mystery, yet I feel myself capable
of explaining why wisdom is not understood. While it is so perfectly
clear and comprehensible to the wise, yet it is a foreign language to
us. This I believe will explain it. The masses (myself included) are
ignorant of the premise on which wisdom rests. We do not understand
the universal scheme. What puzzles us is the confusion with which life
works through its varied organisms. I do not see why each organism in
life should be guided by the life within itself, while man needs a
guide apart from the life which is in him, and yet depends on life in
another self. Why should every being guide its own individual life and
leave others to guide their own, while man guides other men’s lives and
neglects his own. In other words, why should every being mind its own
business, and man mind everybody’s business except his own? A flower,
a tree, an insect, the animal and the fool, each comes into being and
reaches its end, without effort or restraint on its part. It seems a
flower gets pleasure from the blooming, a tree gets joy in its growth.
From the time the seed takes root till it sprouts and until it has
completed its growth, all is accomplished without resistance. It finds
its happiness in its transformation. While growing it is traveling on
the road of pleasure--the easy road.
A bronco roaming wild is thriving on the gratification of its heart’s
desires. It resents the restraint of being put into harness. It kicks,
bites, and does everything in its power to keep its freedom, to live
a happy bronco life. But a stronger force enslaves it and compels it
to do things it does not like to do. Man, by conquering, subduing, and
placing a bit in the bronco’s mouth, makes it obey him because it is
then easier for the horse to go in the direction led than otherwise
and get his jaws hurt. We understand that much of it. What we do not
understand is why it does not work the same with man. Why does not
life direct man and make his evolution a matter of joy, and if life
could not do that, then why did not life create a stronger force than
man to take charge of him, and, as with the bronco, have a bit placed
in his mouth. Even that would be more simply understood than the
explanation which the wise have given us. They say that man’s desires
for pleasure are bent in the wrong channel. If he would follow them
he would be doomed. If he would follow his inclination he would stunt
his own growth, and since he likes to be wise, he does not need a
superior force to subdue him. He supplies the power to other beings
like himself to make him do that which he does not like to do. Here
the wisdomites get in their work. (You can interpret that sentence
more than one way.) They come and save us from the awful peril which
confronts us. They begin with us when we are still children, and keep
it up until we become perfected and enrolled in the wisdomites’ camp;
or if we are so unfortunate as not to be successful in our examination,
they do not forsake us, but keep us under their guidance till we die.
And even then we are not sure that we are saved; we might go to hell
after all.
It is so hard to become perfect. The road to destruction is so broad
and easy. The temptations and possibilities to fail are so great that
few escape it. Narrow is the path and full of obstacles to virtue and
perfection. The possibilities of failure are large. It is necessary,
nay it is the duty of the wise, to safeguard the individual by making
rules and counter-rules for our guidance. The rules are so conflicting
that it makes it difficult to master them. I, too, once thought that I
could make a rule, and like Buster Brown, I got into trouble. (Unless
you are wise you cannot make any rule that will hold good.) I thought
it to be the principle of the wise that it is evil to gratify one’s
desires. So when mother sent dainties to my teacher (she loved the
stuff mother made, she said), in order to save the teacher from evil,
I ate the dainties. When she found it out she taught me a lesson that
convinced me that my logic was wrong. Incidentally I was convinced
that I am incapable of making rules for guidance; and that I must
constantly consult the oracle as to which is the right thing to do and
which is not.
All the fountain channels of wisdom proceed from love. It is preached
everywhere. They tell us to love the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Then they tell us what is truth, what is good, and what is beautiful.
After that they tell us what love is. The analyst will read our books
for us and tell us whether it is wise for us to read them. If he finds
in the book anything that will contaminate us he warns us against it.
Or he will see a play for us and instruct us whether to see or avoid
it. I have not yet been able to discover how the wise himself keeps
from being inoculated by a bad book or an unworthy play; and if he be
infected, then I should be chary of accepting his advice. Indeed, I
think there must be many like me, who, on being warned against a book
or a play, insist on seeing it for themselves. Perhaps this accounts
for the large sales of bad books and the big crowds that attend the
production of wicked plays. It is surprising to see how wise the wise
are. They can even tell your thoughts, and if your thoughts do not
agree with what they tell you you think, then you think wrong, and have
to change them.
The mass would say that the author of a book wrote what he meant and
meant what he wrote, and let it go at that; but the ones who know, say
that the man who wrote the book did not mean what he said he meant, but
he meant what he did not say.
Take, as one example, the Songs of Solomon. The masses read this book
and think that Solomon meant what he said. They think it is a beautiful
love-song, wherein the passionate lover gives full sway to his
feelings. A song which, if properly treated, would come under the ban
of the Puritan Comstock, and should be excluded from the United States
Puritan mail. Any woman who loves and is loved will know that Solomon
sang to the woman who was first in his heart, rejoicing in her beauty,
and that he did not hesitate to catalogue her charms melodiously and
eloquently. No wonder his wooing was so effective.
When Solomon speaks of the loved one’s eyes, he means real eyes--eyes
that you see with. When he speaks of the loved one’s breasts, “Thy two
breasts are like two roses that are twins,” he means breasts of flesh.
How natural that song sounds. Many times I felt bewildered like Solomon
in his song, when he wondered what to do with his little sister. One
senses one’s feelings described in the Song of Solomon, even though one
never cared whether the gentiles came to the church or stayed away. The
wise say that the whole song is symbolic. I have not been able thus far
to discover what Solomon did mean, as the wise men are divided on that
subject. Some say he meant a church; others he meant Jerusalem; still
others that he sings to the Jews. But they all agree that Solomon did
not mean what he meant.
The fact is so plainly seen that Solomon could mean most anything
except what he said. Whereby we learn that the wise know the thoughts
of others better than they who think the thoughts.
There is another set of wise people, whom at first I did not think
wise, but after further acquaintance I concluded that I was mistaken,
and that they were wise after all. They belong to the Tolstoi school.
Like fish, wisdom goes in schools. We have the Hamilton, the Jefferson,
the Jesus, with its different branches; the Bakunian, the Karl Marx,
the Tucker, the Darwin, the Spencer, the Huxley, the Thomas Paine, and
the Franklin school--and there is wisdom in all of them. The reason
for my thinking that this wise man is not wise is because I thought I
understood him--he said that all the other wise people are not wise at
all. I agreed with him that the universities are the hirelings of the
rich, and that there is a conspiracy between them to keep the masses
in slavery. The churches he claims are kept up by the same class, and
are not religious at all. I assented. Instead of “resist not evil,”
which is the foundation of Christianity, the leaders in the church are
foremost in organizing anti-vice crusades, capture and oppress the
poor thief, and reward the rich one. I also understood. The solution
to the chaotic condition, he said, is not to judge anybody, and have
the rich get off the backs of mankind. All this was perfectly clear to
me. All this wise man asked was to be made a leader, so that he might
straighten things out. I did not quite understand that, but I did not
care, as all the rest of the things which I felt, he said he felt, and
said them so beautifully that I thought it was myself talking, and for
feeling like myself he would be as unwise as myself, but after getting
better acquainted with him, I discovered my error, and gladly take the
opportunity to apologize for the unjust thought which came to my mind.
His acts are as mysterious as are those of the wisest. He practices
the things which he condemns. He is first to judge, and he is most
considerate of his reputation. He will come to the call of justice only
when it calls with a respectable retainer. He will not stand alone,
because he cannot afford it. And as for getting off people’s backs,
he is on them with both feet. He refuses to play with me, because he
says that he judged me and found me wanting, and that I was not sincere
in the game. He who confesses that he is a parasite and a robber like
myself refuses to associate with me because I am a hypocrite like
himself. I have no objection to him as a playmate, why should he object
to me? In psychologizing this one I discovered that he feels keenly
the woes of the universe; and he is so impressed nevertheless with his
own greatness that he eliminates the woes of the world by taking care
of the world, which is himself. It is the same old game, with a new
label--the non-resistance label--and it takes pretty well.
Therefore I conclude that while I cannot explain any code of action to
be wise (I cannot even say that the things I think I really think, or
just think I think them; and really think something else which I don’t
think). I know this much, that we fools are not to be sneered at. It is
we that furnish the opportunity for the wise to show their wisdom.