There is something the matter! A feeling of uneasiness is within me.
What’s up, I wonder? My physician tells me that my liver is in good
shape. My heart, he says, beats normal; he examined me carefully, and
assured me that there is nothing wrong with me. My health seems to be
good, and my appetite is in splendid working order. I have a place to
sleep; I could have all the clothes I need; still, I am not very happy.
There is something wrong--I know there is. A kind of restless feeling
possesses me. I have examined myself all over, and I cannot account for
the cause of it within myself, because it is not myself that I feel; I
feel others within me; I feel you. There is something radically wrong
with me in you, which I feel. What is it that you have not, and for
which your heart craves? I feel that you feel lonely; you feel that you
are separated from something to which you ought to be united; you are
like a wanderer, a stranger you are--even amongst your most intimate.
You are hungry for love; you feel depressed because even the ones who
love you love not you--but what you give them.
Come, O my beloved! tell me; tell me whether these are your symptoms?
No, you need not; I feel you--way down deep in my heart I feel you; it
is you who have not felt me knocking at your heart’s door, and you have
locked your heart and would not let me enter. I would have fed you, I
would have nourished you; I know I would. I know you are Life-hungry,
caused by your feeding on symbols instead of the real; it did not
nourish you and you are famished.
You have given symbols the place of the real things. You have accepted
a thing, the value of which exists in the fact that it is redeemable
in something of value; you have become contented with an order which
is exchangeable for something you want--for the thing you want--and it
does not satisfy you. Should you get a cheque, you would not be content
unless there be funds to make it good. If I should present you with a
meal-ticket you would not be satisfied unless you could go to the place
and get the meal.
Ideas are worthless unless you can realize them; they must be redeemed
and acted before they become of value--you must live them. That’s
what ails you--you have overeaten on ideas. You have chewed up your
meal-ticket, and wonder why you are still hungry.
Instead of acts, which are the food of Life, you have substituted
ideas, and Life in you famishes for things vital. You selected the wise
to guide you, and they did; you have the wise men to do the thinking
for you; you have them prepare beautiful thoughts, pickled, fried, or
preserved, and you feed on them. How long would your body last if you
fed it on meal-tickets instead of the stuff which a meal-ticket will
get? It takes steak, potatoes, and the like to make tissue, muscles,
and bone. You thought to be wise is to think wisely, which is true, but
you must redeem the thought in acts. Thoughts are the soul of acts--and
are worthless in themselves. That is the trouble; you thought there was
merit in thinking wisely, and so you thought, and thought, and thought.
If wisdom consists in thinking, it matters not the direction thoughts
take. So the wise--with grave and serious energy--entered upon thought
where no act was possible. A thought may have been valuable when
conditions rendered a possibility of realizing action upon it in the
end. Thought is worthless when it cannot be put into use.
In your heart I find a foreign substance--an idol of symbol worship.
This it is that poisoned your conduct at its very source, and
corruption has entered into every activity of life and produced myriad
forms of hypocrisy.
In theology you are given dead thoughts of the past and amazing
theories of the future, none of which can issue in wise acts of to-day.
You go about with religious meal-tickets, yet finding no tables set;
for you are supplied with worthless cheques upon the establishments of
yesterdays and to-morrows.
What care you for future worlds? It is love and happiness in this world
which you are after. What care you for the bones of the past or of the
future? It is the living bones and skin that interest me. The Bible
is all right, but what of the Bible of to-day? Religion has become
a belief instead of a life. Ask the priest of to-day what to do and
he will tell you to believe. Then you believe that you are what you
thought you would like to be. Jesus said, “Why call you me master and
do not my commandments?” and in the name of Him who tells you to do,
the church tells you you can believe--but be damned if you _do_; we
will not tolerate any nonsense; we have a place for silly fellows like
you.
Imagine yourself doing unto others what you would want them to do unto
you! How long do you suppose it would be before your friends would have
a guardian appointed over you? This belief is the keynote of hypocrisy,
which has spread and become the fashion in all branches of activity;
and to-day’s unhappiness is the hypocrisy in man’s life made apparent.
Scientific thought takes the same direction--dealing with ideas,
theories, classifications, and measurements--things which are not vital
to human life and human happiness. Our scientists come forward with
pathological explanations and theories concerning degeneracy; with
charts, diagrams and skull measurements. They put complicated machines
on the little fingers of our school-children to measure the out-go of
their precious lives as they bend over the study of dim, dead pages.
In the industrial field, the symbol takes shape in veneers, shellacs
and polishes; and men build great temples for their symbol-worship,
and construct amazing systems for the accumulation of wealth--systems
built for ideas instead of for man; systems that demonstrate such ideas
as division of labor, and such a man as the crooked-backed accountant
adding up a lifetime of figures, or the dim-eyed sweatshop toiler
working out a lifetime of buttonholes. Systems that produce such
helpless abortions as millionaires and tramps, systems that change
happy, healthy, well-developed human beings into mere adjuncts and
gives to the ones who actually produce the lowest caste of all.
Art holds up to us the past--the Greek, the Gothic, the Renaissance;
and the artist, driven to copy, neglects to produce the vital and
living art of the present.
In reform we go about calling ourselves reformers, not because we live
a life of reform, but because we say that we do not believe in the old
form. We call ourselves socialists, not because we practice socialism,
but because we believe in the socialistic doctrine; and thus we believe
we are what we believe we would like to be.
You would object to the name of “scavenger,” because you believe in
removing the dung, but you will insist that you be called a good man,
because you believe in goodness.
If I should call you a capitalist because you believe in making money,
you would probably think I am making sport of your poverty. You would
tell me that a capitalist is he who has capital, not he who is seeking
to acquire it. Yet you do not hesitate to tag yourself socialist,
anarchist, or single-taxist, though you only believe in the theory
underlying your ism and do nothing toward living it.
The less you have of a thing, and the less you are the thing, the more
you talk about it. Lacking happiness, you talk it. Talking of art is
conclusive evidence that you lack art. You talk of love when you feel
the absence of love, and you think you have it by proclamation. Words,
phrases, clauses, noise! The child calls an engine “choo-choo” because
of the sound the machine makes when exhausting steam. The child thinks
the function of the engine is to emit a certain kind of noise. So you
are impressed with the enthusiasm of your discussions in advocacy of
your ism, and you think yourself to be the thing discussed.
This symbol-worship is everywhere. Take the vaudeville; an old
soubrette with no voice, no looks--let her cackle “Yankee Doodle,” wave
the flag, and she will receive applause for saving the nation.
On three occasions I visited a concert hall in Chicago where they
served poor meals and worse music for good prices. The orchestra each
time played, by request, “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” and the patriotic
feeling was demonstrated by the applause.
That’s what ails you. You have been feeding on symbols. You have been
trying to make yourself believe you are satisfied with applause, though
you are starved for Life-food. You have tried to outgrow and destroy
the expression of naturalness through your body and mind. You have
cut off every root and branch you could find which was holding you to
naturalness, and in their place you put the substitute of symbols.
Your mother and father, your uncle and aunt, and grandmothers and
grandfathers, your school-teachers and Sunday-school teachers, and
preachers, all united in demanding that you leave off naturalness and
take on the symbols.
Thus it is that man has lost his connection with Life and gropes in
darkness and dwells in death. Nothing short of a complete turning away
from this course of action is able to bring him into conjunction with
Life as it is intended to express through his body and mind by means of
his sensations.