diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 01:28:46 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 01:28:46 -0700 |
| commit | b5e531d9b29951430fdb6fe3398e795300be122a (patch) | |
| tree | 9addc2109897b3bbd2909fedb8e505148adbdbda | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 20768-8.txt | 6969 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 20768-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 163479 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 20768.txt | 6969 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 20768.zip | bin | 0 -> 163438 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
7 files changed, 13954 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/20768-8.txt b/20768-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..daa954b --- /dev/null +++ b/20768-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6969 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Memories and Studies, by William James, +Edited by Henry James, Jr. + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Memories and Studies + + +Author: William James + +Editor: Henry James, Jr. + +Release Date: March 8, 2007 [eBook #20768] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMORIES AND STUDIES*** + + +E-text prepared by Al Haines + + + +MEMORIES AND STUDIES + +by + +WILLIAM JAMES + + + + + + + +Longmans, Green, and Co. +Fourth Avenue and 30th Street, New York +London, Bombay, and Calcutta +1911 + +Copyright, 1911, by Henry James Jr. +All Rights Reserved + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + +Professor William James formed the intention +shortly before his death of republishing a number +of popular addresses and essays under the title +which this book now bears; but unfortunately he +found no opportunity to attend to any detail of the +book himself, or to leave definite instructions for +others. I believe, however, that I have departed +in no substantial degree from my father's idea, +except perhaps by including two or three short +pieces which were first addressed to special +occasions or audiences and which now seem clearly +worthy of republication in their original form, +although he might not have been willing to reprint +them himself without the recastings to which he was +ever most attentive when preparing for new readers. +Everything in this volume has already appeared in +print in magazines or otherwise, and definite +acknowledgements are hereinafter made in the +appropriate places. Comparison with the original texts +will disclose slight variations in a few passages, and +it is therefore proper to explain that in these +passages the present text follows emendations of the +original which have survived in the author's own +handwriting. + +HENRY JAMES, JR. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + I. LOUIS AGASSIZ + II. ADDRESS AT THE EMERSON CENTENARY IN CONCORD + III. ROBERT GOULD SHAW + IV. FRANCIS BOOTT + V. THOMAS DAVIDSON: A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE + VI. HERBERT SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY + VII. FREDERICK MYERS' SERVICES TO PSYCHOLOGY + VIII. FINAL IMPRESSIONS OF A PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER + IX. ON SOME MENTAL EFFECTS OF THE EARTHQUAKE + X. THE ENERGIES OF MEN + XI. THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR + XII. REMARKS AT THE PEACE BANQUET + XIII. THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED + XIV. THE UNIVERSITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL + THE PH. D. OCTOPUS + THE TRUE HARVARD + STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY + XV. A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC + + + + +I + +LOUIS AGASSIZ[1] + +It would be unnatural to have such an assemblage as this meet in the +Museum and Faculty Room of this University and yet have no public word +spoken in honor of a name which must be silently present to the minds +of all our visitors. + +At some near future day, it is to be hoped some one of you who is well +acquainted with Agassiz's scientific career will discourse here +concerning it,--I could not now, even if I would, speak to you of that +of which you have far more intimate knowledge than I. On this social +occasion it has seemed that what Agassiz stood for in the way of +character and influence is the more fitting thing to commemorate, and +to that agreeable task I have been called. He made an impression that +was unrivalled. He left a sort of popular myth--the Agassiz legend, as +one might say--behind him in the air about us; and life comes kindlier +to all of us, we get more recognition from the world, because we call +ourselves naturalists,--and that was the class to which he also +belonged. + +The secret of such an extraordinarily effective influence lay in the +equally extraordinary mixture of the animal and social gifts, the +intellectual powers, and the desires and passions of the man. From his +boyhood, he looked on the world as if it and he were made for each +other, and on the vast diversity of living things as if he were there +with authority to take mental possession of them all. His habit of +collecting began in childhood, and during his long life knew no bounds +save those that separate the things of Nature from those of human art. +Already in his student years, in spite of the most stringent poverty, +his whole scheme of existence was that of one predestined to greatness, +who takes that fact for granted, and stands forth immediately as a +scientific leader of men. + +His passion for knowing living things was combined with a rapidity of +observation, and a capacity to recognize them again and remember +everything about them, which all his life it seemed an easy triumph and +delight for him to exercise, and which never allowed him to waste a +moment in doubts about the commensurability of his powers with his +tasks. If ever a person lived by faith, he did. When a boy of twenty, +with an allowance of two hundred and fifty dollars a year, he +maintained an artist attached to his employ, a custom which never +afterwards was departed from,--except when he maintained two or three. +He lectured from the very outset to all those who would hear him. "I +feel within myself the strength of a whole generation," he wrote to his +father at that time, and launched himself upon the publication of his +costly "Poissons Fossiles" with no clear vision of the quarter from +whence the payment might be expected to come. + +At Neuchatel (where between the ages of twenty-five and thirty he +enjoyed a stipend that varied from four hundred to six hundred dollars) +he organized a regular academy of natural history, with its museum, +managing by one expedient or another to employ artists, secretaries, +and assistants, and to keep a lithographic and printing establishment +of his own employed with the work that he put forth. Fishes, fossil +and living, echinoderms and glaciers, transfigured themselves under his +hand, and at thirty he was already at the zenith of his reputation, +recognized by all as one of those naturalists in the unlimited sense, +one of those folio copies of mankind, like Linnaeus and Cuvier, who aim +at nothing less than an acquaintance with the whole of animated Nature. +His genius for classifying was simply marvellous; and, as his latest +biographer says, nowhere had a single person ever given so decisive an +impulse to natural history. + +Such was the human being who on an October morning fifty years ago +disembarked at our port, bringing his hungry heart along with him, his +confidence in his destiny, and his imagination full of plans. The only +particular resource he was assured of was one course of Lowell +Lectures. But of one general resource he always was assured, having +always counted on it and never found it to fail,--and that was the good +will of every fellow-creature in whose presence he could find an +opportunity to describe his aims. His belief in these was so intense +and unqualified that he could not conceive of others not feeling the +furtherance of them to be a duty binding also upon them. _Velle non +discitur_, as Seneca says:--Strength of desire must be born with a man, +it can't be taught. And Agassiz came before one with such enthusiasm +glowing in his countenance,--such a persuasion radiating from his +person that his projects were the sole things really fit to interest +man as man,--that he was absolutely irresistible. He came, in Byron's +words, with victory beaming from his breast, and every one went down +before him, some yielding him money, some time, some specimens, and +some labor, but all contributing their applause and their godspeed. +And so, living among us from month to month and from year to year, with +no relation to prudence except his pertinacious violation of all her +usual laws, he on the whole achieved the compass of his desires, +studied the geology and fauna of a continent, trained a generation of +zoologists, founded one of the chief museums of the world, gave a new +impulse to scientific education in America, and died the idol of the +public, as well as of his circle of immediate pupils and friends. + +The secret of it all was, that while his scientific ideals were an +integral part of his being, something that he never forgot or laid +aside, so that wherever he went he came forward as "the Professor," and +talked "shop" to every person, young or old, great or little, learned +or unlearned, with whom he was thrown, he was at the same time so +commanding a presence, so curious and inquiring, so responsive and +expansive, and so generous and reckless of himself and of his own, that +every one said immediately, "Here is no musty savant, but a man, a +great man, a man on the heroic scale, not to serve whom is avarice and +sin." He elevated the popular notion of what a student of Nature could +be. Since Benjamin Franklin, we had never had among us a person of +more popularly impressive type. He did not wait for students to come +to him; he made inquiry for promising youthful collectors, and when he +heard of one, he wrote, inviting and urging him to come. Thus there is +hardly one now of the American naturalists of my generation whom +Agassiz did not train. Nay, more; he said to every one that a year or +two of natural history, studied as he understood it, would give the +best training for any kind of mental work. Sometimes he was amusingly +_naïf_ in this regard, as when he offered to put his whole Museum at +the disposition of the Emperor of Brazil if he would but come and labor +there. And I well remember how certain officials of the Brazilian +empire smiled at the cordiality with which he pressed upon them a +similar invitation. But it had a great effect. Natural history must +indeed be a godlike pursuit, if such a man as this can so adore it, +people said; and the very definition and meaning of the word naturalist +underwent a favorable alteration in the common mind. + +Certain sayings of Agassiz's, as the famous one that he "had no time +for making money," and his habit of naming his occupation simply as +that of "teacher," have caught the public fancy, and are permanent +benefactions. We all enjoy more consideration for the fact that he +manifested himself here thus before us in his day. + +He was a splendid example of the temperament that looks forward and not +backward, and never wastes a moment in regrets for the irrevocable. I +had the privilege of admission to his society during the Thayer +expedition to Brazil. I well remember at night, as we all swung in our +hammocks in the fairy-like moonlight, on the deck of the steamer that +throbbed its way up the Amazon between the forests guarding the stream +on either side, how he turned and whispered, "James, are you awake?" +and continued, "_I_ cannot sleep; I am too happy; I keep thinking of +these glorious plans." The plans contemplated following the Amazon to +its headwaters, and penetrating the Andes in Peru. And yet, when he +arrived at the Peruvian frontier and learned that that country had +broken into revolution, that his letters to officials would be useless, +and that that part of the project must be given up, although he was +indeed bitterly chagrined and excited for part of an hour, when the +hour had passed over it seemed as if he had quite forgotten the +disappointment, so enthusiastically was he occupied already with the +new scheme substituted by his active mind. + +Agassiz's influence on methods of teaching in our community was prompt +and decisive,--all the more so that it struck people's imagination by +its very excess. The good old way of committing printed abstractions +to memory seems never to have received such a shock as it encountered +at his hands. There is probably no public school teacher now in New +England who will not tell you how Agassiz used to lock a student up in +a room full of turtle shells, or lobster shells, or oyster shells, +without a book or word to help him, and not let him out till he had +discovered all the truths which the objects contained. Some found the +truths after weeks and months of lonely sorrow; others never found +them. Those who found them were already made into naturalists +thereby--the failures were blotted from the book of honor and of life. +"Go to Nature; take the facts into your own hands; look, and see for +yourself!"--these were the maxims which Agassiz preached wherever he +went, and their effect on pedagogy was electric. The extreme rigor of +his devotion to this concrete method of learning was the natural +consequence of his own peculiar type of intellect, in which the +capacity for abstraction and causal reasoning and tracing chains of +consequences from hypotheses was so much less developed than the genius +for acquaintance with vast volumes of detail, and for seizing upon +analogies and relations of the more proximate and concrete kind. While +on the Thayer expedition, I remember that I often put questions to him +about the facts of our new tropical habitat, but I doubt if he ever +answered one of these questions of mine outright. He always said: +"There, you see you have a definite problem; go and look and find the +answer for yourself." His severity in this line was a living rebuke to +all abstractionists and would-be biological philosophers. More than +once have I heard him quote with deep feeling the lines from Faust: + + "Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie. + Und grun des Lebens goldner Baum." + +The only man he really loved and had use for was the man who could +bring him facts. To see facts, not to argue or _raisonniren_, was what +life meant for him; and I think he often positively loathed the +ratiocinating type of mind. "Mr. Blank, you are _totally_ uneducated!" +I heard him once say to a student who propounded to him some glittering +theoretic generality. And on a similar occasion he gave an admonition +that must have sunk deep into the heart of him to whom it was +addressed. "Mr. X, some people perhaps now consider you a bright young +man; but when you are fifty years old, if they ever speak of you then, +what they will say will be this: 'That X,--oh, yes, I know him; he used +to be a very bright young man!'" Happy is the conceited youth who at +the proper moment receives such salutary cold water therapeutics as +this from one who, in other respects, is a kind friend. We cannot all +escape from being abstractionists. I myself, for instance, have never +been able to escape; but the hours I spent with Agassiz so taught me +the difference between all possible abstractionists and all livers in +the light of the world's concrete fulness, that I have never been able +to forget it. Both kinds of mind have their place in the infinite +design, but there can be no question as to which kind lies the nearer +to the divine type of thinking. + +Agassiz's view of Nature was saturated with simple religious feeling, +and for this deep but unconventional religiosity he found at Harvard +the most sympathetic possible environment. In the fifty years that +have sped since he arrived here our knowledge of Nature has penetrated +into joints and recesses which his vision never pierced. The causal +elements and not the totals are what we are now most passionately +concerned to understand; and naked and poverty-stricken enough do the +stripped-out elements and forces occasionally appear to us to be. But +the truth of things is after all their living fulness, and some day, +from a more commanding point of view than was possible to any one in +Agassiz's generation, our descendants, enriched with the spoils of all +our analytic investigations, will get round again to that higher and +simpler way of looking at Nature. Meanwhile as we look back upon +Agassiz, there floats up a breath as of life's morning, that makes the +work seem young and fresh once more. May we all, and especially may +those younger members of our association who never knew him, give a +grateful thought to his memory as we wander through that Museum which +he founded, and through this University whose ideals he did so much to +elevate and define. + + + +[1] Words spoken at the reception of the American Society of +Naturalists by the President and Fellows of Harvard College at +Cambridge, December 30, 1896. Printed in _Science_, N. S. V. 285. + + + + +II + +ADDRESS AT THE EMERSON CENTENARY IN CONCORD[1] + +The pathos of death is this, that when the days of one's life are +ended, those days that were so crowded with business and felt so heavy +in their passing, what remains of one in memory should usually be so +slight a thing. The phantom of an attitude, the echo of a certain mode +of thought, a few pages of print, some invention, or some victory we +gained in a brief critical hour, are all that can survive the best of +us. It is as if the whole of a man's significance had now shrunk into +the phantom of an attitude, into a mere musical note or phrase +suggestive of his singularity--happy are those whose singularity gives +a note so clear as to be victorious over the inevitable pity of such a +diminution and abridgment. + +An ideal wraith like this, of Emerson's personality, hovers over all +Concord to-day, taking, in the minds of those of you who were his +neighbors and intimates a somewhat fuller shape, remaining more +abstract in the younger generation, but bringing home to all of us the +notion of a spirit indescribably precious. The form that so lately +moved upon these streets and country roads, or awaited in these fields +and woods the beloved Muse's visits, is now dust; but the soul's note, +the spiritual voice, rises strong and clear above the uproar of the +times, and seems securely destined to exert an ennobling influence over +future generations. + +What gave a flavor so matchless to Emerson's individuality was, even +more than his rich mental gifts, their singularly harmonious +combination. Rarely has a man so accurately known the limits of his +genius or so unfailingly kept within them. "Stand by your order," he +used to say to youthful students; and perhaps the paramount impression +one gets of his life is of his loyalty to his own personal type and +mission. The type was that of what he liked to call the scholar, the +perceiver of pure truth; and the mission was that of the reporter in +worthy form of each perception. The day is good, he said, in which we +have the most perceptions. There are times when the cawing of a crow, +a weed, a snowflake, or a farmer planting in his field become symbols +to the intellect of truths equal to those which the most majestic +phenomena can open. Let me mind my own charge, then, walk alone, +consult the sky, the field and forest, sedulously waiting every morning +for the news concerning the structure of the universe which the good +Spirit will give me. + +This was the first half of Emerson, but only half; for genius, as he +said, is insatiate for expression, and truth has to be clad in the +right verbal garment. The form of the garment was so vital with +Emerson that it is impossible to separate it from the matter. They +form a chemical combination--thoughts which would be trivial expressed +otherwise, are important through the nouns and verbs to which he +married them. The style is the man, it has been said; the man +Emerson's mission culminated in his style, and if we must define him in +one word, we have to call him Artist. He was an artist whose medium +was verbal and who wrought in spiritual material. + +This duty of spiritual seeing and reporting determined the whole tenor +of his life. It was to shield this duty from invasion and distraction +that he dwelt in the country, that he consistently declined to entangle +himself with associations or to encumber himself with functions which, +however he might believe in them, he felt were duties for other men and +not for him. Even the care of his garden, "with its stoopings and +fingerings in a few yards of space," he found "narrowing and +poisoning," and took to long free walks and saunterings instead, +without apology. "Causes" innumerable sought to enlist him as their +"worker"--all got his smile and word of sympathy, but none entrapped +him into service. The struggle against slavery itself, deeply as it +appealed to him, found him firm: "God must govern his own world, and +knows his way out of this pit without my desertion of my post, which +has none to guard it but me. I have quite other slaves to face than +those Negroes, to wit, imprisoned thoughts far back in the brain of +man, and which have no watchman or lover or defender but me." This in +reply to the possible questions of his own conscience. To hot-blooded +moralists with more objective ideas of duty, such a fidelity to the +limits of his genius must often have made him seem provokingly remote +and unavailable; but we, who can see things in more liberal +perspective, must unqualifiably approve the results. The faultless +tact with which he kept his safe limits while he so dauntlessly +asserted himself within them, is an example fitted to give heart to +other theorists and artists the world over. + +The insight and creed from which Emerson's life followed can be best +summed up in his own verses: + + "So nigh is grandeur to our dust, + So near is God to man!" + +Through the individual fact there ever shone for him the effulgence of +the Universal Reason. The great Cosmic Intellect terminates and houses +itself in mortal men and passing hours. Each of us is an angle of its +eternal vision, and the only way to be true to our Maker is to be loyal +to ourselves. "O rich and various Man!" he cries, "thou palace of +sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and the night and +the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain the geometry of the city of God; +in thy heart the bower of love and the realms of right and wrong." + +If the individual open thus directly into the Absolute, it follows that +there is something in each and all of us, even the lowliest, that ought +not to consent to borrowing traditions and living at second hand. "If +John was perfect, why are you and I alive?" Emerson writes; "As long as +any man exists there is some need of him; let him fight for his own." +This faith that in a life at first hand there is something sacred is +perhaps the most characteristic note in Emerson's writings. The +hottest side of him is this non-conformist persuasion, and if his +temper could ever verge on common irascibility, it would be by reason +of the passionate character of his feelings on this point. The world +is still new and untried. In seeing freshly, and not in hearing of +what others saw, shall a man find what truth is. "Each one of us can +bask in the great morning which rises out of the Eastern Sea, and be +himself one of the children of the light." "Trust thyself, every heart +vibrates to that iron string. There is a time in each man's education +when he must arrive at the conviction that imitation is suicide; when +he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; and know that +though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn +can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground +which it was given him to till." + +The matchless eloquence with which Emerson proclaimed the sovereignty +of the living individual electrified and emancipated his generation, +and this bugle-blast will doubtless be regarded by future critics as +the soul of his message. The present man is the aboriginal reality, +the Institution is derivative, and the past man is irrelevant and +obliterate for present issues. "If anyone would lay an axe to your +tree with a text from 1 John, v, 7, or a sentence from Saint Paul, say +to him," Emerson wrote, "'My tree is Yggdrasil, the tree of life.' Let +him know by your security that your conviction is clear and sufficient, +and, if he were Paul himself, that you also are here and with your +Creator." "Cleave ever to God," he insisted, "against the name of +God;"--and so, in spite of the intensely religious character of his +total thought, when he began his career it seemed to many of his +brethren in the clerical profession that he was little more than an +iconoclast and desecrator. + +Emerson's belief that the individual must in reason be adequate to the +vocation for which the Spirit of the world has called him into being, +is the source of those sublime pages, hearteners and sustainers of our +youth, in which he urges his hearers to be incorruptibly true to their +own private conscience. Nothing can harm the man who rests in his +appointed place and character. Such a man is invulnerable; he balances +the universe, balances it as much by keeping small when he is small, as +by being great and spreading when he is great. "I love and honor +Epaminondas," said Emerson, "but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. I +hold it more just to love the world of this hour than the world of his +hour. Nor can you, if I am true, excite me to the least uneasiness by +saying, 'He acted and thou sittest still.' I see action to be good +when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. Epaminondas, if +he was the man I take him for, would have sat still with joy and peace, +if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and affords space for all +modes of love and fortitude." "The fact that I am here certainly shows +me that the Soul has need of an organ here, and shall I not assume the +post?" + +The vanity of all superserviceableness and pretence was never more +happily set forth than by Emerson in the many passages in which he +develops this aspect of his philosophy. Character infallibly proclaims +itself. "Hide your thoughts!--hide the sun and moon. They publish +themselves to the universe. They will speak through you though you +were dumb. They will flow out of your actions, your manners and your +face. . . . Don't say things: What you are stands over you the while +and thunders so that I cannot say what you say to the contrary. . . . +What a man _is_ engraves itself upon him in letters of light. +Concealment avails him nothing, boasting nothing. There is confession +in the glances of our eyes; in our smiles; in salutations; and the +grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs him, mars all his good impression. +Men know not why they do not trust him, but they do not trust him. His +vice glasses the eye, casts lines of mean expression in the cheek, +pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast upon the back of the head, +and writes, O fool! fool! on the forehead of a king. If you would not +be known to do a thing, never do it; a man may play the fool in the +drifts of a desert, but every grain of sand shall seem to see.--How can +a man be concealed? How can he be concealed?" + +On the other hand, never was a sincere word or a sincere thought +utterly lost. "Never a magnanimity fell to the ground but there is +some heart to greet and accept it unexpectedly. . . . The hero fears +not that if he withstood the avowal of a just and brave act, it will go +unwitnessed and unloved. One knows it,--himself,--and is pledged by it +to sweetness of peace and to nobleness of aim, which will prove in the +end a better proclamation than the relating of the incident." + +The same indefeasible right to be exactly what one is, provided one +only be authentic, spreads itself, in Emerson's way of thinking, from +persons to things and to times and places. No date, no position is +insignificant, if the life that fills it out be only genuine:-- + +"In solitude, in a remote village, the ardent youth loiters and mourns. +With inflamed eye, in this sleeping wilderness, he has read the story +of the Emperor, Charles the Fifth, until his fancy has brought home to +the surrounding woods the faint roar of cannonades in the Milanese, and +marches in Germany. He is curious concerning that man's day. What +filled it? The crowded orders, the stern decisions, the foreign +despatches, the Castilian etiquette? The soul answers--Behold his day +here! In the sighing of these woods, in the quiet of these gray +fields, in the cool breeze that sings out of these northern mountains; +in the workmen, the boys, the maidens you meet,--in the hopes of the +morning, the ennui of noon, and sauntering of the afternoon; in the +disquieting comparisons; in the regrets at want of vigor; in the great +idea and the puny execution,--behold Charles the Fifth's day; another, +yet the same; behold Chatham's, Hampden's, Bayard's, Alfred's, +Scipio's, Pericles's day,--day of all that are born of women. The +difference of circumstance is merely costume. I am tasting the +self-same life,--its sweetness, its greatness, its pain, which I so +admire in other men. Do not foolishly ask of the inscrutable, +obliterated past what it cannot tell,--the details of that nature, of +that day, called Byron or Burke;--but ask it of the enveloping +Now. . . . Be lord of a day, and you can put up your history books." + +"The deep to-day which all men scorn," receives thus from Emerson +superb revindication. "Other world! there is no other world." All +God's life opens into the individual particular, and here and now, or +nowhere, is reality. "The present hour is the decisive hour, and every +day is doomsday." + +Such a conviction that Divinity is everywhere may easily make of one an +optimist of the sentimental type that refuses to speak ill of anything. +Emerson's drastic perception of differences kept him at the opposite +pole from this weakness. After you have seen men a few times, he could +say, you find most of them as alike as their barns and pantries, and +soon as musty and as dreary. Never was such a fastidious lover of +significance and distinction, and never an eye so keen for their +discovery. His optimism had nothing in common with that indiscriminate +hurrahing for the Universe with which Walt Whitman has made us +familiar. For Emerson, the individual fact and moment were indeed +suffused with absolute radiance, but it was upon a condition that saved +the situation--they must be worthy specimens,--sincere, authentic, +archetypal; they must have made connection with what he calls the Moral +Sentiment, they must in some way act as symbolic mouthpieces of the +Universe's meaning. To know just which thing does act in this way, and +which thing fails to make the true connection, is the secret (somewhat +incommunicable, it must be confessed) of seership, and doubtless we +must not expect of the seer too rigorous a consistency. Emerson +himself was a real seer. He could perceive the full squalor of the +individual fact, but he could also see the transfiguration. He might +easily have found himself saying of some present-day agitator against +our Philippine conquest what he said of this or that reformer of his +own time. He might have called him, as a private person, a tedious +bore and canter. But he would infallibly have added what he then +added: "It is strange and horrible to say this, for I feel that under +him and his partiality and exclusiveness is the earth and the sea, and +all that in them is, and the axis round which the Universe revolves +passes through his body where he stands." + +Be it how it may, then, this is Emerson's revelation:--The point of any +pen can be an epitome of reality; the commonest person's act, if +genuinely actuated, can lay hold on eternity. This vision is the +head-spring of all his outpourings; and it is for this truth, given to +no previous literary artist to express in such penetratingly persuasive +tones, that posterity will reckon him a prophet, and, perhaps +neglecting other pages, piously turn to those that convey this message. +His life was one long conversation with the invisible divine, +expressing itself through individuals and particulars:--"So nigh is +grandeur to our dust, so near is God to man!" + +I spoke of how shrunken the wraith, how thin the echo, of men is after +they are departed? Emerson's wraith comes to me now as if it were but +the very voice of this victorious argument. His words to this effect +are certain to be quoted and extracted more and more as time goes on, +and to take their place among the Scriptures of humanity. "'Gainst +death and all oblivious enmity, shall you pace forth," beloved Master. +As long as our English language lasts men's hearts will be cheered and +their souls strengthened and liberated by the noble and musical pages +with which you have enriched it. + + + +[1] An Address delivered at the Centenary of the Birth of Ralph Waldo +Emerson in Concord, May 25, 1903, and printed in the published +proceedings of that meeting. + + + + +III + +ROBERT GOULD SHAW[1] + +Your Excellency, your Honor, Soldiers, and Friends: In these unveiling +exercises the duty falls to me of expressing in simple words some of +the feelings which have actuated the givers of St. Gaudens' noble work +of bronze, and of briefly recalling the history of Robert Shaw and of +his regiment to the memory of this possibly too forgetful generation. + +The men who do brave deeds are usually unconscious of their +picturesqueness. For two nights previous to the assault upon Fort +Wagner, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment had been afoot, making +forced marches in the rain; and on the day of the battle the men had +had no food since early morning. As they lay there in the evening +twilight, hungry and wet, against the cold sands of Morris Island, with +the sea-fog drifting over them, their eyes fixed on the huge bulk of +the fortress looming darkly three-quarters of a mile ahead against the +sky, and their hearts beating in expectation of the word that was to +bring them to their feet and launch them on their desperate charge, +neither officers nor men could have been in any holiday mood of +contemplation. Many and different must have been the thoughts that +came and went in them during that hour of bodeful reverie; but however +free the flights of fancy of some of them may have been, it is +improbable that any one who lay there had so wild and whirling an +imagination as to foresee in prophetic vision this morning of a future +May, when we, the people of a richer and more splendid Boston, with +mayor and governor, and troops from other States, and every +circumstance of ceremony, should meet together to celebrate their +conduct on that evening, and do their memory this conspicuous honor. + +How, indeed, comes it that out of all the great engagements of the war, +engagements in many of which the troops of Massachusetts had borne the +most distinguished part, this officer, only a young colonel, this +regiment of black men and its maiden battle,--a battle, moreover, which +was lost,--should be picked out for such unusual commemoration? + +The historic significance of an event is measured neither by its +material magnitude, nor by its immediate success. Thermopylae was a +defeat; but to the Greek imagination, Leonidas and his few Spartans +stood for the whole worth of Grecian life. Bunker Hill was a defeat; +but for our people, the fight over that breastwork has always seemed to +show as well as any victory that our forefathers were men of a temper +not to be finally overcome. And so here. The war for our Union, with +all the constitutional questions which it settled, and all the military +lessons which it gathered in, has throughout its dilatory length but +one meaning in the eye of history. And nowhere was that meaning better +symbolized and embodied than in the constitution of this first Northern +negro regiment. + +Look at the monument and read the story;--see the mingling of elements +which the sculptor's genius has brought so vividly before the eye. +There on foot go the dark outcasts, so true to nature that one can +almost hear them breathing as they march. State after State by its +laws had denied them to be human persons. The Southern leaders in +congressional debates, insolent in their security, loved most to +designate them by the contemptuous collective epithet of "this peculiar +kind of property." There they march, warm-blooded champions of a +better day for man. There on horseback, among them, in his very habit +as he lived, sits the blue-eyed child of fortune, upon whose happy +youth every divinity had smiled. Onward they move together, a single +resolution kindled in their eyes, and animating their otherwise so +different frames. The bronze that makes their memory eternal betrays +the very soul and secret of those awful years. + +Since the 'thirties the slavery question been the only question, and by +the end of 'fifties our land lay sick and shaking with it like a +traveller who has thrown himself down at night beside a pestilential +swamp, and in the morning finds the fever through the marrow of his +bones. "Only muzzle the Abolition fanatics," said the South, "and all +will be well again!" But the Abolitionists would not be muzzled,--they +were the voice of the world's conscience, they were a part of destiny. +Weak as they were, they drove the South to madness. "Every step she +takes in her blindness," said Wendell Phillips, "is one more step +towards ruin." And when South Carolina took the final step in +battering down Fort Sumter, it was the fanatics of slavery themselves +who called upon their idolized institution ruin swift and complete. +What law and reason were unable to accomplish, had now to be done by +that uncertain and dreadful dispenser of God's judgments, War--War, +with its abominably casual, inaccurate methods, destroying good and bad +together, but at last able to hew a way out of intolerable situations, +when through man's delusion of perversity every better way is blocked. + +Our great western republic had from its origin been a singular anomaly. +A land of freedom, boastfully so-called, with human slavery enthroned +at the heart of it, and at last dictating terms of unconditional +surrender to every other organ of its life, what was it but a thing of +falsehood and horrible self-contradiction? For three-quarters of a +century it had nevertheless endured, kept together by policy, +compromise, and concession. But at the last that republic was torn in +two; and truth was to be possible under the flag. Truth, thank God, +truth! even though for the moment it must be truth written in hell-fire. + +And this, fellow-citizens, is why, after the great generals have had +their monuments, and long after the abstract soldier's-monuments have +been reared on every village green, we have chosen to take Robert Shaw +and his regiment as the subjects of the first soldier's-monument to be +raised to a particular set of comparatively undistinguished men. The +very lack of external complication in the history of these soldiers is +what makes them represent with such typical purity the profounder +meaning of the Union cause. + +Our nation had been founded in what we may call our American religion, +baptized and reared in the faith that a man requires no master to take +care of him, and that common people can work out their salvation well +enough together if left free to try. But the founders had not dared to +touch the great intractable exception; and slavery had wrought until at +last the only alternative for the nation was to fight or die. What +Shaw and his comrades stand for and show us is that in such an +emergency Americans of all complexions and conditions can go forth like +brothers, and meet death cheerfully if need be, in order that this +religion of our native land shall not become a failure on earth. + +We of this Commonwealth believe in that religion; and it is not at all +because Robert Shaw was an exceptional genius, but simply because he +was faithful to it as we all may hope to be faithful in our measure +when the times demand, that we wish his beautiful image to stand here +for all time, an inciter to similarly unselfish public deeds. + +Shaw thought but little of himself, yet he had a personal charm which, +as we look back on him, makes us repeat: "None knew thee but to love +thee, none named thee but to praise." This grace of nature was united +in him in the happiest way with a filial heart, a cheerful will, and a +judgment that was true and fair. And when the war came, and great +things were doing of the kind that he could help in, he went as a +matter of course to the front. What country under heaven has not +thousands of such youths to rejoice in, youths on whom the safety of +the human race depends? Whether or not they leave memorials behind +them, whether their names are writ in water or in marble, depends +mostly on the opportunities which the accidents of history throw into +their path. Shaw recognized the vital opportunity: he saw that the +time had come when the colored people must put the country in their +debt. + +Colonel Lee has just told us something about the obstacles with which +this idea had to contend. For a large party of us this was still +exclusively a white man's war; and should colored troops be tried and +not succeed, confusion would grow worse confounded. Shaw was a captain +in the Massachusetts Second, when Governor Andrew invited him to take +the lead in the experiment. He was very modest, and doubted, for a +moment, his own capacity for so responsible a post. We may also +imagine human motives whispering other doubts. Shaw loved the Second +Regiment, illustrious already, and was sure of promotion where he +stood. In this new negro-soldier venture, loneliness was certain, +ridicule inevitable, failure possible; and Shaw was only twenty-five; +and, although he had stood among the bullets at Cedar Mountain and +Antietam, he had till then been walking socially on the sunny side of +life. But whatever doubts may have beset him, they were over in a day, +for he inclined naturally toward difficult resolves. He accepted the +proffered command, and from that moment lived but for one object, to +establish the honor of the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth. + +I have had the privilege of reading his letters to his family from the +day of April when, as a private in the New York Seventh, he obeyed the +President's first call. Some day they must be published, for they form +a veritable poem for serenity and simplicity of tone. He took to camp +life as if it were his native element, and (like so many of our young +soldiers) he was at first all eagerness to make arms his permanent +profession. Drilling and disciplining; interminable marching and +counter-marching, and picket-duty on the Upper Potomac as lieutenant in +our Second Regiment, to which post he had soon been promoted; pride at +the discipline attained by the Second, and horror at the bad discipline +of other regiments; these are the staple matter of earlier letters, and +last for many months. These, and occasional more recreative incidents, +visits to Virginian houses, the reading of books like Napier's +"Peninsular War," or the "Idylls of the King," Thanksgiving feats, and +races among officers, that helped the weary weeks to glide away. Then +the bloodier business opens, and the plot thickens till the end is +reached. From first to last there is not a rancorous word against the +enemy,--often quite the reverse,--and amid all the scenes of hardship, +death, and devastation that his pen soon has to write of, there is +unfailing cheerfulness and even a sort of innermost peace. + +After he left it, Robert Shaw's heart still clung to the fortunes of +the Second. Months later when, in South Carolina with the +Fifty-fourth, he writes to his young wife: "I should have been major of +the Second now if I had remained there and lived through the battles. +As regards my own pleasure, I had rather have that place than any other +in the army. It would have been fine to go home a field officer in +that regiment! Poor fellows, how they have been slaughtered!" + +Meanwhile he had well taught his new command how to do their duty; for +only three days after he wrote this he led them up the parapet of Fort +Wagner, where he and nearly half of them were left upon the ground. + +Robert Shaw quickly inspired others with his own love of discipline. +There was something almost pathetic in the earnestness with which both +the officers and men of the Fifty-fourth embraced their mission of +showing that a black regiment could excel in every virtue known to man. +They had good success, and the Fifty-fourth became a model in all +possible respects. Almost the only trace of bitterness in Shaw's whole +correspondence is over an incident in which he thought his men had been +morally disgraced. It had become their duty, immediately after their +arrival at the seat of war, to participate, in obedience to fanatical +orders from the head of the department, in the sack and burning of the +inoffensive little town of Darien on the Georgia coast. "I fear," he +writes to his wife, "that such actions will hurt the reputation of +black troops and of those connected with them. For myself I have gone +through the war so far without dishonor, and I do not like to +degenerate into a plunderer and a robber,--and the same applies to +every officer in my regiment. After going through the hard campaigning +and the hard fighting in Virginia, this makes me very much ashamed. +There are two courses only for me to pursue: to obey orders and say +nothing; or to refuse to go upon any more such expeditions, and be put +under arrest and probably court-martialled, which is a very serious +thing." Fortunately for Shaw, the general in command of that +department was almost immediately relieved. + +Four weeks of camp life and discipline on the Sea Islands, and the +regiment had its baptism of fire. A small affair, but it proved the +men to be staunch. Shaw again writes to his wife: "You don't know what +a fortunate day this has been for me and for us all, excepting some +poor fellows who were killed and wounded. We have fought at last +alongside of white troops. Two hundred of my men on picket this +morning were attacked by five regiments of infantry, some cavalry, and +a battery of artillery. The Tenth Connecticut were on their left, and +say they would have had a bad time if the Fifty-fourth men had not +stood so well. The whole division was under arms in fifteen minutes, +and after coming up close in front of us, the enemy, finding us so +strong, fell back. . . . General Terry sent me word he was highly +gratified with the behavior of our men, and the officers and privates +of other regiments praise us very much. All this is very gratifying to +us personally, and a fine thing for the colored troops. I know this +will give you pleasure for it wipes out the remembrance of the Darien +affair, which you could not but grieve over, though we were innocent +participators." + +The adjutant of the Fifty-fourth, who made report of this skirmish to +General Terry, well expresses the feelings of loneliness that still +prevailed in that command:-- + +"The general's favorite regiment," writes the adjutant,[2] "the +Twenty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry, one of the best that had so far +faced the rebel foe, largely officered by Boston men, was surrounding +his headquarters. It had been a living breathing suspicion with +us--perhaps not altogether justly--that all white troops abhorred our +presence in the army, and that the Twenty-fourth would rather hear of +us in some remote corner of the Confederacy than tolerate us in advance +of any battle in which they themselves were to act as reserves or +lookers-on. Can you not then readily imagine the pleasure which I felt +as I alighted from my horse before General Terry and his staff--I was +going to say his unfriendly staff, but of this I am not sure--to report +to him, with Colonel Shaw's compliments, that we had repulsed the enemy +without the loss of a single inch of ground. General Terry bade me +mount again and tell Colonel Shaw that he was proud of the conduct of +his men, and that he must still hold the ground against any future +sortie of the enemy. You can even now share with me the sensation of +that moment of soldierly satisfaction." + +The next night but one after this episode was spent by the Fifty-fourth +in disembarking on Morris Island in the rain, and at noon Colonel Shaw +was able to report their arrival to General Strong, to whose brigade he +was assigned. A terrific bombardment was playing on Fort Wagner, then +the most formidable earthwork ever built, and the general, knowing +Shaw's desire to place his men beside white troops, said to him: +"Colonel, Fort Wagner is to be stormed this evening, and you may lead +the column, if you say Yes. Your men, I know, are worn out, but do as +you choose." Shaw's face brightened. "Before answering the general, +he instantly turned to me," writes the adjutant, who reports the +interview, "and said, Tell Colonel Hallowell to bring up the +Fifty-fourth immediately.'" + +This was done, and just before nightfall the attack was made. Shaw was +serious, for he knew the assault was desperate, and had a premonition +of his end. Walking up and down in front of the regiment, he briefly +exhorted them to prove that they were men. Then he gave the order: +"Move in quick time till within a hundred yards, then double quick and +charge. Forward!" and the Fifty-fourth advanced to the storming, its +colonel and colors at its head. + +On over the sand, through a narrow defile which broke up the formation, +double quick over the chevaux de frise, into the ditch and over it, as +best they could, and up the rampart with Fort Sumter, which had seen +them, playing on them, and Fort Wagner, now one mighty mound of fire, +tearing out their lives. Shaw led from first to last. Gaining +successfully the parapet, he stood there for a moment with uplifted +sword, shouting, "Forward, Fifty-fourth!" and then fell headlong, with +a bullet through his heart. The battle raged for nigh two hours. +Regiment after regiment, following upon the Fifty-fourth, hurled +themselves upon its ramparts, but Fort Wagner was nobly defended, and +for that night stood safe. The Fifty-fourth withdrew after two-thirds +of its officers and five-twelfths or nearly half its men had been shot +down or bayoneted within the fortress or before its walls. It was good +behavior for a regiment, no one of whose soldiers had had a musket in +his hands more than eighteen weeks, and which had seen the enemy for +the first time only two days before. + +"The negroes fought gallantly," wrote a Confederate officer, "and were +headed by as brave a colonel as ever lived." + +As for the colonel, not a drum was heard nor a funeral note, not a +soldier discharged his farewell shot, when the Confederates buried him, +the morning after the engagement. His body, half stripped of its +clothing, and the corpses of his dauntless negroes were flung into one +common trench together, and the sand was shovelled over them, without a +stake or stone to signalize the spot. In death as in life, then, the +Fifty-fourth bore witness to the brotherhood of man. The lover of +heroic history could wish for no more fitting sepulchre for Shaw's +magnanimous young heart. There let his body rest, united with the +forms of his brave nameless comrades. There let the breezes of the +Atlantic sigh, and its gales roar their requiem, while this bronze +effigy and these inscriptions keep their fame alive long after you and +I and all who meet here are forgotten. + +How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this +morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and the +waves sparkling and the sea-gulls circling around Fort Wagner's ancient +site. But the great earthworks and their thundering cannon, the +commanders and their followers, the wild assault and repulse that for a +brief space made night hideous on that far-off evening, have all sunk +into the blue gulf of the past, and for the majority of this generation +are hardly more than an abstract name, a picture, a tale that is told. +Only when some yellow-bleached photograph of a soldier of the 'sixties +comes into our hands, with that odd and vivid look of individuality due +to the moment when it was taken, do we realize the concreteness of that +by-gone history, and feel how interminable to the actors in them were +those leaden-footed hours and years. The photographs themselves +erelong will fade utterly, and books of history and monuments like this +alone will tell the tale. The great war for the Union will be like the +siege of Troy; it will have taken its place amongst all other "old, +unhappy, far-off things and battles long ago." + +In all such events two things must be distinguished--the moral service +of them from the fortitude which they display. War has been much +praised and celebrated among us of late as a school of manly virtue; +but it is easy to exaggerate upon this point. Ages ago, war was the +gory cradle of mankind, the grim-featured nurse that alone could train +our savage progenitors into some semblance of social virtue, teach them +to be faithful one to another, and force them to sink their selfishness +in wider tribal ends. War still excels in this prerogative; and +whether it be paid in years of service, in treasure, or in life-blood, +the war tax is still the only tax that men ungrudgingly will pay. How +could it be otherwise, when the survivors of one successful massacre +after another are the beings from whose loins we and all our +contemporary races spring? Man is once for all a fighting animal; +centuries of peaceful history could not breed the battle-instinct out +of us; and our pugnacity is the virtue least in need of reinforcement +by reflection, least in need of orator's or poet's help. + +What we really need the poet's and orator's help to keep alive in us is +not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed +when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more +lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in +the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the +Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it +in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of +nations should most of all be reared, for the survival of the fittest +has not bred it into the bone of human beings as it has bred military +valor; and of five hundred of us who could storm a battery side by side +with others, perhaps not one would be found ready to risk his worldly +fortunes all alone in resisting an enthroned abuse. The deadliest +enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within +their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always +in need of being saved. The nation blest above all nations is she in +whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts +without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting +reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between +parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and +preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks. Such +nations have no need of wars to save them. Their accounts with +righteousness are always even; and God's judgments do not have to +overtake them fitfully in bloody spasms and convulsions of the race. + +The lesson that our war ought most of all to teach us is the lesson +that evils must be checked in time, before they grow so great. The +Almighty cannot love such long-postponed accounts, or such tremendous +settlements. And surely He hates all settlements that do such +quantities of incidental devils' work. Our present situation, with its +rancors and delusions, what is it but the direct outcome of the added +powers of government, the corruptions and inflations of the war? Every +war leaves such miserable legacies, fatal seeds of future war and +revolution, unless the civic virtues of the people save the State in +time. + +Robert Shaw had both kinds of virtue. As he then led his regiment +against Fort Wagner, so surely would he now be leading us against all +lesser powers of darkness, had his sweet young life been spared. You +think of many as I speak of one. For, North and South, how many lives +as sweet, unmonumented for the most part, commemorated solely in the +hearts of mourning mothers, widowed brides, or friends did the +inexorable war mow down! Instead of the full years of natural service +from so many of her children, our country counts but their poor +memories, "the tender grace of a day that is dead," lingering like +echoes of past music on the vacant air. + +But so and so only was it written that she should grow sound again. +From that fatal earlier unsoundness those lives have brought for North +and South together permanent release. The warfare is accomplished; the +iniquity is pardoned. No future problem can be like that problem. No +task laid on our children can compare in difficulty with the task with +which their fathers had to deal. Yet as we face the future, tasks +enough await us. The republic to which Robert Shaw and a quarter of a +million like him were faithful unto death is no republic that can live +at ease hereafter on the interest of what they have won. Democracy is +still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only +bulwark, and neither laws nor monuments, neither battleships nor public +libraries, nor great newspapers nor booming stocks; neither mechanical +invention nor political adroitness, nor churches nor universities nor +civil service examinations can save us from degeneration if the inner +mystery be lost. That mystery, as once the secret and the glory of our +English-speaking race, consists in nothing but two common habits, two +inveterate habits carried into public life,--habits so homely that they +lend themselves to no rhetorical expression, yet habits more precious, +perhaps, than any that the human race has gained. They can never be +too often pointed out or praised. One of them is the habit of trained +and disciplined good temper towards the opposite party when it fairly +wins its innings. It was by breaking away from this habit that the +Slave States nearly wrecked our Nation. The other is that of fierce +and merciless resentment toward every man or set of men who break the +public peace. By holding to this habit the free States saved her life. + +O my countrymen, Southern and Northern, brothers hereafter, masters, +slaves, and enemies no more, let us see to it that both of those +heirlooms are preserved. So may our ransomed country, like the city of +the promise, lie forever foursquare under Heaven, and the ways of all +the nations be lit up by its light. + + + +[1] Oration at the Exercises in the Boston Music Hall, May 31, 1897, +upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument. + +[2] G. W. James: "The Assault upon Fort Wagner," in _War Papers read +before the Commandery of the State of Wisconsin, Military Order of the +Loyal Legion of the United States_. Milwaukee, 1891. + + + + +IV + +FRANCIS BOOTT[1] + +How often does it happen here in New England that we come away from a +funeral with a feeling that the service has been insufficient. If it +be purely ritual, the individuality of the departed friend seems to +play too small a part in it. If the minister conducts it in his own +fashion, it is apt to be too thin and monotonous, and if he were not an +intimate friend, too remote and official. We miss direct discourse of +simple human affection about the person, which we find so often in +those lay speeches at the grave of which in France they set us nowadays +so many good examples. In the case of the friend whose memory brings +us together on the present occasion, it was easy to organize this +supplementary service. Not everyone leaves musical compositions of his +own to fill the hour with. And if we may believe that spirits can know +aught of what transpires in the world which they have forsaken, it must +please us all to think how dear old Francis Boott's shade must now be +touched at seeing in the Chapel of this university to which his +feelings clung so loyally, his music and his life at last become the +subjects of cordial and admiring recognition and commemorated by so +many of his neighbors. I can imagine nothing at any rate of which the +foreknowledge could have given him deeper satisfaction. Shy and +sensitive, craving praise as every normal human being craves it, yet +getting little, he had, I think, a certain consciousness of living in +the shadow. I greatly doubt whether his daydreams ever went so far as +to let him imagine a service like this. Such a cordial and spontaneous +outgoing towards him on our part would surprise as much as it would +delight him. + +His life was private in the strongest sense of the term. His +contributions to literature were all anonymous, book-reviews chiefly, +or letters and paragraphs in the New York Nation on musical or literary +topics. Good as was their quality, and witty as was their form,--his +only independent volume was an almost incredibly witty little book of +charades in verse--they were too slight in bulk for commemoration; and +it was only as a musical composer that he touched on any really public +function. With so many of his compositions sounding in your ears, it +would be out of place, even were I qualified, to attempt to +characterize Mr. Boott's musical genius. Let it speak for itself. I +prefer to speak of the man and friend whom we knew and whom so many of +us loved so dearly. + +One of the usual classifications of men is into those of expansive and +those of conservative temper. The word conservative commonly suggests +a dose of religious and political prejudice, and a fondness for +traditional opinions. Mr. Boott was a liberal in politics and +theology; and all his opinions were self-made, and as often as not at +variance with every tradition. Yet in a wider sense he was profoundly +conservative. + +He respected bounds of ordinance, and emphasized the fact of limits. +He knew well his own limits. The knowledge of them was in fact one of +the things he lived by. To judge of abstract philosophy, of sculpture +and painting, of certain lines of literary art, he admitted, was not of +his competency. But within the sphere where he thought he had a right +to judge, he parted his likes from his dislikes and preserved his +preferences with a pathetic steadfastness. He was faithful in age to +the lights that lit his youth, and obeyed at eve the voice obeyed at +prime, with a consistency most unusual. Elsewhere the opinions of +others might perplex him, but he laughed and let them live. Within his +own appropriated sphere he was too scrupulous a lover of the truth not +to essay to correct them, when he thought them erroneous. A certain +appearance comes in here of a self-contradictory character, for Mr. +Boott was primarily modest and sensitive, and all his interests and +pre-occupations were with life's refinements and delicacies. Yet one's +mind always pictured him as a rugged sort of person, opposing +successful resistance to all influences that might seek to change his +habits either of feeling or of action. His admirable health, his sober +life, his regular walk twice a day, whatever might be the weather, his +invariable evenness of mood and opinion, so that, when you once knew +his range, he never disappointed you--all this was at variance with +popular notions of the artistic temperament. He was indeed, a man of +reason, no romancer, sentimentalist or dreamer, in spite of the fact +that his main interests were with the muses. He was exact and +accurate; affectionate, indeed, and sociable, but neither gregarious +nor demonstrative; and such words as "honest," "sturdy," "faithful," +are the adjectives first to rise when one thinks of him. A friend said +to me soon after his death: "I seem still to see Mr. Boott, with his +two feet planted on the ground, and his cane in front of him, making of +himself a sort of tripod of honesty and veracity." + +Old age changes men in different ways. Some it softens; some it +hardens; some it degenerates; some it alters. Our old friend Boott was +identical in spiritual essence all his life, and the effect of his +growing old was not to alter, but only to make the same man mellower, +more tolerant, more lovable. Sadder he was, I think, for his life had +grown pretty lonely; but he was a stoic and he never complained either +of losses or of years, and that contagious laugh of his at any and +every pretext for laughter rang as free and true upon his deathbed as +at any previous time of his existence. + +Born in 1813, he had lived through three generations, and seen enormous +social and public changes. When a carpenter has a surface to measure, +he slides his rule along it, and over all its peculiarities. I +sometimes think of Boott as such a standard rule against which the +changing fashions of humanity of the last century might come to +measurement. A character as healthy and definite as his, of whatsoever +type it be, need only remain entirely true to itself for a sufficient +number of years, while the outer conditions change, to grow into +something like a common measure. Compared with its repose and +permanent fitness to continue, the changes of the generations seem +ephemeral and accidental. It remains the standard, the rule, the term +of comparison. Mr. Boott's younger friends must often have felt in his +presence how much more vitally near they were than they had supposed to +the old Boston long before the war, to the older Harvard, to the older +Rome and Florence. To grow old after his manner is of itself to grow +important. + +I said that Mr. Boott was not demonstrative or sentimental. +Tender-hearted he was and faithful as few men are, in friendship. He +made new friends, and dear ones, in the very last years of his life, +and it is good to think of him as having had that consolation. The +will in which he surprised so many persons by remembering them--"one of +the only purely beautiful wills I have ever read," said a +lawyer,--showed how much he cared at heart for many of us to whom he +had rarely made express professions of affection. + +Good-by, then, old friend. We shall nevermore meet the upright figure, +the blue eye, the hearty laugh, upon these Cambridge streets. But in +that wider world of being of which this little Cambridge world of ours +forms so infinitesimal a part, we may be sure that all our spirits and +their missions here will continue in some way to be represented, and +that ancient human loves will never lose their own. + + + +[1] An address delivered at the Memorial Service to Francis Boott in +the Harvard Chapel, Sunday, May 8, 1904. Printed in 38 _Harvard +Monthly_, 125. + + + + +V + +THOMAS DAVIDSON: A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE.[1] + +I wish to pay my tribute to the memory of a Scottish-American friend of +mine who died five years ago, a man of a character extraordinarily and +intensely human, in spite of the fact that he was classed by obituary +articles in England among the twelve most learned men of his time. + +It would do no honor to Thomas Davidson's memory not to be frank about +him. He handled people without gloves, himself, and one has no right +to retouch his photograph until its features are softened into +insipidity. He had defects and excesses which he wore upon his sleeve, +so that everyone could see them. They made him many enemies, and if +one liked quarrelling he was an easy man to quarrel with. But his +heart and mind held treasures of the rarest. He had a genius for +friendship. Money, place, fashion, fame, and other vulgar idols of the +tribe had no hold on his imagination. He led his own life absolutely, +in whatever company he found himself, and the intense individualism +which he taught by word and deed, is the lesson of which our generation +is perhaps most in need. + +All sorts of contrary adjectives come up as I think of him. To begin +with, there was something physically rustic which suggested to the end +his farm-boy origin. His voice was sweet and its Scottish cadences +most musical, and the extraordinary sociability of his nature made +friends for him as much among women as among men; he had, moreover, a +sort of physical dignity; but neither in dress nor in manner did he +ever grow quite "gentlemanly" or _Salonfähig_ in the conventional and +obliterated sense of the terms. He was too cordial and emphatic for +that. His broad brow, his big chest, his bright blue eyes, his +volubility in talk and laughter told a tale of vitality far beyond the +common; but his fine and nervous hands, and the vivacity of all his +reactions suggested a degree of sensibility that one rarely finds +conjoined with so robustly animal a frame. The great peculiarity of +Davidson did indeed consist in this combination of the acutest +sensibilities with massive faculties of thought and action, a +combination which, when the thought and actions are important, gives to +the world its greatest men. + +Davidson's native mood was happy. He took optimistic views of life and +of his own share in it. A sort of permanent satisfaction radiated from +his face; and this expression of inward glory (which in reality was to +a large extent structural and not "expressive" at all) was displeasing +to many new acquaintances on whom it made an impression of too much +conceit. The impression of conceit was not diminished in their eyes by +the freedom with which Davidson contradicted, corrected and reprehended +other people. A longer acquaintance invariably diminished the +impression. But it must be confessed that T. D. never was exactly +humble-minded, and that the solidity of his self-consciousness +withstood strains under which that of weaker men would have crumbled. +The malady which finally killed him was one of the most exhausting to +the nervous tone to which our flesh is subject, and it wore him out +before it ended him. He told me of the paroxysms of motiveless nervous +dread which used to beset him in the night-watches. Yet these never +subdued his stalwartness, nor made him a "sick-soul" in the theological +sense of that appelation. "God is afraid of me," was the phrase by +which he described his well-being to me one morning when his night had +been a good one, and he was feeling so cannibalistic that he thought he +might get well. + +There are men whose attitude is always that of seeking for truth, and +men who on the contrary always believe that they have the root of it +already in them. Davidson was of the latter class. Like his +countrymen, Carlyle and Ruskin, he felt himself to be in the possession +of something, whether articulate or as yet articulated by himself, that +authorized him (and authorized him with uncommon openness and +frequency) to condemn the errors of others. I think that to the last +he never fully extricated this philosophy. It was a tendency, a faith +in a direction, which gave him an active persuasion that other +directions were false, but of which the central insight never got fully +formulated, but remained in a state which Frederic Myers would have +called subliminal. He varied to a certain extent his watchwords and +his heroes. When I first knew him all was Aristotle. Later all was +Rosmini. Later still Rosmini seemed forgotten. He knew so many +writers that he grew fond of very various ones and had a strange +tolerance for systematizers and dogmatizers whom, as the consistent +individualist that he was, he should have disliked. Hegel, it is true, +he detested; but he always spoke with reverence of Kant. Of Mill and +Spencer he had a low opinion; and when I lent him Paulsen's +Introduction to Philosophy (then just out), as an example of a kind of +eclectic thought that seemed to be growing, and with which I largely +sympathized, he returned it with richer expressions of disdain than +often fell even from his lips: "It's the shabbiest, seediest pretence +at a philosophy I ever dreamed of as possible. It's like a man dressed +in a black coat so threadbare as to be all shiny. The most +poverty-stricken, out-at-elbows thing I ever read. A perfect monument +of seediness and shabbiness," etc. + +The truth is that Davidson, brought up on the older classical +traditions, never outgrew those habits of judging the world by purely +aesthetic criteria which men fed on the sciences of nature are so +willing to abandon. Even if a philosophy were true, he could easily +fail to relish it unless it showed a certain formal nobility and +dogmatic pretension to finality. But I must not describe him so much +from my own professional point of view--it is as a vessel of life at +large that one ought to keep him in remembrance. + +He came to Boston from St. Louis, where he had been teaching, about the +year 1873. He was ruddy and radiant, and I soon saw much of him, +though at first it was without the thoroughness of sympathy which we +afterwards acquired and which made us overflow, on meeting after long +absences, into such laughing greetings as: "Ha! you old thief! Ha! you +old blackguard!"--pure "contrast-effects" of affection and familiarity +passing beyond their bounds. At that time I saw most of him at a +little philosophical club which used to meet every fortnight at his +rooms in Temple Street in Boston. Of the other members, J. Elliot +Cabot and C. C. Everett, are now dead--I will not name the survivors. +We never worked out harmonious conclusions. Davidson used to crack the +whip of Aristotle over us; and I remember that, whatever topic was +formally appointed for the day, we invariably wound up with a quarrel +about Space and Space-perception. The Club had existed before +Davidson's advent. The previous year we had gone over a good part of +Hegel's larger Logic, under the self-constituted leadership of two +young business men from Illinois, who had become enthusiastic Hegelians +and, knowing almost no German, had actually possessed themselves of a +manuscript translation of the entire three volumes of Logic, made by an +extraordinary Pomeranian immigrant, named Brockmeyer. These disciples +were leaving business for the law and studying at the Harvard +law-school; but they saw the whole universe through Hegelian +spectacles, and a more admirable _homo unius libri_ than one of them, +with his three big folios of Hegelian manuscript, I have never had the +good fortune to know. + +I forget how Davidson was earning his subsistence at this time. He did +some lecturing and private teaching, but I do not think they were great +in amount. In the springs and summers he frequented the coast, and +indulged in long swimming bouts and salt-water immersions, which seemed +to agree with him greatly. His sociability was boundless, and his time +seemed to belong to anyone who asked for it. + +I soon conceived that such a man would be invaluable in Harvard +University--a kind of Socrates, a devotee of truth and lover of youth, +ready to sit up to any hour, and drink beer and talk with anyone, +lavish of learning and counsel, a contagious example of how lightly and +humanly a burden of erudition might be borne upon a pair of shoulders. +In faculty-business he might not run well in harness, but as an +inspiration and ferment of character, as an example of the ranges of +combination of scholarship with manhood that are possible, his +influence on the students would be priceless. + +I do not know whether this scheme of mine could under any circumstances +have been carried out. In point of fact it was nipped in the bud by T. +D. himself. A natural chair for him would have been Greek philosophy. +Unfortunately, just at the decisive hour, he offended our Greek +department by a savage onslaught on its methods, which, without taking +anyone's counsel, he sent to the _Atlantic Monthly_, whose editor +printed it. This, with his other unconventionalisms, made advocating +his cause more difficult, and the university authorities, never, I +believe, seriously thought of an appointment for him. + +I believe that in this case, as in one or two others like it, which I +might mention, Harvard University lost a great opportunity. +Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean +more in a university, where a few undisciplinables like T. D. may be +infinitely more precious than a faculty-full of orderly routinists. As +to what Davidson might have become under the conventionalizing +influences of an official position, it would be idle to speculate. + +As things fell out, he became more and more unconventional and even +developed a sort of antipathy to all regular academic life. It subdued +individuality, he thought, and made for Philistinism. He earnestly +dissuaded his young friend Bakewell from accepting a professorship; and +I well remember one dark night in the Adirondacks, after a good dinner +at a neighbor's, the eloquence with which, as we trudged down-hill to +his own quarters with a lantern, he denounced me for the musty and +mouldy and generally ignoble academicism of my character. Never before +or since, I fancy, has the air of the Adirondack wilderness vibrated +more repugnantly to a vocable than it did that night to the word +"academicism." + +Yet Davidson himself was always essentially a teacher. He must give +forth, inspire, and have the young about him. After leaving Boston for +Europe and Africa, founding the Fellowship of the New Life in London +and New York (the present Fabian Society in England is its offshoot), +he hit upon the plan which pleased him best of all when, in 1882 or +thereabouts, he bought a couple of hundred acres on East Hill, which +closes the beautiful Keene Valley in the Adirondacks, on the north, and +founded there, at the foot of Hurricane Mountain, his place "Glenmore" +and its "Summer School of the Culture Sciences." Although the primeval +forest has departed from its immediate vicinity, the region is still +sylvan, the air is sweet and strong and almost alpine in quality, and +the mountain panorama spread before one is superlative. Davidson +showed a business faculty which I should hardly have expected from him, +in organizing his settlement. He built a number of cottages pretty in +design and of the simplest construction, and disposed them well for +effect. He turned a couple of farm buildings which were on the grounds +into a lecturing place and a refectory; and there, arriving in early +April and not leaving till late in November, he spent the happiest part +of all his later years, surrounded during the summer months by +colleagues, friends, and listeners to lectures, and in the spring and +fall by a few independent women who were his faithful friends, and who +had found East Hill a congenial residence. + +Twice I went up with T. D. to open the place in April. I remember +leaving his fireside one night with three ladies who were also early +comers, and finding the thermometer at 8 degrees Fahrenheit and a +tremendous gale blowing the snow about us. Davidson loved these +blustering vicissitudes of climate. In the early years the brook was +never too cold for him to bathe in, and he spent days in rambling over +the hills and up the glens and through the forest. + +His own cottage was full of books whose use was free to all who visited +the settlement. It stood high on a hill in a grove of silver-birches +and looked upon the Western Mountains; and it always seemed to me an +ideal dwelling for such a bachelor-scholar. Here in May and June he +became almost one with the resurgent vegetation. Here, in October, he +was a witness of the jewelled pageant of the dying foliage, and saw the +hillsides reeking, as it were, and aflame with ruby and gold and +emerald and topaz. One September day in 1900, at the "Kurhaus" at +Nauheim, I took up a copy of the Paris _New York Herald_, and read in +capitals: "Death of Professor Thomas Davidson." I had well known how +ill he was, yet such was his vitality that the shock was wholly +unexpected. I did not realize till that moment how much that free +companionship with him every spring and autumn, surrounded by that +beautiful nature, had signified to me, or how big a piece would be +subtracted from my life by its cessation. + +Davidson's capacity for imparting information seemed endless. There +were few subjects, especially "humanistic" subjects, in which at some +time or other he had not taken an interest; and as everything that had +ever touched him was instantaneously in reach of his omnipotent memory, +he easily became a living dictionary of reference. As such all his +friends were wont to use him. He was, for example, never at a loss to +supply a quotation. He loved poetry passionately, and the sympathetic +voice with which he would recall page after page of it--English, +French, German, or Italian--is a thing always to be remembered. But +notwithstanding the instructive part he played in every conceivable +conversation, he was never prolix, and he never "lectured." + +From Davidson I learned what immunities a perfect memory bestows upon +one. I never could discover when he amassed his learning for he never +seemed "occupied." The secret of it was that any odd time would do, +for he never had to acquire a thing twice over. He avoided stated +hours of work on principle. Reprehending (mildly) a certain chapter of +my own on "Habit," he said that it was a fixed rule with him to form no +regular habits. When he found himself in danger of settling into even +a good one, he made a point of interrupting it. Habits and methods +make a prisoner of a man, destroy his readiness, keep him from +answering the call of the fresh moment. Individualist _à outrance_, +Davidson felt that every hour was an unique entity, to whose claims one +should lie open. Thus he was never abstracted or preoccupied, but +always seemed, when with you, as if you were the one person whom it was +then right to attend to. + +It was this individualistic religion that made T. D., democrat as he +nevertheless was, so hostile to all socialisms and administrative +panaceas. Life must be flexible. You ask for a free man, and these +Utopias give you an "interchangeable part," with a fixed number, in a +rule-bound organism. The real thing to aim at is liberation of the +inner interests. Give man possession of a _soul_, and he will work out +his own happiness under any set of conditions. Accordingly, when, in +the penultimate year of his life, he proposed his night-school to a +meeting of young East-Side workingmen in New York, he told them that he +had no sympathy whatever with the griefs of "labor," that outward +circumstances meant nothing in his eyes; that through their individual +wills and intellects they could share, just as they were, in the +highest spiritual life of humanity, and that he was there to help them +severally to that privilege. + +The enthusiasm with which they responded speaks volumes, both for his +genius as a teacher and for the sanity of his position. A small +posthumous book of articles by Davidson and of letters written from +Glenmore to his class, just published, with an introduction by his +disciple Professor Bakewell,[2] gives a full account of the experiment, +and ought to stand as a model and inspirer to similar attempts the +world over. Davidson's idea of the universe was that of a republic of +immortal spirits, the chief business of whom in their several grades of +existence, should be to know and love and help one another. "Creeds +are nothing, life is everything. . . . You can do far more by +presenting to the world the example of noble social relations than by +enumerating any set of principles. Know all you can, love all you can, +do all you can--that is the whole duty of man. . . . Be friends, in +the truest sense, each to the other. There is nothing in all the world +like friendship, when it is deep and real. . . . The divine . . . is a +republic of self-existent spirits, each seeking the realization of its +ideas through love, through intimacy with all the rest, and finding its +heaven in such intimacy." + +We all say and think that we believe this sort of thing; but Davidson +believed it really and actively, and that made all the difference. +When the young wage-earners whom he addressed found that here was a man +of measureless learning ready to give his soul to them as if he had +nothing else to do with it, life's ideal possibilities widened to their +view. When he was taken from them, they founded in New York the Thomas +Davidson Society, for study and neighborhood work, which will probably +become perpetual, and of which his epistles from Glenmore will be the +rule, and keep the standards set by him from degenerating--unless, +indeed, the Society should some day grow too rich, of which there is no +danger at present, and from which may Heaven long preserve it. In one +of his letters to the Class, Davidson sums up the results of his own +experience of life in twenty maxims, as follows: + + +1. Rely upon your own energies, and do not wait for, or depend on other +people. + +2. Cling with all your might to your own highest ideals, and do not be +led astray by such vulgar aims as wealth, position, popularity. Be +yourself. + +3. Your worth consists in what you are, and not in what you have. What +you are will show in what you do. + +4. Never fret, repine, or envy. Do not make yourself unhappy by +comparing your circumstances with those of more fortunate people; but +make the most of the opportunities you have. Employ profitably every +moment. + +5. Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; +live with the mighty. But learn to be happy alone. + +6. Do not believe that all greatness and heroism are in the past. +Learn to discover princes, prophets, heroes, and saints among the +people about you. Be assured they are there. + +7. Be on earth what good people hope to be in heaven. + +8. Cultivate ideal friendships, and gather into an intimate circle all +your acquaintances who are hungering for truth and right. Remember +that heaven itself can be nothing but the intimacy of pure and noble +souls. + +9. Do not shrink from any useful or kindly act, however hard or +repellent it may be. The worth of acts is measured by the spirit in +which they are performed. + +10. If the world despise you because you do not follow its ways, pay no +heed to it. But be sure your way is right. + +11. If a thousand plans fail, be not disheartened. As long as your +purposes are right, you have not failed. + +12. Examine yourself every night, and see whether you have progressed +in knowledge, sympathy, and helpfulness during the day. Count every +day a loss in which no progress has been made. + +13. Seek enjoyment in energy, not in dalliance. Our worth is measured +solely by what we do. + +14. Let not your goodness be professional; let it be the simple, +natural outcome of your character. Therefore cultivate character. + +15. If you do wrong, say so, and make what atonement you can. That is +true nobleness. Have no moral debts. + +16. When in doubt how to act, ask yourself, What does nobility command? +Be on good terms with yourself. + +17. Look for no reward for goodness but goodness itself. Remember +heaven and hell are utterly immoral institutions, if they are meant as +reward and punishment. + +18. Give whatever countenance and help you can to every movement and +institution that is working for good. Be not sectarian. + +19. Wear no placards, within or without. Be human fully. + +20. Never be satisfied until you have understood the meaning of the +world, and the purpose of our own life, and have reduced your world to +a rational cosmos. + + +One of the "placards" Davidson tried hardest to keep his Society from +wearing was that of "Socialism." Yet no one felt more deeply than he +the evils of rapacious individual competition. Spontaneously and +flexibly organized social settlements or communities, with individual +leaders as their centres, seem to have been his ideal, each with its +own religious or ethical elements of discipline. The present isolation +of the family is too inhuman. The ideal type of future life, he +thought, will be something like the monastery, with the family instead +of the individual, for its unit. + +Leveller upwards of men as Davidson was, upon the intellectual and +moral level, he seemed wholly without that sort of religion which makes +so many of our contemporary anarchists think that they ought to dip, at +least, into some manual occupation, in order to share the common burden +of humanity I never saw T. D. work with his hands in any way. He +accepted material services of all kinds without apology, as if he were +a patrician, evidently feeling that if he played his own more +intellectual part rightly, society could make no further claim upon him. + +This confidence that the life of the spirit is the absolutely highest, +made Davidson serene about his outward fortunes. Pecuniary worry would +not tally with his program. He had a very small provision against a +rainy day, but he did little to increase it. He used to write as many +articles and give as many "lectures," "talks," or "readings" every +winter as would suffice to pay the year's expenses, and thereafter he +refused additional invitations, and repaired to Glenmore as early in +the spring as possible. I could but admire the temper he showed when +the principal building there was one night burned to ashes. There was +no insurance on it, and it would cost a couple of thousand dollars to +replace it. Excitable as Davidson was about small contrarieties, he +watched this fire without a syllable of impatience. _Plaie d'argent +n'est pas mortelle_, he seemed to say, and if he felt sharp regrets, he +disdained to express them. + +No more did care about his literary reputation trouble him. In the +ordinary greedy sense, he seemed quite free from ambition. During his +last years he had prepared a large amount of material for that history +of the interaction of Greek, Christian, Hebrew, and Arabic thought upon +one another before the revival of learning, which was to be his _magnum +opus_. It was a territory to which, in its totality, few living minds +had access, and in which a certain proprietary feeling was natural. +Knowing how short his life might be, I once asked him whether he felt +no concern lest the work already done by him should be frustrate, from +the lack of its necessary complement, in case he were suddenly cut off. +His answer surprised me by its indifference. He would work as long as +he lived, he said, but not allow himself to worry, and look serenely at +whatever might be the outcome. This seemed to me uncommonly +high-minded. I think that Davidson's conviction of immortality had +much to do with such a superiority to accidents. On the surface, and +towards small things, he was irritable enough, but the undertone of his +character was remarkable for equanimity. He showed it in his final +illness, of which the misery was really atrocious. There were no +general complaints or lamentations about the personal situation or the +arrest to his career. It was the human lot and he must even bear it; +so he kept his mind upon objective matters. + +But, as I said at the outset, the paramount thing in Davidson in my +eyes was his capacity for friendship. His friends were +innumerable--boys and girls and old boys and old girls, Papists and +Protestants, Jews and Gentiles, married and single; and he cared deeply +for each one of them, admiring them often too extravagantly. What term +can name those recurrent waves of delighted laughter that expressed his +greeting, beginning from the moment he saw you and accompanying his +words continuously, as if his pleasure in you were interminable? His +hand too, stretched out when yards away, so that a country neighbor +said it reached farther than any hand he ever met with. The odd thing +was that friendship in Davidson seemed so little to interfere with +criticism. Persons with whom intercourse was one long contradiction on +his part, and who appeared to annoy him to extermination, he none the +less loved tenderly, and enjoyed living with them. "He's the most +utterly selfish, illiberal and narrow-hearted human being I ever knew," +I heard him once say of someone, "and yet he's the dearest, nicest +fellow living." His enthusiastic belief in any young person who gave a +promise of genius was touching. Naturally a man who is willing, as he +was, to be a prophet, always finds some women who are willing to be +disciples. I never heard of any sentimental weakness in Davidson in +this relation, save possibly in one case. They harmed themselves at +the fire of his soul, and he told them truths without accommodation. +"You 're farther off from God than any woman I ever heard of." "Nay, +if you believe in a protective tariff, you 're in hell already, though +you may not know it." "You had a fine hysterical time last night, +didn't you, when Miss B was brought up from the ravine with her +dislocated shoulder." To Miss B he said: "I don't pity you. It served +you right for being so ignorant as to go there at that hour." Seldom, +strange to say, did the recipients of these deliverances seem to resent +them. + +What with Davidson's warmth of heart and sociability, I used to wonder +at his never marrying. Two years before his death he told me the +reason--an unhappy youthful love-affair in Scotland. Twice in later +life, he said, temptation had come to him, and he had had to make his +decision. When he had come to the point, he had felt each time that +the tie with the dead girl was prohibitive. "When two persons have +known each other as we did," he said, "neither can ever fully belong to +a stranger. So it would n't do." "It would n't do, it would n't do!" +he repeated, as we lay on the hillside, in a tone so musically tender +that it chimes in my ear now as I write down his confession. It can +surely be no breach of confidence to publish it--it is too creditable +to the profundity of Davidson's affections. As I knew him, he was one +of the purest of human beings. + +If one asks, now, what the _value_ of Thomas Davidson was, what was the +general significance of his life, apart from his particular books and +articles, I have to say that it lay in the example he set to us all of +how, even in the midst of this intensely worldly social system of ours, +in which each human interest is organized so collectively and so +commercially, a single man may still be a knight-errant of the +intellectual life, and preserve full freedom in the midst of +sociability. Extreme as was his need of friends, and faithful as he +was to them, he yet lived mainly in reliance on his private +inspiration. Asking no man's permission, bowing the knee to no tribal +idol, renouncing the conventional channels of recognition, he showed us +how a life devoted to purely intellectual ends could be beautifully +wholesome outwardly, and overflow with inner contentment. Fortunately +this type of man is recurrent, and from generation to generation, +literary history preserves examples. But it is infrequent enough for +few of us to have known more than one example--I count myself happy in +knowing two and a half! The memory of Davidson will always strengthen +my faith in personal freedom and its spontaneities, and make me less +unqualifiedly respectful than ever of "Civilization," with its herding +and branding, licensing and degree-giving, authorizing and appointing, +and in general regulating and administering by system the lives human +beings. Surely the individual, the person in the singular number, is +the more fundamental phenomenon, and the social institution, of +whatever grade, is but secondary and ministerial. Many as are the +interests which social systems satisfy, always unsatisfied interests +remain over, and among them are interests to which system, as such, +does violence whenever it lays its hand upon us. The best Commonwealth +will always be the one that most cherishes the men who represent the +residual interests, the one that leaves the largest scope to their +peculiarities. + + + +[1] First published in _McClure's Magazine_ for May, 1905. + +[2] "The Education of the Wage-Earners." Boston, Ginn & Company, 1904. + + + + +VI + +HERBERT SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY[1] + +"God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform." If the +greatest of all his wonders be the human individual, the richness with +which the specimens thereof are diversified, the limitless variety of +outline, from gothic to classic or flowing arabesque, the contradictory +nature of the filling, composed of little and great, of comic, heroic, +and pathetic elements blended inextricably, in personalities all of +whom can _go_, and go successfully, must surely be reckoned the supreme +miracle of creative ingenuity. Rarely has Nature performed an odder or +more Dickens-like feat than when she deliberately designed, or +accidentally stumbled into, the personality of Herbert Spencer. +Greatness and smallness surely never lived so closely in one skin +together. + +The opposite verdicts passed upon his work by his contemporaries bear +witness to the extraordinary mingling of defects and merits in his +mental character. Here are a few, juxtaposed:-- + +"A philosophic saw-mill."--"The most capacious and powerful thinker of +all time. + +"The Arry' of philosophy."--"Aristotle and his master were not more +beyond the pygmies who preceded them than he is beyond Aristotle." + +"Herbert Spencer's chromo-philosophy."--"No other man that has walked +the earth has so wrought and written himself into the life of the +world." + +"The touch of his mind takes the living flavor out of everything."--"He +is as much above and beyond all the other great philosophers who have +ever lived as the telegraph is beyond the carrier-pigeon, or the +railway beyond the sedan chair." + +"He has merely combined facts which we knew before into a huge +fantastic contradictory system, which hides its nakedness and emptiness +partly under the veil of an imposing terminology, and partly in the +primeval fog."--"His contributions are of a depth, profundity, and +magnitude which have no parallel in the history of mind. Taking but +one--and one only--of his transcendent reaches of thought,--namely, +that referring to the positive sense of the Unknown as the basis of +religion,--it may unhesitatingly be affirmed that the analysis and +synthesis by which he advances to the almost supernal grasp of this +mighty truth give a sense of power and reach verging on the +preternatural." + +Can the two thick volumes of autobiography which Mr. Spencer leaves +behind him explain such discrepant appreciations? Can we find revealed +in them the higher synthesis which reconciles the contradictions? +Partly they do explain, I think, and even justify, both kinds of +judgment upon their author. But I confess that in the last resort I +still feel baffled. In Spencer, as in every concrete individual, there +is a uniqueness that defies all formulation. We can feel the touch of +it and recognize its taste, so to speak, relishing or disliking, as the +case may be, but we can give no ultimate account of it, and we have in +the end simply to admire the Creator. + +Mr. Spencer's task, the unification of all knowledge into an articulate +system, was more ambitious than anything attempted since St. Thomas or +Descartes. Most thinkers have confined themselves either to +generalities or to details, but Spencer addressed himself to +everything. He dealt in logical, metaphysical, and ethical first +principles, in cosmogony and geology, in physics, and chemistry after a +fashion, in biology, psychology, sociology, politics, and aesthetics. +Hardly any subject can be named which has not at least been touched on +in some one of his many volumes. His erudition was prodigious. His +civic conscience and his social courage both were admirable. His life +was pure. He was devoted to truth and usefulness, and his character +was wholly free from envy and malice (though not from contempt), and +from the perverse egoisms that so often go with greatness. + +Surely, any one hearing this veracious enumeration would think that +Spencer must have been a rich and exuberant human being. Such wide +curiosities must have gone with the widest sympathies, and such a +powerful harmony of character, whether it were a congenital gift, or +were acquired by spiritual wrestling and eating bread with tears, must +in any case have been a glorious spectacle for the beholder. Since +Goethe, no such ideal human being can have been visible, walking our +poor earth. + +Yet when we turn to the "Autobiography," the self-confession which we +find is this: An old-maidish personage, inhabiting boarding-houses, +equable and lukewarm in all his tastes and passions, having no +desultory curiosity, showing little interest in either books or people. +A petty fault-finder and stickler for trifles, devoid in youth of any +wide designs on life, fond only of the more mechanical side of things, +yet drifting as it were involuntarily into the possession of a +world-formula which by dint of his extraordinary pertinacity he +proceeded to apply to so many special cases that it made him a +philosopher in spite of himself. He appears as modest enough, but with +a curious vanity in some of his deficiencies,--his lack of desultory +interests, for example, and his nonconformity to reigning customs. He +gives a queer sense of having no emotional perspective, as if small +things and large were on the same plane of vision, and equally +commanded his attention. In spite of his professed dislike of +monotony, one feels an awfully monotonous quality in him; and in spite +of the fact that invalidism condemned him to avoid thinking, and to +saunter and potter through large parts of every day, one finds no +twilight region in his mind, and no capacity for dreaminess or +passivity. All parts of it are filled with the same noonday glare, +like a dry desert where every grain of sand shows singly, and there are +no mysteries or shadows. + +"Look on this picture and on that," and answer how they can be +compatible. + +For one thing, Mr. Spencer certainly writes himself _down_ too much. +He complains of a poor memory, of an idle disposition, of a general +dislike for reading. Doubtless there have been more gifted men in all +these respects. But when Spencer once buckled to a particular task, +his memory, his industry, and his reading went beyond those of the most +gifted. He had excessive sensibility to stimulation by a challenge, +and he had preëminent pertinacity. When the notion of his philosophic +system once grasped him, it seemed to possess itself of every effective +fibre of his being. No faculty in him was left unemployed,--nor, on +the other hand, was anything that his philosophy could contain left +unstated. Roughly speaking, the task and the man absorbed each other +without residuum. + +Compare this type of mind with such an opposite type as Ruskin's, or +even as J. S. Mill's, or Huxley's, and you realize its peculiarity. +Behind the work of those others was a background of overflowing mental +temptations. The men loom larger than all their publications, and +leave an impression of unexpressed potentialities. Spencer tossed all +his inexpressibilities into the Unknowable, and gladly turned his back +on them forever. His books seem to have expressed all that there was +to express in his character. + +He is very frank about this himself. No _Sturm und Drang +Periode_, no problematic stage of thought, where the burden of the +much-to-be-straightened exceeds the powers of straightening. + +When George Eliot uttered surprise at seeing no lines on his forehead, +his reply was:--"I suppose it is because I am never puzzled."--"It has +never been my way," he continues, "to set before myself a problem and +puzzle out an answer. The conclusions at which I have from time to +time arrived, have not been arrived at as solutions of questions +raised; but have been arrived at unawares--each as the ultimate outcome +of a body of thought which slowly grew from a germ. Some direct +observation, or some fact met with in reading, would dwell with me; +apparently because I had a sense of its significance. . . . A week +afterwards, possibly, the matter would be remembered; and with further +thought about it, might occur a recognition of some wider application: +new instances being aggregated with those already noted. Again, after +an interval," etc., etc. "And thus, little by little, in unobtrusive +ways, without conscious intention or appreciable effort, there would +grow up a coherent and organized theory" (vol. i, page 464). + +A sort of mill, this, wound up to grind in a certain way, and +irresponsive otherwise. + +"To apply day after day merely with the general idea of acquiring +information, or of increasing ability, was not in me." "Anything like +passive receptivity is foreign to my nature; and there results an +unusually small tendency to be affected by others' thoughts. It seems +as though the fabric of my conclusions had in all cases to be developed +from within. Material which could be taken in and organized so as to +form part of a coherent structure, there was always a readiness to +receive. But ideas and sentiments of alien kinds, or unorganizable +kinds, were, if not rejected, yet accepted with indifference, and soon +dropped away." "It has always been out of the question for me to go on +reading a book the fundamental principles of which I entirely dissent +from. I take it for granted that if the fundamental principles are +wrong the rest cannot be right; and thereupon cease reading--being, I +suspect, rather glad of an excuse for doing so." "Systematic books of +a political or ethical kind, written from points of view quite unlike +my own, were either not consulted at all, or else they were glanced at +and thereafter disregarded" (vol. i, pages 215, 277, 289, 350). + +There is pride rather than compunction in these confessions. Spencer's +mind was so narrowly systematized, that he was at last almost incapable +of believing in the reality of alien ways of feeling. The invariable +arrogance of his replies to criticisms shows his absolute +self-confidence. Every opinion in the world had to be articulately +right or articulately wrong,--so proved by some principle or other of +his infallible system. + +He confesses freely his own inflexibility and censoriousness. His +account of his father makes one believe in the fatality of heredity. +Born of old nonconformist stock, the elder Spencer was a man of +absolute punctuality. Always he would step out of his way to kick a +stone off the pavement lest somebody should trip over it. If he saw +boys quarrelling he stopped to expostulate; and he never could pass a +man who was ill-treating a horse without trying to make him behave +better. He would never take off his hat to any one, no matter of what +rank, nor could he be induced to address any one as "Esquire" or as +"Reverend." He would never put on any sign of mourning, even for +father and mother; and he adhered to one style of coat and hat +throughout all changes of fashion. Improvement was his watchword +always and everywhere. Whatever he wrote had to be endlessly +corrected, and his love of detail led all his life to his neglecting +large ends in his care for small ones. A good heart, but a pedantic +conscience, and a sort of energetically mechanical intelligence. + +Of himself Herbert Spencer says: "No one will deny that I am much given +to criticism. Along with exposition of my own views there has always +gone a pointing out of defects in those of others. And if this is a +trait in my writing, still more is it a trait in my conversation. The +tendency to fault-finding is dominant--disagreeably dominant. The +indicating of errors in thought and speech made by those around has all +through life been an incurable habit--a habit for which I have often +reproached myself, but to no purpose." + +The "Autobiography" abounds in illustrations of the habit. For +instance:-- + +"Of late I have observed sundry cases in which, having found the right, +people deliberately desert it for the wrong. . . . A generation ago +salt-cellars were made of convenient shapes--either ellipses or +elongated parallelograms: the advantage being that the salt-spoon, +placed lengthwise, remained in its place. But for some time past, +fashion has dictated circular salt-cellars, on the edges of which the +salt-spoon will not remain without skilful balancing: it falls on the +cloth. In my boyhood a jug was made of a form at once convenient and +graceful. . . . Now, however, the almost universal form of jug in use +is a frustum of a cone with a miniature spout. It combines all +possible defects. When anything like full, it is impossible to pour +out a small quantity without part of the liquid trickling down beneath +the spout; and a larger quantity cannot be poured out without exceeding +the limits of the spout and running over on each side of it. If the +jug is half empty, the tilting must be continued a long time before any +liquid comes; and then, when it does come, it comes with a rush; +because its surface has now become so large that a small inclination +delivers a great deal. To all which add that the shape is as ugly a +one as can well be hit upon. Still more extraordinary is the folly of +a change made in another utensil of daily use"--and Spencer goes on to +find fault with the cylindrical form of candle extinguisher, proving by +a description of its shape that "it squashes the wick into the melted +composition, the result being that when, next day, the extinguisher is +taken off, the wick, imbedded in the solidified composition, cannot be +lighted without difficulty" (vol. ii, page 238). + +The remorseless explicitness, the punctuation, everything, make these +specimens of public fault-finding with what probably was the equipment +of Mr. Spencer's latest boarding-house, sound like passages from "The +Man versus the State." Another example:-- + +"Playing billiards became 'my custom always of the afternoon.' Those +who confess to billiard-playing commonly make some kind of an +excuse. . . . It suffices to me that I like billiards, and the +attainment of the pleasure given I regard as a sufficient motive. I +have for a long time deliberately set my face against that asceticism +which makes it an offence to do a thing for the pleasure of doing it; +and have habitually contended that, so long as no injury is inflicted +on others, nor any ulterior injury on self, and so long as the various +duties of life have been discharged, the pursuit of pleasure for its +own sake is perfectly legitimate and requires no apology. The opposite +view is nothing else than a remote sequence of the old devil worship of +the barbarian, who sought to please his god by inflicting pains upon +himself, and believed his god would be angry if he made himself happy" +(vol. ii, page 263). + +The tone of pedantic rectitude in these passages is characteristic. +Every smallest thing is either right or wrong, and if wrong, can be +articulately proved so by reasoning. Life grows too dry and literal, +and loses all aërial perspective at such a rate; and the effect is the +more displeasing when the matters in dispute have a rich variety of +aspects, and when the aspect from which Mr. Spencer deduces his +conclusions is manifestly partial. + +For instance, in his art-criticisms. Spencer in his youth did much +drawing, both mechanical and artistic. Volume one contains a +photo-print of a very creditable bust which he modelled of his uncle. +He had a musical ear, and practiced singing. He paid attention to +style, and was not wholly insensible to poetry. Yet in all his +dealings with the art-products of mankind he manifests the same curious +dryness and mechanical literality of judgment--a dryness increased by +pride in his non-conformity. He would, for example, rather give a +large sum than read to the end of Homer's Iliad,--the ceaseless +repetition of battles, speeches, and epithets like well-greaved Greeks, +horse-breaking Trojans; the tedious enumeration of details of dresses, +arms, and chariots; such absurdities as giving the genealogy of a horse +while in the midst of a battle; and the appeals to savage and brutal +passions, having soon made the poem intolerable to him (vol. i, page +300). Turner's paintings he finds untrue, in that the earth-region is +habitually as bright in tone as the air-region. Moreover, Turner +scatters his detail too evenly. In Greek statues the hair is falsely +treated. Renaissance painting, even the best, is spoiled by unreal +illumination, and non-rendering of reflected light in the shadows. +Venetian gothic sins by meaningless ornamentation. St. Mark's Church +may be precious archaeologically, but is not aesthetically precious. +Of Wagner's music he admires nothing but the skilful specialization of +the instruments in the orchestra. + +The fault-finding in all these cases rests on observation, true as far +as it goes; but the total absence of genial relations with the entirety +of the phenomenon discussed, the clutching at some paltry mechanical +aspect of it that lends itself to reasoned proof by _a_ plus _b_, and +the practical denial of everything that only appeals to vaguer +sentiment, show a mind so oddly limited to ratiocinative and explicit +processes, and so wedded to the superficial and flagrantly +_insufficient_, that one begins to wonder whether in the philosophic +and scientific spheres the same mind can have wrought out results of +extraordinary value. + +Both "yes" and "no" are here the answer. Every one who writes books or +articles knows how he must flounder until he hits upon the proper +opening. Once the right beginning found, everything follows easily and +in due order. If a man, however narrow, strikes even by accident, into +one of these fertile openings, and pertinaciously follows the lead, he +is almost sure to meet truth on his path. Some thoughts act almost +like mechanical centres of crystallization; facts cluster of themselves +about them. Such a thought was that of the gradual growth of all +things, by natural processes, out of natural antecedents. Until the +middle of the nineteenth century no one had grasped it _wholesale_; and +the thinker who did so earliest was bound to make discoveries just in +proportion to the exclusiveness of his interest in the principle. He +who had the keenest eye for instances and illustrations, and was least +divertible by casual side-curiosity, would score the quickest triumph. + +To Spencer is certainly due the immense credit of having been the first +to see in evolution an absolutely universal principle. If any one else +had grasped its universality, it failed at any rate to grasp him as it +grasped Spencer. For Spencer it instantly became "the guiding +conception running through and connecting all the concrete sciences" +(vol. ii, page 196). Here at last was "an object at once large and +distinct enough" to overcome his "constitutional idleness." "With an +important and definite end to achieve, I could work" (vol. i, page +215). He became, in short, the victim of a vivid obsession, and for +the first time in his life seems to have grown genuinely ambitious. +Every item of his experience, small or great, every idea in his mental +storehouse, had now to be considered with reference to its bearing on +the new universal principle. On pages 194-199 of volume two he gives +an interesting summary of the way in which all his previous and +subsequent ideas moved into harmonious coördination and subordination, +when once he had this universal key to insight. Applying it wholesale +as he did, innumerable truths unobserved till then had to fall into his +gamebag. And his peculiar trick, a priggish infirmity in daily +intercourse, of treating every smallest thing by abstract law, was here +a merit. Add his sleuth-hound scent for what he was after, and his +untiring pertinacity, to his priority in perceiving the one great truth +and you fully justify the popular estimate of him as one of the world's +geniuses, in spite of the fact that the "temperament" of genius, so +called, seems to have been so lacking in him. + +In one sense, then, Spencer's personal narrowness and dryness were not +hindering, but helping conditions of his achievement. Grant that a +vast picture _quelconque_ had to be made before the details could be +made perfect, and a greater richness and receptivity of mind would have +resulted in hesitation. The quality would have been better in spots, +but the extensiveness would have suffered. + +Spencer is thus the philosopher of vastness. Misprised by many +specialists, who carp at his technical imperfections, he has +nevertheless enlarged the imagination, and set free the speculative +mind of countless doctors, engineers, and lawyers, of many physicists +and chemists, and of thoughtful laymen generally. He is the +philosopher whom those who have no other philosopher can appreciate. +To be able to say this of any man is great praise, and gives the "yes" +answer to my recent question. + +Can the "no" answer be as unhesitatingly uttered? I think so, if one +makes the qualitative aspect of Spencer's work undo its quantitative +aspect. The luke-warm equable temperament, the narrowness of sympathy +and passion, the fondness for mechanical forms of thought, the +imperfect receptivity and lack of interest in facts as such, dissevered +from their possible connection with a theory; nay, the very vividness +itself, the keenness of scent and the pertinacity; these all are +qualities which may easily make for second-rateness, and for +contentment with a cheap and loosely woven achievement. As Mr. +Spencer's "First Principles" is the book which more than any other has +spread his popular reputation, I had perhaps better explain what I mean +by criticising some of its peculiarities. + +I read this book as a youth when it was still appearing in numbers, and +was carried away with enthusiasm by the intellectual perspectives which +it seemed to open. When a maturer companion, Mr. Charles S. Peirce, +attacked it in my presence, I felt spiritually wounded, as by the +defacement of a sacred image or picture, though I could not verbally +defend it against his criticisms. + +Later I have used it often as a text-book with students, and the total +outcome of my dealings with it is an exceedingly unfavorable verdict. +Apart from the great truth which it enforces, that everything has +evolved somehow, and apart from the inevitable stimulating effect of +any such universal picture, I regard its teachings as almost a museum +of blundering reasoning. Let me try to indicate briefly my grounds for +such an opinion. + +I pass by the section on the Unknowable, because this part of Mr. +Spencer's philosophy has won fewer friends than any other. It consists +chiefly of a rehash of Mansel's rehash of Hamilton's "Philosophy of the +Conditioned," and has hardly raised its head since John Mill so +effectively demolished it. If criticism of our human intellectual +constitution is needed, it can be got out of Bradley to-day better than +out of Spencer. The latter's way of reconciling science and religion +is, moreover, too absurdly _naïf_. Find, he says, a fundamental +abstract truth on which they can agree, and that will reconcile them. +Such a truth, he thinks, is that _there is a mystery_. The trouble is +that it is over just such common truths that quarrels begin. Did the +fact that both believed in the existence of the Pope reconcile Luther +and Ignatius Loyola? Did it reconcile the South and the North that +both agreed that there were slaves? Religion claims that the "mystery" +is interpretable by human reason; "Science," speaking through Spencer, +insists that it is not. The admission of the mystery is the very +signal for the quarrel. Moreover, for nine hundred and ninety-nine +men out of a thousand the sense of mystery is the sense of +_more-to-be-known_, not the sense of a More, _not_ to be known. + +But pass the Unknowable by, and turn to Spencer's famous law of +Evolution. + +"Science" works with several types of "law." The most frequent and +useful type is that of the "elementary law,"--that of the composition +of forces, that of gravitation, of refraction, and the like. Such laws +declare no concrete facts to exist, and make no prophecy as to any +actual future. They limit themselves to saying that if a certain +character be found in any fact, another character will co-exist with it +or follow it. The usefulness of these laws is proportionate to the +extent to which the characters they treat of pervade the world, and to +the accuracy with which they are definable. + +Statistical laws form another type, and positively declare something +about the world of actuality. Although they tell us nothing of the +elements of things, either abstract or concrete, they affirm that the +resultant of their actions drifts preponderantly in a particular +direction. Population tends toward cities; the working classes tend to +grow discontented; the available energy of the universe is running +down--such laws prophesy the real future _en gros_, but they never help +us to predict any particular detail of it. + +Spencer's law of Evolution is of the statistical variety. It defines +what evolution means, and what dissolution means, and asserts that, +although both processes are always going on together, there is in the +present phase of the world a drift in favor of evolution. In the first +edition of "First Principles" an evolutive change in anything was +described as the passage of it from a state of indefinite incoherent +homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity. The existence of a +drift in this direction in everything Mr. Spencer proves, both by a +survey of facts, and by deducing it from certain laws of the elementary +type, which he severally names "the instability of the homogeneous," +"the multiplication of effects," "segregation," and "equilibration." +The two former insure the heterogeneity, while "segregation" brings +about the definiteness and coherence, and "equilibration" arrests the +process, and determines when dissolutive changes shall begin. + +The whole panorama is resplendent for variety and inclusiveness, and +has aroused an admiration for philosophy in minds that never admired +philosophy before. Like Descartes in earlier days, Spencer aims at a +purely mechanical explanation of Nature. The knowable universe is +nothing but matter and motion, and its history is nothing but the +"redistribution" of these entities. The value of such an explanation +for scientific purposes depends altogether on how consistent and exact +it is. Every "thing" must be interpreted as a "configuration," every +"event" as a change of configuration, every predicate ascribed must be +of a geometrical sort. Measured by these requirements of mechanics +Spencer's attempt has lamentably failed. His terms are vagueness and +ambiguity incarnate, and he seems incapable of keeping the mechanical +point of view in mind for five pages consecutively. + +"Definite," for example, is hardly a physical idea at all. Every +motion and every arrangement of matter is definitely what it is,--a fog +or an irregular scrawl, as much so as a billiard ball or a straight +line. Spencer means by definiteness in a thing any character that +makes it arrest our attention, and forces us to distinguish it from +other things. The word with him has a human, not a physical +connotation. Definite things, in his book, finally appear merely as +_things that men have made separate names for_, so that there is hardly +a pretence of the mechanical view being kept. Of course names increase +as human history proceeds, so "definiteness" in things must necessarily +more and more evolve. + +"Coherent," again. This has the definite mechanical meaning of +resisting separation, of sticking together; but Spencer plays fast and +loose with this meaning. Coherence with him sometimes means +_permanence in time_, sometimes such _mutual dependence of parts_ as is +realized in a widely scattered system of no fixed material +configuration; a commercial house, for example, with its "travellers" +and ships and cars. + +An honestly mechanical reader soon rubs his eyes with bewilderment at +the orgy of ambiguity to which he is introduced. Every term in +Spencer's fireworks shimmers through a whole spectrum of meanings in +order to adapt itself to the successive spheres of evolution to which +it must apply. "Integration," for instance. A definite coherence is +an Integration; and examples given of integration are the contraction +of the solar nebula, the formation of the earth's crust, the +calcification of cartilage, the shortening of the body of crabs, the +loss of his tail by man, the mutual dependence of plants and animals, +the growth of powerful states, the tendency of human occupations to go +to distinct localities, the dropping of terminal inflexions in English +grammar, the formation of general concepts by the mind, the use of +machinery instead of simple tools, the development of "composition" in +the fine arts, etc., etc. It is obvious that no one form of the motion +of matter characterizes all these facts. The human ones simply embody +the more and more successful pursuit of certain ends. + +In the second edition of his book, Mr. Spencer supplemented his first +formula by a unifying addition, meant to be strictly mechanical. +"Evolution," he now said, "is the progressive integration of matter and +dissipation of motion," during which both the matter and the motion +undergo the previously designated kinds of change. But this makes the +formula worse instead of better. The "dissipation of motion" part of +it is simple vagueness,--for what particular motion is "dissipated" +when a man or state grows more highly evolved? And the integration of +matter belongs only to stellar and geologic evolution. Neither +heightened specific gravity, nor greater massiveness, which are the +only conceivable integrations of matter, is a mark of the more evolved +vital, mental, or social things. + +It is obvious that the facts of which Spencer here gives so clumsy an +account could all have been set down more simply. First there is +solar, and then there is geological evolution, processes accurately +describable as integrations in the mechanical sense, namely, as +decrease in bulk, or growth in hardness. Then Life appears; and after +that neither integration of matter nor dissipation of motion play any +part whatever. The result of life, however, is to fill the world more +and more with things displaying _organic unity_. By this is meant any +arrangement of which one part helps to keep the other parts in +existence. Some organic unities are material,--a sea-urchin, for +example, a department store, a civil service, or an ecclesiastical +organization. Some are mental, as a "science," a code of laws, or an +educational programme. But whether they be material or mental +products, organic unities must _accumulate_; for every old one tends to +conserve itself, and if successful new ones arise they also "come to +stay." The human use of Spencer's adjectives "integrated," "definite," +"coherent," here no longer shocks one. We are frankly on teleological +ground, and metaphor and vagueness are permissible. + +This tendency of organic unities to accumulate when once they are +formed is absolutely all the truth I can distill from Spencer's +unwieldy account of evolution. It makes a much less gaudy and +chromatic picture, but what there is of it is exact. + +Countless other criticisms swarm toward my pen, but I have no heart to +express them,--it is too sorry an occupation. A word about Spencer's +conception of "Force," however, insists on being added; for although it +is one of his most essential, it is one of his vaguest ideas. + +Over all his special laws of evolution there reigns an absolutely +general law, that of the "persistence of force." By this Spencer +sometimes means the phenomenal law of conservation of energy, sometimes +the metaphysical principle that the quantity of existence is +unalterable, sometimes the logical principle that nothing can happen +without a reason, sometimes the practical postulate that in the absence +of any assignable difference you must call a thing the same. This law +is one vast vagueness, of which I can give no clear account; but of his +special vaguenesses "mental force" and "social force" are good examples. + +These manifestations of the universal force, he says, are due to vital +force, and this latter is due to physical force, both being +proportionate to the amount of physical force which is "transformed" +into them. But what on earth is "social force"? Sometimes he +identifies it with "social activity" (showing the latter to be +proportionate to the amount of food eaten), sometimes with the work +done by human beings and their steam-engines, and shows it to be due +ultimately to the sun's heat. It would never occur to a reader of his +pages that a social force proper might be anything that acted as a +stimulus of social change,--a leader, for example, a discovery, a book, +a new idea, or a national insult; and that the greatest of "forces" of +this kind need embody no more "physical force" than the smallest. The +measure of greatness here is the effect produced on the environment, +not a quantity antecedently absorbed from physical nature. Mr. Spencer +himself is a great social force; but he ate no more than an average +man, and his body, if cremated, would disengage no more energy. The +effects he exerts are of no nature _of releases_,--his words pull +triggers in certain kinds of brain. + +The fundamental distinction in mechanics between forces of +push-and-pull and forces of release is one of which Mr. Spencer, in his +earlier years, made no use whatever. Only in his sixth edition did he +show that it had seriously arrested his attention. In biology, +psychology, and sociology the forces concerned are almost exclusively +forces of release. Spencer's account of social forces is neither good +sociology nor good mechanics. His feeble grasp of the conception of +force vitiates, in fact, all his work. + +But the task of a carper is repugnant. The "Essays," "Biology," +"Psychology," "Sociology," and "Ethics" are all better than "First +Principles," and contain numerous and admirable bits of penetrating +work of detail. My impression is that, of the systematic treaties, the +"Psychology" will rank as the most original. Spencer broke new ground +here in insisting that, since mind and its environment have evolved +together, they must be studied together. He gave to the study of mind +in isolation a definitive quietus, and that certainly is a great thing +to have achieved. To be sure he overdid the matter, as usual, and left +no room for any mental structure at all, except that which passively +resulted from the storage of impressions received from the outer world +in the order of their frequency by fathers and transmitted to their +sons. The belief that whatever is acquired by sires is inherited by +sons, and the ignoring of purely inner variations, are weak points; but +to have brought in the environment as vital was a master stroke. + +I may say that Spencer's controversy over use-inheritance with +Weismann, entered into after he was sixty, seems to me in point of +quality better than any other part of his work. It is genuine labor +over a puzzle, genuine research. + +Spencer's "Ethics" is a most vital and original piece of +attitude-taking in the world of ideals. His politico-ethical activity +in general breathes the purest English spirit liberty, and his attacks +on over-administration and criticisms on the inferiority of great +centralized systems are worthy to be the textbooks of individualists +the world over. I confess that it is with this part of his work, in +spite of its hardness and inflexibility of tone, that I personally +sympathize most. + +Looking back on Mr. Spencer as a whole, as this admirably truth-telling +"Autobiography" reveals him, he is a figure unique for quaint +consistency. He never varied from that inimitable blend of small and +vast mindedness, of liberality and crabbedness, which was his personal +note, and which defies our formulating power. If an abstract logical +concept could come to life, its life would be like Spencer's,--the same +definiteness of exclusion and inclusion, the same bloodlessness of +temperament, the same narrowness of intent and vastness of extent, the +same power of applying itself to numberless instances. But he was no +abstract idea; he was a man vigorously devoted to truth and justice as +he saw them, who had deep insights, and who finished, under terrible +frustrations from bad health, a piece of work that taken for all in +all, is extraordinary. A human life is greater than all its possible +appraisers, assessors, and critics. In comparison with the fact of +Spencer's actual living, such critical characterization of it as I have +been at all these pains to produce seems a rather unimportant as well +as a decidedly graceless thing. + + + +[1] Written upon the publication of Herbert Spencer's "Autobiography." +Published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for July, 1904. + + + + +VII + +FREDERIC MYERS' SERVICES TO PSYCHOLOGY[1] + +On this memorial occasion it is from English hearts and tongues +belonging, as I never had the privilege of belonging, to the immediate +environment of our lamented President, that discourse of him as a man and +as a friend must come. It is for those who participated in the endless +drudgery of his labors for our Society to tell of the high powers he +showed there; and it is for those who have something of his burning +interest in the problem of our human destiny to estimate his success in +throwing a little more light into its dark recesses. To me it has been +deemed best to assign a colder task. Frederic Myers was a psychologist +who worked upon lines hardly admitted by the more academic branch of the +profession to be legitimate; and as for some years I bore the title of +"Professor of Psychology," the suggestion has been made (and by me gladly +welcomed) that I should spend my portion of this hour in defining the +exact place and rank which we must accord to him as a cultivator and +promoter of the science of the Mind. + +Brought up entirely upon literature and history, and interested at first +in poetry and religion chiefly; never by nature a philosopher in the +technical sense of a man forced to pursue consistency among concepts for +the mere love of the logical occupation; not crammed with science at +college, or trained to scientific method by any passage through a +laboratory, Myers had as it were to recreate his personality before he +became the wary critic of evidence, the skilful handler of hypothesis, +the learned neurologist and omnivorous reader of biological and +cosmological matter, with whom in later years we were acquainted. The +transformation came about because he needed to be all these things in +order to work successfully at the problem that lay near his heart; and +the ardor of his will and the richness of his intellect are proved by the +success with which he underwent so unusual a transformation. + +The problem, as you know, was that of seeking evidence for human +immortality. His contributions to psychology were incidental to that +research, and would probably never have been made had he not entered on +it. But they have a value for Science entirely independent of the light +they shed upon that problem; and it is quite apart from it that I shall +venture to consider them. + + +If we look at the history of mental science we are immediately struck by +diverse tendencies among its several cultivators, the consequence being a +certain opposition of schools and some repugnance among their disciples. +Apart from the great contrasts between minds that are teleological or +biological and minds that are mechanical, between the animists and the +associationists in psychology, there is the entirely different contrast +between what I will call the classic-academic and the romantic type of +imagination. The former has a fondness for clean pure lines and noble +simplicity in its constructions. It explains things by as few principles +as possible and is intolerant of either nondescript facts or clumsy +formulas. The facts must lie in a neat assemblage, and the psychologist +must be enabled to cover them and "tuck them in" as safely under his +system as a mother tucks her babe in under the down coverlet on a winter +night. Until quite recently all psychology, whether animistic or +associationistic, was written on classic-academic lines. The consequence +was that the human mind, as it is figured in this literature, was largely +an abstraction. Its normal adult traits were recognized. A sort of +sun-lit terrace was exhibited on which it took its exercise. But where +that terrace stopped, the mind stopped; and there was nothing farther +left to tell of in this kind of philosophy but the brain and the other +physical facts of nature on the one hand, and the absolute metaphysical +ground of the universe on the other. + +But of late years the terrace has been overrun by romantic improvers, and +to pass to their work is like going from classic to gothic architecture, +where few outlines are pure and where uncouth forms lurk in the shadows. +A mass of mental phenomena are now seen in the shrubbery beyond the +parapet. Fantastic, ignoble, hardly human, or frankly non-human are some +of these new candidates for psychological description. The menagerie and +the madhouse, the nursery, the prison, and the hospital, have been made +to deliver up their material. The world of mind is shown as something +infinitely more complex than was suspected; and whatever beauties it may +still possess, it has lost at any rate the beauty of academic neatness. + +But despite the triumph of romanticism, psychologists as a rule have +still some lingering prejudice in favor of the nobler simplicities. +Moreover, there are social prejudices which scientific men themselves +obey. The word "hypnotism" has been trailed about in the newspapers so +that even we ourselves rather wince at it, and avoid occasions of its +use. "Mesmerism," "clairvoyance," "medium,"--_horrescimus +referentes_!--and with all these things, infected by their previous +mystery-mongering discoverers, even our best friends had rather avoid +complicity. For instance, I invite eight of my scientific colleagues +severally to come to my house at their own time, and sit with a medium +for whom the evidence already published in our "Proceedings" had been +most noteworthy. Although it means at worst the waste of the hour for +each, five of them decline the adventure. I then beg the "Commission" +connected with the chair of a certain learned psychologist in a +neighboring university to examine the same medium, whom Mr. Hodgson and I +offer at our own expense to send and leave with them. They also have to +be excused from any such entanglement. I advise another psychological +friend to look into this medium's case, but he replies that it is +useless; for if he should get such results as I report, he would (being +suggestible) simply believe himself hallucinated. When I propose as a +remedy that he should remain in the background and take notes, whilst his +wife has the sitting, he explains that he can never consent to his wife's +presence at such performances. This friend of mine writes _ex cathedra_ +on the subject of psychical research, declaring (I need hardly add) that +there is nothing in it; the chair of the psychologist with the Commission +was founded by a spiritist, partly with a view to investigate mediums; +and one of the five colleagues who declined my invitation is widely +quoted as an effective critic of our evidence. So runs the world away! +I should not indulge in the personality and triviality of such anecdotes, +were it not that they paint the temper of our time, a temper which, +thanks to Frederic Myers more than to any one, will certainly be +impossible after this generation. Myers was, I think, decidedly +exclusive and intolerant by nature. But his keenness for truth carried +him into regions where either intellectual or social squeamishness would +have been fatal, so he "mortified" his _amour propre_, unclubbed himself +completely, and became a model of patience, tact and humility wherever +investigation required it. Both his example and his body of doctrine +will make this temper the only one henceforward scientifically +respectable. + +If you ask me how his doctrine has this effect, I answer: By +co-ordinating! For Myers' great principle of research was that in order +to understand any one species of fact we ought to have all the species of +the same general class of fact before us. So he took a lot of scattered +phenomena, some of them recognized as reputable, others outlawed from +science, or treated as isolated curiosities; he made series of them, +filled in the transitions by delicate hypotheses or analogies; and bound +them together in a system by his bold inclusive conception of the +Subliminal Self, so that no one can now touch one part of the fabric +without finding the rest entangled with it. Such vague terms of +apperception as psychologists have hitherto been satisfied with using for +most of these phenomena, as "fraud," "rot," "rubbish," will no more be +possible hereafter than "dirt" is possible as a head of classification in +chemistry, or "vermin" in zoology. Whatever they are, they are things +with a right to definite description and to careful observation. + +I cannot but account this as a great service rendered to Psychology. I +expect that Myers will ere long distinctly figure in mental science as +the radical leader in what I have called the romantic movement. Through +him for the first time, psychologists are in possession of their full +material, and mental phenomena are set down in an adequate inventory. To +bring unlike things thus together by forming series of which the +intermediary terms connect the extremes, is a procedure much in use by +scientific men. It is a first step made towards securing their interest +in the romantic facts, that Myers should have shown how easily this +familiar method can be applied to their study. + +Myers' conception of the extensiveness of the Subliminal Self quite +overturns the classic notion of what the human mind consists in. The +supraliminal region, as Myers calls it, the classic-academic +consciousness, which was once alone considered either by associationists +or animists, figures in his theory as only a small segment of the psychic +spectrum. It is a special phase of mentality, teleologically evolved for +adaptation to our natural environment, and forms only what he calls a +"privileged case" of personality. The out-lying Subliminal, according to +him, represents more fully our central and abiding being. + +I think the words subliminal and supraliminal unfortunate, but they were +probably unavoidable. I think, too, that Myers' belief in the ubiquity +and great extent of the Subliminal will demand a far larger number of +facts than sufficed to persuade him, before the next generation of +psychologists shall become persuaded. He regards the Subliminal as the +enveloping mother-consciousness in each of us, from which the +consciousness we wot of is precipitated like a crystal. But whether this +view get confirmed or get overthrown by future inquiry, the definite way +in which Myers has thrown it down is a new and specific challenge to +inquiry. For half a century now, psychologists have fully admitted the +existence of a subliminal mental region, under the name either of +unconscious cerebration or of the involuntary life; but they have never +definitely taken up the question of the extent of this region, never +sought explicitly to map it out. Myers definitely attacks this problem, +which, after him, it will be impossible to ignore. + +_What is the precise constitution of the Subliminal_--such is the problem +which deserves to figure in our Science hereafter as the _problem of +Myers_; and willy-nilly, inquiry must follow on the path which it has +opened up. But Myers has not only propounded the Problem definitely, he +has also invented definite methods for its solution. Posthypnotic +suggestion, crystal-gazing, automatic writing and trance-speech, the +willing-game, etc., are now, thanks to him, instruments of research, +reagents like litmus paper or the galvanometer, for revealing what would +otherwise be hidden. These are so many ways of putting the Subliminal on +tap. Of course without the simultaneous work on hypnotism and hysteria +independently begun by others, he could not have pushed his own work so +far. But he is so far the only generalizer of the problem and the only +user of all the methods; and even though his theory of the extent of the +Subliminal should have to be subverted in the end, its formulation will, +I am sure, figure always as a rather momentous event in the history of +our Science. + +Any psychologist who should wish to read Myers out of the profession--and +there are probably still some who would be glad to do so to-day--is +committed to a definite alternative. Either he must say that we knew all +about the subliminal region before Myers took it up, or he must say that +it is certain that states of super-normal cognition form no part of its +content. The first contention would be too absurd. The second one +remains more plausible. There are many first hand investigators into the +Subliminal who, not having themselves met with anything super-normal, +would probably not hesitate to call all the reports of it erroneous, and +who would limit the Subliminal to dissolutive phenomena of consciousness +exclusively, to lapsed memories, subconscious sensations, impulses and +_phobias_, and the like. Messrs. Janet and Binet, for aught I know, may +hold some such position as this. Against it Myers' thesis would stand +sharply out. Of the Subliminal, he would say, we can give no +ultra-simple account: there are discreet regions in it, levels separated +by critical points of transition, and no one formula holds true of them +all. And any conscientious psychologist ought, it seems to me, to see +that, since these multiple modifications of personality are only +beginning to be reported and observed with care, it is obvious that a +dogmatically negative treatment of them must be premature and that the +problem of Myers still awaits us as the problem of far the deepest moment +for our actual psychology, whether his own tentative solutions of certain +parts of it be correct or not. + +Meanwhile, descending to detail, one cannot help admiring the great +originality with which Myers wove such an extraordinarily detached and +discontinuous series of phenomena together. Unconscious cerebration, +dreams, hypnotism, hysteria, inspirations of genius, the willing-game, +planchette, crystal-gazing, hallucinatory voices, apparitions of the +dying, medium-trances, demoniacal possession, clairvoyance, +thought-transference, even ghosts and other facts more doubtful; these +things form a chaos at first sight most discouraging. No wonder that +scientists can think of no other principle of unity among them than their +common appeal to men's perverse propensity to superstition. Yet Myers +has actually made a system of them, stringing them continuously upon a +perfectly legitimate objective hypothesis, verified in some cases and +extended to others by analogy. Taking the name "automatism" from the +phenomenon of automatic writing--I am not sure that he may not himself +have been the first so to baptize this latter phenomenon--he made one +great simplification at a stroke by treating hallucinations and active +impulses under a common head, as _sensory_ and _motor automatisms_. +Automatism he then conceived broadly as a message of any kind from the +Subliminal to the Supraliminal. And he went a step farther in his +hypothetic interpretation, when he insisted on "symbolism" as one of the +ways in which one stratum of our personality will often interpret the +influences of another. Obsessive thoughts and delusions, as well as +voices, visions, and impulses, thus fall subject to one mode of +treatment. To explain them, we must explore the Subliminal; to cure them +we must practically influence it. + +Myers' work on automatism led to his brilliant conception, in 1891, of +hysteria. He defined it, with good reasons given, as "a disease of the +hypnotic stratum." Hardly had he done so when the wonderfully ingenious +observations of Binet, and especially of Janet in France, gave to this +view the completest of corroborations. These observations have been +extended in Germany, America, and elsewhere; and although Binet and Janet +worked independently of Myers, and did work far more objective, he +nevertheless will stand as the original announcer of a theory which, in +my opinion, makes an epoch, not only in medical but in psychological +science, because it brings in an entirely new conception of our mental +possibilities. + +Myers' manner of apprehending the problem of the Subliminal shows itself +fruitful in every possible direction. While official science practically +refuses to attend to Subliminal phenomena, the circles which do attend to +them treat them with a respect altogether too undiscriminating,--every +Subliminal deliverance must be an oracle. The result is that there is no +basis of intercourse between those who best know the facts and those who +are most competent to discuss them. Myers immediately establishes a +basis by his remark that in so far as they have to use the same organism, +with its preformed avenues of expression--what may be very different +strata of the Subliminal are condemned in advance to manifest themselves +in similar ways. This might account for the great generic likeness of so +many automatic performances, while their different starting-points behind +the threshold might account for certain differences in them. Some of +them, namely, seem to include elements of super-normal knowledge; others +to show a curious subconscious mania for personation and deception; +others again to be mere drivel. But Myers' conception of various strata +or levels in the Subliminal sets us to analyzing them all from a new +point of view. The word Subliminal for him denotes only a region, with +possibly the most heterogeneous contents. Much of the content is +certainly rubbish, matter that Myers calls dissolutive, stuff that dreams +are made of, fragments of lapsed memory, mechanical effects of habit and +ordinary suggestion; some belongs to a middle region where a strange +manufacture of inner romances perpetually goes on; finally, some of the +content appears superiorly and subtly perceptive. But each has to appeal +to us by the same channels and to use organs partly trained to their +performance by messages from the other levels. Under these conditions +what could be more natural to expect than a confusion which Myers' +suggestion would then have been the first indispensable step towards +finally clearing away. + +Once more, then, whatever be the upshot of the patient work required +here, Myers' resourceful intellect has certainly done a service to +psychology. + +I said a while ago that his intellect was not by nature philosophic in +the narrower sense of being that of a logician. In the broader sense of +being a man of wide scientific imagination, Myers was most eminently a +philosopher. He has shown this by his unusually daring grasp of the +principle of evolution, and by the wonderful way in which he has worked +out suggestions of mental evolution by means of biological analogies. +These analogies are, if anything, too profuse and dazzling in his pages; +but his conception of mental evolution is more radical than anything yet +considered by psychologists as possible. It is absolutely original; and, +being so radical, it becomes one of those hypotheses which, once +propounded, can never be forgotten, but sooner or later have to be worked +out and submitted in every way to criticism and verification. + +The corner-stone of his conception is the fact that consciousness has no +essential unity. It aggregates and dissipates, and what we call normal +consciousness,--the "Human Mind" of classic psychology,--is not even +typical, but only one case out of thousands. Slight organic alterations, +intoxications, and auto-intoxications, give supraliminal forms completely +different, and the subliminal region seems to have laws in many respects +peculiar. Myers thereupon makes the suggestion that the whole system of +consciousness studied by the classic psychology is only an extract from a +larger total, being a part told-off, as it were, to do service in the +adjustments of our physical organism to the world of nature. This +extract, aggregated and personified for this particular purpose, has, +like all evolving things, a variety of peculiarities. Having evolved, it +may also dissolve, and in dreams, hysteria, and divers forms of +degeneration it seems to do so. This is a retrograde process of +separation in a consciousness of which the unity was once effected. But +again the consciousness may follow the opposite course and integrate +still farther, or evolve by growing into yet untried directions. In +veridical automatisms it actually seems to do so. It drops some of its +usual modes of increase, its ordinary use of the senses, for example, and +lays hold of bits of information which, in ways that we cannot even +follow conjecturally, leak into it by way of the Subliminal. The +ulterior source of a certain part of this information (limited and +perverted as it always is by the organism's idiosyncrasies in the way of +transmission and expression) Myers thought he could reasonably trace to +departed human intelligence, or its existing equivalent. I pretend to no +opinion on this point, for I have as yet studied the evidence with so +little critical care that Myers was always surprised at my negligence. I +can therefore speak with detachment from this question and, as a mere +empirical psychologist, of Myers' general evolutionary conception. As +such a psychologist I feel sure that the latter is a hypothesis of +first-rate philosophic importance. It is based, of course, on his +conviction of the extent of the Subliminal, and will stand or fall as +that is verified or not; but whether it stand or fall, it looks to me +like one of those sweeping ideas by which the scientific researches of an +entire generation are often moulded. It would not be surprising if it +proved such a leading idea in the investigation of the near future; for +in one shape or another, the Subliminal has come to stay with us, and the +only possible course to take henceforth is radically and thoroughly to +explore its significance. + + +Looking back from Frederic Myers' vision of vastness in the field of +psychological research upon the programme as most academic psychologists +frame it, one must confess that its limitation at their hands seems not +only implausible, but in truth, a little ridiculous. Even with brutes +and madmen, even with hysterics and hypnotics admitted as the academic +psychologists admit them, the official outlines of the subject are far +too neat to stand in the light of analogy with the rest of Nature. The +ultimates of Nature,--her simple elements, it there be such,--may indeed +combine in definite proportions and follow classic laws of architecture; +but her proximates, in her phenomena as we immediately experience them, +Nature is everywhere gothic, not classic. She forms a real jungle, where +all things are provisional, half-fitted to each other, and untidy. When +we add such a complex kind of subliminal region as Myers believed in to +the official region, we restore the analogy; and, though we may be +mistaken in much detail, in a general way, at least, we become plausible. +In comparison with Myers' way of attacking the question of immortality in +particular, the official way is certainly so far from the mark as to be +almost preposterous. It assumes that when our ordinary consciousness +goes out, the only alternative surviving kind of consciousness that could +be possible is abstract mentality, living on spiritual truth, and +communicating ideal wisdom--in short, the whole classic platonizing +Sunday-school conception. Failing to get that sort of thing when it +listens to reports about mediums, it denies that there can be anything. +Myers approaches the subject with no such _a priori_ requirement. If he +finds any positive indication of "spirits," he records it, whatever it +may be, and is willing to fit his conception to the facts, however +grotesque the latter may appear, rather than to blot out the facts to +suit his conception. But, as was long ago said by our collaborator, Mr. +Canning Schiller, in words more effective than any I can write, if any +conception should be blotted out by serious lovers of Nature, it surely +ought to be classic academic Sunday-school conception. If anything is +unlikely in a world like this, it is that the next adjacent thing to the +mere surface-show of our experience should be the realm of eternal +essences, of platonic ideas, of crystal battlements, of absolute +significance. But whether they be animists or associationists, a +supposition something like this is still the assumption of our usual +psychologists. It comes from their being for the most part philosophers, +in the technical sense, and from their showing the weakness of that +profession for logical abstractions. Myers was primarily a lover of life +and not of abstractions. He loved human life, human persons, and their +peculiarities. So he could easily admit the possibility of level beyond +level of perfectly concrete experience, all "queer and cactus-like" +though it might be, before we touch the absolute, or reach the eternal +essences. + +Behind the minute anatomists and the physiologists, with their metallic +instruments, there have always stood the out-door naturalists with their +eyes and love of concrete nature. The former call the latter +superficial, but there is something wrong about your laboratory-biologist +who has no sympathy with living animals. In psychology there is a +similar distinction. Some psychologists are fascinated by the varieties +of mind in living action, others by the dissecting out, whether by +logical analysis or by brass instruments, of whatever elementary mental +processes may be there. Myers must decidedly be placed in the former +class, though his powerful use of analogy enabled him also to do work +after the fashion of the latter. He loved human nature as Cuvier and +Agassiz loved animal nature; in his view, as in their view, the subject +formed a vast living picture. Whether his name will have in psychology +as honorable a place as their names have gained in the sister science, +will depend on whether future inquirers shall adopt or reject his +theories; and the rapidity with which their decision shapes itself will +depend largely on the vigor with which this Society continues its labor +in his absence. It is at any rate a possibility, and I am disposed to +think it a probability, that Frederic Myers will always be remembered in +psychology as the pioneer who staked out a vast tract of mental +wilderness and planted the flag of genuine science upon it. He was an +enormous collector. He introduced for the first time comparison, +classification, and serial order into the peculiar kind of fact which he +collected. He was a genius at perceiving analogies; he was fertile in +hypotheses; and as far as conditions allowed it in this meteoric region, +he relied on verification. Such advantages are of no avail, however, if +one has struck into a false road from the outset. But should it turn out +that Frederic Myers has really hit the right road by his divining +instinct, it is certain that, like the names of others who have been +wise, his name will keep an honorable place in scientific history. + + + +[1] Written for a meeting of the Society for Psychical Research held +after the death of Frederic Myers and first published in the Society's +Proceedings, Part XLII, Page 17 (1901). + + + + +VIII + +FINAL IMPRESSIONS OF A PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER[1] + +The late Professor Henry Sidgwick was celebrated for the rare mixture +of ardor and critical judgment which his character exhibited. The +liberal heart which he possessed had to work with an intellect which +acted destructively on almost every particular object of belief that +was offered to its acceptance. A quarter of a century ago, scandalized +by the chaotic state of opinion regarding the phenomena now called by +the rather ridiculous name of "psychic"--phenomena, of which the supply +reported seems inexhaustible, but which scientifically trained minds +mostly refuse to look at--he established, along with Professor Barrett, +Frederic Myers and Edmund Gurney, the Society for Psychical Research. +These men hoped that if the material were treated rigorously, and, as +far as possible experimentally, objective truth would be elicited, and +the subject rescued from sentimentalism on the one side and dogmatizing +ignorance on the other. Like all founders, Sidgwick hoped for a +certain promptitude of result; and I heard him say, the year before his +death, that if anyone had told him at the outset that after twenty +years he would be in the same identical state of doubt and balance that +he started with, he would have deemed the prophecy incredible. It +appeared impossible that that amount of handling evidence should bring +so little finality of decision. + +My own experience has been similar to Sidgwick's. For twenty-five +years I have been in touch with the literature of psychical research, +and have had acquaintance with numerous "researchers." I have also +spent a good many hours (though far fewer than I ought to have spent) +in witnessing (or trying to witness) phenomena. Yet I am theoretically +no "further" than I was at the beginning; and I confess that at times I +have been tempted to believe that the Creator has eternally intended +this department of nature to remain _baffling_, to prompt our +curiosities and hopes and suspicions all in equal measure, so that, +although ghosts and clairvoyances, and raps and messages from spirits, +are always seeming to exist and can never be fully explained away, they +also can never be susceptible of full corroboration. + +The peculiarity of the case is just that there are so many sources of +possible deception in most of the observations that the whole lot of +them _may_ be worthless, and yet that in comparatively few cases can +aught more fatal than this vague general possibility of error be +pleaded against the record. Science meanwhile needs something more +than bare possibilities to build upon; so your genuinely scientific +inquirer--I don't mean your ignoramus "scientist"--has to remain +unsatisfied. It is hard to believe, however, that the Creator has +really put any big array of phenomena into the world merely to defy and +mock our scientific tendencies; so my deeper belief is that we +psychical researchers have been too precipitate with our hopes, and +that we must expect to mark progress not by quarter-centuries, but by +half-centuries or whole centuries. + +I am strengthened in this belief by my impression that just at this +moment a faint but distinct step forward is being taken by competent +opinion in these matters. "Physical phenomena" (movements of matter +without contact, lights, hands and faces "materialized," etc.) have +been one of the most baffling regions of the general field (or perhaps +one of the least baffling _prima facie_, so certain and great has been +the part played by fraud in their production); yet even here the +balance of testimony seems slowly to be inclining towards admitting the +supernaturalist view. Eusapia Paladino, the Neapolitan medium, has +been under observation for twenty years or more. Schiaparelli, the +astronomer, and Lombroso were the first scientific men to be converted +by her performances. Since then innumerable men of scientific standing +have seen her, including many "psychic" experts. Every one agrees that +she cheats in the most barefaced manner whenever she gets an +opportunity. The Cambridge experts, with the Sidgwicks and Richard +Hodgson at their head, rejected her _in toto_ on that account. Yet her +credit has steadily risen, and now her last converts are the eminent +psychiatrist, Morselli, the eminent physiologist, Botazzi, and our own +psychical researcher, Carrington, whose book on "The Physical Phenomena +of Spiritualism" (_against_ them rather!) makes his conquest +strategically important. If Mr. Podmore, hitherto the prosecuting +attorney of the S. P. R., so far as physical phenomena are concerned +becomes converted also, we may indeed sit up and look around us. +Getting a good health bill from "Science," Eusapia will then throw +retrospective credit on Home and Stainton Moses, Florence Cook (Prof. +Crookes' medium), and all similar wonder-workers. The balance of +_presumptions_ will be changed in favor of genuineness being possible +at least in all reports of this particularly crass and low type of +supernatural phenomena. + + +Not long after Darwin's "Origin of Species" appeared I was studying +with that excellent anatomist and man, Jeffries Wyman, at Harvard. He +was a convert, yet so far a half-hesitating one, to Darwin's views; but +I heard him make a remark that applies well to the subject I now write +about. When, he said, a theory gets propounded over and over again, +coming up afresh after each time orthodox criticism has buried it, and +each time seeming solider and harder to abolish, you may be sure that +there is truth in it. Oken and Lamarck and Chambers had been +triumphantly despatched and buried, but here was Darwin making the very +same heresy seem only more plausible. How often has "Science" killed +off all spook philosophy, and laid ghosts and raps and "telepathy" away +underground as so much popular delusion. Yet never before were these +things offered us so voluminously, and never in such authentic-seeming +shape or with such good credentials. The tide seems steadily to be +rising, in spite of all the expedients of scientific orthodoxy. It is +hard not to suspect that here may be something different from a mere +chapter in human gullibility. It may be a genuine realm of natural +phenomena. + +_Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus_, once a cheat, always a cheat, such +has been the motto of the English psychical researchers in dealing with +mediums. I am disposed to think that, as a matter of policy, it has +been wise. Tactically, it is far better to believe much too little +than a little too much; and the exceptional credit attaching to the row +of volumes of the S. P. R.'s Proceedings, is due to the fixed intention +of the editors to proceed very slowly. Better a little belief tied +fast, better a small investment _salted down_, than a mass of +comparative insecurity. + +But, however wise as a policy the S. P. R.'s maxim may have been, as a +test of truth, I believe it to be almost irrelevant. In most things +human the accusation of deliberate fraud and falsehood is grossly +superficial. Man's character is too sophistically mixed for the +alternative of "honest or dishonest" to be a sharp one. Scientific men +themselves will cheat--at public lectures--rather than let experiments +obey their well-known tendency towards failure. I have heard of a +lecturer on physics, who had taken over the apparatus of the previous +incumbent, consulting him about a certain machine intended to show +that, however the peripheral parts of it might be agitated, its centre +of gravity remained immovable. "It _will_ wobble," he complained. +"Well," said the predecessor, apologetically, "to tell the truth, +whenever _I_ used that machine I found it advisable to _drive a nail_ +through the centre of gravity." I once saw a distinguished +physiologist, now dead, cheat most shamelessly at a public lecture, at +the expense of a poor rabbit, and all for the sake of being able to +make a cheap joke about its being an "American rabbit"--for no other, +he said, could survive such a wound as he pretended to have given it. + +To compare small men with great, I have myself cheated shamelessly. In +the early days of the Sanders Theater at Harvard, I once had charge of +a heart on the physiology of which Professor Newell Martin was giving a +popular lecture. This heart, which belonged to a turtle, supported an +index-straw which threw a moving shadow, greatly enlarged, upon the +screen, while the heart pulsated. When certain nerves were stimulated, +the lecturer said, the heart would act in certain ways which he +described. But the poor heart was too far gone and, although it +stopped duly when the nerve of arrest was excited, that was the final +end of its life's tether. Presiding over the performance, I was +terrified at the fiasco, and found myself suddenly acting like one of +those military geniuses who on the field of battle convert disaster +into victory. There was no time for deliberation; so, with my +forefinger under a part of the straw that cast no shadow, I found +myself impulsively and automatically imitating the rhythmical movements +which my colleague had prophesied the heart would undergo. I kept the +experiment from failing; and not only saved my colleague (and the +turtle) from a humiliation that but for my presence of mind would have +been their lot, but I established in the audience the true view of the +subject. The lecturer was stating this; and the misconduct of one +half-dead specimen of heart ought not to destroy the impression of his +words. "There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood," is a maxim +which I have heard ascribed to a former venerated President of Harvard. +The heart's failure would have been misunderstood by the audience and +given the lie to the lecturer. It was hard enough to make them +understand the subject anyhow; so that even now as I write in cool +blood I am tempted to think that I acted quite correctly. I was acting +for the _larger_ truth, at any rate, however automatically; and my +sense of this was probably what prevented the more pedantic and literal +part of my conscience from checking the action of my sympathetic +finger. To this day the memory of that critical emergency has made me +feel charitable towards all mediums who make phenomena come in one way +when they won't come easily in another. On the principles of the S. P. +R., my conduct on that one occasion ought to discredit everything I +ever do, everything, for example, I may write in this article,--a +manifestly unjust conclusion. + +Fraud, conscious or unconscious, seems ubiquitous throughout the range +of physical phenomena of spiritism, and false pretence, prevarication +and fishing for clues are ubiquitous in the mental manifestations of +mediums. If it be not everywhere fraud simulating reality, one is +tempted to say, then the reality (if any reality there be) has the bad +luck of being fated everywhere to simulate fraud. The suggestion of +humbug seldom stops, and mixes itself with the best manifestations. +Mrs. Piper's control, "Rector," is a most impressive personage, who +discerns in an extraordinary degree his sitter's inner needs, and is +capable of giving elevated counsel to fastidious and critical minds. +Yet in many respects he is an arrant humbug--such he seems to me at +least--pretending to a knowledge and power to which he has no title, +nonplussed by contradiction, yielding to suggestion, and covering his +tracks with plausible excuses. Now the non-"researching" mind looks +upon such phenomena simply according to their face-pretension and never +thinks of asking what they may signify below the surface. Since they +profess for the most part to be revealers of spirit life, it is either +as being absolutely that, or as being absolute frauds, that they are +judged. The result is an inconceivably shallow state of public opinion +on the subject. One set of persons, emotionally touched at hearing the +names of their loved ones given, and consoled by assurances that they +are "happy," accept the revelation, and consider spiritualism +"beautiful." More hard-headed subjects, disgusted by the revelation's +contemptible contents, outraged by the fraud, and prejudiced beforehand +against all "spirits," high or low, avert their minds from what they +call such "rot" or "bosh" entirely. Thus do two opposite +sentimentalisms divide opinion between them! A good expression of the +"scientific" state of mind occurs in Huxley's "Life and Letters": + +"I regret," he writes, "that I am unable to accept the invitation of +the Committee of the Dialectical Society. . . . I take no interest in +the subject. The only case of 'Spiritualism' I have ever had the +opportunity of examining into for myself was as gross an imposture as +ever came under my notice. But supposing these phenomena to be +genuine--they do not interest me. If anybody would endow me with the +faculty of listening to the chatter of old women and curates in the +nearest provincial town, I should decline the privilege, having better +things to do. And if the folk in the spiritual world do not talk more +wisely and sensibly than their friends report them to do, I put them in +the same category. The only good that I can see in the demonstration +of the 'Truth of Spiritualism' is to furnish an additional argument +against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper, than die and be made +to talk twaddle by a 'medium' hired at a guinea a _Seance_." [2] + +Obviously the mind of the excellent Huxley has here but two +whole-souled categories namely revelation or imposture, to apperceive +the case by. Sentimental reasons bar revelation out, for the messages, +he thinks, are not romantic enough for that; fraud exists anyhow; +therefore the whole thing is nothing but imposture. The odd point is +that so few of those who talk in this way realize that they and the +spiritists are using the same major premise and differing only in the +minor. The major premise is: "Any spirit-revelation must be romantic." +The minor of the spiritist is: "This _is_ romantic"; that of the Huxley +an is: "this is dingy twaddle"--whence their opposite conclusions! + +Meanwhile the first thing that anyone learns who attends seriously to +these phenomena is that their causation is far too complex for our +feelings about what is or is not romantic enough to be spiritual to +throw any light upon it. The causal factors must be carefully +distinguished and traced through series, from their simplest to their +strongest forms, before we can begin to understand the various +resultants in which they issue. Myers and Gurney began this work, the +one by his serial study of the various sorts of "automatism," sensory +and motor, the other by his experimental proofs that a split-off +consciousness may abide after a post-hypnotic suggestion has been +given. Here we have subjective factors; but are not transsubjective or +objective forces also at work? Veridical messages, apparitions, +movements without contact, seem _prima facie_ to be such. It was a +good stroke on Gurney's part to construct a theory of apparitions which +brought the subjective and the objective factors into harmonious +co-operation. I doubt whether this telepathic theory of Gurney's will +hold along the whole line of apparitions to which he applied it, but it +is unquestionable that some theory of that mixed type is required for +the explanation of all mediumistic phenomena; and that when all the +psychological factors and elements involved have been told off--and +they are many--the question still forces itself upon us: Are these all, +or are there indications of any residual forces acting on the subject +from beyond, or of any "meta-psychic" faculty (to use Richet's useful +term) exerted by him? This is the problem that requires real +expertness, and this is where the simple sentimentalisms of the +spiritist and scientist leave us in the lurch completely. + +"Psychics" form indeed a special branch of education, in which experts +are only gradually becoming developed. The phenomena are as massive +and wide-spread as is anything in Nature, and the study of them is as +tedious, repellent and undignified. To reject it for its unromantic +character is like rejecting bacteriology because _penicillium glaucum_ +grows on horse-dung and _bacterium termo_ lives in putrefaction. +Scientific men have long ago ceased to think of the dignity of the +materials they work in. When imposture has been checked off as far as +possible, when chance coincidence has been allowed for, when +opportunities for normal knowledge on the part of the subject have been +noted, and skill in "fishing" and following clues unwittingly furnished +by the voice or face of bystanders have been counted in, those who have +the fullest acquaintance with the phenomena admit that in good mediums +_there is a residuum of knowledge displayed_ that can only be called +supernormal: the medium taps some source of information not open to +ordinary people. Myers used the word "telepathy" to indicate that the +sitter's own thoughts or feelings may be thus directly tapped. Mrs. +Sidgwick has suggested that if living minds can be thus tapped +telepathically, so possibly may the minds of spirits be similarly +tapped--if spirits there be. On this view we should have one distinct +theory of the performances of a typical test-medium. They would be all +originally due to an odd _tendency to personate_, found in her dream +life as it expresses itself in trance. [Most of us reveal such a +tendency whenever we handle a "ouija-board" or a "planchet," or let +ourselves write automatically with a pencil.] The result is a +"control," who purports to be speaking; and all the resources of the +automatist, including his or her trance-faculty of telepathy are called +into play in building this fictitious personage out plausibly. On such +a view of the control, the medium's _will to personate_ runs the whole +show; and if spirits be involved in it at all, they are passive beings, +stray bits of whose memory she is able to seize and use for her +purposes, without the spirit being any more aware of it than the sitter +is aware of it when his own mind is similarly tapped. + +This is one possible way of interpreting a certain type of psychical +phenomenon. It uses psychological as well as "spiritual" factors, and +quite obviously it throws open for us far more questions than it +answers, questions about our subconscious constitution and its curious +tendency to humbug, about the telepathic faculty, and about the +possibility of an existent spirit-world. + +I do not instance this theory to defend it, but simply to show what +complicated hypotheses one is inevitably led to consider, the moment +one looks at the facts in their complexity and turns one's back on the +_naïve_ alternative of "revelation or imposture," which is as far as +either spiritist thought or ordinary scientist thought goes. The +phenomena are endlessly complex in their factors, and they are so +little understood as yet that off-hand judgments, whether of "spirits" +or of "bosh" are the one as silly as the other. When we complicate the +subject still farther by considering what connection such things as +rappings, apparitions, poltergeists, spirit-photographs, and +materializations may have with it, the bosh end of the scale gets +heavily loaded, it is true, but your genuine inquirer still is loath to +give up. He lets the data collect, and bides his time. He believes +that "bosh" is no more an ultimate element in Nature, or a really +explanatory category in human life than "dirt" is in chemistry. Every +kind of "bosh" has its own factors and laws; and patient study will +bring them definitely to light. + +The only way to rescue the "pure bosh" view of the matter is one which +has sometimes appealed to my own fancy, but which I imagine few readers +will seriously adopt. If, namely, one takes the theory of evolution +radically, one ought to apply it not only to the rock-strata, the +animals and the plants but to the stars, to the chemical elements, and +to the laws of nature. There must have been a far-off antiquity, one +is then tempted to suppose, when things were really chaotic. Little by +little, out of all the haphazard possibilities of that time, a few +connected things and habits arose, and the rudiments of regular +performance began. Every variation in the way of law and order added +itself to this nucleus, which inevitably grew more considerable as +history went on; while the aberrant and inconstant variations, not +being similarly preserved, disappeared from being, wandered off as +unrelated vagrants, or else remained so imperfectly connected with the +part of the world that had grown regular as only to manifest their +existence by occasional lawless intrusions, like those which "psychic" +phenomena now make into our scientifically organized world. On such a +view, these phenomena ought to remain "pure bosh" forever, that is, +they ought to be forever intractable to intellectual methods, because +they should not yet be organized enough in themselves to follow any +laws. Wisps and shreds of the original chaos, they would be connected +enough with the cosmos to affect its periphery every now and then, as +by a momentary whiff or touch or gleam, but not enough ever to be +followed up and hunted down and bagged. Their relation to the cosmos +would be tangential solely. + +Looked at dramatically, most occult phenomena make just this sort of +impression. They are inwardly as incoherent as they are outwardly +wayward and fitful. If they express anything, it is pure "bosh," pure +discontinuity, accident, and disturbance, with no law apparent but to +interrupt, and no purpose but to baffle. They seem like stray vestiges +of that primordial irrationality, from which all our rationalities have +been evolved. + +To settle dogmatically into this bosh-view would save labor, but it +would go against too many intellectual prepossessions to be adopted +save as a last resort of despair. Your psychical researcher therefore +bates no jot of hope, and has faith that when we get our data numerous +enough, some sort of rational treatment of them will succeed. + +When I hear good people say (as they often say, not without show of +reason), that dabbling in such phenomena reduces us to a sort of jelly, +disintegrates the critical faculties, liquifies the character, and +makes of one a _gobe-mouche_ generally, I console myself by thinking of +my friends Frederic Myers and Richard Hodgson. These men lived +exclusively for psychical research, and it converted both to spiritism. +Hodgson would have been a man among men anywhere; but I doubt whether +under any other baptism he would have been that happy, sober and +righteous form of energy which his face proclaimed him in his later +years, when heart and head alike were wholly satisfied by his +occupation. Myers' character also grew stronger in every particular +for his devotion to the same inquirings. Brought up on literature and +sentiment, something of a courtier, passionate, disdainful, and +impatient naturally, he was made over again from the day when he took +up psychical research seriously. He became learned in science, +circumspect, democratic in sympathy, endlessly patient, and above all, +happy. The fortitude of his last hours touched the heroic, so +completely were the atrocious sufferings of his body cast into +insignificance by his interest in the cause he lived for. When a man's +pursuit gradually makes his face shine and grow handsome, you may be +sure it is a worthy one. Both Hodgson and Myers kept growing ever +handsomer and stronger-looking. + +Such personal examples will convert no one, and of course they ought +not to. Nor do I seek at all in this article to convert any one to +belief that psychical research is an important branch of science. To +do that, I should have to quote evidence; and those for whom the +volumes of S. P. R. "Proceedings" already published count for nothing +would remain in their dogmatic slumber, though one rose from the dead. +No, not to convert readers, but simply to _put my own state of mind +upon record publicly_ is the purpose of my present writing. Some one +said to me a short time ago that after my twenty-five years of dabbling +in "Psychics," it would be rather shameful were I unable to state any +definite conclusions whatever as a consequence. I had to agree; so I +now proceed to take up the challenge and express such convictions as +have been engendered in me by that length of experience, be the same +true or false ones. I may be dooming myself to the pit in the eyes of +better-judging posterity; I may be raising myself to honor; I am +willing to take the risk, for what I shall write is _my_ truth, as I +now see it. + + +I began this article by confessing myself baffled. I _am_ baffled, as +to spirit-return, and as to many other special problems. I am also +constantly baffled as to what to think of this or that particular +story, for the sources of error in any one observation are seldom fully +knowable. But weak sticks make strong faggots; and when the stories +fall into consistent sorts that point each in a definite direction, one +gets a sense of being in presence of genuinely natural types of +phenomena. As to there being such real natural types of phenomena +ignored by orthodox science, I am not baffled at all, for I am fully +convinced of it. One cannot get demonstrative proof here. One has to +follow one's personal sense, which, of course, is liable to err, of the +dramatic probabilities of nature. Our critics here obey their sense of +dramatic probability as much as we do. Take "raps" for example, and +the whole business of objects moving without contact. "Nature," thinks +the scientific man, is not so unutterably silly. The cabinet, the +darkness, the tying, suggest a sort of human rat-hole life exclusively +and "swindling" is for him the dramatically sufficient explanation. It +probably is, in an indefinite majority of instances; yet it is to me +dramatically improbable that the swindling should not have accreted +round some originally genuine nucleus. If we look at human imposture +as a historic phenomenon, we find it always imitative. One swindler +imitates a previous swindler, but the first swindler of that kind +imitated some one who was honest. You can no more create an absolutely +new trick than you can create a new word without any previous +basis.--You don't know how to go about it. Try, reader, yourself, to +invent an unprecedented kind of "physical phenomenon of spiritualism." +When _I_ try, I find myself mentally turning over the regular +medium-stock, and thinking how I might improve some item. This being +the dramatically probable human way, I think differently of the whole +type, taken collectively, from the way in which I may think of the +single instance. I find myself believing that there is "something in" +these never ending reports of physical phenomena, although I have n't +yet the least positive notion of the something. It becomes to my mind +simply a very worthy problem for investigation. Either I or the +scientist is of course a fool, with our opposite views of probability +here; and I only wish he might feel the liability, as cordially as I +do, to pertain to both of us. + +I fear I look on Nature generally with more charitable eyes than his, +though perhaps he would pause if he realized as I do, how vast the +fraudulency is which inconsistency he must attribute to her. Nature is +brutal enough, Heaven knows; but no one yet has held her non-human side +to be _dishonest_, and even in the human sphere deliberate deceit is +far rarer than the "classic" intellect, with its few and rigid +categories, was ready to acknowledge. There is a hazy penumbra in us +all where lying and delusion meet, where passion rules beliefs as well +as conduct, and where the term "scoundrel" does not clear up everything +to the depths as it did for our forefathers. The first automatic +writing I ever saw was forty years ago. I unhesitatingly thought of it +as deceit, although it contained vague elements of supernormal +knowledge. Since then I have come to see in automatic writing one +example of a department of human activity as vast as it is enigmatic. +Every sort of person is liable to it, or to something equivalent to it; +and whoever encourages it in himself finds himself personating someone +else, either signing what he writes by fictitious name, or, spelling +out, by ouija-board or table-tips, messages from the departed. Our +subconscious region seems, as a rule, to be dominated either by a crazy +"will to make-believe," or by some curious external force impelling us +to personation. The first difference between the psychical researcher +and the inexpert person is that the former realizes the commonness and +typicality of the phenomenon here, while the latter, less informed, +thinks it so rare as to be unworthy of attention. _I wish to go on +record for the commonness_. + +The next thing I wish to go on record for is _the presence_, in the +midst of all the humbug, _of really supernormal knowledge_. By this I +mean knowledge that cannot be traced to the ordinary sources of +information--the senses namely, of the automatist. In really strong +mediums this knowledge seems to be abundant, though it is usually +spotty, capricious and unconnected. Really strong mediums are +rarities; but when one starts with them and works downwards into less +brilliant regions of the automatic life, one tends to interpret many +slight but odd coincidences with truth as possibly rudimentary forms of +this kind of knowledge. + +What is one to think of this queer chapter in human nature? It is odd +enough on any view. If all it means is a preposterous and inferior +monkey-like tendency to forge messages, systematically embedded in the +soul of all of us, it is weird; and weirder still that it should then +own all this supernormal information. If on the other hand the +supernormal information be the key to the phenomenon, it ought to be +superior; and then how ought we to account for the "wicked partner," +and for the undeniable mendacity and inferiority of so much of the +performance? We are thrown, for our conclusions, upon our instinctive +sense of the dramatic probabilities of nature. My own dramatic sense +tends instinctively to picture the situation as an interaction between +slumbering faculties in the automatist's mind and a cosmic environment +of _other consciousness_ of some sort which is able to work upon them. +If there were in the universe a lot of diffuse soul-stuff, unable of +itself to get into consistent personal form, or to take permanent +possession of an organism, yet always craving to do so, it might get +its head into the air, parasitically, so to speak, by profiting by weak +spots in the armor of human minds, and slipping in and stirring up +there the sleeping tendency to personate. It would induce habits in +the subconscious region of the mind it used thus, and would seek above +all things to prolong its social opportunities by making itself +agreeable and plausible. It would drag stray scraps of truth with it +from the wider environment, but would betray its mental inferiority by +knowing little how to weave them into any important or significant +story. This, I say, is the dramatic view which my mind spontaneously +takes, and it has the advantage of falling into line with ancient human +traditions. The views of others are just as dramatic, _for the +phenomenon is actuated by will of some sort anyhow_, and wills give +rise to dramas. The spiritist view, as held by Messrs. Hyslop and +Hodgson, sees a "will to communicate," struggling through inconceivable +layers of obstruction in the conditions. I have heard Hodgson liken +the difficulties to those of two persons who on earth should have only +dead-drunk servants to use as their messengers. The scientist, for his +part, sees a "will to deceive," watching its chance in all of us, and +able (possibly?) to use "telepathy" in its service. + +Which kind of will, and how many kinds of will are most inherently +probable? Who can say with certainty? The only certainty is that the +phenomena are enormously complex, especially if one includes in them +such intellectual flights of mediumship as Swedenborg's, and if one +tries in any way to work the physical phenomena in. That is why I +personally am as yet neither a convinced believer in parasitic demons, +nor a spiritist, nor a scientist, but still remain a psychical +researcher waiting for more facts before concluding. + +Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one +fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with +our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. +The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves, and +Conanicut and Newport hear each other's fog-horns. But the trees also +commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also +hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is a continuum +of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but +accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a +mother-sea or reservoir. Our "normal" consciousness is circumscribed +for adaptation to our external earthly environment, but the fence is +weak in spots, and fitful influences from beyond leak in, showing the +otherwise unverifiable common connection. Not only psychic research, +but metaphysical philosophy, and speculative biology are led in their +own ways to look with favor on some such "panpsychic" view of the +universe as this. Assuming this common reservoir of consciousness to +exist, this bank upon which we all draw, and in which so many of +earth's memories must in some way be stored, or mediums would not get +at them as they do, the question is, What is its own structure? What +is its inner topography? This question, first squarely formulated by +Myers, deserves to be called "Myers' problem" by scientific men +hereafter. What are the conditions of individuation or insulation in +this mother-sea? To what tracts, to what active systems functioning +separately in it, do personalities correspond? Are individual +"spirits" constituted there? How numerous, and of how many hierarchic +orders may these then be? How permanent? How transient? And how +confluent with one another may they become? + +What again, are the relations between the cosmic consciousness and +matter? Are there subtler forms of matter which upon occasion may +enter into functional connection with the individuations in the psychic +sea, and then, and then only, show themselves?--So that our ordinary +human experience, on its material as well as on its mental side, would +appear to be only an extract from the larger psycho-physical world? + +Vast, indeed, and difficult is the inquirer's prospect here, and the +most significant data for his purpose will probably be just these dingy +little mediumistic facts which the Huxleyan minds of our time find so +unworthy of their attention. But when was not the science of the +future stirred to its conquering activities by the little rebellious +exceptions to the science of the present? Hardly, as yet, has the +surface of the facts called "psychic" begun to be scratched for +scientific purposes. It is through following these facts, I am +persuaded, that the greatest scientific conquests of the coming +generation will be achieved. _Kühn ist das Mühen, herrlich der Lohn!_ + + + +[1] Published under the title "Confidences of a Psychical Researcher" +in the _American Magazine_, October, 1909. For a more complete and +less popular statement of some theories suggested in this article see +the last pages of a "Report on Mrs. Piper's Hodgson-Control" in +_Proceedings of the [Eng.] Society for Psychical Research_, 1909, 470; +also printed in _Proc. of Am. Soc. for Psychical Research_ for the same +year. + +[2] T. H. Huxley, "Life and Letters," I, 240. + + + + +IX + +ON SOME MENTAL EFFECTS OF THE EARTHQUAKE[1] + +When I departed from Harvard for Stanford University last December, +almost the last good-by I got was that of my old Californian friend B: +"I hope they'll give you a touch of earthquake while you 're there, so +that you may also become acquainted with that Californian institution." + +Accordingly, when, lying awake at about half past five on the morning +of April 18 in my little "flat" on the campus of Stanford, I felt the +bed begin to waggle, my first consciousness was one of gleeful +recognition of the nature of the movement. "By Jove," I said to +myself, "here's B'ssold [Transcriber's note: 'B's old'?] earthquake, +after all!" And then, as it went _crescendo_. "And a jolly good one +it is, too!" I said. + +Sitting up involuntarily, and taking a kneeling position, I was thrown +down on my face as it went _fortior_ shaking the room exactly as a +terrier shakes a rat. Then everything that was on anything else slid +off to the floor, over went bureau and chiffonier with a crash, as the +_fortissimo_ was reached; plaster cracked, an awful roaring noise +seemed to fill the outer air, and in an instant all was still again, +save the soft babble of human voices from far and near that soon began +to make itself heard, as the inhabitants in costumes _negligés_ in +various degrees sought the greater safety of the street and yielded to +the passionate desire for sympathetic communication. + +The thing was over, as I understand the Lick Observatory to have +declared, in forty-eight seconds. To me it felt as if about that +length of time, although I have heard others say that it seemed to them +longer. In my case, sensation and emotion were so strong that little +thought, and no reflection or volition, were possible in the short time +consumed by the phenomenon. + +The emotion consisted wholly of glee and admiration; glee at the +vividness which such an abstract idea or verbal term as "earthquake" +could put on when translated into sensible reality and verified +concretely; and admiration at the way in which the frail little wooden +house could hold itself together in spite of such a shaking. I felt no +trace whatever of fear; it was pure delight and welcome. + +"_Go_ it," I almost cried aloud, "and go it _stronger_!" + +I ran into my wife's room, and found that she, although awakened from +sound sleep, had felt no fear, either. Of all the persons whom I later +interrogated, very few had felt any fear while the shaking lasted, +although many had had a "turn," as they realized their narrow escapes +from bookcases or bricks from chimney-breasts falling on their beds and +pillows an instant after they had left them. + +As soon as I could think, I discerned retrospectively certain peculiar +ways in which my consciousness had taken in the phenomenon. These ways +were quite spontaneous, and, so to speak, inevitable and irresistible. + +First, I personified the earthquake as a permanent individual entity. +It was _the_ earthquake of my friend B's augury, which had been lying +low and holding itself back during all the intervening months, in +order, on that lustrous April morning, to invade my room, and energize +the more intensely and triumphantly. It came, moreover, directly to +_me_. It stole in behind my back, and once inside the room, had me all +to itself, and could manifest itself convincingly. Animus and intent +were never more present in any human action, nor did any human activity +ever more definitely point back to a living agent as its source and +origin. + +All whom I consulted on the point agreed as to this feature in their +experience. "It expressed intention," "It was vicious," "It was bent +on destruction," "It wanted to show its power," or what not. To me, it +wanted simply to manifest the full meaning of its name. But what was +this "It"? To some, apparently, a vague demonic power; to me an +individualized being, B's earthquake, namely. + +One informant interpreted it as the end of the world and the beginning +of the final judgment. This was a lady in a San Francisco hotel, who +did not think of its being an earthquake till after she had got into +the street and some one had explained it to her. She told me that the +theological interpretation had kept fear from her mind, and made her +take the shaking calmly. For "science," when the tensions in the +earth's crust reach the breaking-point, and strata fall into an altered +equilibrium, earthquake is simply the collective _name_ of all the +cracks and shakings and disturbances that happen. They _are_ the +earthquake. But for me _the_ earthquake was the _cause_ of the +disturbances, and the perception of it as a living agent was +irresistible. It had an overpowering dramatic convincingness. + +I realize now better than ever how inevitable were men's earlier +mythologic versions of such catastrophes, and how artificial and +against the grain of our spontaneous perceiving are the later habits +into which science educates us. It was simply impossible for untutored +men to take earthquakes into their minds as anything but supernatural +warnings or retributions. + +A good instance of the way in which the tremendousness of a catastrophe +may banish fear was given me by a Stanford student. He was in the +fourth story of Encina Hall, an immense stone dormitory building. +Awakened from sleep, he recognized what the disturbance was, and sprang +from the bed, but was thrown off his feet in a moment, while his books +and furniture fell round him. Then with an awful, sinister, grinding +roar, everything gave way, and with chimneys, floor-beams, walls and +all, he descended through the three lower stories of the building into +the basement. "This is my end, this is my death," he felt; but all the +while no trace of fear. The experience was too overwhelming for +anything but passive surrender to it. (Certain heavy chimneys had +fallen in, carrying the whole centre of the building with them.) + +Arrived at the bottom, he found himself with rafters and _débris_ round +him, but not pinned in or crushed. He saw daylight, and crept toward +it through the obstacles. Then, realizing that he was in his +nightgown, and feeling no pain anywhere, his first thought was to get +back to his room and find some more presentable clothing. The +stairways at Encina Hall are at the ends of the building. He made his +way to one of them, and went up the four flights, only to find his room +no longer extant. Then he noticed pain in his feet, which had been +injured, and came down the stairs with difficulty. When he talked with +me ten days later he had been in hospital a week, was very thin and +pale, and went on crutches, and was dressed in borrowed clothing. + +So much for Stanford, where all our experiences seem to have been very +similar. Nearly all our chimneys went down, some of them +disintegrating from top to bottom; parlor floors were covered with +bricks; plaster strewed the floors; furniture was everywhere upset and +dislocated; but the wooden dwellings sprang back to their original +position, and in house after house not a window stuck or a door scraped +at top or bottom. Wood architecture was triumphant! Everybody was +excited, but the excitement at first, at any rate, seemed to be almost +joyous. Here at last was a _real_ earthquake after so many years of +harmless waggle! Above all, there was an irresistible desire to talk +about it, and exchange experiences. + +Most people slept outdoors for several subsequent nights, partly to be +safer in case of recurrence, but also to work off their emotion, and +get the full unusualness out of the experience. The vocal babble of +early-waking girls and boys from the gardens of the campus, mingling +with the birds' songs and the exquisite weather, was for three or four +days delightful sunrise phenomenon. + +Now turn to San Francisco, thirty-five miles distant, from which an +automobile ere long brought us the dire news of a city in ruins, with +fires beginning at various points, and the water-supply interrupted. I +was fortunate enough to board the only train of cars--a very small +one--that got up to the city; fortunate enough also to escape in the +evening by the only train that left it. This gave me and my valiant +feminine escort some four hours of observation. My business is with +"subjective" phenomena exclusively; so I will say nothing of the +material ruin that greeted us on every hand--the daily papers and the +weekly journals have done full justice to that topic. By midday, when +we reached the city, the pall of smoke was vast and the dynamite +detonations had begun, but the troops, the police and the firemen +seemed to have established order, dangerous neighborhoods were roped +off everywhere and picketed, saloons closed, vehicles impressed, and +every one at work who _could_ work. + +It was indeed a strange sight to see an entire population in the +streets, busy as ants in an uncovered ant-hill scurrying to save their +eggs and larvae. Every horse, and everything on wheels in the city, +from hucksters' wagons to automobiles, was being loaded with what +effects could be scraped together from houses which the advancing +flames were threatening. The sidewalks were covered with well-dressed +men and women, carrying baskets, bundles, valises, or dragging trunks +to spots of greater temporary safety, soon to be dragged farther, as +the fire kept spreading! + +In the safer quarters, every doorstep was covered with the dwelling's +tenants, sitting surrounded with their more indispensable chattels, and +ready to flee at a minute's notice. I think every one must have fasted +on that day, for I saw no one eating. There was no appearance of +general dismay, and little of chatter or of inco-ordinated excitement. + +Every one seemed doggedly bent on achieving the job which he had set +himself to perform; and the faces, although somewhat tense and set and +grave, were inexpressive of emotion. I noticed only three persons +overcome, two Italian women, very poor, embracing an aged fellow +countrywoman, and all weeping. Physical fatigue and seriousness were +the only inner states that one could read on countenances. + +With lights forbidden in the houses, and the streets lighted only by +the conflagration, it was apprehended that the criminals of San +Francisco would hold high carnival on the ensuing night. But whether +they feared the disciplinary methods of the United States troops, who +were visible everywhere, or whether they were themselves solemnized by +the immensity of the disaster, they lay low and did not "manifest," +either then or subsequently. + +The only very discreditable thing to human nature that occurred was +later, when hundreds of lazy "bummers" found that they could keep +camping in the parks, and make alimentary storage-batteries of their +stomachs, even in some cases getting enough of the free rations in +their huts or tents to last them well into the summer. This charm of +pauperized vagabondage seems all along to have been Satan's most +serious bait to human nature. There was theft from the outset, but +confined, I believe, to petty pilfering. + +Cash in hand was the only money, and millionaires and their families +were no better off in this respect than any one. Whoever got a vehicle +could have the use of it; but the richest often went without, and spent +the first two nights on rugs on the bare ground, with nothing but what +their own arms had rescued. Fortunately, those nights were dry and +comparatively warm, and Californians are accustomed to camping +conditions in the summer, so suffering from exposure was less great +than it would have been elsewhere. By the fourth night, which was +rainy, tents and huts had brought most campers under cover. + +I went through the city again eight days later. The fire was out, and +about a quarter of the area stood unconsumed. Intact skyscrapers +dominated the smoking level majestically and superbly--they and a few +walls that had survived the overthrow. Thus has the courage of our +architects and builders received triumphant vindication! + +The inert elements of the population had mostly got away, and those +that remained seemed what Mr. H. G. Wells calls "efficients." Sheds +were already going up as temporary starting-points of business. Every +one looked cheerful, in spite of the awful discontinuity of past and +future, with every familiar association with material things +dissevered; and the discipline and order were practically perfect. + +As these notes of mine must be short, I had better turn to my more +generalized reflections. + +Two things in retrospect strike me especially, and are the most +emphatic of all my impressions. Both are reassuring as to human nature. + +The first of these was the rapidity of the improvisation of order out +of chaos. It is clear that just as in every thousand human beings +there will be statistically so many artists, so many athletes, so many +thinkers, and so many potentially good soldiers, so there will be so +many potential organizers in times of emergency. In point of fact, not +only in the great city, but in the outlying towns, these natural +ordermakers, whether amateurs or officials, came to the front +immediately. There seemed to be no possibility which there was not +some one there to think of, or which within twenty-four hours was not +in some way provided for. + +A good illustration is this: Mr. Keith is the great landscape-painter +of the Pacific slope, and his pictures, which are many, are +artistically and pecuniarily precious. Two citizens, lovers of his +work, early in the day diverted their attention from all other +interests, their own private ones included, and made it their duty to +visit every place which they knew to contain a Keith painting. They +cut them from their frames, rolled them up, and in this way got all the +more important ones into a place of safety. + +When they then sought Mr. Keith, to convey the joyous news to him, they +found him still in his studio, which was remote from the fire, +beginning a new painting. Having given up his previous work for lost, +he had resolved to lose no time in making what amends he could for the +disaster. + +The completeness of organization at Palo Alto, a town of ten thousand +inhabitants close to Stanford University, was almost comical. People +feared exodus on a large scale of the rowdy elements of San Francisco. +In point of tact, very few refugees came to Palo Alto. But within +twenty-four hours, rations, clothing, hospital, quarantine, +disinfection, washing, police, military, quarters in camp and in +houses, printed information, employment, all were provided for under +the care of so many volunteer committees. + +Much of this readiness was American, much of it Californian; but I +believe that every country in a similar crisis would have displayed it +in a way to astonish the spectators. Like soldiering, it lies always +latent in human nature. + +The second thing that struck me was the universal equanimity. We soon +got letters from the East, ringing with anxiety and pathos; but I now +know fully what I have always believed, that the pathetic way of +feeling great disasters belongs rather to the point of view of people +at a distance than to the immediate victims. I heard not a single +really pathetic or sentimental word in California expressed by any one. + +The terms "awful," "dreadful" fell often enough from people's lips, but +always with a sort of abstract meaning, and with a face that seemed to +admire the vastness of the catastrophe as much as it bewailed its +cuttingness. When talk was not directly practical, I might almost say +that it expressed (at any rate in the nine days I was there) a tendency +more toward nervous excitement than toward grief. The hearts concealed +private bitterness enough, no doubt, but the tongues disdained to dwell +on the misfortunes of self, when almost everybody one spoke to had +suffered equally. + +Surely the cutting edge of all our usual misfortunes comes from their +character of loneliness. We lose our health, our wife or children die, +our house burns down, or our money is made way with, and the world goes +on rejoicing, leaving us on one side and counting us out from all its +business. In California every one, to some degree, was suffering, and +one's private miseries were merged in the vast general sum of privation +and in the all-absorbing practical problem of general recuperation. +The cheerfulness, or, at any rate, the steadfastness of tone, was +universal. Not a single whine or plaintive word did I hear from the +hundred losers whom I spoke to. Instead of that there was a temper of +helpfulness beyond the counting. + +It is easy to glorify this as something characteristically American, or +especially Californian. Californian education has, of course, made the +thought of all possible recuperations easy. In an exhausted country, +with no marginal resources, the outlook on the future would be much +darker. But I like to think that what I write of is a normal and +universal trait of human nature. In our drawing-rooms and offices we +wonder how people ever do go through battles, sieges and shipwrecks. +We quiver and sicken in imagination, and think those heroes superhuman. +Physical pain whether suffered alone or in company, is always more or +less unnerving and intolerable. But mental pathos and anguish, I +fancy, are usually effects of distance. At the place of action, where +all are concerned together, healthy animal insensibility and heartiness +take their place. At San Francisco the need will continue to be awful, +and there will doubtless be a crop of nervous wrecks before the weeks +and months are over, but meanwhile the commonest men, simply because +they _are_ men, will go on, singly and collectively, showing this +admirable fortitude of temper. + + + +[1] At the time of the San Francisco earthquake the author was at +Leland Stanford University nearby. He succeeded in getting into San +Francisco on the morning of the earthquake, and spent the remainder of +the day in the city. These observations appeared in the _Youth's +Companion_ for June 7, 1906. + + + + +X + +THE ENERGIES OF MEN[1] + +Everyone knows what it is to start a piece of work, either intellectual +or muscular, feeling stale--or _oold_, as an Adirondack guide once put +it to me. And everybody knows what it is to "warm up" to his job. The +process of warming up gets particularly striking in the phenomenon +known as "second wind." On usual occasions we make a practice of +stopping an occupation as soon as we meet the first effective layer (so +to call it) of fatigue. We have then walked, played, or worked +"enough," so we desist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious +obstruction on this side of which our usual life is cast. But if an +unusual necessity forces us to press onward a surprising thing occurs. +The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually +or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before. We have +evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the +fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed. There may be layer after layer of +this experience. A third and a fourth "wind" may supervene. Mental +activity shows the phenomenon as well as physical, and in exceptional +cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue-distress, +amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to +own,--sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because +habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those +early critical points. + +For many years I have mused on the phenomenon of second wind, trying to +find a physiological theory. It is evident that our organism has +stored-up reserves of energy that are ordinarily not called upon, but +that may be called upon: deeper and deeper strata of combustible or +explosible material, discontinuously arranged, but ready for use by +anyone who probes so deep, and repairing themselves by rest as well as +do the superficial strata. Most of us continue living unnecessarily +near our surface. Our energy-budget is like our nutritive budget. +Physiologists say that a man is in "nutritive equilibrium" when day +after day he neither gains nor loses weight. But the odd thing is that +this condition may obtain on astonishingly different amounts of food. +Take a man in nutritive equilibrium, and systematically increase or +lessen his rations. In the first case he will begin to gain weight, in +the second case to lose it. The change will be greatest on the first +day, less on the second, less still on the third; and so on, till he +has gained all that he will gain, or lost all that he will lose, on +that altered diet. He is now in nutritive equilibrium again, but with +a new weight; and this neither lessens nor increases because his +various combustion-processes have adjusted themselves to the changed +dietary. He gets rid, in one way or another, of just as much N, C, H, +etc., as he takes in _per diem_. + +Just so one can be in what I might call "efficiency-equilibrium" +(neither gaining nor losing power when once the equilibrium is reached) +on astonishingly different quantities of work, no matter in what +direction the work may be measured. It may be physical work, +intellectual work, moral work, or spiritual work. + +Of course there are limits: the trees don't grow into the sky. But the +plain fact remains that men the world over possess amounts of resource +which only very exceptional individuals push to their extremes of use. +But the very same individual, pushing his energies to their extreme, +may in a vast number of cases keep the pace up day after day, and find +no "reaction" of a bad sort, so long as decent hygienic conditions are +preserved. His more active rate of energizing does not wreck him; for +the organism adapts itself, and as the rate of waste augments, augments +correspondingly the rate of repair. + +I say the _rate_ and not the _time_ of repair. The busiest man needs +no more hours of rest than the idler. Some years ago Professor +Patrick, of the Iowa State University, kept three young men awake for +four days and nights. When his observations on them were finished, the +subjects were permitted to sleep themselves out. All awoke from this +sleep completely refreshed, but the one who took longest to restore +himself from his long vigil only slept one-third more time than was +regular with him. + +If my reader will put together these two conceptions, first, that few +men live at their maximum of energy, and second, that anyone may be in +vital equilibrium at very different rates of energizing, he will find, +I think, that a very pretty practical problem of national economy, as +well as of individual ethics, opens upon his view. In rough terms, we +may say that a man who energizes below his normal maximum fails by just +so much to profit by his chance at life; and that a nation filled with +such men is inferior to a nation run at higher pressure. The problem +is, then, how can men be trained up to their most useful pitch of +energy? And how can nations make such training most accessible to all +their sons and daughters. This, after all, is only the general problem +of education, formulated in slightly different terms. + +"Rough" terms, I said just now, because the words "energy" and +"maximum" may easily suggest only _quantity_ to the reader's mind, +whereas in measuring the human energies of which I speak, qualities as +well as quantities have to be taken into account. Everyone feels that +his total _power_ rises when he passes to a higher _qualitative_ level +of life. + +Writing is higher than walking, thinking is higher than writing, +deciding higher than thinking, deciding "no" higher than deciding +"yes"--at least the man who passes from one of these activities to +another will usually say that each later one involves a greater element +of _inner work_ than the earlier ones, even though the total heat given +out or the foot-pounds expended by the organism, may be less. Just how +to conceive this inner work physiologically is as yet impossible, but +psychologically we all know what the word means. We need a particular +spur or effort to start us upon inner work; it tires us to sustain it; +and when long sustained, we know how easily we lapse. When I speak of +"energizing," and its rates and levels and sources, I mean therefore +our inner as well as our outer work. + +Let no one think, then, that our problem of individual and national +economy is solely that of the maximum of pounds raisable against +gravity, the maximum of locomotion, or of agitation of any sort, that +human beings can accomplish. That might signify little more than +hurrying and jumping about in inco-ordinated ways; whereas inner work, +though it so often reinforces outer work, quite as often means its +arrest. To relax, to say to ourselves (with the "new thoughters") +"Peace! be still!" is sometimes a great achievement of inner work. +When I speak of human energizing in general, the reader must therefore +understand that sum-total of activities, some outer and some inner, +some muscular, some emotional, some moral, some spiritual, of whose +waxing and waning in himself he is at all times so well aware. How to +keep it at an appreciable maximum? How not to let the level lapse? +That is the great problem. But the work of men and women is of +innumerable kinds, each kind being, as we say, carried on by a +particular faculty; so the great problem splits into two sub-problems, +thus: + +(1). What are the limits of human faculty in various directions? + +(2). By what diversity of means, in the differing types of human +beings, may the faculties be stimulated to their best results? + +Read in one way, these two questions sound both trivial and familiar: +there is a sense in which we have all asked them ever since we were +born. Yet _as a methodical programme of scientific inquiry_, I doubt +whether they have ever been seriously taken up. If answered fully; +almost the whole of mental science and of the science of conduct would +find a place under them. I propose, in what follows, to press them on +the reader's attention in an informal way. + +The first point to agree upon in this enterprise is that _as a rule men +habitually use only a small part of the powers which they actually +possess and which they might use under appropriate conditions_. + +Every one is familiar with the phenomenon of feeling more or less alive +on different days. Every one knows on any given day that there are +energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not +call forth, but which he might display if these were greater. Most of +us feel as if a sort of cloud weighed upon us, keeping us below our +highest notch of clearness in discernment, sureness in reasoning, or +firmness in deciding. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only +half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are +making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical +resources. In some persons this sense of being cut off from their +rightful resources is extreme, and we then get the formidable +neurasthenic and psychasthenic conditions with life grown into one +tissue of impossibilities, that so many medical books describe. + +Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives usually far +within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he +habitually fails to use. He energizes below his _maximum_, and he +behaves below his _optimum_. In elementary faculty, in co-ordination, +in power of _inhibition_ and control, in every conceivable way, his +life is contracted like the field of vision of an hysteric subject--but +with less excuse, for the poor hysteric is diseased, while in the rest +of us it is only an inveterate _habit_--the habit of inferiority to our +full self--that is bad. + +Admit so much, then, and admit also that the charge of being inferior +to their full self is far truer of some men than of others; then the +practical question ensues: _to what do the better men owe their escape? +and, in the fluctuations which all men feel in their own degree of +energizing, to what are the improvements due, when they occur_? + +In general terms the answer is plain: + +Either some unusual stimulus fills them with emotional excitement, or +some unusual idea of necessity induces them to make an extra effort of +will. _Excitements, ideas, and efforts_, in a word, are what carry us +over the dam. + +In those "hyperesthetic" conditions which chronic invalidism so often +brings in its train, the dam has changed its normal place. The +slightest functional exercise gives a distress which the patient yields +to and stops. In such cases of "habit-neurosis" a new range of power +often comes in consequence of the "bullying-treatment," of efforts +which the doctor obliges the patient, much against his will, to make. +First comes the very extremity of distress, then follows unexpected +relief. There seems no doubt that _we are each and all of us to some +extent victims of habit-neurosis_. We have to admit the wider +potential range and the habitually narrow actual use. We live subject +to arrest by degrees of fatigue which we have come only from habit to +obey. Most of us may learn to push the barrier farther off, and to +live in perfect comfort on much higher levels of power. + +Country people and city people, as a class, illustrate this difference. +The rapid rate of life, the number of decisions in an hour, the many +things to keep account of, in a busy city man's or woman's life, seem +monstrous to a country brother. He does n't see how we live at all. A +day in New York or Chicago fills him with terror. The danger and noise +make it appear like a permanent earthquake. But _settle_ him there, +and in a year or two he will have caught the pulse-beat. He will +vibrate to the city's rhythms; and if he only succeeds in his +avocation, whatever that may be, he will find a joy in all the hurry +and the tension, he will keep the pace as well as any of us, and get as +much out of himself in any week as he ever did in ten weeks in the +country. + +The stimuli of those who successfully spend and undergo the +transformation here, are duty, the example of others, and +crowd-pressure and contagion. The transformation, moreover, is a +chronic one: the new level of energy becomes permanent. The duties of +new offices of trust are constantly producing this effect on the human +beings appointed to them. The physiologists call a stimulus +"dynamogenic" when it increases the muscular contractions of men to +whom it is applied; but appeals can be dynamogenic morally as well as +muscularly. We are witnessing here in America to-day the dynamogenic +effect of a very exalted political office upon the energies of an +individual who had already manifested a healthy amount of energy before +the office came. + +Humbler examples show perhaps still better what chronic effects duty's +appeal may produce in chosen individuals. John Stuart Mill somewhere +says that women excel men in the power of keeping up sustained moral +excitement. Every case of illness nursed by wife or mother is a proof +of this; and where can one find greater examples of sustained endurance +than in those thousands of poor homes, where the woman successfully +holds the family together and keeps it going by taking all the thought +and doing all the work--nursing, teaching, cooking, washing, sewing, +scrubbing, saving, helping neighbors, "choring" outside--where does +the catalogue end? If she does a bit of scolding now and then who can +blame her? But often she does just the reverse; keeping the children +clean and the man good tempered, and soothing and smoothing the whole +neighborhood into finer shape. + +Eighty years ago a certain Montyon left to the Académie Française a sum +of money to be given in small prizes, to the best examples of "virtue" +of the year. The academy's committees, with great good sense, have +shown a partiality to virtues simple and chronic, rather than to her +spasmodic and dramatic flights; and the exemplary housewives reported +on have been wonderful and admirable enough. In Paul Bourget's report +for this year we find numerous cases, of which this is a type; Jeanne +Chaix, eldest of six children; mother insane, father chronically ill. +Jeanne, with no money but her wages at a pasteboard-box factory, +directs the household, brings up the children, and successfully +maintains the family of eight, which thus subsists, morally as well as +materially, by the sole force of her valiant will. In some of these +French cases charity to outsiders is added to the inner family burden; +or helpless relatives, young or old, are adopted, as if the strength +were inexhaustible and ample for every appeal. Details are too long to +quote here; but human nature, responding to the call of duty, appears +nowhere sublimer than in the person of these humble heroines of family +life. + +Turning from more chronic to acuter proofs of human nature's reserves +of power, we find that the stimuli that carry us over the usually +effective dam are most often the classic emotional ones, love, anger, +crowd-contagion or despair. Despair lames most people, but it wakes +others fully up. Every siege or shipwreck or polar expedition brings +out some hero who keeps the whole company in heart. Last year there +was a terrible colliery explosion at Courrieres in France. Two hundred +corpses, if I remember rightly, were exhumed. After twenty days of +excavation, the rescuers heard a voice. "_Me voici_," said the first +man unearthed. He proved to be a collier named Nemy, who had taken +command of thirteen others in the darkness, disciplined them and +cheered them, and brought them out alive. Hardly any of them could see +or speak or walk when brought into the day. Five days later, a +different type of vital endurance was unexpectedly unburied in the +person of one Berton who, isolated from any but dead companions, had +been able to sleep away most of his time. + +A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far +stronger creature than was supposed. Cromwell's and Grant's careers +are the stock examples of how war will wake a man up. I owe to +Professor C. E. Norton, my colleague, the permission to print part of a +private letter from Colonel Baird-Smith written shortly after the six +weeks' siege of Delhi, in 1857, for the victorious issue of which that +excellent officer was chiefly to be thanked. He writes as follows: + +". . . My poor wife had some reason to think that war and disease +between them had left very little of a husband to take under nursing +when she got him again. An attack of camp-scurvy had filled my mouth +with sores, shaken every joint in my body, and covered me all over with +sores and livid spots, so that I was marvellously unlovely to look +upon. A smart knock on the ankle-joint from the splinter of a shell +that burst in my face, in itself a mere _bagatelle_ of a wound, had +been of necessity neglected under the pressing and incessant calls upon +me, and had grown worse and worse till the whole foot below the ankle +became a black mass and seemed to threaten mortification. I insisted, +however, on being allowed to use it till the place was taken, +mortification or no; and though the pain was sometimes horrible I +carried my point and kept up to the last. On the day after the assault +I had an unlucky fall on some bad ground, and it was an open question +for a day or two whether I hadn't broken my arm at the elbow. +Fortunately it turned out to be only a severe sprain, but I am still +conscious of the wrench it gave me. To crown the whole pleasant +catalogue, I was worn to a shadow by a constant diarrhoea, and consumed +as much opium as would have done credit to my father-in-law [Thomas De +Quincey]. However, thank God, I have a good share of Tapleyism in me +and come out strong under difficulties. I think I may confidently say +that no man ever saw me out of heart, or ever heard one croaking word +from me even when our prospects were gloomiest. We were sadly scourged +by the cholera, and it was almost appalling to me to find that out of +twenty-seven officers present, I could only muster fifteen for the +operations of the attack. However, it was done, and after it was done +came the collapse. Don't be horrified when I tell you that for the +whole of the actual siege, and in truth for some little time before, I +almost lived on brandy. Appetite for food I had none, but I forced +myself to eat just sufficient to sustain life, and I had an incessant +craving for brandy as the strongest stimulant I could get. Strange to +say, I was quite unconscious of its affecting me in the slightest +degree. _The excitement of the work was so great that no lesser one +seemed to have any chance against it, and I certainly never found my +intellect clearer or my nerves stronger in my life_. It was only my +wretched body that was weak, and the moment the real work was done by +our becoming complete masters of Delhi, I broke down without delay and +discovered that if I wished to live I must continue no longer the +system that had kept me up until the crisis was passed. With it passed +away as if in a moment all desire to stimulate, and a perfect loathing +of my late staff of life took possession of me." + +Such experiences show how profound is the alteration in the manner in +which, under excitement, our organism will sometimes perform its +physiological work. The processes of repair become different when the +reserves have to be used, and for weeks and months the deeper use may +go on. + +Morbid cases, here as elsewhere, lay the normal machinery bare. In the +first number of Dr. Morton Prince's _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, +Dr. Janet has discussed five cases of morbid impulse, with an +explanation that is precious for my present point of view. One is a +girl who eats, eats, eats, all day. Another walks, walks, walks, and +gets her food from an automobile that escorts her. Another is a +dipsomaniac. A fourth pulls out her hair. A fifth wounds her flesh +and burns her skin. Hitherto such freaks of impulse have received +Greek names (as bulimia, dromomania, etc.) and been scientifically +disposed of as "episodic syndromata of hereditary degeneration." But +it turns out that Janet's cases are all what he calls psychasthenics, +or victims of a chronic sense of weakness, torpor, lethargy, fatigue, +insufficiency, impossibility, unreality and powerlessness of will; and +that in each and all of them the particular activity pursued, +deleterious though it be, has the temporary result of raising the sense +of vitality and making the patient feel alive again. These things +reanimate: they would reanimate us, but it happens that in each +patient the particular freak-activity chosen is the only thing that +does reanimate; and therein lies the morbid state. The way to treat +such persons is to discover to them more usual and useful ways of +throwing their stores of vital energy into gear. + +Colonel Baird-Smith, needing to draw on altogether extraordinary stores +of energy, found that brandy and opium were ways of throwing them into +gear. + +Such cases are humanly typical. We are all to some degree oppressed, +unfree. We don't come to our own. It is there, but we don't get at +it. The threshold must be made to shift. Then many of us find that an +eccentric activity--a "spree," say--relieves. There is no doubt that +to some men sprees and excesses of almost any kind are medicinal, +temporarily at any rate, in spite of what the moralists and doctors say. + +But when the normal tasks and stimulations of life don't put a man's +deeper levels of energy on tap, and he requires distinctly deleterious +excitements, his constitution verges on the abnormal. The normal +opener of deeper and deeper levels of energy is the will. The +difficulty is to use it, to make the effort which the word volition +implies. But if we do make it (or if a god, though he were only the +god Chance, makes it through us), it will act dynamogenically on us for +a month. It is notorious that a single successful effort of moral +volition, such as saying "no" to some habitual temptation, or +performing some courageous act, will launch a man on a higher level of +energy for days and weeks, will give him a new range of power. "In the +act of uncorking the whiskey bottle which I had brought home to get +drunk upon," said a man to me, "I suddenly found myself running out +into the garden, where I smashed it on the ground. I felt so happy and +uplifted after this act, that for two months I was n't tempted to touch +a drop." + +The emotions and excitements due to usual situations are the usual +inciters of the will. But these act discontinuously; and in the +intervals the shallower levels of life tend to close in and shut us +off. Accordingly the best practical knowers of the human soul have +invented the thing known as methodical ascetic discipline to keep the +deeper levels constantly in reach. Beginning with easy tasks, passing +to harder ones, and exercising day by day, it is, I believe, admitted +that disciples of asceticism can reach very high levels of freedom and +power of will. + +Ignatius Loyola's spiritual exercises must have produced this result in +innumerable devotees. But the most venerable ascetic system, and the +one whose results have the most voluminous experimental corroboration +is undoubtedly the Yoga system in Hindustan. + +From time immemorial, by Hatha Yoga, Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, or whatever +code of practice it might be, Hindu aspirants to perfection have +trained themselves, month in and out, for years. The result claimed, +and certainly in many cases accorded by impartial judges, is strength +of character, personal power, unshakability of soul. In an article in +the _Philosophical Review_,[2] from which I am largely copying here, I +have quoted at great length the experience with "Hatha Yoga" of a very +gifted European friend of mine who, by persistently carrying out for +several months its methods of fasting from food and sleep, its +exercises in breathing and thought-concentration, and its fantastic +posture-gymnastics, seems to have succeeded in waking up deeper and +deeper levels of will and moral and intellectual power in himself, and +to have escaped from a decidedly menacing brain-condition of the +"circular" type, from which he had suffered for years. + +Judging by my friend's letters, of which the last I have is written +fourteen months after the Yoga training began, there can be no doubt of +his relative regeneration. He has undergone material trials with +indifference, travelled third-class on Mediterranean steamers, and +fourth-class on African trains, living with the poorest Arabs and +sharing their unaccustomed food, all with equanimity. His devotion to +certain interests has been put to heavy strain, and nothing is more +remarkable to me than the changed moral tone with which he reports the +situation. A profound modification has unquestionably occurred in the +running of his mental machinery. The gearing has changed, and his will +is available otherwise than it was. + +My friend is a man of very peculiar temperament. Few of us would have +had the will to start upon the Yoga training, which, once started, +seemed to conjure the further willpower needed out of itself. And not +all of those who could launch themselves would have reached the same +results. The Hindus themselves admit that in some men the results +may come without call or bell. My friend writes to me: "You +are quite right in thinking that religious crises, love-crises, +indignation-crises may awaken in a very short time powers similar to +those reached by years of patient Yoga-practice." + +Probably most medical men would treat this individual's case as one of +what it is fashionable now to call by the name of "self-suggestion," or +"expectant attention"--as if those phrases were explanatory, or meant +more than the fact that certain men can be influenced, while others +cannot be influenced, by certain sorts of _ideas_. This leads me to +say a word about ideas considered as dynamogenic agents, or stimuli for +unlocking what would otherwise be unused reservoirs of individual power. + +One thing that ideas do is to contradict other ideas and keep us from +believing them. An idea that thus negates a first idea may itself in +turn be negated by a third idea, and the first idea may thus regain its +natural influence over our belief and determine our behavior. Our +philosophic and religious development proceeds thus by credulities, +negations, and the negating of negations. + +But whether for arousing or for stopping belief, ideas may fail to be +efficacious, just as a wire, at one time alive with electricity, may at +another time be dead. Here our insight into causes fails us, and we +can only note results in general terms. In general, whether a given +idea shall be a live idea depends more on the person into whose mind it +is injected than on the idea itself. Which is the suggestive idea for +this person, and which for that one? Mr. Fletcher's disciples +regenerate themselves by the idea (and the fact) that they are chewing, +and re-chewing, and super-chewing their food. Dr. Dewey's pupils +regenerate themselves by going without their breakfast--a fact, but +also an ascetic idea. Not every one can use _these_ ideas with the +same success. + +But apart from such individually varying susceptibilities, there are +common lines along which men simply as men tend to be inflammable by +ideas. As certain objects naturally awaken love, anger, or cupidity, +so certain ideas naturally awaken the energies of loyalty, courage, +endurance, or devotion. When these ideas are effective in an +individual's life, their effect is often very great indeed. They may +transfigure it, unlocking innumerable powers which, but for the idea, +would never have come into play. "Fatherland," "the Flag," "the +Union," "Holy Church," "the Monroe Doctrine," "Truth," "Science," +"Liberty," Garibaldi's phrase, "Rome or Death," etc., are so many +examples of energy-releasing ideas. The social nature of such phrases +is an essential factor of their dynamic power. They are forces of +detent in situations in which no other force produces equivalent +effects, and each is a force of detent only in a specific group of men. + +The memory that an oath or vow has been made will nerve one to +abstinences and efforts otherwise impossible; witness the "pledge" in +the history of the temperance movement. A mere promise to his +sweetheart will clean up a youth's life all over--at any rate for time. +For such effects an educated susceptibility is required. The idea of +one's "honor," for example, unlocks energy only in those of us who have +had the education of a "gentleman," so called. + +That delightful being, Prince Pueckler-Muskau, writes to his wife from +England that he has invented "a sort of artificial resolution +respecting things that are difficult of performance. My device," he +continues, "is this: _I give my word of honor most solemnly to myself_ +to do or to leave undone this or that. I am of course extremely +cautious in the use of this expedient, but when once the word is given, +even though I afterwards think I have been precipitate or mistaken, I +hold it to be perfectly irrevocable, whatever inconveniences I foresee +likely to result. If I were capable of breaking my word after such +mature consideration, I should lose all respect for myself,--and what +man of sense would not prefer death to such an alternative? . . . When +the mysterious formula is pronounced, no alteration in my own view, +nothing short of physical impossibilities, must, for the welfare of my +soul, alter my will. . . . I find something very satisfactory in the +thought that man has the power of framing such props and weapons out of +the most trivial materials, indeed out of nothing, merely by the force +of his will, which thereby truly deserves the name of omnipotent." [3] + +_Conversions_, whether they be political, scientific, philosophic, or +religious, form another way in which bound energies are let loose. +They unify us, and put a stop to ancient mental interferences. The +result is freedom, and often a great enlargement of power. A belief +that thus settles upon an individual always acts as a challenge to his +will. But, for the particular challenge to operate, he must be the +right challeng_ee_. In religious conversions we have so fine an +adjustment that the idea may be in the mind of the challengee for years +before it exerts effects; and why it should do so then is often so far +from obvious that the event is taken for a miracle of grace, and not a +natural occurrence. Whatever it is, it may be a highwater mark of +energy, in which "noes," once impossible, are easy, and in which a new +range of "yeses" gains the right of way. + +We are just now witnessing a very copious unlocking of energies by +ideas in the persons of those converts to "New Thought," "Christian +Science," "Metaphysical Healing," or other forms of spiritual +philosophy, who are so numerous among us to-day. The ideas here are +healthy-minded and optimistic; and it is quite obvious that a wave of +religious activity, analogous in some respects to the spread of early +Christianity, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism, is passing over our American +world. The common feature of these optimistic faiths is that they all +tend to the suppression of what Mr. Horace Fletcher calls +"fearthought." Fearthought he defines as the "self-suggestion of +inferiority"; so that one may say that these systems all operate by the +suggestion of power. And the power, small or great, comes in various +shapes to the individual,--power, as he will tell you, not to "mind" +things that used to vex him, power to concentrate his mind, good cheer, +good temper--in short, to put it mildly, a firmer, more elastic moral +tone. + +The most genuinely saintly person I have ever known is a friend of mine +now suffering from cancer of the breast--I hope that she may pardon my +citing her here as an example of what ideas can do. Her ideas have +kept her a practically well woman for months after she should have +given up and gone to bed. They have annulled all pain and weakness and +given her a cheerful active life, unusually beneficent to others to +whom she has afforded help. Her doctors, acquiescing in results they +could not understand, have had the good sense to let her go her own way. + +How far the mind-cure movement is destined to extend its influence, or +what intellectual modifications it may yet undergo, no one can +foretell. It is essentially a religious movement, and to academically +nurtured minds its utterances are tasteless and often grotesque enough. +It also incurs the natural enmity of medical politicians, and of the +whole trades-union wing of that profession. But no unprejudiced +observer can fail to recognize its importance as a social phenomenon +to-day, and the higher medical minds are already trying to interpret it +fairly, and make its power available for their own therapeutic ends. + +Dr. Thomas Hyslop, of the great West Riding Asylum in England, said +last year to the British Medical Association that the best +sleep-producing agent which his practice had revealed to him, was +_prayer_. I say this, he added (I am sorry here that I must quote from +memory), purely as a medical man. The exercise of prayer, in those who +habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most +adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the +nerves. + +But in few of us are functions not tied up by the exercise of other +functions. Relatively few medical men and scientific men, I fancy, can +pray. Few can carry on any living commerce with "God." Yet many of us +are well aware of how much freer and abler our lives would be, were +such important forms of energizing not sealed up by the critical +atmosphere in which we have been reared. There are in every one +potential forms of activity that actually are shunted out from use. +Part of the imperfect vitality under which we labor can thus be easily +explained. One part of our mind dams up--even _damns_ up!--the other +parts. + +Conscience makes cowards of us all. Social conventions prevent us from +telling the truth after the fashion of the heroes and heroines of +Bernard Shaw. We all know persons who are models of excellence, but +who belong to the extreme philistine type of mind. So deadly is their +intellectual respectability that we can't converse about certain +subjects at all, can't let our minds play over them, can't even mention +them in their presence. I have numbered among my dearest friends +persons thus inhibited intellectually, with whom I would gladly have +been able to talk freely about certain interests of mine, certain +authors, say, as Bernard Shaw, Chesterton, Edward Carpenter, H. G. +Wells, but it would n't do, it made them too uncomfortable, they would +n't play, I had to be silent. An intellect thus tied down by +literality and decorum makes on one the same sort of an impression that +an able-bodied man would who should habituate himself to do his work +with only one of his fingers, locking up the rest of his organism and +leaving it unused. + +I trust that by this time I have said enough to convince the reader +both of the truth and of the importance of my thesis. The two +questions, first, that of the possible extent of our powers; and, +second, that of the various avenues of approach to them, the various +keys for unlocking them in diverse individuals, dominate the whole +problem of individual and national education. We need a topography of +the limits of human power, similar to the chart which oculists use of +the field of human vision. We need also a study of the various types +of human being with reference to the different ways in which their +energy-reserves may be appealed to and set loose. Biographies and +individual experiences of every kind may be drawn upon for evidence +here.[4] + + + +[1] This was the title originally given to the Presidential Address +delivered before the American Philosophical Association at Columbia +University, December 28, 1906, and published as there delivered in the +_Philosophical Review_ for January, 1907. The address was later +published, after slight alteration, in the _American Magazine_ for +October, 1907, under the title "The Powers of Men." The more popular +form is here reprinted under the title which the author himself +preferred. + +[2] "The Energies of Men." _Philosophical Review_, vol. xvi, No. 1, +January, 1907. [Cf. Note on p. 229.] + +[3] "Tour in England, Ireland, and France," Philadelphia, 1833, p. 435. + +[4] "This would be an absolutely concrete study . . . The limits of +power must be limits that have been realized in actual persons, and the +various ways of unlocking the reserves of power must have been +exemplified in individual lives . . . So here is a program of concrete +individual psychology . . . It is replete with interesting facts, and +points to practical issues superior in importance to anything we know." +_From the address as originally delivered before the Philosophical +Association_; See xvi. _Philosophical Review_, 1, 19. + + + + +XI + +THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR[1] + +The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping +party. The military feelings are too deeply grounded to abdicate their +place among our ideals until better substitutes are offered than the +glory and shame that come to nations as well as to individuals from the +ups and downs of politics and the vicissitudes of trade. There is +something highly paradoxical in the modern man's relation to war. Ask +all our millions, north and south, whether they would vote now (were +such a thing possible) to have our war for the Union expunged from +history, and the record of a peaceful transition to the present time +substituted for that of its marches and battles, and probably hardly a +handful of eccentrics would say yes. Those ancestors, those efforts, +those memories and legends, are the most ideal part of what we now own +together, a sacred spiritual possession worth more than all the blood +poured out. Yet ask those same people whether they would be willing in +cold blood to start another civil war now to gain another similar +possession, and not one man or women would vote for the proposition. +In modern eyes, precious though wars may be, they must not be waged +solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, +only when an enemy's injustice leaves us no alternative, is a war now +thought permissible. + +It was not thus in ancient times. The earlier men were hunting men, +and to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the village and +possess the females, was the most profitable, as well as the most +exciting, way of living. Thus were the more martial tribes selected, +and in chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to +mingle with the more fundamental appetite for plunder. + +Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to +plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the +love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irrationality and horror +is of no effect upon him. The horrors make the fascination. War is +the _strong_ life; it is life _in extremis_; war-taxes are the only +ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us. + +History is a bath of blood. The Iliad is one long recital of how +Diomedes and Ajax, Sarpedon and Hector _killed_. No detail of the +wounds they made is spared us, and the Greek mind fed upon the story. +Greek history is a panorama of jingoism and imperialism--war for war's +sake, all the citizens being warriors. It is horrible reading, because +of the irrationality of it all--save for the purpose of making +"history"--and the history is that of the utter ruin of a civilization +in intellectual respects perhaps the highest the earth has ever seen. + +Those wars were purely piratical. Pride, gold, women, slaves, +excitement, were their only motives. In the Peloponnesian war for +example, the Athenians ask the inhabitants of Melos (the island where +the "Venus of Milo" was found), hitherto neutral, to own their +lordship. The envoys meet, and hold a debate which Thucydides gives in +full, and which, for sweet reasonableness of form, would have satisfied +Matthew Arnold. "The powerful exact what they can," said the +Athenians, "and the weak grant what they must." When the Meleans say +that sooner than be slaves they will appeal to the gods, the Athenians +reply: "Of the gods we believe and of men we know that, by a law of +their nature, wherever they can rule they will. This law was not made +by us, and we are not the first to have acted upon it; we did but +inherit it, and we know that you and all mankind, if you were as strong +as we are, would do as we do. So much for the gods; we have told you +why we expect to stand as high in their good opinion as you." Well, +the Meleans still refused, and their town was taken. "The Athenians," +Thucydides quietly says, "thereupon put to death all who were of +military age and made slaves of the women and children. They then +colonized the island, sending thither five hundred settlers of their +own." + +Alexander's career was piracy pure and simple, nothing but an orgy of +power and plunder, made romantic by the character of the hero. There +was no rational principle in it, and the moment he died his generals +and governors attacked one another. The cruelty of those times is +incredible. When Rome finally conquered Greece, Paulus Aemilius, was +told by the Roman Senate to reward his soldiers for their toil by +"giving" them the old kingdom of Epirus. They sacked seventy cities +and carried off a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants as slaves. +How many they killed I know not; but in Etolia they killed all the +senators, five hundred and fifty in number. Brutus was "the noblest +Roman of them all," but to reanimate his soldiers on the eve of +Philippi he similarly promises to give them the cities of Sparta and +Thessalonica to ravage, if they win the fight. + +Such was the gory nurse that trained societies to cohesiveness. We +inherit the warlike type; and for most of the capacities of heroism +that the human race is full of we have to thank this cruel history. +Dead men tell no tales, and if there were any tribes of other type than +this they have left no survivors. Our ancestors have bred pugnacity +into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't breed +it out of us. The popular imagination fairly fattens on the thought of +wars. Let public opinion once reach a certain fighting pitch, and no +ruler can withstand it. In the Boer war both governments began with +bluff but could n't stay there, the military tension was too much for +them. In 1898 our people had read the word "war" in letters three +inches high for three months in every newspaper. The pliant politician +McKinley was swept away by their eagerness, and our squalid war with +Spain became a necessity. + +At the present day, civilized opinion is a curious mental mixture. The +military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but are confronted +by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom. +Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military +service. Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally avowable +motives, and pretexts must be found for attributing them solely to the +enemy. England and we, our army and navy authorities repeat without +ceasing, arm solely for "peace," Germany and Japan it is who are bent +on loot and glory. "Peace" in military mouths to-day is a synonym for +"war expected." The word has become a pure provocative, and no +government wishing peace sincerely should allow it ever to be printed +in a newspaper. Every up-to-date dictionary should say that "peace" +and "war" mean the same thing, now _in posse_, now _in actu_. It may +even reasonably be said that the intensely sharp competitive +_preparation_ for war by the nations _is the real war_, permanent, +unceasing; and that the battles are only a sort of public verification +of the mastery gained during the "peace"-interval. + +It is plain that on this subject civilized man has developed a sort of +double personality. If we take European nations, no legitimate +interest of any one of them would seem to justify the tremendous +destructions which a war to compass it would necessarily entail. It +would seem as though common sense and reason ought to find a way to +reach agreement in every conflict of honest interests. I myself think +it our bounden duty to believe in such international rationality as +possible. But, as things stand, I see how desperately hard it is to +bring the peace-party and the war-party together, and I believe that +the difficulty is due to certain deficiencies in the program of +pacificism which set the militarist imagination strongly, and to a +certain extent justifiably, against it. In the whole discussion both +sides are on imaginative and sentimental ground. It is but one utopia +against another, and everything one says must be abstract and +hypothetical. Subject to this criticism and caution, I will try to +characterize in abstract strokes the opposite imaginative forces, and +point out what to my own very fallible mind seems the best Utopian +hypothesis, the most promising line of conciliation. + +In my remarks, pacificist though I am, I will refuse to speak of the +bestial side of the war-_régime_ (already done justice to by many +writers) and consider only the higher aspects of militaristic +sentiment. Patriotism no one thinks discreditable; nor does any one +deny that war is the romance of history. But inordinate ambitions are +the soul of every patriotism, and the possibility of violent death the +soul of all romance. The militarily patriotic and romantic-minded +everywhere, and especially the professional military class, refuse to +admit for a moment that war may be a transitory phenomenon in social +evolution. The notion of a sheep's paradise like that revolts, they +say, our higher imagination. Where then would be the steeps of life? +If war had ever stopped, we should have to re-invent it, on this view, +to redeem life from flat degeneration. + +Reflective apologists for war at the present day all take it +religiously. It is a sort of sacrament. Its profits are to the +vanquished as well as to the victor; and quite apart from any question +of profit, it is an absolute good, we are told, for it is human nature +at its highest dynamic. Its "horrors" are a cheap price to pay for +rescue from the only alternative supposed, of a world of clerks and +teachers, of co-education and zo-ophily, of "consumer's leagues" and +"associated charities," of industrialism unlimited, and feminism +unabashed. No scorn, no hardness, no valor any more! Fie upon such a +cattleyard of a planet! + +So far as the central essence of this feeling goes, no healthy minded +person, it seems to me, can help to some degree partaking of it. +Militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and human +life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible. Without risks or +prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a +type of military character which every one feels that the race should +never cease to breed, for every one is sensitive to its superiority. +The duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping military characters in +stock--of keeping them, if not for use, then as ends in themselves and +as pure pieces of perfection,--so that Roosevelt's weaklings and +mollycoddles may not end by making everything else disappear from the +face of nature. + +This natural sort of feeling forms, I think, the innermost soul of +army-writings. Without any exception known to me, militarist authors +take a highly mystical view of their subject, and regard war as a +biological or sociological necessity, uncontrolled by ordinary +psychological checks and motives. When the time of development is ripe +the war must come, reason or no reason, for the justifications pleaded +are invariably fictitious. War is, in short, a permanent human +_obligation_. General Homer Lea, in his recent book "The Valor of +Ignorance," plants himself squarely on this ground. Readiness for war +is for him the essence of nationality, and ability in it the supreme +measure of the health of nations. + +Nations, General Lea says, are never stationary--they must necessarily +expand or shrink, according to their vitality or decrepitude. Japan +now is culminating; and by the fatal law in question it is impossible +that her statesmen should not long since have entered, with +extraordinary foresight, upon a vast policy of conquest--the game in +which the first moves were her wars with China and Russia and her +treaty with England, and of which the final objective is the capture of +the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, and the whole of our +Coast west of the Sierra Passes. This will give Japan what her +ineluctable vocation as a state absolutely forces her to claim, the +possession of the entire Pacific Ocean; and to oppose these deep +designs we Americans have, according to our author, nothing but our +conceit, our ignorance, our commercialism, our corruption, and our +feminism. General Lea makes a minute technical comparison of the +military strength which we at present could oppose to the strength of +Japan, and concludes that the islands, Alaska, Oregon, and Southern +California, would fall almost without resistance, that San Francisco +must surrender in a fortnight to a Japanese investment, that in three +or four months the war would be over, and our republic, unable to +regain what it had heedlessly neglected to protect sufficiently, would +then "disintegrate," until perhaps some Caesar should arise to weld us +again into a nation. + +A dismal forecast indeed! Yet not implausible, if the mentality of +Japan's statesmen be of the Caesarian type of which history shows so +many examples, and which is all that General Lea seems able to imagine. +But there is no reason to think that women can no longer be the mothers +of Napoleonic or Alexandrian characters; and if these come in Japan and +find their opportunity, just such surprises as "The Valor of Ignorance" +paints may lurk in ambush for us. Ignorant as we still are of the +innermost recesses of Japanese mentality, we may be foolhardy to +disregard such possibilities. + +Other militarists are more complex and more moral in their +considerations. The "Philosophie des Krieges," by S. R. Steinmetz is a +good example. War, according to this author, is an ordeal instituted +by God, who weighs the nations in its balance. It is the essential +form of the State, and the only function in which peoples can employ +all their powers at once and convergently. No victory is possible save +as the resultant of a totality of virtues, no defeat for which some +vice or weakness is not responsible. Fidelity, cohesiveness, tenacity, +heroism, conscience, education, inventiveness, economy, wealth, +physical health and vigor--there is n't a moral or intellectual point +of superiority that does n't tell, when God holds his assizes and hurls +the peoples upon one another. _Die Weltgeschichte ist das +Weltgericht_; and Dr. Steinmetz does not believe that in the long run +chance and luck play any part in apportioning the issues. + +The virtues that prevail, it must be noted, are virtues anyhow, +superiorities that count in peaceful as well as in military +competition; but the strain on them, being infinitely intenser in the +latter case, makes war infinitely more searching as a trial. No ordeal +is comparable to its winnowings. Its dread hammer is the welder of men +into cohesive states, and nowhere but in such states can human nature +adequately develop its capacity. The only alternative is +"degeneration." + +Dr. Steinmetz is a conscientious thinker, and his book, short as it is, +takes much into account. Its upshot can, it seems to me, be summed up +in Simon Patten's word, that mankind was nursed in pain and fear, and +that the transition to a "pleasure-economy" may be fatal to a being +wielding no powers of defence against its disintegrative influences. +If we speak of the _fear of emancipation from the fear-régime_, we put +the whole situation into a single phrase; fear regarding ourselves now +taking the place of the ancient fear of the enemy. + +Turn the fear over as I will in my mind, it all seems to lead back to +two unwillingnesses of the imagination, one aesthetic, and the other +moral; unwillingness, first to envisage a future in which army-life, +with its many elements of charm, shall be forever impossible, and in +which the destinies of peoples shall nevermore be decided, quickly, +thrillingly, and tragically, by force, but only gradually and insipidly +by "evolution"; and, secondly, unwillingness to see the supreme theatre +of human strenuousness closed, and the splendid military aptitudes of +men doomed to keep always in a state of latency and never show +themselves in action. These insistent unwillingnesses, no less than +other aesthetic and ethical insistencies, have, it seems to me, to be +listened to and respected. One cannot meet them effectively by mere +counter-insistency on war's expensiveness and horror. The horror makes +the thrill; and when the question is of getting the extremest and +supremest out of human nature, talk of expense sounds ignominious. The +weakness of so much merely negative criticism is evident--pacificism +makes no converts from the military party. The military party denies +neither the bestiality nor the horror, nor the expense; it only says +that these things tell but half the story. It only says that war is +_worth_ them; that, taking human nature as a whole, its wars are its +best protection against its weaker and more cowardly self, and that +mankind cannot _afford_ to adopt a peace-economy. + +Pacificists ought to enter more deeply into the aesthetical and ethical +point of view of their opponents. Do that first in any controversy, +says J. J. Chapman, then _move the point_, and your opponent will +follow. So long as anti-militarists propose no substitute for war's +disciplinary function, no _moral equivalent_ of war, analogous, as one +might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to +realize the full inwardness of the situation. And as a rule they do +fail. The duties, penalties, and sanctions pictured in the Utopias +they paint are all too weak and tame to touch the military-minded. +Tolstoi's pacificism is the only exception to this rule, for it is +profoundly pessimistic as regards all this world's values, and makes +the fear of the Lord furnish the moral spur provided elsewhere by the +fear of the enemy. But our socialistic peace-advocates all believe +absolutely in this world's values; and instead of the fear of the Lord +and the fear of the enemy, the only fear they reckon with is the fear +of poverty if one be lazy. This weakness pervades all the socialistic +literature with which I am acquainted. Even in Lowes Dickinson's +exquisite dialogue,[2] high wages and short hours are the only forces +invoked for overcoming man's distaste for repulsive kinds of labor. +Meanwhile men at large still live as they always have lived, under a +pain-and-fear economy--for those of us who live in an ease-economy are +but an island in the stormy ocean--and the whole atmosphere of +present-day Utopian literature tastes mawkish and dishwatery to people +who still keep a sense for life's more bitter flavors. It suggests, in +truth, ubiquitous inferiority. Inferiority is always with us, and +merciless scorn of it is the keynote of the military temper. "Dogs, +would you live forever?" shouted Frederick the Great. "Yes," say our +Utopians, "let us live forever, and raise our level gradually." The +best thing about our "inferiors" to-day is that they are as tough as +nails, and physically and morally almost as insensitive. Utopianism +would see them soft and squeamish, while militarism would keep their +callousness, but transfigure it into a meritorious characteristic, +needed by "the service," and redeemed by that from the suspicion of +inferiority. All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows +that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If +proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No +collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride; but it has to +be confessed that the only sentiment which the image of pacific +cosmopolitan industrialism is capable of arousing in countless worthy +breasts is shame at the idea of belonging to _such_ a collectivity. It +is obvious that the United States of America as they exist to-day +impress a mind like General Lea's as so much human blubber. Where is +the sharpness and precipitousness, the contempt for life, whether one's +own, or another's? Where is the savage "yes" and "no," the +unconditional duty? Where is the conscription? Where is the +blood-tax? Where is anything that one feels honored by belonging to? + +Having said thus much in preparation, I will now confess my own Utopia. +I devoutly believe in the reign of peace and in the gradual advent of +some sort of a socialistic equilibrium. The fatalistic view of the +war-function is to me nonsense, for I know that war-making is due to +definite motives and subject to prudential checks and reasonable +criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise. And when whole +nations are the armies, and the science of destruction vies in +intellectual refinement with the sciences of production, I see that war +becomes absurd and impossible from its own monstrosity. Extravagant +ambitions will have to be replaced by reasonable claims, and nations +must make common cause against them. I see no reason why all this +should not apply to yellow as well as to white countries, and I look +forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as +between civilized peoples. + +All these beliefs of mine put me squarely into the anti-militarist +party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be +permanent on this globe, unless the states pacifically organized +preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline. A permanently +successful peace-economy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy. In the +more or less socialistic future towards which mankind seems drifting we +must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which +answer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. We +must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which +the military mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be the +enduring cement; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of +private interest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon +which states are built--unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions +against commonwealths fit only for contempt, and liable to invite +attack whenever a centre of crystallization for military-minded +enterprise gets formed anywhere in their neighborhood. + +The war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that the +martial virtues, although originally gained by the race through war, +are absolute and permanent human goods. Patriotic pride and ambition +in their military form are, after all, only specifications of a more +general competitive passion. They are its first form, but that is no +reason for supposing them to be its last form. Men now are proud of +belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down +their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off +subjection. But who can be sure that _other aspects of one's country_ +may not, with time and education and suggestion enough, come to be +regarded with similarly effective feelings of pride and shame? Why +should men not some day feel that it is worth a blood-tax to belong to +a collectivity superior in _any_ ideal respect? Why should they not +blush with indignant shame if the community that owns them is vile in +any way whatsoever? Individuals, daily more numerous, now feel this +civic passion. It is only a question of blowing on the spark till the +whole population gets incandescent, and on the ruins of the old morals +of military honor, a stable system of morals of civic honor builds +itself up. What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the +individual as in a vise. The war-function has grasped us so far; but +constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose +on the individual a hardly lighter burden. + +Let me illustrate my idea more concretely. There is nothing to make +one indignant in the mere fact that life is hard, that men should toil +and suffer pain. The planetary conditions once for all are such, and +we can stand it. But that so many men, by mere accidents of birth and +opportunity, should have a life of _nothing else_ but toil and pain and +hardness and inferiority imposed upon them, should have no vacation, +while others natively no more deserving never get any taste of this +campaigning life at all,--_this_ is capable of arousing indignation in +reflective minds. It may end by seeming shameful to all of us that +some of us have nothing but campaigning, and others nothing but unmanly +ease. If now--and this is my idea--there were, instead of military +conscription a conscription of the whole youthful population to form +for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against +_Nature_, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other +goods to the commonwealth would follow. The military ideals of +hardihood and discipline would be wrought into the growing fibre of the +people; no one would remain blind as the luxurious classes now are +blind, to man's relations to the globe he lives on, and to the +permanently sour and hard foundations of his higher life. To coal and +iron mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to +dishwashing, clothes-washing, and window-washing, to road-building and +tunnel-making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames of +skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, according to their +choice, to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back +into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas. They would +have paid their blood-tax, done their own part in the immemorial human +warfare against nature; they would tread the earth more proudly, the +women would value them more highly, they would be better fathers and +teachers of the following generation. + +Such a conscription, with the state of public opinion that would have +required it, and the many moral fruits it would bear, would preserve in +the midst of a pacific civilization the manly virtues which the +military party is so afraid of seeing disappear in peace. We should +get toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal +cruelty as possible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is +temporary, and threatens not, as now, to degrade the whole remainder of +one's life. I spoke of the "moral equivalent" of war. So far, war has +been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an +equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its +way. But I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames +of social man, once developed to a certain intensity, are capable of +organizing such a moral equivalent as I have sketched, or some other +just as effective for preserving manliness of type. It is but a +question of time, of skilful propagandism, and of opinion-making men +seizing historic opportunities. + +The martial type of character can be bred without war. Strenuous honor +and disinterestedness abound elsewhere. Priests and medical men are in +a fashion educated to it and we should all feel some degree of it +imperative if we were conscious of our work as an obligatory service to +the state. We should be owned, as soldiers are by the army, and our +pride would rise accordingly. We could be poor, then, without +humiliation, as army officers now are. The only thing needed +henceforward is to inflame the civic temper as past history has +inflamed the military temper. H. G. Wells, as usual, sees the centre +of the situation. "In many ways," he says, "military organization is +the most peaceful of activities. When the contemporary man steps from +the street, of clamorous insincere advertisement, push, adulteration, +underselling and intermittent employment into the barrack-yard, he +steps on to a higher social plane, into an atmosphere of service and +cooperation and of infinitely more honorable emulations. Here at least +men are not flung out of employment to degenerate because there is no +immediate work for them to do. They are fed and drilled and trained +for better services. Here at least a man is supposed to win promotion +by self-forgetfulness and not by self-seeking. And beside the feeble +and irregular endowment of research by commercialism, its little +short-sighted snatches at profit by innovation and scientific economy, +see how remarkable is the steady and rapid development of method and +appliances in naval and military affairs! Nothing is more striking +than to compare the progress of civil conveniences which has been left +almost entirely to the trader, to the progress in military apparatus +during the last few decades. The house-appliances of to-day for +example, are little better than they were fifty years ago. A house of +to-day is still almost as ill-ventilated, badly heated by wasteful +fires, clumsily arranged and furnished as the house of 1858. Houses a +couple of hundred years old are still satisfactory places of residence, +so little have our standards risen. But the rifle or battleship of +fifty years ago was beyond all comparison inferior to those we possess; +in power, in speed, in convenience alike. No one has a use now for +such superannuated things." [3] + +Wells adds[4] that he thinks that the conceptions of order and +discipline, the tradition of service and devotion, of physical fitness, +unstinted exertion, and universal responsibility, which universal +military duty is now teaching European nations, will remain a permanent +acquisition, when the last ammunition has been used in the fireworks +that celebrate the final peace. I believe as he does. It would be +simply preposterous if the only force that could work ideals of honor +and standards of efficiency into English or American natures should be +the fear of being killed by the Germans or the Japanese. Great indeed +is Fear; but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to +make us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher +ranges of men's spiritual energy. The amount of alteration in public +opinion which my utopia postulates is vastly less than the difference +between the mentality of those black warriors who pursued Stanley's +party on the Congo with their cannibal war-cry of "Meat! Meat!" and +that of the "general-staff" of any civilized nation. History has seen +the latter interval bridged over: the former one can be bridged over +much more easily. + + + +[1] Written for and first published by the Association for +International Conciliation (Leaflet No. 27) and also published in +_McClure's Magazine_, August, 1910, and _The Popular Science Monthly_, +October, 1910. + +[2] "Justice and Liberty," N. Y., 1909. + +[3] "First and Last Things," 1908, p. 215. + +[4] "First and Last Things," 1908, p. 226. + + + + +XII + +REMARKS AT THE PEACE BANQUET[1] + +I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher +can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers. +In ancient times philosophers defined man as the rational animal; and +philosophers since then have always found much more to say about the +rational than about the animal part of the definition. But looked at +candidly, reason bears about the same proportion to the rest of human +nature that we in this hall bear to the rest of America, Europe, Asia, +Africa and Polynesia. Reason is one of the very feeblest of nature's +forces, if you take it at only one spot and moment. It is only in the +very long run that its effects become perceptible. Reason assumes to +settle things by weighing them against each other without prejudice, +partiality or excitement; but what affairs in the concrete are settled +by is, and always will be, just prejudices, partialities, cupidities +and excitements. Appealing to reason as we do, we are in a sort of +forlorn-hope situation, like a small sandbank in the midst of a hungry +sea ready to wash it out of existence. But sand-banks grow when the +conditions favor; and weak as reason is, it has this unique advantage +over its antagonists that its activity never lets up and that it +presses always in one direction, while men's prejudices vary, their +passions ebb and flow, and their excitements are intermittent. Our +sand-bank, I absolutely believe, is bound to grow. Bit by bit it will +get dyked and breakwatered. But sitting as we do in this warm room, +with music and lights and smiling faces, it is easy to get too sanguine +about our task; and since I am called to speak, I feel as if it might +not be out of place to say a word about the strength. + +Our permanent enemy is the rooted bellicosity of human nature. Man, +biologically considered, and whatever else he may be into the bargain, +is the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one +that preys systematically on his own species. We are once for all +adapted to the military status. A millennium of peace would not breed +the fighting disposition out of our bone and marrow, and a function so +ingrained and vital will never consent to die without resistance, and +will always find impassioned apologists and idealizers. + +Not only men born to be soldiers, but non-combatants by trade and +nature, historians in their studies, and clergymen in their pulpits, +have been war's idealizers. They have talked of war as of God's court +of justice. And, indeed, if we think how many things beside the +frontiers of states the wars of history have decided, we must feel some +respectful awe, in spite of all the horrors. Our actual civilization, +good and bad alike, has had past wars for its determining condition. +Great mindedness among the tribes of men has always meant the will +to prevail, and all the more, so if prevailing included slaughtering +and being slaughtered. Rome, Paris, England, Brandenburg, +Piedmont,--possibly soon Japan,--along with their arms have their +traits of character and habits of thought prevail among their conquered +neighbors. The blessings we actually enjoy, such as they are, have +grown up in the shadow of the wars of antiquity. The various ideals +were backed by fighting wills, and when neither would give way, the God +of battles had to be the arbiter. A shallow view this, truly; for who +can say what might have prevailed if man had ever been a reasoning and +not a fighting animal? Like dead men, dead causes tell no tales, and +the ideals that went under in the past, along with all the tribes that +represented them, find to-day no recorder, no explainer, no defender. + +But apart from theoretic defenders, and apart from every soldierly +individual straining at the leash and clamoring for opportunity, war +has an omnipotent support in the form of our imagination. Man lives +_by_ habits indeed, but what he lives _for_ is thrills and excitements. +The only relief from habit's tediousness is periodical excitement. +From time immemorial wars have been, especially for non-combatants, the +supremely thrilling excitement. Heavy and dragging at its end, at its +outset every war means an explosion of imaginative energy. The dams of +routine burst, and boundless prospects open. The remotest spectators +share the fascination of that awful struggle now in process on the +confines of the world. There is not a man in this room, I suppose, who +doesn't buy both an evening and a morning paper, and first of all +pounce on the war column. + +A deadly listlessness would come over most men's imagination of the +future if they could seriously be brought to believe that never again +in _soecula soeculorum_ would a war trouble human history. In such a +stagnant summer afternoon of a world, where would be the zest or +interest? + +This is the constitution of human nature which we have to work against. +The plain truth is that people _want_ war. They want it anyhow; for +itself, and apart from each and every possible consequence. It is the +final bouquet of life's fireworks. The born soldiers want it hot and +actual. The non-combatants want it in the background, and always as an +open possibility, to feed imagination on and keep excitement going. +Its clerical and historical defenders fool themselves when they talk as +they do about it. What moves them is not the blessings it has won for +us, but a vague religious exaltation. War is human nature at its +uttermost. We are here to do our uttermost. It is a sacrament. +Society would rot without the mystical blood-payment. + +We do ill, I think, therefore, to talk much of universal peace or of a +general disarmament. We must go in for preventive medicine, not for +radical cure. We must cheat our foe, circumvent him in detail, not try +to change his nature. In one respect war is like love, though in no +other. Both leave us intervals of rest; and in the intervals life goes +on perfectly well without them, though the imagination still dallies +with their possibility. Equally insane when once aroused and under +headway, whether they shall be aroused or not depends on accidental +circumstances. How are old maids and old bachelors made? Not by +deliberate vows of celibacy, but by sliding on from year to year with +no sufficient matrimonial provocation. So of the nations with their +wars. Let the general possibility of war be left open, in Heaven's +name, for the imagination to dally with. Let the soldiers dream of +killing, as the old maids dream of marrying. + +But organize in every conceivable way the practical machinery for +making each successive chance of war abortive. Put peace men in power; +educate the editors and statesmen to responsibility. How beautifully +did their trained responsibility in England make the Venezuela incident +abortive! Seize every pretext, however small, for arbitration methods, +and multiply the precedents; foster rival excitements, and invent new +outlets for heroic energy; and from one generation to another the +chances are that irritation will grow less acute and states of strain +less dangerous among the nations. Armies and navies will continue, of +course, and fire the minds of populations with their potentialities of +greatness. But their officers will find that somehow or other, with no +deliberate intention on any one's part, each successive "incident" has +managed to evaporate and to lead nowhere, and that the thought of what +might have been remains their only consolation. + +The last weak runnings of the war spirit will be "punitive +expeditions." A country that turns its arms only against uncivilized +foes is, I think, wrongly taunted as degenerate. Of course it has +ceased to be heroic in the old grand style. But I verily believe that +this is because it now sees something better. It has a conscience. It +will still perpetrate peccadillos. But it is afraid, afraid in the +good sense, to engage in absolute crimes against civilization. + + + +[1] Published in the Official Report of the Universal Peace Congress, +held in Boston in 1904, and in the _Atlantic Monthly_, December, 1904. + + + + +XIII + +THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED[1] + +Of what use is a college training? We who have had it seldom hear the +question raised; we might be a little nonplussed to answer it offhand. +A certain amount of meditation has brought me to this as the pithiest +reply which I myself can give: The best claim that a college education +can possibly make on your respect, the best thing it can aspire to +accomplish for you, is this: that it should _help you to know a good +man when you see him_. This is as true of women's as of men's +colleges; but that it is neither a joke nor a one-sided abstraction I +shall now endeavor to show. + +What talk do we commonly hear about the contrast between college +education and the education which business or technical or professional +schools confer? The college education is called higher because it is +supposed to be so general and so disinterested. At the "schools" you +get a relatively narrow practical skill, you are told, whereas the +"colleges" give you the more liberal culture, the broader outlook, the +historical perspective, the philosophic atmosphere, or something which +phrases of that sort try to express. You are made into an efficient +instrument for doing a definite thing, you hear, at the schools; but, +apart from that, you may remain a crude and smoky kind of petroleum, +incapable of spreading light. The universities and colleges, on the +other hand, although they may leave you less efficient for this or that +practical task, suffuse your whole mentality with something more +important than skill. They redeem you, make you well-bred; they make +"good company" of you mentally. If they find you with a naturally +boorish or caddish mind, they cannot leave you so, as a technical +school may leave you. This, at least, is pretended; this is what we +hear among college-trained people when they compare their education +with every other sort. Now, exactly how much does this signify? + +It is certain, to begin with, that the narrowest trade or professional +training does something more for a man than to make a skilful practical +tool of him--it makes him also a judge of other men's skill. Whether +his trade be pleading at the bar or surgery or plastering or plumbing, +it develops a critical sense in him for that sort of occupation. He +understands the difference between second-rate and first-rate work in +his whole branch of industry; he gets to know a good job in his own +line as soon as he sees it; and getting to know this in his own line, +he gets a faint sense of what good work may mean anyhow, that may, if +circumstances favor, spread into his judgments elsewhere. Sound work, +clean work, finished work: feeble work, slack work, sham work--these +words express an identical contrast in many different departments of +activity. In so far forth, then, even the humblest manual trade may +beget in one a certain small degree of power to judge of good work +generally. + +Now, what is supposed to be the line of us who have the higher college +training? Is there any broader line--since our education claims +primarily not to be "narrow"--in which we also are made good judges +between what is first-rate and what is second-rate only? What is +especially taught in the colleges has long been known by the name of +the "humanities," and these are often identified with Greek and Latin. +But it is only as literatures, not as languages, that Greek and Latin +have any general humanity-value; so that in a broad sense the +humanities mean literature primarily, and in a still broader sense the +study of masterpieces in almost any field of human endeavor. +Literature keeps the primacy; for it not only _consists_ of +masterpieces, but is largely _about_ masterpieces, being little more +than an appreciative chronicle of human master-strokes, so far as it +takes the form of criticism and history. You can give humanistic value +to almost anything by teaching it historically. Geology, economics, +mechanics, are humanities when taught with reference to the successive +achievements of the geniuses to which these sciences owe their being. +Not taught thus literature remains grammar, art a catalogue, history a +list of dates, and natural science a sheet of formulas and weights and +measures. + +The sifting of human creations!--nothing less than this is what we +ought to mean by the humanities. Essentially this means biography; +what our colleges should teach is, therefore, biographical history, +that not of politics merely, but of anything and everything so far as +human efforts and conquests are factors that have played their part. +Studying in this way, we learn what types of activity have stood the +test of time; we acquire standards of the excellent and durable. All +our arts and sciences and institutions are but so many quests of +perfection on the part of men; and when we see how diverse the types of +excellence may be, how various the tests, how flexible the adaptations, +we gain a richer sense of what the terms "better" and "worse" may +signify in general. Our critical sensibilities grow both more acute +and less fanatical. We sympathize with men's mistakes even in the act +of penetrating them; we feel the pathos of lost causes and misguided +epochs even while we applaud what overcame them. + +Such words are vague and such ideas are inadequate, but their meaning +is unmistakable. What the colleges--teaching humanities by examples +which may be special, but which must be typical and pregnant--should at +least try to give us, is a general sense of what, under various +disguises, _superiority_ has always signified and may still signify. +The feeling for a good human job anywhere, the admiration of the really +admirable, the disesteem of what is cheap and trashy and +impermanent,--this is what we call the critical sense, the sense for +ideal values. It is the better part of what men know as wisdom. Some +of us are wise in this way naturally and by genius; some of us never +become so. But to have spent one's youth at college, in contact with +the choice and rare and precious, and yet still to be a blind prig or +vulgarian, unable to scent out human excellence or to divine it amid +its accidents, to know it only when ticketed and labelled and forced on +us by others, this indeed should be accounted the very calamity and +shipwreck of a higher education. + +The sense for human superiority ought, then, to be considered our line, +as boring subways is the engineer's line and the surgeon's is +appendicitis. Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish +for the better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities, and a +disgust for cheap jacks. We ought to smell, as it were, the difference +of quality in men and their proposals when we enter the world of +affairs about us. Expertness in this might well atone for some of our +awkwardness at accounts, for some of our ignorance of dynamos. The +best claim we can make for the higher education, the best single phrase +in which we can tell what it ought to do for us, is, then, exactly what +I said: it should enable us to _know a good man when we see him_. + +That the phrase is anything but an empty epigram follows from the fact +that if you ask in what line it is most important that a democracy like +ours should have its sons and daughters skilful, you see that it is +this line more than any other. "The people in their wisdom"--this is +the kind of wisdom most needed by the people. Democracy is on its +trial, and no one knows how it will stand the ordeal. Abounding about +us are pessimistic prophets. Fickleness and violence used to be, but +are no longer, the vices which they charge to democracy. What its +critics now affirm is that its preferences are inveterately for the +inferior. So it was in the beginning, they say, and so it will be +world without end. Vulgarity enthroned and institutionalized, elbowing +everything superior from the highway, this, they tell us, is our +irremediable destiny; and the picture-papers of the European continent +are already drawing Uncle Sam with the hog instead of the eagle for his +heraldic emblem. The privileged aristocracies of the foretime, with +all their iniquities, did at least preserve some taste for higher human +quality, and honor certain forms of refinement by their enduring +traditions. But when democracy is sovereign, its doubters say, +nobility will form a sort of invisible church, and sincerity and +refinement, stripped of honor, precedence, and favor, will have to +vegetate on sufferance in private corners. They will have no general +influence. They will be harmless eccentricities. + +Now, who can be absolutely certain that this may not be the career of +democracy? Nothing future is quite secure; states enough have inwardly +rotted; and democracy as a whole may undergo self-poisoning. But, on +the other hand, democracy is a kind of religion, and we are bound not +to admit its failure. Faiths and Utopias are the noblest exercise of +human reason, and no one with a spark of reason in him will sit down +fatalistically before the croaker's picture. The best of us are filled +with the contrary vision of a democracy stumbling through every error +till its institutions glow with justice and its customs shine with +beauty. Our better men _shall_ show the way and we _shall_ follow +them; so we are brought round again to the mission of the higher +education in helping us to know the better kind of man whenever we see +him. + +The notion that a people can run itself and its affairs anonymously is +now well known to be the silliest of absurdities. Mankind does nothing +save through initiatives on the part of inventors, great or small, and +imitation by the rest of us--these are the sole factors active in human +progress. Individuals of genius show the way, and set the patterns, +which common people then adopt and follow. _The rivalry of the +patterns is the history of the world_. Our democratic problem thus is +statable in ultra-simple terms: Who are the kind of men from whom our +majorities shall take their cue? Whom shall they treat as rightful +leaders? We and our leaders are the _x_ and the _y_ of the equation +here; all other historic circumstances, be they economical, political, +or intellectual, are only the background of occasion on which the +living drama works itself out between us. + +In this very simple way does the value of our educated class define +itself: we more than others should be able to divine the worthier and +better leaders. The terms here are monstrously simplified, of course, +but such a bird's-eye view lets us immediately take our bearings. In +our democracy, where everything else is so shifting, we alumni and +alumnae of the colleges are the only permanent presence that +corresponds to the aristocracy in older countries. We have continuous +traditions, as they have; our motto, too, is _noblesse oblige_; and, +unlike them, we stand for ideal interests solely, for we have no +corporate selfishness and wield no powers of corruption. We ought to +have our own class-consciousness. "_Les Intellectuels!_" What prouder +club-name could there be than this one, used ironically by the party of +"redblood," the party of every stupid prejudice and passion, during the +anti-Dreyfus craze, to satirize the men in France who still retained +some critical sense and judgment! Critical sense, it has to be +confessed, is not an exciting term, hardly a banner to carry in +processions. Affections for old habit, currents of self-interest, and +gales of passion are the forces that keep the human ship moving; and +the pressure of the judicious pilot's hand upon the tiller is a +relatively insignificant energy. But the affections, passions, and +interests are shifting, successive, and distraught; they blow in +alternation while the pilot's hand is steadfast. He knows the compass, +and, with all the leeways he is obliged to tack toward, he always makes +some headway. A small force, if it never lets up, will accumulate +effects more considerable than those of much greater forces if these +work inconsistently. The ceaseless whisper of the more permanent +ideals, the steady tug of truth and justice, give them but time, _must_ +warp the world in their direction. + +This bird's-eye view of the general steering function of the +college-bred amid the driftings of democracy ought to help us to a +wider vision of what our colleges themselves should aim at. If we are +to be the yeast-cake for democracy's dough, if we are to make it rise +with culture's preferences, we must see to it that culture spreads +broad sails. We must shake the old double reefs out of the canvas into +the wind and sunshine, and let in every modern subject, sure that any +subject will prove humanistic, if its setting be kept only wide enough. + +Stevenson says somewhere to his reader: "You think you are just making +this bargain, but you are really laying down a link in the policy of +mankind." Well, your technical school should enable you to make your +bargain splendidly; but your college should show you just the place of +that kind of bargain--a pretty poor place, possibly--in the whole +policy of mankind. That is the kind of liberal outlook, of +perspective, of atmosphere, which should surround every subject as a +college deals with it. + +We of the colleges must eradicate a curious notion which numbers of +good people have about such ancient seats of learning as Harvard. To +many ignorant outsiders, the name suggests little more than a kind of +sterilized conceit and incapacity for being pleased. In Edith Wyatt's +exquisite book of Chicago sketches called "Every One his Own Way" there +is a couple who stand for culture in the sense of exclusiveness, +Richard Elliot and his feminine counterpart--feeble caricatures of +mankind, unable to know any good thing when they see it, incapable of +enjoyment unless a printed label gives them leave. Possibly this type +of culture may exist near Cambridge and Boston. There may be specimens +there, for priggishness is just like painter's colic or any other +trade-disease. But every good college makes its students immune +against this malady, of which the microbe haunts the neighborhood of +printed pages. It does so by its general tone being too hearty for the +microbe's life. Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not +by dislikes and disdains; under all misleading wrappings it pounces +unerringly upon the human core. If a college, through the inferior +human influences that have grown regnant there, fails to catch the +robuster tone, its failure is colossal, for its social function stops: +democracy gives it a wide berth, turns toward it a deaf ear. + +"Tone," to be sure, is a terribly vague word to use, but there is no +other, and this whole meditation is over questions of tone. By their +tone are all things human either lost or saved. If democracy is to be +saved it must catch the higher, healthier tone. If we are to impress +it with our preferences, we ourselves must use the proper tone, which +we, in turn, must have caught from our own teachers. It all reverts in +the end to the action of innumerable imitative individuals upon each +other and to the question of whose tone has the highest spreading +power. As a class, we college graduates should look to it that _ours_ +has spreading power. It ought to have the highest spreading power. + +In our essential function of indicating the better men, we now have +formidable competitors outside. _McClure's Magazine_, the _American +Magazine_, _Collier's Weekly_, and, in its fashion, the _World's Work_, +constitute together a real popular university along this very line. It +would be a pity if any future historian were to have to write words +like these: "By the middle of the twentieth century the higher +institutions of learning had lost all influence over public opinion in +the United States. But the mission of raising the tone of democracy, +which they had proved themselves so lamentably unfitted to exert, was +assumed with rare enthusiasm and prosecuted with extraordinary skill +and success by a new educational power; and for the clarification of +their human sympathies and elevation of their human preferences, the +people at large acquired the habit of resorting exclusively to the +guidance of certain private literary adventures, commonly designated in +the market by the affectionate name of ten-cent magazines." + +Must not we of the colleges see to it that no historian shall ever say +anything like this? Vague as the phrase of knowing a good man when you +see him may be, diffuse and indefinite as one must leave its +application, is there any other formula that describes so well the +result at which our institutions ought to aim? If they do that, they +do the best thing conceivable. If they fail to do it, they fail in +very deed. It surely is a fine synthetic formula. If our faculties +and graduates could once collectively come to realize it as the great +underlying purpose toward which they have always been more or less +obscurely groping, a great clearness would be shed over many of their +problems; and, as for their influence in the midst of our social +system, it would embark upon a new career of strength. + + + +[1] Address delivered at a meeting of the Association of American +Alumnae at Radcliffe College, November 7, 1907, and first published in +_McClure's Magazine_ for February, 1908. + + + + +XIV + +THE UNIVERSITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL + + +I. THE PH.D. OCTOPUS[1] + +Some years ago we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant +student of Philosophy, who, after leaving us and supporting himself by +literary labor for three years, received an appointment to teach +English Literature at a sister-institution of learning. The governors +of this institution, however, had no sooner communicated the +appointment than they made the awful discovery that they had enrolled +upon their staff a person who was unprovided with the Ph.D. degree. +The man in question had been satisfied to work at Philosophy for her +own sweet (or bitter) sake, and had disdained to consider that an +academic bauble should be his reward. + +His appointment had thus been made under a misunderstanding. He was +not the proper man; and there was nothing to do but to inform him of +the fact. It was notified to him by his new President that his +appointment must be revoked, or that a Harvard doctor's degree must +forthwith be procured. + +Although it was already the spring of the year, our Subject, being a +man of spirit, took up the challenge, turned his back upon literature +(which in view of his approaching duties might have seemed his more +urgent concern) and spent the weeks that were left him, in writing a +metaphysical thesis and grinding his psychology, logic and history of +philosophy up again, so as to pass our formidable ordeals. + +When the thesis came to be read by our committee, we could not pass it. +Brilliancy and originality by themselves won't save a thesis for the +doctorate; it must also exhibit a heavy technical apparatus of +learning; and this our candidate had neglected to bring to bear. So, +telling him that he was temporarily rejected, we advised him to pad out +the thesis properly, and return with it next year, at the same time +informing his new President that this signified nothing as to his +merits, that he was of ultra Ph.D. quality, and one of the strongest +men with whom we had ever had to deal. + +To our surprise we were given to understand in reply that the quality +_per se_ of the man signified nothing in this connection, and that +three magical letters were the thing seriously required. The College +had always gloried in a list of faculty members who bore the doctor's +title, and to make a gap in the galaxy, and admit a common fox without +a tail, would be a degradation impossible to be thought of. We wrote +again, pointing out that a Ph.D. in philosophy would prove little +anyhow as to one's ability to teach literature; we sent separate +letters in which we outdid each other in eulogy of our candidate's +powers, for indeed they were great; and at last, _mirabile dictu_, our +eloquence prevailed. He was allowed to retain his appointment +provisionally, on condition that one year later at the farthest his +miserably naked name should be prolonged by the sacred appendage the +lack of which had given so much trouble to all concerned. + +Accordingly he came up here the following spring with an adequate +thesis (known since in print as a most brilliant contribution to +metaphysics), passed a first-rate examination, wiped out the stain, and +brought his college into proper relations with the world again. +Whether his teaching, during that first year, of English Literature was +made any the better by the impending examination in a different +subject, is a question which I will not try to solve. + +I have related this incident at such length because it is so +characteristic of American academic conditions at the present day. +Graduate schools still are something of a novelty, and higher diplomas +something of a rarity. The latter, therefore, carry a vague sense of +preciousness and honor, and have a particularly "up-to-date" +appearance, and it is no wonder if smaller institutions, unable to +attract professors already eminent, and forced usually to recruit their +faculties from the relatively young, should hope to compensate for the +obscurity of the names of their officers of instruction by the +abundance of decorative titles by which those names are followed on the +pages of the catalogues where they appear. The dazzled reader of the +list, the parent or student, says to himself, "This must be a terribly +distinguished crowd,--their titles shine like the stars in the +firmament; Ph.D.'s, S.D.'s, and Litt.D.'s, bespangle the page as if +they were sprinkled over it from a pepper caster." + +Human nature is once for all so childish that every reality becomes a +sham somewhere, and in the minds of Presidents and Trustees the Ph.D. +degree is in point of fact already looked upon as a mere advertising +resource, a manner of throwing dust in the Public's eyes. "No +instructor who is not a Doctor" has become a maxim in the smaller +institutions which represent demand; and in each of the larger ones +which represent supply, the same belief in decorated scholarship +expresses itself in two antagonistic passions, one for multiplying as +much as possible the annual output of doctors, the other for raising +the standard of difficulty in passing, so that the Ph.D. of the special +institution shall carry a higher blaze of distinction than it does +elsewhere. Thus we at Harvard are proud of the number of candidates +whom we reject, and of the inability of men who are not _distingués_ in +intellect to pass our tests. + +America is thus as a nation rapidly drifting towards a state of things +in which no man of science or letters will be accounted respectable +unless some kind of badge or diploma is stamped upon him, and in which +bare personality will be a mark of outcast estate. It seems to me high +time to rouse ourselves to consciousness, and to cast a critical eye +upon this decidedly grotesque tendency. Other nations suffer terribly +from the Mandarin disease. Are we doomed to suffer like the rest? + +Our higher degrees were instituted for the laudable purpose of +stimulating scholarship, especially in the form of "original research." +Experience has proved that great as the love of truth may be among men, +it can be made still greater by adventitious rewards. The winning of a +diploma certifying mastery and marking a barrier successfully passed, +acts as a challenge to the ambitious; and if the diploma will help to +gain bread-winning positions also, its power as a stimulus to work is +tremendously increased. So far, we are on innocent ground; it is well +for a country to have research in abundance, and our graduate schools +do but apply a normal psychological spur. But the institutionizing on +a large scale of any natural combination of need and motive always +tends to run into technicality and to develop a tyrannical Machine with +unforeseen powers of exclusion and corruption. Observation of the +workings of our Harvard system for twenty years past has brought some +of these drawbacks home to my consciousness, and I should like to call +the attention of my readers to this disadvantageous aspect of the +picture, and to make a couple of remedial suggestions, if I may. + +In the first place, it would seem that to stimulate study, and to +increase the _gelehrtes Publikum_, the class of highly educated men in +our country, is the only positive good, and consequently the sole +direct end at which our graduate schools, with their diploma-giving +powers, should aim. If other results have developed they should be +deemed secondary incidents, and if not desirable in themselves, they +should be carefully guarded against. + +To interfere with the free development of talent, to obstruct the +natural play of supply and demand in the teaching profession, to foster +academic snobbery by the prestige of certain privileged institutions, +to transfer accredited value from essential manhood to an outward +badge, to blight hopes and promote invidious sentiments, to divert the +attention of aspiring youth from direct dealings with truth to the +passing of examinations,--such consequences, if they exist, ought +surely to be regarded as drawbacks to the system, and an enlightened +public consciousness ought to be keenly alive to the importance of +reducing their amount. Candidates themselves do seem to be keenly +conscious of some of these evils, but outside of their ranks or in the +general public no such consciousness, so far as I can see, exists; or +if it does exist, it fails to express itself aloud. Schools, Colleges, +and Universities, appear enthusiastic over the entire system, just as +it stands, and unanimously applaud all its developments. + +I beg the reader to consider some of the secondary evils which I have +enumerated. First of all, is not our growing tendency to appoint no +instructors who are not also doctors an instance of pure sham? Will +any one pretend for a moment that the doctor's degree is a guarantee +that its possessor will be successful as a teacher? Notoriously his +moral, social and personal characteristics may utterly disqualify him +for success in the class-room; and of these characteristics his +doctor's examination is unable to take any account whatever. Certain +bare human beings will always be better candidates for a given place +than all the doctor-applicants on hand; and to exclude the former by a +rigid rule, and in the end to have to sift the latter by private +inquiry into their personal peculiarities among those who know them, +just as if they were not doctors at all, is to stultify one's own +procedure. You may say that at least you guard against ignorance of +the subject by considering only the candidates who are doctors; but how +then about making doctors in one subject teach a different subject? +This happened in the instance by which I introduced this article, and +it happens daily and hourly in all our colleges? The truth is that the +Doctor-Monopoly in teaching, which is becoming so rooted an American +custom, can show no serious grounds whatsoever for itself in reason. +As it actually prevails and grows in vogue among us, it is due to +childish motives exclusively. In reality it is but a sham, a bauble, a +dodge, whereby to decorate the catalogues of schools and colleges. + +Next, let us turn from the general promotion of a spirit of academic +snobbery to the particular damage done to individuals by the system. + +There are plenty of individuals so well endowed by nature that they +pass with ease all the ordeals with which life confronts them. Such +persons are born for professional success. Examinations have no +terrors for them, and interfere in no way with their spiritual or +worldly interests. There are others, not so gifted who nevertheless +rise to the challenge, get a stimulus from the difficulty, and become +doctors, not without some baleful nervous wear and tear and retardation +of their purely inner life, but on the whole successfully, and with +advantage. These two classes form the natural Ph.D.'s for whom the +degree is legitimately instituted. To be sure, the degree is of no +consequence one way or the other for the first sort of man, for in him +the personal worth obviously outshines the title. To the second set of +persons, however, the doctor ordeal may contribute a touch of energy +and solidity of scholarship which otherwise they might have lacked, and +were our candidates all drawn from these classes, no oppression would +result from the institution. + +But there is a third class of persons who are genuinely, and in the +most pathetic sense, the institution's victims. For this type of +character the academic life may become, after a certain point, a +virulent poison. Men without marked originality or native force, but +fond of truth and especially of books and study, ambitious of reward +and recognition, poor often, and needing a degree to get a teaching +position, weak in the eyes of their examiners,--among these we find the +veritable _chair à canon_ of the wars of learning, the unfit in the +academic struggle for existence. There are individuals of this sort +for whom to pass one degree after another seems the limit of earthly +aspiration. Your private advice does not discourage them. They will +fail, and go away to recuperate, and then present themselves for +another ordeal, and sometimes prolong the process into middle life. Or +else, if they are less heroic morally they will accept the failure as a +sentence of doom that they are not fit, and are broken-spirited men +thereafter. + +We of the university faculties are responsible for deliberately +creating this new class of American social failures, and heavy is the +responsibility. We advertise our "schools" and send out our +degree-requirements, knowing well that aspirants of all sorts will be +attracted, and at the same time we set a standard which intends to pass +no man who has not native intellectual distinction. We know that there +is no test, however absurd, by which, if a title or decoration, a +public badge or mark, were to be won by it, some weakly suggestible or +hauntable persons would not feel challenged, and remain unhappy if they +went without it. We dangle our three magic letters before the eyes of +these predestined victims, and they swarm to us like moths to an +electric light. They come at a time when failure can no longer be +repaired easily and when the wounds it leaves are permanent; and we say +deliberately that mere work faithfully performed, as they perform it, +will not by itself save them, they must in addition put in evidence the +one thing they have not got, namely this quality of intellectual +distinction. Occasionally, out of sheer human pity, we ignore our high +and mighty standard and pass them. Usually, however, the standard, and +not the candidate, commands our fidelity. The result is caprice, +majorities of one on the jury, and on the whole a confession that our +pretensions about the degree cannot be lived up to consistently. Thus, +partiality in the favored cases; in the unfavored, blood on our hands; +and in both a bad conscience,--are the results of our administration. + +The more widespread becomes the popular belief that our diplomas are +indispensable hall-marks to show the sterling metal of their holders, +the more widespread these corruptions will become. We ought to look to +the future carefully, for it takes generations for a national custom, +once rooted, to be grown away from. All the European countries are +seeking to diminish the check upon individual spontaneity which state +examinations with their tyrannous growth have brought in their train. +We have had to institute state examinations too; and it will perhaps be +fortunate if some day hereafter our descendants, comparing machine with +machine, do not sigh with regret for old times and American freedom, +and wish that the _régime_ of the dear old bosses might be reinstalled, +with plain human nature, the glad hand and the marble heart, liking and +disliking, and man-to-man relations grown possible again. Meanwhile, +whatever evolution our state-examinations are destined to undergo, our +universities at least should never cease to regard themselves as the +jealous custodians of personal and spiritual spontaneity. They are +indeed its only organized and recognized custodians in America to-day. +They ought to guard against contributing to the increase of officialism +and snobbery and insincerity as against a pestilence; they ought to +keep truth and disinterested labor always in the foreground, treat +degrees as secondary incidents, and in season and out of season make it +plain that what they live for is to help men's souls, and not to +decorate their persons with diplomas. + +There seem to be three obvious ways in which the increasing hold of the +Ph.D. Octopus upon American life can be kept in check. + +The first way lies with the universities. They can lower their +fantastic standards (which here at Harvard we are so proud of) and give +the doctorate as a matter of course, just as they give the bachelor's +degree, for a due amount of time spent in patient labor in a special +department of learning, whether the man be a brilliantly gifted +individual or not. Surely native distinction needs no official stamp, +and should disdain to ask for one. On the other hand, faithful labor, +however commonplace, and years devoted to a subject, always deserve to +be acknowledged and requited. + +The second way lies with both the universities and colleges. Let them +give up their unspeakably silly ambition to bespangle their lists of +officers with these doctorial titles. Let them look more to substance +and less to vanity and sham. + +The third way lies with the individual student, and with his personal +advisers in the faculties. Every man of native power, who might take a +higher degree, and refuses to do so, because examinations interfere +with the free following out of his more immediate intellectual aims, +deserves well of his country, and in a rightly organized community, +would not be made to suffer for his independence. With many men the +passing of these extraneous tests is a very grievous interference +indeed. Private letters of recommendation from their instructors, +which in any event are ultimately needful, ought, in these cases, +completely to offset the lack of the breadwinning degree; and +instructors ought to be ready to advise students against it upon +occasion, and to pledge themselves to back them later personally, in +the market-struggle which they have to face. + +It is indeed odd to see this love of titles--and such titles--growing +up in a country or which the recognition of individuality and bare +manhood have so long been supposed to be the very soul. The +independence of the State, in which most of our colleges stand, +relieves us of those more odious forms of academic politics which +continental European countries present. Anything like the elaborate +university machine of France, with its throttling influences upon +individuals is unknown here. The spectacle of the "Rath" distinction +in its innumerable spheres and grades, with which all Germany is +crawling to-day, is displeasing to American eyes; and displeasing also +in some respects is the institution of knighthood in England, which, +aping as it does an aristocratic title, enables one's wife as well as +one's self so easily to dazzle the servants at the house of one's +friends. But are we Americans ourselves destined after all to hunger +after similar vanities on an infinitely more contemptible scale? And +is individuality with us also going to count for nothing unless stamped +and licensed and authenticated by some title-giving machine? Let us +pray that our ancient national genius may long preserve vitality enough +to guard us from a future so unmanly and so unbeautiful! + + + +[1] Published in the _Harvard Monthly_, March, 1903. + + + + +II. THE TRUE HARVARD[1] + +When a man gets a decoration from a foreign institution, he may take it +as an honor. Coming as mine has come to-day, I prefer to take it for +that far more valuable thing, a token of personal good will from +friends. Recognizing the good will and the friendliness, I am going to +respond to the chairman's call by speaking exactly as I feel. + +I am not an alumnus of the College. I have not even a degree from the +Scientific School, in which I did some study forty years ago. I have +no right to vote for Overseers, and I have never felt until to-day as +if I were a child of the house of Harvard in the fullest sense. +Harvard is many things in one--a school, a forcing house for thought, +and also a social club; and the club aspect is so strong, the family +tie so close and subtle among our Bachelors of Arts that all of us here +who are in my plight, no matter how long we may have lived here, always +feel a little like outsiders on Commencement day. We have no class to +walk with, and we often stay away from the procession. It may be +foolish, but it is a fact. I don't believe that my dear friends +Shaler, Hollis, Lanman, or Royce ever have felt quite as happy or as +much at home as my friend Barrett Wendell feels upon a day like this. + +I wish to use my present privilege to say a word for these outsiders +with whom I belong. Many years ago there was one of them from Canada +here--a man with a high-pitched voice, who could n't fully agree with +all the points of my philosophy. At a lecture one day, when I was in +the full flood of my eloquence, his voice rose above mine, exclaiming: +"But, doctor, doctor! to be serious for a moment . . . ," in so sincere +a tone that the whole room burst out laughing. I want you now to be +serious for a moment while I say my little say. We are glorifying +ourselves to-day, and whenever the name of Harvard is emphatically +uttered on such days, frantic cheers go up. There are days for +affection, when pure sentiment and loyalty come rightly to the fore. +But behind our mere animal feeling for old schoolmates and the Yard and +the bell, and Memorial and the clubs and the river and the Soldiers' +Field, there must be something deeper and more rational. There ought +at any rate to be some possible ground in reason for one's boiling over +with joy that one is a son of Harvard, and was not, by some unspeakably +horrible accident of birth, predestined to graduate at Yale or at +Cornell. + +Any college can foster club loyalty of that sort. The only rational +ground for pre-eminent admiration of any single college would be its +pre-eminent spiritual tone. But to be a college man in the mere +clubhouse sense--I care not of what college--affords no guarantee of +real superiority in spiritual tone. + +The old notion that book learning can be a panacea for the vices of +society lies pretty well shattered to-day. I say this in spite of +certain utterances of the President of this University to the teachers +last year. That sanguine-hearted man seemed then to think that if the +schools would only do their duty better, social vice might cease. But +vice will never cease. Every level of culture breeds its own peculiar +brand of it as surely as one soil breeds sugar-cane, and another soil +breeds cranberries. If we were asked that disagreeable question, "What +are the bosom-vices of the level of culture which our land and day have +reached?" we should be forced, I think, to give the still more +disagreeable answer that they are swindling and adroitness, and the +indulgence of swindling and adroitness, and cant, and sympathy with +cant--natural fruits of that extraordinary idealization of "success" in +the mere outward sense of "getting there," and getting there on as big +a scale as we can, which characterizes our present generation. What +was Reason given to man for, some satirist has said, except to enable +him to invent reasons for what he wants to do. We might say the same +of education. We see college graduates on every side of every public +question. Some of Tammany's stanchest supporters are Harvard men. +Harvard men defend our treatment of our Filipino allies as a +masterpiece of policy and morals. Harvard men, as journalists, pride +themselves on producing copy for any side that may enlist them. There +is not a public abuse for which some Harvard advocate may not be found. + +In the successful sense, then, in the worldly sense, in the club sense, +to be a college man, even a Harvard man, affords no sure guarantee for +anything but a more educated cleverness in the service of popular idols +and vulgar ends. Is there no inner Harvard within the outer Harvard +which means definitively more than this--for which the outside men who +come here in such numbers, come? They come from the remotest outskirts +of our country, without introductions, without school affiliations; +special students, scientific students, graduate students, poor students +of the College, who make their living as they go. They seldom or never +darken the doors of the Pudding or the Porcellian; they hover in the +background on days when the crimson color is most in evidence, but they +nevertheless are intoxicated and exultant with the nourishment they +find here; and their loyalty is deeper and subtler and more a matter of +the inmost soul than the gregarious loyalty of the clubhouse pattern +often is. + +Indeed, there is such an inner spiritual Harvard; and the men I speak +of, and for whom I speak to-day, are its true missionaries and carry +its gospel into infidel parts. When they come to Harvard, it is not +primarily because she is a club. It is because they have heard of her +persistently atomistic constitution, of her tolerance of exceptionality +and eccentricity, of her devotion to the principles of individual +vocation and choice. It is because you cannot make single one-ideaed +regiments of her classes. It is because she cherishes so many vital +ideals, yet makes a scale of value among them; so that even her +apparently incurable second-rateness (or only occasional +first-rateness) in intercollegiate athletics comes from her seeing so +well that sport is but sport, that victory over Yale is not the whole +of the law and the prophets, and that a popgun is not the crack of doom. + +The true Church was always the invisible Church. The true Harvard is +the invisible Harvard in the souls of her more truth-seeking and +independent and often very solitary sons. _Thoughts_ are the precious +seeds of which our universities should be the botanical gardens. +Beware when God lets loose a thinker on the world--either Carlyle or +Emerson said that--for all things then have to rearrange themselves. +But the thinkers in their youth are almost always very lonely +creatures. "Alone the great sun rises and alone spring the great +streams." The university most worthy of rational admiration is that +one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself least lonely, most +positively furthered, and most richly fed. On an occasion like this it +would be poor taste to draw comparisons between the colleges, and in +their mere clubhouse quality they cannot differ widely:--all must be +worthy of the loyalties and affections they arouse. But as a nursery +for independent and lonely thinkers I do believe that Harvard still is +in the van. Here they find the climate so propitious that they can be +happy in their very solitude. The day when Harvard shall stamp a +single hard and fast type of character upon her children, will be that +of her downfall. Our undisciplinables are our proudest product. Let +us agree together in hoping that the output of them will never cease. + + + +[1] Speech at the Harvard Commencement Dinner, June 24, 1903, after +receiving an LL.D. degree. Printed in the _Graduates' Magazine_ for +September, 1903. + + + + +III. STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY[1] + +Foreigners, commenting on our civilization, have with great unanimity +remarked the privileged position that institutions of learning occupy +in America as receivers of benefactions. Our typical men of wealth, if +they do not found a college, will at least single out some college or +university on which to lavish legacies or gifts. All the more so, +perhaps, if they are not college-bred men themselves. Johns Hopkins +University, the University of Chicago, Clark University, are splendid +examples of this rule. Steadily, year by year, my own university, +Harvard, receives from one to two and a half millions. + +There is something almost pathetic in the way in which our successful +business men seem to idealize the higher learning and to believe in its +efficacy for salvation. Never having shared in its blessings, they do +their utmost to make the youth of coming generations more fortunate. +Usually there is little originality of thought in their generous +foundations. The donors follow the beaten track. Their good will has +to be vague, for they lack the inside knowledge. What they usually +think of is a new college like all the older colleges; or they give new +buildings to a university or help to make it larger, without any +definite idea as to the improvement of its inner form. Improvements in +the character of our institutions always come from the genius of the +various presidents and faculties. The donors furnish means of +propulsion, the experts within the pale lay out the course and steer +the vessel. You all think of the names of Eliot, Gilman, Hall and +Harper as I utter these words--I mention no name nearer home. + +This is founders' day here at Stanford--the day set apart each year to +quicken and reanimate in all of us the consciousness of the deeper +significance of this little university to which we permanently or +temporarily belong. I am asked to use my voice to contribute to this +effect. How can I do so better than by uttering quite simply and +directly the impressions that I personally receive? I am one among our +innumerable American teachers, reared on the Atlantic coast but +admitted for this year to be one of the family at Stanford. I see +things not wholly from without, as the casual visitor does, but partly +from within. I am probably a typical observer. As my impressions are, +so will be the impressions of others. And those impressions, taken +together, will probably be the verdict of history on the institution +which Leland and Jane Stanford founded. + +"Where there is no vision, the people perish." Mr. and Mrs. Stanford +evidently had a vision of the most prophetic sort. They saw the +opportunity for an absolutely unique creation, they seized upon it with +the boldness of great minds; and the passionate energy with which Mrs. +Stanford after her husband's death, drove the original plans through in +the face of every dismaying obstacle, forms a chapter in the biography +of heroism. Heroic also the loyalty with which in those dark years the +president and faculty made the university's cause, their cause, and +shared the uncertainties and privations. + +And what is the result to-day? To-day the key-note is triumphantly +struck. The first step is made beyond recall. The character of the +material foundation is assured for all time as something unique and +unparalleled. It logically calls for an equally unique and +unparalleled spiritual superstructure. + +Certainly the chief impression which the existing university must make +on every visitor is of something unique and unparalleled. Its +attributes are almost too familiar to you to bear recapitulation. The +classic scenery of its site, reminding one of Greece, Greek too in its +atmosphere of opalescent fire, as if the hills that close us in were +bathed in ether, milk and sunshine; the great city, near enough for +convenience, too far ever to become invasive; the climate, so friendly +to work that every morning wakes one fresh for new amounts of work; the +noble architecture, so generously planned that there room and to spare +for every requirement; the democracy of the life, no one superfluously +rich, yet all sharing, so far as their higher needs go, in the common +endowment--where could a genius devoted to the search for truth, and +unworldly as most geniuses are, find on the earth's whole round a place +more advantageous to come and work in? _Die Luft der Freiheit weht_! +All the traditions are individualistic. Red tape and organization are +at their minimum. Interruptions and perturbing distractions hardly +exist. Eastern institutions look all dark and huddled and confused in +comparison with this purity and serenity. Shall it not be auspicious? +Surely the one destiny to which this happy beginning seems to call +Stanford is that it should become something intense and original, not +necessarily in point of wealth or extent, but in point of spiritual +quality. The founders have, as I said, triumphantly struck the +keynote, and laid the basis: the quality of what they have already +given is unique in character. + +It rests with the officials of the present and future Stanford, it +rests with the devotion and sympathetic insight of the growing body of +graduates, to prolong the vision where the founders' vision terminated, +and to insure that all the succeeding steps, like the first steps, +shall single out this university more and more as the university of +quality peculiarly. + +And what makes essential quality in a university? Years ago in New +England it was said that a log by the roadside with a student sitting +on one end of it, and Mark Hopkins sitting on the other end, was a +university. It is the quality of its men that makes the quality of a +university. You may have your buildings, you may create your +committees and boards and regulations, you may pile up your machinery +of discipline and perfect your methods of instruction, you may spend +money till no one can approach you; yet you will add nothing but one +more trivial specimen to the common herd of American colleges, unless +you send into all this organization some breath of life, by inoculating +it with a few men, at least, who are real geniuses. And if you once +have the geniuses, you can easily dispense with most of the +organization. Like a contagious disease, almost, spiritual life passes +from man to man by contact. Education in the long run is an affair +that works itself out between the individual student and his +opportunities. Methods of which we talk so much, play but a minor +part. Offer the opportunities, leave the student to his natural +reaction on them, and he will work out his personal destiny, be it a +high one or a low one. Above all things, offer the opportunity of +higher personal contacts. A university provides these anyhow within +the student body, for it attracts the more aspiring of the youth of the +country, and they befriend and elevate one another. But we are only +beginning in this country, with our extraordinary American reliance on +organization, to see that the alpha and omega in a university is the +tone of it, and that this tone is set by human personalities +exclusively. The world, in fact, is only beginning to see that the +wealth of a nation consists more than in anything else in the number of +superior men that it harbors. In the practical realm it has always +recognized this, and known that no price is too high to pay for a great +statesman or great captain of industry. But it is equally so in the +religious and moral sphere, in the poetic and artistic sphere and in +the philosophic and scientific sphere. Geniuses are ferments; and when +they come together as they have done in certain lands at certain times, +the whole population seems to share in the higher energy which they +awaken. The effects are incalculable and often not easy to trace in +detail, but they are pervasive and momentous. Who can measure the +effects on the national German soul of the splendid series of German +poets and German men of learning, most of them academic personages? + +From the bare economic point of view the importance of geniuses is only +beginning to be appreciated. How can we measure the cash-value to +France of a Pasteur, to England of a Kelvin, to Germany of an Ostwald, +to us here of a Burbank? One main care of every country in the future +ought to be to find out who its first-rate thinkers are and to help +them. Cost here becomes something entirely irrelevant, the returns are +sure to be so incommensurable. This is what wise men the world over +are perceiving. And as the universities are already a sort of agency +providentially provided for the detection and encouragement of mental +superiority, it would seem as if that one among them that followed this +line most successfully would quickest rise to a position of paramountcy +and distinction. + +Why should not Stanford immediately adopt this as her vital policy? +Her position is one of unprecedented freedom. Not trammelled by the +service of the state as other universities on this coast are +trammelled, independent of students' fees and consequently of numbers, +Utopian in the material respects I have enumerated, she only needs a +boldness like that shown by her founders to become the seat of a +glowing intellectual life, sure to be admired and envied the world +over. Let her claim her place; let her espouse her destiny. Let her +call great investigators from whatever lands they live in, from +England, France, Germany, Japan, as well as from America. She can do +this without presumption, for the advantages of this place for steady +mental work are so unparalleled. Let these men, following the happy +traditions of the place, make the university. The original foundation +had something eccentric in it; let Stanford not fear to be eccentric to +the end, if need be. Let her not imitate; let her lead, not follow. +Especially let her not be bound by vulgar traditions as to the +cheapness or dearness of professorial service. The day is certainly +about to dawn when some American university will break all precedents +in the matter of instructors' salaries, and will thereby immediately +take the lead, and reach the winning post for quality. I like to think +of Stanford being that university. Geniuses are sensitive plants, in +some respects like _prima donnas_. They have to be treated tenderly. +They don't need to live in superfluity; but they need freedom from +harassing care; they need books and instruments; they are always +overworking, so they need generous vacations; and above all things they +need occasionally to travel far and wide in the interests of their +souls' development. Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing +of supreme quality is cheap, whatever be the price one has to pay for +it. + +Considering all the conditions, the quality of Stanford has from the +first been astonishingly good both in the faculty and in the student +body. Can we not, as we sit here to-day, frame a vision of what it may +be a century hence, with the honors of the intervening years all rolled +up in its traditions? Not vast, but intense; less a place for teaching +youths and maidens than for training scholars; devoted to truth; +radiating influence; setting standards; shedding abroad the fruits of +learning; mediating between America and Asia, and helping the more +intellectual men of both continents to understand each other better. + +What a history! and how can Stanford ever fail to enter upon it? + + + +[1] An Address at Stanford University on Founders' Day, 1906. Printed +in _Science_, for May 25, 1906. + + + + +XV + +A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC[1] + +Not for the ignoble vulgar do I write this article, but only for those +dialectic-mystic souls who have an irresistible taste, acquired or +native, for higher flights of metaphysics. I have always held the +opinion that one of the first duties of a good reader is to summon +other readers to the enjoyment of any unknown author of rare quality +whom he may discover in his explorations. Now for years my own taste, +literary as well as philosophic, has been exquisitely titillated by a +writer the name of whom I think must be unknown to the readers of this +article; so I no longer continue silent about the merits of Benjamin +Paul Blood. + +Mr. Blood inhabits a city otherwise, I imagine, quite unvisited by the +Muses, the town called Amsterdam, situated on the New York Central +Railroad. What his regular or bread-winning occupation may be I know +not, but it can't have made him super-wealthy. He is an author only +when the fit strikes him, and for short spurts at a time; shy, +moreover, to the point of publishing his compositions only as private +tracts, or in letters to such far-from-reverberant organs of publicity +as the _Gazette_ or the _Recorder_ of his native Amsterdam, or the +_Utica Herald_ or the _Albany Times_. Odd places for such subtile +efforts to appear in, but creditable to American editors in these +degenerate days! Once, indeed, the lamented W. T. Harris of the old +"Journal of Speculative Philosophy" got wind of these epistles, and the +result was a revision of some of them for that review (_Philosophic +Reveries_, 1889). Also a couple of poems were reprinted from their +leaflets by the editor of _Scribner's Magazine_ ("The Lion of the +Nile," 1888, and| "Nemesis," 1899). But apart from these three dashes +before the footlights, Mr. Blood has kept behind the curtain all his +days.[2] + +The author's maiden adventure was the _Anoesthetic Revelation_, a +pamphlet printed privately at Amsterdam in 1874. I forget how it fell +into my hands, but it fascinated me so "weirdly" that I am conscious of +its having been one of the stepping-stones of my thinking ever since. +It gives the essence of Blood's philosophy, and shows most of the +features of his talent--albeit one finds in it little humor and no +verse. It is full of verbal felicity, felicity sometimes of precision, +sometimes of metaphoric reach; it begins with dialectic reasoning, of +an extremely Fichtean and Hegelian type, but it ends in a trumpet-blast +of oracular mysticism, straight from the insight wrought by +anaesthetics--of all things in the world--and unlike anything one ever +heard before. The practically unanimous tradition of "regular" +mysticism has been unquestionably _monistic_; and inasmuch as it is the +characteristic of mystics to speak, not as the scribes, but as men who +have "been there" and seen with their own eyes, I think that this +sovereign manner must have made some other pluralistic-minded students +hesitate, as I confess that it has often given pause to me. One cannot +criticise the vision of a mystic--one can but pass it by, or else +accept it as having some amount of evidential weight. I felt unable to +do either with a good conscience until I met with Mr. Blood. His +mysticism, which may, if one likes, be understood as monistic in this +earlier utterance, develops in the later ones a sort of "left-wing" +voice of defiance, and breaks into what to my ear has a radically +pluralistic sound. I confess that the existence of this novel brand of +mysticism has made my cowering mood depart. I feel now as if my own +pluralism were not without the kind of support which mystical +corroboration may confer. Morrison can no longer claim to be the only +beneficiary of whatever right mysticism may possess to lend _prestige_. + +This is my philosophic, as distinguished from my literary, interest, in +introducing Mr. Blood to this more fashionable audience: his +philosophy, however mystical, is in the last resort not dissimilar from +my own. I must treat him by "extracting" him, and simplify--certainly +all too violently--as I extract. He is not consecutive as a writer, +aphoristic and oracular rather; and being moreover sometimes dialectic, +sometimes poetic, and sometimes mystic in his manner; sometimes +monistic and sometimes pluralistic in his matter, I have to run my own +risk in making him orate _pro domo mea_, and I am not quite unprepared +to hear him say, in case he ever reads these pages, that I have +entirely missed his point. No matter; I will proceed. + + +I + +I will separate his diverse phases and take him first as a pure +dialectician. Dialectic thought of the Hegelian type is a whirlpool +into which some persons are sucked out of the stream which the +straightforward understanding follows. Once in the eddy, nothing but +rotary motion can go on. All who have been in it know the feel of its +swirl--they know thenceforward that thinking unreturning on itself is +but one part of reason, and that rectilinear mentality, in philosophy +at any rate, will never do. Though each one may report in different +words of his rotational experience, the experience itself is almost +childishly simple, and whosoever has been there instantly recognizes +other authentic reports. To have been in that eddy is a freemasonry of +which the common password is a "fie" on all the operations of the +simple popular understanding. + +In Hegel's mind the vortex was at its liveliest, and any one who has +dipped into Hegel will recognize Mr. Blood to be of the same tribe. +"That Hegel was pervaded by the great truth," Blood writes, "cannot be +doubted. The eyes of philosophy, if not set directly on him, are set +towards the region which he occupied. Though he may not be the final +philosopher, yet pull him out, and all the rest will be drawn into his +vacancy." + +Drawn into the same whirlpool, Mr. Blood means. Non-dialectic thought +takes facts as singly given, and accounts for one fact by another. But +when we think of "_all_ fact," we see that nothing of the nature of +fact can explain it, "for that were but one more added to the list of +things to be accounted for. . . . The beginning of curiosity, in the +philosophic sense," Mr. Blood again writes, "is the stare +[Transcriber's note: state?] of being at itself, in the wonder why +anything is at all, and what this being signifies. Naturally we first +assume the void, and then wonder how, with no ground and no fertility, +anything should come into it." We treat it as a positive nihility, "a +barrier from which all our batted balls of being rebound." + +Upon this idea Mr. Blood passes the usual transcendentalist criticism. +There _is_ no such separate opposite to being; yet we never think of +being as such--of pure being as distinguished from specific forms of +being--save as what stands relieved against this imaginary background. +Being has no _outline_ but that which non-being makes, and the two +ideas form an inseparable pair. "Each limits and defines the other. +Either would be the other in the same position, for here (where there +is as yet no question of content, but only of being itself) the +position is all and the content is nothing. Hence arose that paradox: +'Being is by nothing more real than not-being.'" + +"Popularly," Mr. Blood goes on, "we think of all that is as having got +the better of non-being. If all were not--_that_, we think, were easy: +there were no wonder then, no tax on ingenuity, nothing to be accounted +for. This conclusion is from the thinking which assumes all reality as +immediately given assumes knowledge as a simple physical light, rather +than as a distinction involving light and darkness equally. We assume +that if the light were to go out, the show would be ended (and so it +would); but we forget that if the darkness were to go out, that would +be equally calamitous. It were bad enough if the master had lost his +crayon, but the loss of the blackboard would be just as fatal to the +demonstration. Without darkness light would be useless--universal +light as blind as universal darkness. Universal thing and universal +no-thing were indistinguishable. Why, then, assume the positive, the +immediately affirmative, as alone the ingenious? Is not the mould as +shapely as the model? The original ingenuity does not show in bringing +light out of darkness, nor in bringing things out of nothing, but in +evolving, through the just opposition of light and darkness, this +wondrous picture, in which the black and white lines have equal +significance--in evolving from life and death at once, the conscious +spirit. . . . + +"It is our habit to think of life as dear, and of death as cheap +(though Tithonus found them otherwise), or, continuing the simile of +the picture, that paper is cheap while drawing is expensive; but the +engraver had a different estimation in one sense, for all his labor was +spent on the white ground, while he left untouched those parts of the +block which make the lines in the picture. If being and non-being are +both necessary to the presence of either, neither shall claim priority +or preference. Indeed, we may fancy an intelligence which, instead of +regarding things as simply owning entity, should regard chiefly their +background as affected by the holes which things are making in it. +Even so, the paper-maker might see your picture as intrusive!" + +Thus "does the negation of being appear as indispensable in the making +of it." But to anyone who should appeal to particular forms of being +to refute this paradox, Mr. Blood admits that "to say that a picture, +or any other sensuous thing, is the same as the want of it, were to +utter nonsense indeed: there is a difference equivalent to the whole +stuff and merit of the picture; but in so far as the picture can be +there for thought, as something either asserted or negated, its +presence or its absence are the same and indifferent. By _its_ absence +we do not mean the absence of anything else, nor absence in general; +and how, forsooth, does its absence differ from these other absences, +save by containing a complete description of the picture? The hole is +as round as the plug; and from our thought the 'picture' cannot get +away. The negation is specific and descriptive, and what it destroys +it preserves tor our conception." + +The result is that, whether it be taken generally or taken +specifically, all that which _either is or is not_ is or is not _by +distinction or opposition_. "And observe the life, the process, +through which this slippery doubleness endures. Let us suppose the +present tense, that gods and men and angels and devils march all +abreast in this present instant, and the only real time and date in the +universe is now. And what _is_ this instant now? Whatever else, it is +_process_--becoming and departing; with what between? Simply division, +difference; the present has no breadth for if it had, that which we +seek would be the middle of that breadth. There is no precipitate, as +on a stationary platform, of the process of becoming, no residuum of +the process of departing, but between the two is a curtain, _the +apparition of difference_, which is all the world." + +I am using my scissors somewhat at random on my author's paragraphs, +since one place is as good as another for entering a ring by, and the +expert reader will discern at once the authentic dialectic circling. +Other paragraphs show Mr. Blood as more Hegelian still, and thoroughly +idealistic:-- + +"Assume that knowing is distinguishing, and that distinction is of +difference; if one knows a difference, one knows it as of entities +which afford it, and which also he knows; and he must know the entities +and the difference apart,--one from the other. Knowing all this, he +should be able to answer the twin question, 'What is the difference +_between sameness and difference_?' It is a 'twin' question, because +the two terms are equal in the proposition, and each is full of the +other. . . . + +"Sameness has 'all the difference in the world'--from difference; and +difference is an entity as difference--it being identically that. They +are alike and different at once, since either is the other when the +observer would contrast it with the other; so that the sameness and the +difference are 'subjective,' are the property of the observer: his is +the 'limit' in their unlimited field. . . . + +"We are thus apprized that distinction involves and carries its own +identity; and that ultimate distinction--distinction in the last +analysis--is self-distinction, 'self-knowledge,' as we realize it +consciously every day. Knowledge is self-referred: to know is to know +that you know, and to be known as well. + +"'Ah! but _both in the same time_?' inquires the logician. A +subject-object knowing itself as a seamless unit, while yet its two +items show a real distinction: this passes all understanding." + +But the whole of idealism goes to the proof that the two sides _cannot_ +succeed one another in a time-process. "To say you know, and you know +that you know, is to add nothing in the last clause; it is as idle as +to say that you lie, and you know that you lie," for if you know it not +you lie not. + +Philosophy seeks to grasp totality, "but the power of grasping or +consenting to totality involves the power of thought to make itself its +own object. Totality itself may indeed be taken by the _naïve_ +intellect as an immediate topic, in the sense of being just an +_object_, but it cannot be just that; for the knower, as other or +opposite, would still be within that totality. The 'universe' by +definition must contain all opposition. If distinction should vanish, +what would remain? To what other could it change as a whole? How can +the loss of distinction make a _difference_? Any loss, at its utmost, +offers a new status with the old, but obviously it is too late now to +efface distinction by a _change_. There is no possible conjecture, but +such as carries with it the subjective that holds it; and when the +conjecture is of distinction in general, the subjective fills the void +with distinction of itself. The ultimate, ineffaceable distinction is +self-distinction, self-consciousness. . . . 'Thou art the unanswered +question, couldst see thy proper eye.' . . . The thought that must be +is the very thought of our experience; the ultimate opposition, the to +be _and_ not to be, is personality, spirit--somewhat that is in knowing +that it is, and is nothing else but this knowing in its vast +relations.[3] + +"Here lies the bed-rock; here the brain-sweat of twenty-five centuries +crystallizes to a jewel five words long: 'The Universe has No +Opposite.' For there the wonder of that which is, rests safe in the +perception that all things _are_ only through the opposition which is +their only fear." + +"The inevitable generally," in short, is exactly and identically that +which in point of fact is actually here. + +This is the familiar nineteenth-century development of Kant's +idealistic vision. To me it sounds monistic enough to charm the monist +in me unreservedly. I listen to the felicitously-worded concept-music +circling round itself, as on some drowsy summer noon one listens under +the pines to the murmuring of leaves and insects, and with as little +thought of criticism. + +But Mr. Blood strikes a still more vibrant note: "No more can be than +rationally is; and this was always true. There is no reason for what +is not; but for what there is reason, that is and ever was. Especially +is there no becoming of reason, and hence no reason for becoming, to a +sufficient intelligence. In the sufficient intelligence all things +always are, and are rational. To say there is something yet to be +which never was, not even in the sufficient intelligence wherein the +world is rational and not a blind and orphan waif, is to ignore all +reason. Aught that might be assumed as contingently coming to be could +only have 'freedom' for its origin; and 'freedom' has not fertility or +invention, and is not a reason for any special thing, but the very +vacuity of a ground for anything in preference to its room. Neither is +there in bare time any principle or originality where anything should +come or go. . . . + +"Such idealism enures greatly to the dignity and repose of man. No +blind fate, prior to what is, shall necessitate that all first be and +afterward be known, but knowledge is first, with fate in her own hands. +When we are depressed by the weight and immensity of the immediate, we +find in idealism a wondrous consolation. The alien positive, so vast +and overwhelming by itself, reduces its pretensions when the whole +negative confronts it on our side.[4] It matters little for its +greatness when an equal greatness is opposed. When one remembers that +the balance and motion of the planets are so delicate that the +momentary scowl of an eclipse may fill the heavens with tempest, and +even affect the very bowels of the earth--when we see a balloon, that +carries perhaps a thousand pounds, leap up a hundred feet at the +discharge of a sheet of note paper--or feel it stand deathly still in a +hurricane, because it goes with the hurricane, sides with it, and +ignores the rushing world below--we should realize that one tittle of +pure originality would outweigh this crass objective, and turn these +vast masses into mere breath and tissue-paper show." [5] + +But whose is the originality? There is nothing in what I am treating +as this phase of our author's thought to separate it from the +old-fashioned rationalism. There must be a reason for every fact; and +so much reason, so fact. The reason is always the whole foil and +background and negation of the fact, the whole remainder of reality. +"A man may feel good only by feeling better. . . . Pleasure is ever in +the company and contrast of pain; for instance, in thirsting and +drinking, the pleasure of the one is the exact measure of the pain of +the other, and they cease precisely together--otherwise the patient +would drink more. The black and yellow gonfalon of Lucifer is +indispensable in any spiritual picture." Thus do truth's two +components seem to balance, vibrating across the centre of +indifference; "being and non-being have equal value and cost," and +"mainly are convertible in their terms." [6] + +This sounds radically monistic; and monistic also is the first account +of the Ether-revelation, in which we read that "thenceforth each is +all, in God. . . . The One remains, the many change and pass; and +every one of us is the One that remains." + + +II + +It seems to me that any transcendental idealist who reads this article +ought to discern in the fragmentary utterances which I have quoted thus +far, the note of what he considers the truer dialectic profundity. He +ought to extend the glad hand of fellowship to Mr. Blood; and if he +finds him afterwards palavering with the enemy, he ought to count him, +not as a simple ignoramus or Philistine, but as a renegade and relapse. +He cannot possibly be treated as one who sins because he never has +known better, or as one who walks in darkness because he is +congenitally blind. + +Well, Mr. Blood, explain it as one may, does turn towards the darkness +as if he had never seen the light. Just listen for a moment to such +irrationalist deliverances on his part as these:-- + +"Reason is neither the first nor the last word in this world. Reason +is an equation; it gives but a pound for a pound. Nature is excess; +she is evermore, without cost or explanation. + + 'Is heaven so poor that _justice_ + Metes the bounty of the skies? + So poor that every blessing + Fills the debit of a cost? + That all process is returning? + And all gain is of the lost?' + +Go back into reason, and you come at last to fact, nothing more--a +given-ness, a something to wonder at and yet admit, like your own will. +And all these tricks for logicizing originality, self-relation, +absolute process, subjective contradiction, will wither in the breath +of the mystical tact; they will swirl down the corridors before the +besom of the everlasting Yea." + +Or again: "The monistic notion of a oneness, a centred wholeness, +ultimate purpose, or climacteric result of the world, has wholly given +way. Thought evolves no longer a centred whole, a One, but rather a +numberless many, adjust it how we will." + +Or still again: "The pluralists have talked philosophy to a +standstill--Nature is contingent, excessive and mystical essentially." + +Have we here contradiction simply, a man converted from one faith to +its opposite? Or is it only dialectic circling, like the opposite +points on the rim of a revolving disc, one moving up, one down, but +replacing one another endlessly, while the whole disc never moves? If +it be this latter--Mr. Blood himself uses the image--the dialectic is +too pure for me to catch: a deeper man must mediate the monistic with +the pluralistic Blood. Let my incapacity be castigated, if my +"Subject" ever reads this article, but let me treat him from now +onwards as the simply pluralistic mystic which my reading of the rest +of him suggests. I confess to some dread of my own fate at his hands. +In making so far an ordinary transcendental idealist of him, I have +taken liberties, running separate sentences together, inverting their +order, and even altering single words, for all which I beg pardon; but +in treating my author from now onwards as a pluralist, interpretation +is easier, and my hands can be less stained (if they _are_ stained) +with exegetic blood. + + +I have spoken of his verbal felicity, and alluded to his poetry. +Before passing to his mystic gospel, I will refresh the reader +(doubtless now fatigued with so much dialectic) by a sample of his +verse. "The Lion of the Nile" is an allegory of the "champion spirit +of the world" in its various incarnations. + +Thus it begins:-- + + "Whelped on the desert sands, and desert bred + From dugs whose sustenance was blood alone-- + A life translated out of other lives, + I grew the king of beasts; the hurricane + Leaned like a feather on my royal fell; + I took the Hyrcan tiger by the scruff + And tore him piecemeal; my hot bowels laughed + And my fangs yearned for prey. Earth was my lair: + I slept on the red desert without fear: + I roamed the jungle depths with less design + Than e'en to lord their solitude; on crags + That cringe from lightning--black and blasted fronts + That crouch beneath the wind-bleared stars, I told + My heart's fruition to the universe, + And all night long, roaring my fierce defy, + I thrilled the wilderness with aspen terrors, + And challenged death and life. . . ." + + +Again: + + "Naked I stood upon the raked arena + Beneath the pennants of Vespasian, + While seried thousands gazed--strangers from Caucasus, + Men of the Grecian Isles, and Barbary princes, + To see me grapple with the counterpart + Of that I had been--the raptorial jaws, + The arms that wont to crush with strength alone, + The eyes that glared vindictive.--Fallen there, + Vast wings upheaved me; from the Alpine peaks + Whose avalanches swirl the valley mists + And whelm the helpless cottage, to the crown + Of Chimborazo, on whose changeless jewels + The torrid rays recoil, with ne'er a cloud + To swathe their blistered steps, I rested not, + But preyed on all that ventured from the earth, + An outlaw of the heavens.--But evermore + Must death release me to the jungle shades; + And there like Samson's grew my locks again + In the old walks and ways, till scapeless fate + Won me as ever to the haunts of men, + Luring my lives with battle and with love." . . . + + +I quote less than a quarter of the poem, of which the rest is just as +good, and I ask: Who of us all handles his English vocabulary better +than Mr. Blood?[7] + +His proclamations of the mystic insight have a similar verbal power:-- + +"There is an invariable and reliable condition (or uncondition) ensuing +about the instant of recall from anaesthetic stupor to 'coming to,' in +which the genius of being is revealed. . . . No words may express the +imposing certainty of the patient that he is realizing the primordial +Adamic surprise of Life. + +"Repetition of the experience finds it ever the same, and as if it +could not possibly be otherwise. The subject resumes his normal +consciousness only to partially and fitfully remember its occurrence, +and to try to formulate its baffling import,--with but this consolatory +afterthought: that he has known the oldest truth, and that he has done +with human theories as to the origin, meaning, or destiny of the race. +He is beyond instruction in 'spiritual things.' . . . + +"It is the instant contrast of this 'tasteless water of souls' with +formal thought as we 'come to,' that leaves in the patient an +astonishment that the awful mystery of Life is at last but a homely and +a common thing, and that aside from mere formality the majestic and the +absurd are of equal dignity. The astonishment is aggravated as at a +thing of course, missed by sanity in overstepping, as in too foreign a +search, or with too eager an attention: as in finding one's spectacles +on one's nose, or in making in the dark a step higher than the stair. +My first experiences of this revelation had many varieties of emotion; +but as a man grows calm and determined by experience in general, so am +I now not only firm and familiar in this once weird condition, but +triumphant, divine. To minds of sanguine imagination there will be a +sadness in the tenor of the mystery, as if the key-note of the universe +were low; for no poetry, no emotion known to the normal sanity of man, +can furnish a hint of its primeval prestige, and its all-but appalling +solemnity; but for such as have felt sadly the instability of temporal +things there is a comfort of serenity and ancient peace; while for the +resolved and imperious spirit there are majesty and supremacy +unspeakable. Nor can it be long until all who enter the anaesthetic +condition (and there are hundreds every secular day) will be taught to +expect this revelation, and will date from its experience their +initiation into the Secret of Life. . . . + +"This has been my moral sustenance since I have known of it. In my +first printed mention of it I declared: 'The world is no more the alien +terror that was taught me. Spurning the cloud-grimed and still sultry +battlements whence so lately Jehovan thunders boomed, my gray gull +lifts her wing against the night fall, and takes the dim leagues with a +fearless eye.' And now, after twenty-seven years of this experience, +the wing is grayer, but the eye is fearless still, while I renew and +doubly emphasize that declaration. I know, as having known, the +meaning of Existence; the sane centre of the universe--at once the +wonder and the assurance of the soul." + + +After this rather literary interlude I return to Blood's philosophy +again. I spoke a while ago of its being an "irrationalistic" +philosophy in its latest phase. Behind every "fact" rationalism +postulates its "reason." Blood parodizes this demand in true +nominalistic fashion. "The goods are not enough, but they must have +the invoice with them. There must be a _name_, something to _read_. I +think of Dickens's horse that always fell down when they took him out +of the shafts; or of the fellow who felt weak when naked, but strong in +his overcoat." No bad mockery, this, surely, of rationalism's habit of +explaining things by putting verbal doubles of them beneath them as +their ground! + +"All that philosophy has sought as cause, or reason," he says, +"pluralism subsumes in the status and the given fact, where it stands +as plausible as it may ever hope to stand. There may be disease in the +presence of a question as well as in the lack of an answer. We do not +wonder so strangely at an ingenious and well-set-up effect, for we feel +such in ourselves; but a cause, reaching out beyond the verge [of fact] +and dangling its legs in nonentity, with the hope of a rational +foothold, should realize a strenuous life. Pluralism believes in truth +and reason, but only as mystically realized, as lived in experience. +Up from the breast of a man, up to his tongue and brain, comes a free +and strong determination, and he cries, originally, and in spite of his +whole nature and environment, 'I will.' This is the Jovian _fiat_, the +pure cause. This is reason; this or nothing shall explain the world +for him. For how shall he entertain a reason bigger than +himself? . . . Let a man stand fast, then, as an axis of the earth; +the obsequious meridians will bow to him, and gracious latitudes will +measure from his feet." + +This seems to be Blood's mystical answer to his own monistic statement +which I quoted above, that "freedom" has no fertility, and is no reason +for any special thing.[8] "Philosophy," Mr. Blood writes to me in a +letter, "is past. It was the long endeavor to logicize what we can +only realize practically or in immediate experience. I am more and +more impressed that Heraclitus insists on the equation of reason and +unreason, or chance, as well as of being and not-being, etc. This +throws the secret beyond logic, and makes mysticism outclass +philosophy. The insight that mystery,--the Mystery, as such is final, +is the hymnic word. If you use reason pragmatically, and deny it +absolutely, you can't be beaten; be assured of that. But the _Fact_ +remains, and of course the Mystery." [9] + +The "Fact," as I understand the writer here to mean it, remains in its +native disseminated shape. From every realized amount of fact some +other fact is _absent_, as being uninvolved. "There is nowhere more of +it consecutively, perhaps, than appears upon this present page." There +is, indeed, to put it otherwise, no more one all-enveloping fact than +there is one all-enveloping spire in an endlessly growing spiral, and +no more one all-generating fact than there is one central point in +which an endlessly converging spiral ends. Hegel's "bad infinite" +belongs to the eddy as well as to the line. "Progress?" writes our +author. "And to what? Time turns a weary and a wistful face; has he +not traversed an eternity? and shall another give the secret up? We +have dreamed of a climax and a consummation, a final triumph where a +world shall burn _en barbecue_; but there is not, cannot be, a purpose +of eternity; it shall pay mainly as it goes, or not at all. The show +is on; and what a show, if we will but give our attention! Barbecues, +bonfires, and banners? Not twenty worlds a minute would keep up our +bonfire of the sun; and what banners of our fancy could eclipse the +meteor pennants of the pole, or the opaline splendors of the +everlasting ice? . . . Doubtless we _are_ ostensibly progressing, but +there have been prosperity and highjinks before. Nineveh and Tyre, +Rome, Spain, and Venice also had their day. We are going, but it is a +question of our standing the pace. It would seem that the news must +become less interesting or tremendously more so--'a breath can make us, +as a breath has made.'" + +Elsewhere we read: "Variety, not uniformity, is more likely to be the +key to progress. The genius of being is whimsical rather than +consistent. Our strata show broken bones of histories all forgotten. +How can it be otherwise? There can be no purpose of eternity. It is +process all. The most sublime result, if it appeared as the ultimatum, +would go stale in an hour; it could not be endured." + +Of course from an intellectual point of view this way of thinking must +be classed as scepticism. "Contingency forbids any inevitable history, +and conclusions are absurd. Nothing in Hegel has kept the planet from +being blown to pieces." Obviously the mystical "security," the "apodal +sufficiency" yielded by the anaesthetic revelation, are very different +moods of mind from aught that rationalism can claim to father--more +active, prouder, more heroic. From his ether-intoxication Blood may +feel towards ordinary rationalists "as Clive felt towards those +millions of Orientals in whom honor had no part." On page 6, above, I +quoted from his "Nemesis"--"Is heaven so poor that justice," etc. The +writer goes on, addressing the goddess of "compensation" or rational +balance;-- + + "How shalt thou poise the courage + That covets all things hard? + How pay the love unmeasured + That could not brook reward? + How prompt self-loyal honor + Supreme above desire, + That bids the strong die for the weak, + The martyrs sing in fire? + Why do I droop in bower + And sigh in sacred hall? + Why stifle under shelter? + Yet where, through forest tall, + The breath of hungry winter + In stinging spray resolves, + I sing to the north wind's fury + And shout with the coarse-haired wolves? + + * * * * * * + + What of thy priests' confuting, + Of fate and form and law, + Of being and essence and counterpoise, + Of poles that drive and draw? + Ever some compensation, + Some pandering purchase still! + But the vehm of achieving reason + Is the all-patrician Will!" + + +Mr. Blood must manage to re-write the last two lines; but the contrast +of the two securities, his and the rationalist's, is plain enough. The +rationalist sees safe conditions. But Mr. Blood's revelation, whatever +the conditions be, helps him to stand ready for a life among them. In +this, his attitude seems to resemble that of Nietzsche's _amor fati_! +"Simply," he writes to me, "_we do not know_. But when we say we do +not know, we are not to say it weakly and meekly, but with confidence +and content. . . . Knowledge is and must ever be _secondary_, a +witness rather than a principal, or a 'principle'!--in the case. +Therefore mysticism for me!" + +"Reason," he prints elsewhere, "is but an item in the duplex potency of +the mystery, and behind the proudest consciousness that ever reigned, +Reason and Wonder blushed face to face. The legend sinks to burlesque +if in that great argument which antedates man and his mutterings, +Lucifer had not a fighting chance. . . . + +"It is given to the writer and to others for whom he is permitted to +speak--and we are grateful that it is the custom of gentlemen to +believe one another--that the highest thought is not a milk-and-water +equation of so much reason and so much result--'no school sum to be +cast up.' We have realized the highest divine thought of itself, and +there is in it as much of wonder as of certainty; inevitable, and +solitary and safe in one sense, but queer and cactus-like no less in +another sense, it appeals unutterably to experience alone. + +"There are sadness and disenchantment for the novice in these +inferences, as if the keynote of the universe were low, but experience +will approve them. Certainty is the root of despair. The inevitable +stales, while doubt and hope are sisters. Not unfortunately the +universe is wild--game flavored as a hawk's wing. Nature is miracle +all. She knows no laws; the same returns not, save to bring the +different. The slow round of the engraver's lathe gains but the +breadth of a hair, but the difference is distributed back over the +whole curve, never an instant true--ever not quite." + +"Ever not quite!"--this seems to wring the very last panting word out +of rationalistic philosophy's mouth. It is fit to be pluralism's +heraldic device. There is no complete generalization, no total point +of view, no all-pervasive unity, but everywhere some residual +resistance to verbalization, formulation, and discursification, some +genius of reality that escapes from the pressure of the logical finger, +that says "hands off," and claims its privacy, and means to be left to +its own life. In every moment of immediate experience is somewhat +absolutely original and novel. "We are the first that ever burst into +this silent sea." Philosophy must pass from words, that reproduce but +ancient elements, to life itself, that gives the integrally new. The +"inexplicable," the "mystery," as what the intellect, with its claim to +reason out reality, thinks that it is in duty bound to resolve, and the +resolution of which Blood's revelation would eliminate from the sphere +of our duties, remains; but it remains as something to be met and dealt +with by faculties more akin to our activities and heroisms and +willingnesses, than to our logical powers. This is the anesthetic +insight, according to our author. Let _my_ last word, then, speaking +in the name of intellectual philosophy, be _his_ word.--"There is no +conclusion. What has concluded, that we might conclude in regard to +it? There are no fortunes to be told, and there is no advice to be +given.--Farewell!" + + + +[1] Written during the early summer of 1910 and published in the +_Hibbert Journal_ for July of that year. + +[2] "Yes! Paul is quite a correspondent!" said a good citizen of +Amsterdam, from whom I inquired the way to Mr. Blood's dwelling many +years ago, after alighting from the train. I had sought to identify +him by calling him an "author," but his neighbor thought of him only as +a writer of letters to the journals I have named. + +[3] "How shall a man know he is alive--since in thought the knowing +constitutes the being alive, without knowing that thought (life) from +its opposite, and so knowing both, and so far as being is knowing, +being both? Each defines and relieves the other, each is impossible in +thought without the other; therefore each has no distinction save as +presently contrasting with the other, and each by itself is the same, +and nothing. Clearly, then, consciousness is neither of one nor of the +other nor of both, but a knowing subject perceiving them and itself +together and as one. . . . So, in coming out of the anaesthetic +exhilaration . . . we want to tell something; but the effort instantly +proves that something will stay back and do the telling--one must utter +one's own throat, one must eat one's own teeth, to express the being +that possesses one. The result is ludicrous and astounding at +once--astounding in the clear perception that this is the ultimate +mystery of life, and is given you as the old Adamic secret, which you +then feel that all intelligence must sometime know or have known; yet +ludicrous in its familiar simplicity, as somewhat that any man should +always perceive at his best, if his head were only level, but which in +our ordinary thinking has grown into a thousand creeds and theories +dignified as religion and philosophy." + +[4] Elsewhere Mr. Blood writes of the "force of the negative" +thus:--"As when a faded lock of woman's hair shall cause a man to cut +his throat in a bedroom at five o'clock in the morning; or when Albany +resounds with legislation, but a little henpecked judge in a dusty +office at Herkimer or Johnstown sadly writes across the page the word +'unconstitutional'--the glory of the Capitol has faded." + +[5] Elsewhere Blood writes:--"But what then, in the name of common +sense, _is_ the external world? If a dead man could answer he would +say Nothing, or as Macbeth said of the air-drawn dagger, 'there is no +such thing.' But a live man's answer might be in this way: What is the +multiplication table when it is not written down? It is a necessity of +thought; it was not created, it cannot but be; every intelligence which +goes to it, and thinks, must think in that form or think falsely. So +the universe is the static necessity of reason; it is not an object for +any intelligence to find, but it is half object and half subject; it +never cost anything as a whole; it never _was_ made, but always _is_ +made, in the Logos, or expression of reason--the Word; and slowly but +surely it will be understood and uttered in every intelligence, until +he is one with God or reason itself. As a man, for all he knows, or +has known, stands at any given instant the realization of only one +thought, while all the rest of him is invisibly linked to that in the +necessary form and concatenation of reason, so the man as a whole of +exploited thoughts is a moment in the front of the concatenated reason +of the universal whole; and this whole is personal only as it is +personally achieved. This is the Kingdom that is 'within you, and the +God which 'no man hath seen at any time.'" + +[6] There are passages in Blood that sound like a well-known essay by +Emerson. For instance:--"Experience burns into us the fact and the +necessity of universal compensation. The philosopher takes it from +Heraclitus, in the insight that everything exists through its opposite; +and the bummer comforts himself for his morning headache as only the +rough side of a square deal. We accept readily the doctrine that pain +and pleasure, evil and good, death and life, chance and reason, are +necessary equations--that there must be just as much of each as of its +other. + +"It grieves us little that this great compensation cannot at every +instant balance its beam on every individual centre, and dispense with +an under dog in every fight; we know that the parts must subserve the +whole; we have faith that our time will come; and if it comes not at +all in this world, our lack is a bid for immortality, and the most +promising argument for a world hereafter. 'Though He slay me, yet will +I trust in Him.' + +"This is the faith that baffles all calamity, and ensures genius and +patience in the world. Let not the creditor hasten the settlement: let +not the injured man hurry toward revenge; there is nothing that draws +bigger interest than a wrong, and to 'get the best of it' is ever in +some sense to get the worst." + +[7] Or what thinks the reader of the verbiage of these +verses?--addressed in a mood of human defiance to the cosmic Gods-- + + "Whose lightnings tawny leap from furtive lairs, + To helpless murder, while the ships go down + Swirled in the crazy stound, and mariners' prayers + Go up in noisome bubbles--such to them;-- + Or when they tramp about the central fires, + Bending the strata with aeonian tread + Till steeples totter, and all ways are lost,-- + Deem they of wife or child, or home or friend, + Doing these things as the long years lead on + Only to other years that mean no more, + That cure no ill, nor make for use or proof-- + Destroying ever, though to rear again." + +[8] I subjoin a poetic apostrophe of Mr. Blood's to freedom: + + "Let it ne'er be known. + If in some book of the Inevitable, + Dog-eared and stale, the future stands engrossed + E'en as the past. There shall be news in heaven, + And question in the courts thereof; and chance + Shall have its fling, e'en at the [ermined] bench. + + * * * * * * + + Ah, long ago, above the Indian ocean, + Where wan stars brood over the dreaming East, + I saw, white, liquid, palpitant, the Cross; + And faint and far came bells of Calvary + As planets passed, singing that they were saved, + Saved from themselves: but ever low Orion-- + For hunter too was I, born of the wild, + And the game flavor of the infinite + Tainted me to the bone--he waved me on, + On to the tangent field beyond all orbs, + Where form nor order nor continuance + Hath thought nor name; there unity exhales + In want of confine, and the protoplasm + May beat and beat, in aimless vehemence, + Through vagrant spaces, homeless and unknown. + + * * * * * * + + There ends One's empire!--but so ends not all; + One knows not all; my griefs at least are mine-- + By me their measure, and to me their lesson; + E'en I am one--(poor deuce to call the Ace!) + And to the open bears my gonfalon, + Mine aegis, Freedom!--Let me ne'er look back + Accusing, for the withered leaves and lives + The sated past hath strewn, the shears of fate, + But forth to braver days. + O, Liberty, + Burthen of every sigh!--thou gold of gold, + Beauty of the beautiful, strength of the strong! + My soul for ever turns agaze for thee. + There is no purpose of eternity + For faith or patience; but thy buoyant torch + Still lighted from the Islands of the Blest, + O'erbears all present for potential heavens + Which are not--ah, so more than all that are! + Whose chance postpones the ennui of the skies! + Be thou my genius--be my hope in thee! + For this were heaven: to be, and to be free." + +[9] In another letter Mr. Blood writes:--"I think we are through with +'the Whole,' and with '_causa sui_,' and with the 'negative unity' +which assumes to identify each thing as being what it lacks of +everything else. You can, of course, build out a chip by modelling the +sphere it was chipped from;--but if it was n't a sphere? What a +weariness it is to look back over the twenty odd volumes of the +'Journal of Speculative Philosophy' and see Harris's mind wholly filled +by that one conception of self-determination--everything to be thought +as 'part of a system'--a 'whole' and '_causa sui_.'--I should like to +see such an idea get into the head of Edison or George Westinghouse." + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMORIES AND STUDIES*** + + +******* This file should be named 20768-8.txt or 20768-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/7/6/20768 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://www.gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: +http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/20768-8.zip b/20768-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b9079c5 --- /dev/null +++ b/20768-8.zip diff --git a/20768.txt b/20768.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c97267e --- /dev/null +++ b/20768.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6969 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Memories and Studies, by William James, +Edited by Henry James, Jr. + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Memories and Studies + + +Author: William James + +Editor: Henry James, Jr. + +Release Date: March 8, 2007 [eBook #20768] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMORIES AND STUDIES*** + + +E-text prepared by Al Haines + + + +MEMORIES AND STUDIES + +by + +WILLIAM JAMES + + + + + + + +Longmans, Green, and Co. +Fourth Avenue and 30th Street, New York +London, Bombay, and Calcutta +1911 + +Copyright, 1911, by Henry James Jr. +All Rights Reserved + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + +Professor William James formed the intention +shortly before his death of republishing a number +of popular addresses and essays under the title +which this book now bears; but unfortunately he +found no opportunity to attend to any detail of the +book himself, or to leave definite instructions for +others. I believe, however, that I have departed +in no substantial degree from my father's idea, +except perhaps by including two or three short +pieces which were first addressed to special +occasions or audiences and which now seem clearly +worthy of republication in their original form, +although he might not have been willing to reprint +them himself without the recastings to which he was +ever most attentive when preparing for new readers. +Everything in this volume has already appeared in +print in magazines or otherwise, and definite +acknowledgements are hereinafter made in the +appropriate places. Comparison with the original texts +will disclose slight variations in a few passages, and +it is therefore proper to explain that in these +passages the present text follows emendations of the +original which have survived in the author's own +handwriting. + +HENRY JAMES, JR. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + I. LOUIS AGASSIZ + II. ADDRESS AT THE EMERSON CENTENARY IN CONCORD + III. ROBERT GOULD SHAW + IV. FRANCIS BOOTT + V. THOMAS DAVIDSON: A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE + VI. HERBERT SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY + VII. FREDERICK MYERS' SERVICES TO PSYCHOLOGY + VIII. FINAL IMPRESSIONS OF A PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER + IX. ON SOME MENTAL EFFECTS OF THE EARTHQUAKE + X. THE ENERGIES OF MEN + XI. THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR + XII. REMARKS AT THE PEACE BANQUET + XIII. THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED + XIV. THE UNIVERSITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL + THE PH. D. OCTOPUS + THE TRUE HARVARD + STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY + XV. A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC + + + + +I + +LOUIS AGASSIZ[1] + +It would be unnatural to have such an assemblage as this meet in the +Museum and Faculty Room of this University and yet have no public word +spoken in honor of a name which must be silently present to the minds +of all our visitors. + +At some near future day, it is to be hoped some one of you who is well +acquainted with Agassiz's scientific career will discourse here +concerning it,--I could not now, even if I would, speak to you of that +of which you have far more intimate knowledge than I. On this social +occasion it has seemed that what Agassiz stood for in the way of +character and influence is the more fitting thing to commemorate, and +to that agreeable task I have been called. He made an impression that +was unrivalled. He left a sort of popular myth--the Agassiz legend, as +one might say--behind him in the air about us; and life comes kindlier +to all of us, we get more recognition from the world, because we call +ourselves naturalists,--and that was the class to which he also +belonged. + +The secret of such an extraordinarily effective influence lay in the +equally extraordinary mixture of the animal and social gifts, the +intellectual powers, and the desires and passions of the man. From his +boyhood, he looked on the world as if it and he were made for each +other, and on the vast diversity of living things as if he were there +with authority to take mental possession of them all. His habit of +collecting began in childhood, and during his long life knew no bounds +save those that separate the things of Nature from those of human art. +Already in his student years, in spite of the most stringent poverty, +his whole scheme of existence was that of one predestined to greatness, +who takes that fact for granted, and stands forth immediately as a +scientific leader of men. + +His passion for knowing living things was combined with a rapidity of +observation, and a capacity to recognize them again and remember +everything about them, which all his life it seemed an easy triumph and +delight for him to exercise, and which never allowed him to waste a +moment in doubts about the commensurability of his powers with his +tasks. If ever a person lived by faith, he did. When a boy of twenty, +with an allowance of two hundred and fifty dollars a year, he +maintained an artist attached to his employ, a custom which never +afterwards was departed from,--except when he maintained two or three. +He lectured from the very outset to all those who would hear him. "I +feel within myself the strength of a whole generation," he wrote to his +father at that time, and launched himself upon the publication of his +costly "Poissons Fossiles" with no clear vision of the quarter from +whence the payment might be expected to come. + +At Neuchatel (where between the ages of twenty-five and thirty he +enjoyed a stipend that varied from four hundred to six hundred dollars) +he organized a regular academy of natural history, with its museum, +managing by one expedient or another to employ artists, secretaries, +and assistants, and to keep a lithographic and printing establishment +of his own employed with the work that he put forth. Fishes, fossil +and living, echinoderms and glaciers, transfigured themselves under his +hand, and at thirty he was already at the zenith of his reputation, +recognized by all as one of those naturalists in the unlimited sense, +one of those folio copies of mankind, like Linnaeus and Cuvier, who aim +at nothing less than an acquaintance with the whole of animated Nature. +His genius for classifying was simply marvellous; and, as his latest +biographer says, nowhere had a single person ever given so decisive an +impulse to natural history. + +Such was the human being who on an October morning fifty years ago +disembarked at our port, bringing his hungry heart along with him, his +confidence in his destiny, and his imagination full of plans. The only +particular resource he was assured of was one course of Lowell +Lectures. But of one general resource he always was assured, having +always counted on it and never found it to fail,--and that was the good +will of every fellow-creature in whose presence he could find an +opportunity to describe his aims. His belief in these was so intense +and unqualified that he could not conceive of others not feeling the +furtherance of them to be a duty binding also upon them. _Velle non +discitur_, as Seneca says:--Strength of desire must be born with a man, +it can't be taught. And Agassiz came before one with such enthusiasm +glowing in his countenance,--such a persuasion radiating from his +person that his projects were the sole things really fit to interest +man as man,--that he was absolutely irresistible. He came, in Byron's +words, with victory beaming from his breast, and every one went down +before him, some yielding him money, some time, some specimens, and +some labor, but all contributing their applause and their godspeed. +And so, living among us from month to month and from year to year, with +no relation to prudence except his pertinacious violation of all her +usual laws, he on the whole achieved the compass of his desires, +studied the geology and fauna of a continent, trained a generation of +zoologists, founded one of the chief museums of the world, gave a new +impulse to scientific education in America, and died the idol of the +public, as well as of his circle of immediate pupils and friends. + +The secret of it all was, that while his scientific ideals were an +integral part of his being, something that he never forgot or laid +aside, so that wherever he went he came forward as "the Professor," and +talked "shop" to every person, young or old, great or little, learned +or unlearned, with whom he was thrown, he was at the same time so +commanding a presence, so curious and inquiring, so responsive and +expansive, and so generous and reckless of himself and of his own, that +every one said immediately, "Here is no musty savant, but a man, a +great man, a man on the heroic scale, not to serve whom is avarice and +sin." He elevated the popular notion of what a student of Nature could +be. Since Benjamin Franklin, we had never had among us a person of +more popularly impressive type. He did not wait for students to come +to him; he made inquiry for promising youthful collectors, and when he +heard of one, he wrote, inviting and urging him to come. Thus there is +hardly one now of the American naturalists of my generation whom +Agassiz did not train. Nay, more; he said to every one that a year or +two of natural history, studied as he understood it, would give the +best training for any kind of mental work. Sometimes he was amusingly +_naif_ in this regard, as when he offered to put his whole Museum at +the disposition of the Emperor of Brazil if he would but come and labor +there. And I well remember how certain officials of the Brazilian +empire smiled at the cordiality with which he pressed upon them a +similar invitation. But it had a great effect. Natural history must +indeed be a godlike pursuit, if such a man as this can so adore it, +people said; and the very definition and meaning of the word naturalist +underwent a favorable alteration in the common mind. + +Certain sayings of Agassiz's, as the famous one that he "had no time +for making money," and his habit of naming his occupation simply as +that of "teacher," have caught the public fancy, and are permanent +benefactions. We all enjoy more consideration for the fact that he +manifested himself here thus before us in his day. + +He was a splendid example of the temperament that looks forward and not +backward, and never wastes a moment in regrets for the irrevocable. I +had the privilege of admission to his society during the Thayer +expedition to Brazil. I well remember at night, as we all swung in our +hammocks in the fairy-like moonlight, on the deck of the steamer that +throbbed its way up the Amazon between the forests guarding the stream +on either side, how he turned and whispered, "James, are you awake?" +and continued, "_I_ cannot sleep; I am too happy; I keep thinking of +these glorious plans." The plans contemplated following the Amazon to +its headwaters, and penetrating the Andes in Peru. And yet, when he +arrived at the Peruvian frontier and learned that that country had +broken into revolution, that his letters to officials would be useless, +and that that part of the project must be given up, although he was +indeed bitterly chagrined and excited for part of an hour, when the +hour had passed over it seemed as if he had quite forgotten the +disappointment, so enthusiastically was he occupied already with the +new scheme substituted by his active mind. + +Agassiz's influence on methods of teaching in our community was prompt +and decisive,--all the more so that it struck people's imagination by +its very excess. The good old way of committing printed abstractions +to memory seems never to have received such a shock as it encountered +at his hands. There is probably no public school teacher now in New +England who will not tell you how Agassiz used to lock a student up in +a room full of turtle shells, or lobster shells, or oyster shells, +without a book or word to help him, and not let him out till he had +discovered all the truths which the objects contained. Some found the +truths after weeks and months of lonely sorrow; others never found +them. Those who found them were already made into naturalists +thereby--the failures were blotted from the book of honor and of life. +"Go to Nature; take the facts into your own hands; look, and see for +yourself!"--these were the maxims which Agassiz preached wherever he +went, and their effect on pedagogy was electric. The extreme rigor of +his devotion to this concrete method of learning was the natural +consequence of his own peculiar type of intellect, in which the +capacity for abstraction and causal reasoning and tracing chains of +consequences from hypotheses was so much less developed than the genius +for acquaintance with vast volumes of detail, and for seizing upon +analogies and relations of the more proximate and concrete kind. While +on the Thayer expedition, I remember that I often put questions to him +about the facts of our new tropical habitat, but I doubt if he ever +answered one of these questions of mine outright. He always said: +"There, you see you have a definite problem; go and look and find the +answer for yourself." His severity in this line was a living rebuke to +all abstractionists and would-be biological philosophers. More than +once have I heard him quote with deep feeling the lines from Faust: + + "Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie. + Und grun des Lebens goldner Baum." + +The only man he really loved and had use for was the man who could +bring him facts. To see facts, not to argue or _raisonniren_, was what +life meant for him; and I think he often positively loathed the +ratiocinating type of mind. "Mr. Blank, you are _totally_ uneducated!" +I heard him once say to a student who propounded to him some glittering +theoretic generality. And on a similar occasion he gave an admonition +that must have sunk deep into the heart of him to whom it was +addressed. "Mr. X, some people perhaps now consider you a bright young +man; but when you are fifty years old, if they ever speak of you then, +what they will say will be this: 'That X,--oh, yes, I know him; he used +to be a very bright young man!'" Happy is the conceited youth who at +the proper moment receives such salutary cold water therapeutics as +this from one who, in other respects, is a kind friend. We cannot all +escape from being abstractionists. I myself, for instance, have never +been able to escape; but the hours I spent with Agassiz so taught me +the difference between all possible abstractionists and all livers in +the light of the world's concrete fulness, that I have never been able +to forget it. Both kinds of mind have their place in the infinite +design, but there can be no question as to which kind lies the nearer +to the divine type of thinking. + +Agassiz's view of Nature was saturated with simple religious feeling, +and for this deep but unconventional religiosity he found at Harvard +the most sympathetic possible environment. In the fifty years that +have sped since he arrived here our knowledge of Nature has penetrated +into joints and recesses which his vision never pierced. The causal +elements and not the totals are what we are now most passionately +concerned to understand; and naked and poverty-stricken enough do the +stripped-out elements and forces occasionally appear to us to be. But +the truth of things is after all their living fulness, and some day, +from a more commanding point of view than was possible to any one in +Agassiz's generation, our descendants, enriched with the spoils of all +our analytic investigations, will get round again to that higher and +simpler way of looking at Nature. Meanwhile as we look back upon +Agassiz, there floats up a breath as of life's morning, that makes the +work seem young and fresh once more. May we all, and especially may +those younger members of our association who never knew him, give a +grateful thought to his memory as we wander through that Museum which +he founded, and through this University whose ideals he did so much to +elevate and define. + + + +[1] Words spoken at the reception of the American Society of +Naturalists by the President and Fellows of Harvard College at +Cambridge, December 30, 1896. Printed in _Science_, N. S. V. 285. + + + + +II + +ADDRESS AT THE EMERSON CENTENARY IN CONCORD[1] + +The pathos of death is this, that when the days of one's life are +ended, those days that were so crowded with business and felt so heavy +in their passing, what remains of one in memory should usually be so +slight a thing. The phantom of an attitude, the echo of a certain mode +of thought, a few pages of print, some invention, or some victory we +gained in a brief critical hour, are all that can survive the best of +us. It is as if the whole of a man's significance had now shrunk into +the phantom of an attitude, into a mere musical note or phrase +suggestive of his singularity--happy are those whose singularity gives +a note so clear as to be victorious over the inevitable pity of such a +diminution and abridgment. + +An ideal wraith like this, of Emerson's personality, hovers over all +Concord to-day, taking, in the minds of those of you who were his +neighbors and intimates a somewhat fuller shape, remaining more +abstract in the younger generation, but bringing home to all of us the +notion of a spirit indescribably precious. The form that so lately +moved upon these streets and country roads, or awaited in these fields +and woods the beloved Muse's visits, is now dust; but the soul's note, +the spiritual voice, rises strong and clear above the uproar of the +times, and seems securely destined to exert an ennobling influence over +future generations. + +What gave a flavor so matchless to Emerson's individuality was, even +more than his rich mental gifts, their singularly harmonious +combination. Rarely has a man so accurately known the limits of his +genius or so unfailingly kept within them. "Stand by your order," he +used to say to youthful students; and perhaps the paramount impression +one gets of his life is of his loyalty to his own personal type and +mission. The type was that of what he liked to call the scholar, the +perceiver of pure truth; and the mission was that of the reporter in +worthy form of each perception. The day is good, he said, in which we +have the most perceptions. There are times when the cawing of a crow, +a weed, a snowflake, or a farmer planting in his field become symbols +to the intellect of truths equal to those which the most majestic +phenomena can open. Let me mind my own charge, then, walk alone, +consult the sky, the field and forest, sedulously waiting every morning +for the news concerning the structure of the universe which the good +Spirit will give me. + +This was the first half of Emerson, but only half; for genius, as he +said, is insatiate for expression, and truth has to be clad in the +right verbal garment. The form of the garment was so vital with +Emerson that it is impossible to separate it from the matter. They +form a chemical combination--thoughts which would be trivial expressed +otherwise, are important through the nouns and verbs to which he +married them. The style is the man, it has been said; the man +Emerson's mission culminated in his style, and if we must define him in +one word, we have to call him Artist. He was an artist whose medium +was verbal and who wrought in spiritual material. + +This duty of spiritual seeing and reporting determined the whole tenor +of his life. It was to shield this duty from invasion and distraction +that he dwelt in the country, that he consistently declined to entangle +himself with associations or to encumber himself with functions which, +however he might believe in them, he felt were duties for other men and +not for him. Even the care of his garden, "with its stoopings and +fingerings in a few yards of space," he found "narrowing and +poisoning," and took to long free walks and saunterings instead, +without apology. "Causes" innumerable sought to enlist him as their +"worker"--all got his smile and word of sympathy, but none entrapped +him into service. The struggle against slavery itself, deeply as it +appealed to him, found him firm: "God must govern his own world, and +knows his way out of this pit without my desertion of my post, which +has none to guard it but me. I have quite other slaves to face than +those Negroes, to wit, imprisoned thoughts far back in the brain of +man, and which have no watchman or lover or defender but me." This in +reply to the possible questions of his own conscience. To hot-blooded +moralists with more objective ideas of duty, such a fidelity to the +limits of his genius must often have made him seem provokingly remote +and unavailable; but we, who can see things in more liberal +perspective, must unqualifiably approve the results. The faultless +tact with which he kept his safe limits while he so dauntlessly +asserted himself within them, is an example fitted to give heart to +other theorists and artists the world over. + +The insight and creed from which Emerson's life followed can be best +summed up in his own verses: + + "So nigh is grandeur to our dust, + So near is God to man!" + +Through the individual fact there ever shone for him the effulgence of +the Universal Reason. The great Cosmic Intellect terminates and houses +itself in mortal men and passing hours. Each of us is an angle of its +eternal vision, and the only way to be true to our Maker is to be loyal +to ourselves. "O rich and various Man!" he cries, "thou palace of +sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and the night and +the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain the geometry of the city of God; +in thy heart the bower of love and the realms of right and wrong." + +If the individual open thus directly into the Absolute, it follows that +there is something in each and all of us, even the lowliest, that ought +not to consent to borrowing traditions and living at second hand. "If +John was perfect, why are you and I alive?" Emerson writes; "As long as +any man exists there is some need of him; let him fight for his own." +This faith that in a life at first hand there is something sacred is +perhaps the most characteristic note in Emerson's writings. The +hottest side of him is this non-conformist persuasion, and if his +temper could ever verge on common irascibility, it would be by reason +of the passionate character of his feelings on this point. The world +is still new and untried. In seeing freshly, and not in hearing of +what others saw, shall a man find what truth is. "Each one of us can +bask in the great morning which rises out of the Eastern Sea, and be +himself one of the children of the light." "Trust thyself, every heart +vibrates to that iron string. There is a time in each man's education +when he must arrive at the conviction that imitation is suicide; when +he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; and know that +though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn +can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground +which it was given him to till." + +The matchless eloquence with which Emerson proclaimed the sovereignty +of the living individual electrified and emancipated his generation, +and this bugle-blast will doubtless be regarded by future critics as +the soul of his message. The present man is the aboriginal reality, +the Institution is derivative, and the past man is irrelevant and +obliterate for present issues. "If anyone would lay an axe to your +tree with a text from 1 John, v, 7, or a sentence from Saint Paul, say +to him," Emerson wrote, "'My tree is Yggdrasil, the tree of life.' Let +him know by your security that your conviction is clear and sufficient, +and, if he were Paul himself, that you also are here and with your +Creator." "Cleave ever to God," he insisted, "against the name of +God;"--and so, in spite of the intensely religious character of his +total thought, when he began his career it seemed to many of his +brethren in the clerical profession that he was little more than an +iconoclast and desecrator. + +Emerson's belief that the individual must in reason be adequate to the +vocation for which the Spirit of the world has called him into being, +is the source of those sublime pages, hearteners and sustainers of our +youth, in which he urges his hearers to be incorruptibly true to their +own private conscience. Nothing can harm the man who rests in his +appointed place and character. Such a man is invulnerable; he balances +the universe, balances it as much by keeping small when he is small, as +by being great and spreading when he is great. "I love and honor +Epaminondas," said Emerson, "but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. I +hold it more just to love the world of this hour than the world of his +hour. Nor can you, if I am true, excite me to the least uneasiness by +saying, 'He acted and thou sittest still.' I see action to be good +when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. Epaminondas, if +he was the man I take him for, would have sat still with joy and peace, +if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and affords space for all +modes of love and fortitude." "The fact that I am here certainly shows +me that the Soul has need of an organ here, and shall I not assume the +post?" + +The vanity of all superserviceableness and pretence was never more +happily set forth than by Emerson in the many passages in which he +develops this aspect of his philosophy. Character infallibly proclaims +itself. "Hide your thoughts!--hide the sun and moon. They publish +themselves to the universe. They will speak through you though you +were dumb. They will flow out of your actions, your manners and your +face. . . . Don't say things: What you are stands over you the while +and thunders so that I cannot say what you say to the contrary. . . . +What a man _is_ engraves itself upon him in letters of light. +Concealment avails him nothing, boasting nothing. There is confession +in the glances of our eyes; in our smiles; in salutations; and the +grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs him, mars all his good impression. +Men know not why they do not trust him, but they do not trust him. His +vice glasses the eye, casts lines of mean expression in the cheek, +pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast upon the back of the head, +and writes, O fool! fool! on the forehead of a king. If you would not +be known to do a thing, never do it; a man may play the fool in the +drifts of a desert, but every grain of sand shall seem to see.--How can +a man be concealed? How can he be concealed?" + +On the other hand, never was a sincere word or a sincere thought +utterly lost. "Never a magnanimity fell to the ground but there is +some heart to greet and accept it unexpectedly. . . . The hero fears +not that if he withstood the avowal of a just and brave act, it will go +unwitnessed and unloved. One knows it,--himself,--and is pledged by it +to sweetness of peace and to nobleness of aim, which will prove in the +end a better proclamation than the relating of the incident." + +The same indefeasible right to be exactly what one is, provided one +only be authentic, spreads itself, in Emerson's way of thinking, from +persons to things and to times and places. No date, no position is +insignificant, if the life that fills it out be only genuine:-- + +"In solitude, in a remote village, the ardent youth loiters and mourns. +With inflamed eye, in this sleeping wilderness, he has read the story +of the Emperor, Charles the Fifth, until his fancy has brought home to +the surrounding woods the faint roar of cannonades in the Milanese, and +marches in Germany. He is curious concerning that man's day. What +filled it? The crowded orders, the stern decisions, the foreign +despatches, the Castilian etiquette? The soul answers--Behold his day +here! In the sighing of these woods, in the quiet of these gray +fields, in the cool breeze that sings out of these northern mountains; +in the workmen, the boys, the maidens you meet,--in the hopes of the +morning, the ennui of noon, and sauntering of the afternoon; in the +disquieting comparisons; in the regrets at want of vigor; in the great +idea and the puny execution,--behold Charles the Fifth's day; another, +yet the same; behold Chatham's, Hampden's, Bayard's, Alfred's, +Scipio's, Pericles's day,--day of all that are born of women. The +difference of circumstance is merely costume. I am tasting the +self-same life,--its sweetness, its greatness, its pain, which I so +admire in other men. Do not foolishly ask of the inscrutable, +obliterated past what it cannot tell,--the details of that nature, of +that day, called Byron or Burke;--but ask it of the enveloping +Now. . . . Be lord of a day, and you can put up your history books." + +"The deep to-day which all men scorn," receives thus from Emerson +superb revindication. "Other world! there is no other world." All +God's life opens into the individual particular, and here and now, or +nowhere, is reality. "The present hour is the decisive hour, and every +day is doomsday." + +Such a conviction that Divinity is everywhere may easily make of one an +optimist of the sentimental type that refuses to speak ill of anything. +Emerson's drastic perception of differences kept him at the opposite +pole from this weakness. After you have seen men a few times, he could +say, you find most of them as alike as their barns and pantries, and +soon as musty and as dreary. Never was such a fastidious lover of +significance and distinction, and never an eye so keen for their +discovery. His optimism had nothing in common with that indiscriminate +hurrahing for the Universe with which Walt Whitman has made us +familiar. For Emerson, the individual fact and moment were indeed +suffused with absolute radiance, but it was upon a condition that saved +the situation--they must be worthy specimens,--sincere, authentic, +archetypal; they must have made connection with what he calls the Moral +Sentiment, they must in some way act as symbolic mouthpieces of the +Universe's meaning. To know just which thing does act in this way, and +which thing fails to make the true connection, is the secret (somewhat +incommunicable, it must be confessed) of seership, and doubtless we +must not expect of the seer too rigorous a consistency. Emerson +himself was a real seer. He could perceive the full squalor of the +individual fact, but he could also see the transfiguration. He might +easily have found himself saying of some present-day agitator against +our Philippine conquest what he said of this or that reformer of his +own time. He might have called him, as a private person, a tedious +bore and canter. But he would infallibly have added what he then +added: "It is strange and horrible to say this, for I feel that under +him and his partiality and exclusiveness is the earth and the sea, and +all that in them is, and the axis round which the Universe revolves +passes through his body where he stands." + +Be it how it may, then, this is Emerson's revelation:--The point of any +pen can be an epitome of reality; the commonest person's act, if +genuinely actuated, can lay hold on eternity. This vision is the +head-spring of all his outpourings; and it is for this truth, given to +no previous literary artist to express in such penetratingly persuasive +tones, that posterity will reckon him a prophet, and, perhaps +neglecting other pages, piously turn to those that convey this message. +His life was one long conversation with the invisible divine, +expressing itself through individuals and particulars:--"So nigh is +grandeur to our dust, so near is God to man!" + +I spoke of how shrunken the wraith, how thin the echo, of men is after +they are departed? Emerson's wraith comes to me now as if it were but +the very voice of this victorious argument. His words to this effect +are certain to be quoted and extracted more and more as time goes on, +and to take their place among the Scriptures of humanity. "'Gainst +death and all oblivious enmity, shall you pace forth," beloved Master. +As long as our English language lasts men's hearts will be cheered and +their souls strengthened and liberated by the noble and musical pages +with which you have enriched it. + + + +[1] An Address delivered at the Centenary of the Birth of Ralph Waldo +Emerson in Concord, May 25, 1903, and printed in the published +proceedings of that meeting. + + + + +III + +ROBERT GOULD SHAW[1] + +Your Excellency, your Honor, Soldiers, and Friends: In these unveiling +exercises the duty falls to me of expressing in simple words some of +the feelings which have actuated the givers of St. Gaudens' noble work +of bronze, and of briefly recalling the history of Robert Shaw and of +his regiment to the memory of this possibly too forgetful generation. + +The men who do brave deeds are usually unconscious of their +picturesqueness. For two nights previous to the assault upon Fort +Wagner, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment had been afoot, making +forced marches in the rain; and on the day of the battle the men had +had no food since early morning. As they lay there in the evening +twilight, hungry and wet, against the cold sands of Morris Island, with +the sea-fog drifting over them, their eyes fixed on the huge bulk of +the fortress looming darkly three-quarters of a mile ahead against the +sky, and their hearts beating in expectation of the word that was to +bring them to their feet and launch them on their desperate charge, +neither officers nor men could have been in any holiday mood of +contemplation. Many and different must have been the thoughts that +came and went in them during that hour of bodeful reverie; but however +free the flights of fancy of some of them may have been, it is +improbable that any one who lay there had so wild and whirling an +imagination as to foresee in prophetic vision this morning of a future +May, when we, the people of a richer and more splendid Boston, with +mayor and governor, and troops from other States, and every +circumstance of ceremony, should meet together to celebrate their +conduct on that evening, and do their memory this conspicuous honor. + +How, indeed, comes it that out of all the great engagements of the war, +engagements in many of which the troops of Massachusetts had borne the +most distinguished part, this officer, only a young colonel, this +regiment of black men and its maiden battle,--a battle, moreover, which +was lost,--should be picked out for such unusual commemoration? + +The historic significance of an event is measured neither by its +material magnitude, nor by its immediate success. Thermopylae was a +defeat; but to the Greek imagination, Leonidas and his few Spartans +stood for the whole worth of Grecian life. Bunker Hill was a defeat; +but for our people, the fight over that breastwork has always seemed to +show as well as any victory that our forefathers were men of a temper +not to be finally overcome. And so here. The war for our Union, with +all the constitutional questions which it settled, and all the military +lessons which it gathered in, has throughout its dilatory length but +one meaning in the eye of history. And nowhere was that meaning better +symbolized and embodied than in the constitution of this first Northern +negro regiment. + +Look at the monument and read the story;--see the mingling of elements +which the sculptor's genius has brought so vividly before the eye. +There on foot go the dark outcasts, so true to nature that one can +almost hear them breathing as they march. State after State by its +laws had denied them to be human persons. The Southern leaders in +congressional debates, insolent in their security, loved most to +designate them by the contemptuous collective epithet of "this peculiar +kind of property." There they march, warm-blooded champions of a +better day for man. There on horseback, among them, in his very habit +as he lived, sits the blue-eyed child of fortune, upon whose happy +youth every divinity had smiled. Onward they move together, a single +resolution kindled in their eyes, and animating their otherwise so +different frames. The bronze that makes their memory eternal betrays +the very soul and secret of those awful years. + +Since the 'thirties the slavery question been the only question, and by +the end of 'fifties our land lay sick and shaking with it like a +traveller who has thrown himself down at night beside a pestilential +swamp, and in the morning finds the fever through the marrow of his +bones. "Only muzzle the Abolition fanatics," said the South, "and all +will be well again!" But the Abolitionists would not be muzzled,--they +were the voice of the world's conscience, they were a part of destiny. +Weak as they were, they drove the South to madness. "Every step she +takes in her blindness," said Wendell Phillips, "is one more step +towards ruin." And when South Carolina took the final step in +battering down Fort Sumter, it was the fanatics of slavery themselves +who called upon their idolized institution ruin swift and complete. +What law and reason were unable to accomplish, had now to be done by +that uncertain and dreadful dispenser of God's judgments, War--War, +with its abominably casual, inaccurate methods, destroying good and bad +together, but at last able to hew a way out of intolerable situations, +when through man's delusion of perversity every better way is blocked. + +Our great western republic had from its origin been a singular anomaly. +A land of freedom, boastfully so-called, with human slavery enthroned +at the heart of it, and at last dictating terms of unconditional +surrender to every other organ of its life, what was it but a thing of +falsehood and horrible self-contradiction? For three-quarters of a +century it had nevertheless endured, kept together by policy, +compromise, and concession. But at the last that republic was torn in +two; and truth was to be possible under the flag. Truth, thank God, +truth! even though for the moment it must be truth written in hell-fire. + +And this, fellow-citizens, is why, after the great generals have had +their monuments, and long after the abstract soldier's-monuments have +been reared on every village green, we have chosen to take Robert Shaw +and his regiment as the subjects of the first soldier's-monument to be +raised to a particular set of comparatively undistinguished men. The +very lack of external complication in the history of these soldiers is +what makes them represent with such typical purity the profounder +meaning of the Union cause. + +Our nation had been founded in what we may call our American religion, +baptized and reared in the faith that a man requires no master to take +care of him, and that common people can work out their salvation well +enough together if left free to try. But the founders had not dared to +touch the great intractable exception; and slavery had wrought until at +last the only alternative for the nation was to fight or die. What +Shaw and his comrades stand for and show us is that in such an +emergency Americans of all complexions and conditions can go forth like +brothers, and meet death cheerfully if need be, in order that this +religion of our native land shall not become a failure on earth. + +We of this Commonwealth believe in that religion; and it is not at all +because Robert Shaw was an exceptional genius, but simply because he +was faithful to it as we all may hope to be faithful in our measure +when the times demand, that we wish his beautiful image to stand here +for all time, an inciter to similarly unselfish public deeds. + +Shaw thought but little of himself, yet he had a personal charm which, +as we look back on him, makes us repeat: "None knew thee but to love +thee, none named thee but to praise." This grace of nature was united +in him in the happiest way with a filial heart, a cheerful will, and a +judgment that was true and fair. And when the war came, and great +things were doing of the kind that he could help in, he went as a +matter of course to the front. What country under heaven has not +thousands of such youths to rejoice in, youths on whom the safety of +the human race depends? Whether or not they leave memorials behind +them, whether their names are writ in water or in marble, depends +mostly on the opportunities which the accidents of history throw into +their path. Shaw recognized the vital opportunity: he saw that the +time had come when the colored people must put the country in their +debt. + +Colonel Lee has just told us something about the obstacles with which +this idea had to contend. For a large party of us this was still +exclusively a white man's war; and should colored troops be tried and +not succeed, confusion would grow worse confounded. Shaw was a captain +in the Massachusetts Second, when Governor Andrew invited him to take +the lead in the experiment. He was very modest, and doubted, for a +moment, his own capacity for so responsible a post. We may also +imagine human motives whispering other doubts. Shaw loved the Second +Regiment, illustrious already, and was sure of promotion where he +stood. In this new negro-soldier venture, loneliness was certain, +ridicule inevitable, failure possible; and Shaw was only twenty-five; +and, although he had stood among the bullets at Cedar Mountain and +Antietam, he had till then been walking socially on the sunny side of +life. But whatever doubts may have beset him, they were over in a day, +for he inclined naturally toward difficult resolves. He accepted the +proffered command, and from that moment lived but for one object, to +establish the honor of the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth. + +I have had the privilege of reading his letters to his family from the +day of April when, as a private in the New York Seventh, he obeyed the +President's first call. Some day they must be published, for they form +a veritable poem for serenity and simplicity of tone. He took to camp +life as if it were his native element, and (like so many of our young +soldiers) he was at first all eagerness to make arms his permanent +profession. Drilling and disciplining; interminable marching and +counter-marching, and picket-duty on the Upper Potomac as lieutenant in +our Second Regiment, to which post he had soon been promoted; pride at +the discipline attained by the Second, and horror at the bad discipline +of other regiments; these are the staple matter of earlier letters, and +last for many months. These, and occasional more recreative incidents, +visits to Virginian houses, the reading of books like Napier's +"Peninsular War," or the "Idylls of the King," Thanksgiving feats, and +races among officers, that helped the weary weeks to glide away. Then +the bloodier business opens, and the plot thickens till the end is +reached. From first to last there is not a rancorous word against the +enemy,--often quite the reverse,--and amid all the scenes of hardship, +death, and devastation that his pen soon has to write of, there is +unfailing cheerfulness and even a sort of innermost peace. + +After he left it, Robert Shaw's heart still clung to the fortunes of +the Second. Months later when, in South Carolina with the +Fifty-fourth, he writes to his young wife: "I should have been major of +the Second now if I had remained there and lived through the battles. +As regards my own pleasure, I had rather have that place than any other +in the army. It would have been fine to go home a field officer in +that regiment! Poor fellows, how they have been slaughtered!" + +Meanwhile he had well taught his new command how to do their duty; for +only three days after he wrote this he led them up the parapet of Fort +Wagner, where he and nearly half of them were left upon the ground. + +Robert Shaw quickly inspired others with his own love of discipline. +There was something almost pathetic in the earnestness with which both +the officers and men of the Fifty-fourth embraced their mission of +showing that a black regiment could excel in every virtue known to man. +They had good success, and the Fifty-fourth became a model in all +possible respects. Almost the only trace of bitterness in Shaw's whole +correspondence is over an incident in which he thought his men had been +morally disgraced. It had become their duty, immediately after their +arrival at the seat of war, to participate, in obedience to fanatical +orders from the head of the department, in the sack and burning of the +inoffensive little town of Darien on the Georgia coast. "I fear," he +writes to his wife, "that such actions will hurt the reputation of +black troops and of those connected with them. For myself I have gone +through the war so far without dishonor, and I do not like to +degenerate into a plunderer and a robber,--and the same applies to +every officer in my regiment. After going through the hard campaigning +and the hard fighting in Virginia, this makes me very much ashamed. +There are two courses only for me to pursue: to obey orders and say +nothing; or to refuse to go upon any more such expeditions, and be put +under arrest and probably court-martialled, which is a very serious +thing." Fortunately for Shaw, the general in command of that +department was almost immediately relieved. + +Four weeks of camp life and discipline on the Sea Islands, and the +regiment had its baptism of fire. A small affair, but it proved the +men to be staunch. Shaw again writes to his wife: "You don't know what +a fortunate day this has been for me and for us all, excepting some +poor fellows who were killed and wounded. We have fought at last +alongside of white troops. Two hundred of my men on picket this +morning were attacked by five regiments of infantry, some cavalry, and +a battery of artillery. The Tenth Connecticut were on their left, and +say they would have had a bad time if the Fifty-fourth men had not +stood so well. The whole division was under arms in fifteen minutes, +and after coming up close in front of us, the enemy, finding us so +strong, fell back. . . . General Terry sent me word he was highly +gratified with the behavior of our men, and the officers and privates +of other regiments praise us very much. All this is very gratifying to +us personally, and a fine thing for the colored troops. I know this +will give you pleasure for it wipes out the remembrance of the Darien +affair, which you could not but grieve over, though we were innocent +participators." + +The adjutant of the Fifty-fourth, who made report of this skirmish to +General Terry, well expresses the feelings of loneliness that still +prevailed in that command:-- + +"The general's favorite regiment," writes the adjutant,[2] "the +Twenty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry, one of the best that had so far +faced the rebel foe, largely officered by Boston men, was surrounding +his headquarters. It had been a living breathing suspicion with +us--perhaps not altogether justly--that all white troops abhorred our +presence in the army, and that the Twenty-fourth would rather hear of +us in some remote corner of the Confederacy than tolerate us in advance +of any battle in which they themselves were to act as reserves or +lookers-on. Can you not then readily imagine the pleasure which I felt +as I alighted from my horse before General Terry and his staff--I was +going to say his unfriendly staff, but of this I am not sure--to report +to him, with Colonel Shaw's compliments, that we had repulsed the enemy +without the loss of a single inch of ground. General Terry bade me +mount again and tell Colonel Shaw that he was proud of the conduct of +his men, and that he must still hold the ground against any future +sortie of the enemy. You can even now share with me the sensation of +that moment of soldierly satisfaction." + +The next night but one after this episode was spent by the Fifty-fourth +in disembarking on Morris Island in the rain, and at noon Colonel Shaw +was able to report their arrival to General Strong, to whose brigade he +was assigned. A terrific bombardment was playing on Fort Wagner, then +the most formidable earthwork ever built, and the general, knowing +Shaw's desire to place his men beside white troops, said to him: +"Colonel, Fort Wagner is to be stormed this evening, and you may lead +the column, if you say Yes. Your men, I know, are worn out, but do as +you choose." Shaw's face brightened. "Before answering the general, +he instantly turned to me," writes the adjutant, who reports the +interview, "and said, Tell Colonel Hallowell to bring up the +Fifty-fourth immediately.'" + +This was done, and just before nightfall the attack was made. Shaw was +serious, for he knew the assault was desperate, and had a premonition +of his end. Walking up and down in front of the regiment, he briefly +exhorted them to prove that they were men. Then he gave the order: +"Move in quick time till within a hundred yards, then double quick and +charge. Forward!" and the Fifty-fourth advanced to the storming, its +colonel and colors at its head. + +On over the sand, through a narrow defile which broke up the formation, +double quick over the chevaux de frise, into the ditch and over it, as +best they could, and up the rampart with Fort Sumter, which had seen +them, playing on them, and Fort Wagner, now one mighty mound of fire, +tearing out their lives. Shaw led from first to last. Gaining +successfully the parapet, he stood there for a moment with uplifted +sword, shouting, "Forward, Fifty-fourth!" and then fell headlong, with +a bullet through his heart. The battle raged for nigh two hours. +Regiment after regiment, following upon the Fifty-fourth, hurled +themselves upon its ramparts, but Fort Wagner was nobly defended, and +for that night stood safe. The Fifty-fourth withdrew after two-thirds +of its officers and five-twelfths or nearly half its men had been shot +down or bayoneted within the fortress or before its walls. It was good +behavior for a regiment, no one of whose soldiers had had a musket in +his hands more than eighteen weeks, and which had seen the enemy for +the first time only two days before. + +"The negroes fought gallantly," wrote a Confederate officer, "and were +headed by as brave a colonel as ever lived." + +As for the colonel, not a drum was heard nor a funeral note, not a +soldier discharged his farewell shot, when the Confederates buried him, +the morning after the engagement. His body, half stripped of its +clothing, and the corpses of his dauntless negroes were flung into one +common trench together, and the sand was shovelled over them, without a +stake or stone to signalize the spot. In death as in life, then, the +Fifty-fourth bore witness to the brotherhood of man. The lover of +heroic history could wish for no more fitting sepulchre for Shaw's +magnanimous young heart. There let his body rest, united with the +forms of his brave nameless comrades. There let the breezes of the +Atlantic sigh, and its gales roar their requiem, while this bronze +effigy and these inscriptions keep their fame alive long after you and +I and all who meet here are forgotten. + +How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this +morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and the +waves sparkling and the sea-gulls circling around Fort Wagner's ancient +site. But the great earthworks and their thundering cannon, the +commanders and their followers, the wild assault and repulse that for a +brief space made night hideous on that far-off evening, have all sunk +into the blue gulf of the past, and for the majority of this generation +are hardly more than an abstract name, a picture, a tale that is told. +Only when some yellow-bleached photograph of a soldier of the 'sixties +comes into our hands, with that odd and vivid look of individuality due +to the moment when it was taken, do we realize the concreteness of that +by-gone history, and feel how interminable to the actors in them were +those leaden-footed hours and years. The photographs themselves +erelong will fade utterly, and books of history and monuments like this +alone will tell the tale. The great war for the Union will be like the +siege of Troy; it will have taken its place amongst all other "old, +unhappy, far-off things and battles long ago." + +In all such events two things must be distinguished--the moral service +of them from the fortitude which they display. War has been much +praised and celebrated among us of late as a school of manly virtue; +but it is easy to exaggerate upon this point. Ages ago, war was the +gory cradle of mankind, the grim-featured nurse that alone could train +our savage progenitors into some semblance of social virtue, teach them +to be faithful one to another, and force them to sink their selfishness +in wider tribal ends. War still excels in this prerogative; and +whether it be paid in years of service, in treasure, or in life-blood, +the war tax is still the only tax that men ungrudgingly will pay. How +could it be otherwise, when the survivors of one successful massacre +after another are the beings from whose loins we and all our +contemporary races spring? Man is once for all a fighting animal; +centuries of peaceful history could not breed the battle-instinct out +of us; and our pugnacity is the virtue least in need of reinforcement +by reflection, least in need of orator's or poet's help. + +What we really need the poet's and orator's help to keep alive in us is +not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed +when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more +lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in +the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the +Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it +in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of +nations should most of all be reared, for the survival of the fittest +has not bred it into the bone of human beings as it has bred military +valor; and of five hundred of us who could storm a battery side by side +with others, perhaps not one would be found ready to risk his worldly +fortunes all alone in resisting an enthroned abuse. The deadliest +enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within +their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always +in need of being saved. The nation blest above all nations is she in +whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts +without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting +reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between +parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and +preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks. Such +nations have no need of wars to save them. Their accounts with +righteousness are always even; and God's judgments do not have to +overtake them fitfully in bloody spasms and convulsions of the race. + +The lesson that our war ought most of all to teach us is the lesson +that evils must be checked in time, before they grow so great. The +Almighty cannot love such long-postponed accounts, or such tremendous +settlements. And surely He hates all settlements that do such +quantities of incidental devils' work. Our present situation, with its +rancors and delusions, what is it but the direct outcome of the added +powers of government, the corruptions and inflations of the war? Every +war leaves such miserable legacies, fatal seeds of future war and +revolution, unless the civic virtues of the people save the State in +time. + +Robert Shaw had both kinds of virtue. As he then led his regiment +against Fort Wagner, so surely would he now be leading us against all +lesser powers of darkness, had his sweet young life been spared. You +think of many as I speak of one. For, North and South, how many lives +as sweet, unmonumented for the most part, commemorated solely in the +hearts of mourning mothers, widowed brides, or friends did the +inexorable war mow down! Instead of the full years of natural service +from so many of her children, our country counts but their poor +memories, "the tender grace of a day that is dead," lingering like +echoes of past music on the vacant air. + +But so and so only was it written that she should grow sound again. +From that fatal earlier unsoundness those lives have brought for North +and South together permanent release. The warfare is accomplished; the +iniquity is pardoned. No future problem can be like that problem. No +task laid on our children can compare in difficulty with the task with +which their fathers had to deal. Yet as we face the future, tasks +enough await us. The republic to which Robert Shaw and a quarter of a +million like him were faithful unto death is no republic that can live +at ease hereafter on the interest of what they have won. Democracy is +still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only +bulwark, and neither laws nor monuments, neither battleships nor public +libraries, nor great newspapers nor booming stocks; neither mechanical +invention nor political adroitness, nor churches nor universities nor +civil service examinations can save us from degeneration if the inner +mystery be lost. That mystery, as once the secret and the glory of our +English-speaking race, consists in nothing but two common habits, two +inveterate habits carried into public life,--habits so homely that they +lend themselves to no rhetorical expression, yet habits more precious, +perhaps, than any that the human race has gained. They can never be +too often pointed out or praised. One of them is the habit of trained +and disciplined good temper towards the opposite party when it fairly +wins its innings. It was by breaking away from this habit that the +Slave States nearly wrecked our Nation. The other is that of fierce +and merciless resentment toward every man or set of men who break the +public peace. By holding to this habit the free States saved her life. + +O my countrymen, Southern and Northern, brothers hereafter, masters, +slaves, and enemies no more, let us see to it that both of those +heirlooms are preserved. So may our ransomed country, like the city of +the promise, lie forever foursquare under Heaven, and the ways of all +the nations be lit up by its light. + + + +[1] Oration at the Exercises in the Boston Music Hall, May 31, 1897, +upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument. + +[2] G. W. James: "The Assault upon Fort Wagner," in _War Papers read +before the Commandery of the State of Wisconsin, Military Order of the +Loyal Legion of the United States_. Milwaukee, 1891. + + + + +IV + +FRANCIS BOOTT[1] + +How often does it happen here in New England that we come away from a +funeral with a feeling that the service has been insufficient. If it +be purely ritual, the individuality of the departed friend seems to +play too small a part in it. If the minister conducts it in his own +fashion, it is apt to be too thin and monotonous, and if he were not an +intimate friend, too remote and official. We miss direct discourse of +simple human affection about the person, which we find so often in +those lay speeches at the grave of which in France they set us nowadays +so many good examples. In the case of the friend whose memory brings +us together on the present occasion, it was easy to organize this +supplementary service. Not everyone leaves musical compositions of his +own to fill the hour with. And if we may believe that spirits can know +aught of what transpires in the world which they have forsaken, it must +please us all to think how dear old Francis Boott's shade must now be +touched at seeing in the Chapel of this university to which his +feelings clung so loyally, his music and his life at last become the +subjects of cordial and admiring recognition and commemorated by so +many of his neighbors. I can imagine nothing at any rate of which the +foreknowledge could have given him deeper satisfaction. Shy and +sensitive, craving praise as every normal human being craves it, yet +getting little, he had, I think, a certain consciousness of living in +the shadow. I greatly doubt whether his daydreams ever went so far as +to let him imagine a service like this. Such a cordial and spontaneous +outgoing towards him on our part would surprise as much as it would +delight him. + +His life was private in the strongest sense of the term. His +contributions to literature were all anonymous, book-reviews chiefly, +or letters and paragraphs in the New York Nation on musical or literary +topics. Good as was their quality, and witty as was their form,--his +only independent volume was an almost incredibly witty little book of +charades in verse--they were too slight in bulk for commemoration; and +it was only as a musical composer that he touched on any really public +function. With so many of his compositions sounding in your ears, it +would be out of place, even were I qualified, to attempt to +characterize Mr. Boott's musical genius. Let it speak for itself. I +prefer to speak of the man and friend whom we knew and whom so many of +us loved so dearly. + +One of the usual classifications of men is into those of expansive and +those of conservative temper. The word conservative commonly suggests +a dose of religious and political prejudice, and a fondness for +traditional opinions. Mr. Boott was a liberal in politics and +theology; and all his opinions were self-made, and as often as not at +variance with every tradition. Yet in a wider sense he was profoundly +conservative. + +He respected bounds of ordinance, and emphasized the fact of limits. +He knew well his own limits. The knowledge of them was in fact one of +the things he lived by. To judge of abstract philosophy, of sculpture +and painting, of certain lines of literary art, he admitted, was not of +his competency. But within the sphere where he thought he had a right +to judge, he parted his likes from his dislikes and preserved his +preferences with a pathetic steadfastness. He was faithful in age to +the lights that lit his youth, and obeyed at eve the voice obeyed at +prime, with a consistency most unusual. Elsewhere the opinions of +others might perplex him, but he laughed and let them live. Within his +own appropriated sphere he was too scrupulous a lover of the truth not +to essay to correct them, when he thought them erroneous. A certain +appearance comes in here of a self-contradictory character, for Mr. +Boott was primarily modest and sensitive, and all his interests and +pre-occupations were with life's refinements and delicacies. Yet one's +mind always pictured him as a rugged sort of person, opposing +successful resistance to all influences that might seek to change his +habits either of feeling or of action. His admirable health, his sober +life, his regular walk twice a day, whatever might be the weather, his +invariable evenness of mood and opinion, so that, when you once knew +his range, he never disappointed you--all this was at variance with +popular notions of the artistic temperament. He was indeed, a man of +reason, no romancer, sentimentalist or dreamer, in spite of the fact +that his main interests were with the muses. He was exact and +accurate; affectionate, indeed, and sociable, but neither gregarious +nor demonstrative; and such words as "honest," "sturdy," "faithful," +are the adjectives first to rise when one thinks of him. A friend said +to me soon after his death: "I seem still to see Mr. Boott, with his +two feet planted on the ground, and his cane in front of him, making of +himself a sort of tripod of honesty and veracity." + +Old age changes men in different ways. Some it softens; some it +hardens; some it degenerates; some it alters. Our old friend Boott was +identical in spiritual essence all his life, and the effect of his +growing old was not to alter, but only to make the same man mellower, +more tolerant, more lovable. Sadder he was, I think, for his life had +grown pretty lonely; but he was a stoic and he never complained either +of losses or of years, and that contagious laugh of his at any and +every pretext for laughter rang as free and true upon his deathbed as +at any previous time of his existence. + +Born in 1813, he had lived through three generations, and seen enormous +social and public changes. When a carpenter has a surface to measure, +he slides his rule along it, and over all its peculiarities. I +sometimes think of Boott as such a standard rule against which the +changing fashions of humanity of the last century might come to +measurement. A character as healthy and definite as his, of whatsoever +type it be, need only remain entirely true to itself for a sufficient +number of years, while the outer conditions change, to grow into +something like a common measure. Compared with its repose and +permanent fitness to continue, the changes of the generations seem +ephemeral and accidental. It remains the standard, the rule, the term +of comparison. Mr. Boott's younger friends must often have felt in his +presence how much more vitally near they were than they had supposed to +the old Boston long before the war, to the older Harvard, to the older +Rome and Florence. To grow old after his manner is of itself to grow +important. + +I said that Mr. Boott was not demonstrative or sentimental. +Tender-hearted he was and faithful as few men are, in friendship. He +made new friends, and dear ones, in the very last years of his life, +and it is good to think of him as having had that consolation. The +will in which he surprised so many persons by remembering them--"one of +the only purely beautiful wills I have ever read," said a +lawyer,--showed how much he cared at heart for many of us to whom he +had rarely made express professions of affection. + +Good-by, then, old friend. We shall nevermore meet the upright figure, +the blue eye, the hearty laugh, upon these Cambridge streets. But in +that wider world of being of which this little Cambridge world of ours +forms so infinitesimal a part, we may be sure that all our spirits and +their missions here will continue in some way to be represented, and +that ancient human loves will never lose their own. + + + +[1] An address delivered at the Memorial Service to Francis Boott in +the Harvard Chapel, Sunday, May 8, 1904. Printed in 38 _Harvard +Monthly_, 125. + + + + +V + +THOMAS DAVIDSON: A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE.[1] + +I wish to pay my tribute to the memory of a Scottish-American friend of +mine who died five years ago, a man of a character extraordinarily and +intensely human, in spite of the fact that he was classed by obituary +articles in England among the twelve most learned men of his time. + +It would do no honor to Thomas Davidson's memory not to be frank about +him. He handled people without gloves, himself, and one has no right +to retouch his photograph until its features are softened into +insipidity. He had defects and excesses which he wore upon his sleeve, +so that everyone could see them. They made him many enemies, and if +one liked quarrelling he was an easy man to quarrel with. But his +heart and mind held treasures of the rarest. He had a genius for +friendship. Money, place, fashion, fame, and other vulgar idols of the +tribe had no hold on his imagination. He led his own life absolutely, +in whatever company he found himself, and the intense individualism +which he taught by word and deed, is the lesson of which our generation +is perhaps most in need. + +All sorts of contrary adjectives come up as I think of him. To begin +with, there was something physically rustic which suggested to the end +his farm-boy origin. His voice was sweet and its Scottish cadences +most musical, and the extraordinary sociability of his nature made +friends for him as much among women as among men; he had, moreover, a +sort of physical dignity; but neither in dress nor in manner did he +ever grow quite "gentlemanly" or _Salonfaehig_ in the conventional and +obliterated sense of the terms. He was too cordial and emphatic for +that. His broad brow, his big chest, his bright blue eyes, his +volubility in talk and laughter told a tale of vitality far beyond the +common; but his fine and nervous hands, and the vivacity of all his +reactions suggested a degree of sensibility that one rarely finds +conjoined with so robustly animal a frame. The great peculiarity of +Davidson did indeed consist in this combination of the acutest +sensibilities with massive faculties of thought and action, a +combination which, when the thought and actions are important, gives to +the world its greatest men. + +Davidson's native mood was happy. He took optimistic views of life and +of his own share in it. A sort of permanent satisfaction radiated from +his face; and this expression of inward glory (which in reality was to +a large extent structural and not "expressive" at all) was displeasing +to many new acquaintances on whom it made an impression of too much +conceit. The impression of conceit was not diminished in their eyes by +the freedom with which Davidson contradicted, corrected and reprehended +other people. A longer acquaintance invariably diminished the +impression. But it must be confessed that T. D. never was exactly +humble-minded, and that the solidity of his self-consciousness +withstood strains under which that of weaker men would have crumbled. +The malady which finally killed him was one of the most exhausting to +the nervous tone to which our flesh is subject, and it wore him out +before it ended him. He told me of the paroxysms of motiveless nervous +dread which used to beset him in the night-watches. Yet these never +subdued his stalwartness, nor made him a "sick-soul" in the theological +sense of that appelation. "God is afraid of me," was the phrase by +which he described his well-being to me one morning when his night had +been a good one, and he was feeling so cannibalistic that he thought he +might get well. + +There are men whose attitude is always that of seeking for truth, and +men who on the contrary always believe that they have the root of it +already in them. Davidson was of the latter class. Like his +countrymen, Carlyle and Ruskin, he felt himself to be in the possession +of something, whether articulate or as yet articulated by himself, that +authorized him (and authorized him with uncommon openness and +frequency) to condemn the errors of others. I think that to the last +he never fully extricated this philosophy. It was a tendency, a faith +in a direction, which gave him an active persuasion that other +directions were false, but of which the central insight never got fully +formulated, but remained in a state which Frederic Myers would have +called subliminal. He varied to a certain extent his watchwords and +his heroes. When I first knew him all was Aristotle. Later all was +Rosmini. Later still Rosmini seemed forgotten. He knew so many +writers that he grew fond of very various ones and had a strange +tolerance for systematizers and dogmatizers whom, as the consistent +individualist that he was, he should have disliked. Hegel, it is true, +he detested; but he always spoke with reverence of Kant. Of Mill and +Spencer he had a low opinion; and when I lent him Paulsen's +Introduction to Philosophy (then just out), as an example of a kind of +eclectic thought that seemed to be growing, and with which I largely +sympathized, he returned it with richer expressions of disdain than +often fell even from his lips: "It's the shabbiest, seediest pretence +at a philosophy I ever dreamed of as possible. It's like a man dressed +in a black coat so threadbare as to be all shiny. The most +poverty-stricken, out-at-elbows thing I ever read. A perfect monument +of seediness and shabbiness," etc. + +The truth is that Davidson, brought up on the older classical +traditions, never outgrew those habits of judging the world by purely +aesthetic criteria which men fed on the sciences of nature are so +willing to abandon. Even if a philosophy were true, he could easily +fail to relish it unless it showed a certain formal nobility and +dogmatic pretension to finality. But I must not describe him so much +from my own professional point of view--it is as a vessel of life at +large that one ought to keep him in remembrance. + +He came to Boston from St. Louis, where he had been teaching, about the +year 1873. He was ruddy and radiant, and I soon saw much of him, +though at first it was without the thoroughness of sympathy which we +afterwards acquired and which made us overflow, on meeting after long +absences, into such laughing greetings as: "Ha! you old thief! Ha! you +old blackguard!"--pure "contrast-effects" of affection and familiarity +passing beyond their bounds. At that time I saw most of him at a +little philosophical club which used to meet every fortnight at his +rooms in Temple Street in Boston. Of the other members, J. Elliot +Cabot and C. C. Everett, are now dead--I will not name the survivors. +We never worked out harmonious conclusions. Davidson used to crack the +whip of Aristotle over us; and I remember that, whatever topic was +formally appointed for the day, we invariably wound up with a quarrel +about Space and Space-perception. The Club had existed before +Davidson's advent. The previous year we had gone over a good part of +Hegel's larger Logic, under the self-constituted leadership of two +young business men from Illinois, who had become enthusiastic Hegelians +and, knowing almost no German, had actually possessed themselves of a +manuscript translation of the entire three volumes of Logic, made by an +extraordinary Pomeranian immigrant, named Brockmeyer. These disciples +were leaving business for the law and studying at the Harvard +law-school; but they saw the whole universe through Hegelian +spectacles, and a more admirable _homo unius libri_ than one of them, +with his three big folios of Hegelian manuscript, I have never had the +good fortune to know. + +I forget how Davidson was earning his subsistence at this time. He did +some lecturing and private teaching, but I do not think they were great +in amount. In the springs and summers he frequented the coast, and +indulged in long swimming bouts and salt-water immersions, which seemed +to agree with him greatly. His sociability was boundless, and his time +seemed to belong to anyone who asked for it. + +I soon conceived that such a man would be invaluable in Harvard +University--a kind of Socrates, a devotee of truth and lover of youth, +ready to sit up to any hour, and drink beer and talk with anyone, +lavish of learning and counsel, a contagious example of how lightly and +humanly a burden of erudition might be borne upon a pair of shoulders. +In faculty-business he might not run well in harness, but as an +inspiration and ferment of character, as an example of the ranges of +combination of scholarship with manhood that are possible, his +influence on the students would be priceless. + +I do not know whether this scheme of mine could under any circumstances +have been carried out. In point of fact it was nipped in the bud by T. +D. himself. A natural chair for him would have been Greek philosophy. +Unfortunately, just at the decisive hour, he offended our Greek +department by a savage onslaught on its methods, which, without taking +anyone's counsel, he sent to the _Atlantic Monthly_, whose editor +printed it. This, with his other unconventionalisms, made advocating +his cause more difficult, and the university authorities, never, I +believe, seriously thought of an appointment for him. + +I believe that in this case, as in one or two others like it, which I +might mention, Harvard University lost a great opportunity. +Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean +more in a university, where a few undisciplinables like T. D. may be +infinitely more precious than a faculty-full of orderly routinists. As +to what Davidson might have become under the conventionalizing +influences of an official position, it would be idle to speculate. + +As things fell out, he became more and more unconventional and even +developed a sort of antipathy to all regular academic life. It subdued +individuality, he thought, and made for Philistinism. He earnestly +dissuaded his young friend Bakewell from accepting a professorship; and +I well remember one dark night in the Adirondacks, after a good dinner +at a neighbor's, the eloquence with which, as we trudged down-hill to +his own quarters with a lantern, he denounced me for the musty and +mouldy and generally ignoble academicism of my character. Never before +or since, I fancy, has the air of the Adirondack wilderness vibrated +more repugnantly to a vocable than it did that night to the word +"academicism." + +Yet Davidson himself was always essentially a teacher. He must give +forth, inspire, and have the young about him. After leaving Boston for +Europe and Africa, founding the Fellowship of the New Life in London +and New York (the present Fabian Society in England is its offshoot), +he hit upon the plan which pleased him best of all when, in 1882 or +thereabouts, he bought a couple of hundred acres on East Hill, which +closes the beautiful Keene Valley in the Adirondacks, on the north, and +founded there, at the foot of Hurricane Mountain, his place "Glenmore" +and its "Summer School of the Culture Sciences." Although the primeval +forest has departed from its immediate vicinity, the region is still +sylvan, the air is sweet and strong and almost alpine in quality, and +the mountain panorama spread before one is superlative. Davidson +showed a business faculty which I should hardly have expected from him, +in organizing his settlement. He built a number of cottages pretty in +design and of the simplest construction, and disposed them well for +effect. He turned a couple of farm buildings which were on the grounds +into a lecturing place and a refectory; and there, arriving in early +April and not leaving till late in November, he spent the happiest part +of all his later years, surrounded during the summer months by +colleagues, friends, and listeners to lectures, and in the spring and +fall by a few independent women who were his faithful friends, and who +had found East Hill a congenial residence. + +Twice I went up with T. D. to open the place in April. I remember +leaving his fireside one night with three ladies who were also early +comers, and finding the thermometer at 8 degrees Fahrenheit and a +tremendous gale blowing the snow about us. Davidson loved these +blustering vicissitudes of climate. In the early years the brook was +never too cold for him to bathe in, and he spent days in rambling over +the hills and up the glens and through the forest. + +His own cottage was full of books whose use was free to all who visited +the settlement. It stood high on a hill in a grove of silver-birches +and looked upon the Western Mountains; and it always seemed to me an +ideal dwelling for such a bachelor-scholar. Here in May and June he +became almost one with the resurgent vegetation. Here, in October, he +was a witness of the jewelled pageant of the dying foliage, and saw the +hillsides reeking, as it were, and aflame with ruby and gold and +emerald and topaz. One September day in 1900, at the "Kurhaus" at +Nauheim, I took up a copy of the Paris _New York Herald_, and read in +capitals: "Death of Professor Thomas Davidson." I had well known how +ill he was, yet such was his vitality that the shock was wholly +unexpected. I did not realize till that moment how much that free +companionship with him every spring and autumn, surrounded by that +beautiful nature, had signified to me, or how big a piece would be +subtracted from my life by its cessation. + +Davidson's capacity for imparting information seemed endless. There +were few subjects, especially "humanistic" subjects, in which at some +time or other he had not taken an interest; and as everything that had +ever touched him was instantaneously in reach of his omnipotent memory, +he easily became a living dictionary of reference. As such all his +friends were wont to use him. He was, for example, never at a loss to +supply a quotation. He loved poetry passionately, and the sympathetic +voice with which he would recall page after page of it--English, +French, German, or Italian--is a thing always to be remembered. But +notwithstanding the instructive part he played in every conceivable +conversation, he was never prolix, and he never "lectured." + +From Davidson I learned what immunities a perfect memory bestows upon +one. I never could discover when he amassed his learning for he never +seemed "occupied." The secret of it was that any odd time would do, +for he never had to acquire a thing twice over. He avoided stated +hours of work on principle. Reprehending (mildly) a certain chapter of +my own on "Habit," he said that it was a fixed rule with him to form no +regular habits. When he found himself in danger of settling into even +a good one, he made a point of interrupting it. Habits and methods +make a prisoner of a man, destroy his readiness, keep him from +answering the call of the fresh moment. Individualist _a outrance_, +Davidson felt that every hour was an unique entity, to whose claims one +should lie open. Thus he was never abstracted or preoccupied, but +always seemed, when with you, as if you were the one person whom it was +then right to attend to. + +It was this individualistic religion that made T. D., democrat as he +nevertheless was, so hostile to all socialisms and administrative +panaceas. Life must be flexible. You ask for a free man, and these +Utopias give you an "interchangeable part," with a fixed number, in a +rule-bound organism. The real thing to aim at is liberation of the +inner interests. Give man possession of a _soul_, and he will work out +his own happiness under any set of conditions. Accordingly, when, in +the penultimate year of his life, he proposed his night-school to a +meeting of young East-Side workingmen in New York, he told them that he +had no sympathy whatever with the griefs of "labor," that outward +circumstances meant nothing in his eyes; that through their individual +wills and intellects they could share, just as they were, in the +highest spiritual life of humanity, and that he was there to help them +severally to that privilege. + +The enthusiasm with which they responded speaks volumes, both for his +genius as a teacher and for the sanity of his position. A small +posthumous book of articles by Davidson and of letters written from +Glenmore to his class, just published, with an introduction by his +disciple Professor Bakewell,[2] gives a full account of the experiment, +and ought to stand as a model and inspirer to similar attempts the +world over. Davidson's idea of the universe was that of a republic of +immortal spirits, the chief business of whom in their several grades of +existence, should be to know and love and help one another. "Creeds +are nothing, life is everything. . . . You can do far more by +presenting to the world the example of noble social relations than by +enumerating any set of principles. Know all you can, love all you can, +do all you can--that is the whole duty of man. . . . Be friends, in +the truest sense, each to the other. There is nothing in all the world +like friendship, when it is deep and real. . . . The divine . . . is a +republic of self-existent spirits, each seeking the realization of its +ideas through love, through intimacy with all the rest, and finding its +heaven in such intimacy." + +We all say and think that we believe this sort of thing; but Davidson +believed it really and actively, and that made all the difference. +When the young wage-earners whom he addressed found that here was a man +of measureless learning ready to give his soul to them as if he had +nothing else to do with it, life's ideal possibilities widened to their +view. When he was taken from them, they founded in New York the Thomas +Davidson Society, for study and neighborhood work, which will probably +become perpetual, and of which his epistles from Glenmore will be the +rule, and keep the standards set by him from degenerating--unless, +indeed, the Society should some day grow too rich, of which there is no +danger at present, and from which may Heaven long preserve it. In one +of his letters to the Class, Davidson sums up the results of his own +experience of life in twenty maxims, as follows: + + +1. Rely upon your own energies, and do not wait for, or depend on other +people. + +2. Cling with all your might to your own highest ideals, and do not be +led astray by such vulgar aims as wealth, position, popularity. Be +yourself. + +3. Your worth consists in what you are, and not in what you have. What +you are will show in what you do. + +4. Never fret, repine, or envy. Do not make yourself unhappy by +comparing your circumstances with those of more fortunate people; but +make the most of the opportunities you have. Employ profitably every +moment. + +5. Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; +live with the mighty. But learn to be happy alone. + +6. Do not believe that all greatness and heroism are in the past. +Learn to discover princes, prophets, heroes, and saints among the +people about you. Be assured they are there. + +7. Be on earth what good people hope to be in heaven. + +8. Cultivate ideal friendships, and gather into an intimate circle all +your acquaintances who are hungering for truth and right. Remember +that heaven itself can be nothing but the intimacy of pure and noble +souls. + +9. Do not shrink from any useful or kindly act, however hard or +repellent it may be. The worth of acts is measured by the spirit in +which they are performed. + +10. If the world despise you because you do not follow its ways, pay no +heed to it. But be sure your way is right. + +11. If a thousand plans fail, be not disheartened. As long as your +purposes are right, you have not failed. + +12. Examine yourself every night, and see whether you have progressed +in knowledge, sympathy, and helpfulness during the day. Count every +day a loss in which no progress has been made. + +13. Seek enjoyment in energy, not in dalliance. Our worth is measured +solely by what we do. + +14. Let not your goodness be professional; let it be the simple, +natural outcome of your character. Therefore cultivate character. + +15. If you do wrong, say so, and make what atonement you can. That is +true nobleness. Have no moral debts. + +16. When in doubt how to act, ask yourself, What does nobility command? +Be on good terms with yourself. + +17. Look for no reward for goodness but goodness itself. Remember +heaven and hell are utterly immoral institutions, if they are meant as +reward and punishment. + +18. Give whatever countenance and help you can to every movement and +institution that is working for good. Be not sectarian. + +19. Wear no placards, within or without. Be human fully. + +20. Never be satisfied until you have understood the meaning of the +world, and the purpose of our own life, and have reduced your world to +a rational cosmos. + + +One of the "placards" Davidson tried hardest to keep his Society from +wearing was that of "Socialism." Yet no one felt more deeply than he +the evils of rapacious individual competition. Spontaneously and +flexibly organized social settlements or communities, with individual +leaders as their centres, seem to have been his ideal, each with its +own religious or ethical elements of discipline. The present isolation +of the family is too inhuman. The ideal type of future life, he +thought, will be something like the monastery, with the family instead +of the individual, for its unit. + +Leveller upwards of men as Davidson was, upon the intellectual and +moral level, he seemed wholly without that sort of religion which makes +so many of our contemporary anarchists think that they ought to dip, at +least, into some manual occupation, in order to share the common burden +of humanity I never saw T. D. work with his hands in any way. He +accepted material services of all kinds without apology, as if he were +a patrician, evidently feeling that if he played his own more +intellectual part rightly, society could make no further claim upon him. + +This confidence that the life of the spirit is the absolutely highest, +made Davidson serene about his outward fortunes. Pecuniary worry would +not tally with his program. He had a very small provision against a +rainy day, but he did little to increase it. He used to write as many +articles and give as many "lectures," "talks," or "readings" every +winter as would suffice to pay the year's expenses, and thereafter he +refused additional invitations, and repaired to Glenmore as early in +the spring as possible. I could but admire the temper he showed when +the principal building there was one night burned to ashes. There was +no insurance on it, and it would cost a couple of thousand dollars to +replace it. Excitable as Davidson was about small contrarieties, he +watched this fire without a syllable of impatience. _Plaie d'argent +n'est pas mortelle_, he seemed to say, and if he felt sharp regrets, he +disdained to express them. + +No more did care about his literary reputation trouble him. In the +ordinary greedy sense, he seemed quite free from ambition. During his +last years he had prepared a large amount of material for that history +of the interaction of Greek, Christian, Hebrew, and Arabic thought upon +one another before the revival of learning, which was to be his _magnum +opus_. It was a territory to which, in its totality, few living minds +had access, and in which a certain proprietary feeling was natural. +Knowing how short his life might be, I once asked him whether he felt +no concern lest the work already done by him should be frustrate, from +the lack of its necessary complement, in case he were suddenly cut off. +His answer surprised me by its indifference. He would work as long as +he lived, he said, but not allow himself to worry, and look serenely at +whatever might be the outcome. This seemed to me uncommonly +high-minded. I think that Davidson's conviction of immortality had +much to do with such a superiority to accidents. On the surface, and +towards small things, he was irritable enough, but the undertone of his +character was remarkable for equanimity. He showed it in his final +illness, of which the misery was really atrocious. There were no +general complaints or lamentations about the personal situation or the +arrest to his career. It was the human lot and he must even bear it; +so he kept his mind upon objective matters. + +But, as I said at the outset, the paramount thing in Davidson in my +eyes was his capacity for friendship. His friends were +innumerable--boys and girls and old boys and old girls, Papists and +Protestants, Jews and Gentiles, married and single; and he cared deeply +for each one of them, admiring them often too extravagantly. What term +can name those recurrent waves of delighted laughter that expressed his +greeting, beginning from the moment he saw you and accompanying his +words continuously, as if his pleasure in you were interminable? His +hand too, stretched out when yards away, so that a country neighbor +said it reached farther than any hand he ever met with. The odd thing +was that friendship in Davidson seemed so little to interfere with +criticism. Persons with whom intercourse was one long contradiction on +his part, and who appeared to annoy him to extermination, he none the +less loved tenderly, and enjoyed living with them. "He's the most +utterly selfish, illiberal and narrow-hearted human being I ever knew," +I heard him once say of someone, "and yet he's the dearest, nicest +fellow living." His enthusiastic belief in any young person who gave a +promise of genius was touching. Naturally a man who is willing, as he +was, to be a prophet, always finds some women who are willing to be +disciples. I never heard of any sentimental weakness in Davidson in +this relation, save possibly in one case. They harmed themselves at +the fire of his soul, and he told them truths without accommodation. +"You 're farther off from God than any woman I ever heard of." "Nay, +if you believe in a protective tariff, you 're in hell already, though +you may not know it." "You had a fine hysterical time last night, +didn't you, when Miss B was brought up from the ravine with her +dislocated shoulder." To Miss B he said: "I don't pity you. It served +you right for being so ignorant as to go there at that hour." Seldom, +strange to say, did the recipients of these deliverances seem to resent +them. + +What with Davidson's warmth of heart and sociability, I used to wonder +at his never marrying. Two years before his death he told me the +reason--an unhappy youthful love-affair in Scotland. Twice in later +life, he said, temptation had come to him, and he had had to make his +decision. When he had come to the point, he had felt each time that +the tie with the dead girl was prohibitive. "When two persons have +known each other as we did," he said, "neither can ever fully belong to +a stranger. So it would n't do." "It would n't do, it would n't do!" +he repeated, as we lay on the hillside, in a tone so musically tender +that it chimes in my ear now as I write down his confession. It can +surely be no breach of confidence to publish it--it is too creditable +to the profundity of Davidson's affections. As I knew him, he was one +of the purest of human beings. + +If one asks, now, what the _value_ of Thomas Davidson was, what was the +general significance of his life, apart from his particular books and +articles, I have to say that it lay in the example he set to us all of +how, even in the midst of this intensely worldly social system of ours, +in which each human interest is organized so collectively and so +commercially, a single man may still be a knight-errant of the +intellectual life, and preserve full freedom in the midst of +sociability. Extreme as was his need of friends, and faithful as he +was to them, he yet lived mainly in reliance on his private +inspiration. Asking no man's permission, bowing the knee to no tribal +idol, renouncing the conventional channels of recognition, he showed us +how a life devoted to purely intellectual ends could be beautifully +wholesome outwardly, and overflow with inner contentment. Fortunately +this type of man is recurrent, and from generation to generation, +literary history preserves examples. But it is infrequent enough for +few of us to have known more than one example--I count myself happy in +knowing two and a half! The memory of Davidson will always strengthen +my faith in personal freedom and its spontaneities, and make me less +unqualifiedly respectful than ever of "Civilization," with its herding +and branding, licensing and degree-giving, authorizing and appointing, +and in general regulating and administering by system the lives human +beings. Surely the individual, the person in the singular number, is +the more fundamental phenomenon, and the social institution, of +whatever grade, is but secondary and ministerial. Many as are the +interests which social systems satisfy, always unsatisfied interests +remain over, and among them are interests to which system, as such, +does violence whenever it lays its hand upon us. The best Commonwealth +will always be the one that most cherishes the men who represent the +residual interests, the one that leaves the largest scope to their +peculiarities. + + + +[1] First published in _McClure's Magazine_ for May, 1905. + +[2] "The Education of the Wage-Earners." Boston, Ginn & Company, 1904. + + + + +VI + +HERBERT SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY[1] + +"God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform." If the +greatest of all his wonders be the human individual, the richness with +which the specimens thereof are diversified, the limitless variety of +outline, from gothic to classic or flowing arabesque, the contradictory +nature of the filling, composed of little and great, of comic, heroic, +and pathetic elements blended inextricably, in personalities all of +whom can _go_, and go successfully, must surely be reckoned the supreme +miracle of creative ingenuity. Rarely has Nature performed an odder or +more Dickens-like feat than when she deliberately designed, or +accidentally stumbled into, the personality of Herbert Spencer. +Greatness and smallness surely never lived so closely in one skin +together. + +The opposite verdicts passed upon his work by his contemporaries bear +witness to the extraordinary mingling of defects and merits in his +mental character. Here are a few, juxtaposed:-- + +"A philosophic saw-mill."--"The most capacious and powerful thinker of +all time. + +"The Arry' of philosophy."--"Aristotle and his master were not more +beyond the pygmies who preceded them than he is beyond Aristotle." + +"Herbert Spencer's chromo-philosophy."--"No other man that has walked +the earth has so wrought and written himself into the life of the +world." + +"The touch of his mind takes the living flavor out of everything."--"He +is as much above and beyond all the other great philosophers who have +ever lived as the telegraph is beyond the carrier-pigeon, or the +railway beyond the sedan chair." + +"He has merely combined facts which we knew before into a huge +fantastic contradictory system, which hides its nakedness and emptiness +partly under the veil of an imposing terminology, and partly in the +primeval fog."--"His contributions are of a depth, profundity, and +magnitude which have no parallel in the history of mind. Taking but +one--and one only--of his transcendent reaches of thought,--namely, +that referring to the positive sense of the Unknown as the basis of +religion,--it may unhesitatingly be affirmed that the analysis and +synthesis by which he advances to the almost supernal grasp of this +mighty truth give a sense of power and reach verging on the +preternatural." + +Can the two thick volumes of autobiography which Mr. Spencer leaves +behind him explain such discrepant appreciations? Can we find revealed +in them the higher synthesis which reconciles the contradictions? +Partly they do explain, I think, and even justify, both kinds of +judgment upon their author. But I confess that in the last resort I +still feel baffled. In Spencer, as in every concrete individual, there +is a uniqueness that defies all formulation. We can feel the touch of +it and recognize its taste, so to speak, relishing or disliking, as the +case may be, but we can give no ultimate account of it, and we have in +the end simply to admire the Creator. + +Mr. Spencer's task, the unification of all knowledge into an articulate +system, was more ambitious than anything attempted since St. Thomas or +Descartes. Most thinkers have confined themselves either to +generalities or to details, but Spencer addressed himself to +everything. He dealt in logical, metaphysical, and ethical first +principles, in cosmogony and geology, in physics, and chemistry after a +fashion, in biology, psychology, sociology, politics, and aesthetics. +Hardly any subject can be named which has not at least been touched on +in some one of his many volumes. His erudition was prodigious. His +civic conscience and his social courage both were admirable. His life +was pure. He was devoted to truth and usefulness, and his character +was wholly free from envy and malice (though not from contempt), and +from the perverse egoisms that so often go with greatness. + +Surely, any one hearing this veracious enumeration would think that +Spencer must have been a rich and exuberant human being. Such wide +curiosities must have gone with the widest sympathies, and such a +powerful harmony of character, whether it were a congenital gift, or +were acquired by spiritual wrestling and eating bread with tears, must +in any case have been a glorious spectacle for the beholder. Since +Goethe, no such ideal human being can have been visible, walking our +poor earth. + +Yet when we turn to the "Autobiography," the self-confession which we +find is this: An old-maidish personage, inhabiting boarding-houses, +equable and lukewarm in all his tastes and passions, having no +desultory curiosity, showing little interest in either books or people. +A petty fault-finder and stickler for trifles, devoid in youth of any +wide designs on life, fond only of the more mechanical side of things, +yet drifting as it were involuntarily into the possession of a +world-formula which by dint of his extraordinary pertinacity he +proceeded to apply to so many special cases that it made him a +philosopher in spite of himself. He appears as modest enough, but with +a curious vanity in some of his deficiencies,--his lack of desultory +interests, for example, and his nonconformity to reigning customs. He +gives a queer sense of having no emotional perspective, as if small +things and large were on the same plane of vision, and equally +commanded his attention. In spite of his professed dislike of +monotony, one feels an awfully monotonous quality in him; and in spite +of the fact that invalidism condemned him to avoid thinking, and to +saunter and potter through large parts of every day, one finds no +twilight region in his mind, and no capacity for dreaminess or +passivity. All parts of it are filled with the same noonday glare, +like a dry desert where every grain of sand shows singly, and there are +no mysteries or shadows. + +"Look on this picture and on that," and answer how they can be +compatible. + +For one thing, Mr. Spencer certainly writes himself _down_ too much. +He complains of a poor memory, of an idle disposition, of a general +dislike for reading. Doubtless there have been more gifted men in all +these respects. But when Spencer once buckled to a particular task, +his memory, his industry, and his reading went beyond those of the most +gifted. He had excessive sensibility to stimulation by a challenge, +and he had preeminent pertinacity. When the notion of his philosophic +system once grasped him, it seemed to possess itself of every effective +fibre of his being. No faculty in him was left unemployed,--nor, on +the other hand, was anything that his philosophy could contain left +unstated. Roughly speaking, the task and the man absorbed each other +without residuum. + +Compare this type of mind with such an opposite type as Ruskin's, or +even as J. S. Mill's, or Huxley's, and you realize its peculiarity. +Behind the work of those others was a background of overflowing mental +temptations. The men loom larger than all their publications, and +leave an impression of unexpressed potentialities. Spencer tossed all +his inexpressibilities into the Unknowable, and gladly turned his back +on them forever. His books seem to have expressed all that there was +to express in his character. + +He is very frank about this himself. No _Sturm und Drang +Periode_, no problematic stage of thought, where the burden of the +much-to-be-straightened exceeds the powers of straightening. + +When George Eliot uttered surprise at seeing no lines on his forehead, +his reply was:--"I suppose it is because I am never puzzled."--"It has +never been my way," he continues, "to set before myself a problem and +puzzle out an answer. The conclusions at which I have from time to +time arrived, have not been arrived at as solutions of questions +raised; but have been arrived at unawares--each as the ultimate outcome +of a body of thought which slowly grew from a germ. Some direct +observation, or some fact met with in reading, would dwell with me; +apparently because I had a sense of its significance. . . . A week +afterwards, possibly, the matter would be remembered; and with further +thought about it, might occur a recognition of some wider application: +new instances being aggregated with those already noted. Again, after +an interval," etc., etc. "And thus, little by little, in unobtrusive +ways, without conscious intention or appreciable effort, there would +grow up a coherent and organized theory" (vol. i, page 464). + +A sort of mill, this, wound up to grind in a certain way, and +irresponsive otherwise. + +"To apply day after day merely with the general idea of acquiring +information, or of increasing ability, was not in me." "Anything like +passive receptivity is foreign to my nature; and there results an +unusually small tendency to be affected by others' thoughts. It seems +as though the fabric of my conclusions had in all cases to be developed +from within. Material which could be taken in and organized so as to +form part of a coherent structure, there was always a readiness to +receive. But ideas and sentiments of alien kinds, or unorganizable +kinds, were, if not rejected, yet accepted with indifference, and soon +dropped away." "It has always been out of the question for me to go on +reading a book the fundamental principles of which I entirely dissent +from. I take it for granted that if the fundamental principles are +wrong the rest cannot be right; and thereupon cease reading--being, I +suspect, rather glad of an excuse for doing so." "Systematic books of +a political or ethical kind, written from points of view quite unlike +my own, were either not consulted at all, or else they were glanced at +and thereafter disregarded" (vol. i, pages 215, 277, 289, 350). + +There is pride rather than compunction in these confessions. Spencer's +mind was so narrowly systematized, that he was at last almost incapable +of believing in the reality of alien ways of feeling. The invariable +arrogance of his replies to criticisms shows his absolute +self-confidence. Every opinion in the world had to be articulately +right or articulately wrong,--so proved by some principle or other of +his infallible system. + +He confesses freely his own inflexibility and censoriousness. His +account of his father makes one believe in the fatality of heredity. +Born of old nonconformist stock, the elder Spencer was a man of +absolute punctuality. Always he would step out of his way to kick a +stone off the pavement lest somebody should trip over it. If he saw +boys quarrelling he stopped to expostulate; and he never could pass a +man who was ill-treating a horse without trying to make him behave +better. He would never take off his hat to any one, no matter of what +rank, nor could he be induced to address any one as "Esquire" or as +"Reverend." He would never put on any sign of mourning, even for +father and mother; and he adhered to one style of coat and hat +throughout all changes of fashion. Improvement was his watchword +always and everywhere. Whatever he wrote had to be endlessly +corrected, and his love of detail led all his life to his neglecting +large ends in his care for small ones. A good heart, but a pedantic +conscience, and a sort of energetically mechanical intelligence. + +Of himself Herbert Spencer says: "No one will deny that I am much given +to criticism. Along with exposition of my own views there has always +gone a pointing out of defects in those of others. And if this is a +trait in my writing, still more is it a trait in my conversation. The +tendency to fault-finding is dominant--disagreeably dominant. The +indicating of errors in thought and speech made by those around has all +through life been an incurable habit--a habit for which I have often +reproached myself, but to no purpose." + +The "Autobiography" abounds in illustrations of the habit. For +instance:-- + +"Of late I have observed sundry cases in which, having found the right, +people deliberately desert it for the wrong. . . . A generation ago +salt-cellars were made of convenient shapes--either ellipses or +elongated parallelograms: the advantage being that the salt-spoon, +placed lengthwise, remained in its place. But for some time past, +fashion has dictated circular salt-cellars, on the edges of which the +salt-spoon will not remain without skilful balancing: it falls on the +cloth. In my boyhood a jug was made of a form at once convenient and +graceful. . . . Now, however, the almost universal form of jug in use +is a frustum of a cone with a miniature spout. It combines all +possible defects. When anything like full, it is impossible to pour +out a small quantity without part of the liquid trickling down beneath +the spout; and a larger quantity cannot be poured out without exceeding +the limits of the spout and running over on each side of it. If the +jug is half empty, the tilting must be continued a long time before any +liquid comes; and then, when it does come, it comes with a rush; +because its surface has now become so large that a small inclination +delivers a great deal. To all which add that the shape is as ugly a +one as can well be hit upon. Still more extraordinary is the folly of +a change made in another utensil of daily use"--and Spencer goes on to +find fault with the cylindrical form of candle extinguisher, proving by +a description of its shape that "it squashes the wick into the melted +composition, the result being that when, next day, the extinguisher is +taken off, the wick, imbedded in the solidified composition, cannot be +lighted without difficulty" (vol. ii, page 238). + +The remorseless explicitness, the punctuation, everything, make these +specimens of public fault-finding with what probably was the equipment +of Mr. Spencer's latest boarding-house, sound like passages from "The +Man versus the State." Another example:-- + +"Playing billiards became 'my custom always of the afternoon.' Those +who confess to billiard-playing commonly make some kind of an +excuse. . . . It suffices to me that I like billiards, and the +attainment of the pleasure given I regard as a sufficient motive. I +have for a long time deliberately set my face against that asceticism +which makes it an offence to do a thing for the pleasure of doing it; +and have habitually contended that, so long as no injury is inflicted +on others, nor any ulterior injury on self, and so long as the various +duties of life have been discharged, the pursuit of pleasure for its +own sake is perfectly legitimate and requires no apology. The opposite +view is nothing else than a remote sequence of the old devil worship of +the barbarian, who sought to please his god by inflicting pains upon +himself, and believed his god would be angry if he made himself happy" +(vol. ii, page 263). + +The tone of pedantic rectitude in these passages is characteristic. +Every smallest thing is either right or wrong, and if wrong, can be +articulately proved so by reasoning. Life grows too dry and literal, +and loses all aerial perspective at such a rate; and the effect is the +more displeasing when the matters in dispute have a rich variety of +aspects, and when the aspect from which Mr. Spencer deduces his +conclusions is manifestly partial. + +For instance, in his art-criticisms. Spencer in his youth did much +drawing, both mechanical and artistic. Volume one contains a +photo-print of a very creditable bust which he modelled of his uncle. +He had a musical ear, and practiced singing. He paid attention to +style, and was not wholly insensible to poetry. Yet in all his +dealings with the art-products of mankind he manifests the same curious +dryness and mechanical literality of judgment--a dryness increased by +pride in his non-conformity. He would, for example, rather give a +large sum than read to the end of Homer's Iliad,--the ceaseless +repetition of battles, speeches, and epithets like well-greaved Greeks, +horse-breaking Trojans; the tedious enumeration of details of dresses, +arms, and chariots; such absurdities as giving the genealogy of a horse +while in the midst of a battle; and the appeals to savage and brutal +passions, having soon made the poem intolerable to him (vol. i, page +300). Turner's paintings he finds untrue, in that the earth-region is +habitually as bright in tone as the air-region. Moreover, Turner +scatters his detail too evenly. In Greek statues the hair is falsely +treated. Renaissance painting, even the best, is spoiled by unreal +illumination, and non-rendering of reflected light in the shadows. +Venetian gothic sins by meaningless ornamentation. St. Mark's Church +may be precious archaeologically, but is not aesthetically precious. +Of Wagner's music he admires nothing but the skilful specialization of +the instruments in the orchestra. + +The fault-finding in all these cases rests on observation, true as far +as it goes; but the total absence of genial relations with the entirety +of the phenomenon discussed, the clutching at some paltry mechanical +aspect of it that lends itself to reasoned proof by _a_ plus _b_, and +the practical denial of everything that only appeals to vaguer +sentiment, show a mind so oddly limited to ratiocinative and explicit +processes, and so wedded to the superficial and flagrantly +_insufficient_, that one begins to wonder whether in the philosophic +and scientific spheres the same mind can have wrought out results of +extraordinary value. + +Both "yes" and "no" are here the answer. Every one who writes books or +articles knows how he must flounder until he hits upon the proper +opening. Once the right beginning found, everything follows easily and +in due order. If a man, however narrow, strikes even by accident, into +one of these fertile openings, and pertinaciously follows the lead, he +is almost sure to meet truth on his path. Some thoughts act almost +like mechanical centres of crystallization; facts cluster of themselves +about them. Such a thought was that of the gradual growth of all +things, by natural processes, out of natural antecedents. Until the +middle of the nineteenth century no one had grasped it _wholesale_; and +the thinker who did so earliest was bound to make discoveries just in +proportion to the exclusiveness of his interest in the principle. He +who had the keenest eye for instances and illustrations, and was least +divertible by casual side-curiosity, would score the quickest triumph. + +To Spencer is certainly due the immense credit of having been the first +to see in evolution an absolutely universal principle. If any one else +had grasped its universality, it failed at any rate to grasp him as it +grasped Spencer. For Spencer it instantly became "the guiding +conception running through and connecting all the concrete sciences" +(vol. ii, page 196). Here at last was "an object at once large and +distinct enough" to overcome his "constitutional idleness." "With an +important and definite end to achieve, I could work" (vol. i, page +215). He became, in short, the victim of a vivid obsession, and for +the first time in his life seems to have grown genuinely ambitious. +Every item of his experience, small or great, every idea in his mental +storehouse, had now to be considered with reference to its bearing on +the new universal principle. On pages 194-199 of volume two he gives +an interesting summary of the way in which all his previous and +subsequent ideas moved into harmonious cooerdination and subordination, +when once he had this universal key to insight. Applying it wholesale +as he did, innumerable truths unobserved till then had to fall into his +gamebag. And his peculiar trick, a priggish infirmity in daily +intercourse, of treating every smallest thing by abstract law, was here +a merit. Add his sleuth-hound scent for what he was after, and his +untiring pertinacity, to his priority in perceiving the one great truth +and you fully justify the popular estimate of him as one of the world's +geniuses, in spite of the fact that the "temperament" of genius, so +called, seems to have been so lacking in him. + +In one sense, then, Spencer's personal narrowness and dryness were not +hindering, but helping conditions of his achievement. Grant that a +vast picture _quelconque_ had to be made before the details could be +made perfect, and a greater richness and receptivity of mind would have +resulted in hesitation. The quality would have been better in spots, +but the extensiveness would have suffered. + +Spencer is thus the philosopher of vastness. Misprised by many +specialists, who carp at his technical imperfections, he has +nevertheless enlarged the imagination, and set free the speculative +mind of countless doctors, engineers, and lawyers, of many physicists +and chemists, and of thoughtful laymen generally. He is the +philosopher whom those who have no other philosopher can appreciate. +To be able to say this of any man is great praise, and gives the "yes" +answer to my recent question. + +Can the "no" answer be as unhesitatingly uttered? I think so, if one +makes the qualitative aspect of Spencer's work undo its quantitative +aspect. The luke-warm equable temperament, the narrowness of sympathy +and passion, the fondness for mechanical forms of thought, the +imperfect receptivity and lack of interest in facts as such, dissevered +from their possible connection with a theory; nay, the very vividness +itself, the keenness of scent and the pertinacity; these all are +qualities which may easily make for second-rateness, and for +contentment with a cheap and loosely woven achievement. As Mr. +Spencer's "First Principles" is the book which more than any other has +spread his popular reputation, I had perhaps better explain what I mean +by criticising some of its peculiarities. + +I read this book as a youth when it was still appearing in numbers, and +was carried away with enthusiasm by the intellectual perspectives which +it seemed to open. When a maturer companion, Mr. Charles S. Peirce, +attacked it in my presence, I felt spiritually wounded, as by the +defacement of a sacred image or picture, though I could not verbally +defend it against his criticisms. + +Later I have used it often as a text-book with students, and the total +outcome of my dealings with it is an exceedingly unfavorable verdict. +Apart from the great truth which it enforces, that everything has +evolved somehow, and apart from the inevitable stimulating effect of +any such universal picture, I regard its teachings as almost a museum +of blundering reasoning. Let me try to indicate briefly my grounds for +such an opinion. + +I pass by the section on the Unknowable, because this part of Mr. +Spencer's philosophy has won fewer friends than any other. It consists +chiefly of a rehash of Mansel's rehash of Hamilton's "Philosophy of the +Conditioned," and has hardly raised its head since John Mill so +effectively demolished it. If criticism of our human intellectual +constitution is needed, it can be got out of Bradley to-day better than +out of Spencer. The latter's way of reconciling science and religion +is, moreover, too absurdly _naif_. Find, he says, a fundamental +abstract truth on which they can agree, and that will reconcile them. +Such a truth, he thinks, is that _there is a mystery_. The trouble is +that it is over just such common truths that quarrels begin. Did the +fact that both believed in the existence of the Pope reconcile Luther +and Ignatius Loyola? Did it reconcile the South and the North that +both agreed that there were slaves? Religion claims that the "mystery" +is interpretable by human reason; "Science," speaking through Spencer, +insists that it is not. The admission of the mystery is the very +signal for the quarrel. Moreover, for nine hundred and ninety-nine +men out of a thousand the sense of mystery is the sense of +_more-to-be-known_, not the sense of a More, _not_ to be known. + +But pass the Unknowable by, and turn to Spencer's famous law of +Evolution. + +"Science" works with several types of "law." The most frequent and +useful type is that of the "elementary law,"--that of the composition +of forces, that of gravitation, of refraction, and the like. Such laws +declare no concrete facts to exist, and make no prophecy as to any +actual future. They limit themselves to saying that if a certain +character be found in any fact, another character will co-exist with it +or follow it. The usefulness of these laws is proportionate to the +extent to which the characters they treat of pervade the world, and to +the accuracy with which they are definable. + +Statistical laws form another type, and positively declare something +about the world of actuality. Although they tell us nothing of the +elements of things, either abstract or concrete, they affirm that the +resultant of their actions drifts preponderantly in a particular +direction. Population tends toward cities; the working classes tend to +grow discontented; the available energy of the universe is running +down--such laws prophesy the real future _en gros_, but they never help +us to predict any particular detail of it. + +Spencer's law of Evolution is of the statistical variety. It defines +what evolution means, and what dissolution means, and asserts that, +although both processes are always going on together, there is in the +present phase of the world a drift in favor of evolution. In the first +edition of "First Principles" an evolutive change in anything was +described as the passage of it from a state of indefinite incoherent +homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity. The existence of a +drift in this direction in everything Mr. Spencer proves, both by a +survey of facts, and by deducing it from certain laws of the elementary +type, which he severally names "the instability of the homogeneous," +"the multiplication of effects," "segregation," and "equilibration." +The two former insure the heterogeneity, while "segregation" brings +about the definiteness and coherence, and "equilibration" arrests the +process, and determines when dissolutive changes shall begin. + +The whole panorama is resplendent for variety and inclusiveness, and +has aroused an admiration for philosophy in minds that never admired +philosophy before. Like Descartes in earlier days, Spencer aims at a +purely mechanical explanation of Nature. The knowable universe is +nothing but matter and motion, and its history is nothing but the +"redistribution" of these entities. The value of such an explanation +for scientific purposes depends altogether on how consistent and exact +it is. Every "thing" must be interpreted as a "configuration," every +"event" as a change of configuration, every predicate ascribed must be +of a geometrical sort. Measured by these requirements of mechanics +Spencer's attempt has lamentably failed. His terms are vagueness and +ambiguity incarnate, and he seems incapable of keeping the mechanical +point of view in mind for five pages consecutively. + +"Definite," for example, is hardly a physical idea at all. Every +motion and every arrangement of matter is definitely what it is,--a fog +or an irregular scrawl, as much so as a billiard ball or a straight +line. Spencer means by definiteness in a thing any character that +makes it arrest our attention, and forces us to distinguish it from +other things. The word with him has a human, not a physical +connotation. Definite things, in his book, finally appear merely as +_things that men have made separate names for_, so that there is hardly +a pretence of the mechanical view being kept. Of course names increase +as human history proceeds, so "definiteness" in things must necessarily +more and more evolve. + +"Coherent," again. This has the definite mechanical meaning of +resisting separation, of sticking together; but Spencer plays fast and +loose with this meaning. Coherence with him sometimes means +_permanence in time_, sometimes such _mutual dependence of parts_ as is +realized in a widely scattered system of no fixed material +configuration; a commercial house, for example, with its "travellers" +and ships and cars. + +An honestly mechanical reader soon rubs his eyes with bewilderment at +the orgy of ambiguity to which he is introduced. Every term in +Spencer's fireworks shimmers through a whole spectrum of meanings in +order to adapt itself to the successive spheres of evolution to which +it must apply. "Integration," for instance. A definite coherence is +an Integration; and examples given of integration are the contraction +of the solar nebula, the formation of the earth's crust, the +calcification of cartilage, the shortening of the body of crabs, the +loss of his tail by man, the mutual dependence of plants and animals, +the growth of powerful states, the tendency of human occupations to go +to distinct localities, the dropping of terminal inflexions in English +grammar, the formation of general concepts by the mind, the use of +machinery instead of simple tools, the development of "composition" in +the fine arts, etc., etc. It is obvious that no one form of the motion +of matter characterizes all these facts. The human ones simply embody +the more and more successful pursuit of certain ends. + +In the second edition of his book, Mr. Spencer supplemented his first +formula by a unifying addition, meant to be strictly mechanical. +"Evolution," he now said, "is the progressive integration of matter and +dissipation of motion," during which both the matter and the motion +undergo the previously designated kinds of change. But this makes the +formula worse instead of better. The "dissipation of motion" part of +it is simple vagueness,--for what particular motion is "dissipated" +when a man or state grows more highly evolved? And the integration of +matter belongs only to stellar and geologic evolution. Neither +heightened specific gravity, nor greater massiveness, which are the +only conceivable integrations of matter, is a mark of the more evolved +vital, mental, or social things. + +It is obvious that the facts of which Spencer here gives so clumsy an +account could all have been set down more simply. First there is +solar, and then there is geological evolution, processes accurately +describable as integrations in the mechanical sense, namely, as +decrease in bulk, or growth in hardness. Then Life appears; and after +that neither integration of matter nor dissipation of motion play any +part whatever. The result of life, however, is to fill the world more +and more with things displaying _organic unity_. By this is meant any +arrangement of which one part helps to keep the other parts in +existence. Some organic unities are material,--a sea-urchin, for +example, a department store, a civil service, or an ecclesiastical +organization. Some are mental, as a "science," a code of laws, or an +educational programme. But whether they be material or mental +products, organic unities must _accumulate_; for every old one tends to +conserve itself, and if successful new ones arise they also "come to +stay." The human use of Spencer's adjectives "integrated," "definite," +"coherent," here no longer shocks one. We are frankly on teleological +ground, and metaphor and vagueness are permissible. + +This tendency of organic unities to accumulate when once they are +formed is absolutely all the truth I can distill from Spencer's +unwieldy account of evolution. It makes a much less gaudy and +chromatic picture, but what there is of it is exact. + +Countless other criticisms swarm toward my pen, but I have no heart to +express them,--it is too sorry an occupation. A word about Spencer's +conception of "Force," however, insists on being added; for although it +is one of his most essential, it is one of his vaguest ideas. + +Over all his special laws of evolution there reigns an absolutely +general law, that of the "persistence of force." By this Spencer +sometimes means the phenomenal law of conservation of energy, sometimes +the metaphysical principle that the quantity of existence is +unalterable, sometimes the logical principle that nothing can happen +without a reason, sometimes the practical postulate that in the absence +of any assignable difference you must call a thing the same. This law +is one vast vagueness, of which I can give no clear account; but of his +special vaguenesses "mental force" and "social force" are good examples. + +These manifestations of the universal force, he says, are due to vital +force, and this latter is due to physical force, both being +proportionate to the amount of physical force which is "transformed" +into them. But what on earth is "social force"? Sometimes he +identifies it with "social activity" (showing the latter to be +proportionate to the amount of food eaten), sometimes with the work +done by human beings and their steam-engines, and shows it to be due +ultimately to the sun's heat. It would never occur to a reader of his +pages that a social force proper might be anything that acted as a +stimulus of social change,--a leader, for example, a discovery, a book, +a new idea, or a national insult; and that the greatest of "forces" of +this kind need embody no more "physical force" than the smallest. The +measure of greatness here is the effect produced on the environment, +not a quantity antecedently absorbed from physical nature. Mr. Spencer +himself is a great social force; but he ate no more than an average +man, and his body, if cremated, would disengage no more energy. The +effects he exerts are of no nature _of releases_,--his words pull +triggers in certain kinds of brain. + +The fundamental distinction in mechanics between forces of +push-and-pull and forces of release is one of which Mr. Spencer, in his +earlier years, made no use whatever. Only in his sixth edition did he +show that it had seriously arrested his attention. In biology, +psychology, and sociology the forces concerned are almost exclusively +forces of release. Spencer's account of social forces is neither good +sociology nor good mechanics. His feeble grasp of the conception of +force vitiates, in fact, all his work. + +But the task of a carper is repugnant. The "Essays," "Biology," +"Psychology," "Sociology," and "Ethics" are all better than "First +Principles," and contain numerous and admirable bits of penetrating +work of detail. My impression is that, of the systematic treaties, the +"Psychology" will rank as the most original. Spencer broke new ground +here in insisting that, since mind and its environment have evolved +together, they must be studied together. He gave to the study of mind +in isolation a definitive quietus, and that certainly is a great thing +to have achieved. To be sure he overdid the matter, as usual, and left +no room for any mental structure at all, except that which passively +resulted from the storage of impressions received from the outer world +in the order of their frequency by fathers and transmitted to their +sons. The belief that whatever is acquired by sires is inherited by +sons, and the ignoring of purely inner variations, are weak points; but +to have brought in the environment as vital was a master stroke. + +I may say that Spencer's controversy over use-inheritance with +Weismann, entered into after he was sixty, seems to me in point of +quality better than any other part of his work. It is genuine labor +over a puzzle, genuine research. + +Spencer's "Ethics" is a most vital and original piece of +attitude-taking in the world of ideals. His politico-ethical activity +in general breathes the purest English spirit liberty, and his attacks +on over-administration and criticisms on the inferiority of great +centralized systems are worthy to be the textbooks of individualists +the world over. I confess that it is with this part of his work, in +spite of its hardness and inflexibility of tone, that I personally +sympathize most. + +Looking back on Mr. Spencer as a whole, as this admirably truth-telling +"Autobiography" reveals him, he is a figure unique for quaint +consistency. He never varied from that inimitable blend of small and +vast mindedness, of liberality and crabbedness, which was his personal +note, and which defies our formulating power. If an abstract logical +concept could come to life, its life would be like Spencer's,--the same +definiteness of exclusion and inclusion, the same bloodlessness of +temperament, the same narrowness of intent and vastness of extent, the +same power of applying itself to numberless instances. But he was no +abstract idea; he was a man vigorously devoted to truth and justice as +he saw them, who had deep insights, and who finished, under terrible +frustrations from bad health, a piece of work that taken for all in +all, is extraordinary. A human life is greater than all its possible +appraisers, assessors, and critics. In comparison with the fact of +Spencer's actual living, such critical characterization of it as I have +been at all these pains to produce seems a rather unimportant as well +as a decidedly graceless thing. + + + +[1] Written upon the publication of Herbert Spencer's "Autobiography." +Published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for July, 1904. + + + + +VII + +FREDERIC MYERS' SERVICES TO PSYCHOLOGY[1] + +On this memorial occasion it is from English hearts and tongues +belonging, as I never had the privilege of belonging, to the immediate +environment of our lamented President, that discourse of him as a man and +as a friend must come. It is for those who participated in the endless +drudgery of his labors for our Society to tell of the high powers he +showed there; and it is for those who have something of his burning +interest in the problem of our human destiny to estimate his success in +throwing a little more light into its dark recesses. To me it has been +deemed best to assign a colder task. Frederic Myers was a psychologist +who worked upon lines hardly admitted by the more academic branch of the +profession to be legitimate; and as for some years I bore the title of +"Professor of Psychology," the suggestion has been made (and by me gladly +welcomed) that I should spend my portion of this hour in defining the +exact place and rank which we must accord to him as a cultivator and +promoter of the science of the Mind. + +Brought up entirely upon literature and history, and interested at first +in poetry and religion chiefly; never by nature a philosopher in the +technical sense of a man forced to pursue consistency among concepts for +the mere love of the logical occupation; not crammed with science at +college, or trained to scientific method by any passage through a +laboratory, Myers had as it were to recreate his personality before he +became the wary critic of evidence, the skilful handler of hypothesis, +the learned neurologist and omnivorous reader of biological and +cosmological matter, with whom in later years we were acquainted. The +transformation came about because he needed to be all these things in +order to work successfully at the problem that lay near his heart; and +the ardor of his will and the richness of his intellect are proved by the +success with which he underwent so unusual a transformation. + +The problem, as you know, was that of seeking evidence for human +immortality. His contributions to psychology were incidental to that +research, and would probably never have been made had he not entered on +it. But they have a value for Science entirely independent of the light +they shed upon that problem; and it is quite apart from it that I shall +venture to consider them. + + +If we look at the history of mental science we are immediately struck by +diverse tendencies among its several cultivators, the consequence being a +certain opposition of schools and some repugnance among their disciples. +Apart from the great contrasts between minds that are teleological or +biological and minds that are mechanical, between the animists and the +associationists in psychology, there is the entirely different contrast +between what I will call the classic-academic and the romantic type of +imagination. The former has a fondness for clean pure lines and noble +simplicity in its constructions. It explains things by as few principles +as possible and is intolerant of either nondescript facts or clumsy +formulas. The facts must lie in a neat assemblage, and the psychologist +must be enabled to cover them and "tuck them in" as safely under his +system as a mother tucks her babe in under the down coverlet on a winter +night. Until quite recently all psychology, whether animistic or +associationistic, was written on classic-academic lines. The consequence +was that the human mind, as it is figured in this literature, was largely +an abstraction. Its normal adult traits were recognized. A sort of +sun-lit terrace was exhibited on which it took its exercise. But where +that terrace stopped, the mind stopped; and there was nothing farther +left to tell of in this kind of philosophy but the brain and the other +physical facts of nature on the one hand, and the absolute metaphysical +ground of the universe on the other. + +But of late years the terrace has been overrun by romantic improvers, and +to pass to their work is like going from classic to gothic architecture, +where few outlines are pure and where uncouth forms lurk in the shadows. +A mass of mental phenomena are now seen in the shrubbery beyond the +parapet. Fantastic, ignoble, hardly human, or frankly non-human are some +of these new candidates for psychological description. The menagerie and +the madhouse, the nursery, the prison, and the hospital, have been made +to deliver up their material. The world of mind is shown as something +infinitely more complex than was suspected; and whatever beauties it may +still possess, it has lost at any rate the beauty of academic neatness. + +But despite the triumph of romanticism, psychologists as a rule have +still some lingering prejudice in favor of the nobler simplicities. +Moreover, there are social prejudices which scientific men themselves +obey. The word "hypnotism" has been trailed about in the newspapers so +that even we ourselves rather wince at it, and avoid occasions of its +use. "Mesmerism," "clairvoyance," "medium,"--_horrescimus +referentes_!--and with all these things, infected by their previous +mystery-mongering discoverers, even our best friends had rather avoid +complicity. For instance, I invite eight of my scientific colleagues +severally to come to my house at their own time, and sit with a medium +for whom the evidence already published in our "Proceedings" had been +most noteworthy. Although it means at worst the waste of the hour for +each, five of them decline the adventure. I then beg the "Commission" +connected with the chair of a certain learned psychologist in a +neighboring university to examine the same medium, whom Mr. Hodgson and I +offer at our own expense to send and leave with them. They also have to +be excused from any such entanglement. I advise another psychological +friend to look into this medium's case, but he replies that it is +useless; for if he should get such results as I report, he would (being +suggestible) simply believe himself hallucinated. When I propose as a +remedy that he should remain in the background and take notes, whilst his +wife has the sitting, he explains that he can never consent to his wife's +presence at such performances. This friend of mine writes _ex cathedra_ +on the subject of psychical research, declaring (I need hardly add) that +there is nothing in it; the chair of the psychologist with the Commission +was founded by a spiritist, partly with a view to investigate mediums; +and one of the five colleagues who declined my invitation is widely +quoted as an effective critic of our evidence. So runs the world away! +I should not indulge in the personality and triviality of such anecdotes, +were it not that they paint the temper of our time, a temper which, +thanks to Frederic Myers more than to any one, will certainly be +impossible after this generation. Myers was, I think, decidedly +exclusive and intolerant by nature. But his keenness for truth carried +him into regions where either intellectual or social squeamishness would +have been fatal, so he "mortified" his _amour propre_, unclubbed himself +completely, and became a model of patience, tact and humility wherever +investigation required it. Both his example and his body of doctrine +will make this temper the only one henceforward scientifically +respectable. + +If you ask me how his doctrine has this effect, I answer: By +co-ordinating! For Myers' great principle of research was that in order +to understand any one species of fact we ought to have all the species of +the same general class of fact before us. So he took a lot of scattered +phenomena, some of them recognized as reputable, others outlawed from +science, or treated as isolated curiosities; he made series of them, +filled in the transitions by delicate hypotheses or analogies; and bound +them together in a system by his bold inclusive conception of the +Subliminal Self, so that no one can now touch one part of the fabric +without finding the rest entangled with it. Such vague terms of +apperception as psychologists have hitherto been satisfied with using for +most of these phenomena, as "fraud," "rot," "rubbish," will no more be +possible hereafter than "dirt" is possible as a head of classification in +chemistry, or "vermin" in zoology. Whatever they are, they are things +with a right to definite description and to careful observation. + +I cannot but account this as a great service rendered to Psychology. I +expect that Myers will ere long distinctly figure in mental science as +the radical leader in what I have called the romantic movement. Through +him for the first time, psychologists are in possession of their full +material, and mental phenomena are set down in an adequate inventory. To +bring unlike things thus together by forming series of which the +intermediary terms connect the extremes, is a procedure much in use by +scientific men. It is a first step made towards securing their interest +in the romantic facts, that Myers should have shown how easily this +familiar method can be applied to their study. + +Myers' conception of the extensiveness of the Subliminal Self quite +overturns the classic notion of what the human mind consists in. The +supraliminal region, as Myers calls it, the classic-academic +consciousness, which was once alone considered either by associationists +or animists, figures in his theory as only a small segment of the psychic +spectrum. It is a special phase of mentality, teleologically evolved for +adaptation to our natural environment, and forms only what he calls a +"privileged case" of personality. The out-lying Subliminal, according to +him, represents more fully our central and abiding being. + +I think the words subliminal and supraliminal unfortunate, but they were +probably unavoidable. I think, too, that Myers' belief in the ubiquity +and great extent of the Subliminal will demand a far larger number of +facts than sufficed to persuade him, before the next generation of +psychologists shall become persuaded. He regards the Subliminal as the +enveloping mother-consciousness in each of us, from which the +consciousness we wot of is precipitated like a crystal. But whether this +view get confirmed or get overthrown by future inquiry, the definite way +in which Myers has thrown it down is a new and specific challenge to +inquiry. For half a century now, psychologists have fully admitted the +existence of a subliminal mental region, under the name either of +unconscious cerebration or of the involuntary life; but they have never +definitely taken up the question of the extent of this region, never +sought explicitly to map it out. Myers definitely attacks this problem, +which, after him, it will be impossible to ignore. + +_What is the precise constitution of the Subliminal_--such is the problem +which deserves to figure in our Science hereafter as the _problem of +Myers_; and willy-nilly, inquiry must follow on the path which it has +opened up. But Myers has not only propounded the Problem definitely, he +has also invented definite methods for its solution. Posthypnotic +suggestion, crystal-gazing, automatic writing and trance-speech, the +willing-game, etc., are now, thanks to him, instruments of research, +reagents like litmus paper or the galvanometer, for revealing what would +otherwise be hidden. These are so many ways of putting the Subliminal on +tap. Of course without the simultaneous work on hypnotism and hysteria +independently begun by others, he could not have pushed his own work so +far. But he is so far the only generalizer of the problem and the only +user of all the methods; and even though his theory of the extent of the +Subliminal should have to be subverted in the end, its formulation will, +I am sure, figure always as a rather momentous event in the history of +our Science. + +Any psychologist who should wish to read Myers out of the profession--and +there are probably still some who would be glad to do so to-day--is +committed to a definite alternative. Either he must say that we knew all +about the subliminal region before Myers took it up, or he must say that +it is certain that states of super-normal cognition form no part of its +content. The first contention would be too absurd. The second one +remains more plausible. There are many first hand investigators into the +Subliminal who, not having themselves met with anything super-normal, +would probably not hesitate to call all the reports of it erroneous, and +who would limit the Subliminal to dissolutive phenomena of consciousness +exclusively, to lapsed memories, subconscious sensations, impulses and +_phobias_, and the like. Messrs. Janet and Binet, for aught I know, may +hold some such position as this. Against it Myers' thesis would stand +sharply out. Of the Subliminal, he would say, we can give no +ultra-simple account: there are discreet regions in it, levels separated +by critical points of transition, and no one formula holds true of them +all. And any conscientious psychologist ought, it seems to me, to see +that, since these multiple modifications of personality are only +beginning to be reported and observed with care, it is obvious that a +dogmatically negative treatment of them must be premature and that the +problem of Myers still awaits us as the problem of far the deepest moment +for our actual psychology, whether his own tentative solutions of certain +parts of it be correct or not. + +Meanwhile, descending to detail, one cannot help admiring the great +originality with which Myers wove such an extraordinarily detached and +discontinuous series of phenomena together. Unconscious cerebration, +dreams, hypnotism, hysteria, inspirations of genius, the willing-game, +planchette, crystal-gazing, hallucinatory voices, apparitions of the +dying, medium-trances, demoniacal possession, clairvoyance, +thought-transference, even ghosts and other facts more doubtful; these +things form a chaos at first sight most discouraging. No wonder that +scientists can think of no other principle of unity among them than their +common appeal to men's perverse propensity to superstition. Yet Myers +has actually made a system of them, stringing them continuously upon a +perfectly legitimate objective hypothesis, verified in some cases and +extended to others by analogy. Taking the name "automatism" from the +phenomenon of automatic writing--I am not sure that he may not himself +have been the first so to baptize this latter phenomenon--he made one +great simplification at a stroke by treating hallucinations and active +impulses under a common head, as _sensory_ and _motor automatisms_. +Automatism he then conceived broadly as a message of any kind from the +Subliminal to the Supraliminal. And he went a step farther in his +hypothetic interpretation, when he insisted on "symbolism" as one of the +ways in which one stratum of our personality will often interpret the +influences of another. Obsessive thoughts and delusions, as well as +voices, visions, and impulses, thus fall subject to one mode of +treatment. To explain them, we must explore the Subliminal; to cure them +we must practically influence it. + +Myers' work on automatism led to his brilliant conception, in 1891, of +hysteria. He defined it, with good reasons given, as "a disease of the +hypnotic stratum." Hardly had he done so when the wonderfully ingenious +observations of Binet, and especially of Janet in France, gave to this +view the completest of corroborations. These observations have been +extended in Germany, America, and elsewhere; and although Binet and Janet +worked independently of Myers, and did work far more objective, he +nevertheless will stand as the original announcer of a theory which, in +my opinion, makes an epoch, not only in medical but in psychological +science, because it brings in an entirely new conception of our mental +possibilities. + +Myers' manner of apprehending the problem of the Subliminal shows itself +fruitful in every possible direction. While official science practically +refuses to attend to Subliminal phenomena, the circles which do attend to +them treat them with a respect altogether too undiscriminating,--every +Subliminal deliverance must be an oracle. The result is that there is no +basis of intercourse between those who best know the facts and those who +are most competent to discuss them. Myers immediately establishes a +basis by his remark that in so far as they have to use the same organism, +with its preformed avenues of expression--what may be very different +strata of the Subliminal are condemned in advance to manifest themselves +in similar ways. This might account for the great generic likeness of so +many automatic performances, while their different starting-points behind +the threshold might account for certain differences in them. Some of +them, namely, seem to include elements of super-normal knowledge; others +to show a curious subconscious mania for personation and deception; +others again to be mere drivel. But Myers' conception of various strata +or levels in the Subliminal sets us to analyzing them all from a new +point of view. The word Subliminal for him denotes only a region, with +possibly the most heterogeneous contents. Much of the content is +certainly rubbish, matter that Myers calls dissolutive, stuff that dreams +are made of, fragments of lapsed memory, mechanical effects of habit and +ordinary suggestion; some belongs to a middle region where a strange +manufacture of inner romances perpetually goes on; finally, some of the +content appears superiorly and subtly perceptive. But each has to appeal +to us by the same channels and to use organs partly trained to their +performance by messages from the other levels. Under these conditions +what could be more natural to expect than a confusion which Myers' +suggestion would then have been the first indispensable step towards +finally clearing away. + +Once more, then, whatever be the upshot of the patient work required +here, Myers' resourceful intellect has certainly done a service to +psychology. + +I said a while ago that his intellect was not by nature philosophic in +the narrower sense of being that of a logician. In the broader sense of +being a man of wide scientific imagination, Myers was most eminently a +philosopher. He has shown this by his unusually daring grasp of the +principle of evolution, and by the wonderful way in which he has worked +out suggestions of mental evolution by means of biological analogies. +These analogies are, if anything, too profuse and dazzling in his pages; +but his conception of mental evolution is more radical than anything yet +considered by psychologists as possible. It is absolutely original; and, +being so radical, it becomes one of those hypotheses which, once +propounded, can never be forgotten, but sooner or later have to be worked +out and submitted in every way to criticism and verification. + +The corner-stone of his conception is the fact that consciousness has no +essential unity. It aggregates and dissipates, and what we call normal +consciousness,--the "Human Mind" of classic psychology,--is not even +typical, but only one case out of thousands. Slight organic alterations, +intoxications, and auto-intoxications, give supraliminal forms completely +different, and the subliminal region seems to have laws in many respects +peculiar. Myers thereupon makes the suggestion that the whole system of +consciousness studied by the classic psychology is only an extract from a +larger total, being a part told-off, as it were, to do service in the +adjustments of our physical organism to the world of nature. This +extract, aggregated and personified for this particular purpose, has, +like all evolving things, a variety of peculiarities. Having evolved, it +may also dissolve, and in dreams, hysteria, and divers forms of +degeneration it seems to do so. This is a retrograde process of +separation in a consciousness of which the unity was once effected. But +again the consciousness may follow the opposite course and integrate +still farther, or evolve by growing into yet untried directions. In +veridical automatisms it actually seems to do so. It drops some of its +usual modes of increase, its ordinary use of the senses, for example, and +lays hold of bits of information which, in ways that we cannot even +follow conjecturally, leak into it by way of the Subliminal. The +ulterior source of a certain part of this information (limited and +perverted as it always is by the organism's idiosyncrasies in the way of +transmission and expression) Myers thought he could reasonably trace to +departed human intelligence, or its existing equivalent. I pretend to no +opinion on this point, for I have as yet studied the evidence with so +little critical care that Myers was always surprised at my negligence. I +can therefore speak with detachment from this question and, as a mere +empirical psychologist, of Myers' general evolutionary conception. As +such a psychologist I feel sure that the latter is a hypothesis of +first-rate philosophic importance. It is based, of course, on his +conviction of the extent of the Subliminal, and will stand or fall as +that is verified or not; but whether it stand or fall, it looks to me +like one of those sweeping ideas by which the scientific researches of an +entire generation are often moulded. It would not be surprising if it +proved such a leading idea in the investigation of the near future; for +in one shape or another, the Subliminal has come to stay with us, and the +only possible course to take henceforth is radically and thoroughly to +explore its significance. + + +Looking back from Frederic Myers' vision of vastness in the field of +psychological research upon the programme as most academic psychologists +frame it, one must confess that its limitation at their hands seems not +only implausible, but in truth, a little ridiculous. Even with brutes +and madmen, even with hysterics and hypnotics admitted as the academic +psychologists admit them, the official outlines of the subject are far +too neat to stand in the light of analogy with the rest of Nature. The +ultimates of Nature,--her simple elements, it there be such,--may indeed +combine in definite proportions and follow classic laws of architecture; +but her proximates, in her phenomena as we immediately experience them, +Nature is everywhere gothic, not classic. She forms a real jungle, where +all things are provisional, half-fitted to each other, and untidy. When +we add such a complex kind of subliminal region as Myers believed in to +the official region, we restore the analogy; and, though we may be +mistaken in much detail, in a general way, at least, we become plausible. +In comparison with Myers' way of attacking the question of immortality in +particular, the official way is certainly so far from the mark as to be +almost preposterous. It assumes that when our ordinary consciousness +goes out, the only alternative surviving kind of consciousness that could +be possible is abstract mentality, living on spiritual truth, and +communicating ideal wisdom--in short, the whole classic platonizing +Sunday-school conception. Failing to get that sort of thing when it +listens to reports about mediums, it denies that there can be anything. +Myers approaches the subject with no such _a priori_ requirement. If he +finds any positive indication of "spirits," he records it, whatever it +may be, and is willing to fit his conception to the facts, however +grotesque the latter may appear, rather than to blot out the facts to +suit his conception. But, as was long ago said by our collaborator, Mr. +Canning Schiller, in words more effective than any I can write, if any +conception should be blotted out by serious lovers of Nature, it surely +ought to be classic academic Sunday-school conception. If anything is +unlikely in a world like this, it is that the next adjacent thing to the +mere surface-show of our experience should be the realm of eternal +essences, of platonic ideas, of crystal battlements, of absolute +significance. But whether they be animists or associationists, a +supposition something like this is still the assumption of our usual +psychologists. It comes from their being for the most part philosophers, +in the technical sense, and from their showing the weakness of that +profession for logical abstractions. Myers was primarily a lover of life +and not of abstractions. He loved human life, human persons, and their +peculiarities. So he could easily admit the possibility of level beyond +level of perfectly concrete experience, all "queer and cactus-like" +though it might be, before we touch the absolute, or reach the eternal +essences. + +Behind the minute anatomists and the physiologists, with their metallic +instruments, there have always stood the out-door naturalists with their +eyes and love of concrete nature. The former call the latter +superficial, but there is something wrong about your laboratory-biologist +who has no sympathy with living animals. In psychology there is a +similar distinction. Some psychologists are fascinated by the varieties +of mind in living action, others by the dissecting out, whether by +logical analysis or by brass instruments, of whatever elementary mental +processes may be there. Myers must decidedly be placed in the former +class, though his powerful use of analogy enabled him also to do work +after the fashion of the latter. He loved human nature as Cuvier and +Agassiz loved animal nature; in his view, as in their view, the subject +formed a vast living picture. Whether his name will have in psychology +as honorable a place as their names have gained in the sister science, +will depend on whether future inquirers shall adopt or reject his +theories; and the rapidity with which their decision shapes itself will +depend largely on the vigor with which this Society continues its labor +in his absence. It is at any rate a possibility, and I am disposed to +think it a probability, that Frederic Myers will always be remembered in +psychology as the pioneer who staked out a vast tract of mental +wilderness and planted the flag of genuine science upon it. He was an +enormous collector. He introduced for the first time comparison, +classification, and serial order into the peculiar kind of fact which he +collected. He was a genius at perceiving analogies; he was fertile in +hypotheses; and as far as conditions allowed it in this meteoric region, +he relied on verification. Such advantages are of no avail, however, if +one has struck into a false road from the outset. But should it turn out +that Frederic Myers has really hit the right road by his divining +instinct, it is certain that, like the names of others who have been +wise, his name will keep an honorable place in scientific history. + + + +[1] Written for a meeting of the Society for Psychical Research held +after the death of Frederic Myers and first published in the Society's +Proceedings, Part XLII, Page 17 (1901). + + + + +VIII + +FINAL IMPRESSIONS OF A PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER[1] + +The late Professor Henry Sidgwick was celebrated for the rare mixture +of ardor and critical judgment which his character exhibited. The +liberal heart which he possessed had to work with an intellect which +acted destructively on almost every particular object of belief that +was offered to its acceptance. A quarter of a century ago, scandalized +by the chaotic state of opinion regarding the phenomena now called by +the rather ridiculous name of "psychic"--phenomena, of which the supply +reported seems inexhaustible, but which scientifically trained minds +mostly refuse to look at--he established, along with Professor Barrett, +Frederic Myers and Edmund Gurney, the Society for Psychical Research. +These men hoped that if the material were treated rigorously, and, as +far as possible experimentally, objective truth would be elicited, and +the subject rescued from sentimentalism on the one side and dogmatizing +ignorance on the other. Like all founders, Sidgwick hoped for a +certain promptitude of result; and I heard him say, the year before his +death, that if anyone had told him at the outset that after twenty +years he would be in the same identical state of doubt and balance that +he started with, he would have deemed the prophecy incredible. It +appeared impossible that that amount of handling evidence should bring +so little finality of decision. + +My own experience has been similar to Sidgwick's. For twenty-five +years I have been in touch with the literature of psychical research, +and have had acquaintance with numerous "researchers." I have also +spent a good many hours (though far fewer than I ought to have spent) +in witnessing (or trying to witness) phenomena. Yet I am theoretically +no "further" than I was at the beginning; and I confess that at times I +have been tempted to believe that the Creator has eternally intended +this department of nature to remain _baffling_, to prompt our +curiosities and hopes and suspicions all in equal measure, so that, +although ghosts and clairvoyances, and raps and messages from spirits, +are always seeming to exist and can never be fully explained away, they +also can never be susceptible of full corroboration. + +The peculiarity of the case is just that there are so many sources of +possible deception in most of the observations that the whole lot of +them _may_ be worthless, and yet that in comparatively few cases can +aught more fatal than this vague general possibility of error be +pleaded against the record. Science meanwhile needs something more +than bare possibilities to build upon; so your genuinely scientific +inquirer--I don't mean your ignoramus "scientist"--has to remain +unsatisfied. It is hard to believe, however, that the Creator has +really put any big array of phenomena into the world merely to defy and +mock our scientific tendencies; so my deeper belief is that we +psychical researchers have been too precipitate with our hopes, and +that we must expect to mark progress not by quarter-centuries, but by +half-centuries or whole centuries. + +I am strengthened in this belief by my impression that just at this +moment a faint but distinct step forward is being taken by competent +opinion in these matters. "Physical phenomena" (movements of matter +without contact, lights, hands and faces "materialized," etc.) have +been one of the most baffling regions of the general field (or perhaps +one of the least baffling _prima facie_, so certain and great has been +the part played by fraud in their production); yet even here the +balance of testimony seems slowly to be inclining towards admitting the +supernaturalist view. Eusapia Paladino, the Neapolitan medium, has +been under observation for twenty years or more. Schiaparelli, the +astronomer, and Lombroso were the first scientific men to be converted +by her performances. Since then innumerable men of scientific standing +have seen her, including many "psychic" experts. Every one agrees that +she cheats in the most barefaced manner whenever she gets an +opportunity. The Cambridge experts, with the Sidgwicks and Richard +Hodgson at their head, rejected her _in toto_ on that account. Yet her +credit has steadily risen, and now her last converts are the eminent +psychiatrist, Morselli, the eminent physiologist, Botazzi, and our own +psychical researcher, Carrington, whose book on "The Physical Phenomena +of Spiritualism" (_against_ them rather!) makes his conquest +strategically important. If Mr. Podmore, hitherto the prosecuting +attorney of the S. P. R., so far as physical phenomena are concerned +becomes converted also, we may indeed sit up and look around us. +Getting a good health bill from "Science," Eusapia will then throw +retrospective credit on Home and Stainton Moses, Florence Cook (Prof. +Crookes' medium), and all similar wonder-workers. The balance of +_presumptions_ will be changed in favor of genuineness being possible +at least in all reports of this particularly crass and low type of +supernatural phenomena. + + +Not long after Darwin's "Origin of Species" appeared I was studying +with that excellent anatomist and man, Jeffries Wyman, at Harvard. He +was a convert, yet so far a half-hesitating one, to Darwin's views; but +I heard him make a remark that applies well to the subject I now write +about. When, he said, a theory gets propounded over and over again, +coming up afresh after each time orthodox criticism has buried it, and +each time seeming solider and harder to abolish, you may be sure that +there is truth in it. Oken and Lamarck and Chambers had been +triumphantly despatched and buried, but here was Darwin making the very +same heresy seem only more plausible. How often has "Science" killed +off all spook philosophy, and laid ghosts and raps and "telepathy" away +underground as so much popular delusion. Yet never before were these +things offered us so voluminously, and never in such authentic-seeming +shape or with such good credentials. The tide seems steadily to be +rising, in spite of all the expedients of scientific orthodoxy. It is +hard not to suspect that here may be something different from a mere +chapter in human gullibility. It may be a genuine realm of natural +phenomena. + +_Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus_, once a cheat, always a cheat, such +has been the motto of the English psychical researchers in dealing with +mediums. I am disposed to think that, as a matter of policy, it has +been wise. Tactically, it is far better to believe much too little +than a little too much; and the exceptional credit attaching to the row +of volumes of the S. P. R.'s Proceedings, is due to the fixed intention +of the editors to proceed very slowly. Better a little belief tied +fast, better a small investment _salted down_, than a mass of +comparative insecurity. + +But, however wise as a policy the S. P. R.'s maxim may have been, as a +test of truth, I believe it to be almost irrelevant. In most things +human the accusation of deliberate fraud and falsehood is grossly +superficial. Man's character is too sophistically mixed for the +alternative of "honest or dishonest" to be a sharp one. Scientific men +themselves will cheat--at public lectures--rather than let experiments +obey their well-known tendency towards failure. I have heard of a +lecturer on physics, who had taken over the apparatus of the previous +incumbent, consulting him about a certain machine intended to show +that, however the peripheral parts of it might be agitated, its centre +of gravity remained immovable. "It _will_ wobble," he complained. +"Well," said the predecessor, apologetically, "to tell the truth, +whenever _I_ used that machine I found it advisable to _drive a nail_ +through the centre of gravity." I once saw a distinguished +physiologist, now dead, cheat most shamelessly at a public lecture, at +the expense of a poor rabbit, and all for the sake of being able to +make a cheap joke about its being an "American rabbit"--for no other, +he said, could survive such a wound as he pretended to have given it. + +To compare small men with great, I have myself cheated shamelessly. In +the early days of the Sanders Theater at Harvard, I once had charge of +a heart on the physiology of which Professor Newell Martin was giving a +popular lecture. This heart, which belonged to a turtle, supported an +index-straw which threw a moving shadow, greatly enlarged, upon the +screen, while the heart pulsated. When certain nerves were stimulated, +the lecturer said, the heart would act in certain ways which he +described. But the poor heart was too far gone and, although it +stopped duly when the nerve of arrest was excited, that was the final +end of its life's tether. Presiding over the performance, I was +terrified at the fiasco, and found myself suddenly acting like one of +those military geniuses who on the field of battle convert disaster +into victory. There was no time for deliberation; so, with my +forefinger under a part of the straw that cast no shadow, I found +myself impulsively and automatically imitating the rhythmical movements +which my colleague had prophesied the heart would undergo. I kept the +experiment from failing; and not only saved my colleague (and the +turtle) from a humiliation that but for my presence of mind would have +been their lot, but I established in the audience the true view of the +subject. The lecturer was stating this; and the misconduct of one +half-dead specimen of heart ought not to destroy the impression of his +words. "There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood," is a maxim +which I have heard ascribed to a former venerated President of Harvard. +The heart's failure would have been misunderstood by the audience and +given the lie to the lecturer. It was hard enough to make them +understand the subject anyhow; so that even now as I write in cool +blood I am tempted to think that I acted quite correctly. I was acting +for the _larger_ truth, at any rate, however automatically; and my +sense of this was probably what prevented the more pedantic and literal +part of my conscience from checking the action of my sympathetic +finger. To this day the memory of that critical emergency has made me +feel charitable towards all mediums who make phenomena come in one way +when they won't come easily in another. On the principles of the S. P. +R., my conduct on that one occasion ought to discredit everything I +ever do, everything, for example, I may write in this article,--a +manifestly unjust conclusion. + +Fraud, conscious or unconscious, seems ubiquitous throughout the range +of physical phenomena of spiritism, and false pretence, prevarication +and fishing for clues are ubiquitous in the mental manifestations of +mediums. If it be not everywhere fraud simulating reality, one is +tempted to say, then the reality (if any reality there be) has the bad +luck of being fated everywhere to simulate fraud. The suggestion of +humbug seldom stops, and mixes itself with the best manifestations. +Mrs. Piper's control, "Rector," is a most impressive personage, who +discerns in an extraordinary degree his sitter's inner needs, and is +capable of giving elevated counsel to fastidious and critical minds. +Yet in many respects he is an arrant humbug--such he seems to me at +least--pretending to a knowledge and power to which he has no title, +nonplussed by contradiction, yielding to suggestion, and covering his +tracks with plausible excuses. Now the non-"researching" mind looks +upon such phenomena simply according to their face-pretension and never +thinks of asking what they may signify below the surface. Since they +profess for the most part to be revealers of spirit life, it is either +as being absolutely that, or as being absolute frauds, that they are +judged. The result is an inconceivably shallow state of public opinion +on the subject. One set of persons, emotionally touched at hearing the +names of their loved ones given, and consoled by assurances that they +are "happy," accept the revelation, and consider spiritualism +"beautiful." More hard-headed subjects, disgusted by the revelation's +contemptible contents, outraged by the fraud, and prejudiced beforehand +against all "spirits," high or low, avert their minds from what they +call such "rot" or "bosh" entirely. Thus do two opposite +sentimentalisms divide opinion between them! A good expression of the +"scientific" state of mind occurs in Huxley's "Life and Letters": + +"I regret," he writes, "that I am unable to accept the invitation of +the Committee of the Dialectical Society. . . . I take no interest in +the subject. The only case of 'Spiritualism' I have ever had the +opportunity of examining into for myself was as gross an imposture as +ever came under my notice. But supposing these phenomena to be +genuine--they do not interest me. If anybody would endow me with the +faculty of listening to the chatter of old women and curates in the +nearest provincial town, I should decline the privilege, having better +things to do. And if the folk in the spiritual world do not talk more +wisely and sensibly than their friends report them to do, I put them in +the same category. The only good that I can see in the demonstration +of the 'Truth of Spiritualism' is to furnish an additional argument +against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper, than die and be made +to talk twaddle by a 'medium' hired at a guinea a _Seance_." [2] + +Obviously the mind of the excellent Huxley has here but two +whole-souled categories namely revelation or imposture, to apperceive +the case by. Sentimental reasons bar revelation out, for the messages, +he thinks, are not romantic enough for that; fraud exists anyhow; +therefore the whole thing is nothing but imposture. The odd point is +that so few of those who talk in this way realize that they and the +spiritists are using the same major premise and differing only in the +minor. The major premise is: "Any spirit-revelation must be romantic." +The minor of the spiritist is: "This _is_ romantic"; that of the Huxley +an is: "this is dingy twaddle"--whence their opposite conclusions! + +Meanwhile the first thing that anyone learns who attends seriously to +these phenomena is that their causation is far too complex for our +feelings about what is or is not romantic enough to be spiritual to +throw any light upon it. The causal factors must be carefully +distinguished and traced through series, from their simplest to their +strongest forms, before we can begin to understand the various +resultants in which they issue. Myers and Gurney began this work, the +one by his serial study of the various sorts of "automatism," sensory +and motor, the other by his experimental proofs that a split-off +consciousness may abide after a post-hypnotic suggestion has been +given. Here we have subjective factors; but are not transsubjective or +objective forces also at work? Veridical messages, apparitions, +movements without contact, seem _prima facie_ to be such. It was a +good stroke on Gurney's part to construct a theory of apparitions which +brought the subjective and the objective factors into harmonious +co-operation. I doubt whether this telepathic theory of Gurney's will +hold along the whole line of apparitions to which he applied it, but it +is unquestionable that some theory of that mixed type is required for +the explanation of all mediumistic phenomena; and that when all the +psychological factors and elements involved have been told off--and +they are many--the question still forces itself upon us: Are these all, +or are there indications of any residual forces acting on the subject +from beyond, or of any "meta-psychic" faculty (to use Richet's useful +term) exerted by him? This is the problem that requires real +expertness, and this is where the simple sentimentalisms of the +spiritist and scientist leave us in the lurch completely. + +"Psychics" form indeed a special branch of education, in which experts +are only gradually becoming developed. The phenomena are as massive +and wide-spread as is anything in Nature, and the study of them is as +tedious, repellent and undignified. To reject it for its unromantic +character is like rejecting bacteriology because _penicillium glaucum_ +grows on horse-dung and _bacterium termo_ lives in putrefaction. +Scientific men have long ago ceased to think of the dignity of the +materials they work in. When imposture has been checked off as far as +possible, when chance coincidence has been allowed for, when +opportunities for normal knowledge on the part of the subject have been +noted, and skill in "fishing" and following clues unwittingly furnished +by the voice or face of bystanders have been counted in, those who have +the fullest acquaintance with the phenomena admit that in good mediums +_there is a residuum of knowledge displayed_ that can only be called +supernormal: the medium taps some source of information not open to +ordinary people. Myers used the word "telepathy" to indicate that the +sitter's own thoughts or feelings may be thus directly tapped. Mrs. +Sidgwick has suggested that if living minds can be thus tapped +telepathically, so possibly may the minds of spirits be similarly +tapped--if spirits there be. On this view we should have one distinct +theory of the performances of a typical test-medium. They would be all +originally due to an odd _tendency to personate_, found in her dream +life as it expresses itself in trance. [Most of us reveal such a +tendency whenever we handle a "ouija-board" or a "planchet," or let +ourselves write automatically with a pencil.] The result is a +"control," who purports to be speaking; and all the resources of the +automatist, including his or her trance-faculty of telepathy are called +into play in building this fictitious personage out plausibly. On such +a view of the control, the medium's _will to personate_ runs the whole +show; and if spirits be involved in it at all, they are passive beings, +stray bits of whose memory she is able to seize and use for her +purposes, without the spirit being any more aware of it than the sitter +is aware of it when his own mind is similarly tapped. + +This is one possible way of interpreting a certain type of psychical +phenomenon. It uses psychological as well as "spiritual" factors, and +quite obviously it throws open for us far more questions than it +answers, questions about our subconscious constitution and its curious +tendency to humbug, about the telepathic faculty, and about the +possibility of an existent spirit-world. + +I do not instance this theory to defend it, but simply to show what +complicated hypotheses one is inevitably led to consider, the moment +one looks at the facts in their complexity and turns one's back on the +_naive_ alternative of "revelation or imposture," which is as far as +either spiritist thought or ordinary scientist thought goes. The +phenomena are endlessly complex in their factors, and they are so +little understood as yet that off-hand judgments, whether of "spirits" +or of "bosh" are the one as silly as the other. When we complicate the +subject still farther by considering what connection such things as +rappings, apparitions, poltergeists, spirit-photographs, and +materializations may have with it, the bosh end of the scale gets +heavily loaded, it is true, but your genuine inquirer still is loath to +give up. He lets the data collect, and bides his time. He believes +that "bosh" is no more an ultimate element in Nature, or a really +explanatory category in human life than "dirt" is in chemistry. Every +kind of "bosh" has its own factors and laws; and patient study will +bring them definitely to light. + +The only way to rescue the "pure bosh" view of the matter is one which +has sometimes appealed to my own fancy, but which I imagine few readers +will seriously adopt. If, namely, one takes the theory of evolution +radically, one ought to apply it not only to the rock-strata, the +animals and the plants but to the stars, to the chemical elements, and +to the laws of nature. There must have been a far-off antiquity, one +is then tempted to suppose, when things were really chaotic. Little by +little, out of all the haphazard possibilities of that time, a few +connected things and habits arose, and the rudiments of regular +performance began. Every variation in the way of law and order added +itself to this nucleus, which inevitably grew more considerable as +history went on; while the aberrant and inconstant variations, not +being similarly preserved, disappeared from being, wandered off as +unrelated vagrants, or else remained so imperfectly connected with the +part of the world that had grown regular as only to manifest their +existence by occasional lawless intrusions, like those which "psychic" +phenomena now make into our scientifically organized world. On such a +view, these phenomena ought to remain "pure bosh" forever, that is, +they ought to be forever intractable to intellectual methods, because +they should not yet be organized enough in themselves to follow any +laws. Wisps and shreds of the original chaos, they would be connected +enough with the cosmos to affect its periphery every now and then, as +by a momentary whiff or touch or gleam, but not enough ever to be +followed up and hunted down and bagged. Their relation to the cosmos +would be tangential solely. + +Looked at dramatically, most occult phenomena make just this sort of +impression. They are inwardly as incoherent as they are outwardly +wayward and fitful. If they express anything, it is pure "bosh," pure +discontinuity, accident, and disturbance, with no law apparent but to +interrupt, and no purpose but to baffle. They seem like stray vestiges +of that primordial irrationality, from which all our rationalities have +been evolved. + +To settle dogmatically into this bosh-view would save labor, but it +would go against too many intellectual prepossessions to be adopted +save as a last resort of despair. Your psychical researcher therefore +bates no jot of hope, and has faith that when we get our data numerous +enough, some sort of rational treatment of them will succeed. + +When I hear good people say (as they often say, not without show of +reason), that dabbling in such phenomena reduces us to a sort of jelly, +disintegrates the critical faculties, liquifies the character, and +makes of one a _gobe-mouche_ generally, I console myself by thinking of +my friends Frederic Myers and Richard Hodgson. These men lived +exclusively for psychical research, and it converted both to spiritism. +Hodgson would have been a man among men anywhere; but I doubt whether +under any other baptism he would have been that happy, sober and +righteous form of energy which his face proclaimed him in his later +years, when heart and head alike were wholly satisfied by his +occupation. Myers' character also grew stronger in every particular +for his devotion to the same inquirings. Brought up on literature and +sentiment, something of a courtier, passionate, disdainful, and +impatient naturally, he was made over again from the day when he took +up psychical research seriously. He became learned in science, +circumspect, democratic in sympathy, endlessly patient, and above all, +happy. The fortitude of his last hours touched the heroic, so +completely were the atrocious sufferings of his body cast into +insignificance by his interest in the cause he lived for. When a man's +pursuit gradually makes his face shine and grow handsome, you may be +sure it is a worthy one. Both Hodgson and Myers kept growing ever +handsomer and stronger-looking. + +Such personal examples will convert no one, and of course they ought +not to. Nor do I seek at all in this article to convert any one to +belief that psychical research is an important branch of science. To +do that, I should have to quote evidence; and those for whom the +volumes of S. P. R. "Proceedings" already published count for nothing +would remain in their dogmatic slumber, though one rose from the dead. +No, not to convert readers, but simply to _put my own state of mind +upon record publicly_ is the purpose of my present writing. Some one +said to me a short time ago that after my twenty-five years of dabbling +in "Psychics," it would be rather shameful were I unable to state any +definite conclusions whatever as a consequence. I had to agree; so I +now proceed to take up the challenge and express such convictions as +have been engendered in me by that length of experience, be the same +true or false ones. I may be dooming myself to the pit in the eyes of +better-judging posterity; I may be raising myself to honor; I am +willing to take the risk, for what I shall write is _my_ truth, as I +now see it. + + +I began this article by confessing myself baffled. I _am_ baffled, as +to spirit-return, and as to many other special problems. I am also +constantly baffled as to what to think of this or that particular +story, for the sources of error in any one observation are seldom fully +knowable. But weak sticks make strong faggots; and when the stories +fall into consistent sorts that point each in a definite direction, one +gets a sense of being in presence of genuinely natural types of +phenomena. As to there being such real natural types of phenomena +ignored by orthodox science, I am not baffled at all, for I am fully +convinced of it. One cannot get demonstrative proof here. One has to +follow one's personal sense, which, of course, is liable to err, of the +dramatic probabilities of nature. Our critics here obey their sense of +dramatic probability as much as we do. Take "raps" for example, and +the whole business of objects moving without contact. "Nature," thinks +the scientific man, is not so unutterably silly. The cabinet, the +darkness, the tying, suggest a sort of human rat-hole life exclusively +and "swindling" is for him the dramatically sufficient explanation. It +probably is, in an indefinite majority of instances; yet it is to me +dramatically improbable that the swindling should not have accreted +round some originally genuine nucleus. If we look at human imposture +as a historic phenomenon, we find it always imitative. One swindler +imitates a previous swindler, but the first swindler of that kind +imitated some one who was honest. You can no more create an absolutely +new trick than you can create a new word without any previous +basis.--You don't know how to go about it. Try, reader, yourself, to +invent an unprecedented kind of "physical phenomenon of spiritualism." +When _I_ try, I find myself mentally turning over the regular +medium-stock, and thinking how I might improve some item. This being +the dramatically probable human way, I think differently of the whole +type, taken collectively, from the way in which I may think of the +single instance. I find myself believing that there is "something in" +these never ending reports of physical phenomena, although I have n't +yet the least positive notion of the something. It becomes to my mind +simply a very worthy problem for investigation. Either I or the +scientist is of course a fool, with our opposite views of probability +here; and I only wish he might feel the liability, as cordially as I +do, to pertain to both of us. + +I fear I look on Nature generally with more charitable eyes than his, +though perhaps he would pause if he realized as I do, how vast the +fraudulency is which inconsistency he must attribute to her. Nature is +brutal enough, Heaven knows; but no one yet has held her non-human side +to be _dishonest_, and even in the human sphere deliberate deceit is +far rarer than the "classic" intellect, with its few and rigid +categories, was ready to acknowledge. There is a hazy penumbra in us +all where lying and delusion meet, where passion rules beliefs as well +as conduct, and where the term "scoundrel" does not clear up everything +to the depths as it did for our forefathers. The first automatic +writing I ever saw was forty years ago. I unhesitatingly thought of it +as deceit, although it contained vague elements of supernormal +knowledge. Since then I have come to see in automatic writing one +example of a department of human activity as vast as it is enigmatic. +Every sort of person is liable to it, or to something equivalent to it; +and whoever encourages it in himself finds himself personating someone +else, either signing what he writes by fictitious name, or, spelling +out, by ouija-board or table-tips, messages from the departed. Our +subconscious region seems, as a rule, to be dominated either by a crazy +"will to make-believe," or by some curious external force impelling us +to personation. The first difference between the psychical researcher +and the inexpert person is that the former realizes the commonness and +typicality of the phenomenon here, while the latter, less informed, +thinks it so rare as to be unworthy of attention. _I wish to go on +record for the commonness_. + +The next thing I wish to go on record for is _the presence_, in the +midst of all the humbug, _of really supernormal knowledge_. By this I +mean knowledge that cannot be traced to the ordinary sources of +information--the senses namely, of the automatist. In really strong +mediums this knowledge seems to be abundant, though it is usually +spotty, capricious and unconnected. Really strong mediums are +rarities; but when one starts with them and works downwards into less +brilliant regions of the automatic life, one tends to interpret many +slight but odd coincidences with truth as possibly rudimentary forms of +this kind of knowledge. + +What is one to think of this queer chapter in human nature? It is odd +enough on any view. If all it means is a preposterous and inferior +monkey-like tendency to forge messages, systematically embedded in the +soul of all of us, it is weird; and weirder still that it should then +own all this supernormal information. If on the other hand the +supernormal information be the key to the phenomenon, it ought to be +superior; and then how ought we to account for the "wicked partner," +and for the undeniable mendacity and inferiority of so much of the +performance? We are thrown, for our conclusions, upon our instinctive +sense of the dramatic probabilities of nature. My own dramatic sense +tends instinctively to picture the situation as an interaction between +slumbering faculties in the automatist's mind and a cosmic environment +of _other consciousness_ of some sort which is able to work upon them. +If there were in the universe a lot of diffuse soul-stuff, unable of +itself to get into consistent personal form, or to take permanent +possession of an organism, yet always craving to do so, it might get +its head into the air, parasitically, so to speak, by profiting by weak +spots in the armor of human minds, and slipping in and stirring up +there the sleeping tendency to personate. It would induce habits in +the subconscious region of the mind it used thus, and would seek above +all things to prolong its social opportunities by making itself +agreeable and plausible. It would drag stray scraps of truth with it +from the wider environment, but would betray its mental inferiority by +knowing little how to weave them into any important or significant +story. This, I say, is the dramatic view which my mind spontaneously +takes, and it has the advantage of falling into line with ancient human +traditions. The views of others are just as dramatic, _for the +phenomenon is actuated by will of some sort anyhow_, and wills give +rise to dramas. The spiritist view, as held by Messrs. Hyslop and +Hodgson, sees a "will to communicate," struggling through inconceivable +layers of obstruction in the conditions. I have heard Hodgson liken +the difficulties to those of two persons who on earth should have only +dead-drunk servants to use as their messengers. The scientist, for his +part, sees a "will to deceive," watching its chance in all of us, and +able (possibly?) to use "telepathy" in its service. + +Which kind of will, and how many kinds of will are most inherently +probable? Who can say with certainty? The only certainty is that the +phenomena are enormously complex, especially if one includes in them +such intellectual flights of mediumship as Swedenborg's, and if one +tries in any way to work the physical phenomena in. That is why I +personally am as yet neither a convinced believer in parasitic demons, +nor a spiritist, nor a scientist, but still remain a psychical +researcher waiting for more facts before concluding. + +Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one +fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with +our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. +The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves, and +Conanicut and Newport hear each other's fog-horns. But the trees also +commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also +hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is a continuum +of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but +accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a +mother-sea or reservoir. Our "normal" consciousness is circumscribed +for adaptation to our external earthly environment, but the fence is +weak in spots, and fitful influences from beyond leak in, showing the +otherwise unverifiable common connection. Not only psychic research, +but metaphysical philosophy, and speculative biology are led in their +own ways to look with favor on some such "panpsychic" view of the +universe as this. Assuming this common reservoir of consciousness to +exist, this bank upon which we all draw, and in which so many of +earth's memories must in some way be stored, or mediums would not get +at them as they do, the question is, What is its own structure? What +is its inner topography? This question, first squarely formulated by +Myers, deserves to be called "Myers' problem" by scientific men +hereafter. What are the conditions of individuation or insulation in +this mother-sea? To what tracts, to what active systems functioning +separately in it, do personalities correspond? Are individual +"spirits" constituted there? How numerous, and of how many hierarchic +orders may these then be? How permanent? How transient? And how +confluent with one another may they become? + +What again, are the relations between the cosmic consciousness and +matter? Are there subtler forms of matter which upon occasion may +enter into functional connection with the individuations in the psychic +sea, and then, and then only, show themselves?--So that our ordinary +human experience, on its material as well as on its mental side, would +appear to be only an extract from the larger psycho-physical world? + +Vast, indeed, and difficult is the inquirer's prospect here, and the +most significant data for his purpose will probably be just these dingy +little mediumistic facts which the Huxleyan minds of our time find so +unworthy of their attention. But when was not the science of the +future stirred to its conquering activities by the little rebellious +exceptions to the science of the present? Hardly, as yet, has the +surface of the facts called "psychic" begun to be scratched for +scientific purposes. It is through following these facts, I am +persuaded, that the greatest scientific conquests of the coming +generation will be achieved. _Kuehn ist das Muehen, herrlich der Lohn!_ + + + +[1] Published under the title "Confidences of a Psychical Researcher" +in the _American Magazine_, October, 1909. For a more complete and +less popular statement of some theories suggested in this article see +the last pages of a "Report on Mrs. Piper's Hodgson-Control" in +_Proceedings of the [Eng.] Society for Psychical Research_, 1909, 470; +also printed in _Proc. of Am. Soc. for Psychical Research_ for the same +year. + +[2] T. H. Huxley, "Life and Letters," I, 240. + + + + +IX + +ON SOME MENTAL EFFECTS OF THE EARTHQUAKE[1] + +When I departed from Harvard for Stanford University last December, +almost the last good-by I got was that of my old Californian friend B: +"I hope they'll give you a touch of earthquake while you 're there, so +that you may also become acquainted with that Californian institution." + +Accordingly, when, lying awake at about half past five on the morning +of April 18 in my little "flat" on the campus of Stanford, I felt the +bed begin to waggle, my first consciousness was one of gleeful +recognition of the nature of the movement. "By Jove," I said to +myself, "here's B'ssold [Transcriber's note: 'B's old'?] earthquake, +after all!" And then, as it went _crescendo_. "And a jolly good one +it is, too!" I said. + +Sitting up involuntarily, and taking a kneeling position, I was thrown +down on my face as it went _fortior_ shaking the room exactly as a +terrier shakes a rat. Then everything that was on anything else slid +off to the floor, over went bureau and chiffonier with a crash, as the +_fortissimo_ was reached; plaster cracked, an awful roaring noise +seemed to fill the outer air, and in an instant all was still again, +save the soft babble of human voices from far and near that soon began +to make itself heard, as the inhabitants in costumes _negliges_ in +various degrees sought the greater safety of the street and yielded to +the passionate desire for sympathetic communication. + +The thing was over, as I understand the Lick Observatory to have +declared, in forty-eight seconds. To me it felt as if about that +length of time, although I have heard others say that it seemed to them +longer. In my case, sensation and emotion were so strong that little +thought, and no reflection or volition, were possible in the short time +consumed by the phenomenon. + +The emotion consisted wholly of glee and admiration; glee at the +vividness which such an abstract idea or verbal term as "earthquake" +could put on when translated into sensible reality and verified +concretely; and admiration at the way in which the frail little wooden +house could hold itself together in spite of such a shaking. I felt no +trace whatever of fear; it was pure delight and welcome. + +"_Go_ it," I almost cried aloud, "and go it _stronger_!" + +I ran into my wife's room, and found that she, although awakened from +sound sleep, had felt no fear, either. Of all the persons whom I later +interrogated, very few had felt any fear while the shaking lasted, +although many had had a "turn," as they realized their narrow escapes +from bookcases or bricks from chimney-breasts falling on their beds and +pillows an instant after they had left them. + +As soon as I could think, I discerned retrospectively certain peculiar +ways in which my consciousness had taken in the phenomenon. These ways +were quite spontaneous, and, so to speak, inevitable and irresistible. + +First, I personified the earthquake as a permanent individual entity. +It was _the_ earthquake of my friend B's augury, which had been lying +low and holding itself back during all the intervening months, in +order, on that lustrous April morning, to invade my room, and energize +the more intensely and triumphantly. It came, moreover, directly to +_me_. It stole in behind my back, and once inside the room, had me all +to itself, and could manifest itself convincingly. Animus and intent +were never more present in any human action, nor did any human activity +ever more definitely point back to a living agent as its source and +origin. + +All whom I consulted on the point agreed as to this feature in their +experience. "It expressed intention," "It was vicious," "It was bent +on destruction," "It wanted to show its power," or what not. To me, it +wanted simply to manifest the full meaning of its name. But what was +this "It"? To some, apparently, a vague demonic power; to me an +individualized being, B's earthquake, namely. + +One informant interpreted it as the end of the world and the beginning +of the final judgment. This was a lady in a San Francisco hotel, who +did not think of its being an earthquake till after she had got into +the street and some one had explained it to her. She told me that the +theological interpretation had kept fear from her mind, and made her +take the shaking calmly. For "science," when the tensions in the +earth's crust reach the breaking-point, and strata fall into an altered +equilibrium, earthquake is simply the collective _name_ of all the +cracks and shakings and disturbances that happen. They _are_ the +earthquake. But for me _the_ earthquake was the _cause_ of the +disturbances, and the perception of it as a living agent was +irresistible. It had an overpowering dramatic convincingness. + +I realize now better than ever how inevitable were men's earlier +mythologic versions of such catastrophes, and how artificial and +against the grain of our spontaneous perceiving are the later habits +into which science educates us. It was simply impossible for untutored +men to take earthquakes into their minds as anything but supernatural +warnings or retributions. + +A good instance of the way in which the tremendousness of a catastrophe +may banish fear was given me by a Stanford student. He was in the +fourth story of Encina Hall, an immense stone dormitory building. +Awakened from sleep, he recognized what the disturbance was, and sprang +from the bed, but was thrown off his feet in a moment, while his books +and furniture fell round him. Then with an awful, sinister, grinding +roar, everything gave way, and with chimneys, floor-beams, walls and +all, he descended through the three lower stories of the building into +the basement. "This is my end, this is my death," he felt; but all the +while no trace of fear. The experience was too overwhelming for +anything but passive surrender to it. (Certain heavy chimneys had +fallen in, carrying the whole centre of the building with them.) + +Arrived at the bottom, he found himself with rafters and _debris_ round +him, but not pinned in or crushed. He saw daylight, and crept toward +it through the obstacles. Then, realizing that he was in his +nightgown, and feeling no pain anywhere, his first thought was to get +back to his room and find some more presentable clothing. The +stairways at Encina Hall are at the ends of the building. He made his +way to one of them, and went up the four flights, only to find his room +no longer extant. Then he noticed pain in his feet, which had been +injured, and came down the stairs with difficulty. When he talked with +me ten days later he had been in hospital a week, was very thin and +pale, and went on crutches, and was dressed in borrowed clothing. + +So much for Stanford, where all our experiences seem to have been very +similar. Nearly all our chimneys went down, some of them +disintegrating from top to bottom; parlor floors were covered with +bricks; plaster strewed the floors; furniture was everywhere upset and +dislocated; but the wooden dwellings sprang back to their original +position, and in house after house not a window stuck or a door scraped +at top or bottom. Wood architecture was triumphant! Everybody was +excited, but the excitement at first, at any rate, seemed to be almost +joyous. Here at last was a _real_ earthquake after so many years of +harmless waggle! Above all, there was an irresistible desire to talk +about it, and exchange experiences. + +Most people slept outdoors for several subsequent nights, partly to be +safer in case of recurrence, but also to work off their emotion, and +get the full unusualness out of the experience. The vocal babble of +early-waking girls and boys from the gardens of the campus, mingling +with the birds' songs and the exquisite weather, was for three or four +days delightful sunrise phenomenon. + +Now turn to San Francisco, thirty-five miles distant, from which an +automobile ere long brought us the dire news of a city in ruins, with +fires beginning at various points, and the water-supply interrupted. I +was fortunate enough to board the only train of cars--a very small +one--that got up to the city; fortunate enough also to escape in the +evening by the only train that left it. This gave me and my valiant +feminine escort some four hours of observation. My business is with +"subjective" phenomena exclusively; so I will say nothing of the +material ruin that greeted us on every hand--the daily papers and the +weekly journals have done full justice to that topic. By midday, when +we reached the city, the pall of smoke was vast and the dynamite +detonations had begun, but the troops, the police and the firemen +seemed to have established order, dangerous neighborhoods were roped +off everywhere and picketed, saloons closed, vehicles impressed, and +every one at work who _could_ work. + +It was indeed a strange sight to see an entire population in the +streets, busy as ants in an uncovered ant-hill scurrying to save their +eggs and larvae. Every horse, and everything on wheels in the city, +from hucksters' wagons to automobiles, was being loaded with what +effects could be scraped together from houses which the advancing +flames were threatening. The sidewalks were covered with well-dressed +men and women, carrying baskets, bundles, valises, or dragging trunks +to spots of greater temporary safety, soon to be dragged farther, as +the fire kept spreading! + +In the safer quarters, every doorstep was covered with the dwelling's +tenants, sitting surrounded with their more indispensable chattels, and +ready to flee at a minute's notice. I think every one must have fasted +on that day, for I saw no one eating. There was no appearance of +general dismay, and little of chatter or of inco-ordinated excitement. + +Every one seemed doggedly bent on achieving the job which he had set +himself to perform; and the faces, although somewhat tense and set and +grave, were inexpressive of emotion. I noticed only three persons +overcome, two Italian women, very poor, embracing an aged fellow +countrywoman, and all weeping. Physical fatigue and seriousness were +the only inner states that one could read on countenances. + +With lights forbidden in the houses, and the streets lighted only by +the conflagration, it was apprehended that the criminals of San +Francisco would hold high carnival on the ensuing night. But whether +they feared the disciplinary methods of the United States troops, who +were visible everywhere, or whether they were themselves solemnized by +the immensity of the disaster, they lay low and did not "manifest," +either then or subsequently. + +The only very discreditable thing to human nature that occurred was +later, when hundreds of lazy "bummers" found that they could keep +camping in the parks, and make alimentary storage-batteries of their +stomachs, even in some cases getting enough of the free rations in +their huts or tents to last them well into the summer. This charm of +pauperized vagabondage seems all along to have been Satan's most +serious bait to human nature. There was theft from the outset, but +confined, I believe, to petty pilfering. + +Cash in hand was the only money, and millionaires and their families +were no better off in this respect than any one. Whoever got a vehicle +could have the use of it; but the richest often went without, and spent +the first two nights on rugs on the bare ground, with nothing but what +their own arms had rescued. Fortunately, those nights were dry and +comparatively warm, and Californians are accustomed to camping +conditions in the summer, so suffering from exposure was less great +than it would have been elsewhere. By the fourth night, which was +rainy, tents and huts had brought most campers under cover. + +I went through the city again eight days later. The fire was out, and +about a quarter of the area stood unconsumed. Intact skyscrapers +dominated the smoking level majestically and superbly--they and a few +walls that had survived the overthrow. Thus has the courage of our +architects and builders received triumphant vindication! + +The inert elements of the population had mostly got away, and those +that remained seemed what Mr. H. G. Wells calls "efficients." Sheds +were already going up as temporary starting-points of business. Every +one looked cheerful, in spite of the awful discontinuity of past and +future, with every familiar association with material things +dissevered; and the discipline and order were practically perfect. + +As these notes of mine must be short, I had better turn to my more +generalized reflections. + +Two things in retrospect strike me especially, and are the most +emphatic of all my impressions. Both are reassuring as to human nature. + +The first of these was the rapidity of the improvisation of order out +of chaos. It is clear that just as in every thousand human beings +there will be statistically so many artists, so many athletes, so many +thinkers, and so many potentially good soldiers, so there will be so +many potential organizers in times of emergency. In point of fact, not +only in the great city, but in the outlying towns, these natural +ordermakers, whether amateurs or officials, came to the front +immediately. There seemed to be no possibility which there was not +some one there to think of, or which within twenty-four hours was not +in some way provided for. + +A good illustration is this: Mr. Keith is the great landscape-painter +of the Pacific slope, and his pictures, which are many, are +artistically and pecuniarily precious. Two citizens, lovers of his +work, early in the day diverted their attention from all other +interests, their own private ones included, and made it their duty to +visit every place which they knew to contain a Keith painting. They +cut them from their frames, rolled them up, and in this way got all the +more important ones into a place of safety. + +When they then sought Mr. Keith, to convey the joyous news to him, they +found him still in his studio, which was remote from the fire, +beginning a new painting. Having given up his previous work for lost, +he had resolved to lose no time in making what amends he could for the +disaster. + +The completeness of organization at Palo Alto, a town of ten thousand +inhabitants close to Stanford University, was almost comical. People +feared exodus on a large scale of the rowdy elements of San Francisco. +In point of tact, very few refugees came to Palo Alto. But within +twenty-four hours, rations, clothing, hospital, quarantine, +disinfection, washing, police, military, quarters in camp and in +houses, printed information, employment, all were provided for under +the care of so many volunteer committees. + +Much of this readiness was American, much of it Californian; but I +believe that every country in a similar crisis would have displayed it +in a way to astonish the spectators. Like soldiering, it lies always +latent in human nature. + +The second thing that struck me was the universal equanimity. We soon +got letters from the East, ringing with anxiety and pathos; but I now +know fully what I have always believed, that the pathetic way of +feeling great disasters belongs rather to the point of view of people +at a distance than to the immediate victims. I heard not a single +really pathetic or sentimental word in California expressed by any one. + +The terms "awful," "dreadful" fell often enough from people's lips, but +always with a sort of abstract meaning, and with a face that seemed to +admire the vastness of the catastrophe as much as it bewailed its +cuttingness. When talk was not directly practical, I might almost say +that it expressed (at any rate in the nine days I was there) a tendency +more toward nervous excitement than toward grief. The hearts concealed +private bitterness enough, no doubt, but the tongues disdained to dwell +on the misfortunes of self, when almost everybody one spoke to had +suffered equally. + +Surely the cutting edge of all our usual misfortunes comes from their +character of loneliness. We lose our health, our wife or children die, +our house burns down, or our money is made way with, and the world goes +on rejoicing, leaving us on one side and counting us out from all its +business. In California every one, to some degree, was suffering, and +one's private miseries were merged in the vast general sum of privation +and in the all-absorbing practical problem of general recuperation. +The cheerfulness, or, at any rate, the steadfastness of tone, was +universal. Not a single whine or plaintive word did I hear from the +hundred losers whom I spoke to. Instead of that there was a temper of +helpfulness beyond the counting. + +It is easy to glorify this as something characteristically American, or +especially Californian. Californian education has, of course, made the +thought of all possible recuperations easy. In an exhausted country, +with no marginal resources, the outlook on the future would be much +darker. But I like to think that what I write of is a normal and +universal trait of human nature. In our drawing-rooms and offices we +wonder how people ever do go through battles, sieges and shipwrecks. +We quiver and sicken in imagination, and think those heroes superhuman. +Physical pain whether suffered alone or in company, is always more or +less unnerving and intolerable. But mental pathos and anguish, I +fancy, are usually effects of distance. At the place of action, where +all are concerned together, healthy animal insensibility and heartiness +take their place. At San Francisco the need will continue to be awful, +and there will doubtless be a crop of nervous wrecks before the weeks +and months are over, but meanwhile the commonest men, simply because +they _are_ men, will go on, singly and collectively, showing this +admirable fortitude of temper. + + + +[1] At the time of the San Francisco earthquake the author was at +Leland Stanford University nearby. He succeeded in getting into San +Francisco on the morning of the earthquake, and spent the remainder of +the day in the city. These observations appeared in the _Youth's +Companion_ for June 7, 1906. + + + + +X + +THE ENERGIES OF MEN[1] + +Everyone knows what it is to start a piece of work, either intellectual +or muscular, feeling stale--or _oold_, as an Adirondack guide once put +it to me. And everybody knows what it is to "warm up" to his job. The +process of warming up gets particularly striking in the phenomenon +known as "second wind." On usual occasions we make a practice of +stopping an occupation as soon as we meet the first effective layer (so +to call it) of fatigue. We have then walked, played, or worked +"enough," so we desist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious +obstruction on this side of which our usual life is cast. But if an +unusual necessity forces us to press onward a surprising thing occurs. +The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually +or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before. We have +evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the +fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed. There may be layer after layer of +this experience. A third and a fourth "wind" may supervene. Mental +activity shows the phenomenon as well as physical, and in exceptional +cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue-distress, +amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to +own,--sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because +habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those +early critical points. + +For many years I have mused on the phenomenon of second wind, trying to +find a physiological theory. It is evident that our organism has +stored-up reserves of energy that are ordinarily not called upon, but +that may be called upon: deeper and deeper strata of combustible or +explosible material, discontinuously arranged, but ready for use by +anyone who probes so deep, and repairing themselves by rest as well as +do the superficial strata. Most of us continue living unnecessarily +near our surface. Our energy-budget is like our nutritive budget. +Physiologists say that a man is in "nutritive equilibrium" when day +after day he neither gains nor loses weight. But the odd thing is that +this condition may obtain on astonishingly different amounts of food. +Take a man in nutritive equilibrium, and systematically increase or +lessen his rations. In the first case he will begin to gain weight, in +the second case to lose it. The change will be greatest on the first +day, less on the second, less still on the third; and so on, till he +has gained all that he will gain, or lost all that he will lose, on +that altered diet. He is now in nutritive equilibrium again, but with +a new weight; and this neither lessens nor increases because his +various combustion-processes have adjusted themselves to the changed +dietary. He gets rid, in one way or another, of just as much N, C, H, +etc., as he takes in _per diem_. + +Just so one can be in what I might call "efficiency-equilibrium" +(neither gaining nor losing power when once the equilibrium is reached) +on astonishingly different quantities of work, no matter in what +direction the work may be measured. It may be physical work, +intellectual work, moral work, or spiritual work. + +Of course there are limits: the trees don't grow into the sky. But the +plain fact remains that men the world over possess amounts of resource +which only very exceptional individuals push to their extremes of use. +But the very same individual, pushing his energies to their extreme, +may in a vast number of cases keep the pace up day after day, and find +no "reaction" of a bad sort, so long as decent hygienic conditions are +preserved. His more active rate of energizing does not wreck him; for +the organism adapts itself, and as the rate of waste augments, augments +correspondingly the rate of repair. + +I say the _rate_ and not the _time_ of repair. The busiest man needs +no more hours of rest than the idler. Some years ago Professor +Patrick, of the Iowa State University, kept three young men awake for +four days and nights. When his observations on them were finished, the +subjects were permitted to sleep themselves out. All awoke from this +sleep completely refreshed, but the one who took longest to restore +himself from his long vigil only slept one-third more time than was +regular with him. + +If my reader will put together these two conceptions, first, that few +men live at their maximum of energy, and second, that anyone may be in +vital equilibrium at very different rates of energizing, he will find, +I think, that a very pretty practical problem of national economy, as +well as of individual ethics, opens upon his view. In rough terms, we +may say that a man who energizes below his normal maximum fails by just +so much to profit by his chance at life; and that a nation filled with +such men is inferior to a nation run at higher pressure. The problem +is, then, how can men be trained up to their most useful pitch of +energy? And how can nations make such training most accessible to all +their sons and daughters. This, after all, is only the general problem +of education, formulated in slightly different terms. + +"Rough" terms, I said just now, because the words "energy" and +"maximum" may easily suggest only _quantity_ to the reader's mind, +whereas in measuring the human energies of which I speak, qualities as +well as quantities have to be taken into account. Everyone feels that +his total _power_ rises when he passes to a higher _qualitative_ level +of life. + +Writing is higher than walking, thinking is higher than writing, +deciding higher than thinking, deciding "no" higher than deciding +"yes"--at least the man who passes from one of these activities to +another will usually say that each later one involves a greater element +of _inner work_ than the earlier ones, even though the total heat given +out or the foot-pounds expended by the organism, may be less. Just how +to conceive this inner work physiologically is as yet impossible, but +psychologically we all know what the word means. We need a particular +spur or effort to start us upon inner work; it tires us to sustain it; +and when long sustained, we know how easily we lapse. When I speak of +"energizing," and its rates and levels and sources, I mean therefore +our inner as well as our outer work. + +Let no one think, then, that our problem of individual and national +economy is solely that of the maximum of pounds raisable against +gravity, the maximum of locomotion, or of agitation of any sort, that +human beings can accomplish. That might signify little more than +hurrying and jumping about in inco-ordinated ways; whereas inner work, +though it so often reinforces outer work, quite as often means its +arrest. To relax, to say to ourselves (with the "new thoughters") +"Peace! be still!" is sometimes a great achievement of inner work. +When I speak of human energizing in general, the reader must therefore +understand that sum-total of activities, some outer and some inner, +some muscular, some emotional, some moral, some spiritual, of whose +waxing and waning in himself he is at all times so well aware. How to +keep it at an appreciable maximum? How not to let the level lapse? +That is the great problem. But the work of men and women is of +innumerable kinds, each kind being, as we say, carried on by a +particular faculty; so the great problem splits into two sub-problems, +thus: + +(1). What are the limits of human faculty in various directions? + +(2). By what diversity of means, in the differing types of human +beings, may the faculties be stimulated to their best results? + +Read in one way, these two questions sound both trivial and familiar: +there is a sense in which we have all asked them ever since we were +born. Yet _as a methodical programme of scientific inquiry_, I doubt +whether they have ever been seriously taken up. If answered fully; +almost the whole of mental science and of the science of conduct would +find a place under them. I propose, in what follows, to press them on +the reader's attention in an informal way. + +The first point to agree upon in this enterprise is that _as a rule men +habitually use only a small part of the powers which they actually +possess and which they might use under appropriate conditions_. + +Every one is familiar with the phenomenon of feeling more or less alive +on different days. Every one knows on any given day that there are +energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not +call forth, but which he might display if these were greater. Most of +us feel as if a sort of cloud weighed upon us, keeping us below our +highest notch of clearness in discernment, sureness in reasoning, or +firmness in deciding. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only +half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are +making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical +resources. In some persons this sense of being cut off from their +rightful resources is extreme, and we then get the formidable +neurasthenic and psychasthenic conditions with life grown into one +tissue of impossibilities, that so many medical books describe. + +Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives usually far +within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he +habitually fails to use. He energizes below his _maximum_, and he +behaves below his _optimum_. In elementary faculty, in co-ordination, +in power of _inhibition_ and control, in every conceivable way, his +life is contracted like the field of vision of an hysteric subject--but +with less excuse, for the poor hysteric is diseased, while in the rest +of us it is only an inveterate _habit_--the habit of inferiority to our +full self--that is bad. + +Admit so much, then, and admit also that the charge of being inferior +to their full self is far truer of some men than of others; then the +practical question ensues: _to what do the better men owe their escape? +and, in the fluctuations which all men feel in their own degree of +energizing, to what are the improvements due, when they occur_? + +In general terms the answer is plain: + +Either some unusual stimulus fills them with emotional excitement, or +some unusual idea of necessity induces them to make an extra effort of +will. _Excitements, ideas, and efforts_, in a word, are what carry us +over the dam. + +In those "hyperesthetic" conditions which chronic invalidism so often +brings in its train, the dam has changed its normal place. The +slightest functional exercise gives a distress which the patient yields +to and stops. In such cases of "habit-neurosis" a new range of power +often comes in consequence of the "bullying-treatment," of efforts +which the doctor obliges the patient, much against his will, to make. +First comes the very extremity of distress, then follows unexpected +relief. There seems no doubt that _we are each and all of us to some +extent victims of habit-neurosis_. We have to admit the wider +potential range and the habitually narrow actual use. We live subject +to arrest by degrees of fatigue which we have come only from habit to +obey. Most of us may learn to push the barrier farther off, and to +live in perfect comfort on much higher levels of power. + +Country people and city people, as a class, illustrate this difference. +The rapid rate of life, the number of decisions in an hour, the many +things to keep account of, in a busy city man's or woman's life, seem +monstrous to a country brother. He does n't see how we live at all. A +day in New York or Chicago fills him with terror. The danger and noise +make it appear like a permanent earthquake. But _settle_ him there, +and in a year or two he will have caught the pulse-beat. He will +vibrate to the city's rhythms; and if he only succeeds in his +avocation, whatever that may be, he will find a joy in all the hurry +and the tension, he will keep the pace as well as any of us, and get as +much out of himself in any week as he ever did in ten weeks in the +country. + +The stimuli of those who successfully spend and undergo the +transformation here, are duty, the example of others, and +crowd-pressure and contagion. The transformation, moreover, is a +chronic one: the new level of energy becomes permanent. The duties of +new offices of trust are constantly producing this effect on the human +beings appointed to them. The physiologists call a stimulus +"dynamogenic" when it increases the muscular contractions of men to +whom it is applied; but appeals can be dynamogenic morally as well as +muscularly. We are witnessing here in America to-day the dynamogenic +effect of a very exalted political office upon the energies of an +individual who had already manifested a healthy amount of energy before +the office came. + +Humbler examples show perhaps still better what chronic effects duty's +appeal may produce in chosen individuals. John Stuart Mill somewhere +says that women excel men in the power of keeping up sustained moral +excitement. Every case of illness nursed by wife or mother is a proof +of this; and where can one find greater examples of sustained endurance +than in those thousands of poor homes, where the woman successfully +holds the family together and keeps it going by taking all the thought +and doing all the work--nursing, teaching, cooking, washing, sewing, +scrubbing, saving, helping neighbors, "choring" outside--where does +the catalogue end? If she does a bit of scolding now and then who can +blame her? But often she does just the reverse; keeping the children +clean and the man good tempered, and soothing and smoothing the whole +neighborhood into finer shape. + +Eighty years ago a certain Montyon left to the Academie Francaise a sum +of money to be given in small prizes, to the best examples of "virtue" +of the year. The academy's committees, with great good sense, have +shown a partiality to virtues simple and chronic, rather than to her +spasmodic and dramatic flights; and the exemplary housewives reported +on have been wonderful and admirable enough. In Paul Bourget's report +for this year we find numerous cases, of which this is a type; Jeanne +Chaix, eldest of six children; mother insane, father chronically ill. +Jeanne, with no money but her wages at a pasteboard-box factory, +directs the household, brings up the children, and successfully +maintains the family of eight, which thus subsists, morally as well as +materially, by the sole force of her valiant will. In some of these +French cases charity to outsiders is added to the inner family burden; +or helpless relatives, young or old, are adopted, as if the strength +were inexhaustible and ample for every appeal. Details are too long to +quote here; but human nature, responding to the call of duty, appears +nowhere sublimer than in the person of these humble heroines of family +life. + +Turning from more chronic to acuter proofs of human nature's reserves +of power, we find that the stimuli that carry us over the usually +effective dam are most often the classic emotional ones, love, anger, +crowd-contagion or despair. Despair lames most people, but it wakes +others fully up. Every siege or shipwreck or polar expedition brings +out some hero who keeps the whole company in heart. Last year there +was a terrible colliery explosion at Courrieres in France. Two hundred +corpses, if I remember rightly, were exhumed. After twenty days of +excavation, the rescuers heard a voice. "_Me voici_," said the first +man unearthed. He proved to be a collier named Nemy, who had taken +command of thirteen others in the darkness, disciplined them and +cheered them, and brought them out alive. Hardly any of them could see +or speak or walk when brought into the day. Five days later, a +different type of vital endurance was unexpectedly unburied in the +person of one Berton who, isolated from any but dead companions, had +been able to sleep away most of his time. + +A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far +stronger creature than was supposed. Cromwell's and Grant's careers +are the stock examples of how war will wake a man up. I owe to +Professor C. E. Norton, my colleague, the permission to print part of a +private letter from Colonel Baird-Smith written shortly after the six +weeks' siege of Delhi, in 1857, for the victorious issue of which that +excellent officer was chiefly to be thanked. He writes as follows: + +". . . My poor wife had some reason to think that war and disease +between them had left very little of a husband to take under nursing +when she got him again. An attack of camp-scurvy had filled my mouth +with sores, shaken every joint in my body, and covered me all over with +sores and livid spots, so that I was marvellously unlovely to look +upon. A smart knock on the ankle-joint from the splinter of a shell +that burst in my face, in itself a mere _bagatelle_ of a wound, had +been of necessity neglected under the pressing and incessant calls upon +me, and had grown worse and worse till the whole foot below the ankle +became a black mass and seemed to threaten mortification. I insisted, +however, on being allowed to use it till the place was taken, +mortification or no; and though the pain was sometimes horrible I +carried my point and kept up to the last. On the day after the assault +I had an unlucky fall on some bad ground, and it was an open question +for a day or two whether I hadn't broken my arm at the elbow. +Fortunately it turned out to be only a severe sprain, but I am still +conscious of the wrench it gave me. To crown the whole pleasant +catalogue, I was worn to a shadow by a constant diarrhoea, and consumed +as much opium as would have done credit to my father-in-law [Thomas De +Quincey]. However, thank God, I have a good share of Tapleyism in me +and come out strong under difficulties. I think I may confidently say +that no man ever saw me out of heart, or ever heard one croaking word +from me even when our prospects were gloomiest. We were sadly scourged +by the cholera, and it was almost appalling to me to find that out of +twenty-seven officers present, I could only muster fifteen for the +operations of the attack. However, it was done, and after it was done +came the collapse. Don't be horrified when I tell you that for the +whole of the actual siege, and in truth for some little time before, I +almost lived on brandy. Appetite for food I had none, but I forced +myself to eat just sufficient to sustain life, and I had an incessant +craving for brandy as the strongest stimulant I could get. Strange to +say, I was quite unconscious of its affecting me in the slightest +degree. _The excitement of the work was so great that no lesser one +seemed to have any chance against it, and I certainly never found my +intellect clearer or my nerves stronger in my life_. It was only my +wretched body that was weak, and the moment the real work was done by +our becoming complete masters of Delhi, I broke down without delay and +discovered that if I wished to live I must continue no longer the +system that had kept me up until the crisis was passed. With it passed +away as if in a moment all desire to stimulate, and a perfect loathing +of my late staff of life took possession of me." + +Such experiences show how profound is the alteration in the manner in +which, under excitement, our organism will sometimes perform its +physiological work. The processes of repair become different when the +reserves have to be used, and for weeks and months the deeper use may +go on. + +Morbid cases, here as elsewhere, lay the normal machinery bare. In the +first number of Dr. Morton Prince's _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, +Dr. Janet has discussed five cases of morbid impulse, with an +explanation that is precious for my present point of view. One is a +girl who eats, eats, eats, all day. Another walks, walks, walks, and +gets her food from an automobile that escorts her. Another is a +dipsomaniac. A fourth pulls out her hair. A fifth wounds her flesh +and burns her skin. Hitherto such freaks of impulse have received +Greek names (as bulimia, dromomania, etc.) and been scientifically +disposed of as "episodic syndromata of hereditary degeneration." But +it turns out that Janet's cases are all what he calls psychasthenics, +or victims of a chronic sense of weakness, torpor, lethargy, fatigue, +insufficiency, impossibility, unreality and powerlessness of will; and +that in each and all of them the particular activity pursued, +deleterious though it be, has the temporary result of raising the sense +of vitality and making the patient feel alive again. These things +reanimate: they would reanimate us, but it happens that in each +patient the particular freak-activity chosen is the only thing that +does reanimate; and therein lies the morbid state. The way to treat +such persons is to discover to them more usual and useful ways of +throwing their stores of vital energy into gear. + +Colonel Baird-Smith, needing to draw on altogether extraordinary stores +of energy, found that brandy and opium were ways of throwing them into +gear. + +Such cases are humanly typical. We are all to some degree oppressed, +unfree. We don't come to our own. It is there, but we don't get at +it. The threshold must be made to shift. Then many of us find that an +eccentric activity--a "spree," say--relieves. There is no doubt that +to some men sprees and excesses of almost any kind are medicinal, +temporarily at any rate, in spite of what the moralists and doctors say. + +But when the normal tasks and stimulations of life don't put a man's +deeper levels of energy on tap, and he requires distinctly deleterious +excitements, his constitution verges on the abnormal. The normal +opener of deeper and deeper levels of energy is the will. The +difficulty is to use it, to make the effort which the word volition +implies. But if we do make it (or if a god, though he were only the +god Chance, makes it through us), it will act dynamogenically on us for +a month. It is notorious that a single successful effort of moral +volition, such as saying "no" to some habitual temptation, or +performing some courageous act, will launch a man on a higher level of +energy for days and weeks, will give him a new range of power. "In the +act of uncorking the whiskey bottle which I had brought home to get +drunk upon," said a man to me, "I suddenly found myself running out +into the garden, where I smashed it on the ground. I felt so happy and +uplifted after this act, that for two months I was n't tempted to touch +a drop." + +The emotions and excitements due to usual situations are the usual +inciters of the will. But these act discontinuously; and in the +intervals the shallower levels of life tend to close in and shut us +off. Accordingly the best practical knowers of the human soul have +invented the thing known as methodical ascetic discipline to keep the +deeper levels constantly in reach. Beginning with easy tasks, passing +to harder ones, and exercising day by day, it is, I believe, admitted +that disciples of asceticism can reach very high levels of freedom and +power of will. + +Ignatius Loyola's spiritual exercises must have produced this result in +innumerable devotees. But the most venerable ascetic system, and the +one whose results have the most voluminous experimental corroboration +is undoubtedly the Yoga system in Hindustan. + +From time immemorial, by Hatha Yoga, Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, or whatever +code of practice it might be, Hindu aspirants to perfection have +trained themselves, month in and out, for years. The result claimed, +and certainly in many cases accorded by impartial judges, is strength +of character, personal power, unshakability of soul. In an article in +the _Philosophical Review_,[2] from which I am largely copying here, I +have quoted at great length the experience with "Hatha Yoga" of a very +gifted European friend of mine who, by persistently carrying out for +several months its methods of fasting from food and sleep, its +exercises in breathing and thought-concentration, and its fantastic +posture-gymnastics, seems to have succeeded in waking up deeper and +deeper levels of will and moral and intellectual power in himself, and +to have escaped from a decidedly menacing brain-condition of the +"circular" type, from which he had suffered for years. + +Judging by my friend's letters, of which the last I have is written +fourteen months after the Yoga training began, there can be no doubt of +his relative regeneration. He has undergone material trials with +indifference, travelled third-class on Mediterranean steamers, and +fourth-class on African trains, living with the poorest Arabs and +sharing their unaccustomed food, all with equanimity. His devotion to +certain interests has been put to heavy strain, and nothing is more +remarkable to me than the changed moral tone with which he reports the +situation. A profound modification has unquestionably occurred in the +running of his mental machinery. The gearing has changed, and his will +is available otherwise than it was. + +My friend is a man of very peculiar temperament. Few of us would have +had the will to start upon the Yoga training, which, once started, +seemed to conjure the further willpower needed out of itself. And not +all of those who could launch themselves would have reached the same +results. The Hindus themselves admit that in some men the results +may come without call or bell. My friend writes to me: "You +are quite right in thinking that religious crises, love-crises, +indignation-crises may awaken in a very short time powers similar to +those reached by years of patient Yoga-practice." + +Probably most medical men would treat this individual's case as one of +what it is fashionable now to call by the name of "self-suggestion," or +"expectant attention"--as if those phrases were explanatory, or meant +more than the fact that certain men can be influenced, while others +cannot be influenced, by certain sorts of _ideas_. This leads me to +say a word about ideas considered as dynamogenic agents, or stimuli for +unlocking what would otherwise be unused reservoirs of individual power. + +One thing that ideas do is to contradict other ideas and keep us from +believing them. An idea that thus negates a first idea may itself in +turn be negated by a third idea, and the first idea may thus regain its +natural influence over our belief and determine our behavior. Our +philosophic and religious development proceeds thus by credulities, +negations, and the negating of negations. + +But whether for arousing or for stopping belief, ideas may fail to be +efficacious, just as a wire, at one time alive with electricity, may at +another time be dead. Here our insight into causes fails us, and we +can only note results in general terms. In general, whether a given +idea shall be a live idea depends more on the person into whose mind it +is injected than on the idea itself. Which is the suggestive idea for +this person, and which for that one? Mr. Fletcher's disciples +regenerate themselves by the idea (and the fact) that they are chewing, +and re-chewing, and super-chewing their food. Dr. Dewey's pupils +regenerate themselves by going without their breakfast--a fact, but +also an ascetic idea. Not every one can use _these_ ideas with the +same success. + +But apart from such individually varying susceptibilities, there are +common lines along which men simply as men tend to be inflammable by +ideas. As certain objects naturally awaken love, anger, or cupidity, +so certain ideas naturally awaken the energies of loyalty, courage, +endurance, or devotion. When these ideas are effective in an +individual's life, their effect is often very great indeed. They may +transfigure it, unlocking innumerable powers which, but for the idea, +would never have come into play. "Fatherland," "the Flag," "the +Union," "Holy Church," "the Monroe Doctrine," "Truth," "Science," +"Liberty," Garibaldi's phrase, "Rome or Death," etc., are so many +examples of energy-releasing ideas. The social nature of such phrases +is an essential factor of their dynamic power. They are forces of +detent in situations in which no other force produces equivalent +effects, and each is a force of detent only in a specific group of men. + +The memory that an oath or vow has been made will nerve one to +abstinences and efforts otherwise impossible; witness the "pledge" in +the history of the temperance movement. A mere promise to his +sweetheart will clean up a youth's life all over--at any rate for time. +For such effects an educated susceptibility is required. The idea of +one's "honor," for example, unlocks energy only in those of us who have +had the education of a "gentleman," so called. + +That delightful being, Prince Pueckler-Muskau, writes to his wife from +England that he has invented "a sort of artificial resolution +respecting things that are difficult of performance. My device," he +continues, "is this: _I give my word of honor most solemnly to myself_ +to do or to leave undone this or that. I am of course extremely +cautious in the use of this expedient, but when once the word is given, +even though I afterwards think I have been precipitate or mistaken, I +hold it to be perfectly irrevocable, whatever inconveniences I foresee +likely to result. If I were capable of breaking my word after such +mature consideration, I should lose all respect for myself,--and what +man of sense would not prefer death to such an alternative? . . . When +the mysterious formula is pronounced, no alteration in my own view, +nothing short of physical impossibilities, must, for the welfare of my +soul, alter my will. . . . I find something very satisfactory in the +thought that man has the power of framing such props and weapons out of +the most trivial materials, indeed out of nothing, merely by the force +of his will, which thereby truly deserves the name of omnipotent." [3] + +_Conversions_, whether they be political, scientific, philosophic, or +religious, form another way in which bound energies are let loose. +They unify us, and put a stop to ancient mental interferences. The +result is freedom, and often a great enlargement of power. A belief +that thus settles upon an individual always acts as a challenge to his +will. But, for the particular challenge to operate, he must be the +right challeng_ee_. In religious conversions we have so fine an +adjustment that the idea may be in the mind of the challengee for years +before it exerts effects; and why it should do so then is often so far +from obvious that the event is taken for a miracle of grace, and not a +natural occurrence. Whatever it is, it may be a highwater mark of +energy, in which "noes," once impossible, are easy, and in which a new +range of "yeses" gains the right of way. + +We are just now witnessing a very copious unlocking of energies by +ideas in the persons of those converts to "New Thought," "Christian +Science," "Metaphysical Healing," or other forms of spiritual +philosophy, who are so numerous among us to-day. The ideas here are +healthy-minded and optimistic; and it is quite obvious that a wave of +religious activity, analogous in some respects to the spread of early +Christianity, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism, is passing over our American +world. The common feature of these optimistic faiths is that they all +tend to the suppression of what Mr. Horace Fletcher calls +"fearthought." Fearthought he defines as the "self-suggestion of +inferiority"; so that one may say that these systems all operate by the +suggestion of power. And the power, small or great, comes in various +shapes to the individual,--power, as he will tell you, not to "mind" +things that used to vex him, power to concentrate his mind, good cheer, +good temper--in short, to put it mildly, a firmer, more elastic moral +tone. + +The most genuinely saintly person I have ever known is a friend of mine +now suffering from cancer of the breast--I hope that she may pardon my +citing her here as an example of what ideas can do. Her ideas have +kept her a practically well woman for months after she should have +given up and gone to bed. They have annulled all pain and weakness and +given her a cheerful active life, unusually beneficent to others to +whom she has afforded help. Her doctors, acquiescing in results they +could not understand, have had the good sense to let her go her own way. + +How far the mind-cure movement is destined to extend its influence, or +what intellectual modifications it may yet undergo, no one can +foretell. It is essentially a religious movement, and to academically +nurtured minds its utterances are tasteless and often grotesque enough. +It also incurs the natural enmity of medical politicians, and of the +whole trades-union wing of that profession. But no unprejudiced +observer can fail to recognize its importance as a social phenomenon +to-day, and the higher medical minds are already trying to interpret it +fairly, and make its power available for their own therapeutic ends. + +Dr. Thomas Hyslop, of the great West Riding Asylum in England, said +last year to the British Medical Association that the best +sleep-producing agent which his practice had revealed to him, was +_prayer_. I say this, he added (I am sorry here that I must quote from +memory), purely as a medical man. The exercise of prayer, in those who +habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most +adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the +nerves. + +But in few of us are functions not tied up by the exercise of other +functions. Relatively few medical men and scientific men, I fancy, can +pray. Few can carry on any living commerce with "God." Yet many of us +are well aware of how much freer and abler our lives would be, were +such important forms of energizing not sealed up by the critical +atmosphere in which we have been reared. There are in every one +potential forms of activity that actually are shunted out from use. +Part of the imperfect vitality under which we labor can thus be easily +explained. One part of our mind dams up--even _damns_ up!--the other +parts. + +Conscience makes cowards of us all. Social conventions prevent us from +telling the truth after the fashion of the heroes and heroines of +Bernard Shaw. We all know persons who are models of excellence, but +who belong to the extreme philistine type of mind. So deadly is their +intellectual respectability that we can't converse about certain +subjects at all, can't let our minds play over them, can't even mention +them in their presence. I have numbered among my dearest friends +persons thus inhibited intellectually, with whom I would gladly have +been able to talk freely about certain interests of mine, certain +authors, say, as Bernard Shaw, Chesterton, Edward Carpenter, H. G. +Wells, but it would n't do, it made them too uncomfortable, they would +n't play, I had to be silent. An intellect thus tied down by +literality and decorum makes on one the same sort of an impression that +an able-bodied man would who should habituate himself to do his work +with only one of his fingers, locking up the rest of his organism and +leaving it unused. + +I trust that by this time I have said enough to convince the reader +both of the truth and of the importance of my thesis. The two +questions, first, that of the possible extent of our powers; and, +second, that of the various avenues of approach to them, the various +keys for unlocking them in diverse individuals, dominate the whole +problem of individual and national education. We need a topography of +the limits of human power, similar to the chart which oculists use of +the field of human vision. We need also a study of the various types +of human being with reference to the different ways in which their +energy-reserves may be appealed to and set loose. Biographies and +individual experiences of every kind may be drawn upon for evidence +here.[4] + + + +[1] This was the title originally given to the Presidential Address +delivered before the American Philosophical Association at Columbia +University, December 28, 1906, and published as there delivered in the +_Philosophical Review_ for January, 1907. The address was later +published, after slight alteration, in the _American Magazine_ for +October, 1907, under the title "The Powers of Men." The more popular +form is here reprinted under the title which the author himself +preferred. + +[2] "The Energies of Men." _Philosophical Review_, vol. xvi, No. 1, +January, 1907. [Cf. Note on p. 229.] + +[3] "Tour in England, Ireland, and France," Philadelphia, 1833, p. 435. + +[4] "This would be an absolutely concrete study . . . The limits of +power must be limits that have been realized in actual persons, and the +various ways of unlocking the reserves of power must have been +exemplified in individual lives . . . So here is a program of concrete +individual psychology . . . It is replete with interesting facts, and +points to practical issues superior in importance to anything we know." +_From the address as originally delivered before the Philosophical +Association_; See xvi. _Philosophical Review_, 1, 19. + + + + +XI + +THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR[1] + +The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping +party. The military feelings are too deeply grounded to abdicate their +place among our ideals until better substitutes are offered than the +glory and shame that come to nations as well as to individuals from the +ups and downs of politics and the vicissitudes of trade. There is +something highly paradoxical in the modern man's relation to war. Ask +all our millions, north and south, whether they would vote now (were +such a thing possible) to have our war for the Union expunged from +history, and the record of a peaceful transition to the present time +substituted for that of its marches and battles, and probably hardly a +handful of eccentrics would say yes. Those ancestors, those efforts, +those memories and legends, are the most ideal part of what we now own +together, a sacred spiritual possession worth more than all the blood +poured out. Yet ask those same people whether they would be willing in +cold blood to start another civil war now to gain another similar +possession, and not one man or women would vote for the proposition. +In modern eyes, precious though wars may be, they must not be waged +solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, +only when an enemy's injustice leaves us no alternative, is a war now +thought permissible. + +It was not thus in ancient times. The earlier men were hunting men, +and to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the village and +possess the females, was the most profitable, as well as the most +exciting, way of living. Thus were the more martial tribes selected, +and in chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to +mingle with the more fundamental appetite for plunder. + +Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to +plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the +love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irrationality and horror +is of no effect upon him. The horrors make the fascination. War is +the _strong_ life; it is life _in extremis_; war-taxes are the only +ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us. + +History is a bath of blood. The Iliad is one long recital of how +Diomedes and Ajax, Sarpedon and Hector _killed_. No detail of the +wounds they made is spared us, and the Greek mind fed upon the story. +Greek history is a panorama of jingoism and imperialism--war for war's +sake, all the citizens being warriors. It is horrible reading, because +of the irrationality of it all--save for the purpose of making +"history"--and the history is that of the utter ruin of a civilization +in intellectual respects perhaps the highest the earth has ever seen. + +Those wars were purely piratical. Pride, gold, women, slaves, +excitement, were their only motives. In the Peloponnesian war for +example, the Athenians ask the inhabitants of Melos (the island where +the "Venus of Milo" was found), hitherto neutral, to own their +lordship. The envoys meet, and hold a debate which Thucydides gives in +full, and which, for sweet reasonableness of form, would have satisfied +Matthew Arnold. "The powerful exact what they can," said the +Athenians, "and the weak grant what they must." When the Meleans say +that sooner than be slaves they will appeal to the gods, the Athenians +reply: "Of the gods we believe and of men we know that, by a law of +their nature, wherever they can rule they will. This law was not made +by us, and we are not the first to have acted upon it; we did but +inherit it, and we know that you and all mankind, if you were as strong +as we are, would do as we do. So much for the gods; we have told you +why we expect to stand as high in their good opinion as you." Well, +the Meleans still refused, and their town was taken. "The Athenians," +Thucydides quietly says, "thereupon put to death all who were of +military age and made slaves of the women and children. They then +colonized the island, sending thither five hundred settlers of their +own." + +Alexander's career was piracy pure and simple, nothing but an orgy of +power and plunder, made romantic by the character of the hero. There +was no rational principle in it, and the moment he died his generals +and governors attacked one another. The cruelty of those times is +incredible. When Rome finally conquered Greece, Paulus Aemilius, was +told by the Roman Senate to reward his soldiers for their toil by +"giving" them the old kingdom of Epirus. They sacked seventy cities +and carried off a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants as slaves. +How many they killed I know not; but in Etolia they killed all the +senators, five hundred and fifty in number. Brutus was "the noblest +Roman of them all," but to reanimate his soldiers on the eve of +Philippi he similarly promises to give them the cities of Sparta and +Thessalonica to ravage, if they win the fight. + +Such was the gory nurse that trained societies to cohesiveness. We +inherit the warlike type; and for most of the capacities of heroism +that the human race is full of we have to thank this cruel history. +Dead men tell no tales, and if there were any tribes of other type than +this they have left no survivors. Our ancestors have bred pugnacity +into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't breed +it out of us. The popular imagination fairly fattens on the thought of +wars. Let public opinion once reach a certain fighting pitch, and no +ruler can withstand it. In the Boer war both governments began with +bluff but could n't stay there, the military tension was too much for +them. In 1898 our people had read the word "war" in letters three +inches high for three months in every newspaper. The pliant politician +McKinley was swept away by their eagerness, and our squalid war with +Spain became a necessity. + +At the present day, civilized opinion is a curious mental mixture. The +military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but are confronted +by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom. +Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military +service. Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally avowable +motives, and pretexts must be found for attributing them solely to the +enemy. England and we, our army and navy authorities repeat without +ceasing, arm solely for "peace," Germany and Japan it is who are bent +on loot and glory. "Peace" in military mouths to-day is a synonym for +"war expected." The word has become a pure provocative, and no +government wishing peace sincerely should allow it ever to be printed +in a newspaper. Every up-to-date dictionary should say that "peace" +and "war" mean the same thing, now _in posse_, now _in actu_. It may +even reasonably be said that the intensely sharp competitive +_preparation_ for war by the nations _is the real war_, permanent, +unceasing; and that the battles are only a sort of public verification +of the mastery gained during the "peace"-interval. + +It is plain that on this subject civilized man has developed a sort of +double personality. If we take European nations, no legitimate +interest of any one of them would seem to justify the tremendous +destructions which a war to compass it would necessarily entail. It +would seem as though common sense and reason ought to find a way to +reach agreement in every conflict of honest interests. I myself think +it our bounden duty to believe in such international rationality as +possible. But, as things stand, I see how desperately hard it is to +bring the peace-party and the war-party together, and I believe that +the difficulty is due to certain deficiencies in the program of +pacificism which set the militarist imagination strongly, and to a +certain extent justifiably, against it. In the whole discussion both +sides are on imaginative and sentimental ground. It is but one utopia +against another, and everything one says must be abstract and +hypothetical. Subject to this criticism and caution, I will try to +characterize in abstract strokes the opposite imaginative forces, and +point out what to my own very fallible mind seems the best Utopian +hypothesis, the most promising line of conciliation. + +In my remarks, pacificist though I am, I will refuse to speak of the +bestial side of the war-_regime_ (already done justice to by many +writers) and consider only the higher aspects of militaristic +sentiment. Patriotism no one thinks discreditable; nor does any one +deny that war is the romance of history. But inordinate ambitions are +the soul of every patriotism, and the possibility of violent death the +soul of all romance. The militarily patriotic and romantic-minded +everywhere, and especially the professional military class, refuse to +admit for a moment that war may be a transitory phenomenon in social +evolution. The notion of a sheep's paradise like that revolts, they +say, our higher imagination. Where then would be the steeps of life? +If war had ever stopped, we should have to re-invent it, on this view, +to redeem life from flat degeneration. + +Reflective apologists for war at the present day all take it +religiously. It is a sort of sacrament. Its profits are to the +vanquished as well as to the victor; and quite apart from any question +of profit, it is an absolute good, we are told, for it is human nature +at its highest dynamic. Its "horrors" are a cheap price to pay for +rescue from the only alternative supposed, of a world of clerks and +teachers, of co-education and zo-ophily, of "consumer's leagues" and +"associated charities," of industrialism unlimited, and feminism +unabashed. No scorn, no hardness, no valor any more! Fie upon such a +cattleyard of a planet! + +So far as the central essence of this feeling goes, no healthy minded +person, it seems to me, can help to some degree partaking of it. +Militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and human +life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible. Without risks or +prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a +type of military character which every one feels that the race should +never cease to breed, for every one is sensitive to its superiority. +The duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping military characters in +stock--of keeping them, if not for use, then as ends in themselves and +as pure pieces of perfection,--so that Roosevelt's weaklings and +mollycoddles may not end by making everything else disappear from the +face of nature. + +This natural sort of feeling forms, I think, the innermost soul of +army-writings. Without any exception known to me, militarist authors +take a highly mystical view of their subject, and regard war as a +biological or sociological necessity, uncontrolled by ordinary +psychological checks and motives. When the time of development is ripe +the war must come, reason or no reason, for the justifications pleaded +are invariably fictitious. War is, in short, a permanent human +_obligation_. General Homer Lea, in his recent book "The Valor of +Ignorance," plants himself squarely on this ground. Readiness for war +is for him the essence of nationality, and ability in it the supreme +measure of the health of nations. + +Nations, General Lea says, are never stationary--they must necessarily +expand or shrink, according to their vitality or decrepitude. Japan +now is culminating; and by the fatal law in question it is impossible +that her statesmen should not long since have entered, with +extraordinary foresight, upon a vast policy of conquest--the game in +which the first moves were her wars with China and Russia and her +treaty with England, and of which the final objective is the capture of +the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, and the whole of our +Coast west of the Sierra Passes. This will give Japan what her +ineluctable vocation as a state absolutely forces her to claim, the +possession of the entire Pacific Ocean; and to oppose these deep +designs we Americans have, according to our author, nothing but our +conceit, our ignorance, our commercialism, our corruption, and our +feminism. General Lea makes a minute technical comparison of the +military strength which we at present could oppose to the strength of +Japan, and concludes that the islands, Alaska, Oregon, and Southern +California, would fall almost without resistance, that San Francisco +must surrender in a fortnight to a Japanese investment, that in three +or four months the war would be over, and our republic, unable to +regain what it had heedlessly neglected to protect sufficiently, would +then "disintegrate," until perhaps some Caesar should arise to weld us +again into a nation. + +A dismal forecast indeed! Yet not implausible, if the mentality of +Japan's statesmen be of the Caesarian type of which history shows so +many examples, and which is all that General Lea seems able to imagine. +But there is no reason to think that women can no longer be the mothers +of Napoleonic or Alexandrian characters; and if these come in Japan and +find their opportunity, just such surprises as "The Valor of Ignorance" +paints may lurk in ambush for us. Ignorant as we still are of the +innermost recesses of Japanese mentality, we may be foolhardy to +disregard such possibilities. + +Other militarists are more complex and more moral in their +considerations. The "Philosophie des Krieges," by S. R. Steinmetz is a +good example. War, according to this author, is an ordeal instituted +by God, who weighs the nations in its balance. It is the essential +form of the State, and the only function in which peoples can employ +all their powers at once and convergently. No victory is possible save +as the resultant of a totality of virtues, no defeat for which some +vice or weakness is not responsible. Fidelity, cohesiveness, tenacity, +heroism, conscience, education, inventiveness, economy, wealth, +physical health and vigor--there is n't a moral or intellectual point +of superiority that does n't tell, when God holds his assizes and hurls +the peoples upon one another. _Die Weltgeschichte ist das +Weltgericht_; and Dr. Steinmetz does not believe that in the long run +chance and luck play any part in apportioning the issues. + +The virtues that prevail, it must be noted, are virtues anyhow, +superiorities that count in peaceful as well as in military +competition; but the strain on them, being infinitely intenser in the +latter case, makes war infinitely more searching as a trial. No ordeal +is comparable to its winnowings. Its dread hammer is the welder of men +into cohesive states, and nowhere but in such states can human nature +adequately develop its capacity. The only alternative is +"degeneration." + +Dr. Steinmetz is a conscientious thinker, and his book, short as it is, +takes much into account. Its upshot can, it seems to me, be summed up +in Simon Patten's word, that mankind was nursed in pain and fear, and +that the transition to a "pleasure-economy" may be fatal to a being +wielding no powers of defence against its disintegrative influences. +If we speak of the _fear of emancipation from the fear-regime_, we put +the whole situation into a single phrase; fear regarding ourselves now +taking the place of the ancient fear of the enemy. + +Turn the fear over as I will in my mind, it all seems to lead back to +two unwillingnesses of the imagination, one aesthetic, and the other +moral; unwillingness, first to envisage a future in which army-life, +with its many elements of charm, shall be forever impossible, and in +which the destinies of peoples shall nevermore be decided, quickly, +thrillingly, and tragically, by force, but only gradually and insipidly +by "evolution"; and, secondly, unwillingness to see the supreme theatre +of human strenuousness closed, and the splendid military aptitudes of +men doomed to keep always in a state of latency and never show +themselves in action. These insistent unwillingnesses, no less than +other aesthetic and ethical insistencies, have, it seems to me, to be +listened to and respected. One cannot meet them effectively by mere +counter-insistency on war's expensiveness and horror. The horror makes +the thrill; and when the question is of getting the extremest and +supremest out of human nature, talk of expense sounds ignominious. The +weakness of so much merely negative criticism is evident--pacificism +makes no converts from the military party. The military party denies +neither the bestiality nor the horror, nor the expense; it only says +that these things tell but half the story. It only says that war is +_worth_ them; that, taking human nature as a whole, its wars are its +best protection against its weaker and more cowardly self, and that +mankind cannot _afford_ to adopt a peace-economy. + +Pacificists ought to enter more deeply into the aesthetical and ethical +point of view of their opponents. Do that first in any controversy, +says J. J. Chapman, then _move the point_, and your opponent will +follow. So long as anti-militarists propose no substitute for war's +disciplinary function, no _moral equivalent_ of war, analogous, as one +might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to +realize the full inwardness of the situation. And as a rule they do +fail. The duties, penalties, and sanctions pictured in the Utopias +they paint are all too weak and tame to touch the military-minded. +Tolstoi's pacificism is the only exception to this rule, for it is +profoundly pessimistic as regards all this world's values, and makes +the fear of the Lord furnish the moral spur provided elsewhere by the +fear of the enemy. But our socialistic peace-advocates all believe +absolutely in this world's values; and instead of the fear of the Lord +and the fear of the enemy, the only fear they reckon with is the fear +of poverty if one be lazy. This weakness pervades all the socialistic +literature with which I am acquainted. Even in Lowes Dickinson's +exquisite dialogue,[2] high wages and short hours are the only forces +invoked for overcoming man's distaste for repulsive kinds of labor. +Meanwhile men at large still live as they always have lived, under a +pain-and-fear economy--for those of us who live in an ease-economy are +but an island in the stormy ocean--and the whole atmosphere of +present-day Utopian literature tastes mawkish and dishwatery to people +who still keep a sense for life's more bitter flavors. It suggests, in +truth, ubiquitous inferiority. Inferiority is always with us, and +merciless scorn of it is the keynote of the military temper. "Dogs, +would you live forever?" shouted Frederick the Great. "Yes," say our +Utopians, "let us live forever, and raise our level gradually." The +best thing about our "inferiors" to-day is that they are as tough as +nails, and physically and morally almost as insensitive. Utopianism +would see them soft and squeamish, while militarism would keep their +callousness, but transfigure it into a meritorious characteristic, +needed by "the service," and redeemed by that from the suspicion of +inferiority. All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows +that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If +proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No +collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride; but it has to +be confessed that the only sentiment which the image of pacific +cosmopolitan industrialism is capable of arousing in countless worthy +breasts is shame at the idea of belonging to _such_ a collectivity. It +is obvious that the United States of America as they exist to-day +impress a mind like General Lea's as so much human blubber. Where is +the sharpness and precipitousness, the contempt for life, whether one's +own, or another's? Where is the savage "yes" and "no," the +unconditional duty? Where is the conscription? Where is the +blood-tax? Where is anything that one feels honored by belonging to? + +Having said thus much in preparation, I will now confess my own Utopia. +I devoutly believe in the reign of peace and in the gradual advent of +some sort of a socialistic equilibrium. The fatalistic view of the +war-function is to me nonsense, for I know that war-making is due to +definite motives and subject to prudential checks and reasonable +criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise. And when whole +nations are the armies, and the science of destruction vies in +intellectual refinement with the sciences of production, I see that war +becomes absurd and impossible from its own monstrosity. Extravagant +ambitions will have to be replaced by reasonable claims, and nations +must make common cause against them. I see no reason why all this +should not apply to yellow as well as to white countries, and I look +forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as +between civilized peoples. + +All these beliefs of mine put me squarely into the anti-militarist +party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be +permanent on this globe, unless the states pacifically organized +preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline. A permanently +successful peace-economy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy. In the +more or less socialistic future towards which mankind seems drifting we +must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which +answer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. We +must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which +the military mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be the +enduring cement; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of +private interest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon +which states are built--unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions +against commonwealths fit only for contempt, and liable to invite +attack whenever a centre of crystallization for military-minded +enterprise gets formed anywhere in their neighborhood. + +The war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that the +martial virtues, although originally gained by the race through war, +are absolute and permanent human goods. Patriotic pride and ambition +in their military form are, after all, only specifications of a more +general competitive passion. They are its first form, but that is no +reason for supposing them to be its last form. Men now are proud of +belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down +their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off +subjection. But who can be sure that _other aspects of one's country_ +may not, with time and education and suggestion enough, come to be +regarded with similarly effective feelings of pride and shame? Why +should men not some day feel that it is worth a blood-tax to belong to +a collectivity superior in _any_ ideal respect? Why should they not +blush with indignant shame if the community that owns them is vile in +any way whatsoever? Individuals, daily more numerous, now feel this +civic passion. It is only a question of blowing on the spark till the +whole population gets incandescent, and on the ruins of the old morals +of military honor, a stable system of morals of civic honor builds +itself up. What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the +individual as in a vise. The war-function has grasped us so far; but +constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose +on the individual a hardly lighter burden. + +Let me illustrate my idea more concretely. There is nothing to make +one indignant in the mere fact that life is hard, that men should toil +and suffer pain. The planetary conditions once for all are such, and +we can stand it. But that so many men, by mere accidents of birth and +opportunity, should have a life of _nothing else_ but toil and pain and +hardness and inferiority imposed upon them, should have no vacation, +while others natively no more deserving never get any taste of this +campaigning life at all,--_this_ is capable of arousing indignation in +reflective minds. It may end by seeming shameful to all of us that +some of us have nothing but campaigning, and others nothing but unmanly +ease. If now--and this is my idea--there were, instead of military +conscription a conscription of the whole youthful population to form +for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against +_Nature_, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other +goods to the commonwealth would follow. The military ideals of +hardihood and discipline would be wrought into the growing fibre of the +people; no one would remain blind as the luxurious classes now are +blind, to man's relations to the globe he lives on, and to the +permanently sour and hard foundations of his higher life. To coal and +iron mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to +dishwashing, clothes-washing, and window-washing, to road-building and +tunnel-making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames of +skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, according to their +choice, to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back +into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas. They would +have paid their blood-tax, done their own part in the immemorial human +warfare against nature; they would tread the earth more proudly, the +women would value them more highly, they would be better fathers and +teachers of the following generation. + +Such a conscription, with the state of public opinion that would have +required it, and the many moral fruits it would bear, would preserve in +the midst of a pacific civilization the manly virtues which the +military party is so afraid of seeing disappear in peace. We should +get toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal +cruelty as possible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is +temporary, and threatens not, as now, to degrade the whole remainder of +one's life. I spoke of the "moral equivalent" of war. So far, war has +been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an +equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its +way. But I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames +of social man, once developed to a certain intensity, are capable of +organizing such a moral equivalent as I have sketched, or some other +just as effective for preserving manliness of type. It is but a +question of time, of skilful propagandism, and of opinion-making men +seizing historic opportunities. + +The martial type of character can be bred without war. Strenuous honor +and disinterestedness abound elsewhere. Priests and medical men are in +a fashion educated to it and we should all feel some degree of it +imperative if we were conscious of our work as an obligatory service to +the state. We should be owned, as soldiers are by the army, and our +pride would rise accordingly. We could be poor, then, without +humiliation, as army officers now are. The only thing needed +henceforward is to inflame the civic temper as past history has +inflamed the military temper. H. G. Wells, as usual, sees the centre +of the situation. "In many ways," he says, "military organization is +the most peaceful of activities. When the contemporary man steps from +the street, of clamorous insincere advertisement, push, adulteration, +underselling and intermittent employment into the barrack-yard, he +steps on to a higher social plane, into an atmosphere of service and +cooperation and of infinitely more honorable emulations. Here at least +men are not flung out of employment to degenerate because there is no +immediate work for them to do. They are fed and drilled and trained +for better services. Here at least a man is supposed to win promotion +by self-forgetfulness and not by self-seeking. And beside the feeble +and irregular endowment of research by commercialism, its little +short-sighted snatches at profit by innovation and scientific economy, +see how remarkable is the steady and rapid development of method and +appliances in naval and military affairs! Nothing is more striking +than to compare the progress of civil conveniences which has been left +almost entirely to the trader, to the progress in military apparatus +during the last few decades. The house-appliances of to-day for +example, are little better than they were fifty years ago. A house of +to-day is still almost as ill-ventilated, badly heated by wasteful +fires, clumsily arranged and furnished as the house of 1858. Houses a +couple of hundred years old are still satisfactory places of residence, +so little have our standards risen. But the rifle or battleship of +fifty years ago was beyond all comparison inferior to those we possess; +in power, in speed, in convenience alike. No one has a use now for +such superannuated things." [3] + +Wells adds[4] that he thinks that the conceptions of order and +discipline, the tradition of service and devotion, of physical fitness, +unstinted exertion, and universal responsibility, which universal +military duty is now teaching European nations, will remain a permanent +acquisition, when the last ammunition has been used in the fireworks +that celebrate the final peace. I believe as he does. It would be +simply preposterous if the only force that could work ideals of honor +and standards of efficiency into English or American natures should be +the fear of being killed by the Germans or the Japanese. Great indeed +is Fear; but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to +make us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher +ranges of men's spiritual energy. The amount of alteration in public +opinion which my utopia postulates is vastly less than the difference +between the mentality of those black warriors who pursued Stanley's +party on the Congo with their cannibal war-cry of "Meat! Meat!" and +that of the "general-staff" of any civilized nation. History has seen +the latter interval bridged over: the former one can be bridged over +much more easily. + + + +[1] Written for and first published by the Association for +International Conciliation (Leaflet No. 27) and also published in +_McClure's Magazine_, August, 1910, and _The Popular Science Monthly_, +October, 1910. + +[2] "Justice and Liberty," N. Y., 1909. + +[3] "First and Last Things," 1908, p. 215. + +[4] "First and Last Things," 1908, p. 226. + + + + +XII + +REMARKS AT THE PEACE BANQUET[1] + +I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher +can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers. +In ancient times philosophers defined man as the rational animal; and +philosophers since then have always found much more to say about the +rational than about the animal part of the definition. But looked at +candidly, reason bears about the same proportion to the rest of human +nature that we in this hall bear to the rest of America, Europe, Asia, +Africa and Polynesia. Reason is one of the very feeblest of nature's +forces, if you take it at only one spot and moment. It is only in the +very long run that its effects become perceptible. Reason assumes to +settle things by weighing them against each other without prejudice, +partiality or excitement; but what affairs in the concrete are settled +by is, and always will be, just prejudices, partialities, cupidities +and excitements. Appealing to reason as we do, we are in a sort of +forlorn-hope situation, like a small sandbank in the midst of a hungry +sea ready to wash it out of existence. But sand-banks grow when the +conditions favor; and weak as reason is, it has this unique advantage +over its antagonists that its activity never lets up and that it +presses always in one direction, while men's prejudices vary, their +passions ebb and flow, and their excitements are intermittent. Our +sand-bank, I absolutely believe, is bound to grow. Bit by bit it will +get dyked and breakwatered. But sitting as we do in this warm room, +with music and lights and smiling faces, it is easy to get too sanguine +about our task; and since I am called to speak, I feel as if it might +not be out of place to say a word about the strength. + +Our permanent enemy is the rooted bellicosity of human nature. Man, +biologically considered, and whatever else he may be into the bargain, +is the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one +that preys systematically on his own species. We are once for all +adapted to the military status. A millennium of peace would not breed +the fighting disposition out of our bone and marrow, and a function so +ingrained and vital will never consent to die without resistance, and +will always find impassioned apologists and idealizers. + +Not only men born to be soldiers, but non-combatants by trade and +nature, historians in their studies, and clergymen in their pulpits, +have been war's idealizers. They have talked of war as of God's court +of justice. And, indeed, if we think how many things beside the +frontiers of states the wars of history have decided, we must feel some +respectful awe, in spite of all the horrors. Our actual civilization, +good and bad alike, has had past wars for its determining condition. +Great mindedness among the tribes of men has always meant the will +to prevail, and all the more, so if prevailing included slaughtering +and being slaughtered. Rome, Paris, England, Brandenburg, +Piedmont,--possibly soon Japan,--along with their arms have their +traits of character and habits of thought prevail among their conquered +neighbors. The blessings we actually enjoy, such as they are, have +grown up in the shadow of the wars of antiquity. The various ideals +were backed by fighting wills, and when neither would give way, the God +of battles had to be the arbiter. A shallow view this, truly; for who +can say what might have prevailed if man had ever been a reasoning and +not a fighting animal? Like dead men, dead causes tell no tales, and +the ideals that went under in the past, along with all the tribes that +represented them, find to-day no recorder, no explainer, no defender. + +But apart from theoretic defenders, and apart from every soldierly +individual straining at the leash and clamoring for opportunity, war +has an omnipotent support in the form of our imagination. Man lives +_by_ habits indeed, but what he lives _for_ is thrills and excitements. +The only relief from habit's tediousness is periodical excitement. +From time immemorial wars have been, especially for non-combatants, the +supremely thrilling excitement. Heavy and dragging at its end, at its +outset every war means an explosion of imaginative energy. The dams of +routine burst, and boundless prospects open. The remotest spectators +share the fascination of that awful struggle now in process on the +confines of the world. There is not a man in this room, I suppose, who +doesn't buy both an evening and a morning paper, and first of all +pounce on the war column. + +A deadly listlessness would come over most men's imagination of the +future if they could seriously be brought to believe that never again +in _soecula soeculorum_ would a war trouble human history. In such a +stagnant summer afternoon of a world, where would be the zest or +interest? + +This is the constitution of human nature which we have to work against. +The plain truth is that people _want_ war. They want it anyhow; for +itself, and apart from each and every possible consequence. It is the +final bouquet of life's fireworks. The born soldiers want it hot and +actual. The non-combatants want it in the background, and always as an +open possibility, to feed imagination on and keep excitement going. +Its clerical and historical defenders fool themselves when they talk as +they do about it. What moves them is not the blessings it has won for +us, but a vague religious exaltation. War is human nature at its +uttermost. We are here to do our uttermost. It is a sacrament. +Society would rot without the mystical blood-payment. + +We do ill, I think, therefore, to talk much of universal peace or of a +general disarmament. We must go in for preventive medicine, not for +radical cure. We must cheat our foe, circumvent him in detail, not try +to change his nature. In one respect war is like love, though in no +other. Both leave us intervals of rest; and in the intervals life goes +on perfectly well without them, though the imagination still dallies +with their possibility. Equally insane when once aroused and under +headway, whether they shall be aroused or not depends on accidental +circumstances. How are old maids and old bachelors made? Not by +deliberate vows of celibacy, but by sliding on from year to year with +no sufficient matrimonial provocation. So of the nations with their +wars. Let the general possibility of war be left open, in Heaven's +name, for the imagination to dally with. Let the soldiers dream of +killing, as the old maids dream of marrying. + +But organize in every conceivable way the practical machinery for +making each successive chance of war abortive. Put peace men in power; +educate the editors and statesmen to responsibility. How beautifully +did their trained responsibility in England make the Venezuela incident +abortive! Seize every pretext, however small, for arbitration methods, +and multiply the precedents; foster rival excitements, and invent new +outlets for heroic energy; and from one generation to another the +chances are that irritation will grow less acute and states of strain +less dangerous among the nations. Armies and navies will continue, of +course, and fire the minds of populations with their potentialities of +greatness. But their officers will find that somehow or other, with no +deliberate intention on any one's part, each successive "incident" has +managed to evaporate and to lead nowhere, and that the thought of what +might have been remains their only consolation. + +The last weak runnings of the war spirit will be "punitive +expeditions." A country that turns its arms only against uncivilized +foes is, I think, wrongly taunted as degenerate. Of course it has +ceased to be heroic in the old grand style. But I verily believe that +this is because it now sees something better. It has a conscience. It +will still perpetrate peccadillos. But it is afraid, afraid in the +good sense, to engage in absolute crimes against civilization. + + + +[1] Published in the Official Report of the Universal Peace Congress, +held in Boston in 1904, and in the _Atlantic Monthly_, December, 1904. + + + + +XIII + +THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED[1] + +Of what use is a college training? We who have had it seldom hear the +question raised; we might be a little nonplussed to answer it offhand. +A certain amount of meditation has brought me to this as the pithiest +reply which I myself can give: The best claim that a college education +can possibly make on your respect, the best thing it can aspire to +accomplish for you, is this: that it should _help you to know a good +man when you see him_. This is as true of women's as of men's +colleges; but that it is neither a joke nor a one-sided abstraction I +shall now endeavor to show. + +What talk do we commonly hear about the contrast between college +education and the education which business or technical or professional +schools confer? The college education is called higher because it is +supposed to be so general and so disinterested. At the "schools" you +get a relatively narrow practical skill, you are told, whereas the +"colleges" give you the more liberal culture, the broader outlook, the +historical perspective, the philosophic atmosphere, or something which +phrases of that sort try to express. You are made into an efficient +instrument for doing a definite thing, you hear, at the schools; but, +apart from that, you may remain a crude and smoky kind of petroleum, +incapable of spreading light. The universities and colleges, on the +other hand, although they may leave you less efficient for this or that +practical task, suffuse your whole mentality with something more +important than skill. They redeem you, make you well-bred; they make +"good company" of you mentally. If they find you with a naturally +boorish or caddish mind, they cannot leave you so, as a technical +school may leave you. This, at least, is pretended; this is what we +hear among college-trained people when they compare their education +with every other sort. Now, exactly how much does this signify? + +It is certain, to begin with, that the narrowest trade or professional +training does something more for a man than to make a skilful practical +tool of him--it makes him also a judge of other men's skill. Whether +his trade be pleading at the bar or surgery or plastering or plumbing, +it develops a critical sense in him for that sort of occupation. He +understands the difference between second-rate and first-rate work in +his whole branch of industry; he gets to know a good job in his own +line as soon as he sees it; and getting to know this in his own line, +he gets a faint sense of what good work may mean anyhow, that may, if +circumstances favor, spread into his judgments elsewhere. Sound work, +clean work, finished work: feeble work, slack work, sham work--these +words express an identical contrast in many different departments of +activity. In so far forth, then, even the humblest manual trade may +beget in one a certain small degree of power to judge of good work +generally. + +Now, what is supposed to be the line of us who have the higher college +training? Is there any broader line--since our education claims +primarily not to be "narrow"--in which we also are made good judges +between what is first-rate and what is second-rate only? What is +especially taught in the colleges has long been known by the name of +the "humanities," and these are often identified with Greek and Latin. +But it is only as literatures, not as languages, that Greek and Latin +have any general humanity-value; so that in a broad sense the +humanities mean literature primarily, and in a still broader sense the +study of masterpieces in almost any field of human endeavor. +Literature keeps the primacy; for it not only _consists_ of +masterpieces, but is largely _about_ masterpieces, being little more +than an appreciative chronicle of human master-strokes, so far as it +takes the form of criticism and history. You can give humanistic value +to almost anything by teaching it historically. Geology, economics, +mechanics, are humanities when taught with reference to the successive +achievements of the geniuses to which these sciences owe their being. +Not taught thus literature remains grammar, art a catalogue, history a +list of dates, and natural science a sheet of formulas and weights and +measures. + +The sifting of human creations!--nothing less than this is what we +ought to mean by the humanities. Essentially this means biography; +what our colleges should teach is, therefore, biographical history, +that not of politics merely, but of anything and everything so far as +human efforts and conquests are factors that have played their part. +Studying in this way, we learn what types of activity have stood the +test of time; we acquire standards of the excellent and durable. All +our arts and sciences and institutions are but so many quests of +perfection on the part of men; and when we see how diverse the types of +excellence may be, how various the tests, how flexible the adaptations, +we gain a richer sense of what the terms "better" and "worse" may +signify in general. Our critical sensibilities grow both more acute +and less fanatical. We sympathize with men's mistakes even in the act +of penetrating them; we feel the pathos of lost causes and misguided +epochs even while we applaud what overcame them. + +Such words are vague and such ideas are inadequate, but their meaning +is unmistakable. What the colleges--teaching humanities by examples +which may be special, but which must be typical and pregnant--should at +least try to give us, is a general sense of what, under various +disguises, _superiority_ has always signified and may still signify. +The feeling for a good human job anywhere, the admiration of the really +admirable, the disesteem of what is cheap and trashy and +impermanent,--this is what we call the critical sense, the sense for +ideal values. It is the better part of what men know as wisdom. Some +of us are wise in this way naturally and by genius; some of us never +become so. But to have spent one's youth at college, in contact with +the choice and rare and precious, and yet still to be a blind prig or +vulgarian, unable to scent out human excellence or to divine it amid +its accidents, to know it only when ticketed and labelled and forced on +us by others, this indeed should be accounted the very calamity and +shipwreck of a higher education. + +The sense for human superiority ought, then, to be considered our line, +as boring subways is the engineer's line and the surgeon's is +appendicitis. Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish +for the better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities, and a +disgust for cheap jacks. We ought to smell, as it were, the difference +of quality in men and their proposals when we enter the world of +affairs about us. Expertness in this might well atone for some of our +awkwardness at accounts, for some of our ignorance of dynamos. The +best claim we can make for the higher education, the best single phrase +in which we can tell what it ought to do for us, is, then, exactly what +I said: it should enable us to _know a good man when we see him_. + +That the phrase is anything but an empty epigram follows from the fact +that if you ask in what line it is most important that a democracy like +ours should have its sons and daughters skilful, you see that it is +this line more than any other. "The people in their wisdom"--this is +the kind of wisdom most needed by the people. Democracy is on its +trial, and no one knows how it will stand the ordeal. Abounding about +us are pessimistic prophets. Fickleness and violence used to be, but +are no longer, the vices which they charge to democracy. What its +critics now affirm is that its preferences are inveterately for the +inferior. So it was in the beginning, they say, and so it will be +world without end. Vulgarity enthroned and institutionalized, elbowing +everything superior from the highway, this, they tell us, is our +irremediable destiny; and the picture-papers of the European continent +are already drawing Uncle Sam with the hog instead of the eagle for his +heraldic emblem. The privileged aristocracies of the foretime, with +all their iniquities, did at least preserve some taste for higher human +quality, and honor certain forms of refinement by their enduring +traditions. But when democracy is sovereign, its doubters say, +nobility will form a sort of invisible church, and sincerity and +refinement, stripped of honor, precedence, and favor, will have to +vegetate on sufferance in private corners. They will have no general +influence. They will be harmless eccentricities. + +Now, who can be absolutely certain that this may not be the career of +democracy? Nothing future is quite secure; states enough have inwardly +rotted; and democracy as a whole may undergo self-poisoning. But, on +the other hand, democracy is a kind of religion, and we are bound not +to admit its failure. Faiths and Utopias are the noblest exercise of +human reason, and no one with a spark of reason in him will sit down +fatalistically before the croaker's picture. The best of us are filled +with the contrary vision of a democracy stumbling through every error +till its institutions glow with justice and its customs shine with +beauty. Our better men _shall_ show the way and we _shall_ follow +them; so we are brought round again to the mission of the higher +education in helping us to know the better kind of man whenever we see +him. + +The notion that a people can run itself and its affairs anonymously is +now well known to be the silliest of absurdities. Mankind does nothing +save through initiatives on the part of inventors, great or small, and +imitation by the rest of us--these are the sole factors active in human +progress. Individuals of genius show the way, and set the patterns, +which common people then adopt and follow. _The rivalry of the +patterns is the history of the world_. Our democratic problem thus is +statable in ultra-simple terms: Who are the kind of men from whom our +majorities shall take their cue? Whom shall they treat as rightful +leaders? We and our leaders are the _x_ and the _y_ of the equation +here; all other historic circumstances, be they economical, political, +or intellectual, are only the background of occasion on which the +living drama works itself out between us. + +In this very simple way does the value of our educated class define +itself: we more than others should be able to divine the worthier and +better leaders. The terms here are monstrously simplified, of course, +but such a bird's-eye view lets us immediately take our bearings. In +our democracy, where everything else is so shifting, we alumni and +alumnae of the colleges are the only permanent presence that +corresponds to the aristocracy in older countries. We have continuous +traditions, as they have; our motto, too, is _noblesse oblige_; and, +unlike them, we stand for ideal interests solely, for we have no +corporate selfishness and wield no powers of corruption. We ought to +have our own class-consciousness. "_Les Intellectuels!_" What prouder +club-name could there be than this one, used ironically by the party of +"redblood," the party of every stupid prejudice and passion, during the +anti-Dreyfus craze, to satirize the men in France who still retained +some critical sense and judgment! Critical sense, it has to be +confessed, is not an exciting term, hardly a banner to carry in +processions. Affections for old habit, currents of self-interest, and +gales of passion are the forces that keep the human ship moving; and +the pressure of the judicious pilot's hand upon the tiller is a +relatively insignificant energy. But the affections, passions, and +interests are shifting, successive, and distraught; they blow in +alternation while the pilot's hand is steadfast. He knows the compass, +and, with all the leeways he is obliged to tack toward, he always makes +some headway. A small force, if it never lets up, will accumulate +effects more considerable than those of much greater forces if these +work inconsistently. The ceaseless whisper of the more permanent +ideals, the steady tug of truth and justice, give them but time, _must_ +warp the world in their direction. + +This bird's-eye view of the general steering function of the +college-bred amid the driftings of democracy ought to help us to a +wider vision of what our colleges themselves should aim at. If we are +to be the yeast-cake for democracy's dough, if we are to make it rise +with culture's preferences, we must see to it that culture spreads +broad sails. We must shake the old double reefs out of the canvas into +the wind and sunshine, and let in every modern subject, sure that any +subject will prove humanistic, if its setting be kept only wide enough. + +Stevenson says somewhere to his reader: "You think you are just making +this bargain, but you are really laying down a link in the policy of +mankind." Well, your technical school should enable you to make your +bargain splendidly; but your college should show you just the place of +that kind of bargain--a pretty poor place, possibly--in the whole +policy of mankind. That is the kind of liberal outlook, of +perspective, of atmosphere, which should surround every subject as a +college deals with it. + +We of the colleges must eradicate a curious notion which numbers of +good people have about such ancient seats of learning as Harvard. To +many ignorant outsiders, the name suggests little more than a kind of +sterilized conceit and incapacity for being pleased. In Edith Wyatt's +exquisite book of Chicago sketches called "Every One his Own Way" there +is a couple who stand for culture in the sense of exclusiveness, +Richard Elliot and his feminine counterpart--feeble caricatures of +mankind, unable to know any good thing when they see it, incapable of +enjoyment unless a printed label gives them leave. Possibly this type +of culture may exist near Cambridge and Boston. There may be specimens +there, for priggishness is just like painter's colic or any other +trade-disease. But every good college makes its students immune +against this malady, of which the microbe haunts the neighborhood of +printed pages. It does so by its general tone being too hearty for the +microbe's life. Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not +by dislikes and disdains; under all misleading wrappings it pounces +unerringly upon the human core. If a college, through the inferior +human influences that have grown regnant there, fails to catch the +robuster tone, its failure is colossal, for its social function stops: +democracy gives it a wide berth, turns toward it a deaf ear. + +"Tone," to be sure, is a terribly vague word to use, but there is no +other, and this whole meditation is over questions of tone. By their +tone are all things human either lost or saved. If democracy is to be +saved it must catch the higher, healthier tone. If we are to impress +it with our preferences, we ourselves must use the proper tone, which +we, in turn, must have caught from our own teachers. It all reverts in +the end to the action of innumerable imitative individuals upon each +other and to the question of whose tone has the highest spreading +power. As a class, we college graduates should look to it that _ours_ +has spreading power. It ought to have the highest spreading power. + +In our essential function of indicating the better men, we now have +formidable competitors outside. _McClure's Magazine_, the _American +Magazine_, _Collier's Weekly_, and, in its fashion, the _World's Work_, +constitute together a real popular university along this very line. It +would be a pity if any future historian were to have to write words +like these: "By the middle of the twentieth century the higher +institutions of learning had lost all influence over public opinion in +the United States. But the mission of raising the tone of democracy, +which they had proved themselves so lamentably unfitted to exert, was +assumed with rare enthusiasm and prosecuted with extraordinary skill +and success by a new educational power; and for the clarification of +their human sympathies and elevation of their human preferences, the +people at large acquired the habit of resorting exclusively to the +guidance of certain private literary adventures, commonly designated in +the market by the affectionate name of ten-cent magazines." + +Must not we of the colleges see to it that no historian shall ever say +anything like this? Vague as the phrase of knowing a good man when you +see him may be, diffuse and indefinite as one must leave its +application, is there any other formula that describes so well the +result at which our institutions ought to aim? If they do that, they +do the best thing conceivable. If they fail to do it, they fail in +very deed. It surely is a fine synthetic formula. If our faculties +and graduates could once collectively come to realize it as the great +underlying purpose toward which they have always been more or less +obscurely groping, a great clearness would be shed over many of their +problems; and, as for their influence in the midst of our social +system, it would embark upon a new career of strength. + + + +[1] Address delivered at a meeting of the Association of American +Alumnae at Radcliffe College, November 7, 1907, and first published in +_McClure's Magazine_ for February, 1908. + + + + +XIV + +THE UNIVERSITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL + + +I. THE PH.D. OCTOPUS[1] + +Some years ago we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant +student of Philosophy, who, after leaving us and supporting himself by +literary labor for three years, received an appointment to teach +English Literature at a sister-institution of learning. The governors +of this institution, however, had no sooner communicated the +appointment than they made the awful discovery that they had enrolled +upon their staff a person who was unprovided with the Ph.D. degree. +The man in question had been satisfied to work at Philosophy for her +own sweet (or bitter) sake, and had disdained to consider that an +academic bauble should be his reward. + +His appointment had thus been made under a misunderstanding. He was +not the proper man; and there was nothing to do but to inform him of +the fact. It was notified to him by his new President that his +appointment must be revoked, or that a Harvard doctor's degree must +forthwith be procured. + +Although it was already the spring of the year, our Subject, being a +man of spirit, took up the challenge, turned his back upon literature +(which in view of his approaching duties might have seemed his more +urgent concern) and spent the weeks that were left him, in writing a +metaphysical thesis and grinding his psychology, logic and history of +philosophy up again, so as to pass our formidable ordeals. + +When the thesis came to be read by our committee, we could not pass it. +Brilliancy and originality by themselves won't save a thesis for the +doctorate; it must also exhibit a heavy technical apparatus of +learning; and this our candidate had neglected to bring to bear. So, +telling him that he was temporarily rejected, we advised him to pad out +the thesis properly, and return with it next year, at the same time +informing his new President that this signified nothing as to his +merits, that he was of ultra Ph.D. quality, and one of the strongest +men with whom we had ever had to deal. + +To our surprise we were given to understand in reply that the quality +_per se_ of the man signified nothing in this connection, and that +three magical letters were the thing seriously required. The College +had always gloried in a list of faculty members who bore the doctor's +title, and to make a gap in the galaxy, and admit a common fox without +a tail, would be a degradation impossible to be thought of. We wrote +again, pointing out that a Ph.D. in philosophy would prove little +anyhow as to one's ability to teach literature; we sent separate +letters in which we outdid each other in eulogy of our candidate's +powers, for indeed they were great; and at last, _mirabile dictu_, our +eloquence prevailed. He was allowed to retain his appointment +provisionally, on condition that one year later at the farthest his +miserably naked name should be prolonged by the sacred appendage the +lack of which had given so much trouble to all concerned. + +Accordingly he came up here the following spring with an adequate +thesis (known since in print as a most brilliant contribution to +metaphysics), passed a first-rate examination, wiped out the stain, and +brought his college into proper relations with the world again. +Whether his teaching, during that first year, of English Literature was +made any the better by the impending examination in a different +subject, is a question which I will not try to solve. + +I have related this incident at such length because it is so +characteristic of American academic conditions at the present day. +Graduate schools still are something of a novelty, and higher diplomas +something of a rarity. The latter, therefore, carry a vague sense of +preciousness and honor, and have a particularly "up-to-date" +appearance, and it is no wonder if smaller institutions, unable to +attract professors already eminent, and forced usually to recruit their +faculties from the relatively young, should hope to compensate for the +obscurity of the names of their officers of instruction by the +abundance of decorative titles by which those names are followed on the +pages of the catalogues where they appear. The dazzled reader of the +list, the parent or student, says to himself, "This must be a terribly +distinguished crowd,--their titles shine like the stars in the +firmament; Ph.D.'s, S.D.'s, and Litt.D.'s, bespangle the page as if +they were sprinkled over it from a pepper caster." + +Human nature is once for all so childish that every reality becomes a +sham somewhere, and in the minds of Presidents and Trustees the Ph.D. +degree is in point of fact already looked upon as a mere advertising +resource, a manner of throwing dust in the Public's eyes. "No +instructor who is not a Doctor" has become a maxim in the smaller +institutions which represent demand; and in each of the larger ones +which represent supply, the same belief in decorated scholarship +expresses itself in two antagonistic passions, one for multiplying as +much as possible the annual output of doctors, the other for raising +the standard of difficulty in passing, so that the Ph.D. of the special +institution shall carry a higher blaze of distinction than it does +elsewhere. Thus we at Harvard are proud of the number of candidates +whom we reject, and of the inability of men who are not _distingues_ in +intellect to pass our tests. + +America is thus as a nation rapidly drifting towards a state of things +in which no man of science or letters will be accounted respectable +unless some kind of badge or diploma is stamped upon him, and in which +bare personality will be a mark of outcast estate. It seems to me high +time to rouse ourselves to consciousness, and to cast a critical eye +upon this decidedly grotesque tendency. Other nations suffer terribly +from the Mandarin disease. Are we doomed to suffer like the rest? + +Our higher degrees were instituted for the laudable purpose of +stimulating scholarship, especially in the form of "original research." +Experience has proved that great as the love of truth may be among men, +it can be made still greater by adventitious rewards. The winning of a +diploma certifying mastery and marking a barrier successfully passed, +acts as a challenge to the ambitious; and if the diploma will help to +gain bread-winning positions also, its power as a stimulus to work is +tremendously increased. So far, we are on innocent ground; it is well +for a country to have research in abundance, and our graduate schools +do but apply a normal psychological spur. But the institutionizing on +a large scale of any natural combination of need and motive always +tends to run into technicality and to develop a tyrannical Machine with +unforeseen powers of exclusion and corruption. Observation of the +workings of our Harvard system for twenty years past has brought some +of these drawbacks home to my consciousness, and I should like to call +the attention of my readers to this disadvantageous aspect of the +picture, and to make a couple of remedial suggestions, if I may. + +In the first place, it would seem that to stimulate study, and to +increase the _gelehrtes Publikum_, the class of highly educated men in +our country, is the only positive good, and consequently the sole +direct end at which our graduate schools, with their diploma-giving +powers, should aim. If other results have developed they should be +deemed secondary incidents, and if not desirable in themselves, they +should be carefully guarded against. + +To interfere with the free development of talent, to obstruct the +natural play of supply and demand in the teaching profession, to foster +academic snobbery by the prestige of certain privileged institutions, +to transfer accredited value from essential manhood to an outward +badge, to blight hopes and promote invidious sentiments, to divert the +attention of aspiring youth from direct dealings with truth to the +passing of examinations,--such consequences, if they exist, ought +surely to be regarded as drawbacks to the system, and an enlightened +public consciousness ought to be keenly alive to the importance of +reducing their amount. Candidates themselves do seem to be keenly +conscious of some of these evils, but outside of their ranks or in the +general public no such consciousness, so far as I can see, exists; or +if it does exist, it fails to express itself aloud. Schools, Colleges, +and Universities, appear enthusiastic over the entire system, just as +it stands, and unanimously applaud all its developments. + +I beg the reader to consider some of the secondary evils which I have +enumerated. First of all, is not our growing tendency to appoint no +instructors who are not also doctors an instance of pure sham? Will +any one pretend for a moment that the doctor's degree is a guarantee +that its possessor will be successful as a teacher? Notoriously his +moral, social and personal characteristics may utterly disqualify him +for success in the class-room; and of these characteristics his +doctor's examination is unable to take any account whatever. Certain +bare human beings will always be better candidates for a given place +than all the doctor-applicants on hand; and to exclude the former by a +rigid rule, and in the end to have to sift the latter by private +inquiry into their personal peculiarities among those who know them, +just as if they were not doctors at all, is to stultify one's own +procedure. You may say that at least you guard against ignorance of +the subject by considering only the candidates who are doctors; but how +then about making doctors in one subject teach a different subject? +This happened in the instance by which I introduced this article, and +it happens daily and hourly in all our colleges? The truth is that the +Doctor-Monopoly in teaching, which is becoming so rooted an American +custom, can show no serious grounds whatsoever for itself in reason. +As it actually prevails and grows in vogue among us, it is due to +childish motives exclusively. In reality it is but a sham, a bauble, a +dodge, whereby to decorate the catalogues of schools and colleges. + +Next, let us turn from the general promotion of a spirit of academic +snobbery to the particular damage done to individuals by the system. + +There are plenty of individuals so well endowed by nature that they +pass with ease all the ordeals with which life confronts them. Such +persons are born for professional success. Examinations have no +terrors for them, and interfere in no way with their spiritual or +worldly interests. There are others, not so gifted who nevertheless +rise to the challenge, get a stimulus from the difficulty, and become +doctors, not without some baleful nervous wear and tear and retardation +of their purely inner life, but on the whole successfully, and with +advantage. These two classes form the natural Ph.D.'s for whom the +degree is legitimately instituted. To be sure, the degree is of no +consequence one way or the other for the first sort of man, for in him +the personal worth obviously outshines the title. To the second set of +persons, however, the doctor ordeal may contribute a touch of energy +and solidity of scholarship which otherwise they might have lacked, and +were our candidates all drawn from these classes, no oppression would +result from the institution. + +But there is a third class of persons who are genuinely, and in the +most pathetic sense, the institution's victims. For this type of +character the academic life may become, after a certain point, a +virulent poison. Men without marked originality or native force, but +fond of truth and especially of books and study, ambitious of reward +and recognition, poor often, and needing a degree to get a teaching +position, weak in the eyes of their examiners,--among these we find the +veritable _chair a canon_ of the wars of learning, the unfit in the +academic struggle for existence. There are individuals of this sort +for whom to pass one degree after another seems the limit of earthly +aspiration. Your private advice does not discourage them. They will +fail, and go away to recuperate, and then present themselves for +another ordeal, and sometimes prolong the process into middle life. Or +else, if they are less heroic morally they will accept the failure as a +sentence of doom that they are not fit, and are broken-spirited men +thereafter. + +We of the university faculties are responsible for deliberately +creating this new class of American social failures, and heavy is the +responsibility. We advertise our "schools" and send out our +degree-requirements, knowing well that aspirants of all sorts will be +attracted, and at the same time we set a standard which intends to pass +no man who has not native intellectual distinction. We know that there +is no test, however absurd, by which, if a title or decoration, a +public badge or mark, were to be won by it, some weakly suggestible or +hauntable persons would not feel challenged, and remain unhappy if they +went without it. We dangle our three magic letters before the eyes of +these predestined victims, and they swarm to us like moths to an +electric light. They come at a time when failure can no longer be +repaired easily and when the wounds it leaves are permanent; and we say +deliberately that mere work faithfully performed, as they perform it, +will not by itself save them, they must in addition put in evidence the +one thing they have not got, namely this quality of intellectual +distinction. Occasionally, out of sheer human pity, we ignore our high +and mighty standard and pass them. Usually, however, the standard, and +not the candidate, commands our fidelity. The result is caprice, +majorities of one on the jury, and on the whole a confession that our +pretensions about the degree cannot be lived up to consistently. Thus, +partiality in the favored cases; in the unfavored, blood on our hands; +and in both a bad conscience,--are the results of our administration. + +The more widespread becomes the popular belief that our diplomas are +indispensable hall-marks to show the sterling metal of their holders, +the more widespread these corruptions will become. We ought to look to +the future carefully, for it takes generations for a national custom, +once rooted, to be grown away from. All the European countries are +seeking to diminish the check upon individual spontaneity which state +examinations with their tyrannous growth have brought in their train. +We have had to institute state examinations too; and it will perhaps be +fortunate if some day hereafter our descendants, comparing machine with +machine, do not sigh with regret for old times and American freedom, +and wish that the _regime_ of the dear old bosses might be reinstalled, +with plain human nature, the glad hand and the marble heart, liking and +disliking, and man-to-man relations grown possible again. Meanwhile, +whatever evolution our state-examinations are destined to undergo, our +universities at least should never cease to regard themselves as the +jealous custodians of personal and spiritual spontaneity. They are +indeed its only organized and recognized custodians in America to-day. +They ought to guard against contributing to the increase of officialism +and snobbery and insincerity as against a pestilence; they ought to +keep truth and disinterested labor always in the foreground, treat +degrees as secondary incidents, and in season and out of season make it +plain that what they live for is to help men's souls, and not to +decorate their persons with diplomas. + +There seem to be three obvious ways in which the increasing hold of the +Ph.D. Octopus upon American life can be kept in check. + +The first way lies with the universities. They can lower their +fantastic standards (which here at Harvard we are so proud of) and give +the doctorate as a matter of course, just as they give the bachelor's +degree, for a due amount of time spent in patient labor in a special +department of learning, whether the man be a brilliantly gifted +individual or not. Surely native distinction needs no official stamp, +and should disdain to ask for one. On the other hand, faithful labor, +however commonplace, and years devoted to a subject, always deserve to +be acknowledged and requited. + +The second way lies with both the universities and colleges. Let them +give up their unspeakably silly ambition to bespangle their lists of +officers with these doctorial titles. Let them look more to substance +and less to vanity and sham. + +The third way lies with the individual student, and with his personal +advisers in the faculties. Every man of native power, who might take a +higher degree, and refuses to do so, because examinations interfere +with the free following out of his more immediate intellectual aims, +deserves well of his country, and in a rightly organized community, +would not be made to suffer for his independence. With many men the +passing of these extraneous tests is a very grievous interference +indeed. Private letters of recommendation from their instructors, +which in any event are ultimately needful, ought, in these cases, +completely to offset the lack of the breadwinning degree; and +instructors ought to be ready to advise students against it upon +occasion, and to pledge themselves to back them later personally, in +the market-struggle which they have to face. + +It is indeed odd to see this love of titles--and such titles--growing +up in a country or which the recognition of individuality and bare +manhood have so long been supposed to be the very soul. The +independence of the State, in which most of our colleges stand, +relieves us of those more odious forms of academic politics which +continental European countries present. Anything like the elaborate +university machine of France, with its throttling influences upon +individuals is unknown here. The spectacle of the "Rath" distinction +in its innumerable spheres and grades, with which all Germany is +crawling to-day, is displeasing to American eyes; and displeasing also +in some respects is the institution of knighthood in England, which, +aping as it does an aristocratic title, enables one's wife as well as +one's self so easily to dazzle the servants at the house of one's +friends. But are we Americans ourselves destined after all to hunger +after similar vanities on an infinitely more contemptible scale? And +is individuality with us also going to count for nothing unless stamped +and licensed and authenticated by some title-giving machine? Let us +pray that our ancient national genius may long preserve vitality enough +to guard us from a future so unmanly and so unbeautiful! + + + +[1] Published in the _Harvard Monthly_, March, 1903. + + + + +II. THE TRUE HARVARD[1] + +When a man gets a decoration from a foreign institution, he may take it +as an honor. Coming as mine has come to-day, I prefer to take it for +that far more valuable thing, a token of personal good will from +friends. Recognizing the good will and the friendliness, I am going to +respond to the chairman's call by speaking exactly as I feel. + +I am not an alumnus of the College. I have not even a degree from the +Scientific School, in which I did some study forty years ago. I have +no right to vote for Overseers, and I have never felt until to-day as +if I were a child of the house of Harvard in the fullest sense. +Harvard is many things in one--a school, a forcing house for thought, +and also a social club; and the club aspect is so strong, the family +tie so close and subtle among our Bachelors of Arts that all of us here +who are in my plight, no matter how long we may have lived here, always +feel a little like outsiders on Commencement day. We have no class to +walk with, and we often stay away from the procession. It may be +foolish, but it is a fact. I don't believe that my dear friends +Shaler, Hollis, Lanman, or Royce ever have felt quite as happy or as +much at home as my friend Barrett Wendell feels upon a day like this. + +I wish to use my present privilege to say a word for these outsiders +with whom I belong. Many years ago there was one of them from Canada +here--a man with a high-pitched voice, who could n't fully agree with +all the points of my philosophy. At a lecture one day, when I was in +the full flood of my eloquence, his voice rose above mine, exclaiming: +"But, doctor, doctor! to be serious for a moment . . . ," in so sincere +a tone that the whole room burst out laughing. I want you now to be +serious for a moment while I say my little say. We are glorifying +ourselves to-day, and whenever the name of Harvard is emphatically +uttered on such days, frantic cheers go up. There are days for +affection, when pure sentiment and loyalty come rightly to the fore. +But behind our mere animal feeling for old schoolmates and the Yard and +the bell, and Memorial and the clubs and the river and the Soldiers' +Field, there must be something deeper and more rational. There ought +at any rate to be some possible ground in reason for one's boiling over +with joy that one is a son of Harvard, and was not, by some unspeakably +horrible accident of birth, predestined to graduate at Yale or at +Cornell. + +Any college can foster club loyalty of that sort. The only rational +ground for pre-eminent admiration of any single college would be its +pre-eminent spiritual tone. But to be a college man in the mere +clubhouse sense--I care not of what college--affords no guarantee of +real superiority in spiritual tone. + +The old notion that book learning can be a panacea for the vices of +society lies pretty well shattered to-day. I say this in spite of +certain utterances of the President of this University to the teachers +last year. That sanguine-hearted man seemed then to think that if the +schools would only do their duty better, social vice might cease. But +vice will never cease. Every level of culture breeds its own peculiar +brand of it as surely as one soil breeds sugar-cane, and another soil +breeds cranberries. If we were asked that disagreeable question, "What +are the bosom-vices of the level of culture which our land and day have +reached?" we should be forced, I think, to give the still more +disagreeable answer that they are swindling and adroitness, and the +indulgence of swindling and adroitness, and cant, and sympathy with +cant--natural fruits of that extraordinary idealization of "success" in +the mere outward sense of "getting there," and getting there on as big +a scale as we can, which characterizes our present generation. What +was Reason given to man for, some satirist has said, except to enable +him to invent reasons for what he wants to do. We might say the same +of education. We see college graduates on every side of every public +question. Some of Tammany's stanchest supporters are Harvard men. +Harvard men defend our treatment of our Filipino allies as a +masterpiece of policy and morals. Harvard men, as journalists, pride +themselves on producing copy for any side that may enlist them. There +is not a public abuse for which some Harvard advocate may not be found. + +In the successful sense, then, in the worldly sense, in the club sense, +to be a college man, even a Harvard man, affords no sure guarantee for +anything but a more educated cleverness in the service of popular idols +and vulgar ends. Is there no inner Harvard within the outer Harvard +which means definitively more than this--for which the outside men who +come here in such numbers, come? They come from the remotest outskirts +of our country, without introductions, without school affiliations; +special students, scientific students, graduate students, poor students +of the College, who make their living as they go. They seldom or never +darken the doors of the Pudding or the Porcellian; they hover in the +background on days when the crimson color is most in evidence, but they +nevertheless are intoxicated and exultant with the nourishment they +find here; and their loyalty is deeper and subtler and more a matter of +the inmost soul than the gregarious loyalty of the clubhouse pattern +often is. + +Indeed, there is such an inner spiritual Harvard; and the men I speak +of, and for whom I speak to-day, are its true missionaries and carry +its gospel into infidel parts. When they come to Harvard, it is not +primarily because she is a club. It is because they have heard of her +persistently atomistic constitution, of her tolerance of exceptionality +and eccentricity, of her devotion to the principles of individual +vocation and choice. It is because you cannot make single one-ideaed +regiments of her classes. It is because she cherishes so many vital +ideals, yet makes a scale of value among them; so that even her +apparently incurable second-rateness (or only occasional +first-rateness) in intercollegiate athletics comes from her seeing so +well that sport is but sport, that victory over Yale is not the whole +of the law and the prophets, and that a popgun is not the crack of doom. + +The true Church was always the invisible Church. The true Harvard is +the invisible Harvard in the souls of her more truth-seeking and +independent and often very solitary sons. _Thoughts_ are the precious +seeds of which our universities should be the botanical gardens. +Beware when God lets loose a thinker on the world--either Carlyle or +Emerson said that--for all things then have to rearrange themselves. +But the thinkers in their youth are almost always very lonely +creatures. "Alone the great sun rises and alone spring the great +streams." The university most worthy of rational admiration is that +one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself least lonely, most +positively furthered, and most richly fed. On an occasion like this it +would be poor taste to draw comparisons between the colleges, and in +their mere clubhouse quality they cannot differ widely:--all must be +worthy of the loyalties and affections they arouse. But as a nursery +for independent and lonely thinkers I do believe that Harvard still is +in the van. Here they find the climate so propitious that they can be +happy in their very solitude. The day when Harvard shall stamp a +single hard and fast type of character upon her children, will be that +of her downfall. Our undisciplinables are our proudest product. Let +us agree together in hoping that the output of them will never cease. + + + +[1] Speech at the Harvard Commencement Dinner, June 24, 1903, after +receiving an LL.D. degree. Printed in the _Graduates' Magazine_ for +September, 1903. + + + + +III. STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY[1] + +Foreigners, commenting on our civilization, have with great unanimity +remarked the privileged position that institutions of learning occupy +in America as receivers of benefactions. Our typical men of wealth, if +they do not found a college, will at least single out some college or +university on which to lavish legacies or gifts. All the more so, +perhaps, if they are not college-bred men themselves. Johns Hopkins +University, the University of Chicago, Clark University, are splendid +examples of this rule. Steadily, year by year, my own university, +Harvard, receives from one to two and a half millions. + +There is something almost pathetic in the way in which our successful +business men seem to idealize the higher learning and to believe in its +efficacy for salvation. Never having shared in its blessings, they do +their utmost to make the youth of coming generations more fortunate. +Usually there is little originality of thought in their generous +foundations. The donors follow the beaten track. Their good will has +to be vague, for they lack the inside knowledge. What they usually +think of is a new college like all the older colleges; or they give new +buildings to a university or help to make it larger, without any +definite idea as to the improvement of its inner form. Improvements in +the character of our institutions always come from the genius of the +various presidents and faculties. The donors furnish means of +propulsion, the experts within the pale lay out the course and steer +the vessel. You all think of the names of Eliot, Gilman, Hall and +Harper as I utter these words--I mention no name nearer home. + +This is founders' day here at Stanford--the day set apart each year to +quicken and reanimate in all of us the consciousness of the deeper +significance of this little university to which we permanently or +temporarily belong. I am asked to use my voice to contribute to this +effect. How can I do so better than by uttering quite simply and +directly the impressions that I personally receive? I am one among our +innumerable American teachers, reared on the Atlantic coast but +admitted for this year to be one of the family at Stanford. I see +things not wholly from without, as the casual visitor does, but partly +from within. I am probably a typical observer. As my impressions are, +so will be the impressions of others. And those impressions, taken +together, will probably be the verdict of history on the institution +which Leland and Jane Stanford founded. + +"Where there is no vision, the people perish." Mr. and Mrs. Stanford +evidently had a vision of the most prophetic sort. They saw the +opportunity for an absolutely unique creation, they seized upon it with +the boldness of great minds; and the passionate energy with which Mrs. +Stanford after her husband's death, drove the original plans through in +the face of every dismaying obstacle, forms a chapter in the biography +of heroism. Heroic also the loyalty with which in those dark years the +president and faculty made the university's cause, their cause, and +shared the uncertainties and privations. + +And what is the result to-day? To-day the key-note is triumphantly +struck. The first step is made beyond recall. The character of the +material foundation is assured for all time as something unique and +unparalleled. It logically calls for an equally unique and +unparalleled spiritual superstructure. + +Certainly the chief impression which the existing university must make +on every visitor is of something unique and unparalleled. Its +attributes are almost too familiar to you to bear recapitulation. The +classic scenery of its site, reminding one of Greece, Greek too in its +atmosphere of opalescent fire, as if the hills that close us in were +bathed in ether, milk and sunshine; the great city, near enough for +convenience, too far ever to become invasive; the climate, so friendly +to work that every morning wakes one fresh for new amounts of work; the +noble architecture, so generously planned that there room and to spare +for every requirement; the democracy of the life, no one superfluously +rich, yet all sharing, so far as their higher needs go, in the common +endowment--where could a genius devoted to the search for truth, and +unworldly as most geniuses are, find on the earth's whole round a place +more advantageous to come and work in? _Die Luft der Freiheit weht_! +All the traditions are individualistic. Red tape and organization are +at their minimum. Interruptions and perturbing distractions hardly +exist. Eastern institutions look all dark and huddled and confused in +comparison with this purity and serenity. Shall it not be auspicious? +Surely the one destiny to which this happy beginning seems to call +Stanford is that it should become something intense and original, not +necessarily in point of wealth or extent, but in point of spiritual +quality. The founders have, as I said, triumphantly struck the +keynote, and laid the basis: the quality of what they have already +given is unique in character. + +It rests with the officials of the present and future Stanford, it +rests with the devotion and sympathetic insight of the growing body of +graduates, to prolong the vision where the founders' vision terminated, +and to insure that all the succeeding steps, like the first steps, +shall single out this university more and more as the university of +quality peculiarly. + +And what makes essential quality in a university? Years ago in New +England it was said that a log by the roadside with a student sitting +on one end of it, and Mark Hopkins sitting on the other end, was a +university. It is the quality of its men that makes the quality of a +university. You may have your buildings, you may create your +committees and boards and regulations, you may pile up your machinery +of discipline and perfect your methods of instruction, you may spend +money till no one can approach you; yet you will add nothing but one +more trivial specimen to the common herd of American colleges, unless +you send into all this organization some breath of life, by inoculating +it with a few men, at least, who are real geniuses. And if you once +have the geniuses, you can easily dispense with most of the +organization. Like a contagious disease, almost, spiritual life passes +from man to man by contact. Education in the long run is an affair +that works itself out between the individual student and his +opportunities. Methods of which we talk so much, play but a minor +part. Offer the opportunities, leave the student to his natural +reaction on them, and he will work out his personal destiny, be it a +high one or a low one. Above all things, offer the opportunity of +higher personal contacts. A university provides these anyhow within +the student body, for it attracts the more aspiring of the youth of the +country, and they befriend and elevate one another. But we are only +beginning in this country, with our extraordinary American reliance on +organization, to see that the alpha and omega in a university is the +tone of it, and that this tone is set by human personalities +exclusively. The world, in fact, is only beginning to see that the +wealth of a nation consists more than in anything else in the number of +superior men that it harbors. In the practical realm it has always +recognized this, and known that no price is too high to pay for a great +statesman or great captain of industry. But it is equally so in the +religious and moral sphere, in the poetic and artistic sphere and in +the philosophic and scientific sphere. Geniuses are ferments; and when +they come together as they have done in certain lands at certain times, +the whole population seems to share in the higher energy which they +awaken. The effects are incalculable and often not easy to trace in +detail, but they are pervasive and momentous. Who can measure the +effects on the national German soul of the splendid series of German +poets and German men of learning, most of them academic personages? + +From the bare economic point of view the importance of geniuses is only +beginning to be appreciated. How can we measure the cash-value to +France of a Pasteur, to England of a Kelvin, to Germany of an Ostwald, +to us here of a Burbank? One main care of every country in the future +ought to be to find out who its first-rate thinkers are and to help +them. Cost here becomes something entirely irrelevant, the returns are +sure to be so incommensurable. This is what wise men the world over +are perceiving. And as the universities are already a sort of agency +providentially provided for the detection and encouragement of mental +superiority, it would seem as if that one among them that followed this +line most successfully would quickest rise to a position of paramountcy +and distinction. + +Why should not Stanford immediately adopt this as her vital policy? +Her position is one of unprecedented freedom. Not trammelled by the +service of the state as other universities on this coast are +trammelled, independent of students' fees and consequently of numbers, +Utopian in the material respects I have enumerated, she only needs a +boldness like that shown by her founders to become the seat of a +glowing intellectual life, sure to be admired and envied the world +over. Let her claim her place; let her espouse her destiny. Let her +call great investigators from whatever lands they live in, from +England, France, Germany, Japan, as well as from America. She can do +this without presumption, for the advantages of this place for steady +mental work are so unparalleled. Let these men, following the happy +traditions of the place, make the university. The original foundation +had something eccentric in it; let Stanford not fear to be eccentric to +the end, if need be. Let her not imitate; let her lead, not follow. +Especially let her not be bound by vulgar traditions as to the +cheapness or dearness of professorial service. The day is certainly +about to dawn when some American university will break all precedents +in the matter of instructors' salaries, and will thereby immediately +take the lead, and reach the winning post for quality. I like to think +of Stanford being that university. Geniuses are sensitive plants, in +some respects like _prima donnas_. They have to be treated tenderly. +They don't need to live in superfluity; but they need freedom from +harassing care; they need books and instruments; they are always +overworking, so they need generous vacations; and above all things they +need occasionally to travel far and wide in the interests of their +souls' development. Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing +of supreme quality is cheap, whatever be the price one has to pay for +it. + +Considering all the conditions, the quality of Stanford has from the +first been astonishingly good both in the faculty and in the student +body. Can we not, as we sit here to-day, frame a vision of what it may +be a century hence, with the honors of the intervening years all rolled +up in its traditions? Not vast, but intense; less a place for teaching +youths and maidens than for training scholars; devoted to truth; +radiating influence; setting standards; shedding abroad the fruits of +learning; mediating between America and Asia, and helping the more +intellectual men of both continents to understand each other better. + +What a history! and how can Stanford ever fail to enter upon it? + + + +[1] An Address at Stanford University on Founders' Day, 1906. Printed +in _Science_, for May 25, 1906. + + + + +XV + +A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC[1] + +Not for the ignoble vulgar do I write this article, but only for those +dialectic-mystic souls who have an irresistible taste, acquired or +native, for higher flights of metaphysics. I have always held the +opinion that one of the first duties of a good reader is to summon +other readers to the enjoyment of any unknown author of rare quality +whom he may discover in his explorations. Now for years my own taste, +literary as well as philosophic, has been exquisitely titillated by a +writer the name of whom I think must be unknown to the readers of this +article; so I no longer continue silent about the merits of Benjamin +Paul Blood. + +Mr. Blood inhabits a city otherwise, I imagine, quite unvisited by the +Muses, the town called Amsterdam, situated on the New York Central +Railroad. What his regular or bread-winning occupation may be I know +not, but it can't have made him super-wealthy. He is an author only +when the fit strikes him, and for short spurts at a time; shy, +moreover, to the point of publishing his compositions only as private +tracts, or in letters to such far-from-reverberant organs of publicity +as the _Gazette_ or the _Recorder_ of his native Amsterdam, or the +_Utica Herald_ or the _Albany Times_. Odd places for such subtile +efforts to appear in, but creditable to American editors in these +degenerate days! Once, indeed, the lamented W. T. Harris of the old +"Journal of Speculative Philosophy" got wind of these epistles, and the +result was a revision of some of them for that review (_Philosophic +Reveries_, 1889). Also a couple of poems were reprinted from their +leaflets by the editor of _Scribner's Magazine_ ("The Lion of the +Nile," 1888, and| "Nemesis," 1899). But apart from these three dashes +before the footlights, Mr. Blood has kept behind the curtain all his +days.[2] + +The author's maiden adventure was the _Anoesthetic Revelation_, a +pamphlet printed privately at Amsterdam in 1874. I forget how it fell +into my hands, but it fascinated me so "weirdly" that I am conscious of +its having been one of the stepping-stones of my thinking ever since. +It gives the essence of Blood's philosophy, and shows most of the +features of his talent--albeit one finds in it little humor and no +verse. It is full of verbal felicity, felicity sometimes of precision, +sometimes of metaphoric reach; it begins with dialectic reasoning, of +an extremely Fichtean and Hegelian type, but it ends in a trumpet-blast +of oracular mysticism, straight from the insight wrought by +anaesthetics--of all things in the world--and unlike anything one ever +heard before. The practically unanimous tradition of "regular" +mysticism has been unquestionably _monistic_; and inasmuch as it is the +characteristic of mystics to speak, not as the scribes, but as men who +have "been there" and seen with their own eyes, I think that this +sovereign manner must have made some other pluralistic-minded students +hesitate, as I confess that it has often given pause to me. One cannot +criticise the vision of a mystic--one can but pass it by, or else +accept it as having some amount of evidential weight. I felt unable to +do either with a good conscience until I met with Mr. Blood. His +mysticism, which may, if one likes, be understood as monistic in this +earlier utterance, develops in the later ones a sort of "left-wing" +voice of defiance, and breaks into what to my ear has a radically +pluralistic sound. I confess that the existence of this novel brand of +mysticism has made my cowering mood depart. I feel now as if my own +pluralism were not without the kind of support which mystical +corroboration may confer. Morrison can no longer claim to be the only +beneficiary of whatever right mysticism may possess to lend _prestige_. + +This is my philosophic, as distinguished from my literary, interest, in +introducing Mr. Blood to this more fashionable audience: his +philosophy, however mystical, is in the last resort not dissimilar from +my own. I must treat him by "extracting" him, and simplify--certainly +all too violently--as I extract. He is not consecutive as a writer, +aphoristic and oracular rather; and being moreover sometimes dialectic, +sometimes poetic, and sometimes mystic in his manner; sometimes +monistic and sometimes pluralistic in his matter, I have to run my own +risk in making him orate _pro domo mea_, and I am not quite unprepared +to hear him say, in case he ever reads these pages, that I have +entirely missed his point. No matter; I will proceed. + + +I + +I will separate his diverse phases and take him first as a pure +dialectician. Dialectic thought of the Hegelian type is a whirlpool +into which some persons are sucked out of the stream which the +straightforward understanding follows. Once in the eddy, nothing but +rotary motion can go on. All who have been in it know the feel of its +swirl--they know thenceforward that thinking unreturning on itself is +but one part of reason, and that rectilinear mentality, in philosophy +at any rate, will never do. Though each one may report in different +words of his rotational experience, the experience itself is almost +childishly simple, and whosoever has been there instantly recognizes +other authentic reports. To have been in that eddy is a freemasonry of +which the common password is a "fie" on all the operations of the +simple popular understanding. + +In Hegel's mind the vortex was at its liveliest, and any one who has +dipped into Hegel will recognize Mr. Blood to be of the same tribe. +"That Hegel was pervaded by the great truth," Blood writes, "cannot be +doubted. The eyes of philosophy, if not set directly on him, are set +towards the region which he occupied. Though he may not be the final +philosopher, yet pull him out, and all the rest will be drawn into his +vacancy." + +Drawn into the same whirlpool, Mr. Blood means. Non-dialectic thought +takes facts as singly given, and accounts for one fact by another. But +when we think of "_all_ fact," we see that nothing of the nature of +fact can explain it, "for that were but one more added to the list of +things to be accounted for. . . . The beginning of curiosity, in the +philosophic sense," Mr. Blood again writes, "is the stare +[Transcriber's note: state?] of being at itself, in the wonder why +anything is at all, and what this being signifies. Naturally we first +assume the void, and then wonder how, with no ground and no fertility, +anything should come into it." We treat it as a positive nihility, "a +barrier from which all our batted balls of being rebound." + +Upon this idea Mr. Blood passes the usual transcendentalist criticism. +There _is_ no such separate opposite to being; yet we never think of +being as such--of pure being as distinguished from specific forms of +being--save as what stands relieved against this imaginary background. +Being has no _outline_ but that which non-being makes, and the two +ideas form an inseparable pair. "Each limits and defines the other. +Either would be the other in the same position, for here (where there +is as yet no question of content, but only of being itself) the +position is all and the content is nothing. Hence arose that paradox: +'Being is by nothing more real than not-being.'" + +"Popularly," Mr. Blood goes on, "we think of all that is as having got +the better of non-being. If all were not--_that_, we think, were easy: +there were no wonder then, no tax on ingenuity, nothing to be accounted +for. This conclusion is from the thinking which assumes all reality as +immediately given assumes knowledge as a simple physical light, rather +than as a distinction involving light and darkness equally. We assume +that if the light were to go out, the show would be ended (and so it +would); but we forget that if the darkness were to go out, that would +be equally calamitous. It were bad enough if the master had lost his +crayon, but the loss of the blackboard would be just as fatal to the +demonstration. Without darkness light would be useless--universal +light as blind as universal darkness. Universal thing and universal +no-thing were indistinguishable. Why, then, assume the positive, the +immediately affirmative, as alone the ingenious? Is not the mould as +shapely as the model? The original ingenuity does not show in bringing +light out of darkness, nor in bringing things out of nothing, but in +evolving, through the just opposition of light and darkness, this +wondrous picture, in which the black and white lines have equal +significance--in evolving from life and death at once, the conscious +spirit. . . . + +"It is our habit to think of life as dear, and of death as cheap +(though Tithonus found them otherwise), or, continuing the simile of +the picture, that paper is cheap while drawing is expensive; but the +engraver had a different estimation in one sense, for all his labor was +spent on the white ground, while he left untouched those parts of the +block which make the lines in the picture. If being and non-being are +both necessary to the presence of either, neither shall claim priority +or preference. Indeed, we may fancy an intelligence which, instead of +regarding things as simply owning entity, should regard chiefly their +background as affected by the holes which things are making in it. +Even so, the paper-maker might see your picture as intrusive!" + +Thus "does the negation of being appear as indispensable in the making +of it." But to anyone who should appeal to particular forms of being +to refute this paradox, Mr. Blood admits that "to say that a picture, +or any other sensuous thing, is the same as the want of it, were to +utter nonsense indeed: there is a difference equivalent to the whole +stuff and merit of the picture; but in so far as the picture can be +there for thought, as something either asserted or negated, its +presence or its absence are the same and indifferent. By _its_ absence +we do not mean the absence of anything else, nor absence in general; +and how, forsooth, does its absence differ from these other absences, +save by containing a complete description of the picture? The hole is +as round as the plug; and from our thought the 'picture' cannot get +away. The negation is specific and descriptive, and what it destroys +it preserves tor our conception." + +The result is that, whether it be taken generally or taken +specifically, all that which _either is or is not_ is or is not _by +distinction or opposition_. "And observe the life, the process, +through which this slippery doubleness endures. Let us suppose the +present tense, that gods and men and angels and devils march all +abreast in this present instant, and the only real time and date in the +universe is now. And what _is_ this instant now? Whatever else, it is +_process_--becoming and departing; with what between? Simply division, +difference; the present has no breadth for if it had, that which we +seek would be the middle of that breadth. There is no precipitate, as +on a stationary platform, of the process of becoming, no residuum of +the process of departing, but between the two is a curtain, _the +apparition of difference_, which is all the world." + +I am using my scissors somewhat at random on my author's paragraphs, +since one place is as good as another for entering a ring by, and the +expert reader will discern at once the authentic dialectic circling. +Other paragraphs show Mr. Blood as more Hegelian still, and thoroughly +idealistic:-- + +"Assume that knowing is distinguishing, and that distinction is of +difference; if one knows a difference, one knows it as of entities +which afford it, and which also he knows; and he must know the entities +and the difference apart,--one from the other. Knowing all this, he +should be able to answer the twin question, 'What is the difference +_between sameness and difference_?' It is a 'twin' question, because +the two terms are equal in the proposition, and each is full of the +other. . . . + +"Sameness has 'all the difference in the world'--from difference; and +difference is an entity as difference--it being identically that. They +are alike and different at once, since either is the other when the +observer would contrast it with the other; so that the sameness and the +difference are 'subjective,' are the property of the observer: his is +the 'limit' in their unlimited field. . . . + +"We are thus apprized that distinction involves and carries its own +identity; and that ultimate distinction--distinction in the last +analysis--is self-distinction, 'self-knowledge,' as we realize it +consciously every day. Knowledge is self-referred: to know is to know +that you know, and to be known as well. + +"'Ah! but _both in the same time_?' inquires the logician. A +subject-object knowing itself as a seamless unit, while yet its two +items show a real distinction: this passes all understanding." + +But the whole of idealism goes to the proof that the two sides _cannot_ +succeed one another in a time-process. "To say you know, and you know +that you know, is to add nothing in the last clause; it is as idle as +to say that you lie, and you know that you lie," for if you know it not +you lie not. + +Philosophy seeks to grasp totality, "but the power of grasping or +consenting to totality involves the power of thought to make itself its +own object. Totality itself may indeed be taken by the _naive_ +intellect as an immediate topic, in the sense of being just an +_object_, but it cannot be just that; for the knower, as other or +opposite, would still be within that totality. The 'universe' by +definition must contain all opposition. If distinction should vanish, +what would remain? To what other could it change as a whole? How can +the loss of distinction make a _difference_? Any loss, at its utmost, +offers a new status with the old, but obviously it is too late now to +efface distinction by a _change_. There is no possible conjecture, but +such as carries with it the subjective that holds it; and when the +conjecture is of distinction in general, the subjective fills the void +with distinction of itself. The ultimate, ineffaceable distinction is +self-distinction, self-consciousness. . . . 'Thou art the unanswered +question, couldst see thy proper eye.' . . . The thought that must be +is the very thought of our experience; the ultimate opposition, the to +be _and_ not to be, is personality, spirit--somewhat that is in knowing +that it is, and is nothing else but this knowing in its vast +relations.[3] + +"Here lies the bed-rock; here the brain-sweat of twenty-five centuries +crystallizes to a jewel five words long: 'The Universe has No +Opposite.' For there the wonder of that which is, rests safe in the +perception that all things _are_ only through the opposition which is +their only fear." + +"The inevitable generally," in short, is exactly and identically that +which in point of fact is actually here. + +This is the familiar nineteenth-century development of Kant's +idealistic vision. To me it sounds monistic enough to charm the monist +in me unreservedly. I listen to the felicitously-worded concept-music +circling round itself, as on some drowsy summer noon one listens under +the pines to the murmuring of leaves and insects, and with as little +thought of criticism. + +But Mr. Blood strikes a still more vibrant note: "No more can be than +rationally is; and this was always true. There is no reason for what +is not; but for what there is reason, that is and ever was. Especially +is there no becoming of reason, and hence no reason for becoming, to a +sufficient intelligence. In the sufficient intelligence all things +always are, and are rational. To say there is something yet to be +which never was, not even in the sufficient intelligence wherein the +world is rational and not a blind and orphan waif, is to ignore all +reason. Aught that might be assumed as contingently coming to be could +only have 'freedom' for its origin; and 'freedom' has not fertility or +invention, and is not a reason for any special thing, but the very +vacuity of a ground for anything in preference to its room. Neither is +there in bare time any principle or originality where anything should +come or go. . . . + +"Such idealism enures greatly to the dignity and repose of man. No +blind fate, prior to what is, shall necessitate that all first be and +afterward be known, but knowledge is first, with fate in her own hands. +When we are depressed by the weight and immensity of the immediate, we +find in idealism a wondrous consolation. The alien positive, so vast +and overwhelming by itself, reduces its pretensions when the whole +negative confronts it on our side.[4] It matters little for its +greatness when an equal greatness is opposed. When one remembers that +the balance and motion of the planets are so delicate that the +momentary scowl of an eclipse may fill the heavens with tempest, and +even affect the very bowels of the earth--when we see a balloon, that +carries perhaps a thousand pounds, leap up a hundred feet at the +discharge of a sheet of note paper--or feel it stand deathly still in a +hurricane, because it goes with the hurricane, sides with it, and +ignores the rushing world below--we should realize that one tittle of +pure originality would outweigh this crass objective, and turn these +vast masses into mere breath and tissue-paper show." [5] + +But whose is the originality? There is nothing in what I am treating +as this phase of our author's thought to separate it from the +old-fashioned rationalism. There must be a reason for every fact; and +so much reason, so fact. The reason is always the whole foil and +background and negation of the fact, the whole remainder of reality. +"A man may feel good only by feeling better. . . . Pleasure is ever in +the company and contrast of pain; for instance, in thirsting and +drinking, the pleasure of the one is the exact measure of the pain of +the other, and they cease precisely together--otherwise the patient +would drink more. The black and yellow gonfalon of Lucifer is +indispensable in any spiritual picture." Thus do truth's two +components seem to balance, vibrating across the centre of +indifference; "being and non-being have equal value and cost," and +"mainly are convertible in their terms." [6] + +This sounds radically monistic; and monistic also is the first account +of the Ether-revelation, in which we read that "thenceforth each is +all, in God. . . . The One remains, the many change and pass; and +every one of us is the One that remains." + + +II + +It seems to me that any transcendental idealist who reads this article +ought to discern in the fragmentary utterances which I have quoted thus +far, the note of what he considers the truer dialectic profundity. He +ought to extend the glad hand of fellowship to Mr. Blood; and if he +finds him afterwards palavering with the enemy, he ought to count him, +not as a simple ignoramus or Philistine, but as a renegade and relapse. +He cannot possibly be treated as one who sins because he never has +known better, or as one who walks in darkness because he is +congenitally blind. + +Well, Mr. Blood, explain it as one may, does turn towards the darkness +as if he had never seen the light. Just listen for a moment to such +irrationalist deliverances on his part as these:-- + +"Reason is neither the first nor the last word in this world. Reason +is an equation; it gives but a pound for a pound. Nature is excess; +she is evermore, without cost or explanation. + + 'Is heaven so poor that _justice_ + Metes the bounty of the skies? + So poor that every blessing + Fills the debit of a cost? + That all process is returning? + And all gain is of the lost?' + +Go back into reason, and you come at last to fact, nothing more--a +given-ness, a something to wonder at and yet admit, like your own will. +And all these tricks for logicizing originality, self-relation, +absolute process, subjective contradiction, will wither in the breath +of the mystical tact; they will swirl down the corridors before the +besom of the everlasting Yea." + +Or again: "The monistic notion of a oneness, a centred wholeness, +ultimate purpose, or climacteric result of the world, has wholly given +way. Thought evolves no longer a centred whole, a One, but rather a +numberless many, adjust it how we will." + +Or still again: "The pluralists have talked philosophy to a +standstill--Nature is contingent, excessive and mystical essentially." + +Have we here contradiction simply, a man converted from one faith to +its opposite? Or is it only dialectic circling, like the opposite +points on the rim of a revolving disc, one moving up, one down, but +replacing one another endlessly, while the whole disc never moves? If +it be this latter--Mr. Blood himself uses the image--the dialectic is +too pure for me to catch: a deeper man must mediate the monistic with +the pluralistic Blood. Let my incapacity be castigated, if my +"Subject" ever reads this article, but let me treat him from now +onwards as the simply pluralistic mystic which my reading of the rest +of him suggests. I confess to some dread of my own fate at his hands. +In making so far an ordinary transcendental idealist of him, I have +taken liberties, running separate sentences together, inverting their +order, and even altering single words, for all which I beg pardon; but +in treating my author from now onwards as a pluralist, interpretation +is easier, and my hands can be less stained (if they _are_ stained) +with exegetic blood. + + +I have spoken of his verbal felicity, and alluded to his poetry. +Before passing to his mystic gospel, I will refresh the reader +(doubtless now fatigued with so much dialectic) by a sample of his +verse. "The Lion of the Nile" is an allegory of the "champion spirit +of the world" in its various incarnations. + +Thus it begins:-- + + "Whelped on the desert sands, and desert bred + From dugs whose sustenance was blood alone-- + A life translated out of other lives, + I grew the king of beasts; the hurricane + Leaned like a feather on my royal fell; + I took the Hyrcan tiger by the scruff + And tore him piecemeal; my hot bowels laughed + And my fangs yearned for prey. Earth was my lair: + I slept on the red desert without fear: + I roamed the jungle depths with less design + Than e'en to lord their solitude; on crags + That cringe from lightning--black and blasted fronts + That crouch beneath the wind-bleared stars, I told + My heart's fruition to the universe, + And all night long, roaring my fierce defy, + I thrilled the wilderness with aspen terrors, + And challenged death and life. . . ." + + +Again: + + "Naked I stood upon the raked arena + Beneath the pennants of Vespasian, + While seried thousands gazed--strangers from Caucasus, + Men of the Grecian Isles, and Barbary princes, + To see me grapple with the counterpart + Of that I had been--the raptorial jaws, + The arms that wont to crush with strength alone, + The eyes that glared vindictive.--Fallen there, + Vast wings upheaved me; from the Alpine peaks + Whose avalanches swirl the valley mists + And whelm the helpless cottage, to the crown + Of Chimborazo, on whose changeless jewels + The torrid rays recoil, with ne'er a cloud + To swathe their blistered steps, I rested not, + But preyed on all that ventured from the earth, + An outlaw of the heavens.--But evermore + Must death release me to the jungle shades; + And there like Samson's grew my locks again + In the old walks and ways, till scapeless fate + Won me as ever to the haunts of men, + Luring my lives with battle and with love." . . . + + +I quote less than a quarter of the poem, of which the rest is just as +good, and I ask: Who of us all handles his English vocabulary better +than Mr. Blood?[7] + +His proclamations of the mystic insight have a similar verbal power:-- + +"There is an invariable and reliable condition (or uncondition) ensuing +about the instant of recall from anaesthetic stupor to 'coming to,' in +which the genius of being is revealed. . . . No words may express the +imposing certainty of the patient that he is realizing the primordial +Adamic surprise of Life. + +"Repetition of the experience finds it ever the same, and as if it +could not possibly be otherwise. The subject resumes his normal +consciousness only to partially and fitfully remember its occurrence, +and to try to formulate its baffling import,--with but this consolatory +afterthought: that he has known the oldest truth, and that he has done +with human theories as to the origin, meaning, or destiny of the race. +He is beyond instruction in 'spiritual things.' . . . + +"It is the instant contrast of this 'tasteless water of souls' with +formal thought as we 'come to,' that leaves in the patient an +astonishment that the awful mystery of Life is at last but a homely and +a common thing, and that aside from mere formality the majestic and the +absurd are of equal dignity. The astonishment is aggravated as at a +thing of course, missed by sanity in overstepping, as in too foreign a +search, or with too eager an attention: as in finding one's spectacles +on one's nose, or in making in the dark a step higher than the stair. +My first experiences of this revelation had many varieties of emotion; +but as a man grows calm and determined by experience in general, so am +I now not only firm and familiar in this once weird condition, but +triumphant, divine. To minds of sanguine imagination there will be a +sadness in the tenor of the mystery, as if the key-note of the universe +were low; for no poetry, no emotion known to the normal sanity of man, +can furnish a hint of its primeval prestige, and its all-but appalling +solemnity; but for such as have felt sadly the instability of temporal +things there is a comfort of serenity and ancient peace; while for the +resolved and imperious spirit there are majesty and supremacy +unspeakable. Nor can it be long until all who enter the anaesthetic +condition (and there are hundreds every secular day) will be taught to +expect this revelation, and will date from its experience their +initiation into the Secret of Life. . . . + +"This has been my moral sustenance since I have known of it. In my +first printed mention of it I declared: 'The world is no more the alien +terror that was taught me. Spurning the cloud-grimed and still sultry +battlements whence so lately Jehovan thunders boomed, my gray gull +lifts her wing against the night fall, and takes the dim leagues with a +fearless eye.' And now, after twenty-seven years of this experience, +the wing is grayer, but the eye is fearless still, while I renew and +doubly emphasize that declaration. I know, as having known, the +meaning of Existence; the sane centre of the universe--at once the +wonder and the assurance of the soul." + + +After this rather literary interlude I return to Blood's philosophy +again. I spoke a while ago of its being an "irrationalistic" +philosophy in its latest phase. Behind every "fact" rationalism +postulates its "reason." Blood parodizes this demand in true +nominalistic fashion. "The goods are not enough, but they must have +the invoice with them. There must be a _name_, something to _read_. I +think of Dickens's horse that always fell down when they took him out +of the shafts; or of the fellow who felt weak when naked, but strong in +his overcoat." No bad mockery, this, surely, of rationalism's habit of +explaining things by putting verbal doubles of them beneath them as +their ground! + +"All that philosophy has sought as cause, or reason," he says, +"pluralism subsumes in the status and the given fact, where it stands +as plausible as it may ever hope to stand. There may be disease in the +presence of a question as well as in the lack of an answer. We do not +wonder so strangely at an ingenious and well-set-up effect, for we feel +such in ourselves; but a cause, reaching out beyond the verge [of fact] +and dangling its legs in nonentity, with the hope of a rational +foothold, should realize a strenuous life. Pluralism believes in truth +and reason, but only as mystically realized, as lived in experience. +Up from the breast of a man, up to his tongue and brain, comes a free +and strong determination, and he cries, originally, and in spite of his +whole nature and environment, 'I will.' This is the Jovian _fiat_, the +pure cause. This is reason; this or nothing shall explain the world +for him. For how shall he entertain a reason bigger than +himself? . . . Let a man stand fast, then, as an axis of the earth; +the obsequious meridians will bow to him, and gracious latitudes will +measure from his feet." + +This seems to be Blood's mystical answer to his own monistic statement +which I quoted above, that "freedom" has no fertility, and is no reason +for any special thing.[8] "Philosophy," Mr. Blood writes to me in a +letter, "is past. It was the long endeavor to logicize what we can +only realize practically or in immediate experience. I am more and +more impressed that Heraclitus insists on the equation of reason and +unreason, or chance, as well as of being and not-being, etc. This +throws the secret beyond logic, and makes mysticism outclass +philosophy. The insight that mystery,--the Mystery, as such is final, +is the hymnic word. If you use reason pragmatically, and deny it +absolutely, you can't be beaten; be assured of that. But the _Fact_ +remains, and of course the Mystery." [9] + +The "Fact," as I understand the writer here to mean it, remains in its +native disseminated shape. From every realized amount of fact some +other fact is _absent_, as being uninvolved. "There is nowhere more of +it consecutively, perhaps, than appears upon this present page." There +is, indeed, to put it otherwise, no more one all-enveloping fact than +there is one all-enveloping spire in an endlessly growing spiral, and +no more one all-generating fact than there is one central point in +which an endlessly converging spiral ends. Hegel's "bad infinite" +belongs to the eddy as well as to the line. "Progress?" writes our +author. "And to what? Time turns a weary and a wistful face; has he +not traversed an eternity? and shall another give the secret up? We +have dreamed of a climax and a consummation, a final triumph where a +world shall burn _en barbecue_; but there is not, cannot be, a purpose +of eternity; it shall pay mainly as it goes, or not at all. The show +is on; and what a show, if we will but give our attention! Barbecues, +bonfires, and banners? Not twenty worlds a minute would keep up our +bonfire of the sun; and what banners of our fancy could eclipse the +meteor pennants of the pole, or the opaline splendors of the +everlasting ice? . . . Doubtless we _are_ ostensibly progressing, but +there have been prosperity and highjinks before. Nineveh and Tyre, +Rome, Spain, and Venice also had their day. We are going, but it is a +question of our standing the pace. It would seem that the news must +become less interesting or tremendously more so--'a breath can make us, +as a breath has made.'" + +Elsewhere we read: "Variety, not uniformity, is more likely to be the +key to progress. The genius of being is whimsical rather than +consistent. Our strata show broken bones of histories all forgotten. +How can it be otherwise? There can be no purpose of eternity. It is +process all. The most sublime result, if it appeared as the ultimatum, +would go stale in an hour; it could not be endured." + +Of course from an intellectual point of view this way of thinking must +be classed as scepticism. "Contingency forbids any inevitable history, +and conclusions are absurd. Nothing in Hegel has kept the planet from +being blown to pieces." Obviously the mystical "security," the "apodal +sufficiency" yielded by the anaesthetic revelation, are very different +moods of mind from aught that rationalism can claim to father--more +active, prouder, more heroic. From his ether-intoxication Blood may +feel towards ordinary rationalists "as Clive felt towards those +millions of Orientals in whom honor had no part." On page 6, above, I +quoted from his "Nemesis"--"Is heaven so poor that justice," etc. The +writer goes on, addressing the goddess of "compensation" or rational +balance;-- + + "How shalt thou poise the courage + That covets all things hard? + How pay the love unmeasured + That could not brook reward? + How prompt self-loyal honor + Supreme above desire, + That bids the strong die for the weak, + The martyrs sing in fire? + Why do I droop in bower + And sigh in sacred hall? + Why stifle under shelter? + Yet where, through forest tall, + The breath of hungry winter + In stinging spray resolves, + I sing to the north wind's fury + And shout with the coarse-haired wolves? + + * * * * * * + + What of thy priests' confuting, + Of fate and form and law, + Of being and essence and counterpoise, + Of poles that drive and draw? + Ever some compensation, + Some pandering purchase still! + But the vehm of achieving reason + Is the all-patrician Will!" + + +Mr. Blood must manage to re-write the last two lines; but the contrast +of the two securities, his and the rationalist's, is plain enough. The +rationalist sees safe conditions. But Mr. Blood's revelation, whatever +the conditions be, helps him to stand ready for a life among them. In +this, his attitude seems to resemble that of Nietzsche's _amor fati_! +"Simply," he writes to me, "_we do not know_. But when we say we do +not know, we are not to say it weakly and meekly, but with confidence +and content. . . . Knowledge is and must ever be _secondary_, a +witness rather than a principal, or a 'principle'!--in the case. +Therefore mysticism for me!" + +"Reason," he prints elsewhere, "is but an item in the duplex potency of +the mystery, and behind the proudest consciousness that ever reigned, +Reason and Wonder blushed face to face. The legend sinks to burlesque +if in that great argument which antedates man and his mutterings, +Lucifer had not a fighting chance. . . . + +"It is given to the writer and to others for whom he is permitted to +speak--and we are grateful that it is the custom of gentlemen to +believe one another--that the highest thought is not a milk-and-water +equation of so much reason and so much result--'no school sum to be +cast up.' We have realized the highest divine thought of itself, and +there is in it as much of wonder as of certainty; inevitable, and +solitary and safe in one sense, but queer and cactus-like no less in +another sense, it appeals unutterably to experience alone. + +"There are sadness and disenchantment for the novice in these +inferences, as if the keynote of the universe were low, but experience +will approve them. Certainty is the root of despair. The inevitable +stales, while doubt and hope are sisters. Not unfortunately the +universe is wild--game flavored as a hawk's wing. Nature is miracle +all. She knows no laws; the same returns not, save to bring the +different. The slow round of the engraver's lathe gains but the +breadth of a hair, but the difference is distributed back over the +whole curve, never an instant true--ever not quite." + +"Ever not quite!"--this seems to wring the very last panting word out +of rationalistic philosophy's mouth. It is fit to be pluralism's +heraldic device. There is no complete generalization, no total point +of view, no all-pervasive unity, but everywhere some residual +resistance to verbalization, formulation, and discursification, some +genius of reality that escapes from the pressure of the logical finger, +that says "hands off," and claims its privacy, and means to be left to +its own life. In every moment of immediate experience is somewhat +absolutely original and novel. "We are the first that ever burst into +this silent sea." Philosophy must pass from words, that reproduce but +ancient elements, to life itself, that gives the integrally new. The +"inexplicable," the "mystery," as what the intellect, with its claim to +reason out reality, thinks that it is in duty bound to resolve, and the +resolution of which Blood's revelation would eliminate from the sphere +of our duties, remains; but it remains as something to be met and dealt +with by faculties more akin to our activities and heroisms and +willingnesses, than to our logical powers. This is the anesthetic +insight, according to our author. Let _my_ last word, then, speaking +in the name of intellectual philosophy, be _his_ word.--"There is no +conclusion. What has concluded, that we might conclude in regard to +it? There are no fortunes to be told, and there is no advice to be +given.--Farewell!" + + + +[1] Written during the early summer of 1910 and published in the +_Hibbert Journal_ for July of that year. + +[2] "Yes! Paul is quite a correspondent!" said a good citizen of +Amsterdam, from whom I inquired the way to Mr. Blood's dwelling many +years ago, after alighting from the train. I had sought to identify +him by calling him an "author," but his neighbor thought of him only as +a writer of letters to the journals I have named. + +[3] "How shall a man know he is alive--since in thought the knowing +constitutes the being alive, without knowing that thought (life) from +its opposite, and so knowing both, and so far as being is knowing, +being both? Each defines and relieves the other, each is impossible in +thought without the other; therefore each has no distinction save as +presently contrasting with the other, and each by itself is the same, +and nothing. Clearly, then, consciousness is neither of one nor of the +other nor of both, but a knowing subject perceiving them and itself +together and as one. . . . So, in coming out of the anaesthetic +exhilaration . . . we want to tell something; but the effort instantly +proves that something will stay back and do the telling--one must utter +one's own throat, one must eat one's own teeth, to express the being +that possesses one. The result is ludicrous and astounding at +once--astounding in the clear perception that this is the ultimate +mystery of life, and is given you as the old Adamic secret, which you +then feel that all intelligence must sometime know or have known; yet +ludicrous in its familiar simplicity, as somewhat that any man should +always perceive at his best, if his head were only level, but which in +our ordinary thinking has grown into a thousand creeds and theories +dignified as religion and philosophy." + +[4] Elsewhere Mr. Blood writes of the "force of the negative" +thus:--"As when a faded lock of woman's hair shall cause a man to cut +his throat in a bedroom at five o'clock in the morning; or when Albany +resounds with legislation, but a little henpecked judge in a dusty +office at Herkimer or Johnstown sadly writes across the page the word +'unconstitutional'--the glory of the Capitol has faded." + +[5] Elsewhere Blood writes:--"But what then, in the name of common +sense, _is_ the external world? If a dead man could answer he would +say Nothing, or as Macbeth said of the air-drawn dagger, 'there is no +such thing.' But a live man's answer might be in this way: What is the +multiplication table when it is not written down? It is a necessity of +thought; it was not created, it cannot but be; every intelligence which +goes to it, and thinks, must think in that form or think falsely. So +the universe is the static necessity of reason; it is not an object for +any intelligence to find, but it is half object and half subject; it +never cost anything as a whole; it never _was_ made, but always _is_ +made, in the Logos, or expression of reason--the Word; and slowly but +surely it will be understood and uttered in every intelligence, until +he is one with God or reason itself. As a man, for all he knows, or +has known, stands at any given instant the realization of only one +thought, while all the rest of him is invisibly linked to that in the +necessary form and concatenation of reason, so the man as a whole of +exploited thoughts is a moment in the front of the concatenated reason +of the universal whole; and this whole is personal only as it is +personally achieved. This is the Kingdom that is 'within you, and the +God which 'no man hath seen at any time.'" + +[6] There are passages in Blood that sound like a well-known essay by +Emerson. For instance:--"Experience burns into us the fact and the +necessity of universal compensation. The philosopher takes it from +Heraclitus, in the insight that everything exists through its opposite; +and the bummer comforts himself for his morning headache as only the +rough side of a square deal. We accept readily the doctrine that pain +and pleasure, evil and good, death and life, chance and reason, are +necessary equations--that there must be just as much of each as of its +other. + +"It grieves us little that this great compensation cannot at every +instant balance its beam on every individual centre, and dispense with +an under dog in every fight; we know that the parts must subserve the +whole; we have faith that our time will come; and if it comes not at +all in this world, our lack is a bid for immortality, and the most +promising argument for a world hereafter. 'Though He slay me, yet will +I trust in Him.' + +"This is the faith that baffles all calamity, and ensures genius and +patience in the world. Let not the creditor hasten the settlement: let +not the injured man hurry toward revenge; there is nothing that draws +bigger interest than a wrong, and to 'get the best of it' is ever in +some sense to get the worst." + +[7] Or what thinks the reader of the verbiage of these +verses?--addressed in a mood of human defiance to the cosmic Gods-- + + "Whose lightnings tawny leap from furtive lairs, + To helpless murder, while the ships go down + Swirled in the crazy stound, and mariners' prayers + Go up in noisome bubbles--such to them;-- + Or when they tramp about the central fires, + Bending the strata with aeonian tread + Till steeples totter, and all ways are lost,-- + Deem they of wife or child, or home or friend, + Doing these things as the long years lead on + Only to other years that mean no more, + That cure no ill, nor make for use or proof-- + Destroying ever, though to rear again." + +[8] I subjoin a poetic apostrophe of Mr. Blood's to freedom: + + "Let it ne'er be known. + If in some book of the Inevitable, + Dog-eared and stale, the future stands engrossed + E'en as the past. There shall be news in heaven, + And question in the courts thereof; and chance + Shall have its fling, e'en at the [ermined] bench. + + * * * * * * + + Ah, long ago, above the Indian ocean, + Where wan stars brood over the dreaming East, + I saw, white, liquid, palpitant, the Cross; + And faint and far came bells of Calvary + As planets passed, singing that they were saved, + Saved from themselves: but ever low Orion-- + For hunter too was I, born of the wild, + And the game flavor of the infinite + Tainted me to the bone--he waved me on, + On to the tangent field beyond all orbs, + Where form nor order nor continuance + Hath thought nor name; there unity exhales + In want of confine, and the protoplasm + May beat and beat, in aimless vehemence, + Through vagrant spaces, homeless and unknown. + + * * * * * * + + There ends One's empire!--but so ends not all; + One knows not all; my griefs at least are mine-- + By me their measure, and to me their lesson; + E'en I am one--(poor deuce to call the Ace!) + And to the open bears my gonfalon, + Mine aegis, Freedom!--Let me ne'er look back + Accusing, for the withered leaves and lives + The sated past hath strewn, the shears of fate, + But forth to braver days. + O, Liberty, + Burthen of every sigh!--thou gold of gold, + Beauty of the beautiful, strength of the strong! + My soul for ever turns agaze for thee. + There is no purpose of eternity + For faith or patience; but thy buoyant torch + Still lighted from the Islands of the Blest, + O'erbears all present for potential heavens + Which are not--ah, so more than all that are! + Whose chance postpones the ennui of the skies! + Be thou my genius--be my hope in thee! + For this were heaven: to be, and to be free." + +[9] In another letter Mr. Blood writes:--"I think we are through with +'the Whole,' and with '_causa sui_,' and with the 'negative unity' +which assumes to identify each thing as being what it lacks of +everything else. You can, of course, build out a chip by modelling the +sphere it was chipped from;--but if it was n't a sphere? What a +weariness it is to look back over the twenty odd volumes of the +'Journal of Speculative Philosophy' and see Harris's mind wholly filled +by that one conception of self-determination--everything to be thought +as 'part of a system'--a 'whole' and '_causa sui_.'--I should like to +see such an idea get into the head of Edison or George Westinghouse." + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMORIES AND STUDIES*** + + +******* This file should be named 20768.txt or 20768.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/7/6/20768 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://www.gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: +http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/20768.zip b/20768.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e4839ef --- /dev/null +++ b/20768.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9c4309a --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #20768 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20768) |