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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 18:37:19 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 18:37:19 -0700 |
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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/44208-0.txt b/44208-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4482383 --- /dev/null +++ b/44208-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7759 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44208 *** + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + https://archive.org/details/hivewill00comfiala + + + + + +THE HIVE + + + * * * * * * + +BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT + + + THE HIVE + THE LAST DITCH + CHILD AND COUNTRY + LOT & COMPANY + RED FLEECE + MIDSTREAM + DOWN AMONG MEN + FATHERLAND + + + NEW YORK + + GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + + * * * * * * + + +THE HIVE + +by + +WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT + +Author of "Midstream," "Child and Country," +"The Last Ditch," "Down Among Men," etc. + + + + + + + +[Illustration] + +New York +George H. Doran Company + +Copyright, 1918, +By George H. Doran Company + +Printed in the United States of America + + + + + TO MARY + + + ... soft gold and deep + fragrance and pomegranate red. + + + + +FOREWORD + + +There is much to say. Many have a part in this story of our days. +Their work is on the table. Yet no manuscript, no chapter, is a real +beginning. One must start a book this way--with a fresh sheet in the +machine and tell what he is going to tell about.... First of all, it +has to do with the unfolding of the child mind; all the Stonestudy work +has been for that, but the brimming wonder of it all is that we have +chiefly been employed unfolding ourselves. + +No one can begin upon the sweet and sacred story of life to a child +without taking a stride nearer into the centre of things, and living +it. That's what all telling is about--presently to stop talking and to +catch up on conduct. The fairest culture of all is to become artists in +life.... Thinking of this, thinking much upon this one thing, we have +been lured out of the heaviness of work into the dimension of Play. We +tell here about this particular passage. + +Also something about the story of Man and Woman, hinting at what is +contained in pages of the Book of Life not opened heretofore for the +eyes of the many, but preparing now for the eyes of the children of +the New Race--a beautiful story, be sure of that, but one that requires +art in the telling. No one could bring this story to the lovers and the +children of the New Race who had not found out that Beauty belongs to +the divine trinity with Goodness and Truth. + +Many seers have not held that well in mind, many sages have forgotten +it, many saints have not learned it adequately at all. We have to build +our own heavens here before we can have them anywhere else. The more of +an artist a man is, the more reverent he becomes about perfecting his +thought-forms. Just a mention now--that we rejoice to make much of the +Beauty side of things in this book; that a thing cannot be beautiful +and bad; that Beauty is the next quest of the many, as they escape one +by one from the bondage of Gold. + +We try to express the Soul of things rather than to delineate +boundaries of matter, but a very strong point is made upon the fact +that one cannot deal in the spirit until he has mastered to a good +degree the coarser stuff that bodies and worlds are made of. We do not +care how the young minds aspire mystically, so long as their abutments +hold fast in the bottom-lands. A man must not drag his anchor as he +climbs the hill; he must unfold line all the way--a line made of +strands of himself, woven of his own wisdom, love and power. + +Much is made in this book of the fact that we are given _pounds_ for a +purpose--that all here below is symbol and intimation of a globe and +perfection elsewhere--that we cannot look upon the archetype of gold +until we have mastered the imitation in clay.... We come even closer +to this precious subject: For instance, we know that it is only from +the soul of things that one can see materials--that no one can get a +glimpse of the meaning of materials so long as he is lost in the ruck +of them. At the same time we do not believe that we have access, even +to the lesser grades of mysticism, until we have all the power and +force of the material-minded. We believe we must do well that which the +world is doing, even the tasks of the average man, that nothing can be +missed. + +We do not encourage that mystic or poet who requires endowment. If we +are to be artists, we believe in supporting our own groups; we have a +suspicion that we are not through with conditions, any conditions no +matter how hateful, so long as they have us whipped. + +We aspire to be writers and politicians and painters and heroes; we +aspire to be masters in all the superb productions of life, but we are +content to begin with the ground. We are content with poverty, yet we +believe that very early as workmen, we are entitled to a fastidious +poverty, which is expensive. No possessions--but all possessions. As +writers we are convinced that it is necessary to do--and inimitably +well--the things that the public wants and pays ten cents the word for, +quite as well as to reveal the deeper folds of our growth for which we +have to finance publication. We are not sure yet which is the worthier +achievement. + +Perhaps we speak much of Soul in this book, but we mean nothing more +formidable than the better part of every man. This is the Big Fellow +who takes us over when we do that which is worth while--in billiards +or diplomacy, in art or love or trade. I think it is the Big Comrade +which we are really unfolding--the Workman and Player. Much of Soul, we +write, because it is the point of our educational drive--to set It free +in the child or the young workman, to make It speak or write or play, +and not mere brain and hand. + +We speak much of love--not as an emotion, not as a sentiment, but as a +cosmic force. You will see much more what we mean by this as you turn +the pages. It is the most challenging thing in the world. It is the +inner white-hot core of the Fatherland that is to be--the great white +Democracy of the future.... + +_Democracy_--that's the point of inception of it all; that word is +the seed. The more you dwell upon it--you know what the Seamless Robe +of the Christ means--the more you realise that the Master Jesus was +the first Big Democrat.... We have them speak the word softly and +thoughtfully here each day--we like to hear the young ones say it. They +are apt to know as much about it as you do--for the word doesn't mean +exactly what they mean, who have used it most heretofore. It isn't +the name of a political party--yet.... It is government of the people +by the people, but only to those who see the sons of God in the eyes +of passing men. We only ask its magic, not its presence upon these +pages.... They're fighting for it gloriously--every hour. The boys here +thrill with the boys there. We hold our hands high to them. Some of our +boys are there. They are all our boys! Some are waiting the call to +go--but there or here, we are pulling together for the real Fatherland, +for the adequite fraternity, under the endless and thrilling magic of +the word _Equality_. + +... I can say no more splendid word to you than My Equal: I know of +no greater adventure than to become one of the Many. It is true that +you and I--the best of us, the Immortal within us each, are of one +house--that this is but a far outpost of the journey, Egypt if you +like, the husks if you like--but that we have arisen and are on our way +home to the Father's House. + + + Canyon, Santa Monica, California. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + NORTH AMERICANS 17 + + QUICKENINGS 24 + + CONQUEST OF FEARS 36 + + THE STUFF OF COMRADES 45 + + JOHN'S THINGS 56 + + VALUES OF LETTER WRITING 70 + + THE NEW DANCING 79 + + OLD PICTURES IN RED 91 + + STEVE 101 + + HEJIRA 111 + + THE SPECTATOR 118 + + TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL 129 + + THE ABBOT 139 + + THE ARTIST UNLEASHED 155 + + WORK IN SHORT STORIES 164 + + VALLEY ROAD GIRL 172 + + BEAUTY 183 + + SHUK 192 + + IMAGINATION 205 + + BOYS AND DOGS 211 + + THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE 219 + + THE MATING MYSTERY 241 + + CHAPTER OF LETTERS 252 + + ROMANCE 267 + + THE COSMIC PEASANT 277 + + RÉSUMÉ 315 + + + + + THE HIVE + + + + +1 + +NORTH AMERICANS + + +The thing called the New Race--the passion of poets, the phantom +running ahead and forever calling the dreamer and revolutionist +and occultist, is far from a reality as yet among the commonplaces +of the world. It is the spirit of everything worth while, but that +means nothing to one who has not a breath of it in his own body.... A +story went forth from this shop recently in which certain ideals and +presences of the new social order were carried through to a cheerful +ending. The publisher wrote, "Yes, but what is the New Race?" + +It's a fair question, but remember one cannot adequately describe a +spiritual thing in terms of matter. It is only possible of portrayal +where it has broken through into terms of three-space. First you are +apt to get the nearest and most striking picture of the New Race at +your own supper-table--the presence of one of your own children, +especially if the young one is hard to understand. + +Parents and children of all times have found confusion and alarm in +each other's ways. But there are rare periods of human history when +the difference between two generations has been not a normal and +superficial crack, but an abyss. It is so now. The Old has reached +its climacteric point of destructivity. All self-passions destroy +themselves in time. Fear, greed, sensuality--all are self-destructive. +Great human numbers and decadent principles have been recently +broken down in the world with a swiftness and abandonment heretofore +unrecorded, except in the traditions of planetary flood and flame.... + +You may watch closely the child under seven who plays in the Unseen, +whose companions are not in the room for older eyes; watch the one of +fancies and fairies and fragrances which others cannot quite discern. +Many a child has been driven with a soul-wound into corroding silence +by parents who thought they were punishing falsehood, when they were in +reality repressing the imagination--the faculty which master-artists +denote as the first and loveliest possession of the creative mind. Too +coarse and unlit to see what the child saw, the parents again and again +have looked gravely at each other, saying: + +"This is a crisis. Our child has begun to lie. We must forget her own +feelings and punish her----" + +So often it is _her_--but not always. The boys who are to do the +great tasks of song and prophecy and architecture--they, too, dream +dreams and see visions and have the rapt eyes of Joan in the forests +of Domremy; they, too, are severely questioned by the pharisees; none +escape this scourging; they, too, in many cases shall be put to death. + +The new ideals of the parenthood, education, romance, are now being +introduced and promulgated by pioneers long since emerged from the old +litter and humus. Education will mean first of all a turning for power +to the Unseen. The quest of the Swan and the Star and the Beloved, are +never carried along on the levels and inequalities of the earth--always +the uplifted face for the saint and the sage and the seer. Great +parents kneel beside their children and beg to be delivered from the +heaviness which holds them to the dim shadows, where the child sees +face to face. Education will mean finding his intrinsic task for the +child--the intensive cultivation of the human spirit from the Soul +outward, not alone from the brain inward. + +The quest of the passing age was for Gold. The real meaning and +symbol and glory of gold, as the highest, smoothest and most finished +of minerals, has been lost in the bulkier products and possessions +it meant to measure and signify. More and more has gold itself hid +away from vulgar hands and been represented by objects intrinsically +inferior. We now behold a civilisation destroying itself for +commodities and destroying the commodities for which the destruction +began. + +Gold itself will serve Beauty in the coming age; commerce will serve +æsthetics. The lovers of Beauty begin with the sand, with the clay. +They love nature from the ground up; they are fervent for light and +air, for sun and sky and water, for fruits and grains and bees, for +stars and rains and romances. They say such things are holy. Words are +inadequate for their loves and appreciations. They find the ways to +love God infinite. They see Him in stone and stream; they see Him in +the eyes of the deep down men; they see Him risen and inevitable in the +eyes of their lovers.... + +Straight goodness will not do for the New Race, nor straight +intellectuality. Artists, singers, painters and idealists will be the +heroes of the generations to come, for they will add the quest of +Beauty to the unwashed goodness of the saints and pilgrims. + +These are but flaring points; one is embarrassed in short space because +of a myriad things to say. Free verse is a sign of the New, also the +dream of a free world and the planetary patriotism. The immanence of +the _spirit_ of all things, is a sign; the sense of the underlying +oneness of humanity; not alone the Fatherland, but the Kinterland, +where new Fountains are established and sages and masters come for +inspiration--all these, like a passing train of wonder, a glimpse of +many cars.... + +I think I can bring the picture in closer by using a few pages of work +from one of the young men with me. His name is Steve. I called him The +Dakotan,[1] in the book, _Child and Country_. We've romped and ridden +together for three years, and I've known Steve better every day--still +far from the end. The rest of the chapter is Steve's writing: + + [1] H.A. Sturtzel. + + +NORTH AMERICANS + +Out of the centuries of moil and mix and fuse of Europe, the orient and +the north countries, a gleaming archetype has emerged here which may +be called the real North Americans. They are scattered here and there +among the younger generation--young people new in name only; in soul +they are as old as Zeus. Often they are strangers in their father's +house. They blend the mind of the occidental with the soul of the east; +splendid firstlings of an untried future. They betray themselves by +their genius. Heredity is the first fetich overthrown by them. + +From the first they are a law unto themselves. They cast off churches, +codes, creeds, schools and parents as preliminary steps in their +teens. In the twenties they are prodigies, leaders in the arts or the +revolutions. It is their aim to over-reach themselves, not to further a +type. Very early they conjourn together in secret and obscure places, +revolting against life as it is lived, like a handful of white dwellers +in a foreign city. + +There is always an alien, intangible something about these people. One +senses the double life they lead, their own, and others. Conditions +are not yet adjusted for them. They are super-nationalists, the first +mark of the new. They are dreamers who make their dreams come true in +matter, and first among their dreams is of the planet in one piece. +They are naturally intolerant of barriers and partitions. They see +ahead a new social order vast and shining as a devachanic vision--the +real democracy of the future. They see that the new has come in not to +kill, but to build. Theirs will be the spiritual heroics. Yet all this, +of the greater patriotism, must not yet be spoken. It only alienates +them the more from those they must live with. Their arch enemy is +Ignorance, personified so often in their elders. + +It is noticeable that these young people are healthier, stronger, +swifter, sharper, tougher, bolder and at the same time lighter and +finer than the passing generation. They have the _new healthiness_. +They belong to the open and are practically immune to disease. +Theirs is the health of sun and wind and spirit--vitality instead of +constitution, something the old can never understand. Constitution +is weight, solid, ungiving. Vitality is volatile, springy, electric, +constantly being given, constantly being acquired, self-refining. +Constitution does not change; it accumulates all it can, then begins to +die.... + +The young women of this new Race are open, strong, eye-to-eye, free +spoken. They are capable of friendships; they are not adverse to being +wholly understood by males. They are not popular with ordinary women, +who surmise their superiority but comprehend it not. Deceit, jealousy +and such common disturbances evident in the sex are unknown to them. +They have character and are lovely rather than beautiful. They are apt +to go half way in their love-making, for who should know better when +the chosen father of their children arrives. + +All of these people are bringers of true love. Love is their philosophy +and religion. They listen to the heart as well as the brain. Others +think them cruel in their discrimination in mating. They take all or +nothing--prodigious riskers, great sufferers, throwing even love's +dream on the board to be played for, and laughing as they play. The +slightest blight on the loved one is deepest agony. + +Perhaps the surest way of discovering these young giants is to search +about for the most sorely harassed children. Invariably they are put +to it, to break into this day and generation. They fight their way up +through all the banked-up ignorance and antagonism of unlit humanity. +Often they are solitaires, coming and going with the secrecy of kings +and eagles. + + * * * * * + + + + +2 + +QUICKENINGS + + +A few pages of drift first of all with the younger boys.... There +is a lane of Lombardy poplars from the Lake to the interurban +car-line--a half mile. It is a lifting walk at any time, but summer +evenings are wonderful with all the sounds and scents of a true +pastorale--lake-breath and meadow-lands, the whole sky to look at, and +the murmuring dissonance of the poplars. Often we walk to the car with +passing guests. One evening a guest went away whom we loved very much. +A lad of seven, named John, and I walked back from the car alone. + +He was ignited. I felt this at last through his hand. I had been +thinking about my own things all too long, missing the beginnings of +his talk.... He hurried forward in the dusk, speaking in a hushed rapt +voice. Because I had missed the first part, I said: "John, I want you +to write that--either to-night or to-morrow." + +And this is what came in: + + +THE MAGIC LANE: + +It was at dusk. Two people left their tracks in Nature's dust road. + +Love is found on that road. It is the road of the mystics. + +They leave their love in it; Nature kisses their feet. + +Many horses' feet have been kissed on that mystic road. + +That mystic road will last forever. + +I long to walk upon that road of love. + +Love on that road will last forever. + +It is all true love. + +Our friends have been met on that road of love. + +It leads to the Hills of God. + +Certain spelling matters have been corrected. We pay little attention +to spelling in the work here. The young ones learn by reading and get +the proper look of a word altogether too soon in many cases. There was +another high moment from John at the same time. The following three +lines have stood out from the period with memorable magic: + + +WONDER + +The soft breath of the Mother came in through the window of vines. + +The stars were shining like the face of the New Generation. + +My spirit was away in the Hills. A noise at the door brought me back---- + +John then fell into a psychological tangle which we found little +profit in following. By the "Mother" he referred to Nature.... The +verse period has passed for the time. Around the age of seven, boys +change. Often, as in this case, they are not so interesting for a while +afterward. John is coming nine now and is writing "action" stories with +all the worn and regulation props and settings. The early tendency will +return with a dimension added. All transitions are times of disorder, +but they are followed by larger areas and truer fulfilments of order. A +cloud falls upon the sanctuary, but when it is dispelled, one perceives +a lifted dome, bright with its new cloth of gold. + +I am struck every day in dealing with young boys how wisdom and beauty +and truth can be inculcated in their lives, without pain and strain to +them, and with great profit to the teacher. The young mind is quick to +change. It has not grown its pharisaical ivory.... + +The sanction of a boy must be won on a physical basis. A man must know +what the boy knows and go him one better. The man must understand boy +points of view, but never expect the boy to be puerile. Parents of the +past generations have had the steady effrontery to expect very little +from children. "Why, they are only children!" has done more to make +for vacuousness and drivel than any other visionless point of view, +none of which has been missed. There is a difference in ages, to be +sure. The child's mind has not massed for use the external impacts +of twenty or thirty years of life in the world, but there is also an +Immortal within--a singer, hero, builder, or a teacher possibly, eager +to manifest through the child's fresh mind, fervid to bring the mind of +the child to its subjection, for the expression of its own revelations. +Indeed, the parents themselves are enjoined to become as little +children. In arriving at this wisdom and humility, they may suddenly +find masters in their own children. + +There is also a lad here of seven named Tom. Yesterday I found him +beside me on the sand, down by the water's edge. I began to tell him +about the Inner Light that we all carry. You can talk over a child's +head, if your words are choked with mental complications (which is apt +to be second-rate talk, anyway), but you seldom are out of reach of a +fine child's grasp when you speak of spiritual things. He was sitting +cross-legged, folded hands between his knees--a little six pointed +star--head and shoulders the three upper points, knees with folded +hands between, the three lower. He was bare from the waist up and +thighs down, and brown as the honey of buckwheat.... I told him that +the seventh and perfect point of his star was within; that if he shut +his eyes and kept very still, putting away for the present all his +thoughts about himself, his feelings, his wants and his rights--looking +into himself as one would look ahead for a lamp in the night, listening +deep within, as one would listen for the voice of a loved friend,--I +promised that at last he would see what the three wise men saw--the +Star in the East. He need only follow that Star and be true to its +guidance to come at last to the Cave and the Solar Babe.... After that +I hinted that I would come to _his_ feet and listen. + +Tom felt that it was worth trying for at once--shut his eyes, turning +all thoughts and gaze within. He held the posture long.... I have +marvelled again and again at the quickness with which the child-mind +attains to concentration so essential for all original production. +The little ones have no mad emotional lists to sort out and subdue; +their wants are simple "yes" and "no" in so many cases. Indeed, they +are spared the struggle of becoming as little children.... Tom held +the posture, until I was actually tense from the strain of waiting and +keeping my thoughts from calling his. + +It was a picture--sun-whitened hair, long yellow lashes, brown body +with a bit of babe's softness left to it, and glorious sunlight. He +opened his eyes at last saying that he had the door, where the light +was, almost opened, when a fly bit him. + +I thought of the perfection of the instance of the mind's +waywardness--the coming of the Master spoiled by a fly bite.... Tom +will search for his Star every day. It is strange that he is closer +to the hill-pastures around Bethlehem, under seven, than for years +afterward. + +To learn concentration in mid-life after the world "has been put +through a man," is an ordeal at best; and yet we are by no means +masters of ourselves, nor capable of significant achievement until the +brain can be stilled at will of its petty affairs (the first aim of +concentration) and becomes the glad servant of the "giant" within. + +A little later I saw Tom on the back of a huge black walk-trot +saddle-horse of show quality--passing up the Lane at a fast clip, his +feet half way to the stirrups, holding on to the saddle with one hand, +the bridle-rein in the other. A year or two ago I should have been +afraid to permit that, but we manage now to relieve the young ones of +a large part of our fears for their welfare. Children have enough to +overcome from their parents. Frequently the New Age young people have +to master their heredity before they begin upon themselves. + +Life is a big horse to ride, so often a black horse. It is well to +start children free and unafraid. We do not let them dwell in thought +of pain. We do not permit tears. We inform them early that to be sick +is a confession of uncleanness, that lying is for the use of cowards +only, and that to be cruel marks the idiot. + +We are occasionally serious over repeated failures, but we laugh over +things done well. Tennis has unfolded marvellous possibilities in the +training of will force. Children are shown that there is a mystic +quality to all the perfect games--that the great billiardists and +tennis and baseball players perform feats in higher space, whether they +know it or not. There is the essential ideal first in the making of the +athlete as in the making of the poet. The great moments of play require +faculties swifter and more unerring than the human eye or hand or mind. +Ask the master of any game if he had time to think in pulling off the +stroke that won. It is inspiration that he uses quite the same as the +poet in his high moments. + +Education is the preparation of the mind to receive and answer to +inspiration from a plane above. The more you develop merely the brain +of a child, the more he is detached from the great principles of being, +the more also is he closed to the real, and subjected to the danger of +actual lesion and sickness. The more you develop the spirit of a child, +or rather give the significant One within an opportunity to come forth +and _be_ the child, the more you make for beauty, health, goodness and +glory of bodily life.... A lucky day when you start really to associate +with your children, luckier still when you undertake the work of +teaching them incidental to your own work. Then and there, you begin to +realise that children are close to a source of things that you cannot +touch. Presently you realise that they are teaching you.... + +Day after day I have studied and practised the development of the +child from within outward. I have seen the capacity to synthesise and +assimilate mere mental matters developed in a year, by training the +mind from the centre of origins outward, that mental training alone +could never accomplish. The mind itself becomes vigorous and avid and +capacious and majestically swift. It is trained to express its true +self. That is power--that is king-play. This sentence covers the whole +matter: + +_The perfect way to develop the mind of the child is to teach him to +sit and listen at the feet of his own master, the Soul._ + +The right to live and to bring the laughter of power to the days must +be won afresh each morning. No two days alike. We make ourselves +impossible to children of the New Age by trying to confine them in the +laws and rules of yesterday. The young people whom I serve live in +a different intensity. Their interest flags if I repeat, if I fall +into familiar rhythms. Continually they spur me on. I think, after +all, great teaching is the capacity to feel what the younger minds are +thinking. If we are too coarse to catch the first warning of their +resistance, they slip farther and farther from our grasp. + +It would not seem possible to hold American young people with spiritual +affairs; yet this is done daily. We call the Unseen--the great gamble. +I have shown how all else betrays--how all matter is a mockery at the +last--that even love and friendship fail for those who are called to +weep and worship wholly at the tomb of the body.... The truth is out: +The beginnings of real teaching is in making the Unseen interesting and +dramatic. + +We dwell upon the mystic white lines which connect all things--the +sources of daring and beauty and creativeness. I ask my young people +where they were--when they did any rare and improved bit of work, when +they felt like great comrades, met some magnanimous impulse, arose to +superb instants of play, or when in Chapel the big animation touched +us all and set us free. They always answer that they were _out of +themselves_. + +That's a secret of the new teaching again--to lift the students out +of themselves. Men take to drink or drugs for this same reason: men +and women set out on the great adventures, pleasures and quests for +this. We hunger and toil for this freedom; we suffer and adore--to get +out of ourselves. Mental teachings tie us in more firmly. The teaching +here--and no two days alike--is to startle and encourage the young +minds to arise and live and breathe in that lovelier and more spacious +dimension which at least borders upon the Unseen. The doors open and +shut so softly. One does not know he has been out--until he is back +with strange light in his eyes and in his hands a gift from the gods. + +The essential spirituality of the new teaching must not be confused +with religious affairs as they are known and exploited in the world. +You cannot teach the New Age religion of the world's kind. It has +its own. No dry as dust sage will do. A snort will answer your +sanctimoniousness; flexible science will reply to the abysses of your +logic.... You must be the consummate artist if never before in your +life, to teach the beauty of the soul to youth. The young workers of +the new social order will never bring forth their great harvests from +your _reflected_ light. You must be spontaneous--you must flood them +with pure solar gold; you must show them by your life and your work, +how you come and go into the Unseen. + +There is no rest.... One commands his disciples to go forth at last. +The teacher strides forward faster when they cling. He tells them +one day they must race the gamut to follow him; and the next day he +puts another in his place and begs to be allowed a cushion in the +midst of the children.... We hold them by setting them free--the first +law of love. All unions of the future--in trade and friendship and +matrimony--will be founded upon the principle of freedom; and this is +the essence of the new teaching--to liberate the children into their +larger and God-quickened selves. + +No rest and no two days alike. + +A Bob White called me this morning across the uncut hayfields at the +edge of the lake-bluff.... His two smooth and patient notes seemed +to contain the secret of putting off all fret and fear and unrest. +He seemed to ask if I had not done this already--had not yet put all +boyish and merely temporal things away? "Not yet?... Not yet?" he +called the question. + +I answered that I would try again, and I set out straightway to be +honest once more with the world, with the soil and with myself. I would +begin with the clay again to be clean--to rise and think and dwell in +cleanliness, to think no thought, to perform no action second-rate--to +begin with the Laugh again--the warm laugh of conquest that always +opens some inner door to fresh powers--to arise afresh in the glory +and gamble of the Unseen.... I returned and saw the young ones one by +one--from Tom and John up to the men and women--doing their work. I set +about mine with a laugh and called the day good. The teacher knows best +who is taught. + + + + +3 + +CONQUEST OF FEARS + + +An interesting boy of ten and I have been much together in the open +weather. We have learned many things, but nothing more important than +what a sham Fear is. I do not mean that we take chances or that it is +wise to risk life or limb. Fine discrimination is back of all training +in the arts of life; still we certainly have found that Fear is a +waster and diminisher of beauty and power--and that it can be mastered. + +About the most fascinating thing that life has shown me is the way in +which fine examples of the younger generation learn the deeper matters +of life--matters of self-mastery which make the very presence of a +lad significant to a stranger, and which formerly were supposed to be +secrets for the sons of kings alone. + +"Do you fear anything?" I ask. "Look deep. Listen deep--do you fear +anything?... It's like the pain that tells you of a weakness or +disease. Fear is an unerring reminder of a task of conquest ahead for +you. That which you fear most is the thing to conquer first." + +There had been much of this talk of Fear before a laughable personal +experience showed me how much I asked. + +I crossed a mesa and came to an abrupt drop-off--two hundred feet +sheer. It astonished me. I hadn't experienced anything like this quiver +of horror for years. All members and muscles bolted at the thought of +advancing closer to the edge. I sat down to think it out. It never had +occurred before that I _wasn't_ my nervous system, and must not let it +get me down. + +The more I thought, the more I perceived that I must do the thing I +dreaded so. In fact, I had told trusting young people that they were +not their bodies, not their emotions, not even their minds--that these +must be made to obey. Here I had a chance to prove if I were less in +action than talk. I forced my fluttering young self to the edge.... +Dizziness--wobbly limbs, fancied shoves from behind, the call of the +huge shadowed space below, a queer sense of parting in mid-air, the +body thumping down, another and liberated self gladly spurning the +ground--all these symptoms of panic followed swiftly. + +I held until calm came, and I then could study this little coil of +forgotten fears--a civilised mess.... The weakness was absurdly easy to +overcome after the will was once aroused. There's no end or limitation +to will force when awakened. The greater the man, the more awe he has +for this subject. There's a glow that follows conquest of any kind; the +mere call of the will to action brings a sense of power in the heart. +There is no way more speedily to dispel pain, anger, passion, fear, or +any of these tentacles of personality--than to summon the power of will +to instant action. The particular matter of this precipice showed me a +trick about calling up the force--priceless to me afterward in bigger +tests, and for opening the way of self-conquest to boys. + +One must decide what one wants to do--then carry it out to the death. +Discrimination, art, all culture and knowledge may be brought to bear +in making the decision--but after that, it must be carried out--just +that. + +Fears belong to the abdomen. You can feel them there. They are quicker +than thought. Perhaps you had a twinge of nerves over some sight or +sound or odour, before your mind could tell you what you were afraid +of.... I have often told the young ones here--listening a bit to my own +voice--that there isn't anything living or dead, phantom, shell, or +living soul, that has got the authority to make the spirit of man quail. + +Courage is spirit. + +Most people don't care to try to deal with it; they let it have its +way.... Do you recall the fears of the dark room as a child--fear +always stealing behind--upstairs alone, the rush to the light, almost +screaming tension?... I heard a patter of steps the other evening and +knew the whole story--a boy of seven. He had been sent upstairs without +a light. I sent him back, told him to stay there until he got himself +in hand--to stay in the dark and think the bogie down. He was well +afterward. + +I have known some under-fire work. A man soon gets himself in hand +to look straight at a white-fringed trench. Fear of sharks furnished +another test. From a child the deep-sea devourers had an exquisite +fascination for me--to be cut in two under brine, white belly, +backward mouth, black-rimmed, hairy pig eyes, the double-rows of +teeth.... Pacific Islanders swim in the same harbour with fourteen-foot +scavengers, careless of whole schools of monsters, yet scurry to their +boats at the sight of one solitary, _different_ fin. I had seen the +so-called, man-eating brutes, "grey nurses," dim grey horrors with dull +black spots. A well-fed imagination also came into play. + +I went swimming in the surf with a splendid Australian chap--a doctor +home from the trenches.... He left me back in the surf lines and +started out to sea. I finished my swim decently in toward North +America, and lay on the strand. From time to time off in the sunset I +saw my friend's head.... I was glad to grab the beach-comber when he +came in. + +"It's all perfectly sane and splendid," I said, "and I'm glad to have +you back for supper with us, and the billows out yonder are doubtless +all that you say, for an afternoon's lie-up, only I venture to +ask--what if a grey nurse should happen in from the lower islands?" + +"You don't think about them," he said. + +That's about all there is to the fear subject. You don't let it get +you. There is nothing worth fearing in or above or under the plane of +manifestation.... So I tried that out in deep water. The old horrors +succumbed like the fear of the precipice, but not so readily, quite. +One can imagine keenly in the dim deep; the touch of sea-weed quickens +all the monsters of the mind.... + +There's nothing fit to be afraid of, unless it is the _self_. When we +get the ape and the tiger, the peacock and the porpoise, the lizard +and the shark and the carcajou of our own natures mastered, there +isn't anything left to do but to tally them off outside, a friendly +finish with them all. No menagerie is complete as man's, and each of us +favours some species from time to time. + +I have thought much about fear. In another place I told how we have +overcome inertia; how we developed senses through the hard administry +of fear and hunger, anger and the rest. Now, however, these must be +overcome.... One of the last physical fears to let go in my case is +that for the hangman's rope. I think Roger Casement really wanted the +axe in preference to the hemp. Steadily facing a repulsion, it surely +vanishes. + +The point of it all is that you can teach self-command to the +children.... I took a girl of fourteen to my precipice--left her there +standing on the very edge. After a few minutes I called. Her face was +calm as if she had gazed from a porch.... + +"Did you feel any fear?" I asked. + +"Only yours for me," she answered. + +It was very true. I had the thing whipped for myself, but it had been +hard to leave her there. + +Finally I took the smaller boys out for a test. They didn't know I was +testing them. Children haven't the fear of height such as we put on. I +recalled a score of episodes of my own boy-days, in which I startled +the elders by Sam Patch imitations. Also I have put the young ones +through some deep water affairs.... + +You may not be able to get it quite--but all fear is illusion. Every +inner beast mastered makes us stronger. These animals within are our +cosmos to rule. We do not know how beautiful they are until we lose +our fear for them. Boys and girls here are learning these things and +putting them in action. + +The kingdom of heaven is also within. Fear, passion, anger, poverty, +and the like--all represent areas of our own kingdom not yet brought +under perfect cultivation.... After the emotional and physical +conquests come the psychic ones--hard matters of mastery pertaining to +the heart and mind--to know, to do, to dare, to keep silent--then the +finding of the hidden treasures of the subconscious, mystic fleets that +sail those dim seas, as yet uncharted for most of us.... After that, +the Soul. At last we must be potent enough to stand eye to eye in the +presence of the King Himself. + +From looking steadily over an escarpment of two or three hundred feet +drop, to gazing at the world from the forward cockpit of an airplane +at two or three thousand feet, isn't such a long step as you would +imagine. The fact is, I was in no way terrified in my first flight, and +fear certainly crawled me full length as I stood that time at the edge +of the mesa. Our young people have the call to test the new dimension +of wings. This zeal corresponds in a unique way with the new education. +Intellect stays upon the ground. Intuition is the lifting of the wings +of the mind. + +I had already begun to make friendly visits to an aerodrome at the edge +of the Pacific when the following letter came from the Abbot,[2] who +is now seventeen and in New York: + +... Perhaps Steve told you that I had a ride in an airplane about three +weeks ago. Man! 'Tis the place for me! Next summer, soon as school +dissipates, I attach my name to the Royal Flying Corps. The psychic +effect of a flight is wonderful--like travelling over a very tall +bridge. The Atlantic coast for many miles lay in profile as a map, the +roads stretched as thin mathematical lines; forests as darker shadows +of the earth; New York as a blotch of smoke and curious patchwork. +For twenty minutes we sailed around and around, just as you've seen a +gull pinion, then we came to earth; waited until it got dark, then up +again.... Lights of the aerodrome lay like jewels upon the earth, but +up, up we went, faster and higher, the roar of the propeller providing +a steady nervous outlet. I could shout my lungs out--I had to relieve +myself of the excess thrill. + +Then what should happen? Red, a tiny rim, like the disc of a golden +dollar, the sun began to lift up from the horizon again. The higher +we went, the higher it lifted, until there it hung, as a golden bulb, +a swollen orange off in the mighty stretches,--pure, golden,--while +below twinkled the town's lights. 'Twas the fullest, richest, most +brimming moment I've ever had. The awe of the cosmos overtakes the +heart and lays down its stupendous laws. The distance between sun and +'plane seemed a golden pathway that ever could absorb your flight. I +was aware only of worshipping God, and that roar of the machine made +one think of the roar of the planets, comets, meteors, all the suns, +roa-oa-ring. What a romance! Finding the sun! + +... No discussion of the fear element whatsoever in the letter.... + + [2] Fred Jasperson. + +The old thrills won't do for the new race. I took a pair of +screen-trained young ones to a circus recently and became absorbed at +their mild boredom. Alcohol is too slow and coarse for the wastrel +tendencies of the modern hour. The sad ones of the new generation +use high potency drugs to forget the drag of time and space. A new +dimension is required in all things. The young men of the new race make +light of our old dreads and are learning winged ways to heaven and to +hell. + + + + +4 + +THE STUFF OF COMRADES + + +I wonder if I can make clearer, by turning a few different facets in +this chapter, what we mean by friends, comrades, the spirit of things, +and love not as an emotion but as a cosmic force. Many days I have +faced a Chapel, as I face this day's work, longing to bring in closer +the dream of the new social order, yet dismayed by the limitations +of words and my own mind, trained so long in the life of the old.... +I would begin to talk, drawing the young minds to mine through an +intimate revelation of the heart, then presently lose the sense of +effort, even the sense of thought--and an hour would pass in the joy of +communal blessedness, because we were one. + +Man is not getting larger, though he is continually holding more. +The human brain, after it reaches a certain age and size, may gain +thereafter a conception of the universe without altering the size of +the hat-band. There is a continual condensation at work within us +mentally and physically. We take the cream of the thing, and throw the +rest away. The wiser and the more inclusive we become, the more we take +just the spirit of a thing, and leave the bulk and weight behind. + +This is true in our every refinement, in the clothes we wear, the food +we eat, the books we read and the friends we gather together. We become +harder and harder to suit, because bulk and weight are common, but the +spiritual extract of anything is slow to appear for us. The wiser the +man, the more fastidious he is, and this does not mean that he is a +crank. The excellence of fastidiousness is not in eccentricity but in +inclusiveness. In the spirit of the thing, he sees all. From the spirit +of the thing, he expresses in his own way any part. He can array whole +hierarchies of facts from the spirit of the whole, but mainly he leaves +the facts in reference-libraries, where they belong and are quickly +available, and stores away in his working faculties just a drop of the +_oil_ of a subject or a breath from its essence. + +There are those who believe that the soul of man is made up of essences +of experiences of thousands of lives--yet the refinement of the soul +is so spiritualised that the best surgeon cannot find the little +organ. He knows the brain, which is made up of the stored experiences +of but one life, but because the soul is so small or so diffused, +the surgeon is very apt to say that there is no such organ. And yet, +we all know there is knowledge and power behind us, which drives us, +in our greater moments, to utterances and action entirely without the +scope of the brain. We may call this the soul, or the nth power, or the +fourth dimension--the name doesn't matter.... Listen, if I write well +to-day--I mean well for me--if I rise to the opportunity at all, it +will be because I am writing things which my brain doesn't know. + +I yearn to make this still clearer.... The rose, which is the highest +evolved of flowers, includes all the evolution of plant-life of its +line beneath; the same with gold among the minerals. The fact that each +is the highest necessitates that. In the same way, man includes Nature +and the lower creatures, in that he is the highest. This is easily +proven to you when you recall that a child in the womb passes through +all states of creature evolution. That period is, in a wonderful way, a +review of the evolution of the world. + +The mere fact that the higher one climbs, the farther one can see, +proves it again. This is a law. The scent of a rose is the sublimate +of all plant odours; and the spirit of man is the refinement of all +knowledge and experience beneath. + +The higher man ascends, the more inclusive. To heal another, the +physician must be able to include the other. Evolution is continual +refinement--the drawing unto ourselves of the spirit of bulks of +matter. I stood upon a bluff overlooking the ocean recently, and a +breath of the south wind awakened in my mind the story of one whole +summer; others have listened to forest trees or the humming roar of +a distant city, or the rush of a great river, and found in them the +aggregate of all Nature's sounds in one tone. This is the magic of the +spirit of things. + +In all philosophy, there is no difference of opinion as to one fact, +that man is unfolding a microcosm within himself, including in his +consciousness more and more the Idea of the Universe. The cosmic +consciousness, which a few have attained, is the actual perception of +the externals of the Plan. + +The cream of anything includes all the parts. The cosmic mind must +include the essence of all arts and experiences and facts. Just as the +rose and the man and the grain of dust are potential with all beneath, +the highest man, the cosmic intelligence, is potentially the cosmos in +containing the Idea of it. + +This idea may be contained in and expressed outwardly by some great +single, all-including, all-mastering emotion--such as love. And now we +are in a region where there can be no difference of opinion; at least +I have never heard disputed what is the greatest thing in the world. + +There are all kinds of love. The simple man loves simply--himself, +his woman, his children and his animals. The love of the cosmic +consciousness breaks forth in a deluge upon the race, because it +comprehends and includes all beneath. This great outpouring is formed +of earth, air, water, fire, sunlight and all winds, all facts, all +experiences, all arts, light of the moon and stars and all glowing +things under the sun, all sounds and scents and pictures, all ardours, +and sympathies and tolerances. Its outpouring is action, and is of +itself creative. This is the _OM_. Such a love leavens and impregnates +all things, because it understands and includes all things. It unifies +all separateness; it enfolds all intelligence with intuition; it unites +all parts. + +This brings us to that ancient and unassailable premise of all +religions--that God includes every part of the universe in being the +spirit of it; that His idea of creativeness is expressed in one great +single, all-mastering and including emotion,--which is love. We hear +the little children saying it, "God is love." + + * * * * * + +... We awaken the Ideal in ourselves first by imitating the virtues of +others. In the earlier days when to me courage meant physical action, +men passed in different fields, leaving an imperishable remembrance. +I have often seen the expressions of those I loved and idealised as a +boy, live again in the faces of my own children. John T. McCutcheon in +Luzon, filling a reel of films, under a volley of fire at Binan, on his +knees, working the camera with a whole brigade sprawled behind--gave +me one of the finest early building blocks for the courage among men. +He also gave me an ideal of cleanliness: One evening, after a vicious +day's march, and we were all ravenous, John T. left camp to find a +river. There he bathed with government bouquet,--made himself right +with himself, even to shaving, before meat and drink. His constraint +looked like mastery to me then. Grant Wallace was a big star of that +service--ideal in performance of friendship.... Young men at hand now +are different. Not one of them lack in grip and grit. They reveal the +new thing in courage, the courage that begins where the courage of +the soldier ends. These have gone far into the mystery of their own +kingdoms--rapidly becoming kings of themselves. + +The world doesn't understand them. The Abbot[3] is a sensation in +literary matters at Columbia, but unplaced. The Dakotan[3] was said +to be unfit for a soldier because he was twenty pounds under weight +for his height. He can leap five feet six, run or hike indefinitely, +exhaust a cement-mixer, say "stick" in all tongues and "quit" in none. +He has the will and wisdom to make himself a new man over night--and +yet his Government wants him served up just so, in pounds. There isn't +any one loves America more than the Dakotan, whom we now call Steve. +Even the young military surgeons will know before long that endurance +is a matter of spiritual culture, that courage is spirit--that a man +is well because of cleanliness of body and thought and organised +will; that he doesn't fail in a pinch because he is evolved; that all +the higher forms of life call for speed rather than strength, the +levitating force of spirit rather than the gravitating force of flesh, +for brain rather than brute.... Comrade stuff is the stuff of souls.... +I've studied them long and devotedly. I build my days upon the things +these boys show me. Less and less are we different from those who call +to our hearts. + + [3] These appear in _Child and Country_. + +These young men do not think themselves out; they are not troubled by +misses or personal discrepancies. They simply are themselves. I have +perceived that men of dreams and genius and action are in the larger +sense free from themselves. The main part of their day's performance +is a lifting out of the tangle of emotion and desire, into a large, +unrestricted area full of calm daylight, where events and movements +are seen in their relation to one another, not in separateness and +one at a time, an area also where inspiration is momentarily expected +to strike. They do not analyse themselves. They do not hear their own +voices. They are not dismayed if they falter or drop from the key. The +things that most men do with care, and that occupy so much of the days +these young men perform automatically. + +My own path was upward through an intense self-consciousness--the +American, not the oriental way. I lived with myself all the route. I +observed outward conditions and events, domestic, civic and cosmic; but +at the same time observed their effects upon myself. I did not know +until I was adult that there is a big receptivity of consciousness +above this--where intuitions play and weave causes and effects +together--where the mind is more like a child's than a man's, or more +like a giant's, perhaps--where the big faith comes, and the warm laugh +comes, and man surpasses himself, but does not know until afterward, if +at all. + +Warmth flooded into me as I touched this larger consciousness. It +became clear as daylight--that a man is at his best only when out of +himself. I saw much of my misery and depression was the result of +self-analysis. I was a better man when I let myself go utterly. And +this was exactly the thing that happened in moments of danger, moments +of romance and friendship, moments of the self hurling itself outward. +Capacity for these moments makes the Comrade, and indicates that love +which is not a sentiment, but a cosmic force. + +Again, you cannot describe a spiritual thing with these little tools +and materials in black and white--just intimations.... If we are +sweet enough inside, something of the song will come to us.... Two +words suggest it best. The first is _Comrade_, which has become a +silliness in a military sense, yet has a high and holy meaning to +all reconstructionists.... I remember when the word first came to me +with a thrill, as a young lad going off to Cuban wars. It was burned +out of me a few days afterward in a Sibley tent full of regular army +soldiers.... I remember the scorn with which I used the word all the +years--or avoided using it--until slowly, smilingly, its new dimension +opened, hard as a diamond, and as clear--its meaning in work and world +and women, its new meaning to Russia and India and China and America. + +It seems to say _Equality_. It's a kind of deep drink of spirit +together, a word spoken at the last moment between men--an +inner-shrine word, spoken with a smile, and a glimpse into the eternal +indestructibility of the human heart. It expresses the love of the +world, not as it is felt in the brain, but in the breast of the soul. +The New Race has already washed it clean. It goes with a Cause fit to +die for. It belongs to men and women who can look at each other with a +kind of prayer in their eyes and face death alone and laugh at it. + +There's a fury, too, in the word--fury against the world, against +things as they are. It stands against the world-darkness now, and for +the day that is to be. It means love for the poor, a love for the +peasants, a passion to serve and be tender to them, not to drive them +into the pits of death--a readiness to die for them without _cant_, a +readiness also to dare to live for them. + +_Comrade_--there's vision in it to strip off the masks of decadent +nations, to open wide the sepulchres where the priests are still +plotting to crucify the King; its strong magic will uncover the +monotonous crimes of commerce.... It signifies the spirit of the young +men and women who have already begun with gladness and fire to clear +the débris for the building of the New Age. + +They will begin with the soil; they will know and love their own hard +part. They will begin with the grass, with the rice, with the millet +and the wheat, the clean things, the simple and holy things that the +peasants love, with the songs that the peasants sing, the songs of the +soil and the rivers and snows--to build upon them the new heaven and +the new earth.... Above all, there's a laugh in the word--the laugh of +youth and power. + +The other word is _Democracy_. + + * * * * * + + + + +5 + +JOHN'S THINGS + + +Here are some of John's things, mainly letters to the Old Man. +California called hard for the recent winter, and I went out a few +weeks ahead of the Stonestudy outfit. John intended to follow within +three weeks, but overturned a kettle of boiling water in his lap, and +was unable to leave his quarters for three times that period. We all +learned better the hard lesson--to wait. The quoted word "Play" in his +first letter refers to a little slip of paper which I had pasted upon +my typewriter. There has been a big tendency in recent months, in my +case, to let down all tension in relation to literary production--the +idea being that when one has learned all the laws he is capable of, the +time is at hand when it is well to forget them. I have written several +times throughout this book of an ideal emergence of Workman into +Player. We learn many laws, to learn at last that there are none. We +come up through many slaveries to freedom.... I have not corrected all +the spelling in John's documents. The point most interesting is how the +real voice breaks through the mind of a child of nine from time to time. + + DEAR YOUNERVERS[4] PAL: + + We got your letter but it was not like you for it was not + type-written. Your old machine here is going grand. I am using it + now. It seems that I am with you all the time. _Comrad_ has meant a + lot the last four days to me. Comrad is everything in the New Race. + Masters will be comrads with every one. + + That "Play" has it all, on your machine. "Play" is in all + somewhere. It is all like a big page and everything is woven on it. + There is a time when Comrads hafto go apart for a little while, but + not long. Their thoughts never go apart. They are always pulling + together, always weaving in thoughts and things that are the same. + It is wounderful--a parting. No sadness over it. It is the best + that could come, or it would not. We are held together. The pull of + the world is nothing to us. + + It is hard to keep high, but we will. Fred[5] and I take a swim + every day. I go a hundred and fifty feet. Then we come up and rub + each other. + + True Comrads have it all. Love from Comrad to Comrad. + + [4] Universe. + + [5] The Abbot. + + + + PAL: + + I woke up this morning kind of blurred, and got Irving and Steve to + come out and clean up the barn. They came and we worked there all + morning, and then went in for a swim. It was wounderful, the feel I + had when I got some clean clothes on and had the old dog[6] feeling + good. He is meditating over what a wounderful world it is now. The + stall smells sweet as a hay-stack. + + Fred just got here and is working at your desk. + + How was your morning? I never had a better one, and its the weary + old Sabbath, too. + + Send for me soon now. It seems that it was a year since we have + been together. We can not do without each other. Send for me + _Soon_. I hold my hand high to you. + + [6] The saddle horse. + + + DEAR OLD MAGIC FATH: + + I am at Steve's desk in the guest room. It is the first time that + I have touched the keys of a type writer since the night I was + berned. It sure does feel good. + + It has been much more wonderful to hafto have Patience for the + Meeting. It will be twice as great for both. I have needed you so + since I have been in bed. In pane and sicknes there is nothing that + you need so much as your Comrad. + + I felt palms up to everything. It is all good. We love it all. It + all was something for us to get. It puts us higher after something + comes to us like that. + + I have all the pores poring out love to you. We are always together. + + YOUR SIDE KIKER. + + + DEAR OLD PAL: + + Fred and I slept again in the Study. It looked like a storm last + night, but it did not come. Fred is a real Comrad. I got to his + heart last night. I do not know how. The roses have been wounderful + the last few days. + + How is wounderful Mary? We are all sending Thoughts to you. We have + had wounderful full days lately, all heat. The town is howling + for rain now; they are never satisfied. We are always ready for + anything. It is the best. Our wounderful old mailtrain just crossed + the magic lane. I love trains more and more. They have a pull to my + heart. We love everything. + + I do not feel on erth. I feel in space. Out of the draw of the + erth--_Free_. + + Love always in my heart for you. I hold hard for the time that + Comrads pull together again for the road, us two. Jane is at my + hump all the time--so I will quit. + + + DEAR OLD COMRAD: + + We are close this morning. I can feel your warm wounderful hand in + mine this morning. We are one. There is the holy breath--such a + great pull of thoughts and work to California. It seems as if all + the Comrads were calling me there. Then I hafto think of the one + thing--_Patience_. When you have mastered Patience, you are free. + All well here. My sores are getting better fast. I have wanted to + work lots lately, since I was in bed, but I could not. I lost so + many ideas in bed. Beds are a curse. I love you, Comrad. We need to + be together. + + YOUR OLD PAL. + + + SUNLIGHT PAL: + + A wounderful sun. A little late in getting up. The sun was out + full--a wounderful breakfast and a wounderful bowl of roses. + + Every morning gets greater. The coming together again gets closer. + Separation is a great thing! You find that when it comes. It will + be so big and wounderful to come together on the shores of the sea. + The trains on the Pere Marquette line have a draw to my heart; the + whistle is so wounderful.... To have a bath in the salt water and + not in old Lake Erie.... It was another wounderful night with + Fred. He has done so much for me this time that we have been away + from each other. + + He is so wounderful if you can get to him. I think I have got right + to him to the heart. I am awful lonesome for you and the sea. + + I walked to the train track with Fred this morning. It was like the + day you were going away. I felt it was nearing the last walk up the + old Lane. Fred has the same feel. It swept over us--a free feel; it + was almost too much. + + How is your Sisity-list coming? Mine is great. It is hard to get + along without you here. Old Abe was drafted, and we don't know when + we will see him. The sea and sunlight sweeping in the open door of + your work room! We will sure have some grand times. We will get + horses and have some more of them Moonlight rides. It will be great + to hit the old _Tie path_ Itself--with the[7] Welcome Mulligan + and the[8] Onerbel Chas. Lipton under our arms. The smell of the + burning bark and a caben in the Rockies! Oh, the open road. Life is + Life on the old Road. + + That canyon must be a wounder, and the sea and the misty mountains + and the brown hills. You have it all. Oh man, that is the country + for everything. + + I keep high for our meeting, Comrad of the Road. + + [7] Frying Pan. + + [8] Teapot. + + +PROSE SETTINGS + + +I + +THE RED SUNSET. + +The red sunset Died away like the close of a forest fire. + +The Dusk ran through the mountains like a scarf of blue. + +The Moon and old Jupiter took the Open Road together. + +The others came out of the everlasting Blue Deeps. + + +II + +THE DESERT NIGHT. + +The man at the camel corral was fixing the camels for the desert. Other +men were waiting at the front of the Temple. Another came forward with +four camels, a pack-beast and two riders. Then all were off over the +Sun Betin Sand. + +Nothing but Sand and Harizen. Only the Arab who was ahead on the Old +Camel knew the way. + +They went on and on over the Everlasting Sand, the Sun Betin Sand. + + +III + +PINES. + +The great wood is the Pines. The very whiff of them gives you the +breath of Nature, the great Mother of the planet, the mother of Love. +Her breath is the breath of life and love, and the Mouziek of the world. + + +TREAS (_California_) + +Treas are grate. They are so wild and wounderful. There is so many +kinds here. The trea I love best of them all, is the U.K. Liptes. It is +fragran; it has the sun and the erth all flowers and the swaying beauty +of its great youth. I loved it from the first. It is beauty that stays. + +I went up to a grove the other day and along a little lone path--the +mist and odor of them lingering in deep shadows. My feet broke the deep +silences and a Voice came and spoke soft to me: "If you listen long +enough you can hear----" I think it was my Master speaking, for a glow +came around me, after He had spoke. + + +THE SONG OF THE SPERIT + +Life is not any good until you forget your boddy; then you get all the +power of living, but you can't do anything that you feel like doing. + + +LETHER: + +All lether has a mystery in it. It is the animal's mystery. The misteks +of the other world know it, and try to tell us. I have been told but +my mind has not received it. I will hafto wait until it does. I think +I will know it all in a fue years. I will tell the rest of the world, +if I hear it first. I would like to be the first to hear it. + + +STONES: + +The whole erth was of stone. + +God thought that he would make it something good. He sent the Old +Mother Nature down and she spent years and years, but she did not know +what to put on it. She went up to God and He took her to a room, and +showed her the things that He had to put on the Erth. + +They were sperits, so she got them one at a time and brought them down. + +In the mean time she was making other things. They were seeds and she +planted these and they came up. It was wheat and barley and other +things like that. The sperits became people and took them for food, and +the old Mother is still putting things and bringing her sperits on the +Erth. This world is just about filled. + + +THE SPERIT + +At night the Sperit goes to see God. It gets fresh to make the boddy +fresh every morning. This is what keeps you clean. If you were all +clean, you would not die. You go thru a hard life and what is not +clean is burned off, and then you are pure to go to heaven. You rest +then until you are ready to come and be a saint. + + +ALONE + +The sun beat hard upon the rocks. + +I was alone in the Power of the rocks. Nothing was moving. + +I was Alone. My Sperit was alone. + +It was the loneliest place in the world. + +No animal of any kind, not a bird or a snake--alone. + +Nature did not even have cells of thought. + +The power of the rocks was holden me there. + +A thought came over me that I had never known Home. + +All of a sudden Nature spoke, and I was free from everything. + +I came back to the Father. + + +EQUALS + +There is a greatness in a man that treats his horse like his brother. +A man is a beast when he beats his horse. He is of a lower Brivahen[9] +than the horse. The man who says to his horse that he is his equal, is +a great man, a master of animals. + + [9] Vibration. + + +BEAUTY + +When the New Race comes, there will be beauty--real beauty. Down thru +the ages people have talked of beauty, but they have not seen it +really, yet. It will come with the New Race--beauty in everything--in +the body, in writing, in talk, in love. Not love one, but all. The +younerverse Lovers will not only love each other, but they will love +all. This war is the great clean up of the world. After it is all over, +and the troops come all home together, there will be the great New Race +waiting for them with open arms--then all will be real beauty. + + +THE HOLD UP AND THE GET AWAY + +... It was the first time Denver Bill had come in without a cigarette +in his mouth. They wanted to know why he wasn't smoking, but they +didn't ask. + +He ordered the same drink and took it fast.... He chucked the chair +over, grabbed the tellfon off the table and gave "Hlo." + +He said, "Horse up here in five minutes." + +It was there. + +He was out of town in a minute more. + +Denver Bill stopped at a cabin where he had made ponmets[10] to rob a +train at 7:45, and it was now 6:10. His friend was there. They jumped +on their horses and rode a quarter of a mile. The train whistled around +the curve. + + [10] Appointment. + +There was a shout. Denver called: "Stop that engine!" + +It stopped slow.... Bill murdered the engineer, and then flew thru the +train of cars. He grabbed the fifty pound gold box and jumped thru the +window. A shot rang out. + +Bill was pincked. + +The man that he had come with played dirt on him because he went off +with the gold. Bill crawled across the field and laid in the hay stack. + +He rolled the first cigarette of the day. + + * * * * * + + +LETTER TO THE ABBOT (from California) + + DEAR OLD WIFE: + + How are you coming? I was just up over the hill behind us, getting + two wounderful qwortz of golden honey. How is your type mill + pumping these days? I got a new story in my bean:--Have an old + fisherman that takes those forks and goes after crabs--have him + find a pot of pearls instead of crabs.--Think if it is done right + it would make a wounder. + + When will you be out here? We will lead a pack trane over the + mountains! Oh, that is the old open road! Pack mules, they mean + it to me--a line of mules in the mountains and a couple of saddel + horses! That's the life. + + I hope you have changed your mind about them airaplanes. I do not + like the Idea. But, old man, it is for the best, and nothing is a + mistake. Take it as it comes. Write soon, and make the pages fly + like dust to me. I need all that I can get. + + Last night was our first bit of rain. Slept in an open window where + my face was sprayed all night with the wounderful cold drops of + spring. When I got up, I was feeling better than I ever did before. + I was all relaxed. I lay a long time just in the wounder of the + wounderful free air and rain. I got up and went down and washed + in more of the soft rain, and ate and went outside to come down + to my work shop. I stood in the wind. Everything around me was so + wounderful. All the trees and flowers were brighter. The hills were + a little damp. The birds were playing and drinking in the rain. The + ray of sun was just coming over the hill. I could almost hear the + breathing of the grass and erth. It was like a song, the great song + of spring and breathing of the world. + + That is the way that the new generation will come in after the + world is washed and all countries are _one_. A Boy, young and + clean, will come in, whistling and breathing a Song of the New + Race. + + YOUR COMRAD. + + * * * * * + + +ANOTHER + + WELL, WIFE: + + Here I am pumping a little more of my vocabulary at you. I think + that I will go into the ocean and have a swim. It's dulce on + my wounds. What I want to tell you is about an old sea loafer + here--a big, black dog. He isn't any kind of a dog--nothing but a + world-man-dog, he is. He is a lover of the sea and sand. He goes + down with us every day. He is a pal for the road. He can't follow + the saddel like Jack, but he can shore be a frend. I have lerned + him and he has lerned me. We stick close. + + Well, pal of the sea and saddel, I am getting awful lonesome, but + I am with you all the time. I need your old paw. I shore keep high + for the Spring Coming. We will have a shack back in the hills all + alone, and drink tea and talk. Don't it sound good? I won't forget + it either, not until we have it. We have planned it for many ages, + and we will hafto have it--old pal of the moonlight rides. + + I am close and always your Comrad. + + + + +6 + +VALUES OF LETTER WRITING + + +Stonestudy particularly is a shop for writers. A man is at his best in +writing to the one who pulls the most from him. The thing is to pour +out. The pursuit of happiness is a learning how to radiate. Happiness +itself is radiation--incandescence. + +You say you write to the world. A composite? An abstraction? These +will not draw forth your best and greatest.... You pass a thousand +faces in the town, and are suddenly torn by one? Do you think that +the unmanifested, upon which the thousand faces sleep so far as you +are concerned, is capable of bringing out your wisest or tenderest +expression, as is this one face pressed against the very window of your +habitation? + +As a workman, as an artist, as a player, one must give his best, one +by one, to individuals first, before he arouses the force to set +the table for the world.... It is important for the young writer +to answer exactly certain listening attitudes. I think, in a story +mood, of the shepherd fires--the endless droning tales of Persia and +Palestine--camel bells, bearded men in white hoods, occasional weary +movements of women in the tent openings as the evening passes to dead +of night. The tale-teller is making his listeners see more or less +dimly something _he_ sees--something he has heard and visualised, +better yet, something he has lived. The finer his telling the more +completely he has lived it. The more listeners pull from him, the more +excellent his animation, his art. A speaker, accustomed to give himself +spontaneously to an audience, said: "If I don't give you what you +want--if I am not at my best to-day--remember it's apt not to be _all_ +my fault." + +Soil and seed in all things. + +We prepare ourselves with much misery and massed experience to tell +our story of life. How strange that we should not have reckoned with +the fact that all this preparation is only half.... Really, it is as +important to think to whom one is writing as what to write about. I've +been afield with many young men, soldiers and the like. Their best and +highest moments afield were spent in writing home, or possibly to the +girl they left under the beeches or sycamores. We should write a myriad +or two love letters, before we are ready to write for the world.... By +writing and dreaming and travelling and living toward the one, we learn +how to focalise our forces. Having done that, we are ready to diffuse, +to radiate. Sooner or later the _one_ point will be taken away. + +Don't be distressed; it is only for the time. But the love we have +learned with one must be turned upon the many. It's all a love story. +The whole universe is that. The stillness of the sun in relation to the +planets tells the first story of radiation--love a cosmic force, not +a sentiment--all one big, brave tale.... The real priest is trained +to draw out, to furnish understanding,--inclusion. One can talk well +to one who includes him. As professional essayists and story-tellers, +we are only beginning to learn that we must talk or write to some one +greater than ourselves, to set ourselves free. + +The wonderful power of letters begins and ends just here.... Write your +story or your essay to one who contains you--to one who draws your +best, to one who sets you free. You can ascertain your relation to +another by your mood as you prepare to write. The more you practise the +art, the more sensitive you are, the more you realise that no two moods +of yours are the same, as you write to different people. One draws +humour, one irony, one a tendency to exaggerate, another deeply to be +serious and reformative. This should reveal the whole secret. Choose +your complement for the portrayal of a mood. + +The thing we call our style is merely the evidence of that which +we have chosen to work toward, plus our particular personality. We +should work to that which sets us free. Certainly one cannot be free +in another's form. There are fixed vehicles for expression--novel, +essay, poem, infinite departments of each, but the fact remains that no +workman or artist or player can be utterly himself, who remains in the +forms laid down by those who went before, or in forms prescribed by the +generation he undertakes to express himself through. + +No good workman ever accepts things as they are. To be the workman +unashamed, he must be considerably beyond his generation in culture and +acumen. He therefore finds the beaten paths--which are the easy paths +for the many--the most irksome paths for himself. He grinds long and +hideously against the things that are, and thus becomes formidable, +since grinding makes the edge. The dullest part of the axe is held the +longest against the wheel. + +Bit by bit, as the consciousness of the chosen workman expands under +years and ordeals, he casts off all the shackles, forms and prescribed +nonsense of the trivial and material-minded. He breathes deeper with +each unbinding, until he reaches the fair eminence upon which lies the +priceless secret of all expression: + +_That there is no law for the pure in heart._ + +He reaches this point through many slaveries, and yet a child can +be taught the secret. The child must also be taught, at the same +time however, that the world is wrong and inferior in all its views; +otherwise the child will not have stamina enough to stand against the +opinions of all elders of all times, much less those who sit at the +same breakfast table. Verily, the thing that Rodin and Balzac and +Carpenter and Hugo and Chavannes and Nietzsche and Whitman gave their +prodigious vitalities to learn, before their real work began,--can +be taught to the child, but the child must find his faith in his own +spirit and some true teacher to set him free. + +In the later aspirations beyond professional workmanship for the world, +the Players achieve that master freedom which detaches itself entirely +from causes and effects in materials. They work as do those who are +ambitious, yet refuse to tie themselves in the least way to results. +They work to their Masters, to the Unseen.... All of which is pure and +perfect liberation, but requires one trained in building with spiritual +causes and effects. We seek to furnish this training for a few who are +ready. It is the way to the inmost and the uppermost in all art and +mysticism. We are set free here as expressionists of various kinds by +writing or painting or playing to those we hold dearer than ourselves. +We wouldn't be writing if we could be with them in the flesh--how clear +that is! The fundamental processes of our picture-making are quickened +by our yearning. Here we touch an old and curious law, that you must +have separation for the true romance. + +We learn to mass life into pictures or tones or tales.... All that we +do well shortens the grade for those who receive. If they are quite +ready, they won't have to make the mistakes we did--mistakes painful at +the time, but out of which we make humour now. + +A man brings a gift when he brings forth a good tale. He has done +something with the worn-out tools of incident and experience which +hasn't been done before. To do it well his telling is dependent +upon his audience. His telling will be different for each listening +group. The greater the artist, the less alike will be his methods of +approaching different friends or comrades. Each will bring from him a +different tone, a different look to his eyes, a different grip of hand, +and different order of unfolding his genius.... + +The most perfect bits of writing we have from the group of our greatest +novelists--is either in the form of letters or parts of work inspired +by the influence of a woman's heart--some romantic and one-pointed +outbreathing of their souls to one.... The great creative producers +rarely found steady human companionship in one woman. No flesh was +starry enough to endure their idealisation; the break of their picture +was often the shattering of life itself. Experience forces us all at +last to take our idolatry from that which changes--to continue our +lessons of love toward the Unseen. Lovers of the New Race seem to have +learned the agony of trying to find all in each other, of trying to +find the universe eye to eye. They realise at once that man and woman +are but the two earth points of a triangle; that they safely may rear +their passions and their transfigurations only to the pure point of +union above.... + + * * * * * + +A man has found something when he cries "Eureka!" He loves something, +when he pours out his heart to it. The first great struggle of the real +workman is to find a form that contains him--a form of expression that +will not maim his dream. It is never the form that has held another, +that has sufficed for another artist. A letter is one way to freedom. A +writer's style should set him free. + +The enduring aphorisms and tablets and discourses of the Masters have +been spoken to their beloved few. A man's sealed orders in the world, +his occult transcriptions from above the world, come in the form of +personal messages. Great documents of the future shall be written this +way. We write many personal letters. One of my young comrades has the +idea to gather together names of a score of mill-girls in New York or +somewhere, and write her heart to them--less to try to help them, than +to ease her own heart, to tell her love for them. Radiation--that is +happiness. Mill-girls have been a dream of hers. She is full of force +to pour out. + +Incandescence is happiness. All expression is happiness. Happiness is +creative. To work, to express, that is to radiate. The object is as +important as the thing that aches to go forth. Choose the form that +sets you free. To each his form. + +A tireless woman asked how she might serve. Her lover was lost in +Flanders. We told her to write to the soldiers--to write her heart +out in letters to soldiers--that she would save lives and start great +dreams and bring the gold back to many grey mists--to be Mary the +Mother, the saint, the dream of the film-eyed fighting men--to love +them through the heart of her beloved. That is what focalisation leads +to--to draw forth the great energies from our souls, to set us free, +first to one, then to the world. + +We learn to love the one--in order to give this love to the world. We +learn to love in matter for the moment, in order to become consummate +artists and players in the soul stuff that cannot die. Again and again, +through possessions and personalities--missing, destroyed or moved +away--we learn to take the force of our outpouring from the mutative to +the changeless--making a divine bestowal at last of a clinging human +need--lifting from the idolatry of the flesh, which encloses all pain, +to the love of souls which sets us free. + + + + +7 + +THE NEW DANCING + + +I have found true North Americans. A woman of twenty-seven, a mother +(with a mysterious man somewhere) and a girl-child with the calm and +power of Joan come again.... I needed a change, was tired of my house +and my voice--close to the end of all human interest that morning as I +set out for a walk up the edge of the Lake. On and on walking, until I +came to the little girl on the shore. She was making a frowning man in +clay. She asked me if I were the Crusader, but answered herself while +I was hoping to fit the dimension of that fascinating title. She had +decided that I wasn't. + +_North Americans_--I think of them so again and again--something great +and calm and deep and beautiful, something arrived, at last, from all +the fusion--en rapport with nature, children of the light, living and +abiding constantly in the essences of sunlight--with the humour and +certainty of Mother Earth about their ways--the cleanliness of earth +and the sweetness of golden light in their house and mind.... + +Mind you, I had walked forth as one would wade out to sea in the path +of the moon--actually yearning for a better land than this.... There on +the shore, after hours, was the child--her eyes turned to mine, putting +me into the enchantment of the wise--stilling hate and ennui. We had +words together, the great awe of life stealing over me again after +many days. Her hand stretched forth to take me to her mother (this day +called the Lonely Queen, for they live in an enchanted story-book). +A climb to the top of the bluff and into the most fragrant and godly +lane, a low house in the distance in the shelter of beeches--solitary +and isolate beeches sheltering a human house, built for sunshine long +ago. Many pages would not tell of the lane and the house, the lawn and +the hives.... I want to touch the core of this inimitable pair that +took me in--poor but dining upon the perfect foods, so poor that they +make and dye the lovely things they wear--a kind of holy handiwork +everywhere--perfume of summer in the house and in the heart of it a +deepdelved peace where broods a sort of lustrous dream. + +The child is but seven--that is, her body and brain are but seven. +Her talk with her mother is the talk of a pair of immortals.... Wheat +bread and butter for supper, peaches of the mother's canning--a last +jar, she said, with comb-honey for sweetening and golden cream on +top. It was a repast for the mountain-top where demi-gods stray--all +miracles about us, Apollo just putting his steeds away, Vulcan smoking +sombre and wrathful in the distance. + +Can you see me sitting down to supper in a true handmade house, at the +head of a God-made portal to the lake (the lane is nothing less) in a +grove of white beeches--lingering gold on the vines at the window, the +murmur of hives in the air, and these two mystic presences subduing +their radiance to sit with me?... There's a little can of tea that +is opened the last thing after the table is spread; the brass kettle +begins to sing, and the mother hovers over--a kind of sacred rite, all +this--then the dancing water is poured over the leaves and the room +softly fills with the air of far archipelagoes. Roses of Ireland and +France are in the room. Tearoses--some daughter of poetry must have +named them. + +... Still I am telling you about _things_--not about _them_. I thought +I should write you what they are, yet the longer I sit here, the more +testaments of their adorable lives appear, but their spirits draw +farther apart.... There is never a drone of talk where they are ... +sentences and silences, the myriad voices of evening stealing into the +hushes between.... I must get down to earth again. I must begin with +the grass and the shore and the magic which began when the child turned +up to me from the frowning clay.... + +I should like to report them moment by moment--to make you see, but +there is a fixed purpose in this chapter. Sitting apart from them that +first night, I contemplated the North America of the future--a kind of +dream that nestles within a dream--the Great Companions, superb men and +women, the vastness of leisure, the structural verity of joy, a new +dimension in the human mind, a new colour and redolence in the light +that plays upon the teeming world. Not for years had I been so near to +the dithyrambic.... I went out into the dusk and smoked a machine-made +cigarette--not for worlds would I desecrate that room. I returned +drowsy--opened the casement windows wide to the stars. As I put out the +lights, the sense came to me that the little room was as fragrant and +sweet as a new-woven basket. + +... I awoke to low singing. The room was grey and seemed to lift +with me, and the walls to widen. It was as if I had caught the old +house just waking from a sleep of its own. The phenomenon of the +singing lived in my mind. I don't know the song--a rapid bird-like +improvisation possibly--two voices hushed, but a vibration of clear +liquid joy. I went to the window. The earth was still asleep--a +pearl-grey world of dripping trees in a kind of listening ecstasy--two +beings below on the lawn--a lawn that was grey with dew. It was like +looking down upon a cloud from the Matterhorn. These two beings--one +in a veil of rose, one in a veil of gold--were dancing upon the cloud, +dancing bare-armed and limbed, their voices interpreting some soft +harmony that seemed to come from the break of day upon the sphere. + +It was not for me--yet I could not draw back from the vines. I brought +only thankfulness to it--sharing the joy in the dim of a room, in the +dim of a mere man's heart. Yet all I could contain came to me from +the mother and child. They knelt in the grass, the song more hushed, +bringing up to their faces and shoulders hands that dripped with the +holy distillations of the night--a wash in dew and day, their song a +prayer, their dance a sacred rite.... I should have thought it the gift +of dreams, but there was a starry track of deep green across the lawn, +where their bare feet had broken the sheen of dew. + +... I dwelt with souls--that was the truth. I sat at breakfast with +souls, dew-washed, speaking to each other and to me from that long road +of life which we lose for a squalid by-way when we put on the garments +of the world.... They talked again about what the birds hear in the +morning. They said that what the birds sing is their interpretation +of the great song of daybreak--that the earth does not meet her Lord +Sun in silence.... And then I knew that the song I heard was their +interpretation--think of it--a child of seven eating buttered toast. + +And I knew that power is a song--that the singing of the kettle is the +song of steam, that the inimitable _t'sing_ of an electric burner when +the current first charges through, is the awakening song of steel and +carbon to their native capacity and direction. The same is in the heart +of a boy when he finds his task--the same is in the order of a master +and in the making of his poem.... These two hear it--the song of Mother +Earth as the floods of light pour out and over her from the East. + +Here was a mother who knew how to play. She had launched somehow +into a sphere of her own making--doubtless having found life of the +world insupportable. I had thought much about bringing up children, +about unfolding the child, and here it was being worked out with +brimming joy.... It was all too natural to be called education. It +was nature--it was liberation, rather--a new and higher meaning of +naturalness. + +I was almost afraid to speak. The life here seemed so delicate +and delightful that comments would bruise the fine form of it.... +They played together--that was the point. Play is a liberation of +force--great play is ecstasy. In it one rises to the _stillness_ +of production, wherein one bathes in mystery and potency and all +commonness is cleansed away. Those who reach this stillness are the +great beings of the world. + + * * * * * + +When we finally open ourselves to any subject, we find intimations of +it everywhere. I found presently that all the voices of the New Age +had designated the magic of the dance. It seems almost dull to declare +that I do not refer now to the dance as it is taught and used and +exploited as a social accomplishment, but that in which the personality +is subdued and quiescent, quite as absolutely as it is in all great +moments of production. One must give oneself. Music carries the +sensitive soul into its own mystic region. A rhythm within answers to +the external rhythm--the two meet and mate--the fusion is bewildering +beauty. + +As in all creativeness, the first law is spontaneity. + +The great dancers of the future will _hear_ their own music--possibly +give voice to it as they give their body to the rhythm. There shall be +no exact interpretation of song or sonata--at least, not until absolute +genius interprets the exact figure of each tone-set. This is impossible +in a world of mutation. Accordingly, one who establishes a series of +movements to accompany a certain harmony, misses the meaning of the +divine improvisations which is the essential beauty of the New Age +dances. One should dance as freely as one called upon to speak. And one +will neither speak nor dance greatly by prearrangement or following any +arbitrary form. + +The very tone of the voice is different and deeper when one is caught +in the spirit of spontaneity. The prime object of the new education, +which includes dancing, is to set the soul free. Music is one of the +master-lures to call forth the sleeping giant. + + * * * * * + +One night a stranger[11] came to Stonestudy. She said she was called by +the way we were doing things, and that she hoped she had something to +bring to us.... The next morning at daybreak, down on the shore, I saw +stars and circles of young women and girls folding and bending together +in exquisite tones of colour and song. Her gift was the new dancing. +Over night she had captured the young people, bringing them a new joy +in the world. For two or three months she remained with us and has +since established classes east and west--life given to the message of +beauty. With us her expression and magic has endured. + + [11] Helen Cramp. + +There is no way more swift to merge in the universal, than by the +response to music through movement. Not dancing, which is a response to +time in music more than to rhythm, but the actual blotting out of self, +a spiritual exaltation which many religionists have sought and few +attained. + +The means is very simple; nothing strange or peculiar. It is the +dropping of the human will so that the music may flow through. One +does not move to the music then; one is moved by it. The objective +mind ceases to operate and through the larger consciousness absolute +Beauty streams. The response to the music may be totally different +with several pupils, but where the dancer is really lost to the +objective world, the movement is always true and satisfying to those +who watch. This is easy for those who are close to Nature and God, but +it is fraught with difficulties for those who are over-mental or who +have been terribly repressed. In many ways the will is man's highest +asset and it requires a supreme effort of the will itself to drop the +objective consciousness. + +There is a technique of the dance to be sure, but it is designed only +to free the body so that it may be a purer channel for the music, and +to facilitate the effacement of self. Physical strength, agility, +beauty as mere beauty, are never sought, but only the revelation of +eternal harmony. + +There is rhythm throughout Nature. Man often moves less gracefully +than the higher mammals. He has opposed his will to the law of the +universe, for centuries abusing his ancient right, but through music he +may realise again the harmony of all. The dancer is radiant with the +splendour of the infinite and there comes an ecstasy into the spirit, +of those who witness the transfiguration--the hush that one feels only +before the highest art and purest religion. + +It is reasonable to suppose that those who dance must bring back with +them into every-day living something of the beauty of those exalted +moments when they touch "the white radiance of eternity." Here is +natural education, natural religion--a practical mysticism, the merging +of self in the Infinite with a consequent fitness for daily living. + +So the dancing of the New Age is but a different form of contemplation +and production, by which the Soul becomes the creature--for the period +achieving that blessedness which is above time and space, and dwelling +in that dimension, where goodness, beauty and truth are one. + + * * * * * + +The new dancing is "in the air." Like vers libre and all New Age +realisations and creations, its first essential is freedom. This is the +meaning of the word Democracy--equality, liberation. The very spirit +of all that is new demands freedom. The deeper one penetrates, the +lovelier the folds of this marvellous conception. There is no title for +friend or comrade, for child or lover--comparable to the assumption of +equality. + +Equality--its power sings. It dances. When the last is said and done, +we all want the same thing, if we really knew,--goodness, beauty +and truth, one at the top. There is joy in the fine new conception +appearing now in all the arts--freedom first and last, even to +lawlessness at first, but that will right itself more swiftly than +smugness, which has had its age-long and hideous trial.... To me, the +house in the beeches slowly unfolds it all--the mystery of the cosmic +peasantry of the future--that fastidious poverty, that delicate plenty +which is perfection. These two, mother and child, mean the new dancing +to me, and the New Race beside. I have not dared to go again, because +I build incorrigible dreams, and this one especially is dear.... Yet I +often recall their loveliness together. + +The mother's beauty had turned to loveliness. It had more than the +mystic chiselling of sorrow--it had passion, it had humour.... I feel +the need of telling you from time to time that I am not rhapsodising, +the need of reminding you, how weathered and drab my mind was, when +I went up the shore that day. She made me think of grapes and olives +and laurel-boughs; she seemed the sister to the child. All about the +two were subtle, pervasive, ever-changing tests of the power of the +soul. The country people around did not think her extraordinary, much +less beautiful. How much is revealed in that? Loveliness requires +certain vision, an interpretative spirit, and thus it is protected +from the vulgar gaze. These good country people carry upon their faces +and hands and persons picture-writing of secret sins and dreamless +stolidity, and yet they are scandalised by this woman. You cannot +imagine how sweetly it came to me that she had utterly lost the sense +that she was outcast. + +A lamp burns at her door every evening. I don't suppose it is seen +three times a month--yet the lamp burns.... There's a big wooden Cross +in the room where they sleep--the child led me to it--a mat of grass +before it, _kusa_ grass, who knows?... A great Cross, a much-worshipped +Cross, with spike-holes, the broken edges worn smooth.... The child +whispered to me that _she_ had been brought (when she was too small to +know) and placed on the mat at the foot of the Cross for her mother to +find; also that she came when the white clover bloomed. + + * * * * * + +... It is only this way, bit by bit, that I can make the picture. I +have never before been so disturbed by the sense of inadequacy. The +light about their heads is all diffused like morning upon a cloud. + + * * * * * + + + + +8 + +OLD PICTURES IN RED + + +There was a period between the second and third year of the war, when +it seemed that the guiding, shielding spirits of the planet were slowly +being withdrawn--leaving only the mockery of goods, the chaos of +multiplied things. But at the blackest, in the very hush of desolation, +the new breath stole in upon us, a breath of lilacs on the chill, dank, +wintry air. Many now stand arisen, waiting the flash that changes the +world.... Five men were gathered in Stonestudy one evening; we talked +of our parts, the best we could do in the clean-up. It was hard to look +over the barriers at first; hard for an American to accept the fact +that he dare not say what he thought, nor write what he thought. It was +hard to realise that we were prevented from expressing what we thought, +by the very forces that had drawn us into this deep trouble. We who are +the distant generation of a party of pilgrims and voyagers who came to +America to find a free country, were strange and intolerant at first, +when we felt the yoke of Europe settle upon ancient scar-tissue. + +We discussed. + +A country is superb when one is unconscious of it, we said. One's +country should be like one's health, part of the song of life. Suddenly +to find the freedom of the past unremembered, the freedom of the +future unglimpsed, to hear the loathly low beat of talk from groups +of frock-coated Appetites, with heavy half-dead legs and heads like +pitching-quoits, settling our sacred future on the basis of steel +and coal and margin and murder market; to feel ourselves clutched +and borne forward with stub-nailed fingers in the stench of big +business; black-garbed shopmen pointing the way to the ports, urging +and shouldering other people's children to the ports of the gunboats, +advising the efficacy of "Nearer My God to Thee," as a song for sinking +ships,--we forgot at first in our own pain that this was merely the +body of the Old strained to a cracking point by the resistless growth +of the New. + +Presently we grew kinder.... In a way, the Old was the grim stepmother +in whose house we learned how _not_ to do most things; in whose kitchen +we learned cleanliness, because of the vile example of her organic +sloth; in whose walled garden we learned the peril and the passion of +Quest, because we loathed her long snoring of afternoons; from the +death of whose sects and schism-shops we set forth to find the unity of +life; from the obscenity of whose loves we came into the first great +cleansing hatred of ourselves.... + +No hatred now. Hatred is part of the Old. It has no part to unsteady +the hands of the reconstructionists. This New Race has come up in +strong soil. The Old nourished and fertilised all its vitalities. The +new green beneath the litter of dead leaves cries out under the decay, +"You are stifling me!" but the plan of it all is wiser, for there is +warmth still in the humus of the old to protect the new and the frosts +may not be finished. + +More and more as the sense of big cleansing and chastening came home +to us, the everlasting principles of reason and order and beauty also +appeared out of the chaos and the pain.... They were saying in Europe +that this war was a war without morale. We believed it would be a war +with morale before the destruction was finished. One of the cleanest +dreams we had was that America would bring, with its guns and knives +and instruments of flagellation, something of the almighty spirit of +the human heart to light the blackness where the Pale Horse has passed. +That's all morale is, and war without morale hasn't any cause or effect +on the constructive side, and will continue to destroy itself against +itself as all such forces do in their madness. + +If any one concludes that we were a group of religionists gathered in +Stonestudy that night it will be well to point out that this planet +will be a whole lot more religious before war ends, and no one will be +louder about it than the trade-mind everywhere. + +War brings death, and death enforces the faith of the human heart, +and faith is one of a trinity (as we learned in Sabbath School and +variously since) that inclines the heart of man to God. You take a +loved object from the Seen and place it in the Unseen (thousands each +day the soldiers pass) and faith is born of the agony of separation. +The human heart forces a bridge across the abyss from the Seen to the +Unseen. It's the old story of the bereaved turning to God. Saints are +thus made--thus tenderness and purity come to be. + +Within the next ten years there will be heroisms before our +eyes--heroisms such as seers and saints and sages have dreamed of as +the consummation of the human heart. And those who have lost most and +mourned most will read the eternal joy of the Plan from the Book of +God's Remembrance. + + * * * * * + +When you see the remnant of a race of people crying out that there +is no God--then you begin to know what war means. When a country has +given its tithe of human blood, _or one in five is gone_--then you +begin to know what an Austrian woman meant, when she spoke of the +"horrible grinding of war and the answer of the women to man's cries +of pain afield." ... When peace brings a worship of materials and a +dulness that cannot look beyond existing institutions--the end is war, +and after that a sitting in black upon the ground. + +We didn't know what death meant before this war--but many have learned. +The very word death has the sweetest sound of all uttered names to many +a lonely heart to-day. We didn't know enough about death. We had the +habit of thinking this was all. The end of such thinking is war, and +after that, a sitting in black upon the ground. + +When your heart is cleft in twain and one part stays on this side, and +the other over the dim borderland--there's a straining of eyes into the +Unseen, a picture making out of the creative materials of human spirit. +Life of the soul begins again--out of pain--always out of pain. + +We have not yet learned to accept life from the higher masters, Joy and +Beauty. We still learn through Pain. We forget the meaning of death, +even as we gather our things of death about us, and war comes along to +remind us again. Always those who answer to Master Pain must look to +death to find their relation to God. The faith that comes with peace +at last to the human heart, is energised by a love that crosses the +abyss of life and death.... A grand old teacher, Master Pain. When we +know all his lessons, and take his hand from our shoulder, and touch it +to our lips (for we shall know well his wonderful work when the time +comes for us to part with him), then we shall find that he is not a +black man at all--but a Sunburnt God.... + + * * * * * + +Four at a supper table--a little child, its young mother, and the old +father and mother of a grown son, who has just died for France. The old +man's eyes roved from the child to its mother, back to the old woman, +and lingered there, something rough and deep and wise in his look. The +child suffered vaguely. There was much suffering in the house.... The +young mother asked coldly if they could feel _him_ in the room. Then +just as coldly she asked if there were a God. Then she ran from the +room with a cry like a night animal. The silent child began to weep. +The old man and the old woman stared at each other and wondered what +their daughter-in-law meant about _him_ being in the room. + +A picture of the chastened world. + +The child turned from the strange, sad human beings to the fairies +that played upon the peasant hearth. The child's mother had rushed +forth into the twilight to find a vision or a memory or a breath of +God. The old man and the old woman looked so long at each other in the +darkness--that the soul of the son of their flesh stood for one healing +instant between them. Thus the enduring figures of the Unseen reveal +themselves to those who have suffered to the end. + +The nations are but names to fight for. These battle-lines are for +humanity's soul. If America is fighting for humanity, let it be with +surgical calm and healing in her hands. Hate spoils everything. + + * * * * * + +The babe knows a room; the child knows a house and looks out into a +street; the youth learns the street and then the city; the young man +learns his country, but the man should learn the world. You can never +be the great lover of America by hating the rest of the world; no +human mind can see what is best, what is even good for America, when +the interests of other countries are forgotten. No man's country ever +suffered because he turned his love and service to the feet of humanity. + + * * * * * + +The few who brought the real American impartiality to the European +war in the first months, found themselves in the midst of the most +challenging chaos that ever reared its head to the light. Profound and +tragic impressions followed each other. It became icy clear that the +greater nations, as well as the pawns of the Balkans and the Levant, +were puppets alike, churned together in a great planetary cleansing. +Every partisan path was found to be increasingly crooked the farther +one advanced--and a sheer descent at the last. Any national point of +view used to dupe the people into greater destructive energy, proved +in itself, no matter how sincerely offered, as short-sighted and +ill-founded as the hatred of two soldiers who meet between trenches and +discover, as they gore each other to death, that their only basis for +hostility is a different colour of coat. + +Studying Europe in those dark days, the unprejudiced eye was in danger +of having some truths torn down with the host of illusions. It was +hard to hold fast to the fact that there was anything magic or holy +about nations at war. Indeed, they seemed entities formed of groups of +greedy men who wanted their way--in the main, groups of leaders devoid +of vision and the spirit of fraternity, and careless of the welfare of +the people, quite the same as many great commercial organisations.... +The real enemies of any people are groups of men who want things for +themselves. The real issue of the war has nothing to do with entities +of this kind, nor with alliances of such entities, but with the painful +groping consciousness of the peasant mind--its slow and torturous +awakening to the fact that royalty in its utmost pomp and glow does not +enfold God. + +The people must learn before they can be free. Hitherto they have +been duped by the nations; and the nations are now being duped by each +other; but there is a greater plan at work--using men and nations +alike,--a plan to do away with boundaries and hatred and preying, +to strike the spear from the hand of man and leave it free to help +his neighbour, to establish democracy in the place of imperialism, +and fraternity upon the solid footings of the earth in the place of +separateness and strife.... The new volume of human spirit already +has been opened. We felt it that night in Stonestudy before lights +out,--the first beauty as of a song across still waters. + + * * * * * + +An American correspondent going home from the field in Europe "the +long way around," met an old Persian Master on the road to Damascus. +With the sage was his nearest disciple, also a Persian; in fact, the +young man was so loved that he had been changed from discipleship into +sonship. This young Persian became very devoted to the American. They +stood together for a moment in silence, when the time for parting came. +The old Master drew near and said: + +"It is good to see you place your hands together. To me it is a symbol +of the marriage of the East and West, for the East and West must mate. +Long ago the East went up to God and the West went down to men. The +East has learned Vision and the West has learned Action. These two +must meet and mate again for the glory of God and the splendour of +earth. The East has lifted its soul to the hills and held fast to +its memory of the Father's house. The West has descended into the +folds of the valley, and won from agony and isolation its efficacy in +material things. And now the mystic is looking down and the materialist +is looking up. Soon their hands shall join--like your two hands in +mine--and there shall be great joy in the Father's House." + + * * * * * + + + + +9 + +STEVE + + +Steve and I were camping together for a few weeks on the Southern +California strand. One morning he looked up from the pages of a book in +his hands and remarked: + +"This fellow is one of us." + +The book was _Youth_, by Joseph Conrad. + +"I haven't read a book for a long time," Steve added. "There are three +stories in this. I've read only one--_Heart of Darkness_--in fact, I +haven't finished that.... You have to fall into this Conrad and be +his--to get him. You let your mind open into a cup, and presently after +six or seven pages, you find it brimming. If you fall into him deep +enough, you get almost what he sees--not quite though. No reader ever +does. But you get something intense, fascinating, a restlessness, a +terror. You find that all your somnolence and inertia has caught fire." + +There had been a ten minutes' rain at dawn. The smell of the tropics +moved over the sterile sand. It was cool, but there was no wind. The +day promised heat. We had been up in Canada for the winter, and it was +hard to believe that hot sunlight was free. A broad quilt of gulls and +plover sat together on the shore waiting for the drying light or for +the mist to rise, or the tide to ebb.... + +Steve resumed: + +"He tells about a boy who loved maps--who used to look for hours at the +continents--thrillingly attracted to the darkest places, the patches +still unprotected. There was one heart of darkness with a river winding +through. He doesn't tell you the continent or the river, but there were +elephants there. He should have called the story _Ivory_.... Years +afterward, the man, worn to the bone from the world's lies, sets out to +penetrate this deepest black of the planet. He reaches the river and +follows it for endless days, but the world has arrived. Some nation is +there colonising for Ivory--you don't know which. The story is told +like that--unplaced in time and space. Really it doesn't matter what +particular imperialistic tendency is at work. The fact is, he climbed +the river into the ghastliest chaos.... + +"You get the deep green of the heart of the continent, the mournful +brooding leafiness--the natives herded and distracted, more afraid of +the blast of a river-steamer's whistle than of any kind of violent +death. Death was familiar to them. They were chained to labour, +cast loose to die. Vultures swept the sky waiting for their limbs +to fall still. There was the salty pester of fever in the air--men +foolish with fever and heat--a haze of flies--white men burning out +inside--oxidisation of human souls--a steady and hideous beat of +death--devils of hate and violence and acquisitiveness--clerks making +entries of Ivory--a nation's young men running through the jungles +for Ivory--carloads of bright glass beads and painted calico for +Ivory--all standards of life and career-building set upon Ivory--murder +for that--lives lost, tribes shattered--the leafy heart of a fresh +continent seared with the civil flame of greed--commodities dumped +in river beds--mails that men would die for torn open by vandal +hands--waste, perversity, nothing clean-cut even of crime, the horrible +non-initiative of the middlemen.... All this told with patient +exactitude, but with indescribable intensity; told by a master-hand +that trembles; with the control that one can only know who is sensitive +enough to tremble. You feel a big man bending forward to make you see +something that all but killed him to find out. You feel him scarred +and sick, his heart leaking, because he found it all so hideously and +stupidly rotten. It's a little picture of a trade war--that's the +point--the war of middlemen--middlemen turning to rend each other.... +Heart of darkness--after that the light comes." + +Steve opened and shut his fingers in the sunlight. The warmth was +sweeter every minute. + +"This fellow sees it all," he went on. "He's done a big job for me--for +anybody who gives himself to the book. There's something immortal about +being a workman like that--about any workman. That's why one wants to +cast a weep after the passing hordes of middlemen. They can't do work. +They don't even see the fog of human agony they've painted the world +with. They are _it_. It is the old against the old. It's all about +Ivory. They crucify for fossil." + +Steve was lighting up. + +"This Conrad brought back to me to-day a bigger love for the workman. +The starved and scorned inventor gets the best of it, after all--not +in Ivory--but he builds something in himself. He quickens something in +himself that goes on in freed consciousness when the body falls. No, I +don't insist that anything goes on in any particular way, but the deep +moments of work somehow show a man that the best of him here is but a +nexus between a savage past and a splendid future.... It's wonderful to +be alive to-day. I believe there are secret agencies at work behind all +the governments--that they are one at the top. I don't mean detectives, +not intelligence or espionage bureaus. Potent, mystic, infallible +forces. It doesn't matter. _Some person or some group is holding the +plan of the New Age._ + +"We're learning life as never before--plucking the deeper fruits and +mysteries of pain. But one must go apart from the crowd to see. One +must cease to be a partisan. The real seer sees the whole, not the +part. All the war-lands are in pain. One sees only the part, when one +is in pain. Not one man out of a million sees it all. A few Russians +see it all--a few in China--a few in India. Romain Rolland sees it all. +This fellow, Conrad, sees it all.... It's a pity if America doesn't +soon get the full picture. It's worth seeing----" + +Ocean and sunlight and mountains. The world was a brimming cup. If a +man could take all the beauty there was for him, he could never die.... +We went over to the post-office of the little town. The business men of +the place were coming in. The first mail had just been distributed.... +Grocers, butchers, the hardware man, the real estate men, the man +who ran the newspaper, fishermen, barbers, lawyers--mainly fat and +pleasant--children on the way to school. + +They were short-breathed and short-armed. They dressed in wool and wore +heavy dark hats. I had never noticed before how short-armed the race +of tradespeople are. Labourers and peasants are not so; painters and +musicians have a tendency to be long-armed. I mentioned this to Steve. + +"The middlemen," said he. "They are tightened throughout--ligaments +contracted--contraction taking place in the deeper weaves of +mind, a drying up of the deeper sources of life. Contraction, +self-centering--that's what madness is. A man must sing, or weave, or +build or make bricks. The ways of competitive life are paltry ways. +They hide their ways from one another, and afterward from themselves. +They pluck no fruits; they contrive no short cuts; they do not become +intimate even with the commodities of the earth--the very things +they worship and pare margins from. They eat infamously, filch from +each other.... It's all here--all that Conrad pictured in the heart +of darkness. These are the sick, the maimed, the blind of the earth. +They live in the realm of fear, pain, anger, desire. These are the +war-makers.... Their arms are twisting and shortening in to their +navels----" + +Sunlight streamed in through the open doors of the post-office. Motors +going by drowned the soft rustling from the sea. The hell of the +outer world trickled in through bits of conversation. Everybody had +read the morning paper at the same time. No one thought of telling +anything that his neighbour did not know.... Europe was starving--the +President was ill--railroads in strike, coal famine, prohibitive cost +of staples--France cracking with the dry-rot of exhaustion--England ... +a voice--Germany choking in her own blood. + +The tradespeople of the little town by the sea gathered in their bills +and orders and advertisements and hurried back to their shops. Nothing +astonished any more. There were no words for the world's woe--no ears +for lamentations--no mind but to buy cheap at the right time and sell +dear all the time. We walked back to the shore. + + * * * * * + +"I once saw a little town on a hill-side," Steve said. "A grand +boot-maker was there, and a man who made clocks with such tools as he +had--big noble clocks that ran unvaryingly eight full days. Another +man made furniture--perfect woods from the forest drying in his kilns +and sheds. There was a sweet smell about his shop. There was a weaver +and a potter there. The days were long and singing, full of labour and +peace. No one multiplied by mechanical means. Every artisan had his +apprentices. The age of the apprentices will come back--with a new +dimension added----" + +"Switzerland or dream?" said I. + +Steve smiled. "They are starting communities all along this coast," he +said. "Many are on the quest of the town I saw." + +We sat down upon the sand again. The sun was higher. White clouds +brooded in heaven's own daylight; white wings moved upon the sea, I +was thinking about Steve and all he had said. What Conrad pictured in +the dark continent existed here in one of the cleanest small towns +of America--an earlier stage of the same malignant disease. From the +broad and beautiful vantage points of democracy and fraternity--every +shop here was a lair, the products, exposed and secreted, a spectacle +of moral decay and insensate devouring; every schoolhouse a place of +dismal enchantment where competition was not only taught but enforced. +Steve knew deeply well when he spoke, that the creative artist, the +producer of every real and true and beautiful thing, comes into the +power to express himself, in spite of such education, not because of +them. + +One can laugh at all mediocre men occupying seats of the mighty and +calling their dead gods to witness that they are right--but one +who knows that the intrinsic gift of each child is the one thing +in sunlight to be promoted, turns away a bit dismally from the +spectacle of the standardisation of the child mind--from the wholesale +manufacture of middlemen by school system. + +Steve loves America. I know of no one who loves America more. He +doesn't rise and cheer when the orchestra plays a questionable bit +of verse and tune in a movie-hall where imagination is being put to +death--_but he believes in the vision of the Founders of America_. He +believes in the spaciousness and splendour of the American spirit; that +the dream of a few mystics will triumph at the last, and that the many +will follow the dream of the few. He does not believe that the voice of +the middlemen is the voice of God. + +It's hard to credit, but this young man does not hate one country to +love another. He loves America because the dream of a new heaven and a +new earth has a quicker chance for breaking through into matter here +than elsewhere. He perceives the tissues of the senile and the obscene +breaking down in America, under intense civil and martial and moral +processes. He believes that this breaking down is essential before the +building begins. He believes that the future will be built upon the +thoughts of men who are great enough to stand apart from the dumas, +from the cabinets and the senates, just now. As Steve sees it, all +partisans have to do with the parts, and the parts of the partisans +have to do with the Old, which is destroying itself--sense against +substance, limb against limb, organ against organ. + +The young men of the New Race are born of a mating of the East and +West. They are naturally intolerant of partitions. Steve is one of +these. He isn't a spirit alone. He is a body and brain. He has stayed +awake through the full night and day. He sees the planet in one piece. +He has crossed all the rivers. He knows the young men of America. He +is one of them. He loves America because he knows the rest of the +world. He has friends among the Chinese young men--among the young +men of Russia and India. He says that all three have greater obstacles +to overcome in getting the dream through, than we of America--that +everybody will be singing it after the wreckage is cleared away. + +"America, Russia, India, China--they are lands, not pavements," Steve +declared. + +He was looking across and to the south. The sun was a glory about +us--all the background a tentative, swiftly passing thing, all but +forgotten now, stilled by the rustle of the long, low white lines of +the sea. + +"The New Age will redeem all the broad lands," he said, with a trace of +a smile--"lands for meadows and fields and gardens--meadows for milk, +fields for wheat, gardens for honey--the New Race is particular for the +perfect foods--foods for the giant and the child--broad lands for the +toilers--the great sea coasts for the dreamers.... It's all a matter of +taste," he added. + + * * * * * + + + + +10 + +HEJIRA + + +We found we were a bit tied in the Middle West, caught somewhat whether +we liked it or not, in the meshes of possession. Steve and I had liked +it much out on the Southern California strand.... When one reads in the +earlier book,[12] the stress that we put on building that big stone +house on Lake Erie; this felicitous hejira may disconcert. + + [12] _Child and Country._ + +The fact is, we wearied of possession. We found ourselves yearning +for that beauty which is unconfined. We were athirst for new things, +a different break of seasons and taxes.... The world was so full of +people who could build and buy and own and insure, that we decided we +should be doing the things that the others could not. We were glad to +have built the house for the other fellow. We had to do it. We learned +how to run it well, in and out--but it was a stone house. When a man +builds a stone house with walls eighteen inches thick, he must leave a +hole to get out; also he must be sure that he isn't building on his own +chest.... In true Hive spirit, we renounced at the highest moment of +possession. + +The crowd cannot be seen by one who stands in the crowd. On the same +basis a man cannot see the relation of his house to the road or garden +from the inside of the house. The world must be regarded from outside +to be seen as a whole. The New Race is determined to see it so. This +_outside_ is none other than the mystical viewpoint of all world +artists and builders. + +One does not know what friends are, until one discovers that the secret +of friendship is not in getting but in giving. No one knows what love +is until he reverses all the laws that the many follow now. I do not +mean lawlessness. I mean the higher law that is found at last by the +quester after goodness, beauty and truth. We have to finish with the +world as it is before we set out in quest of a better country.... We +found that we had to become active servants of a finer ideal than +householding at its highest. We determined to do more than to dream +this ideal; we set about to make a better country. At worst, we work +for our children. + +It came to us many times before we moved that we were forever +done with things as they are; that we had come to the end of show +and property-measure and hoarding; to the end of the love of self +which destroys the vision for friendship; to the end of domesticity +which holds one's neighbour as prey or rival; to the end of civic +identification, or relation with any federated commonwealth, which +fancies its existence threatened by the prosperity of other political +bodies. No heat about it. + +We came to the edge of the Lake in vanloads; we went away with bags.... +I turned from the eastern distance on the bluff, on one of the last +days, and looked at the vined study and the big stone house, the elms +so strong and green about it. I remembered the early picture of all +this. It began from Stevenson's _Treasure of Franchard_, many years +ago,--how old Dr. Duprez went out in the morning and tried grapes and +plums with the dew on them, sniffing the perfumes of his own yard, +dwelling in his own orchards. + +I remember one day before building that the man came to us about the +young trees. He had pictures of them in books--blooms and fruits of +such colours that nature would never be guilty of--all the fruits I +heard of as a boy--white grapes that never grow in this country, purple +ones that grow whether you care or not.... + +The trees were coming on now, many with ripening fruit. The grove of +elms was a matter of collateral, as the bank would say. The break-water +had caught up thousands of yards of sand. It worked--the old struggle +of wasting banks forgotten until a greater storm. The honeysuckles that +were planned to climb the bars of the study windows, had to be trimmed +now for any light at all. The wistaria trailed admirably and imposed +upon the front the sense of years. + +... We had planned to have all the fruits; some of the finest were now +in flower. We came with many clothes, underwear and outerwear, wool and +dark things. We left with a few light effects in our hands--to find a +place where white garments might be worn in peace. We came with a great +idea of food--game and fishes, meats, poultry, many cans and vegetables +and desserts. We went away with a taste for graham bread and butter--a +spread of honey, a glass of milk. We came with a fear of disease for +the children, fear of colds, fear of losing something, or having +something taken away, doubtless having the fear of death and accident. +We went away with a clear idea of what death is and the advantage of +it, children and adults alike. + +Young children rode the horse that had a reputation for being +wild-spirited and very much a man's mount. We had seen the deep places +of the Lake fill with sunshine. We came with parasols and awnings and +protections against the sun. Most of us would like to have worn nothing +but a breech-clout had the town permitted; and the only time we had +found the world hard to bear, was the long grey Spring days of rain. + +Sunlight--it is closer to God and happiness and manhood and every +delight than words can suggest. The more you know of it, the more you +need; the more you love it, the more its mysterious excellence unfolds. +I know what sunstroke is, and what the sickness from heat is. It's a +vile state of the body, or vile clothing that stifles the body. When +one is well and has learned to come back to the Father of Lights--there +is no fear in his heart. I used to wear a helmet and dark glasses, but +no more--eyes stronger than ever. I look for the sun in the morning and +stare up from the sand into his face at high noon. There is nothing the +matter with sunlight. The sadness and the sickness is with those who +bring their quilts and cloaks to hide it from their flesh.... + +It's all in synthesis. The end of bulk possession is pain.... We +started in with many flowers. We ended with roses. It's all in the +tea-rose.... By careful selection of thoughts over a little period, we +can come into the joy of flowers in other people's gardens. There are +brave men who allow you to walk in their orchards; and there are many +who work hard to raise fruits for a price. There is much joy, if you +really look at it, in building a house for another fellow. + +We start with the brute materials--beginning with the clay itself. +Our cultivations become more intensive through the years. All life is +so. We take the extract of a thing at last--a shelf of books where +formerly we wanted a roomful--somebody's else little rented bungalow, +where formerly we wanted an estate. We realise, at last, that there is +an essence to be obtained from the extract, an oil from the essence--a +spirit at last from the oil. The whole story is in that--synthesis. +Slowly, at last, we begin to set ourselves free. We descend into +matter; learn its lessons and laws, rise like a plant through the +darkness to the light, integrating force to meet and cope with the new +and lighter element. I held up seven little books in one hand--weighing +no more than a new novel. + +"It's all in these," I said to the Chapel. "One could put these in his +bag and have it all." + +... And then at last, I went down alone and empty-handed to the shore, +meditated on God with sun and sand and flowing airs.... All matter +is scaffolding which falls away. A man thinks he builds a house for +himself, but no sooner has he put on the last tile than death or the +open road calls. He chooses his climate and grows out of it. He thinks +he must possess, that he must hoard against a rainy day, and he gathers +the stuff of death about him. If he cannot rise, death covers him +for the time. Dr. Duprez didn't speak of the care of his orchard, or +his garden. It was all _story_ to me. Dear R.L.S. He didn't dream +of the work of the hand necessary to keep up an orchard, and have a +connoisseur's joy for a few summer days of the year. He didn't tell +of the parasites, the sprinklings, the arsenates and pumps, nor of +the little winged migrators that sit on the hills, waiting for the +potatoes to come up. The call comes to possess nothing. It had better +be answered. + + + + +11 + +THE SPECTATOR + + +Some of us here have swiftly reviewed certain old slaveries, that we +may set free the children of to-day.... They do not have to make the +same mistakes we did. I, at thirty-nine, say to those ten and twenty +and thirty years younger: + +"Start where I leave off. I do not relieve you of pain or error or +shortsightedness, of passion or pleasure, or anything that arouses +or wears down body and soul. Only this I ask you--don't make the +same mistakes I did. Let me give you the answer to a few petty and +pestiferous lures. I can put you right on them. Begin now to learn +your lessons by doing things wrong at first, a holy way to get +somewhere, but be a pioneer in your evils; be daring and fastidious +and full-powered and discriminating in your faults! Above all, be +impersonal in them as soon as possible. Let the winds of the world +breeze through. It's all a Laugh." + +Every process of the world to-day is designed to take away that +adorable love and listening of the child to its own soul. Streets, +schools, trade, neighbours, houses in rows, priests, pastors, +charlatans, all standardise. A thousand teachers in technic for one +in the spirit of things; ten thousand teachers of the health of the +body (and every one wrong) for one who shows the way to the single and +sacred fountain of youth; innumerable voices lifted in fly-dronings +of instruction, how to fill the bin and the brain, the bank and the +bourse--how to have and to hold and to die holding, and to bury oneself +in the midst of--for one who laughs and plays and dares to watch the +world go by.... At last to be the Spectator! + +I tell you now from much living that there is nothing here in the world +that is worth fighting for, but the glad tolerance of events, sheer, +laughing joy in the Plan.... Every time you adjust your life to the +standard of the world, you are doing something that is beneath your +soul, and you will suffer for it, and be forced to retrace. Dress for +the world, and the world will find its flaws in you. Work for the world +according to its specification, and it will defile you. Enter into any +of the competitions of the world and your face and your hands and task +will be constricted by visible and invisible impediments and barriers, +less than the real of you in every detail. Search for health according +to the laws of flesh alone, and it will elude you at every point, +showing you all vanities and pits and pains. Search for beauty of face +and body, and it will be the first thing taken. There is nothing in the +world but to make the human divine--that is the job we are here for. + +To cease to hold is the beginning of invincible attraction; want +nothing and the treasures of the world are yours. You cannot have +health until you are ready to give up life here. Cease to cling, +and that which was a body held apart from you, is suddenly a winged +creature returning.... There is nothing here but the love story, and +the power of that must be spiritual. The madonna of the future will +look up, not down at the head upon her breast. Man must overcome +mammon; Woman must overcome the mammal. The lovers of the future will +look a little time in each other's eyes and much above to a Third who +will come nearer and nearer for their adoration.... The friends of the +future will sing in their Partings; they shall know the spirit and the +breath of _camaraderie_ which knows no death. + + * * * * * + +There is a tendency on the part of our young associates to be +extravagant in their speech. Much that they see is beyond their +capacity decently to express. A group of us was looking down from a +high balustrade. Flowery vines were woven intricately against the face +of the stucco below. We became conscious of an incredible whirring, so +low that it was difficult to hear, and yet so intense as to give the +thought of a distant seismic disorder. It was the invisible wings of a +humming-bird, flashing from cup to cup in the vines below. The child +standing next to me said: + +"The sound has texture." + +It expressed something very real to me; yet there is not power in words +to portray the exact feeling. All the objects of nature have their +spiritual dimensions also for those who dwell much in the Unseen. These +unusual children see the material object merely as an outpost for a +challenging mystery; while, to the material mind, the outpost is all, +and the lavish adjectives and expressions of the former are deplored as +gush or affectation. As a matter of splendid truth, the most marked and +potent of all adjectives and expressions are pitifully inadequate to +express the lustre and radiance which begins at the point where three +dimensions end. + +The Valley Road Girl came into the Study one day, saying that this +chapel book should be called _The Hive_. We all thought it a wonderful +name to work toward, yet the unfolding of possibilities has been +steadily interesting since that day. + +The inner sanctuaries of occult literature commend the students to look +to the bees. The pattern of much that man has still to unfold from his +own soul, for his personal and communal uplift, is already expressed +in the hive. There is a period of larva, and a period of wings to each +cycle. Such matters call to those of spiritual discernment. One feels +on the verge of great revelations for humanity, beyond the thing called +death, as he studies this miniature model of a great democracy. + +The most fascinating love episode I ever read was the Nuptial Flight in +Maeterlinck's _Life of the Bee_. The majesty of winging to the sun, the +falling back of the weaker-winged suitors, the commanding isolation of +sun and sky, fusion under the mighty beat of the wings of the queen, +the broken body of the male, the mother's return to the shadow and the +labour of the generative wheel--magically, it all opened a vista to +the great renunciations, the great passions and aspirations ahead for +the human soul, great fusions of the future, marriages truly made in +heaven, the inevitable trinity of all matings--the drama of love and +death. + +For her one high noon flight in June, the queen toils through years. +She brings back from that superb instant the swarming cities of the +future. On and on, she unfolds her fecundity in the dark, a prodigious +and Herculean labour; from the human standpoint a task of intolerable +pain and monotony. The queen's labour is scarcely more difficult than +the tasks assigned to the hosts of workers, which appear to be denied +any separate episode of emancipation. Yet, equally with the queen, +they share the communal spirit; and no one who has stood among the +hives at the end of a long summer day, and heard the song of bounty and +deep-hearted content, can deny the peace that dwells among the myriad +of skilled artisans, each with his perfectly appointed task. + +Bees appear to remember the light, while working at the opposite side +of the wheel. Men, as yet, are detached, lost in the heresies of self +and strife. Only a few visionaries have peered beyond the petty reach +of the optic nerve, to perceive that this, which we make so much of, is +but the hell-portion; that this appearance of ours in pounds is a mere +dressing up in materials of earth to endure the dark and low vibration +of the wheel's most downward sweep. These few visionaries, always +singing the joy of the other arcs of the cycle, somehow keep the dream +alive,--the dream that appears already to be the essential blessedness +and magic of life in the hive. + +All mysticism seeks to teach us this single point which the bees seem +to have learned so well--to transcend time and space in labour; to put +off the sense of separation and strife, to hearken to the soul's own +song of equality and sufficing days. We must be pushed to the last +reaches of pain before we learn this secret. We have to penetrate the +darkness before we earn this flash which swings wide the portals of joy. + +Joy is the most potent thing in the universe. The bee-queen mother +weaves race after race of progeny out of the incredible dynamics of an +instant's joy. Each cell that she fills with life is a living fragment +of her nuptial feast. Fusion is ecstasy, parturition is pain. The many +become one; that is heaven. The one becomes many again; that is earth +and hell. Integration and diffusion--the same story told in the hives +and ant-hills, in the strolling winds and swinging seas, in the hearts +and marts of men, in matings everywhere. + + * * * * * + +The original idea was to use the title, _The Hive_, in relation to the +happy intensity of Stonestudy days, but our ideal grew to adapt to the +name, because of its revelations in regard to the new social order; the +pure and instant abnegation of the self to the community; the active +acceptance of the precept: _That which is good for the one is good for +the many, and that which is good for the many is good for the one_. + +We cannot lose ourselves long in our own misery when we realise the +glory of yesterday, and the more spacious solar adventure of to-morrow. +We cannot continue to feel our own isolation when we perceive a brother +in the eye of a stranger, when we perceive the sons of God in the +eyes of passing men. At length appears the task ahead--the great +Fatherland, the Planetary Hive. + +I have taken the hint from the new race children, that to transcend +pain we must make joy of it. Given the hint, one realises that the +masters of all ages have told the same story--how to make light of +human shadow, how to make lustrous our own darkness. No matter what +science says to the contrary, the quest for the Absolute means the same +thing; this is the marriage at Cana, the turning of water into wine; +this is the passion of the ancient alchemists, to transmute base metals +into gold; this is healing; this is regeneration. + +To make joy out of pain is still more: it is power for world's work; +it is the light that one carries among men; it is the fire that makes +man remembered by his fellows, that makes man significant in any +task. It is loss of the sense of self; the death of the lower for the +birth of the higher life; the subjugation of three-score-and-ten for +immortality; an _adios_ to the hands that cling, for the stride and +rhythm of the Great Companions on the long road. It is not for the +saint any more than for the soldier, not for the sage any more than +for the politician, not for the poet any more than for the parent. It +is not piety, it is power. One learns it best from the children. One +becomes as a little child in learning it well. + +We are learning rapidly these days. These are the days of humanity's +passion and pilgrimage. The soul of humanity is passing along the dusty +roads of Palestine, for the healing of its own weaknesses, the casting +out of its own demons. One who is not carrying a part of the world +burdens now, as well as his personal pack, seems forgotten of the gods. +It has come to many of us that we dare not take more than a glimpse of +our own allotted happiness--that we may not have more than a touch of +the beloved's hand in these days of parturition everywhere. + +But personally and nationally we shall come to that significant +crossing where nothing else can be taken from us, where death seems the +highest boon, and Master Pain has driven home his most pointed shaft. + +That is the moment of laughter. Driven to the last ditch we turn and +laugh. That is the moment of our expansion for a new kind of heroism. +One builds from that deep hour. + +The ultimate secret is not to identify oneself with that which changes. +When these objects shift or break down, or some one takes them away, we +suffer the old savage rent. The day comes when we disentangle from the +final mesh of possession--cease the idolatry of things; then, and only +then, are we rich--possessing the spirit and essence of all things, +tallying the universe within according to its objective arrangements +with the universe without. + +Finally, to master the world, one must learn actually to enjoy the +mutation of material things, as one of an audience watches the +movements on the stage. No longer torn here and there in the small +fury of detached affairs, one laughs richly at the progress of the +Play. Possessing the spirit of all things within, he realises that +nothing he has can really be taken away. No longer identifying himself +with material objects, he is at last in touch with the perfect and +changeless archetypes. This dispassion, so difficult to reach, at last +extends over all world-forms. One ceases to love bodies; one loves +souls. The son at the front, the daughter taken to a different house, +the empty seat at the table, crash of finance or romance--all but +a passing of symbols--Godspeed and a smile. Bit by bit the valiant +reaches that profound and almost divine indifference to the external, +having bound himself to the real, the enduring, the inner cosmos. + +First passion, then dispassion, then compassion--conquest of pairs of +opposites until night and day are seen as separate sides of the same +globe. So with pain and pleasure and all fluctuations. Day by day, +while learning this great secret, the aspirant is forced to die to +the thing he loves most. Day by day the thing that he hates and fears +most--for that he must live. At last, loves and hates merge together. +One is no longer focalised upon a point, but upon a universe. He +arrives at the great silence in himself, the static momentum. He no +longer moves with the world--the passing show goes by. He transmutes +pain into joy--not lying to the self, but because pain of the body is +joy of the soul--joy of union, joy of birth that comes from pain. + +At last to be the Spectator! To possess the world, to realise the +divinity of others, the ineffable equality of Souls. To have all,--the +mothering winds of the hills and the holy breath of the sea; to move +and laugh and die with all the world. + + + + +12 + +TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL + + +The younger boy with us--Tom, now seven, does not find it easy to +express himself through writing. He draws well, but that is a talent +which I would not recognise so quickly as the expression through words. +I mean to send him away to an artist for a time. Tom's imagination is +fertile and expansive. He dictates well--wonderful play of colours +through his mind. He talked the following to an amanuensis, a year or +more ago as he conned over a handful of coloured stones: + +"There's a wonderful mystery about stones.... One like a mountain that +the fire comes up out of--with white on top ... another like a cap of +honey.... Another: this is like a great big mountain, and this is a +dog full of food, and he's standing on a dragon, one of those devilish +dragons; his tail is curved under him, and a spot on him near his neck. +He looks down and he sees the sky, floating. He wonders if he should +leap down and get some. There's a great big lake under him. He thinks +he has more power than anything in the world--he's looking for more +power. He's wondering where it is. See him thinking. + +... Here's a volcano at night--see the force, and then the rain beating +down behind it--even see fairies dashing by there. Here's a man with +his jaw knocked in. Mystery here--a forest at night. This is like a +coloured man that's been in a prize-fight, and he's gritting his teeth +because he didn't win; he's got a mug-nose too. There's a fried-cake. +Another: Here's 'Agra Falls and fairies dashing, and sparkling stones +at night. That's in Japan--that's true, look at all the lanterns up +there. There's some India--water dashing over a cliff, another like a +smooth cliff, nothing to hurt it, just fairies to fly around it--and a +door-knob, and there's a hole where owls live...." + + * * * * * + +Many interesting things appear in these dictations provided Tom's +helper effaces himself sufficiently to permit the boy to forget +externals. The remaining pages of this chapter is a sketch of Tom's +case written by the Little Girl[13] who furnishes an interesting +surface of understanding for the complications of this lad. +Incidentally her own development is one of the big winnings of +Stonestudy work. The Little Girl is now fourteen and this essay will +show something of her awakening: + + [13] Jane Levington Comfort. + + +TOM + +He is seven, restless as the sea, and just as full of mysteries. Many +times I have felt a strong spirit in the body, a healer, a great lover, +a dear and compassionate comrade. For a time Tom meant India to me. +I could see the blue hills and the wide dusty roads, the cows coming +home through the dusk, and the little Indian mothers bringing food and +their babies to the feet of a withered, white old man in a big Sannysin +robe. Always I seemed one of the mothers, and Tom the master. I used +to sit at his feet when he was very small, and listen carefully to his +wandering, yet deep and wise words. He seemed to unfold many things to +me about myself, and in that way helped me as a teacher would, though +he did not know. + +For a while Tom's quest was in healing--his small hands were always +laid upon our hurts, serious eyes staring upwards. It seemed to awaken +the past in his soul. Gradually his bent turned to other things. When +we went to the country to live, he saw Nature for the first time. Tom +was very much at home with the old Mother. He loved the living things +that most children fear; the bees and beetles, the blind little beings +that live in the earth and the small, red-tongued garter-snakes. He +often spoke of a life he had lived with the snakes--of the big ones +that used to love him and curl around his neck. I never could help +shuddering a little at the thought, but Tom would explain, "They won't +hurt you if you love them. Then they will love you too. Snakes feel +just what you feel--if you're afraid of them, they get mad." + +Again I would think of India--the great cobras that sit before a pure +master, opening their hoods to listen to his chanting. Tom knew what +purity meant, a deep-down purity like the earth itself. Why should +anything hurt him?... He used to hold the bees in his hands and walk +through a cloud of double-winged beetles with utmost carelessness. Many +times he has led me through a cloud of them, murmuring, "They won't +hurt you." Once he disturbed a honeybee in the late afternoon, drunken +and senseless on the fragrant flowers. It stung him. He shook it off +his hand and said in a disgusted voice, "That wasn't my bee!" + +A little later Tom discovered the Unseen of Nature. I mean that it +ceased to be the unseen to him. The fairies opened their mysterious +arms, and we saw little of him for a time, so lost was he in their +wonder. There was a small rock in the front yard that he used to sit +on when he was looking for them. The busy brown gnomes appeared to +him first--often rolling pebbles down the cliff, or gathering leaves +in their little aprons. Then the tree-nymphs would come to him; so +green and fresh and sweet--with bright eyes and coaxing hands. He +would follow laughingly what they said and did, always explaining to +us later what they _meant_. And he saw the spirits of the water, far +out over the lake, mingled with the sunlight. They gave him much, he +said, but he would like to have gone out to them. He said that burning +wood unlocked the fire fairies--let them out into freedom and light. +He loved to build fires on the beach, watching carefully the leaping +and spreading of the flames. The salamanders were responsible for the +spreading, he thought, and used to watch their little red hands at +work. His eyes seemed to melt as they stared so far and deeply into +things--way past the _seen_ into that which is nothingness to most of +us. And he would come back slowly as though it were hard to detach +himself from the enchantment. Always we kept very still at such a time, +for fear we hurry him. + +Out of the magic and mystery of that summer, out of the warm nights +full of stars and peace, and the days of sunlight spent with the +beckoning fairies, Tom's soul unfolded another big quest. The fairies +were only the start of the Unseen, though we thought at the time that +he saw all that a human being could. At last the Master's voice reached +his open ears. He answered immediately. + +It began with old Indian philosophy. He heard certain reading in the +Study one day, and later asked for the book. It was a little book, +written in words of one syllable by a Hindu boy, telling how to reach +the Feet of the Master. The next morning I found him on his knees +before it in the sunlight. At that time Tom was just learning to read. +It was hard for him, but he wanted to be alone with the spirit of it. +He handed me the book saying, "Please read this page aloud to me." + +The young Master was speaking of Discrimination and Onepointedness. +Tom's face filled with the wonder of one who has found the thing he +has been wanting for a very long time--for ages perhaps. He said, "If +you asked me to go and get you a book, and I went, but instead of +bringing the book back to you, I took it to the shore and commenced +to read, forgetting that you wanted it, that would be the opposite of +onepointedness, wouldn't it?" A little later, he said: + +"The Master watches you from the hills, all the way up. He knows all +that you do. When you do small things, you are taking Him away from +yourself; you are not being the _Soul_. Each time you do something +great and brave, the Master comes a step nearer. When you become your +soul, the Master comes all the way down the hill and tells your brain +which way to go--tells you the path, the way home. _Then_ you have +earned it. You have got to earn everything, everything that comes to +you.... I think that the Master comes and takes you away at night, +shows you many things--tries to help you. But pain has to teach the +brain, and pain is the lack of soul. It hurts your soul to have you +suffer. It hurts the Master too, but they both know that you are +learning to be their comrade through your pain." + +Tom paused. In his eyes there was that wonderful melting again, and a +joy so deep and pure that it made my heart sing. + +"It is all meant," he added. "All is meant, but men do not know that +the Master is watching. For ages and ages the Master waits so patiently +for his _friend_ to come." + +"His friend?" I asked. + +"Yes. Souls are always comrades. The Master is greater than you are +only because he has been longer on the path. He started before you did. +He has come up through all that we have. Just think how long my Master +has been waiting for me, and I have not even found Him yet." + +I looked at the little body of him, at the innocence of the eyes and +mouth, all untouched by the world--so pure and yet crying out in pain +because he had taken so long on the quest.... His eighth year brought +Tom into regular boyhood. The young brain, always before silently +giving way to intuition, began to speak for itself. This stage is as +important perhaps, but not so beautiful as when the hushedness and +glowing of the Unseen touches a child. Here we turned from Tom, and the +things that creep into the heart of almost every boy of the same age, +crept into Tom's heart. He forgot the fairies--they ceased to call. He +forgot the wide roads of peace and purity. He seemed to forget that the +Master was still waiting so patiently on the hill for him to open and +receive. But we knew better than that. + +The development of the brain always robs a child of the inner glowing +for a time, but it all comes back again with a great dimension added; +the instrument is then keen and direct--a power in itself. We turned +from Tom--a young brain standing alone, very conscious of itself, +is anything but interesting. At the time we were in the turmoil of +departure, each of us thinking in different ways about the long journey +just ahead, and the wonder of being at last in California. Tom was more +or less his own director those days. + +He fell into crime, looted the house of a friend, denied everything. He +was sent to his quarters to stay until he found himself again. It took +a week exactly, but he found a deep happiness in being alone in the +little room before he left it. It did him as much good as the long days +in the sunlight ever could; he came out pale and wide eyed, and the +breath of a soul was in the room when he entered. + +One day out of his long week, I went to him. The sun had gone down +behind a nest of grey clouds. Dusk had almost deepened into darkness, +but there was no light in his room. He sat there, his eyes staring +ahead of him, his hands folded tightly in his lap. I walked in quietly +and sat down beside him. I was not even noticed; he was lost in his +thought. At last I asked, + +"Tom, what did you find so interesting in that cheap business?" + +"I haven't found out yet," he said grimly. + +"Have you been thinking about it?" + +"Sure have. Been thinking all day." + +"Has nothing come?" + +"No, but it's coming soon. It can't take long if I stay here like this, +wishing and pulling every minute." + +"Of course it can't." + +He continued to stare into the darkness ahead. + +"What does it feel like, Tom?" I asked. + +"Your soul leaves you.... Your soul won't stay if you are going back." + +"Going back?" + +"Yes. I mean if you have been big and listened to its voice, and then +stop. If you are _less_ than yourself after you've been _more_, your +soul won't stay." + +"What do you do when your soul leaves you?" + +"You walk the Black Path." + +He looked a child seraph. + +"That path is not interesting, is it?" + +"No. You have got to know what it is, got to walk up it a little ways, +so that you are not afraid of it any more. When you know a thing, you +are not afraid of it any longer. Before you know, it looks all dark to +you. Nothing can hurt you when you are not afraid.... It's just the +same as with the animals. All the black things that come into you are +animals. If they find nothing but love and whiteness inside, they will +go away and not even look at you again; but if fear and darkness are +there, they get mad and bite." + +Leaning forward with a laugh, he added, "You can't cut across from the +black path to the white. You've got to go all the way back and start +over." + + * * * * * + + + + +13 + +THE ABBOT + + +The Abbot is now seventeen. He is doing well at Columbia. Classes and +routine there are mere externals. The Abbot is living a life far more +real than appears--a life that few men in America have learned how to +live. He has actually arrived at the conviction of the unfathomable +riches that lie within. Many occultists and a few great artists have +a working knowledge of this kind. We hoped the Abbot could remain at +Stonestudy, but his parents wanted some letters after his family name +as well as before. Our young man was enjoined to make the best of it. +As a matter of fact, he is putting on a lot of brain things that work +admirably with the inner activity which we made much of in our work +together. + +In another book,[14] I told of the Abbot's awakening--how we called +him from mysterious regions of silence and mystification, to a more +or less adequate expression of material facts. Here was a boy almost +overshadowed by his own soul at times, inclined to be half out of the +body and not altogether present in the mind, when moving among the +sordid affairs of the world--a lad who knew the arrangement of planets +and the flow of meteoric matter better than the geography of our own +continent; who swung very readily back into memories of other lives, +mainly monastic, rather than into the episodes of his own kid-days. + + [14] _Child and Country._ + +I forget just how it was that we first sensed the giant in this boy. +In any case, we struck one. The ordinary training that I would give an +American youth to breathe the soul of him, was not at all necessary +with the Abbot. Rather, pressure was exerted from the first to make him +come down into our world, to make him be one of us, to make him see +streets and alleys, doorsteps and servant-stairs. They have succeeded +better at Columbia in this regard than we were able to do, but the +wonder and satisfaction of it all is, that the aroused mystic, the +aroused artist, has not receded--but dominates his days and work. I +understand that he is considered a sensation in a literary way. + +He is not different from his fellows. It is part of our ethics to +belong where we happen to be; to do the things that others do, better, +if possible, than the customary performance; to begin after that to be +our inimitable selves. It is our ideal to move about the world, not +to attract attention, to be quiet and calm and efficacious, to be +helpful and humorous and wise, to furnish the swift, unerring word or +hand or lift in the midst of affairs; to deny ourselves to no one; to +hold ourselves superior to no one; to strive laughingly toward the big +workmanship, to become Players after the essential apprenticeship, to +win the Laugh at last, and that perfect consummation which only comes +with utter and instant detachment when the task is accomplished. + + * * * * * + +The Abbot was sprawled in a Study shadow one summer afternoon, when I +suddenly saw him in relation to big sea-tales. Usually we tale-tellers +carry our packs. I saw the Abbot with a sea-chest that day. His was +not the way of the Arabian fires and the Assyrian camel paths--the +word-spinner's usual evolutionary line. He came overseas with his +narratives.... I saw him in the next few years making a circle around +all the capes, touching all the ports of Asiatic and insular water +fronts--a bit of Conrad, a bit of Melville, a bit of Stevenson ... a +most sumptuous sea-chest full of shells, corals, coins and trinkets +from all the Islands; feather of a woman's fan perhaps, here and there, +silks hazy from sea water, crooked knives from Malay Isles, whale-bone +and shark's teeth, pearl of the mollusk, a bit of ambergris--just a top +tray of the Chest! Deep mystic parchments farther within, a corner for +the sacred writings of all the world, a small type mill, a great wad of +white paper, the rest mainly traces of a long glide across the ocean +floors. + +I have learned to go very slow in building a matrix of my own thought +about any young man's mind, yet I told the Abbot that day what I saw +for him--how he was bound to do the big sea-tales, how we were sick of +steam, sick already of the big hydroplanes, sick of all that hurries, +all that explodes, all that has the taint of gas; that the world +presently would be so sick of noise and explosions and show and speed, +that professional soothers would be in great demand, like the Japanese +masseurs who wait upon the sleepless; that the sick world would want +to read of long, loose, lazy days under canvas, of the few ports left +where they haven't set up recruiting offices;--that the world would be +in desperate need of sunlight and surf and wide swinging seas--that he +must be one of those to usher in the old romance of the sailing craft +again. + +I told about his sea-chest better than I have told it here, but the +Abbot's eyes didn't bulge. Presently, however, he began to grow that +way.... His Saturdays and Sabbaths now are spent, not in Morningside +Heights, but down among the shipping and across the harbour, where the +big world tramps hang out. You will see these things in his letters. I +have several of his yarns here, but I am not going to run any of them +in this book. They are good yarns, but too intrinsically big yet for +the handling of a boy of seventeen. He has too much calibre for his +brain so far to carry ten thousand words to superb consummation. I want +to spring a big tale presently. I have a lapful of his random letters +from days spent down on the water front, and nights under the study +lamp: + + DEAR OLD WASP: + + Morning mists over the lake, the _Pelee_ coming up out of them. + Just had a night with John and a corking good run of work. We've + been watching the sun go down from Lynster's[15] back lately, and + breathing the planetary heave under the stars, with the milky + way dipping to the lake before us. This inland place is heavy + to take. The weight of agriculture is like a blanket over all. + It takes three or four pages to bore up through the cuticle. Me + for a get-away to the world soon--to feed up on the hum of feet + and voices and cars.... Blackbirds are beginning to blacken the + mornings and nights again; touch of Fall and Pine-smoke this + morning. Real itchings in the ankles--to you! A wonderful synthesis + for us all when we meet up again.... I'd like to roam the world + with John. He is a grand pal. Could joke over an oven made out of + a tomato-can, as well as eat from a banquet table.... + + [15] The saddle horse. + +A day or two later: + + ... Black forces strong around Stonestudy last night.... About + eight-thirty I rode over on Lynt, to sleep with John. Decided to + have a debauch with tea. While I worked on, he gathered the cups + and tea and electric tea-kettle together and got things going. + He called for me to come and make the tea. He was seated in the + big chair with a tableleaf in front of him, and on that was the + tea-kettle, boiling.... One leg slipped, and the whole boiling + collection went in his lap.... A prince, the way he stood it. The + bunch was just coming back from town. Penel' rushed over, and the + next was a turmoil right, cries, olive oil, lint, rags, confusion + of voices and footsteps--too many people and the little guy sort + o' lost his control--but it all came back again. Almost any minute + I am looking for the laugh from him. All night I was with him. + Penelope, the finished heroine as always. One could see the shades + of pain pass over John's face time and again. His nerves jump--but + his mouth and eyes are certainly getting a grand hue of steel.... + Yours right along. + +Another: + + Hazy summer about. Blue over the lake with shadows deepening in the + distance. Crops drying beneath the sun. Leave it at its height--am + headed back for Columbia--where I'll let time shape the winds for + farther "going." + + School is not harmful to one who _is_ himself. I'll take + philosophy, and then be over to tell you who stole your + washboard.... It is no struggle, no test, for one to be lit among + his own as we are. One's depth of listening is best tested in + crowds. We've got to separate--go out and change the continents + into tablelands of democracy. + + War seems settling on the world for years longer, but there is a + bigger order coming out of the incredible chaos. Each must see God + and worship through his work to shape the master beauty. Every + one's art breaks new roads which lead to one place. + + Stories are coming freer every day--I've gotten across. Don't + know whether it's the best thing for me. But I've done it, and + that's what I wanted to know. It is all preparation. Results are + beginnings. I look back now on the summer of '14. It _was_ heaven. + It _was_ peace. To look at the cottage lights and hear the voices + of rowers through the dusk was a breath from God. It was peace, it + was relaxation, a deep resting of tissue for turmoil. Depth and + mastery to you. + +THIS TO JOHN: + + The thought of your scarred legs has been with me on the borderland + of sleep for many nights, also our hours together on the pine + needles. To-night, with the sun falling sadly over the iron mills, + I walked along the Heights and cast an eye down into brilliant + Harlem. The voices of the bargemen, the wheeze of tugs, the low + growl of outpassing vessels, an occasional curse from a freighted + barge, came up with the hum of the city. There seemed to be + some goddess entwined with sea-weed standing over the ocean of + structures. She held a finger to her lips for silence, and pointed + to the Lord knows where--well, where I felt a tumult to go, to + satisfy some hot quest.... I was lost to the multitude of faces + that sent up a passionate and incomprehensible hum ... savour of + youth singing in the veins. + + Presently a drizzle drove me back to the room.... I reached up and + flicked out the lights.... In an apartment across the street lives + an old man who always comes to his window at dark and gazes up and + down the streets. His head is grey--his eyes are deep and old. The + light from his shaded reading lamp falls in a pool of dim yellow + about his carpet. Sometimes he turns out the lamp, and leaves the + fire-place alone. Sometimes his head falls forward on his chest, + and he dreams--I suppose, of boundless seas, for he was once a + sea-captain. + + His wandering days are over--no more quest. The houses rise to his + eyes like one long, bleak, uncrested wave from the Arctic Sea.... + He means old days, but we--we must never grow old; we must live + and ever be full of creation as the cloud is full of lightning. We + must, old pal, ride the deserts, drift over seas; we must spill our + work as we go, as night spills its stars from a casket. Fill me + up with the Pacific in your letters--the big sunlight--the colour + of the mountains where they dip and rise to clouds. I have a dry + palate for it all. Fill me--eye and ear and soul. + + Yours deep in those scars---- + + * * * * * + + DEAR OLD MAN: + + The Hudson is very still this morning; a few battleships have swung + out with the tide; gulls seem to be forever passing up and down the + river in white eddies; smoke from the factories rises straight and + white. The morning sun strikes like a sledge upon the Palisades. + How grand that old river is, and how untiring in its endless ebb + and flood--almost like a solar system in the serene way it deals + with human traffic. + + A great new sense of words has come over me lately. At the very + birth of language lies a chest of rich obsolete words--quite like a + Spanish treasure chest, with its doubloons, bezoar stones and "pots + of Arica bronze." The artists go treasure hunting in language, and + a few do startle the world with their wealth. The live-long day + seems to me now like a shuttle driving back and forth, weaving from + soul to matter, a golden fabric. + + This word-chest means much to me because it deals with the sea. + Lift up the lid, and tucked away in those little drawers lies the + seaman's religion in bits of turquoise, in coils of fish line + and hooks, in pink sea-shells, perhaps in an old violin, or in a + few stray books of Carlyle, Goethe, Dante and Melville's _Moby + Dick_. The point is we all bungle along through our world-term + somehow; we have our work and religion and pleasures and tales in + a camphor-wood chest with a brass band around it. Sometimes we + bring out the violin and make God-awful discords, calling it music + of the sea; we brighten people's eyes with our bits of turquoise; + terrorise them with the philosophy that Carlyle and Goethe and Moby + Dick have given us; we make them feel that endless _wroom, wroom, + wroom_ of the ocean that is washing in our souls. + + Yes, we must first learn the futility of life before we can live. + The war teaches this lesson well, but won't it be great when + everybody is singing over his golden shuttle and laughing? Won't + it be great when the chastened New Race springs up, like green + shoots at the passing of winter? Won't it be great when the world + has grown serene and wise enough to sit down beside a blazing + bark fire, with the shadows of pine trees about, or near the dim + breakers, and consider it profitable to talk about the stars? + + ... There are times when one feels he must be alone--when he wants + to be connected with nothing--when he wants to go to a distant and + high altitude, and there boil his pot of alchemy--there, where the + air is dust free, and the incense of one's devotion goes straight + up. He must listen and listen, until he believes that he hears the + stars humming in their courses; then the sun drawing like a magnet, + then a crescendo of song up to a deafening roar,--that all things, + all stars, are headed towards one point of balance among that whole + mass of sapphires we see above. + + Man, but the joy of telling tales, of recording the warmth of human + hearts, of loving men and their ways--to fill out a morning with + that golden shuttle! One has but to sit and the sun on the walls + and the shadows in the corners, or if at night, the flame on the + stones of the hearth turn to words!... The old sea is full of that. + The heart within her breast sounds the footfalls of quest; the + ecstasy of life tears in her storm and in still hours she sits in + her glitter.... + + Some day we shall be together on the blessed Pacific coast. We + shall have bookshelves and packages of dates, bottles of cream and + combs of honey. We shall work with that rugged lunge of mountains + in our products; and that endless and insistent _wroom, wroom, + wroom_ of the ocean in all. Listen, here is a day as we shall have + it: + + The sun lifting up the depth of Canyon shall awake us. After + we have cooked and eaten of crisp toast and honey and coffee, + we shall go to our desks and bring out a most rigid problem in + mathematics,[16] and dwell perhaps for an hour in drawing all + forces of thinking into play--awaking the mind--shaking off that + inertia of body. After that we shall penetrate the thing which + we wish to work upon that particular morning. We shall see its + functions and logical action, then begin the shuttle and weave back + and forth with that pliancy that sees the deepest of metaphysics in + an old man lighting a pipe or loitering over a pork-pie. To top the + morning, we'll have a meal of milk and dates. The afternoon shall + mean an isolation with the books--perhaps on the sand with the sun + tanning our backs. Both healthfully and mentally an efflux of soul. + At about five in the afternoon comes the humming calm--the poise + of mind and soul and body. Another meal of the simple foods and + once more, production, as the sun goes into the sea--giving one's + soul the might and expanse that the planets use in weaving their + ways. Perhaps, at ten or eleven we shall reach up, switch out the + electric bulb and open the door. That shall be a day mastered. Side + by side, we'll walk over to the cliff at whose base mumbles the + mighty Pacific. We shall pass no words--the earth'll be good to + feel and smell. We'll honour the still night of stars. + + [16] Help! + + That day is a privilege to earn--our bodies must suffer and become + scarred and jostled by the currents of people, and cursed upon + by foul mouths. All pleasant presently. We must know the heart + of a bartender as we would want to know the heart of the Christ. + Do you know that Masefield was a bartender? The secret of the + real artist is sanity. One must grow hair the medium length--keep + a well muscled and full lunged body--and if chronic fishermen + should happen in on us for a meal we must be able to argue that a + hickory pole is better for a pound-net than pine; or if a devout + pastor--that we would much rather praise God's work outside on the + beach.... + + * * * * * + +TO JANE: + + Your letter this morning after a long, wonderful run of work. This + is really the highest day I've had--real rugged work--bronze moving + pictures before me--faces--open shirts on sunburnt breasts--and, + of course, the eternal sea. Your letter came like a sudden bag + of sunlight emptied into a mist. The water became blue and the + promontories sharp like ink lines. + + And about Steve. I understand all. The draft explains his not + writing. And this war--it's like a maelstrom rising higher and + higher. Next summer for certain, possibly this Christmas, it + means I go. But rather than go as a private I'm going to enlist + voluntarily in the aviation corps. Flying only would have as much + thrill as doing the climax of a story. That's like the sea. And I'm + not panicky or worried about it. I feel in some unconscious way + that the balance of the cosmos demands it. God, nobody should drag + now! It's just like a marshfire that grows and grows to let the new + green shoots come under in spring. It's like a big song. I would + not go to fight Germany, or France or England or America. I'd go + because it's a cleanser. One must play with the song of many feet + and express with the original song. One must flash pictures to the + many eyes of their own being. Oh--it's a song, the whole thing! And + I'm looking forward to it. + + Only the ones such as John and Tom shall escape. Don't you see the + joy, the peace, the grandeur in owning a scar, in being bled white? + The first year of the war, England was black with mourning. Now, + she is white.... The work is on me with talons. + + I am looking only at the impossible heights--of a portrayal of + life--the rugged life in endless volumes. I have made an oath + silently with myself that in three years I shall do a book.... The + work comes now just as if I were to sit down before a fire-place + with shadows and light around stones, and were to grow interested, + with stars low on the horizon like live sparks. + + And friends? A foolish question! I mean that I must be alone in + the formative thrall of work. I _did_ want your letter. But forget + pity. That is a thing that stifles soul. I do not ask, by all the + stars, I do not ask for anything. The highest of all things to you + all. + + And Steve? He has too much of the Song to be trodden or be lost or + be ground in mud. You are all friends--but I must be alone now. The + work is rising.... + + * * * * * + +TO JOHN: + + There ain't no sun beatin' in my doorway, and there ain't none of + your sacred seas and canyons around; but there is a socialist's + riot in the street below--kerosene torches a-going--one shaggy + haired enthusiast is standing on a soap box and is wagging his + jaw in an athletic way.... How's the fire burning under your + type-mill? What's the brand of smoke it gives up--poetry, action, + lumps of granite or ladles of ocean? I'm all lit up in this place + here--because things are moving--real issues are gathering--and + the pulse of living is so close that I can almost feel it + occasionally. Last Saturday, went to a place called Rockaway--and + oh man--rocks--rugged grey and eroded--surf bitten--gnarled, + twisted--and they tossed the sea's white jaws about like bits + of cotton. Real sea coast it was--with a little smack in the + purple way, her sails bellied, her mouth lapping the brine--an + old fisherman browsing around the shores for clams while his wife + hauled up the nets, basketed the cod and upturned their boat. + + Put an extra stick under the machine and line a few of your + aphorisms. + + * * * * * + + + + +14 + +THE ARTIST UNLEASHED + + +The young workmen here do essays well, earlier than short stories. +Longer training is required for fiction. The reason is obvious. Fiction +work takes brain. The Stonestudy idea is to set free the greater Artist +within. Essays and ethical works are the natural fruits of the inner +life of the ages; story-production requires facility and development +of the every-day working consciousness. Straight brain is needed to +arrange settings, keen development of actual tissue to note and arrange +and remember. Also a big working surface of self-criticism must be +prepared. + +There is a quality of fiction that seems to set free a larger +consciousness and to bring with it settings and atmospheres of another +age. This sort of phenomenon encourages the idea of the continuity of +consciousness--before and after the three-score-and-ten. It may be +that the greater the Artist, the more of these veins of syntheticated +experience are open to his every-day working mind. That may really +be what sumptuous artistic equipment is--the capacity to open up the +old loves and scenes and adventures of the long road. Intuition is +explained as the use of the result of massed experiences, intellect the +coping with one at a time; intuition, a light that flashes from peak to +peak, intellect as a running fire up and down from height and vale. + +Certainly intellect alone will never make a great drama of life and +love, yet action and romance of the present hour draw hard upon one's +present life training and the faculties and tastes of his immediate +culture--actual brain possession and the ordering thereof. A child can +portray superbly well some ancient imprint upon the Soul, even the +passages of his own initiations through earth, water, air and fire, +his brain not conscious of the real nature of what is coming forth; +yet, the same child cannot put the cohering line through a series of +episodes occurring under his own notice. Something of this mental +grasp is necessary to make the artful effect required in a short +tale. The child's mind, in the first place, is trained to listen and +interpret the experiences of the larger consciousness; in the second +set of conditions, he is forced to rely upon actual brain tissue which +requires the training and culture of the years. + +Art is composition. The farther you go, the finer the tools. It is +difficult to train the fingers to intricate tricks of weaving, or +the brain to sort and place the facts and colours and surprises of +a present-day narrative or tale, but the soul may be called upon to +express through the narrow temples of an awakened child its cosmic +understanding, its ordered firmament. + +Decades of observation and reporting; firm and verified actuality of +knowledge and opinion; to these, added experience and the excellence +of order--such is the training of the intellectual artist who times +his production to his own generations. He pays the price in pain and +subjection to the things that are; he knows well the meaning of labour; +often, though he may still laugh as an artist, he has forgotten how to +laugh as a man. + +My desk here is covered with papers and poems of a beauty this +intellectual artist cannot reach, of a freedom he can never know, until +he lifts the torch of his consciousness out of and above the brain, +making that serve quite as his knees bend and serve. Thinking of these +things to-day, the door of the Study opened and the Little Girl gave +me her work. She writes things of the larger consciousness without +effort, but finds it hard and wearing to narrate the immediate matters +of life. To her, the fine short story of the present hour is the great +accomplishment, the ideal she is working toward. + +With another she goes often to the cities--rambling among the +rooming-houses, cheaper restaurants and mills. She means to work in +the mills soon--to forget herself and forget us for a time, to be +with the harder-lucked girls whom she loves with thrilling passion. +She has brought home from these little adventures wonderful stories +of the patience and the laughter and the heroism crowding like hidden +sacred presences about the duller lives. She brings a humour to the +telling of the divine secrets of the poor--the clutching pang for food, +the soldier going, his baby coming, the tortured spine, the stunted, +the darkened, the wasted--an irresistible divinity about it all--pain +impermanent, joy enduring. Back of the lacking eyes and leaking lives, +she sees wonders that Zola never saw, that none can see with mere +intelligence, that none can dream, who sees only the here and now, +who has not learned to laugh at the so-called injustices of men, who +cannot see the greater order to come because the present chaos is so +devastating. + +One may report minutiæ of torments, mass the items of degradation and +bring forth a great document of the underworld--but these are mere +foundations. The Builders bring the dream, they live the hope, they +open the long-road consciousness, they substantiate their visions of +better days, bring order and coherence to all the splendid toil of the +intellectualist; they raise their edifice upon _all_ that is done.... +Here is the Little Girl's work of to-day's writing: + + +MEDITATION + +In the night the Master came down to a woman who lay sad and sleepless +in a dark house. He came so near that she felt his holy radiance. Her +soul breathed; her body ceased to tremble; she felt within his sacred +circle. The Master smiled and said: + +"Why do you not sleep?" + +The woman answered, "I am carried away by thoughts that will not hush. +Night after night I lie here so bitterly close to old dreams. I realise +that they are not worthy, but my brain is full of them." + +The Master smiled again. "There is a way to compel the silence of the +brain." + +"I have not found it," said the woman. + +"Learn to be the soul," the Master said. He suggested a way to +begin--then was gone. + +The rest of that night the woman thought of his words. Deeper and +deeper his words sank into her heart. When morning came, a happiness +brooded within; she dressed quickly and went out.... Back of her +little house rose the golden brown hills. She climbed, and at the top +of the nearest, sat down. The peace and purity and fragrance of the +sun-steeped hills filled her soul. For a long time she thought in +silence, then slipping off her loose white sandals, said: "I begin with +the grass. Yes, I begin with my _feet_.... How wonderful you are--so +ready to obey, to give your service at any time! What would happen +if you carried me other than my will? Supposing some day I should be +walking fast to the house of my beloved, when you suddenly took me the +other way!" + +She laughed, and added: "You stay with me all my life, and little by +little are carrying me up the shining path to the Father's house. And +yet--how strange! I am not you.... And my knees, how wonderful and +willing--all limber and full of life--helping me in all ways to do all +things--bending gently when I bow in holy communion, expressing joy +through free, easy movements, mute, yet strong before pain! There is +nothing more wonderful in the world than you. Yet--I am not my knees. + +"And you, old heart," she added. "You have endured the keenest pain; +you have loved and given yourself, have hated and become black only +through pain to whiten again--old heart of many rendings--until +all life was tragedy, and you almost ceased to beat. Little heart, +sanctuary of the soul--room for _his_ rest.... Yet I am not the heart! + +"And the white throat in which the lotus unfolds its mystic petals of +light--I am not the throat!... And the mind, stream for the soul's +fulfilment--listener, runner, interpreter of light--mate of the soul in +all things, ever ready, sparkling with the inner fire,--I am _not_ the +mind. You can hurt me no longer. I am _free_!" + +The woman sitting alone upon the hilltop, paused again. "What am I?" +she almost cried. + +It was as though the hills, the air and the rising sun joined her in +the answer--"_I Am_, ... Longer than the living flame leaps within, _I +Am_. Longer than sun and planets radiate light, _I Am_. Longer than +worlds give birth to form, _I Am_. I am one with the rocks and the sea, +one with the warmth and light, one with the earth, one with Humanity. + +"I am Humanity. _I Am._" + + * * * * * + +It is only when the Little Girl brings in a bit of fiction that we +remember her years. The brain that even now can polish a detached +incident, or clip into firing-form a bit of humour of the street, +cannot as yet order the narrative to a culminating effect. She is in +her brain, which is only fourteen, struggling with the matters of time +and space, wherein only lie pain and bewilderment. + +Art is long. The training of the hand and intellect requires the +years--but not the labour, not the agony, not the mad strain supposed +to prepare one for an artistic career by those who believe mental +equipment to be all.... The key to this whole discussion is the fact +that the brain can be developed more in a year through inner awakening +than in a decade by the usual methods of external impacts alone.... The +ideal education is the balancing of the without with the within--the +tallying of the world without with the world within--the same old +story of the kingdom without clearing its correspondences with the +kingdom within. + +The Little Girl's ideal is to do great stories. They challenge her by +their very difficulty. When I see where she stands now, and think of +the far ways we elders went to learn the game; when I see what the +twenty-year-olds are doing now, how they command their mysticism--a +harder task for me than the accomplishment of physical results; when I +see the inner bloom and co-ordination and the inimitable surfaces which +come to all the arts by the development of the soul life first, the +listening for the Master within--I want to get my hands on them all, +upon all the young builders of the New Race. I want at once to awaken +within them the Spectator--the One who cannot be swung back and forth +in the pairs of opposites, who cannot give himself to the partisans, +who has glimpsed the Plan and offers it full adoration, who says +accordingly that the best possible thing that can happen is the thing +that happens next. These are the young Players who will reveal life by +living it--portray life as naturally as breathing, whose equipment is +not possessions, not even brain possessions, but spiritual _en rapport_ +with all, oneness with all life. + +I remember struggling for effects. These young people breathe +effects. I remember style as a studied attainment. These young people +acknowledge but one style--that is being one's self.... I want to set +many of them free from within outward. In their gladness at the finding +of themselves, they will go forth to include the world; they will bring +to it the compassion which enfolds all, reveals all.... Love the world +well and you will understand it. Love the world well, and you will +write well to it. Give it yourself, and the world is yours. + + * * * * * + + + + +15 + +WORK IN SHORT STORIES + + +The Little Girl sketched this impression of an Indian Summer Dusk: + + * * * * * + +... Just now the great blue dusk, after an Indian summer day. It +deepens and seems to laugh, then all is night. Huge black clouds roll +up, promising a storm. Against them, tall, selfish, unafraid, stand +the poplar trees. The great Mother of the dusk is singing, the God in +Nature is singing, and Nature's belongings, all of them, sing in this +magical moment. One feels it all in one's self, feels the glory, the +romance, the very core-life of the Universe. The matings too, taking +place in the grass and air; the matings of the two streams, the two +grains of sand; the matings of butterflies, birds and bees. It all +flows through one's body like music and honey and sunshine.... + +Nothing but space is around me. I feel all hollow inside. Power and +beauty and all things else flow through ... and out, like a sieve. +My body is far below me, yet it will be taken care of. It does not +stumble, nor make any clumsy, unnecessary movement. Finding it alone +and forgotten, Rhythm catches it in her gentle arms. Slowly, softly, +gently, Rhythm carries it along, the same that carries the deer so +swiftly in the forest, the mountain sheep from ledge to ledge and over +valleys, and that which waves the trees' long arms so gracefully.... +The night moves on its way, the threat of storm is passed. I am back +again--an untellable freshness has sweetened hair and clothing. I am +all glowing inside. + + * * * * * + +This was done two years ago. There was a kind of dream story which she +recently finished, gratifying the artistic sense entirely, but in a way +that ruined it for the general reader. It was all new to her that there +could possibly be two ways to regard a bit of workmanship. Five or +six story-writers were present for the reading, and out of the fruits +of that evening, we surely saw the lesser beauty give way before a +greater. We forecasted the readers of the future, who would prefer the +more spiritual, more challenging story texture and dénouement. + +There has always been The Few--glad to discover the real, answering +to interior order and clarity, "straight grain,"--but the fact for +enthusiasm now is that the world is being peopled with the awakened. +These young moderns are recognising each other from day to day, pulling +together for better social order, utilising the wisdom of the East, +and the drive of the West--labouring in new paths, daring new leaps, +working out philosophies as fresh and ancient as the dawn and, what +is straighter to the point, demanding modern books, written out of an +integrity to match their own.... + +Short story writing in America is less a trade and more of an art +since Edward J. O'Brien, the poet, took his chair in the flow of the +output and began to say which was which. There are a number of people +in America who know a good short story when they see one; this is +true among those who buy short stories, but editors cannot always buy +what they want. A deal of mechanism in a magazine has to be oiled and +energised by different kinds of minds from those who paint the pictures +and write the tales. O'Brien knew both ends--also he knew that big, +unobtrusive part of the market that looks long and pointedly for the +real tale. + +He is a queer boy--from the bleak fishing grounds north of Boston. +He is in no hurry. You couldn't tell if he really wants anything. He +doesn't seem to want much--for O'Brien.... After he had his main line +and most of the ramifications of his idea laid, he told the editors to +send on the stories. Most of them did. O'Brien did a lot of work in a +few weeks, did it startlingly well. He started something.... Now, if a +writer sits down, suddenly struck with a fine idea for a tale, and this +fine idea precludes the possibility of selling it for a high price--the +writer dares go ahead and finish the task, because he knows O'Brien +will get to the thing in due time, and that if it is really what it +seems and the performance of the idea adequate, then the work will not +be utterly lost. + +As a matter of fact, this is a bit of self-placation, since no work is +lost; no one gets the value of a big thing to anything like the degree +of the man who does it; no big thing is lost from the world, not even +if dropped in a sewer, if it is really important for the world to +have it. We are all a bit too heavily handicapped with our own idea +of what the world should have from our own shops--at the same time, +when we are young, we pant for the quicker return, the answering hail +within reason--at least, within time and space. Now O'Brien has come, +strangely arrived, his proper phylacteries in place, the touch of +tinted haze about his head, the right man. + +Back of all, however, is the workman's own spine. That's the best +thing to lean on; and when the going is heavy, to learn to do without. +We often remind each other in Chapel of the modern artist Cezanne, +who moved about his painting for many years, painting _the thing_, +satisfying his soul, and leaving his canvasses around in the fields for +the peasants to laugh at or mull over.... They have long since been +brought in out of the rain--those canvasses. I forget the incredible +thousands his littlest sketch brings now.... But Cezanne got the films +out of himself--tallied them off--the landscapes within and without, +when it did him most good. It never fails. What was good for the artist +is good for the rest of us afterward. + +Meanwhile much is still to do in the story world. The big smash of +the moving pictures hasn't cleared from our game yet. It will be the +cause of greater tales before the end is seen, for you can't portray +the realities of romance upon a flat screen. For a time the many +thought it was no longer necessary to learn to read, because there was +such a torrent of pictures everywhere, but it was only through the +pictures that the few has finally managed to realize how marvelously +pictorial mere words are, and how few words are required when they are +imaginatively driven. One day in Stonestudy we discussed these story +and screen affairs, looking ahead somewhat to better times than these. +One of our young men, whose story is told in a later chapter, put down +the things we talked about. This is Shuk's writing: + + * * * * * + +A fresh and different vitality is manifest to-day in American +literature. At various points around us, dealing with words, colours +and the subtler tools, are active young workmen who for the first +time, in the fullest sense, may be termed "North American." The first +characteristic of this new element, these young flexible and vigorous +minds, is that they are workmen--not labourers, not professionals, not +primarily artists in anything unless it be life--but workers first, and +after that novelists, poets, musicians, painters or politicians. They +are not competitors. They have not forgotten the warm side of justice, +but they know well the stern face of compassion--they know that it +takes Christ and anti-Christ to make a world. They are neither modest +nor egotistical, being for the most part busy and intensely alive. This +implies their joy. + +The great love story has not been written. The few great love stories +of the world have to be pieced out by the imagination. We find that +we have been told that certain are great love stories, but they do +not stand examination. The classic form will not do for the New Age. +There is to be a new language--for literary handling. It may be called +American, to distinguish it from English in the accepted form. It is to +be brisk, brief, brave and ebullient--to meet the modification all must +reckon with--the screen-trained mind. + +American-mindedness of itself, cannot yet accept a great love-story. It +would be called "sentimental" if not lascivious. The average American +is an impossible lover, making it incident to business. The real and +the sham are equally above him. He would not know when to be exalted +or when to be ashamed. He thinks his own passion is evil, and thus +makes it so. The great love-story can only be written with creative +dynamics, and can only be accepted as yet by the few of corresponding +receptivity. There is nothing soft about true romance. Some passionate +singer of the New Age will likely appear right soon, his story to have +the full redolence and lustre of the heart, his emotions thoroughbred, +his literary quality at the same time crystalline with reality. + +The big adventure-story has not been done so far. The day of guns, +horses and redskins is over. Photoplays have developed these fiction +resources to the limit, proving to those writers born to be modern +that their full tales can never be shown on a flat surface. There +will be undercurrents, overtones, invisible movements, tensions upon +the reader, not only from between the lines, but between words. +The story-teller of the New Age may handle his theme in words of +one syllable, but his tale will have an intensity scarcely to be +explained--only responded to by minds which cannot be satisfied by +two-plane production--minds which demand more of life than the camera +sees. + +The real war-story of to-day, even for to-morrow, ought to arrive soon. +This is an age for an epic. Some keen and comprehensive mind will +arise--a literary genius who will include the patriot, the anarchist, +the poet, dramatist, humanitarian, theosophist, dreamer, judge and +statesman, even the iciest aces of the air--and tell the story of +War, a tale of trenches, kings and arms; blood, heroism and monstrous +greed; vast far-reaching causes and the slow, inevitable hell of +effects--told from a viewpoint so inclusive that thrones are merely +pawns in a Planetary Game. + +Inclusion is the first business of the writer who is truly allied with +the modern element. Propagandists do not fill the picture. Yesterday +the wreckers and agnostics--to-day the specialists and onesided +enthusiasts--to-morrow, the embodiers, the includers. + + * * * * * + + + + +16 + +VALLEY ROAD GIRL + + +The Valley Road Girl, who gave us the title, and helped us to see how +the New Race will become in due time the planetary hive, asked not to +appear in this book. A letter this morning asks it again. She is in +the stress and heat of a series of ordeals, learning what it means +suddenly to be parted from friends and the centre of her work. A wise +and sensitive young woman--I rather thrill over her sufferings. We +don't commiserate; we congratulate, when one is called to a stretch +of particularly stiff and solitary going. We know that one must be +passionately worthy to take the big-calibred ordeals. There is pain +to all births--pain, the precursor of greater joys. Pain is not the +expansion of the flower to the sun; that is joy, that comes afterward. +Pain is the necessary rupturing of the bud-sheaths before the final +unfolding into the new dimension. Pain is within, inarticulate--merely +finds a correspondence in some outer cause. + +Part of the Valley Road Girl's letter follows: + +... It hurt to let that last Lamentation go to you. I thought of the +times when I had put up a braver fight, bolstered only with pride. +But pride is low now, and still dwindling in the glass. Even the gods +withdraw from the pathetic. They love us more when we challenge with +doubt than when we implore. The many are God-fearing. They must have +some divine power to shift their responsibility upon. They can ask the +Flame to cleanse them, but quail at working out their own salvation. I +have done some crying out to God, but I am finished. The one good path +I have is Work--self-expression every day. + +I made another mistake--in looking back. Regret identifies us with +the past and impedes progress. Youth is smileless, inclined to regard +to-day's struggles as ultimate evil, but gradually we learn that +all things pass. To consider everything as in transition, we place +ourselves in the very current of growth.... For rapid journeying, we +must travel light. We can only carry along the spirit of things--the +essence of our joys and lessons. That's what I have from Chapel days. + +I blush for many hours since. Sometimes I have felt as if I were on +a vast plain and there was no God nor earth nor the quality of love +anywhere, but only I--deathless--in long, hideous travail, all life to +be tested against this Me!... + + * * * * * + +How I want to write! Every day more awe enfolds the dream. Days +bring me closer to the Town. The war has deepened the hearts of all +the young people here, especially the women. Young women are very +wonderful to me. They have a certain loveliness of body that comes of +girl-whiteness within--thoughtful tenderness about them, and something +else, a lightness that may be just youth. It attracts me because I have +never felt it. + +I do not care if the gods laugh at my ambitions to write. By the very +sign that we are victims of matter now, we shall become victors. I +want the bottom--down among the deeps of pain, where all the sorrow of +the world is my sorrow; all tears, my tears.... I am not ready for the +Hive. No compromise. To accept less in one's work than the dream--that +is failure. + + * * * * * + +The Valley Road Girl is eighteen. She has hardly been away from the +little town by the lake shore. She is held to it queerly still. I +expect her to make the place long-lived in the memory of many novel +readers. I see the big book of the country-side about her--a gallery +of quaint and curious faces--done with her stern, sweet power. I have +seen this big book building about her, as I see the top trays of The +Abbot's Sea Chest. These are the days of her sketching and tearing +down. Deep draughts of life call to her, deeps of religion, deeps of +cosmic memory--and all about is the little town. The meaning has come +to her at last. Already she has turned to love the nearest; loving the +nearest will unfold the big book and set her free. Six hundred pages +I call for--the leisurely vibration, terrible intensity of romantic +moments, passion of the fields, the hideous mockery of narrow, brittle +lives, the country-wife worn glassy with routine and insane monotony, +and the young of the country-side--quick bloom, pure youth falling into +coarseness before its form is finished, the real and immortal behind it +all. These are her properties. Hundreds of pages have been written and +prayerfully destroyed. Thus is she setting herself free. + +I have a paper of hers on the spiritual adventures of a smileless +child--which I liked much when it came in, more than two years ago. The +Valley Road Girl is close to us in all our preparing and building; so +that these chapters would be strange without her voice: + + ... Fire was always terrible, so my first aspirations were caused + by fear of hell _below_. Before that, I had wanted to laugh when + told to pray. As I grew, I thought much of the heavenly state, but + could find only vague pictures. Recently I asked a country minister + his idea of heaven, and he seemed uncertain. He could only assure + me that it was a desirable place. Yet children always wonder about + their destination, questioning as they journey. + + I started early to pray--a grim affair; at first crying out through + fear or hurt. God was too awful for such intimacies so I took the + Christ figure of the Trinity into my confidence. Just here came + a strange transition. It didn't seem sufficient for me to think + those prayers: I felt I must state them clearly or my wish might + be ambiguous. Even to-day, I find that only expressing a thing + simplifies it for me. + + If there were acquaintances whose lives were touched with beauty + or romance, I prayed for them, but mostly named _my_ wants. I made + the discovery that the intensity put forth in holding the image of + a desire brings it into the world. Man may call the answer _God_, + but that seems his own power. I have sometimes thought of Will with + its divine kindred, Wisdom and Love, as the Three Who stood first + before His Face. + + To-day we dream, and to-morrow our hands are filled. I remember + the early Chapel days when the Old Man would say, "Be careful what + you want--you are apt to get it,"--with a great laugh and mystery + playing about his words. How truly one comes to realise that. + When I started at Stonestudy, the town-people used to ask how we + were taught,--if our English and story-structure were principally + considered as in the schools. I could only tell them, "Oh, no, not + like school!" Then I tried to explain Chapel and they wondered how + that manner of education could make us writers. Yet our writing + improved with the days. Work, a few weeks old, embarrassed us with + its defects. + + Then I actually tried to discover just how we were being helped. + To a young aspirant, there is awe about an artist; we had come to + listen. The same thoughts expressed in homely words wouldn't have + quickened us. The Old Man's sentences were rich with figures that + clarified everything. We began to _see_ Stonestudy. About this time + at home I used to start anything that interested me, "I've got a + picture----" Chapel had helped me, as only one can help another, by + quickening the imagination. + +That was what drew me to the Little Girl--her vivid impression of +things. She could make _her_ listener see also. Speaking of children +whom school had overwhelmed, she used to tell us of their "lacking +eyes" and the world that had crushed them, as the "solid world." ... +I think that was the secret of her faith in fairies and Nature's most +elusive agencies. I listened doubtfully at first, for school had +tampered with my once-ready belief. One had first to trust her words, +"If you believe, you will see." And I recalled my early religious +experiences, based on "According to your faith, be it unto you." + +This is the "really" religion--faith in the hidden world. We conceive +its light gradually as the seed pushes its way upward through the soil. +All religion that does not make the workshop a Chapel--the place for +picturing heaven, is less than we know. I seem to confuse religion with +the stimulating of the imagination. It is because they are one to me. + +The Valley Road Girl has a beautiful sister who was rather reluctant to +come to Stonestudy. She did not think she could ever belong; had no +thought ever of writing or taking part in our things, yet none of the +young people ever brought us more than Esther. I found the following +pages about these two sisters together among the writings of the Little +Girl: + + ... On the floor below lived two girls who came often to visit + their beloved friends in the attic. One was a year or so older than + the other, and most serious and sober, constantly hunting for her + own philosophy and making her own religion, praying for power and + vision, fearing lest she fail at the appointed task, suffering over + conditions, revolting at times, loving her work and her sister with + an everlasting passion. That was the one whom we call the Valley + Road Girl. + + The other was a perfect giver, born with the thought of her own + smallness, unwilling to accept a different point of view on the + subject from another. A spirit--wide eyes, frail body, living her + life calmly, objecting to nothing, obeying others, loving all, + frightening her parents with her absolute goodness. And that was + Esther. + + When she came at last to Stonestudy, her cushion with the others + round the fire had been waiting for many months. For we all knew + her; through the Valley Road Girl we knew Esther belonged to us. + One Chapel day later, when she remained at home, we wondered how + we'd ever manage without her.... Occasionally Esther brought a + paper with her and laid it under the black stone--a bit of verse, + perhaps a dream, or something deep and mysterious from her soul. + One day it was a picture of the Desert, I remember.... Noonday, the + white heat of the sun reflected by the sand, the brown of a camel's + eyes, the long road to travel--caravans--then night--the sound of + low music, women dancing, the red of fires on black oily bodies of + slaves.... Esther made us see it all. + + There were long days in the woods--spring quickening life in all + things. We'd gather moss and violets and talk endlessly, Esther + always so free these memorable days, and happy. It was the dance + that set her free--her expression through the dance--a dancer's + body and soul, her wonderful quality of forgetfulness of self, made + her perfect. Literally she could surrender herself to the music, + trust it, and be carried in perfect grace and rhythm. We watched + her unfold, the beauty of her deepening in every way. Her joy in + life grew. She became like a nymph in the pure light of summer.... + + * * * * * + +As was set down in the other book,[17] it was the Little Girl who +started these educational proceedings. Less than four years ago I +suggested that she remain home from school, and take a stroll with me +down the Shore. I was a bit bored at the time, doubtless heavy with +the sense of parental care. To my best knowledge, the Little Girl was +in no way extraordinary. She does not seem so now. It seemed natural +for her to turn in the chapter on "Tom" in this book. I did not think +of it as a brimming thing for a child to perform. Incidentally Steve +brought in an essay last night on the young lovers and beauty lovers of +the New Race, covering matters which I planned as necessary for me to +do in this book. _Weaving_, that's really what a book from the group +amounts to--weaving, more and more. From time to time in years to come, +I hope to take a few weeks and spin a book. + + [17] Child and Country. + + * * * * * + +It is only in matters having to do with actual world-facts that the +Little Girl ever reminds us that she is only finishing her second +period of sevens. There is no one to whom I go more often for wisdom or +consolation. Her comradeship is complete. Others forget the matter of +age in relation to her. Her big friendship with the Valley Road Girl +overrides four years of growth most formidable in the usual attachment. +The soul is out of time and space. The same thing is more emphatically +shown in the case of John and The Abbot--nine and seventeen. + +The Little Girl reads very little--not nearly so much as I do. She +carries no weights. The slightest tendency toward precocity would +sicken me of the whole business. This growth and development which +I speak of is not intellectual in the acquisitive sense. I take the +young minds away from long division examples. One of those a day is +plenty. Excessive use of the young brain is dangerous. One should +handle brain-tissue with delicacy. One should learn well how to think, +so as to escape lesion and avoid rupture of those most delicate fibres. +Any strain sounds a warning. The use and development of the brain from +outside is only safe so long as the process is joyous. The development +of the brain from within is natural and continually felicitous. No two +processes are alike--for the Soul perfects the instrument to serve +Itself. In due time the brain, thus trained, will bring forth the +one perfect and inimitable product. Trained by the world solely from +without, its product is a mere standard at best. + +I have met absolutely no ill results, not even from the gentle +encouragement of the practice of concentration among children. This is +stiff brainwork for a time--stiff because the brain must be mastered. +But the brain that has learned to listen for the voice of the Master +within, is already using the fruits of concentration, and as I have +written before, the children master the distractions more easily than +developed personalities. One must learn how to think obediently before +one can silence the thoughts. One must silence the brain to hear the +Soul, but one must _be_ the Soul to silence the brain. + +Intellectual children have been brought to me several times. They +lack the essential reverence. They wish to show me what they know; +their parents goad them into this showing. These are not the new race +type that thrills us.... I cannot help you out of a predicament if my +hands are full of bundles. I cannot bring to you the one spontaneous +utterance that you long for, if my brain is crowded with the things of +to-day and yesterday. I place upon the ground my bundles, and give you +a hand. I clear my mind of all its recent and immediate acquisitions, +and by the very force and matrix of your need (if I am the valuable +teacher) I supply, from the infinite reservoir of massed experiences, +an intuitional answer that will not leave you as you were. + +... God pity the good little brain-pans so heavily piled in public +schools, and the brave little memories so cruelly taxed. I want to +brush all junk away from them, let their souls breathe, let them +become as little children, show them how the greatest workmen and the +master-thinkers are great and masterful, simply because they have +learned how to become as little children. + + * * * * * + + + + +17 + +BEAUTY + + +We develop through expression. I find these paragraphs among many of +the Little Girl's for which there is no place here: + + * * * * * + + ... Everything in pouring out one's dreams and thoughts, one's + very soul into words! It is relief, fulfilment; it completes + all thoughts and dreams; it gives them strength. They are + only half-powers if left unexpressed. In the moments of great + outpouring, order forms--the inner order that is lasting and + divine, the order that every man must have running rhythmically + through him, before his great task can be given him by the Master. + If man lives in truth, he lives in order. There is no truth without + order--no order without truth. They are one at the top. There are + no mistakes in all the Holy Universe. + + * * * * * + +We speak much of the Master. As every artist becomes significant, I +think he is more and more conscious, deep within, of the presence of +one whose word is absolute. The great artist isolates himself from +criticism--that is, he may listen to the observations of a child or the +youngest critic and find values, yet his life is passed in doing things +others cannot do, and for which there are no criteria. He loses the +sense of all laws at the last, in the great ebullition of his soul--to +get its records down. He is not ignited with expression as formerly, +because he _is_ expression. His establishment in flesh is for that, and +no other reason. His Master nears. I think of Tolstoi so intimately and +Carlyle in these things.... We are close, in our best moments, to the +Shop Itself. Kipling touched this mystic arrangement in his inimitable +_L'envoi_, "When earth's last picture is painted----" + +More and more life teaches us the treachery of matter, as it teaches +us how to love. One by one the things we turn to, vanish, leaving us +rent and crying out. Thus we learn to turn to the Unseen. We long at +last for our particular archetype who embodies potentially the ideal +of parent and teacher and beloved. The last tearing torrential love +of the flesh is for the mate, the first of our more purely spiritual +aspirations for the Master.... The good days of apprenticeship give us +the basic ideal of him--the pure workmanship, the love of truth, need +for utter comprehension with few words--the love of one another, yet +the absolute essential so hard to learn, to cling to nothing in the +realm of change--all these are incentives to the quest of the Master. +More and more we succeed in turning our love to what we still call the +Unseen from old habit. The very love that you turn to the Master builds +the path by which he comes to you. He can only appear in your own +thought-form.... + +It comes to us so often that we make our own heavens. So many forget +that we require beauty as well as goodness and truth. Not sages alone, +not saints alone--but artists, workmen and players in beauty, as +well as in love and wisdom. The Master will come to you in your own +thought-form; your heaven will fill your own conception. Saints of the +elder bigotries will have angels with feathers and peasant feet. Those +who have clung so hard to their bodies, must galvanise them again with +rheumatism and senility and mortgage-ridden minds. + +I tell them here to be careful what they dream--to take all the loves, +the safe things, love of child and mother and mate, love of comrades, +the passion for dying for another ... to take Nature's perfect +things,--the grains, the fruits, bees, stars, devas, poems--majesty +of mountain, strength of the field, holy breath of sea--the highest +moments of song and thought and meetings ... to take all that is +consummate for the thought-form--to build the coming of the Master +in that--light from the Unseen--to build for eternity.... The Master +can only show you that much of Himself as your own highest picture +contains.... This is the practice of his presence, so liberating to the +minds of dreamers and workmen and mothers. + + * * * * * + +Steve has done some thinking on the quest of beauty in relation to the +young lovers of the New Race. The rest of the chapter is his writing: + + Beauty is the lustre shining from within, because of the sheer + intensity of being. It is proof of spiritual battles won, a gift + earned by ages of renunciation, martyrdom, and self-sacrifice. It + is manifest balance, order and serenity gained from isolation and + self-conquest. The glow seen about the heads of saints is really + there. It is a splendour not of earth, the same ray from which + beauty is drawn. + + A certain tragic joy and a terrible serenity, that is mistaken for + melancholy, often goes with beauty. It is the result of turning + back voluntarily for work in the world, renouncing possible bliss + for the service of humanity. Chief among the spiritual victories + mentioned, is this turning back, facing the stream of evolution + again, and all its cold metal, for new work. So its light is a + light from behind--a reflection to the world of the wonders ahead. + + Beauty is an indication of the weave of one's higher life, + of developed discrimination, material proof of the perfecting + ordination of the life, will and emotions. All that is beautiful + is good, all that is good must be beautiful. Ugliness is false and + fleeting, a confession of sickness and turmoil within. There can + absolutely be no great love without a sheer worship of beauty, not + for itself, not from the æsthetic standpoint--no temperamental + moth-man ethics--but the calm mastery of its inner meaning, which + is mastery of life itself. + + This does not mean that we must love things merely because they are + beautiful, but because of the truth we know to be in them, manifest + in their beauty. Also it means that we must never accept a thing + merely because it is demonstrated, or seek truth for truth's sake. + Beauty is the one lasting criterion. + + As soon as we truly see these things, we know the secret of real + love, which is beauty's expression. The lover is no longer lover + only, but love-master--all domination of the sexes then becomes a + slavery of the past. The lover is parent, mate and child in one. + Each is also the other's teacher. + + At the beginning these lovers give each other complete freedom, + knowing that nothing can be maintained that is held; that joyous + freedom is its own wise bondage. The finding of the lover is never + the end of the quest as in the world. Rather, it is the beginning. + Never is there a lying back in satisfaction or inconsequence. That + would be failure for themselves as well as their children. Growth + is the goal. Growth goes on after the mating at a rate never before + approached, for each has been opened, liberated. Every relation is + evident alternately in this growth, parent and child, teacher and + pupil, master and disciple, madonna and messiah. At certain high + moments, the other appears as the Master himself; through his eyes + the mysteries of the universe are seen. + + The three-ply love yearns to give, knowing that by giving all one + gains all. It yearns to protect, to mother, to love failings and + make them virtues. It loves the failings as well as the gifts, + treasuring all the little humanesses of the loved one, searching + them out zealously. Never are they foolish enough to expect + perfection at first. Every fault is told point-blank, at any cost + of pain or injury to the other. For it is the god-given privilege + of each to bring suffering to the other, because he loves that + other more than life, more than self, more than happiness, and it + is understood that their mutual goal is the priceless heritage, + perfection. Nothing short of perfection remains. For this all else, + even life, is a paltry price. There is no hiding the truth. This is + the supreme test for great loves, great friendships. Both mates are + equal. _Equality_--the word comes to mean more than worship. + + This philosophy is justified by the law of sacrifice. That which + we love more than life is ours more wholly than ourselves, by + the great law. In fact, we cannot belong to ourselves; we must + work upon ourselves until we are big enough to cast body mind and + soul in the heart of another, without fear. Separateness--the + pitiful sense of self, has long been the prime illusion of the + world, the cause of all lust, wars and torments. Those who are not + great enough lovers to surrender all to their love find pain and + disparity throughout. They have yet to learn that all that belongs + to the self-willed, only half belongs, for it has not been given + its freedom. + + In loves such as the New Age is bringing in, true creativeness is + touched. In worshipping both the soul of her child and that of + her mate more than her own, the mother is given for the moment + a beam from the divine shaft from the Creator. For that moment + she has over-reached herself. Just so is the new love constantly + over-reaching itself in the cause of the loved one, a divine + madness the world has not begun to dream of--to belong and to have, + to be in and through and around the loved one. Thus to over-reach + is to create. The ordinary one must become extraordinary when loved + in this god-like manner. To over-reach oneself--that is the cry + of the New!... To think or act in any way that will hurt the self + becomes impossible then, for the self is truly become the other + lover. + + Blindness of passion is far from the nature of things in the new + loves. Or rather such passions have been washed and redeemed + until they are self-governing. There is all the difference + between them and the world idea of passion, as between adoration + and infatuation. Deep waters and deep characters hold to + their channels. Only shallow and frothy currents are loud and + turbulent.... Again it is the three in one. How could one hold a + mad destroying passion for one in whom the parent child and master + are equally dominant? Always the spirit of tenderness is there like + an unseen third. Thus passion has become compassion, and the earth + love is seen truly for the first time partaking of the nature of + the infinite love which holds the universe together. This is the + source of calm, of will-lessness. + + The elder generation, judging all things from the standpoint of + the self will, is dumbfounded. Such iron repression among children + is beyond its imagination. The elder generation goes on living + sharkish and predatory lives, experimenting with repression after + too much getting and taking and licentiousness. It concentrates + terribly on repression, throwing up about itself temporary + breastworks, developing cruel red rays of personal will which + at best is but a defiant pugnacity. Its eyes grow red and voice + savage. For the time the gargoyles of the ancient self are locked + in the lower room, but they are not mastered. All personal will is + but a confession of inordination within. Where there is inner order + and beauty, it is not needed, becomes indeed an affront to the most + high. + + The beautiful will-lessness which marks the relation of the sexes + of the New Order is the key to the freedom of the future. Tiger and + ape are transformed into white presences--the mutinous slaves of + the earth-self become cosmic servants. + + * * * * * + + + + +18 + +SHUK + + +I was talking to a group of young artists in Chicago. There was a boy +there who seemed disturbed because the others dared to be natural in +my presence, and talk about themselves. I was quite at ease, enjoying +myself, and getting altogether as much respect as I deserved.... This +lad walked with me to the train. I wanted to take him home. I liked his +voice and his hand and his mind. I thought at first that he could not +mean all he said, but I was wrong about that. Reverence is sometimes +very hard to take, but the one who brings it has the pure surface of +receptivity. The boy said, as my train pulled out: + +"No, I can't come now. There's a month to be spent at home in Michigan, +and a season's playing with an orchestra up in the lake resorts, but +after that--say October, I'll come to Stonestudy." + +That was exactly what he did. He had it all planned months ahead. It's +Shuk's[18] way--a mathematical mind, a crystal mind. The theosophists +would say that he belonged to the intellectual ray.... We are always +better with Shuk in the room. He comes half way to meet our process +of lighting up, which is the devotional process; in fact, Shuk +incorporated himself in our ideals in exchange for a year or two of +living the life at Stonestudy.... These things never die. + + [18] Herman S. Schuchert. + +A raincoat, a black bag--these are Shuk's possessions, all weight and +measure minimised, even to the kind of white paper which wears best and +packs best. Shuk means order. A page of his "copy" is a rest to the +eye. There is a finished quality to his sentences. My tendency is to +rush into a mental clean-up when he enters the room. I'm not impressing +these details as his virtues. Shuk's virtues are cosmic. He will +presently be telling the big tales, and telling them fast. + +As a group, we are learning to come and go from each other. We have +learned well not to lean--rather to anticipate the Law and leave the +beloved when the tendency to cling becomes too keen.... There is a time +to come and a time to go. I always think of the Master Jesus, leaving +His disciples--saying that they would not find the Comforter within, if +He remained with them always. + +Shuk had much to do in bringing home to us this valuable concept. +We had a way of thinking the world would come to us on the Lake Erie +bluff. It would. It did. But we were getting fat and baronial; a bit +fat of brain, perhaps.... Better than that, the gaunt, lean face +forever at the window-panes of civilisation.... Comrades are always +together. Big meetings, easy partings. One does not know how close +he is to another, until their thoughts spark warm over a lot of +mileage--the immortality of it all stealing in through the soft airs of +night, perhaps. + +I teach the young ones to stand alone at every chance. The idea is +to make them penetrate for themselves, as swiftly as possible, the +main tricks and illusions of matter; to make them see past any doubt +that to be worldly-minded is to be inferior. Still they must see this +for themselves. I formally renounced parentage in the case of the +Little Girl. I take all my authority from the younger boys at frequent +intervals--especially when they have been real mates: + +"Don't advise with me," I tell them. "Show what you know about +living.... Do it your way. If you begin to botch it, I'll come in and +be a regular parent again, but the idea is to set you loose." + +These matters come out naturally in relation to Shuk. He'll be +surprised to read this. None of the young ones ever adequately credit +the fact that I do a lot of sitting at their feet.... We could see the +world as one piece better with Shuk in the room. His intense listening +pulled my eyes constantly. He wanted to know about stories--about +writing stories. His presence made us all better workmen because he +was so zealous to become one. I had long been absorbed in the romantic +side of world-politics, but Shuk decorated the subject with a new +romance.... The farther away a country is, the more we know about it +from a fiction standpoint. His mental forms are very strong. Shuk and +I have practically covered the same run of thoughts in a morning's +work--our machines a mile apart--no prearrangement. But this has worked +out so often as to cease to be a novelty. The Little Girl's letters +have often crossed with mine, carrying the same spiritual unfoldment--a +four days' journey distant.... + +Another realisation related with Shuk's coming, is that I do not belong +as the master of a school in the economic sense. There was much detail +at Stonestudy, much householder's management required. I wouldn't have +given it up, if I had been unable to do that part, but it was a waste +of force--wretched economy for me to take charge of such affairs. We +plan to support ourselves, but I cannot run a school, apportion tasks, +or puzzle devotedly among the meshes of finance. This part of the work +in California will doubtless be taken care of by those who do it well +and profitably. There have been moments when I wanted to go among all +the schools--happen in, stay an hour or a week--until the children and +teachers forgot me, so I could find my own among the many.... But again +it occurs to me that wiser plans than mine are behind it all. Those +who are ready, come; numbers will take care of themselves; all we need +to do is to make the most of the nearest, and keep up our song in such +accord as we can in the midst of the world's sacrificial madness--many +girls' voices now, for the war has plucked the boys.... + +Some of the things of Shuk's which I chose for this book were about +the big war and are not profitable discussions now, but with his paper +included in an earlier chapter, and one or two small things here, his +quality can be seen. This is a letter to the Old Man: + + ... I haven't ceased to follow the Wars. Big one inside. Tremendous + flights, dizzy careenings, impossible falls. Am tramping noisily + through the forbidden garden of Books. Am becoming more and more + vividly aware of Life, above actuality, beyond sorrow, interior to + joy. Vital and thrilling peace to all your endeavours.... Enclosed + a paragraph or two on tallying off the world-war within, with the + world-war without: + + Evil is stupid mixing of good things into in-harmony. Evil is + simply ignorance. Ignorance does not fade away, but must be worked + out, worn down. War is evil in this process. Man's higher nature + is naturally at war with ignorance, manifesting in his lower + nature. If man had always kept at this war against the domination + of the lower self, he would never have needed another war to jar + and jog him along. But man decided, in ignorance, that he had no + cause for war with the lower self. This was his first illusion. + The next mistake was natural. Man thought he would get rid of evil + by killing off the lower selves of other men. All due to his first + error in looking outside instead of in. + + It's all wrong to think we must leave our own houses in order to + fight the greatest battles conceivable. If we do not accept the + fight within ourselves, we shall certainly have the same fight, + once or twice removed, forced upon us.... + +Whatever portion of humankind is chastened and quickened by this big +field-war and sea-war, is the first fruits of a nobler race. Man has +had countless and continuous opportunities of doing this purifying +process to himself in privacy and peace; instead, he has consistently, +with rarest exceptions, used his will to serve the lesser self, or deal +with the lesser selves of other men. Now, in these years, every man who +failed, will learn the lesson, because it will be forced upon him. If +our wisdom is not so great and old as we hope, if we have in the long +past thrown away our chances, then we shall surely go out and fare as +the others fare now--in exactly the right proportion. + +Killing another doesn't work as a means of self-correction. Hereafter, +I'm interested in correcting myself. There is very little outside work +left to do. This is a commonplace, of course, yet it reminds me that +the highest wisdom is something grandly simple and easy. Murder is an +aggravated waste of both time and opportunity. + +Yet I am at peace with nobody, not even myself. Peace ought to be more +intense than war, and until it is, we shall have to go through many +wars to arrive at any kind of peace. Many slaveries is the price of +freedom. + +One who fears will be brought up facing monster fears, until he learns +next time that his personal fears were too petty to mention. One who +has greed and envy will surely be made a pawn in a game of greed so +colossal that perhaps, in a future time, he will have no interest in +neighbourhood greeds, but will have learned to see and to desire the +whole world. His greed has been stretched into a passion for dominion; +and the most fascinating field for empire he will discover within +himself. + +So wherever we stand, we can't lose out. We can choose to do good, +better, best--but without choosing, nothing less than all right can +happen. + +The brighter facts are that all these warring energies, whether of +men or ordnance, are the force of one God, energies working out of +the muddles men made. Man has disturbed the balance. Man now makes a +sacrifice in order to restore equilibrium, to release the powers he +misused. + +The greatest conceivable struggle must sooner or later come between the +higher and lower nature of every living thing. Man is now preparing +himself, collectively and individually, for this final conquest. His +prime illusion seized him when he turned away from his own faults, to +correct the faults of his brother. The secondary illusion is that the +brother will not be able to care for his own faults. The third is that +we must help our brother correct himself. The fourth is that if he +won't do it himself, in the way we say, we will do it for him. + +The world (and this means me) is just learning the rudiments of +war, just finding out how much vitality man has, how much courage, +the stupidity of all fear, the size of the globe, the depth and +possibilities of the elements, including the human soul; is perceiving +more of life and accepting intenser vibrations than ever before on this +terra. All this knowledge will go into the True Peace some day. But in +these nearby years, men are prayerfully eager to get back "home," where +all these godly lessons may be forgotten. + +Real War will positively show man that he must remember what he is +taught. When he comes "home," he will enlist immediately in the +interior struggle with his lower self. His war with other men will +train him to fight with the greatest enemy on earth, his own ignorance. + +I have already enlisted in this big war. My first victory was in +seizing the fact that the world is me and I am the world and nothing to +the contrary. The universe rises and falls with me, subjectively. The +goal is to make it--objectively. + +I am locked with impatience these days. + +After that, comes fear. + +I may go to the red fields to learn the nonsense about fear. Of course +I can theorise it now perfectly, and practise it at periods. But I +want it steadily, the non-wobbling wisdom. Already I have conquered +some fatuousness in myself. Out of my jubilation I write to you.... +Of course, the Many is not a model to follow. The "Many" is a picture +in every man's mind, composed of the inferior things that all other +men do.... Inclusion--intensity--love--creativeness--these Stonestudy +precepts contain all the story. They are certainly the way out and up +and over into Life. + + * * * * * + +Shuk has done a little sketch or two on the big Romance of the new +social order: + + Humour, universality, the highest good will, he writes, are the + symbols that flame from the temple of the New Race.... Everywhere + appear children of the renovating, re-vitalising, more cosmic + tribe. They are easily recognised. The hope of a full and decent + future is with them. + + They will do little according to their immediate predecessors, and + much by an inner light of their own. Being wise and simple and not + destructive, they will gratefully accept all that has proven true + for earlier peoples. But they will instinctively have nothing at + all to do with the traditions based on three-score-and-ten, or any + other of the unfortunately solid viewpoints that frost the world + to-day. + + They love the world, have come to claim it whole, to reclaim + it from deluded ancestors who were solemnly, from birth, bent + upon deeding and selling and stealing and fencing in bits of the + planet's surface. Forerunners of this happier race have shown + themselves to be masters of materials, true workmen in the solid + stuffs; but by their sense of humour they are saved from any + impulse to seize and sit upon fragments of earth. + + These new ones are born with an urge towards unity. Their task, to + set the world in order. Their means, not so much a rearrangement + of objects as a very intense activity along the roads of Beauty + and Truth, in a co-operation unstudied and normal with the rest of + mankind and with the Igniting Principle. + + It may be observed that Beauty and Truth are too vague to produce + effective action in a solid world. This is invariably a saying of + the material-minded, however virtuous they may be. It is they who + loudly demand a dull utility over and above Beauty, and apart from + it. It is they who have agglomerated the chaos that is in this hour + threshing about in dust and blood. Their sober iniquities are the + fertiliser to force the seed of the New Race. + + It is not a cosmic blunder that the great minds of the world are + found in art, including the supreme art of mystic religion--and + seldom in the arena of statecraft. The world was never managed from + a senate chamber; the cosmos is not guided by a king. When rulers + of the past have become great figures, that greatness usually + rested upon their gift of poetry, their love of art or wisdom, or + some religious quality. + + Poems of twenty words have outlived the might of forty wars. A + great book is a higher achievement than a sweeping political move. + The dullest changeling with an obsession may set his seal upon a + war to the death of ten million men, but in the few lines of a true + poem are stored the honey of millenniums of human life. A genuine + work of art is more potent and practical than any blood-bought wall + of tribal separation, more vital and immediate than the doings of + armies. To judge of this properly, one need only know both kings + and poets. + + Of the early kings of Rome, it is Numa who is remembered--and he + was in harmony with Celestial Order. Of countless other Roman + figures, the average mind turns first to Cæsar, who was a literary + man, and whose passion to write outlasted every march of his + legions. Greece had kings and statesmen and great generals, yet + it is her wise men who stand foremost. The conquering Alexander + is famed chiefly because he was the unwitting distributor of + Grecian beauty. In fact, Greek history began with Homer, the poet, + and American history with Columbus, the dreamer who is still our + creditor. The mystics of old China reached for the Torch of Light, + and they might have attained a true dominion over the planet, had + not their fear-inspired kings built a Wall and gelded the Empire + once for all. Gautama Buddha gave up kingcraft in order to gain a + higher mastery. Mohammed lived on the Road. Jesus the Christ set + free an energy in the world that is only gaining its real momentum + after two thousand years--and he firmly refused a material crown. + +... A hopeful dream, the poem of an autumn afternoon, the building of a +sphinx or a pyramid--these are not subject to time or conditions. They +remain. + +So the Children who are the hope of the world are not dismayed at the +medley of illusions emanating from the so-called ruling class. Emperors +and premiers do not get very much done either way; they themselves +abandon their own works over night. They are deserving of profound +sympathy. They only spread out more manful chaos to be set straight by +the master craftsmen--the artists, humorists, vitalists, mystics.... +Beauty is the sun-bright flash of the Infinite. + +With duty raised to a joy, and pain forgot, the Singers come, the +Builders, the Quickeners of man. The Unforgettables of the so-called +past were of this stock. Their leisure is deep--of a sort that sustains +the finitudes. + +All the good goals of yesterday are to be counted as mile-posts. +Direction is more important than any imaginable goal; unvarying +tendency is more direct and splendid than any creed; the white path of +the quester is more precious than a stationary heaven. + +The modern children cannot stop on this side of the horizon because +they are creators. Life is their religion. Their rites are broad and +deep as man, as ancient and reverent as time, as new as dawn. + +They do not reject the Vedas. They re-fashion the Upanishads in their +own hearts. They study the travels and hopes of Jesus, listen for +the divine songs of Orpheus, penetrate the glitter of numbers with +Pythagoras, find satisfaction in the Mohammedan thinkers who connected +Aristotle with Moses. These names do not belong to the past. The +many Buddhas are perpetually modern. Kabir lives to-day in Tagore. +Heracleitus and Plato are still living springs. + +In just the same sense, the children of the New Race are old as +the Pelasgian Zeus, though in point of time they are here for work +and play in 1920. But their vitality, reality, beauty, power and +achievement--these are affairs of all time. + + * * * * * + + + + +19 + +IMAGINATION + + +Many mystics have lost touch entirely with the deep sunken abutments of +the spiritual edifice--the footings in matter. They are deeply wise in +the mysteries and unfoldments of contemplation, but lose their way like +mindless lambs in the world. We idealise a practical mysticism which +dares to walk the earth in the heat of the day, dares to contemplate +the stars as outposts of the heavenly kingdom, launching the vision at +last, not only to the Holy City, but to the Throne of Itself.... + +Talks with Shuk at Stonestudy had a tendency to make us see the big +Unseen politics and diplomacies and rulerships of the planet. Here are +a few paragraphs from one of his letters which show the quality: + + ... Kings and presidents are the most hampered of men. Great + generals are silly without their armies. To remove externals + from us, to rid our minds of the illusive and the inessential, + is simply to clear us for action. Even a gunner, in taking aim, + regards the object or enemy as an abstraction, and focuses his + whole attention upon his own instrument, his sights. If he + actually looks at the enemy, he will not hit him. The billiardist + first glances over the entire table, then, to make a true shot, + concentrates his full attention upon the tip of his own cue. + Perhaps the great leader of armies does not regard individuals or + see them as men, but as extensions of his own body, and in time of + stress, he has forgotten them completely save as abstract power + for his use, and that use he determines interiorly. Even the most + material-minded of men, in the crux of worldly and four-square + events, sinks into deep and effective cerebration. Can we, who + realise this as a conscious and direct principle, do any less? + + I think the Guardians are sitting together a little way off, + watching with grand interest, to see just how much of a mess + mankind can make. Man is always given lavish supplies with which to + create works of art that may prove equal in beauty and wonder to + the universe itself. Man does not yet see art in these materials. + + He must open his eyes before the Powers are able to help him. The + Guardians cannot operate against man's will, because their will and + his will, including yours and mine right now, are of one piece. + The will of the Guardians is better trained and cleaner, because + more experienced.... When men cease to shout for different things + from the same Father, they stand a chance of getting the Father's + attention. + + * * * * * + +We have had many astonishing hours in Chapel talking about these +"Guardians," the arrangements above, as below, one Plan governing all. +We do not care to bandy about the name of God a great deal, for we +realise that He is most unseen when embodied in matter; that He is apt +to be far from the mind that makes familiar with Him in words. Yet all +stands for Him, all reveals Him. The farther we can see beyond mere +eyesight, the more we realise that He is _not_ standing exactly in +person, just outside of the boundaries of matter. + +There are hierarchies, so to speak. There are messengers and couriers +and charioteers, saints, pilgrims, angels, courtiers, priests and +politicians, grades and authorities represented there, such as we find +in Matter and Romance here.... Shuk and Steve and I used to hypothecate +the existence of a White Council back of all the religious movements of +the world. By humour and analogy and romantic speculation, we arrived +at the point of view that the world religions are one at the top, and +that initiates, illuminati, masters are stationed at intervals to help +humanity up the slopes. We conceived the White Council as a centre of +wisdom love and power, holding up the cup continually for revelation, +guiding and guarding humanity's soul. We glimpsed the fact that the +leaders of the White Council might be beyond embodiment--at least in +avoirdupois--the holy of all holy men. Only a most pure and potent +messenger, we thought, would be permitted to reach this Inner Temple, +this Shamballah, compared to which the Vatican is a salon open to the +public and the monasteries of Thibet a concourse for pilgrims. + +After religion, we realised that there must be an upper centre for +all that is represented here below so diversely in politics and +nationalism. It couldn't be God Himself back of the dumas and senates, +reichstags, diets and parliaments. One does not pass from elevator-boy +to editor in chief in a great commercial office. If there were a White +Council back of all the religious movements of the world, there must +be a Big Mill back of all world-politics--a gathering of directors, +venturing to judge the problems of men because they had risen above +them.... These men could want nothing material. We perceived them +behind armies and thrones, manipulating kings and diplomats and secret +centres, in ways that even the closest agents did not understand. + +We concluded there must be another centre made up of the +master-artists, bringing through into matter (as the world can stand +it and as the little human instruments reach up for them), the great +delivering beauties of song and story, paint and verse and tale. And +this we called the Shop Itself. Sometimes we fancied that it was all +too much, even to dream of going there sometime to see the forms, the +marbles, the canvases, the manuscripts--the Artists themselves.... And +then we realised that, just as all the arts and all the religions and +all the political movements were one at the top, that Politics and Art +and Religion were one at the next eminence; that the Inner Council and +the Big Mill and the Shop Itself were one at the top, just as Wisdom, +Love and Power are; as Goodness, Beauty and Truth are; as Father, Son +and Holy Spirit are--three in one at the Top, and that was Himself.... + +And then we would rise from Chapel and go out and look at the +lake--Steve and Shuk and I. + +Finally one day we were told that we had done some right good +dreaming--that it was all true. We were advised that it was no affair +of ours if other people didn't get it right away; that they would get +it.... So we began to put these things in stories. They mean Romance +to us. Queerly enough the stories are coming through--one long one +especially, called _Archer_, that shows the downhere activities of the +Big Mill and the White Council and the Shop Itself. + + * * * * * + +I have said it often in this book--that our culture consists of the +quantity of properties that we have tallied off--the within with the +without. The Kingdom is within, also the King; the Sky and the Nest are +one; one are the heavens and the homing heart that finds its peace in +the deep vales where the adorable humanities come to be. The inmost and +the uppermost are one. + +We are where the torch of consciousness is. + +We are in the body, or in the mind, or in the soul; we are in time +or eternity, or we pass back and forth.... First we tally off the +far outposts of the kingdoms without and within; first we are mere +sentries learning to become clear-eyed and brave to stand alone--almost +outsiders, having scarcely heard of the Kingdom, dimly conscious, but +learning to become steady-eyed. Then we are called in a little--called +in to become couriers on foot, running to and from among the outer +provinces of the kingdom; then messengers to the Middle Countries; then +Charioteers to the gates of the City; then ministers to the court of +the King.... + +The day comes at last when we have audience with Him--when we rule +with Him, when we become united with Him. From the throne Itself, then +we perceive the outsiders, the sentries, the couriers, messengers, +charioteers, the winged riders and the deep-down men of the +dungeons.... With the fine tranquillity of power, we measure forth to +all, reverence, justice and grace. + + * * * * * + + + + +20 + +BOYS AND DOGS + + +Children of the new social order love strange creatures; they are +passionate about the care and protection of animals, but until they are +made to suffer, they are apt to be sceptical about the infallibility +of their elders. They are usually forced into silence early. I have +noted that their ideas are intrinsically at variance with parental +ideas--about purity, sunlight, dancing, foods, religion, odours.... +It takes a good man to break a horse or a dog. In a sense _break_ is +the word, although I would accomplish it with enchantment rather than +a gad.... This is invariable: "When the pupil is ready--the Master +appears----" an old occult saying, and another: "The first thing the +Master does, is to break the back of his disciple----" + +Stiffness of opinion, rigidity of holding to that which one has, +preconception, deep-rutted habits of mind--all these are fatal to that +swift and splendid growth of the disciple when he first finds his +teacher. For days the child is in a bewildering series of changes--made +over new each fortnight--reviewing lives of experience--razing the +old structures to the very footings for new temples of mind and soul. +The child must be ready to give himself--must give himself utterly. +The essential reverence is first required; the self is broken for all +births; one gives one's self to gain all. I would not try to quicken +a child who doubted what I was saying; and yet I have never sought to +make myself unerring or infallible. I like to have the young ones make +humour of my frailties, and at the same time believe there is something +priceless in our better moments together. There is no possibility of +front or acting. + +I seek to make them practise the presence of the Divine in themselves. +I tell them never to do anything alone that they would not do before +me. I take away all sense of sin from them. I sometimes congratulate +them on being especially close to us, because of mistakes. I seek to +set them free in all their ways, stripping the last attraction from +evil, jockeying them higher from a humorous and artistic point of view. +I show them the banality of many popular and obvious evils, the dulness +of paying the price for something _off_ form and of questionable taste. + + * * * * * + +There is a lot of humour and nobility about a good dog and a good boy +together. John has been sleeping for a few nights in a bit of a cabin +with an open door. He picked up a friend down on the beach somewhere, +the same that he described as "World Man Dog" in one of his letters. +I liked the tone of his voice as he talked with this old loafer named +Seaweed.... One evening I was sitting on the hill above the cabin, +so still that even a bird would have mistaken me for a part of the +landscape. + +World Man Dog came up the cabin grade. His head was down--thinking. His +tail was straight out behind him, as a dog's tail is when very much +engaged with his own thoughts. You could see that he was going to keep +an appointment; it was evident that he was afraid he might be late. He +did not see me, so completely was he engrossed in his own affairs. He +went right on up to John's door, entered, gave a look round the shack, +first eagerly, then to make sure. His face fell, his body sagged--down +he slumped in the middle of the floor--utterly dejected. As plain as +day: + +"Hell,--he ain't here!" + + * * * * * + +A real dog trainer is a wise man. I used to raise collies and was +around the benches some--watching the champions come and go. One old +trainer talked to me: + +"Styles change in dogs," he said, "but a good dog doesn't change. He +goes on and on. You don't get the good collies here on the benches any +more. This year they want the collie so fine that we have to pinch the +brain out of his head and break his lung-room in two. Last year we bred +for hair, not for body and brain. Look at that one----" + +He pointed to an old sire that had three seasons of the bench and +blue, a sweeper of prizes. I remember the time when such a head would +have started a stealer anywhere. The old collie had not lost form, +but styles had changed. A most stupid dog with a straight, narrow +head had won--not the shepherd type at all, but the head of a Russian +wolf-hound--a bit of the monster left in it, a drugged look in the +small black eyes; hysteria there, and not fealty--madness and not soul. + +"We breed them for the cities now--for porches and parlours," the +trainer added. "Yes, those great collie strains that we have been +nurturing for centuries to all that is brave and hard and useful--we +are putting the hair of the lap-dog on them now--long silky stuff, not +for snow and sleet. The collie walks by himself these days. No, we +won't altogether ruin the strain. Many individuals are spoiled, but the +race had come too far and too long to be broken down by a few years of +fancyfying." + +Of course, I was thinking of the children at every stage of the +talk--of city people and children. As a race, the city-bred have become +too fine. Life has worn them thin--given them the drugged look about +the eyes. The race will never get far in the art of living until it +comes home to the land and the restful distances and free flowing airs. +This is so true that it seems to risk wearing the eye and the mind--to +say it again.... + +It's good to see them--a boy and a dog together in the hills or down +by the edges of the land. There was a piece of decent collie in a +dog named Jack back on the lake shore. He was long in strength and +courage, but a bit shy in obedience. As a work-dog, he was ruined by +a man who knew less than he did, frequently the case in bringing up +dogs and men--whipped at the wrong time, every forming endeavour in +the pup-brain broken by that. He is seven or eight years old now ... +a clean dog, a very wise and kind dog, with a sly and quiet humour +that seldom is cruel and never falls into horse play--a lover of many +children and confident of an open door in many homes. + +I remember the dignity and beauty of his first appearance over the +bank from the shore, almost timed to our arrival. We were tender to +the collie in general, having passed years with them. Jack moved from +one to another accepting embraces with a kindliness that mellowed +that cloudy day. There was joy about it all. I stood back waiting my +turn with much self-control. He submitted to the welcome--to the last +detail, and a little later refused refreshments with perfect courtesy. + +When we came back the second summer, we found that a bullet had broken +Jack's right front leg. He had wintered out at times, had known much +pain. It was not that he did not have good friends who would have taken +him in, but I think Jack lost faith a bit in the pain and stress. There +was grey about his muzzle. One day he sat in the centre of the little +Chapel class. + +"I'd like to be as good a man as Jack is a dog," one of the boys said. + +"You'd be one more man," said another. + +The fact is Jack has filled his circle rather well. This thought came +to me presently with fuller meaning. I regarded him with knowledge of +three seasons. A clean dog, a gentleman, a master of himself, very +courageous and slow to anger, impossible for small children to anger--a +dog among dogs, but more than dog among men. + +"He _has_ filled his circle," I said aloud. "What makes a man look less +in these very virtues that Jack has mastered, is that a man's circle +is larger, and he has not reached the time of fulfilment as Jack has. +If the dog's accomplishments were suddenly lifted from his circle +and placed in a larger one, we would not be conscious of the fine +integration of virtues that keep us interested now." + +Men, lost in the complications of cities, yearn for the simplicity of +their early days on the farms; and yet they could not go back. The +simplicity they yearn for is ahead. That of the old country days is but +a symbol of the cosmic simplicity in store for us. Tolstoi turned back +to the peasants, yet the simplicity he craved was not there. + +The peasants are merely potential of what the New Race will be; the +peasants themselves must suffer the transition--must have their circle +widened and feel their little laws and their little sense of order +suddenly diffused over broad, strange surfaces. Their cosmic simplicity +will appear when the larger dimension is put in order. That which is +lovely in any plane of being, is that which is in flower--when it +has about filled its present circle. We are not less, intrinsically, +because our values are placed in a larger vessel, though we have a +renovating sense of our own insignificance. There is an order of small +men, so obviously a part of their very narrowness, that it becomes +instantly repulsive to larger souls. Many of the latter have flashed +off to the end of their tether for the time, preferring chaos, to the +two by two neatness of small-templed men. + +A secret of growth lies in these observations. We fill a certain +circle, restoring a kind of order in the chaos; and then the circle is +suddenly widened and that which was our order and mastery is loose and +diffused within the larger orbit. Herein are the pangs of transition. +We lose our way for the time in the vaster area, like a man who is +unfamiliar with an estate just purchased. There is but one thing to +do--to begin to work upon the new dimension. As we work, courage and +patience steal in. Presently comes the vision of the completed circle. +When this comes, our labour is pinned to a fresh ideal, and we are safe. + +In a hundred ways I have found it true that the vision comes in the +labouring hours. One may move for weeks about his new estate (or +manuscript), planning this and that, but the glimpse of the cohering +whole is denied him, until he has actually begun upon the nearest or +most pressing task. This is the miraculous benefit of action again. In +giving ourselves forth in action, the replenishment comes. The sense of +self ceases to clutter the faculties as we bend and toil. + +The days that are added to our experience each bring this story in a +different way: that the sense of self impedes reality on every hand; +that the loss of the sense of self in labour and service renders us +instantly quick to the animations of the spirit, without which at least +from time to time, a man belongs to the herd, and is lost, like all +gregarious creatures, in the will of his superiors. + + * * * * * + + + + +21 + +THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE + + +There is a man here who has found peace. I made a pilgrimage to his +house. A boy from the village went with me part of the way up the +mountain. The Pacific was presently visible upon the right hand, and a +spacious verdant valley on the left. I lingered a moment on the trail, +rejoicing in the quiet splendour, and then noticed a vine-clad hut +still farther up the slope. + +"That's Mr. Dreve's cabin," the boy said. + +I learned from him that this man Dreve was well-loved in the village +and in the big city beyond; that he was a very different man now +from the one who had come here a few years ago; that he was torn and +maddened then, cursing God, but too stubborn to kill himself. + +"What helped him?" said I, because the boy had paused. + +"Well, it wasn't the climate," he answered. + +I saw he was wondering if I were worth risking the truth upon. + +"Did he fight it out with himself?" I asked carelessly. + +"Yes," said the boy, and I now met a fine straight pair of eyes.... + +There was an old sharp wedge to the story. Dreve's sweetheart had +died--the loss twisting him to the point almost of insanity. He had +climbed this mountain, it was said, and remained for three days, until +the town began to search. The marshal had found him sitting up there, +where the shack is now. Dreve was quiet and normal, but confessed +himself hungry. He had returned to the mountain soon afterward, and +built his cabin. In six months, Dreve was all changed over. He seemed +to have a new body and new mind. + +"You said he's here four days a week," I suggested. + +"Yes, he goes to the city. He has a good business, but has mastered it +to the point that several younger men can run it. Dreve only gives two +or three days a week to business affairs, though he has been a great +worker----" + +"He's up there now?" I asked. + +"Yes." + +"Does he mind strangers?" + +"Not your kind." + +I thanked him, and added, "Tell me--he means a lot to you, doesn't he?" + +"All a man could," said the boy. "I'm going back now." + + * * * * * + +Dreve was middle-aged, clean-shaven, deep-eyed. Time had been driven +to truce in his case. His face showed many battles, but when he spoke, +a kind of new day dawned and you looked into the face of a boy. I +remained with him three days. We talked of the new magic in the +training of children. We talked of the New Age and the great song of +joy and peace that would break across the world when troops turned home. + +Dreve had _something_. He seemed to breathe something out of the air +that other men's lungs aren't trained for. He seemed to have _within_ +everything necessary for a human being, including vision and humour and +a firm grasp of the world. He was at peace about God and the world; +at peace also about death. Slowly it dawned upon me that this man had +walked arm in arm with life to the last abyss, and that life had been +forced to confess that she had nothing worse to offer, whereupon the +two had become fast friends. + +When a man can sit tight and lose everything he formerly wanted in the +sense of world possessions; when he has winnowed the last shams out +of the things called _fame_ and _convention_ and _society_; when he +has lost the woman who means all the world to him, and still loves her +memory and her soul better than the living presence of any other woman; +when he has come to realise that death contains everything he wants, +yet is content to wait for it--the idea of hell becomes a boyish thing +to be put away, and Lucifer returns to his old place as a Son of the +Morning. + +We stood together in the noon sun. Dreve did not even wear a hat. + +"I came here in great shadow and could not bear the light," he said. +"But one day I found my heart lifting a little as the sun came out. +Then I found that it was really true--that sunlight helped me. The more +I thought about it, the more I needed it; the more I loved it, the more +its particular excellence for me unfolded. Take anything to the light, +and it ceases to be formidable. Sickness is a confession. The time +is at hand when schools will teach that. Sickness is a confession of +ignorance which is a lack of light. If one is weak he cannot stand the +light. Transplanted things must be protected from the light. St. Paul +on the road to Damascus did not have enough inner light to endure the +great flash from without. Light works upon evil like quicklime--that's +why sunlight hurts the sick ones. It is also hostile to the utterly +stupid idea of what clothing is for--clothing that thwarts and +strangles every circulatory process of the flesh. There's nothing the +matter with sunlight----" + +The sun had not only redeemed the physical shadows of Dreve's life, but +symbolised the spiritual light which had come to him with the calm and +power of the greater noon-day. He did not speak in exact statements of +the one who was gone, but that romance, too, was like light about his +head. I thought of the wonderful thing that Beatrice said which helped +to heal the forlorn heart of her great lover: + +"I will make you forever, with me, a citizen of that Rome whereof +Christ is a Roman----" + +And I thought of the Blessed Damosel leaning over the barrier of +heaven with sweet and immortal messages for him who waited below in +the very core of earth's agony. In passing, the great lovewomen bridge +the Unseen for their lovers, who in their turn give to the world the +mighty documents of the human heart. In passing, this woman had become +everything to Dreve, so that I, a stranger, felt that he was not alone +but twice-powered. All his life was a prayer to her. He brought to her +spirit now the greatest gift that man can bring to his mate--the love +of the world through her heart. + +We had walked down to the ocean. Many young people were bathing in the +surf or playing on the strand. It was the presence of Dreve perhaps, +but I confess that human beings never before looked so wonderful to +me--a fearlessness and candour and beauty about the moving groups that +was like a vision of the future. All smallness of self was smoothed +away in the grand harmony of sun and sand and sea. + +"It's a kind of challenge to a war-stricken world, isn't it?" he asked +quietly. "Aren't they splendid together--the big boys and girls of +California?... Don't misunderstand me. I know the world. I'm not lost +in dreams. I know well the darkness of the world. But there are great +ones among the boys and girls playing together here. All are on the +road, but the great ones of the Reconstruction are already here in the +world--playing. + +"Great ones play," he repeated. "First we are labourers, then artisans, +then artists, then workers--at last we learn to play. That means that +we dare to be ourselves, wherein lies our real value to others--when we +dare to become as little children.... Hear them laugh.... You wouldn't +think this was the saddest little planet in the universe.... Look at +that tall young pair of sunburnt giants! She's a Diana, conquesting +again. Look at the wonder in his eyes! Perhaps it is just dawning upon +him that the man who walks with this girl must walk to God. + +"... Oh, yes, I know," he added laughingly, "there is flippancy and a +touch of the uncouth here and there--but we have all played clumsily at +first." + +I continually marvelled at Dreve's remarkable health. His stride up the +mountain-side was actually buoyant. + +"Did you ever feel that you could live as long as you pleased?" he +asked. + +"No." + +"I think one does not learn this until after one has wanted to die. +One must live above the body and not in it--in order to make it serve +indefinitely--quite the same as you would climb above a street to watch +a parade go by." + +I put that thought away for contemplation, knowing that it belonged to +a certain mystery of Dreve's regeneration. + +"You know," he added, "one has to get very tired to want to die. Those +young people down on the shore--they want to live. They are not tired. +They want to cross all the rivers. They mean to miss nothing down here. +They can't see through it all. It challenges them. But the time comes +when everything on earth seems to betray. Then you have to turn to the +Unseen for the big gamble. The world is learning it rapidly to-day. +Look----" + +We had reached his hill-cabin. + +He turned from the sea to the valley. Night was falling. There was a +big moss-rose plant that smelled like a harvest apple, and filled all +the slope with sweet dry fragrance. There was a constancy about it, +and the great sun-shot hill was blessed with the light and creativeness +of the long day. It was like the song of finished labour from a +peasant's heart.... One forgot the world, the war, forgot that the holy +heart of humanity was in intolerable travail.... The valley that Dreve +now pointed to was like an English pastorale. It had the look of age +and long sweet establishment in the dusk. My friend was quick to catch +the thought in my mind. + +"... It is like England," he said. "There was a development of +detail in English country-life as nowhere else. I think of cherries +and cattle, of strawberries with clotted cream, of sheep-dogs and +sheep-tended downs and lawns, of authoritative cookery, natural service +and Elizabethan inns.... Everything was regular and comfortable. One +forgot to-morrow and yesterday in England before the war. I heard a +dog-trainer, speaking of a pup, say, 'He's a fine indiwidual, but his +breeding isn't exactly reglar.' ... With a rush it came to me that +nothing in the world is regular now. England isn't a soothing pastorale +any more--everything changed, demoralised--but only for the present." + +The dusk was stealing down from the far ridges. Our eyes were lost +in the California valley which seemed to be growing deeper in the +thickness of night. Almost as Dreve spoke, I expected to hear vesper +bells from some Kentish village. His low voice finished the picture: + +"Country roads and sheep upon the lawns, vine-finished stone-work, +doves in the towers and under the eaves, evening bells and honest +goods.... I think of the ships going forth from England, boys from +the inland countries answering the call of the sea and finding their +fore-and-afters and men-of-war in Plymouth or Bristol.... You know +it is the things that make the romance of a country that endure? All +these will come again. All the good and perfect things of the spirit +of old England will come again.... Our hearts burn within to think of +the yearning in the world for a peaceful valley like this.... Think, if +I could take your hand now and watch the sun go down upon a peaceful +world ... hear the cattle coming home and sheep in the perfumed mist of +evening ... doves under the eaves and the sleepy voices of children.... +I think Europe would fall to screaming and tears, and then lose its +madness for strife--if the big picture of our valley at evening were +placed before the battle-lines as we see it now." + +Dreve stared a moment longer. I fancied I saw a bone-white line under +the tan, running from chin to jaw. + +"A woman was leaving her lover," he added. "It had to be so. Each knew +that. Just as she was going, the woman said, 'I forget--I forget why I +have to go away.' ... It would be that way with the soldiers, if they +could look down upon their own valleys and farms. They would forget war +and hurry down, saying, 'I'm coming!'" + + * * * * * + +I wanted to get closer to Dreve's secret of peace and power. I wanted +to tell it. Apparently Dreve wanted me to. Now, there's a price to pay +for these big things, but many are willing to pay the price if the way +is clear. Dreve had suffered all he could; then something had turned +within him, and he found himself in Day again instead of Death. + +"It must be told differently," he began. "For instance, if I should +tell you that the way is to love your neighbour as yourself, you +wouldn't have anything. Whitman said, 'Happiness is the efflux of +soul,' which is exactly true, but it didn't help me until I had +experience. Happiness is the loss of the sense of self. You can see +that clearly. All pleasure-seeking is to forget self. We loosen +something inside that sets us free for a moment, and we say we've had a +good time. + +"There are great powers within. The greater the man, the more he uses +this fact. We thought of steam as a finished power until the big +straight-line force of electricity was released. We can't explain it, +but we have touched certain of the laws which it obeys. The materialist +is inclined, as ever, to say that electricity is the last force to be +uncorked on the planet, just as he said that the kerosene lamp was the +last word in illumination. The occultist declares that there are still +higher and hotter forces, touching Light itself, and indulging in the +laughter of curves and decoration where the cold monster electricity +moves only in straight lines. + +"Men have died to tell the story that happiness is radiation, not +reflection--that we have it all inside, if we could only turn it +loose--that all pain and fear and anger and self-illusion disappear the +instant we enter the larger dimension of life, exactly as the moon goes +out of sight in the presence of the incandescent sun. + +"I was emptied of all that life meant in the world--but something new +flooded in. I saw that all was not lost, but that all was greater than +I could dream; that all was waiting for fuller and finer expression. +I saw that what I could do for you, or for any man or woman or child, +brought me a living force of the love I was dying for. It became clear +that I needed only to clear away the choking evil of self, in order to +feel that I was a part of the tender and mighty Plan,--to touch the +rhythm of the Source, from which all songs and heroisms and martyrdoms +come. + +"It has all been said again and again. There comes a moment usually +after much pain when the human mind realises that it is invincible when +working with the Plan; that it may even merge with a kind of Divine +Potency yet retain itself; that it can actually perform its actions +with the help of that mighty fluid energy in which the stars are swung +and the avatars are born. + +"A cold monster indeed is this electricity compared to the odic force, +the dynamo of which is the human will. But the magic of it all lies in +the reverse of the whole system of use. This force destroys when used +for self, but constructs when it is turned outward. Here we touch the +law again that happiness is in radiation--in the loss of the sense of +self--in incandescence--" + +Dreve smiled at me with sudden revealing charm. "I would say that it +was all in loving one's neighbour," he added, "except that it has been +said so much.... It is true. You seemed to know it to-day on the shore. +You seemed to see the great ones passing there. If the world could only +know the joy of seeing the sons of God in the eyes of passing men!" + + * * * * * + +Night had come. We sat at the doorway of his cabin, a waver of +firelight within, stars clearing above the misty sea. + +"It's all play when one gets into the Plan--all pain while one resists +the Plan," Dreve added slowly. "I used to think that I had a strong +will; that I had good will-force, as men go. It was the will of an +invalid child. If men could only know the force that is theirs to use +when they enter the Stream! One is asked to give up old habits and ways +and propensities--but only because they are harmful and impeding. All +which really belongs is merely obscured for the time. It returns to you +with fresh loveliness and power. One does not give up three-space to +understand four-space. The truth is he must rise above the former to +see it all. + +"It isn't you and I who matter," he said abruptly, after a pause. +"These things are for all. I know what comes afterward--to a man or to +a nation--when driven to the last ditch of pain. A new dimension of +power comes. That's what happens. That's what the New Age is all about. +That's what the war means. We shall learn our new chastity. We shall +emerge as a race into a more serene and splendid consciousness.... The +price--the dead.... I could tell you something about that. One must +have prayed for death to know about that. Don't think of that now--only +take it from me, or from your own soul, that the big Plan is all +right--that _They_ haven't made any mistakes yet--that the loved one is +only away for a time--busy--quite right--about the Father's business. +Another time for that. + +"I can't forget them down on the Shore," Dreve finished. "That was +play. It was all a laugh down there. The big forces and the big people +are always a part of laughter. The laugh will take you to the throne. +The Gods laugh.... There's a laugh that ends pain. There's a laugh that +challenges power. There is the laugh of the aroused lover in the world. +We shall hear the laugh of the world itself, when the big revelation +breaks upon us all that the Plan is good--that the Plan is for joy." + + + + +22 + +A DITHYRAMB AND A LETTER + + +I think we come through at birth with certain sealed orders to be +opened at distant points of the journey.... Ten years ago, as I lay one +night, ready for sleep, hand lifted to put out the light--my eyes found +these lines: + + _"Listen, I will be honest with you: + I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes. + + These are the days that must happen to you: + You shall not heap up what is called riches; + + You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve; + + You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd--you hardly + settle yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by an + irresistible call to depart; + + You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who + remain behind you; + + What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with + passionate kisses of parting; + + You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd hands + toward you.... + + 'Allons! After the Great Companions, and to belong to them!'"_ + +The thing had come around by India--a quotation from Walt, in a +little Hindu book of love and death by Nivedeta. It spoiled my night. +I resisted. Some entity connected with the lines seemed to smile +patiently. Deep within, I knew they belonged to me; that I should +have to realise them, line by line, then live them; that here was +a page from the envelope of my sealed orders to be opened after +clearance--opened far out on the white water. + +They used to strike me as hard lines until the warm laugh came up out +of them.... Romance means _Not to stay_.... Bit by bit, the story +unfolds that the Plan is good--that the Plan is unutterably good, that +one needs only to rise into the spiritual drift to find that all are +God's countries. First the big physical drift, the drift around the +world, along the waterfronts, missing none until the laugh comes, until +the petty things of life, in _no_ arrangements or combinations, can +hold your faculties or even long attract the eye. You know them all. + +One must learn the world first; one must not miss the world tricks. The +men who have lived most have laughed most. But don't stay too long in +the labyrinths. They are passages of pain so long as you give yourself +to them. Still you must solve the maze. After that, don't stay--don't +stay to pick up threads. There are other mazes, other drifts. I +assure you life is rich and brave, but there is nothing so healthy as +a laughing discussion of death in one's own mind--the next step of +the cosmic adventure ... and to travel light there--not to take our +mortgages, our material ambitions, our stone houses full of effects--by +no means to take our card-indexes and letter files--to travel light, +to pick up the brighter shells by the way--every glimpse ahead showing +higher light--a more spacious and splendid prospect.... Why carry +our furs and frost-proof igloos for this adventure in the deeper +tropics?... To become as little children--to be open hearted and free +handed--to listen, to believe, to make pictures, to see across apparent +separateness, to forget one's self in the daisy fields, to love the +light and the land, to fall into ecstatic speculations! You can't do +that if you carry the plumbing of your house in mind, and stop suddenly +to recall if you turned off the water in the laundry-tubs. + +Weigh up your external possessions--weigh them carefully--for their +amount is the exact measure of your infidelity to God.... + +To become as a little child--to know that the forests are filled with +other than things to eat--to love the mysteries awake, to love the +fairies and the hidden flowers into strange unfoldings--to be fearless +and free forever!... The Little Girl writes of her love for it all as +it comes: + + * * * * * + +... I have a half a minute to send my love and strong pull for _High +Flight_. We wanted this to be the magic week of the Home Coming, but it +must be best to wait a little longer. Wait, wait--that is the old song +of Earth--young waiting--big waiting--holy waiting. _I love it._ I love +the suffering of it. One is great according to how well one can wait. I +am loving Earth terribly. It is close to me, with its strange music. + +Last night, the Valley Road one and Esther and I were together--touched +great white things--talked and laughed and loved until long after +three. Each in her way is a power wherever she touches. Each has +everything within. Each is pure and wonderfully sweet. We wait, +openarmed, for you. There are wonders in Muriel--and in others. I +dream constantly of the beauty to come. Nature's ecstasy will be +bursting forth in fulfilment when our Lovers come home. I'm so _glad_ +this morning! + + * * * * * + +The children learn it so easily. I like to stop in this book and +let them say it--the big story of the Seamless Robe, the story of +Democracy. The young men say it strongly; and tenderly the young +women,--the dream of the mate in their hearts becoming the dream of +the Master. They all say it so thrillingly for me in their words and +lives--the little boys coming in with their tales of prairie and the +deeps; literally it is here out of the mouths of babes.... Dreve found +it in a woman, another in science, another in music, another in the +open road. Every man is his own way, his own truth and life. It waits +for all.... We keep fanning day and night, many of us who work at +home--the fanners of the Hive! We cool and harden the great spiritual +concept into matter, as the cathedral spires of wax appear and harden +in flaky white under the masses of the bees.... + +I laugh at my own intensity.... It is our one tale, told in essay and +story, in different terms for cults and schools, for soldiers and +clergy, in verse and prose, with dignity and in slang, but here it runs +best out of the mouths of babes ... helping the Big Democrat get his +story through.... The rest of the chapter is the Little Girl's: + + +THE SOUL SPEAKS. + +I walked through a field. The brown soil was upturned and all the +richness of man's labour was in it.... The morning sun was lifting a +grey veil of dew up to its heart; the earth was fresh and cool where +it had rested. My feet were bare and sank into the soft richness. The +field was wide and pure and fragrant and alive. It seemed to sing as +the sun grew warm upon it. Ecstatic birds flew close and balanced +themselves magically in the sparkling air. + +I happened to be just ready to receive the golden loveliness that the +old Mother is always eager to give, that morning. She helped me to feel +the goodness of all things--the power and beauty of all, and the great, +giving spirit.... Inside I felt keenly the presence of Soul--that was +the secret. Soul awakened and breathing, Soul waiting and eager, Soul, +the holy quickener.... The heart beat peacefully, the brain hushed all +unnecessary thought and listened. I lay down upon the sweet ground +there--the body relaxed and forgotten. + +Then, from the depths within, I heard the sound of the Soul's voice +speaking these words: + +"This is the appointed time. Long enough have I sat mute and silent in +the darkness. We have learned the lesson. The circle of separateness +is complete. We are ready to enter a new globe now, a globe much +larger than the one we have known, much more wonderful. In it there +are greater tests than we ever had before. But the new tests, instead +of being painful, are joyous; not separateness is ahead, but union, +oneness in all things.... Long have you gone your way alone, down the +road of deafness and blind eyes and pain; and not the way I would +have led you, though perfectly right, for it was an education. The +blindness and darkness of it has taught us what _not_ to do, therefore +we know the path.... Ours were not object lessons; always we have +learned through opposites.... To learn the great lesson of listening, +we talked much. We told others of the paths they should take long +before we thought of following our own. We hated all things, to learn +how to love; we took all to ourselves, to learn how to give. We did +the things of death, to learn life truly.... We have suffered great +pain to know the secret source of the everlasting joy. We feared, in +order that we may become fearless, and know the mystery of the dark. +We chose the road of separateness to feel the ecstasy of oneness and +completion at last. We entered the terrible sphere of time and space to +transcend both and be free. We took upon ourselves pounds of tiresome +flesh, to make of it a golden symbol of the great spiritual beauty and +freedom. We asked for everything at first, but through our desiring and +brooding, we learned the most wonderful lesson of all--wanting nothing +but to give. + +"All is for us. The Path gleams before our eyes--the long, sunlit path +leading to the Father's house. I go home with my love by my side. By +crying out in agony, and by weeping bitterly we have learned how to +_laugh_. The world is needing us; we contain all things. From now on, +we live as one in Wisdom, Love and Power." + + * * * * * + + + + +23 + +THE MATING MYSTERY + +I thought a great deal about Dreve's love-story in relation to the +young people, in relation to the love of humanity, and in relation to +the mystical growth of a man denied the mate on earth. In the first +place, there must be many great love stories in the coming decades of +reconstruction, if for no other reason than that great children are +coming in. Such friends and brothers and comrades-of-all-the-earth can +only be born through the excellent and adequate love of man and woman. +In a recent novel, an old priest of the Gobi tells something of the +love story of the future to a young American who is greatly troubled in +his romance. I quote three or four paragraphs because this expression +in fiction is clearer than I could write it again. Rajananda says: + + I have watched your devotion for the woman and it has been a holy + thing, my son. You love well. She has become more than earth-woman + to you. She has become the way to God. This leads to true _yoga_. + Where there is love like yours, there is no lust. Without these + trials you could not have known so soon the love that will bring + you in good time to her breast. The ways of easily-wedded pairs + sink into commonness soon--the dull and dreamless death. It is + those who are kept apart, who overcome great obstacles, who learn + the greatest thing of all--to wait--who touch the upper reaches of + splendour in the love of man and woman, and thus prepare themselves + for the greater union and the higher questing which is the love of + God together. + + The seer must know the hearts of men. Knowledge of love is the + knowledge of God. Love is the Wheel of Life; love is the Holy + Breath that turns the Wheel. The seer is far from ready for his + work in the world, who has forgotten from his breast the love of + man and woman. And then, my son, we are almost at the end of the + night of the world. The Builders are coming in to take the places + of those who have torn down with war and every other madness + of self. These Builders must be born of men and women--the New + Race--but of men and women who have learned what great love means. + + ... Listen, my son: in the elder days men put away their women to + worship God. The prophets, the seers, the holy men walked alone, + and left the younger-souls of the world to bring forth sons. The + time was not ripe for the race of heroes, therefore the mere + children of men brought forth children. And all the masters spoke + of the love of God for man, and the love of man for man, and the + love of woman for her child, but no one spoke of the love of man + and woman. All the sacred writings passed lightly over that, even + the lips of the avatars were sealed. But now the Old is destroying + itself in the outer world; the last great night of matter and of + self is close to breaking into light; the time for heroes has come, + my son, and heroes still must be born of this sacred mystery--the + love of man and woman. So all the priests have this message now, + all the teachers and leaders of men, even I, old Rajananda who + speaks to you, and who has never known the kiss of woman--all are + opening to the world the great story, unsealing the greatness of + the love of man and woman.... For the Builders are coming, coming + to lift the earth--the Saints are coming, my son--old Rajananda + hears them singing; the Heroes are coming with light about their + heads and their voices beautiful with the Story of God.... And now + I must sleep. I go to my daughter, who waits for you.... Once, + before you came, she rested my head and filled my bowl in the stone + square at Nadiram. Even now she waits for you in the hills of my + country--not far from this place, my son---- + + * * * * * + +In the big expansions of life, in moments of great happiness, or +hard-driven by pain--most of us have realised that the higher we rise +in human consciousness, the nearer we get to the All. Thousands of +people now living have risen, for short periods at least, above the +sense of separateness, in which they realised that the finest and most +exalted love a man may have is for "the great orphan, Humanity." + +The human heart is awakened through the love of one, to the more +spacious expression for the world. All life is a learning how to love. +The last love of the flesh and the rolling years, before man turns his +love from flesh to spirit, is the grand passion of man and woman, yet +man does not abandon the woman in turning to Humanity or to the Unseen. +Rather, hand in hand, the eyes of the man and woman are uplifted to one +star--the Apex of a Triangle perfected.... Yet one must not turn to the +Unseen until he has learned the full agony and ecstasy of the seen. + +"Love humanity by all means," I tell younger ones, "but learn what love +means first. Do not undertake to destroy passion until you have learned +its glory and madness. Rather lift passion to adoration, and use it, +full-powered, upon that which unfolds forever for your worship. It is +not well to kill out a personality until you get one." + + * * * * * + +Our youthful reconstructionists are apt to stir the community with +opinions or actions, which have to do with their own heart stories +and the world's romance. They have a way of confounding the seasoned +authorities of pastorate and parish, with embarrassing questions in +regard to method and magic in the making of two souls into one. These +young people may not be modest according to Elizabethan ideals; in +fact, the young women are apt to go half-way in the choice of the man +who is to be the father of her children, but this is an essential of +innate beauty and fastidiousness. More and more the higher types of the +new social order are questers for that single and holy mating which +brings nearer the dream of the beautiful and heroic in children, and +which gives us a glimpse of a future to die for. + +The story of Romance cannot be written nor interpreted in life without +its hill-rock, named Liberty. There is no man-made law for love. The +first business of human beings is to find their own on earth. All +makeshifts part away; all short-range systems scurry past; all comets +and asteroids cease to be considered, when a pair of suns whip into +each other's attraction. And so it is with a true-mated pair. Those +who have dreamed long and kept themselves pure, realise here below for +a time the raptures of the elect. The new generation has a sense of +this; and while its eyes look hard and daringly for its own, its finer +examples preserve an integrity for the one until he is found. + +The New Race realises that promiscuity is only a lack of taste. To draw +the fulness and redolence from a book or a friend or a lover, from any +episode or fabric of life, one must search for the true, as well as the +beautiful, and the beautiful as well as the good.... Perhaps that tells +it best--it dares to love Beauty, this New Race. It means to bring +back the beauty of the body as well as to breathe forth the Soul. Its +devil and its danger is Paganism. It loves Nature so well that it is in +danger of forgetting that the old Mother is not complete in herself, +but a manifest of her Lord Sun.... + + * * * * * + +As to the liberty of its loves--the New Race realises that one cannot +be held, except by vulgar hands, where that one does not want to stay. +A mated man and woman turn each other absolutely free, and the first +cry of their liberty is toward one immortal nest. Those firmly caught +in the pure dream are content to wait for each other. They do not +experiment. They realise the long road of romance--a road so long that +the three-score and ten is but a caravansary of the night. They build +above the flesh if for no other reason than to come into the greater +beauty of the flesh. Renouncing nothing, devoted to austerity only for +mystical union, carried away in no abandonment, they seek to achieve +that command of the body by the mind, and that command of the body +and mind by the Soul, which reveals the ultimate truth--that the plan +is for Joy; that the best of all things is for men who have mastered +themselves; that chastity is the breath and inevitable answer to +self-conquest. + +The growth of Romance through an ideal mating becomes a fusion at last +of all the loves of earth. Connubial blessedness is therefore more +reverently to be promoted than procreation, for upon it depends the +loveliness of issue. The New Race acts upon the conviction that the +love between man and woman is the holiest of earth expressions, rather +than the love of mother and child. The first contains the second. + +Still no earth love is the end.... Built through austerity and +idolatry, through denial and abandon, through madness and martyrdom, +through pettiness and chivalry, through pain turning less and less +slowly through the years to power, through a little zone of peace at +last (the calm before the greater storm) the fervour of man and woman +becomes, in the fullness of time, too strong for earth, and in the +final and keenest pain, the administry of a higher force begins.... +I mean to tell this in a queer way through the next three or four +chapters. Straight statements will not contain it quite--for it is +_still_ with dream, as yet. Rather I mean to weave the concept for +you--fold on fold--so that at the end you will have it, as they do who +have listened in Chapel many days. + +Flesh is not integrated finely enough to carry the higher ardours +of devotion. If the great saints who have learned to pour out their +souls in adoration to the Father should turn back to a mere physical +expression, they would blast themselves as well as the object of their +madness. The awakening of the higher forces of love lifts the eye of +the adorer from the breast to the brow of the beloved--from the brow to +the Initiatory Star risen at last to meridian. + +A new dimension of love is entered upon. All life tells the story. +Watch the big birds lift from the sand to the cushion of wings; watch +the airplane quicken its speed until it lifts from the monorail.... +Machinery of racking power in a falling house, is that great love which +has not yet learned to look above the body of the chosen one. + +This change is the last and highest pain of romance--the breaking +apart of the temporal, for the story of the long road. Man and woman +must go apart for the mastery of self, before they are ready for the +higher mating. The great love story invariably crosses the mountains +of separation. If we cling too long to the less, nature is outraged, +beauty is drained. Brief separations are dangerous, because the lovers +build recklessly with ideals and the rarest spiritual materials. +Meeting again too soon, they encounter an unmiraculous creature face +to face. If they had really completed the journey, finished the task +apart, they would have come into that tenderness which loves the human +frailties of each other, and which sees the manifest of three-score-ten +merely as a garment particularly made for a particular journey. + + * * * * * + +There is always wrecking work, before a new and wider circle is entered +upon. The time will come when men and women shall learn that the +magic of going apart is equal to the magic of coming together. In all +birth-times, in all transitions, the consciousness of the bearer is +changed--often queerly.... One can endure the primitive and the child +in the other's mind; one might adore the great play of passion, and +all the art of it; one might never weary of fragrance of throat, or +magnetism of hand, the inimitable plays and child things--but the mind +is forever the slayer of the real.... + +Remember, there is not a full union possible on the physical plane. +The body is the barrier that separates souls. Those who believe they +have all of each other in that which they see and hear and touch--have +far to come in the real love story. Have you ever asked yourself +what physical passion is? It is a frenzy to overcome separation. +This separation was necessary for the diffusion of life. It is the +outbreath, the going forth, the great generative plan.... Physical +passion does not satisfy the agony of the soul; often it only makes +the agony more keen. In the early phenomena of all great love stories, +there is encountered that blinding, bewildering need _to become the +other_--to lose identity, to fly somehow into the breast of the other +and be no more. This is keen pain of love but also an intimation of +greater union. + + * * * * * + +There was a man who had found much of beauty and power, much of the +Burning Desert and certain wonderful touches of the peace of the Hill +Country--in his story with a certain woman. She loved him in a way more +real than he dreamed. Life had shown him much to scoff at. He had been +glad to make the most, merely, of an exquisite playwoman. One day she +was down town to meet him, but he left her for a business appointment. +That afternoon, about everything he had in a material way was swept +from him--much to which his ambition had tied itself for several +years. The man was badly rocked. He walked the streets--shocked almost +to laughter, to find all that he had held for, and held to, plucked +from under.... At length he thought of the woman who waited. The +laugh of mockery quickened, because he thought of losing her, too--a +worldly-heart who would go with the rest--goods that perish. + +He knocked at the door where she waited. It was opened swiftly. He +did not need to speak.... She seemed above and around him. There was +a great still sweetness he had never dreamed of as a man (and could +only remember dimly as a child to his mother), arms of tenderness +and healing.... He saw that instant in her eyes that nothing of the +world ever did nor ever could really separate them. The queerest thing +about it all was, that he used a word he never could use before--a +word, as he said, that had been so badly worked by the world that it +needed a lot of washing before it was fit for him. Yet it came to his +lips--_wife_--in a way that showed him also a new meaning to the word +_forever_. + + * * * * * + +This subject of love and mating is only opened. There is much to say +in pages that follow, but now, apropos of nothing, if not this theme, +there is a chapter of letters. They somehow contain the spirit of many +things I have longed to express. Those to whom they appeal will find +the last pages of the book richer because of the insert. + + * * * * * + + + + +24 + +CHAPTER OF LETTERS + +I + + +We come up through many slaveries into freedom. It is the end of a +considerable road to be able to stand against the morning sun, saying: +"I want nothing but to give----" ... To be able to say this without an +answering laugh of mockery in the heart, where old King Desire sits +with his dogs. + +To be free--that is to be irresistible. Do you want love? You only +spoil it when you stipulate what the return shall be--how the +proffering of the return shall be ordered and arranged. The great love +is giving; great love is incandescence. One must be radiant to be +happy. It is so literally. It is so, fold within fold.... + +One sees gold, looking up from below, and its attraction becomes +eminent among all desires for the time. We pass it by and look down, as +the spirit of man should look down upon gold, and it becomes a mineral +merely. You can enjoy it as you enjoy other people's roses. It bestows +itself. Others seek to bestow it upon you. + +Hold to nothing in matter. It is slavery. Give yourself laughingly to +your work for daily bread without thought of result. Then, and not +until then, are you inimitable in your task. Order the performance of +your task with mere brain and attach it to your ambitions--you but do +what the many accomplish. Your product is multiple, not a perfect cube. +It cannot unfold into the Cross. It misses Resurrection. You must be +free, even to perform your work in the world. You must be free to be +irresistible.... Genius is approach to freedom. It finds its own paths; +it cuts itself free from the forms and vehicles of others. + +We have known the dark slavery of the opinions of others. Many of us +have cast off such bonds, who are still slaves to our own opinions. +We learn to stop lying to others before we learn to stop lying to +ourselves. Until we are free, we have no opinion that is fit to endure; +until we are free, our opinions are coloured and formed in the matrices +of personal self, which is subject to death. + +It's all so simple. We have to put down what is in our hands to help +others. We have to still our own thought to listen to another's saying. +We have to silence the self to hear the Master. + +This silencing goes on and on in all our work. Pain shows the way.... +We must traverse the deserts. We must cross all the rivers. We must see +one by one every material thing betray us. This is the Path--money, +opinions, ambitions, health, friends, desires, all betray so long as we +obstruct their approaches with our own conceptions and our own greeds. +We rise one by one above these illusions. The last and greatest is +that desire which is born in generation.... All the old reaches its +highest perfection in the human love story. All Nature binds one to the +loveliness of this tale. It is the way to the Way. Because it is not +the Way itself, it appears to end. The great intensities of agony now +begin. The soul realises that only the foothills of pain are passed; +that here are the mountains, here are the deep valleys that contain the +Gethsemanes and timbers for the Cross, and the plan by which the Cross +must be morticed and tenoned.... + +The sea, the mountain, gold, the rose, the child, the peasant's +simplicity, the coming of the coolness of evening, the glory of the +clay and waterfall, mist and cloud and star, the deep healing winds +that come slowly with their heavy fruitage of power from the mountains, +the swift winds with the holy breath of the Sea--all these in the +breast of the mate.... When this dream is taken, one bleeds, laterally +and full-length. One wants to die; thus he overcomes death. He feels +the great burden in which all other burdens lose themselves. When he +passes this highest series of inland peaks, the distances stretch clear +and shining ahead. This the test of faith because you deal with love +itself. Your soul, in its earliest advices, tells you that your love of +earth is pure. + +It is. It is good. It is the highest here. + +It is still to be perfected by the races, even by the new races, who +must be born bright with its untried magic.... But so long as it is +idolatry to that which is subject to change, it is hourly impregnating +the life itself with the seeds of pain.... + +You are called to the love of Souls. Sooner or later you must go. It +is the Path. It is the steep path to the Master. You give up all to +go this way--and then you laugh to find it all returned in lovelier +dimensions. You take your idolatry from the plane of mutation--lift it +into the glorious and changeless plateaus of the spirit.... + +You turn from the Seen to the Unseen. + +This is the passage. You are called to go alone a little way--to be +worthy of the great Meeting. You carry your gifts of the passage woven +into the Seamless Robe of your being. All that impedes day by day you +cast aside, as an army making a perilous retreat casts off day by day +its impedimenta--until at last you stand naked upon the eminence, and +the Voice says, "Be not Ashamed--I am the Beloved...." + + * * * * * + +Out of slaveries.... We think at first that God is without--at last we +look for Him within. We come from the happiness of the Father's House +making our great journey, but our Soul's quest continually is for the +happiness again. Yet we must not look back. It is failure to go back. +That which we have left unfinished, is not behind, but awaiting ahead. + +We are slaves to our bodily health until we learn that the body is +superbly fitted for obedience to the Soul; that it comes into its +rhythm and beauty only when mastered. Indeed the very process of +mastery is to lead it to the Fountain of Youth. + +We learn that truly to be rich, we must give continually. We learn by +the quickenings of our spirit that white lines run from the brows of +all creatures to an apex which is God--that God is all. All is God.... +All is one. We are one. We are brothers. One house for all at the end +of the Road.... We find the King in our own Souls. We learn from that +that all men are Kings. We bow to all Souls. All souls are rays of God. +We come at last to see the sons of God in the eyes of passing men. + +Our passion now is outpoured. That is joy. We ask nothing but to give, +to heal,--to permit the spirit of the Healing Masters to flow through +us, but first we clear away the obstructions of the self. + +Achieving our own chastity, we perceive the potential chastity in every +face. We are deluded no longer. The imbecile cannot hide our eyes from +the Flame. All purity must be found within. We have no fault with +others when we are cleansed. We see the heroes then, the giants, the +runners, the singers, the charioteers. + + * * * * * + +We learn that we can give nothing real away--that all we do for others +is service for ourselves. We give pain for joy, time for eternity, the +human for the divine--give to receive, give to be radiant. We must be +Flame to be fed by the Flame Itself. + + * * * * * + +We are prepared by every suffering, every humiliation, until the +personality bows at last.... Personality is good. It has brought us +where we are. Do not kill it out before its work is finished. We do not +realise its beauty until we see it mastered--until we see it with the +eyes of the Soul. All one story. We learn to love step by step. We love +ourselves, our possessions, our children, our friends, our mates, our +Masters, our God.... The higher we go, the more perfectly we contain +all the gradations. + +The last sufferings, the last tests, are so often through the human +love story, because all weaknesses are easily shown through that--all +our pains so quickly received.... The bright sandals of the Master at +last are heard across the Hills. One laughs then, for He brings with +Him the beloved we have cried for so long.... Not in the love of desire +after that, but the love of giving, the love that casts out fear, that +passes understanding, that fulfils the law, the irresistible love of +the Christ. + + +II + +... A wonderful morning--a rare Monday--the highest hold yet--all is +ascending. All beings are so wonderful. I sit on a certain bench to +work one morning--the next morning cushions are there for me.... I +speak a sentence from a book with a word how much it means and how +worthy to love--and the sentence is brought to me illuminated on +vellum.... They bring the finest fruits--honey for tea, cream for +peeled figs, black bread perfectly toasted, the perfection of unsalted +butter.... I walk up the mountain to work--and the voice of the +gardener is a benediction from the Most High--and I stand for a moment +looking toward your sea over the city, and the birds say, "It is time." + +There is a pool of lilies at the top, an Alhambran villa, great rose +gardens.... I come to the pool--dip my feet in the still waters and I +know from that how chill the night has been. I look at the lilies--how +far they have opened--and know the time of day. I pray for a moment +under a priestly Pine ... and my heart goes out in the new joy we have +found--the joy of knowing that one may be the king of the world and the +confirmed Son of God--if he but learn the one lesson--to want nothing. + +Pool of lilies in the morning sun. (A little lizard is walking along +the arm of the bench. My bare feet are quiet, and he wonders what kind +of barkless trees they are. He is here and there. One sees his body +move, not the members. The sun puts him to sleep.) ... The pool is +still as the waters of sleep. The Sea--I think of her always as the +emotional body of the world--the old Sea Mother with diamond-tipped +emotions. And then I think of the Master Jesus walking upon the Sea +and saying "Peace be still" to the stormy waters.... Each Soul must +say that to his emotions. We learn to walk upright upon the earth, +then to still the waters, then to have dominion over the birds of the +air--and last to be seven times refined in the Fire.... Earth, water, +air, fire--the first quaternary.... Yes, we are learning to say "Peace +be still" to the stormy waters. We do not know how beautiful they are +until they obey. + +... Out of the still waters in the pure blue starlight, the lily +blooms--the lotus on the still lagoons of the Soul.... Naked as a +serpent's head, the sealed bud rises from the water in the night.... +Out of the power that follows the peace upon the waters--for the blooms +of the spirit lift greatly in the tranquillity of the heart that +follows the storm--out of the power of peace upon the waters, the lotus +rises and waits like a bride in the dawn-dusk for her Lord Sun to brush +back the veils and find her heart. + + * * * * * + +It is only the beginning of heaven we find here. We weary of the +world and turn back to the Father's House. We have plucked the fruits +of pain--we have thirsted and hungered again and again.... Out of +the darkness we have formed the thought, at last, that there must be +quenching waters, and somewhere bread to eat that does not perish.... +You can say it in a thousand ways. The Prodigal tells the story. He +arises and turns back. Evolution has ceased, involution begins again. +He is being folded back to the Father with all the treasures of Egypt. +He has ceased to diffuse himself in generation, through which he has +become an integral part of every fibre of the world, and begins now to +call in and synthesise all his spiritual possessions. The processes of +diffusion were in pain--the integration is joy again. Each day of the +up-slope his step quickens. The more he knows, the more he believes. +The more he sees, the larger his faith--the more his treasures, the +more sumptuous his order. "Unto him who hath it shall be given." + +Again, it is merely lifting the consciousness from time to eternity, +from the cramp of space to the flow of the universe--from pain to +play--from desire to radiation.... One ascends and at each steps sees +farther. Day by day, the work of the installation of the higher powers +goes on. We give up nothing but that which impedes the inflow of +godly forces. That which we think we want to-day will look as absurd +to-morrow as the hopelessness of a child over a plaything broken. + +It's a way of loving every step. Thus we heal from the infinite tears +of the changes of matter and dissolution, and lift our love to the +Masters and the Immortal Gods. We dare love utterly only that which can +contain us. If the Masters loved us with all their power, we would fall +in the madness of too much light.... Always, they give us all the love +that we can endure.... We give our all to them and expand daily, until +we know the passion to break ourselves open in ecstasy, like the king +bee under the whirring wings of the queen. + +In the human body, the diaphragm is the surface of the waters. If +our consciousness is below that, we are in generation. To become +regenerated is to lift the balance of consciousness above--to +rise like the lotus from the face of stilled waters.... It is a +quickened vibration. Simultaneously, one lifts from cerebration to +intuition--from the time of matter to the spaciousness of Soul--from +the light of the camp-fire in the night, to the full day upon the +plain--from the son of man to the Son of God--from the pain of loving +with desire to the irresistible creativeness of wanting nothing but to +give. + + +III + +... I was watching the pool this morning--fish and frogs and eels +under the lily-pads--a slow cold life. They have colour and grace--but +eyes of glass. They move so softly down in the dim coppery light.... +I thought of the lakes and the seas, the simple cold of all life--the +coldest and most rudimentary in the great deeps.... Birds were playing +about in the rose gardens, darting in and out of the bamboo clumps and +yucca stalks. Humming-birds were continually fanning the trumpet and +honeysuckle vines.... I thought of the skylarks--throats that open +only as wings beat upward, and the infinite blue harbours where the +white gulls flash--the lonely lakes and tarns where the heron cross in +the evening and the loon cries at night--the cypress deeps where the +flamingoes commune in shaded glory, and the eagles that cross from peak +to peak, along the spine of the continents. + +... And then, of course, it came to me--the old conquest--how we must +lift our consciousness above the face of the waters and put on our +wings.... Many have almost finished with the waters of generation--the +emotional body of man, the same as the planet.... In the beginning, it +was necessary to "go down into the water"--the terms of the baptismal +rite. Regeneration is "coming up out of the water." The struggle +between the two dimensions is dramatically expressed by the faith, and +the lapse of faith, of Peter when he obeyed the Lord, and arose to walk +upon his storm-tossed lower self. His supplication as he sank saved him +from perishing. Regenerated, he walked with the Lord upon the waters. +I remember, too, the saying, "You must be born again of water and of +spirit----," the story of regeneration told once more.... + +It's a lifting from the cold, bloodless vibrations of the creatures of +the deep, to the winged passages of air and sun and starlight.... We +think that we give up joys of life--we plunge back again and again to +the dim cold waters--our eyes blinded at first by the light, our senses +frightened by the fragrance and the space.... As if the reflected +light of the lower cosmos could compare with the pure radiance above; +as if the love of desire could compare to the glory of the outpouring +heart--the heart filled with light--the fulness of spirit, the ecstasy +of wings. + + * * * * * + + +IV + +... The time comes in the progress of spiritual aspiration when the +generative impulse begins to manifest within rather than without. +Firmly and gently the thoughts are turned to the Image within or above; +the tendencies for outward manifestation slowly but surely give way.... +This work sometimes goes on rapidly. A hundred times a day the thoughts +of earthy attraction are finished with a soul conception, where +formerly the mere physical presence sufficed. + +Nothing answers thought more swiftly, but in this passage of mastery, +if a single desire eludes from the aspirant, he must meet it later +in a tearing and cumulative call. Surely at length the mind rises to +rule. One's conception changes from the fear, the torment and the red +haze, to gentleness and calm, a readiness to know _all_ the mysteries +of life--to care for and respect all functions as one only can who has +mastered himself. + +To cast them out in hatred is failure. That means the hardening. It +blights the beauty of the vales and all magic. + +When one begins to unfold the wonders of the kingdom within, as one is +called to do in the higher and contemplative spheres of the artistic +life, there is an increasing joy that makes it easy, more and more, to +lift the power of life from the torment and unrest of the generative +seas. + +One finds his dream of the beloved changed and infinitively endeared to +him. Patience, reverence, tenderness comes to the love that once knew +only the single passion of a male for the mammal. Even that, in memory, +becomes beautiful to eyes of wisdom and calm--all God's plan. One is +sensitive all through his breast for the unfathomable sweetness of life +and love. He sees the child and the immortal in the mate. He finds that +the body is truly sacred because he sees it with love and not with +desire. These are good tidings. They make one happy to write them. + +There are seven centres of ecstasy in the body. Through the mastery +of will and love and action, the life-force is lifted to dwell with +and awaken these centres. With each awakening, a new power comes--a +new joy--a new hill-range crossed toward the Father's House; with each +awakening, the beloved within is quickened in consciousness, and the +beloved without is held more dear. The wondrous story of regeneration +goes on and on, to the love that seeks to give itself utterly. To +love--that is all the Soul asks. + +Momentary passion swiftly passes in the increase of spiritual +aspiration. Its force is not killed, but used for awakening the higher +and immortal principles where real love abides. The hand of the loved +one becomes sacred unto tears, and the joy of life is to serve. + +The whole body is presently repolarised--the fire sparking upward--the +apex of the triangle turned upward--desire of soul instead of desire +of the body.... The mating of the mind and the soul is the larger, the +cosmic consciousness, awaited so long. This means that the Lord has +come into His Temple--the body made ready. It means that the mind and +soul are one, the house no longer divided against itself. The lover +is ready for the approach of his mate. Each has been cleansed at the +fountains apart.... + +One must be utterly weary of the old. This repolarisation of the +generative force cannot come until one has heard with furious passion, +in the depths of pain, the call to the higher life, the new quest. Not +repression then, but transmutation. One changes gently, often under a +mystic administry, but always with growing love for the body and for +the world, using the life forces for healing and concentration and +the power to listen to the Lord within--the Voice of the Silence.... +Upon the illumination of the seven centres by the life force, another +mystery takes place. The levitation of the spiritual life overpowers +to a considerable extent the natural gravitation of the flesh--the +down-pull of years. The result, of course, is the restoration of health +to all tissues of the body--the Fountain of Youth starts singing +again.... To you. + + * * * * * + + + + +25 + +ROMANCE + + +Affairs like these can only colour and illumine the upper side of the +clouds, so far as American fiction is concerned. One might write a real +novel of Regeneration, but the field of the story is not now for this; +the arteries through which the public is reached by the publisher are +not yet friendly to such a novel. We learn at Stonestudy to write what +we please, but we are content with still small answers, at least for +a time. We have ceased trying to force people to see the thing as we +see it. For money to live by, to take our places comfortably in travel +or sequestration, we retain the handicraft to write for markets that +pay. We keep in touch with the world--that is practical mysticism. We +rejoice in the dense pressures and tortures of world traffic. This is +very calmly told, as it should be. My young associates learn it easily, +performing the actions thereof, but for me, many years were required. + +Long ago I wrote a novel about a man and woman coming to a fervent +agreement to remain apart for a year before their mating, in order that +they array themselves in fuller glory for each other, so that each day +each would find the other more wonderful than yesterday. The novel +furnished much adventure in the intervening year, otherwise it would +have been still-born. What was the real theme to me apparently wasn't +noted at all. Yet separation is as essential as companionship for the +real Romance. A man who does life in a book must know this much, even +if he use his knowledge sparingly. It's all a laugh in the higher +workmanship. Romance--each has his idea of that. Each does his best by +that. Here's a document of the day from John which gives his idea very +well: + + Since I was first with Steve and Fred and Irving and Shuk, I + have had the great sense of wanting to be out and away from the + world--to be with them _one at a time_. In the Rockies or in the + misty isles of the sea! All of them have a different meaning and + sense. _One_ will mean the Rockies or the misty mountain, saddels, + foamy bits and lathering horses. Another will mean the tarry smell + of the hold of a ship, the flapping of sails in the moonlight, and + the smell of black coffee coming up from the galleys. Another will + mean the sun betin desert--camels, and men stooping over a fire. + They are all my comrads. + + Fred is a young sea-writer. We are great pals. We yousto go down + and lie in the sand, read, talk and meditate; then a little later + we would take exercise and a long swim, then rub each other down. + They were wounderful days--those. I got right to the heart of Fred, + and he did to me. He yousto come over at night and sleep with me. + Those were the nights! I got so attached to him, but we had to go + apart. He is in New York now, going to college, and I am here in + California. It does not seem right for me to be in this God blest + place in the Youneverse, and he in the slums of the world, going to + college. But it is the Plan, or it would not be this way. + + The new race will stay high all through partings; then they cannot + last long--for there is nothing to stay away for. When pain + leaves, then all will be ready for the road and the great comrads, + horses and the road of greatness. It is all ahead. In the great + future--all ahead--my comrads--all comrads--the world will be all + comrads! + + * * * * * + +All our days, as tellers of tales, we try to tell, not stories, so +much, as what Romance means to us. The very glory of life is that there +are no two pictures the same.... To me, Romance means _not to stay_! +It was hard to learn. Not to tarry in the senses, if for no other +reason than to know the full beauty of the senses. One must not miss +his train; one must not linger after curfew has sounded. There is no +grey confronting of misery--like that of meeting one's own commonness +catching up. + +It's stiff grade work all the way, but there are heroic moments. We +learn to take a supernal, rather than a sensuous joy. The most rending +of lovers is the most passionate saint.... When Mohammed finally got +his morals in working order, the desert was said to be full of slain.... + +There is something to do with _martyrdom_ in my dream of Romance in +later years. All pain and fear has gone out of that word--a singing +about it. The name _Kuru t'ul Ayn_ comes to my mind in thoughts of +Romance--"Consolation of the Eyes," martyred soon after the Forerunner +Bab had been shot in Tabriz. I cannot tell why exactly, save that she +had beauty that had turned to loveliness, and many men had looked +through the door of heaven in her eyes--some haunting mystery there of +beauty and bestowal--the blending perhaps of the love of man and God in +the same woman-heart, passion lifted remotely above the common rules of +life, transcending every man-made institution. + +One of the Little Girl's ideas of Romance is a hill cabin, an open door +to the dusk,--baby heads weaving under her hands--warm air coming up +from the valleys, but _his_ step not coming that night.... Here is a +suggestion from one of her letters: + +Have just been out in the garden planting little seeds that will grow +big and strong so that they can be put into shining pots and cooked for +the Stranger's dinner--tiny carrot seeds. They had to be rolled over +and over between the fingers before they could decide one by one to +fall into the rich warm earth. Planting little seeds at sunset! Does it +not awaken in you something of the old days we spent so close to the +soil? Radiant dusk? But you have to look _back_ to see how sweet the +purity and simplicity of the peasant's life. The peasants themselves +do not know. To-day holy hot sunlight and lilac bloom--could there be +a more wonderful day than that? And Chapel so full of power, then a +planting of little seeds at sunset. Ah, Mary! I am happy as I dare to +be in a world that is choking in its own blood. At least we are open +and ready for any work if it is ours. We hold up our arms asking for +hard and painful tasks that will fill us with that singing conquest +that cries aloud: "None have more pain to hold than we!" ... We are all +working toward you, toward that height. You will be waiting for us with +open arms out there. We all send white love to you--our waiting Mary! + + * * * * * + +Peasants and mill-girls, or the dim lacking faces of the +passers-by--always these join to the Little Girl's quests and dreams +of the spirit. Two brief additional cuttings suggestive of her idea of +Romance follow, from the twelve-year period: + + The first great vision of the quest must come to a soul over the + plough, in the peasant's body--dissatisfaction with self and + surroundings. This is the beginning of everything. The person who + is content with small things, small thoughts, does not move. His + soul stays asleep. With awakening comes hate and anger and much + simple blackness. It is just _that_, which gives him the power to + stand up against the ways he has known so long--to stand up for + himself--to push the new vague dreams through to life and light. + It is all blind at first, but great and brave, too. The call that + would come to the peasant would be to the Town--to many men and + things, for that is just the opposite from his life. In a simple + way he would go to the depths of the worst he could find--to the + extreme. + + The thing that is holding so many from their own, is contentedness, + satisfaction. The longer one holds to this, the lower he sinks, + until he is buried in himself.... The questers who have come up + into the light, are brilliant, flashing, beautiful. But the souls + of the "white torrent" are rushing on through the dark night, a + night that grows darker and darker as it approaches the day. Their + faces are tragic, drawn, expectant; there is a sort of red-dark + cloud that they are tearing themselves through.... Only the poor + fat ones! they fill you with sadness because you can not help them + and they are not trying to help themselves. They seem to sink + almost visibly, farther and farther down, as they laugh and smile, + and nod their heads to each other (only to each other). The light + around them is really not a light at all--just a colour, a cold, + grey-black colour that looks almost dead. You could laugh if they + had anything to do with you, any power over you--you could laugh at + them and tell them that you were laughing, but their helplessness + hurts you. _They_ can only hurt themselves. There is absolutely + no humour in their faces nor in any of their movements. They are + all sober; they can not laugh inside. Always it is the sign of + flight from God to lose the sense of humour. For humour is a great + inner glowing--the power to overlook, to forget the meaner things + in people and in life. It is a power to forget one's self also, + to laugh at oneself.... I see the New Race as a line of Classic + Ruffians--a Troop of Mystic Warriors ... singing their glorious + song of stern compassion and deep love, filling all with their + questing for power and beauty.... I hear their laughter." + + * * * * * + +She paints the City Street a bit darker in this: + + * * * * * + + Dim faces, full of blank suffering and of living death. Dark + and noisy streets, crowded stores of trade.... Men--little men, + following their women, carrying the babies. The mother part of me + goes out to those little men. Down the ages, mothering imprints + its pain upon our souls. And their women now--with faces wanting, + always wanting, everything in them _wanting_! I have been carried + away by these dim hungry faces. I have seen them staring at me + with blank surprise. But then they hurry on, and the forgotten + babies cry. Hushing them, the women pass--little men following. + + * * * * * + +... The pain of utter isolation--somehow this means Romance to me, in +a deeper fold of being. Isolation--the hate of an undivided people--a +man standing alone against his nation, yet loving it better than any of +the natives.... I remember in an early story of having the hero do his +big task under the fiery stimulus of the hate of London. All this has +something to do with the coming of Saviours. + +Time approaches for many when the little three score and ten fails +longer to hold the full story; one must look out of this sickly +warm room of the body; one longs for the mystic death, which is +_martyrdom_.... I tell all this from time to time in tales--but only +the children seem to understand.... + +Romance--I have walked up and down streets and open highways for days +and found no man's work challenging, nothing to keep alive my interest. +I wanted absolutely nothing that any one else in the world had, nothing +that any one could gain. All worldly activities looked diminished and +pathetic to me--but under it all--the endless iteration of the Soul: +"Here is a _man_--as much me as myself!" A call in that--always a call +in that. One longs to die for that, once and for all. + +I crossed the Yellow Sea with a wound long ago. I had missed a battle +and was suffering, without the satisfaction of suffering with a bullet +wound.... I lay three deep in Chinese coolies in deck passage. I wanted +to see some one at home, or I should have dropped overside. In the fag +of pain, on the border of delirium, I lay with the deep down men of the +world, Chinese coolies in their filth and vomit. I looked into the eyes +of the nearest, and saw a brother, not a stranger.... It was ten years +afterward before I caught the big meaning of that moment--and that's +why I say so often that the time comes when we find the sons of God in +the eyes of passing men. That is _Romance_. + +There is more of death and less of days in my dream of Romance now.... +I can see a man giving up his woman because she is dearer than his +own life to him. I can see a man going to the scaffold for a country +that is taking his life and hers. (Always I see him loving his country +more dearly than the sober ones of regnancy and war.) ... I see him +taking his woman in his hands--half laughing, half crying, their faces +upturned--one creature in that moment of parting, as they had never +been in street or church, or state.... Romance in that. + +I have a line here from the Valley Road Girl: + + ... Lastly, it came like a commandment to me--to give all to + the Coming Generation--to acknowledge the New Race as one's + God--remembering always that all Gods are jealous Gods." + +It's all in that, our dream of Romance--Democracy, the Planetary Hive. + + * * * * * + +I am using a short story as the next chapter, because it brings nearer +to the centre of the picture certain ideals of romance, workmanship, +martyrdom, love and death, than many essays could do. A tale may be +a master-synthesis. Perhaps it is just the thing to show you what +we mean, as a group,--what we mean about many things. This is not a +marketable tale; in fact, it was done with the idea of making a place +for itself just here in this book. + + * * * * * + + + + +26 + +THE COSMIC PEASANT + +A SHORT STORY + + +When I was a lad I remember hearing some one say he had read a story +of love and war. I thought of it just now, as I lay panting a bit in +a queer nest for the night in the Galbraudin Foothills--in the midst +of an army that had no country yet--a tragic document unfolding in +my heart.... A story of love and war--yes, I had seen one. It was +written upon the cells of my brain, the deeper parts engraved upon the +heart--the old red war with a new dream hovering above it, and the old +true love, white as ever, yet a touch of the rose and gold of the new +race in its folds. It seems almost my story. Like Job's servant, only I +am spared to tell it. Such a little while ago, I thought the tales of +love and war all told. + +I saw Varsieff first at school, and went to him at once. Literally, I +went to him. It was at recess, and I followed at his heels to his room +instead of my own. He was not surprised. I was always at my best beside +him. He accepted this gift from me. One who learns to give greatly as +Varsieff did, learns also to accept the best things with grace. I only +left his room long enough to get my bag. Gladly would I have slept at +his door, but he asked me in. We were to be mates. Often he assured me +that we were men, face to face; that I was not his Boswell, not his +disciple, but a man-to-man friend. Yet I knew that my power was not the +power of Varsieff, also that I was most powerful when I realised his +splendid superiority. + +I followed him during all the vacations. He loved the North +Country--snow on the mountains, cold night rains, the filled fields and +shrunken rivers of summer, the sound and natural things. He said he +would find his tropical island when his work was done, but that work +meant Russia to him. He was genius. Every one loved him. One vacation +time we undertook to walk together over the Torqueval Peaks. He +borrowed a guitar at a peasant house there in the mountains, and played +for an hour as I have never heard any one play. I had been with him for +almost three years and had not known he touched the instrument. + +In one of those days of our walking-tour in the mountains an instance +occurred of Varsieff's immeasurable tenderness of heart. One golden +morning as we walked through a little village, past a vined wicker +fence--a huge yellow cat sprang forth from the leaves and caught a bird +on the wing. A kind of sob came from my friend at the swift little +tragedy enacted in the wonderful morning light. I turned--Varsieff's +face was back to its childhood--a depiction of childish horror--all +finished manhood erased. + +Many times in our talk his sentences formed a poem, which I would rush +away to put down. He learned to do this alone afterward. Once I went +to his room in Moscow after I had been away several months, and found +scattered among clothing, papers, books and tea-things, a set of recent +lyrical gems of his. These I gathered together in the little book, now +marching around the world. + +I smile to remember when I came to learn that Varsieff had other +friends as devoted as I. It hurt at first; I could not understand. His +big magic then was that he wanted nothing. He used to say that a man is +at his worst when he wants anything for himself. The fact is Varsieff +in wanting the _letter_ of nothing, really wanted the spirit of all; +in wanting nothing for himself in those days, he wanted everything for +the world, a new heaven and a new earth, first and especially a new +Russia. Then the day came when he wanted a woman. This was altogether +unexpected. I thought that Varsieff absolutely had given himself to +the revolution--that humanity was his bride. + +I was with him when he first saw Paula Mantone--that is but part of her +name. It was in Moscow. His voice, as he spoke to me, watching her, had +a different and deeper inflection than I ever heard before. She was +just a girl--poorly dressed, who had paused to speak laughingly to an +old flower-woman. + +"Wait, Lange," he said to me, and crossed to her. + +It was in the Spring of the year. The morning was very bright. She +turned from the tray of flowers and looked up at him. His hands went +out to her shoulders. He was searching her face with a queer and tense +smile--as one who finds a woman after a few months' separation in one +whom he has left a child. Of course, my thought was that he had known +her before. She, too, would have slept at his door.... + +I heard their voices. He asked her name, where she lived, and how he +could reach her again. It all seemed trifling to me. Varsieff had never +been like this before. The rest of the day he was silent. We walked and +dined together, but his thoughts were not for me. For once, they were +not for Russia. There was a smile in his eyes, and often he turned back +the way we had come. Once he said: + +"I had to leave her. It was quite all I could stand. I do not think the +world is a place for two such people to be happy in. Possibly, we may +be allowed to meet from time to time----" + +I was inclined to call this nonsense. A little later he added strangely: + +"Yes, it would be dangerous to let go and become merely human in a case +like this." + +The next three years Varsieff and I were much apart. I do not profess +quite to understand the obstacles between him and Paula Mantone. +They had loved each other instantly and torrentially. They were much +together, yet there was some super-human torture about it. Even if I +have a glimpse of the mystery, I'm afraid few will understand. There is +something back of each one of us greater than our actions. We are all +greater than we seem. It was as if Varsieff and Paula Mantone were only +intended to meet here--to meet and quicken each other for a greater +giving to the world. I wonder if it is quite true, what he said toward +the last: That really splendid lovers may consecrate themselves to each +other, but they must also learn to give each other to the world.... In +the beginning they tried to lose themselves in each other, and they +encountered untellable pain. + +At length came the night when Varsieff returned to my lodgings, saying +that it was only a question of time when they should find peace. He +said he knew they would find peace, for he had already touched it +momentarily. I wondered if she were dead, and he caught my thought. + +"No, Lange," he said. "I am still to see her from time to time." + +Before that first meeting with Paula Mantone in the street, Varsieff +had loved Russia and the world, a friend and comrade to me and to many +others. All his love had suddenly been called in and directed upon the +woman. After the three years, he gave himself to all of us again--but +a quickened illuminated man. He had been brilliant to me before that, +but the brilliance of phosphorous compared to sunlight now. Varsieff +was making some strange spiritual initiation out of his love story. His +presence glorified me on the night of his coming--the summer before the +war. + +"There are four layers to Russia," I remember him saying. "The royalty +on top, then the dreamers, then the middlemen, then the peasants. Kings +and middlemen go together; dreamers and peasants go together.... Yes, +time will come when the dreamers and the peasants truly shall belong to +each other. They have been lovers a long time." + +I asked him about the other pair. + +"The kings and the middlemen will cancel each other," he answered. + +Varsieff was the most active man I ever knew, and yet he moved easily +as one in a sort of spiritual drift. He was an intellectualist with +those who used their heads, a devotionalist with those who used their +hearts, a mystic among dreamers, a child among children. Though never +known much publicly, he was to my mind the biggest occult force of the +new Russia. I doubt if there was another man, unless it was Christonal, +who gave more impulse and direction to the revolutionary movement. + +The heads of many departments drew inspiration from Varsieff. I +have seen him carry himself lightly through a day of decisions and +improvements and conceptions, which do not come to the ordinary master +of democracy in a year. I have seen him encounter, worked out by +others, suggestions and innovations which he himself had made--Varsieff +not realising that the thought was his own. He would innocently praise +his own work, as carried out by another. The last few months preceding +the revolution were the busiest I ever knew. We became new men. We did +not leave Petrograd, but prepared secretly for the big unburdening of +the soul of a people. The last few days, before the government changed +hands, were charged with a wrecking silence. + +Christonal's nerve broke. For twelve hours he was in and out of a +system of baths and manhandlings, and I was one who stood by. Varsieff +smiled it through, his voice calm, his eyes often looking away as he +spoke. The leaders of the younger party saw who was the real chief that +day, though Christonal is a strong leader. + +I was always a good desk man, and was trying to get some order in a +bundle of cipher messages in the heat of the night, when Varsieff came +and lifted me laughingly by the shoulders, thrusting the messages into +one of my deep inner pockets. I thought he was dragging me off to bed, +but when we were alone, he said: + +"_She_ is near. I can't leave. Will you go to her for me?" ... + +He told me many things to say. + +I found Paula Mantone after many hours in one of the Registmonten +hospitals. She was frail and feverish from much labour, not regularly +attached to any nursing staff. The instant I saw her, I realised more +clearly what Varsieff had been doing--trying to kill himself with work +for the Cause. Clearly, she had lost interest in all but death and +service. I had been too much with Varsieff to notice his arrival at the +same point, but I saw their joint endeavour through her. It seemed to +me like a death-pact. + +A new mystery for me. Evidently they had realised they must wait for +release in death, but serve meanwhile. The marvel of Varsieff's sending +me when he might have come himself, gave me just an inkling of the +tremendous power and patience which had come to him. Two years, or +even a year ago, he would have endangered new Russia for an hour with +Paula Mantone. + +I could not breathe this rare atmosphere. So far as I knew, there was +no woman for me in earth or heaven, but certainly I would not have been +able to look over a living woman's shoulder for her mystic counterpart, +and long for death to consummate the real mating. But war teaches +lovers many wonderful things. + +Paula Mantone was a kind of white silence. You had to listen keenly +for her step and give your attention to her voice. She was utterly +feminine--malleable like gold. Even to me, she was the meaning of +love. I had no thought of her being _my_ woman, and yet she seemed +spiritually to contain some sister who would answer for me. Soldiers +worshipped her. I think each saw his own in her presence. It was the +finished magic of the Trojan Helen again--every man's desire, as gold +contains potentially all the metals, and the rose the essence of all +the flowers.... + +She was the quietest woman I ever saw. She seemed formed of white +cloud--the sun on the other side. That was it--Varsieff was shining on +the other side. She answered him, light for light--gold for gold. For +the rest of us, she had that white, saintly lustre. And even in that, +we found much to make us brave and keep us pure. + +Deep within, there was some wonder about Varsieff and Paula Mantone +which my brain could not interpret exactly. But the world had suddenly +become to me, in her presence, a place of divided hearts--millions of +divided lovers around the world. I had only known the shock and misery +of war before, and the thrilling roar of comrades, the crash of the +wreckers and the songs of the builders ever nearer. Now I heard the +still voices of lovers everywhere. In the pressures of air--callings, +cryings, yearnings made audible. + +It was a new door of the heart that she opened--her particular gift +to me. That moment, though I had loved and served Varsieff for years, +I knew more thrillingly than ever his greatness, because this woman +loved him. To me, to all soldiers, she gave a reflection of that superb +bounty. To him she gave its _incandescence_. Perhaps together they +found it too terrible a light for earth, or perhaps they were unwilling +to find their fulness of days in a world so charged with agony as these +years. + +She left me a moment, answering some voice which I had not heard, and +stood for several seconds beside the cot of a bearded soldier, her +fingers upon his grey-white brow. I did not realise until after she +moved, that she was there at the moment of his passing. I thought of it +again: She was the white silence. I think the soldier died, believing +that his woman was there. + +Twenty cots in the place--a low, cold room lit with a handful of +candles. The smell of blood and sickness and soiled clothing mingled +with the bitterness of iodoform as the chill draught swept through. The +peasant soldiers knew only the meagrest care. Their wounds were dressed +as often as possible, but there were five times too many cases for the +service, and the whole corps was impoverished. + +She stood still in the dim distance a moment longer, her fingers +touching the brow already cold. Then she seemed to remember that I was +waiting at the far door. I was not twenty feet away, and yet in the +few seconds required for her to reach me, a sort of vision filled my +mind--a vision of the peace that soon would come to the world--the song +of fruitful labour sung again, peaceful lands, soft dusks, lit cabins, +filled barns, peaceful flocks and up-reaching baby fingers--all with +such a queer shock to a male consciousness like mine. And when she +stood before me, I felt that the best part of Varsieff was also there. +I even fancied his look in her eyes, such as you see exchanged in an +old pair who have lived long together. I think that a great love always +seeks to make one of two--in different ways than we dream. + +"You came from him?" she whispered. + +"Yes." + +"How does he look?" she asked. + +"He looks like you," I said, for the moment inspired. "He looks like a +sun-god, too. He looks _with your love_ into the eyes of soldiers and +statesmen and revolutionists, and they find him irresistible." + +"Dear Lange," she said. "He loves you, too. You are changed. You have +come into the big magic of the revolution----" + +"I am Varsieff's friend, first and last--his comrade." + +"And mine," she whispered. + +"The magic comes from standing between, Mlle. Mantone." + +She smiled and bent toward me. She had been like a tall, white flower, +but now for a second as she bent closer, it seemed to me that I saw a +hint of Varsieff's gold flame on the other side--because we talked of +him. + +"What did he say?" she continued in a low whisper. + +"He said to tell you that he and all your friends were busy, day and +night, weaving and binding the Cause into one great fabric. He told me +to tell you this--that the work of the Weavers will be given to the +world in a day or two--possibly the day after to-morrow. I wish you +could have seen Varsieff's face as he spoke to me this last. I remember +his words exactly: 'Tell Paula all that I do is for her. That I read +and write and dream and breathe through her heart--that she has taught +me well to love and wait--that I love the world through her heart.'" + +"Anything more?" she asked in a kind of agony. + +"He told me to say that only you knew his weaknesses, so far----" + +"I love them best," she answered. "A woman always holds a little +tighter to the sweet human things of her child.... But he is a teacher, +a leader. He must be clean and flawless.... If it were only for us--I +should have him, weaknesses and all.... But he is to lead the clean +peasants to their promised land----" + + * * * * * + +Varsieff listened as a desert listens for rain. He caught me by the +shoulders when I ceased to speak--as if to shake something more from my +mind and heart. + +"A man must be half-divine to keep step with that woman," he said. + +Then he changed the subject by remarking that Christonal was not +half-divine--quite. + +"Christonal is ambitious," he added. + +"What has he done now?" I asked. + +"He has ordered me to take the field----" + +That turned on a red light in my brain. Varsieff was not a soldier. I +knew instantly that Christonal was not pure--that he wanted personal +power more than the good of the Cause. No one knew Varsieff's place +better than he did. My friend could only have been ordered to the +field for the same reason that David sent the husband of Bathsheba. + +After the revolutionary signal went through, Varsieff and I found +ourselves in the Galbraudin Foothills with thirty thousand men, and +every man of them wanted to go home. Somehow the peasants thought +that if they changed leaders, they would march home at once. They +were willing to fight their way home; they had felt their own power. +Varsieff loved them with a white passion. + +"They won't miss, if _we_ are true! They're clean. God love +them--they're clean!" + +He saw in the peasants the soil for the new earth and the soul of the +new heaven. + +Germans and Austrians were to the south of our nest in the Galbraudin +Foothills, while to the east and north were the big lines of Russian +troops as yet unawakened to the principles that moved our ranks. Our +weakness was that the peasants thought the war was over.... The cold +mountains were in the distance--winter still upon them--a late spring +in the Foothills.... In this dramatic lull, our men talked of their +ploughing, of their women. + +Some one said, "They're enlisting the women and girls----" + +It went through the lines like a taint of gas. The men were difficult +then even for Varsieff to hold. + +You must get the picture. We revolutionists were cut off from the +world. The Germans and Austrians sent us messages--some friendly, +some derisive. They thought us fools or gods, but waited to see what +we would do. The old line of Russian troops all about--just as clean +peasantry as our forces--but officered by the straight military class, +impervious so far as a body to any shaft of the propagandist. + +Varsieff whispered to me that those regular forces were honeycombed +with our comrades, but that they were being put to death under the +slightest suspicion--that two or three hundred were martyred each day. + +The strangeness and horror of it all dawned upon me--the sense of the +whole world against us, even America from whom we had drawn the spirit +of our courage--a kind of holding of our army for slaughter. Listen, +I have seen tens of thousands of troops go down to the pits of white +and red, seen their opened veins colour the snows, seen the spots of +red on the brown earth turn black. I have seen the boys lean over the +trenches and the pools from each throat widen and deepen from one man +to another. I have seen a man grab his mate as he fell and say some +absurd whimsical thing that the soldier next didn't understand until +_his_ moment of death--a little sentence that folded them, not in +extinction, but in a new life. All the horrors of death--quantity and +quality--yellow and red and white--pure white passings that made a man +think of the lilies--all manner of death I had seen, and still it had +all been impersonal compared to now. + +This was my own heart business. I shared leadership with Varsieff. +These lives were in my hands. I wanted to go down among the boys--one +by one and say that I was pure, that I loved them--that if they died +they were at least loved and not wasted. + +I always wondered what those young peasant souls thought about death. +Once in a lot of pain when I was just a boy, I wanted badly to die and +was deterred from taking my life, because of a counter-desire to get +home and see my mother. I think it must be like that with the peasants. + +Varsieff saw them in a strange mystic light. No man loved them as he +did. They looked like sons of God to him. That's what he saw when they +went down to death. + +"There are no dreams too fine for them to answer," he whispered. "They +are pure--they come from the North like all invaders--glacially pure! +We'll warm their hearts--lead them home to God--teach them how to live!" + +He was silent suddenly. I asked him to go on and then saw the queerest +look instead. Varsieff was torn by the thought, that now as a leader +of revolutionists he must teach his peasants how to _die_ as well.... +A civilian, I repeat, does not realise this quite the same. In the +Capitol, we had worked for a Cause that meant the death of men, but now +we were the officers called upon to charge live troops to the fork and +the grill. I knew Varsieff to be more imaginative and tender than I, +yet I would not have mentioned my qualms, had I known how terribly he +was suffering. He caught my hands, whispering: + +"You have it, too?" + +It was the single hour of weakness that Varsieff had ever revealed to +me. I studied his face without speaking. + +"I brought them to this," he muttered. "I have always thought of the +spirit of things. I was always pure enough, following that dream.... +But, Lange, we're a little mad--we who dream.... I had to come here. +I had to see this fighting end. Perhaps Christonal knew what he was +doing." + +I put my arm around his shoulder. We Russians are allowed that. + +"I have always thought of the spirit of things," he added, "until I met +Paula Mantone. I would have forgotten everything for her beauty, but +she remembered our souls.... And now, because I would have forgotten +the bodies of these men Christonal sent me here to learn that. We are +spirits and bodies, too, Lange. It takes a crowned head to hold to the +two ends at once--God, hear 'em sing----" + +The ruffians always hushed and choked us when they sang. Something new +about it this time, for Varsieff was seeing them across a red stream of +their own blood. + +"I can't drive 'em into the fire-pits," he muttered. "Why, I'd rather +wash and dress 'em. They've got the idea that I am to lead them home. +I can't betray that--not even for the Cause!... I never saw it before. +They are not herds, not groups--but monads--each a man----" + +"We've got to put through the big story," I said quietly. "Thirty +thousand is cheap--our little planting out here is cheap, if we +can give Russia the new heaven and the new earth--Russia--then +America--then the world----" + +I was giving him back his own words. + +"Thirty thousand lives," he repeated. "Yes, the price is cheap--thirty +thousand every day for awhile--your life and mine, Lange--a cheap price +to pay for the glory we see in the days to come. But I can't kill +these--I think Christonal knew it all the time----" + +"You aren't ready for work in the constructive end, if you falter here +among the wreckers----" I said. + +I knew that no Cause had ever uncovered a more valuable servant than +this same Varsieff, though badly out of hand just now. I wasn't making +any effect upon him. He looked at me strangely. + +"That sounds true--exactly and unerringly true," he said wearily. + +There was no quarter possible now. + +"I remember your words in clubs and cabinets and in the ante-rooms of +the dumas.... You weren't afraid of blood there, Varsieff." + +He winced. + +"They called you the 'Fire-eater,'" I added, never knowing when to +stop. "It's just as straight to-day as it was when you talked there: +'The old civilisation must be washed clean with the blood of the +new----'" + +His hand came up piteously. + +"But their hearts are turned homeward, Lange," he said. "Their eyes +are building their homes all over again--eyes turned homeward over the +mountains----" + +"Turned to God," I said reverently. + +"Yes, but taking my word--the word of Varsieff--that God is there----" + +"He is there." + +"But will He come to them at the last, Lange?... Will He show His +face--so they will believe?... When they feel their death-wounds--the +blood sliding out, warm and silent--the cold coming in--will they hold +to what I said? Will He be there for them?" + +"You're shot up, old man, only a bit bewildered to-day. No one knows +better than you how great emotional giving of one's self to Cause or +Country makes death easy--and quickens the Soul." + +Varsieff was ashen. + +"I've got to eat all my words! Even you, bring back my words to me. +I've talked too much.... Suppose I am a madman----?" + +"Then you have no responsibility for what you said," I smiled. + +He stared at the tent-wall. + +"Varsieff," I said at last. + +His hand came out. + +"You were pure in all you undertook." + +Silence. + +"You wanted nothing for yourself." + +"I wanted nothing for me--nothing but----" + +"But what?" + +"Paula Man----" + +"She's a part of you--now. You look like her!" + +"I think I'll have to die to see her--Oh, Lange--I'm sick--I'm +impoverished, cell by cell, with loneliness----" Varsieff laughed +unsteadily and added: + +"I remember asking you to say to her--that she alone knew my +weaknesses. Now you know them, too." + +"She said she loved them.... Varsieff, I have known you a long time," +I added after a moment. "I have shaped my manhood, such as it is, +after you. I am proud of this--to the end. I, too, care more for +you, because of this day--for understanding. To understand--that is +everything. I who always listened before, tell you to-day: _The dream +does hold. The dream is good. Thirty thousand men--even our singing, +growling, big-footed, red-hearted thirty thousand--is a cheap price to +pay for the new Russia!_" + +"Do you think Paula would say that?" he asked. + +"Yes," I answered, "from the mother-heart of her." + +I had spoken, and now I tried to make myself believe that she would +have ordered him on. I had to change him, at any cost. A rather +questionable way now appeared--to lift him out of himself. + +"Listen, Friend," I added. "You are lonely--but you have the heart of +a woman pulsing with yours--every beat.... You'd have to _be me_ to +know what loneliness means. I'd take all the pain to have a woman like +that. There are times when you are half a man, because you are apart +from her, but there are other times, Varsieff, when you are twice a +man--double dynamics----" + +He caught me in his arms. I knew he was healed, but I felt the cad and +the cur for bringing his sympathy on myself.... He was looking back +toward the cold mountains when I left him, and the look of the woman +was in his eyes. That night I dreamed that Paula Mantone came to me +with a message for Varsieff, and that she told me some beautiful thing +about the child of a king--but I could not quite get it down to brain. + + * * * * * + +Sedgwick, a brigadier, and technically in command of the thirty +thousand, was a straight militarist in training. He looked to Varsieff, +the political head, for orders. The day came when Varsieff had no one +to look to, for we were cut off from Christonal and Petrograd. We +were not long kept in doubt after that as to who were our immediate +enemies--not German, not Austrian, but the old line Russian troops hung +up to the east of us, the same that had recently occupied themselves +making martyrs of the revolutionists in their ranks--two or three +hundred a day. + +It was a red morning when two of our _fliers_ blew down with the word +that our brothers were closing in--that it looked like extermination +for our thirty thousand, unless we strode out and crippled them with +the first shock. Ten miles to the west the Bundalino Marshes began. We +had the secret paths, but it was a wretched fugitive outlook to seek +shelter there. As I looked at it, it would never occur to leaders who +had brought Russia to the moment of parturition, to break up for a +miserable safety in the swamps of Bundalino. + +I recall the distant firing of that red morning. My eardrums had not +healed from recent months more or less in touch with the artillery. I +remember brushing the edge of the lines, as I crossed from Sedgwick's +headquarters back to the hut I shared with Varsieff and a servant or +two. The peasants were listening queerly and quietly to the far firing. + +I passed through the sprawl of pup-shelters, and certain ideas occurred +to me: first, that the arrangement of camp was abominable, a pitiful +lack of technique shown in this bit of military handling; second, the +slow cold conviction that we, as revolutionists, must have all the +virtues of the old-line troops to begin with, and to build our real +greatness on top of that; finally I drew from the queer attitudes of +the men toward me, an intuitional flash that to them the distant firing +meant a signal that they were about to fight their way home. + +Varsieff was sitting dejected upon a camp-chest when I rejoined him. + +"Sedgwick is ready when you are," I said. "He suggests that the men be +not kept waiting too long." + +Varsieff looked up. His face was livid. His soul had no chance that +morning. I thought of the old story of Arjuna standing between the +battle-lines, reluctant to join action against his own kindred. + +"It's the same here that it was in Petrograd," I announced finally. +"The dream holds----" + +He shook his head.... "They are just boys--white-haired boys. They want +to go home----" + +That instant I seemed to see the world laughing at this great man; +I saw the end of Varsieff politically.... Superb genius broken down +by an intrinsic weakness--as a man who, trying to lead the world, +falls for the lure of an actress maid.... I saw all his work of +early years--straight, clean, unerring, selfless labour of a man to +a Cause--the inspired labour of the past two years when he gave the +whole fruit of his quickened heart to the new Russia--the magic of +a man loved by a woman great enough to be his divine sculptor and +priestess.... It was the thought of Paula Mantone that helped me that +instant. Sedgwick was on the path outside. I hurried out and whispered: + +"Don't come now. Come back in ten minutes----" + +The General paused to let me hear the firing. "But the troops----" he +said. + +"Give me ten minutes more with Varsieff----" + +"The attack may be called----" + +"I know, but I need that time." + +The old soldier turned back, hating me.... + + * * * * * + +"Varsieff," I said a moment later. + +"Yes----" + +"I've got to tell you something----" + +He turned quickly. + +"Paula Mantone is near----" + +"No!" + +"I saw her last night." + +"Will she see me?" + +I laughed at him. "Do you think she would want to see you now?... +You're a sick man, Varsieff--morally sick. Any decision is better +than your present incapacity.... I think she must have sensed your +weakness--that she came to bring you strength, for she is your +strength." + +"Does she love me?" he asked. + +"That's a slap in her face to ask that--a woman who gives you her +soul's strength--the love of her life. That's lack of faith, my +friend----" + +"I am whipped. The white-haired boys--they want to go home----" + +"You can't wash your hands. You can't say, 'Go home, boys.' They have +to fight their way home. First, they have to fight their way to the +east out of this valley--against old Russia!... It's the first great +battle of the Old and New--first time in the history of the world. We +hold the New for better or worse--this little Theban band. You would +let us fail and dribble away and slink into the Marshes--you, her +lover, whom she calls Boy and Strongheart----" + + * * * * * + +"What did she say?" he asked fiercely. + +"----that I need not speak of her coming unless you needed help. +She said you would not need help on account of your own lack of +courage--rather that it would be your great tenderness that might +defeat our Cause now. She said this was but a last ordeal, hardest of +all for Builders, who have ceased to kill...." + +"Where did you see her?" + +It was all a lie, of course, except I had dreamed of her coming. I +invented a place of meeting and added to his question that Sedgwick did +not know of her presence. + +"I agreed that we were not killers, but I told her that we dared to be +cruel to ourselves," I added. + +"What did she say to that?" Varsieff asked hoarsely. He had suddenly +become like a child--one who dared not go to her, who scarcely trusted +himself to speak. + +"She said _that_ was the key to the whole matter--that we dare to +sacrifice ourselves--dare to inflict pain upon each other because one's +true love is the self--" + +I was startled and awed at my own words. The idea was unlike anything +of mine. It was exactly as if she had told me something of the kind in +the dream. Varsieff groaned: + +"The glory of her," he whispered. "Was there more?" + +"Only that you must not falter now ... and that she would be waiting +for you at the end of the day----" + +"'In the cool of the evening,' she would say," he muttered. + +"Perhaps that was it," I said. + +"Nothing more?" + +"Yes--but only if you needed it----" + +"I do." + +"That she never loved you so well as now--that you mean new Russia +to her--that she will come running to you in the cool of the +evening--either here or _on the other side_--and something about the +child of a king." + +His back stiffened. He arose. I saw him splendid again. I drew back in +the shadow, afraid that he would see the sweat that had broken out upon +me, though the place was cold. + +Of course the idea, as I saw it, was to give the old-line troops the +fight of their lives--to show the whole of Russia a martyrdom if +necessary, thus revealing the temper of the revolutionists. Varsieff +had been tempted to let them slip back into the Marshes to save their +lives. + + * * * * * + +We were in the saddle side by side an hour later, and close to the +front--the two big lines moving slowly and craftily together. Varsieff +looked back at his precious boys, following willingly enough so far. + +"It's their white heads that kill me," he muttered. "They are like +children, and that I should----" + +"They are all our children," I answered, sweeping my hand in a circle +ahead where the troops of old Russia had filled in, waiting to deliver +us to death. + +"Dear old Lange," he muttered, "I'm glad you know her----" + +I wondered what that had to do with his peasant children. Her spirit +seemed a blend of his every thought and emotion.... We galloped along +the fronts, talking to the different commanders. Some were students, +in their teens, faces of boys who loved Varsieff with a love that +yearned to die for him immediately, without words, a readiness to leap +under his horse's feet.... In a kind of madness, all the mysteries of +life seemed to unfold for me that morning, the spirit of Paula Mantone +always near because I was so close to her lover. + +He talked to the different leaders quite careless if the peasant ranks +listened. He told them that the outer world was watching--that new +Russia, Poland, Finland, the new Europe, the new World--all depended +upon _them_ now. He said they were chosen men--that he would never +leave the field except in victory--that he was brother and father and +lover to them--that the world would be better for this day. He talked +like a man at a bar, or standing among the river-boats, or a father to +his sons in the fields. + +We rode along the lines as they marched. Our horses lathered and dried +and lathered again in the morning sun. I saw my comrade, Varsieff, +giving up his soul to the peasants: + +"... I, too, have my farm that waits for me--my woman who waits for +me--my country, my dream!... I build with you. I stand or fall with +you!... We shall be better for this day, my children. This is a day for +living men and comrades----" + +He filled me with a kind of white flame. + +Then the crash. After that, was a moment of silence and gloom like a +cloud passing over the sun. Then our eyes began to reap.... A blizzard +of hot, stinking metal had broken in front of us--in the midst of our +marching and listening battalion. If you have ever felt the mockery +and cruelty of raging seas, you can know something of the shock +that twisted the core of me that instant. That which had been the +white-haired peasants with open laughing mouths and lifted hands, their +souls answering the leader who loved them, a song forming on their lips +... now it was as if a carcass had been moved--one that had lain long +in the sun, the devastation long continued underneath.... + +These were my boys. Next to Varsieff and Paula Mantone, I loved them. +Now they were down, dismembered, shaking--the air a whir of white to +my tortured ears, like a shriek of bewildered ghosts. And here and +there, like Varsieff and myself--men standing unhurt in the midst of +human fragments, like maggots, shaking themselves to cover. + +I wonder if you can understand? It seemed that I still could see the +welter of our boys in the leader's face. Also I saw the death of my +good friend--the death-stroke of that superb mind--the face of a man, +whose soul had vanished. + +Both our horses were down, though we were unhurt so far.... A distance +of fifteen feet separated us. I called to him. I tried to tell him that +he had not failed. I thought I should die before I moved, before I +could get started toward him. The staring failure in his face paralysed +me. For the time, he was cut off even from the spirit of Paula Mantone. + +I had to look down and watch my steps as I made my way to him. I knew +some hideous fear that he would fall in that blackness--if I looked +away.... There were voices from the ground. None of the parts of men +could be still. Lips writhed before my eyes--and words were spoken like +little claps of force in thin air.... I caught his opened collar.... + +"It's all right, Varsieff," I whispered. + +"You lie!" said he. + +It was like a blow from a man's mother. I had to look into his face +before my brain accepted his words. Then I remembered _my_ lie.... The +evil of it had not come to me until now, with him breaking down before +my eyes.... I saw the look again--that I had seen by the peasant's yard +long ago as we crossed the Torqueval Peaks--the look of a frightened +child in that face of finished manhood. + +I pulled him to me, and led him back toward Sedgwick's staff. I heard +myself talking and laughing, jockeying with words.... His head was +twisted to the side--his draggled remnant of a mind pulled back to the +scene of that havoc. And now, if you please, we were catching the real +thing. The old-line Russians were breaking upon us with machines and +shrapnel--the old combing and carding that seldom fails.... I saw the +cold mountains all about. + +Did you ever see a slaughter of drones? Perfect economy it is, from +the standpoint of the hive. The work of providing for the future is +accomplished--no mistake in the plan. The workers gather from all +sides. One by one the big clumsy drones are put to death--wrestling, +tugging, stinging, many workers giving themselves to death to carry out +the spirit of the hive.... The officers ahead who ordered our brother +Russians upon us, thought they were right--those great grey lines +ahead, honeycombed with our own precious comrades, all of whom were not +yet martyred, as was proved. But they had not found their voice. It +looked like straight death they brought to us. + +... Ages. I would turn from Varsieff's face to the cold mountains. +Something of the changelessness of the beyond and above came to me out +of the hideous fluctuation of the near and below. I could not keep +Varsieff back. He wouldn't resist so long as I held him, but the moment +my hands released, his body would rise like some automatic thing and +blindly stagger forward into the pale smoke-charged sunlight. The men +who saw him--many who knew what he had been and had heard him speak but +a few moments ago--lost their concentration on the battle. He became +everywhere the centre of a rotting line. Clearly they had been fighting +on his spirit--that, and the thought of going home.... + +Sedgwick rode up and saw my struggle--beckoned me back, as one in +authority would bully a guard in a madhouse.... I obeyed, thinking of +the lie I had told. Here were human fragments; the air filled with the +shrieks of the fallen--the face of my friend beside me, the face of a +blasted mind--all because of that lie of mine. + +Then, as I trundled him to the rear, sometimes swinging him from one +elbow to the other, I saw a line, as one would draw a bloody finger +across his cheek. Then--it was like a monkey-bite in the bone and hair +of his eye-brow.... We were in a hail from the machines and the men +were falling back. + + * * * * * + +I think we are half-mad in such moments, or else touched with a divine +sanity. In the midst of utter loss, the lines breaking back, the men +beginning to stampede--the plan flashed into my mind that I could only +save the first lie by a second. If the remnant fell back to starve in +the Marshes--Varsieff forever was put from me. Such was my thought. The +personal issue was greater than the Cause. I was beside myself--never +so little, never so formidable. + +My arm slipped from Varsieff who sank to his knees and flopped back +at the wheels of a four-inch _Sanguinary_, bursting hot. I ran back +to Sedgwick's staff, leaped into an empty saddle--then rode along the +cracking fronts. + +"Halt----" I yelled to the faces of the slipping lines.... "Halt--and +don't you see you're running from your own Comrades?... They're taking +over the Imperialists yonder. Our men have risen in the ranks of the +enemy!..." + +All along the lines, I yelled it--and it came forth like an inspired +message--lie that it was from my angle. For to me, death was better +than retreat, with the eyes of the world on our little nucleus of the +new order.... My shouts were checking them. + +"Our Comrades are coming to us--hold for them!... Don't run away ... +they are coming! They are coming to join us, when they clean themselves +up over yonder--only a little clean-up first, my children. Hear the +noise?" + +I don't know how long I rode. I only knew that the fighting death was +victory--that there is no propaganda like martyrdom.... + +They answered at first with a kind of half-hearted halt. I was struck +with the silence. A queer thing happened. I saw that I had spoken the +truth.... There was firing ahead, but it had no meaning of death to our +ranks. They were firing in the air, and some threw down their guns and +were running toward us. Presently we saw the tent-cloths hoisted in +truce. It was like seeing my mother again--shaking the table-cloth to +the birds. + +Then I saw their lines and ours running together--yes, Varsieff's +new heaven and new earth--saw them running together bare-headed, +white-haired peasant boys, hands outstretched, mouths open.... Freedom +was an aureola of different sunlight around their heads. On they came +like glorious ruffians, seizing their brothers in their arms--the lines +folding together like good mates before the Lord. + +Then it was like a blast--that Varsieff must see this! A cold blast +in the heart--that he must not miss this glory--that my eyes must not +dwell upon this great consummation alone! Deep within, I knew my pain +was because his head was not lifted to the picture of his conquest. +Deep within, I knew that for some inexplicable reason of fate, he was +held back like the old Master on the other side of the Jordan--not +allowed to enter and witness the beauty of the promised land. + +In the midst of that radiant tumult, I ran back to the place that I +had left him. It was trampled; the mud was deeper, but Varsieff was +not there.... In the midst of the shouting and the glory, I searched +for him.... Hours passed, the fighting ceased ... we were a hundred +thousand strong, armed, provisioned, hearts turned homeward.... Scores +of us were looking for the Varsieff now. + +And then I heard my name called, and two young student-officers caught +me, one to each elbow and carried me forward, running to where the +woman stood ... Paula Mantone. She was standing in the midst of her own +people--the sun on her face. And I saw, too, the white look of one who +has conquered fear, but the weariness of her eyes was like the presence +of death.... + +"Where is he?" she whispered. + +"Oh, God, I do not know----" + +"Poor dear Lange--all is well with us.... The boys of two armies +rushing together--yes, Lange, this is a good day for us----" + +She spoke rapidly, like lines committed--the same death-like weariness +in her tones.... She had taken my hand: + +"Come, we must find him ... take me to the place where you left +him--come quickly----" + +It was some distance. We walked at first in silence. It seemed as if +I could not live if I did not find out what she would have done this +morning in my place. Presently she said: + +"I thought he would fail when it came to ordering a charge. He was very +brave, they say." + +I loved the students who told her that, but I had known too much +torture to keep the perfect silence. + +"... It was hard for him.... He isn't a killer--he saw only the +white-haired boys----" + +"My beloved----" she whispered. + +"I told him that it was the same in Petrograd as here--that the dream +held here--that you would have told him to be strong at the death +part----" + +She was not listening. She did not answer. + + * * * * * + +"It was just here. He was wounded a trifle. I left him to stop the +troops. They were breaking a bit," I explained. + +I had passed the place a dozen times. I remembered by the big +_Sanguinary_--hot when I had let go of Varsieff's arm. The dead had +been covered. The big gun was a wreck now--even the caisson with a +broken wheel. + +Then I realised it had been moved. There was a queer mound under the +wreckage. I reached down; my hand felt warmth in the mud. The woman was +with me.... I think we moved that mammoth caisson together.... There +was no white on him--a coating of mud but warm. We lifted him and the +woman's breast covered him from my eyes.... I heard him say her name. I +heard him speak of the tropical island they would go to together.... + +I stood apart--I who had stood at his side so long.... There were +seconds when I heard her low passionate whispers--when I watched the +arch of her shoulder, the beauty of her bended brow.... I did not see +his face again. She held it fast to her and talked somehow out of the +world. Then I saw her raise her eyes as she had done that night in the +tent. For the first time I realised that he had only kept alive for her +coming.... But still I felt he must know the whole story. I did not go +closer, but called in half a whisper: + +"Tell him how the boys came together--arms out and laughing like +brothers. Don't let him go without knowing that--tell him how they +threw their guns away and then sat down on the ground together--singing +of home and the rivers and the ploughed lands and the women waiting for +us----" + +"I told him--I told him!" she answered. "You may come to him ... but +he--he only waited to see me.... Ah, Lange, you had him so much----" + +I looked away. Dusk was falling, the white peaks like spirits.... I had +not seen his face again, but it suddenly came to me how it had looked +when I saw it before--that which was the bravest and most beautiful +face that I knew in manhood--how it had been beaten and bruised under +the boots of running peasants--crushed into the mire by the feet of +the men he loved so well. For a moment, I was in the red world of rage +that this should be, but then the mighty drama of it came nearer, +the supreme laughing art of it all--that only the saviours call to +them. And I smiled, looking away to the dusk falling on the cold +mountains--and I knew that my friend's spirit was as close to us as the +body she held against her breast.... + +Then back in the bivouacs a song began--the men of two armies roaring +out a song of the great white democracy of the future.... + + * * * * * + + + + +27 + +RÉSUMÉ + + +The end of Varsieff is satisfying to us, and yet I wonder if I can +make this sort of romance clear. Martyrdom--they call it a short cut. +There is a saying that the soul of a man who dies for something, goes +marching on. The Irish become hopeless of their cause, if some one +dies for the opposition. All revolutionists have reckoned with this +subtlety--no propaganda like martyrdom; all the sacred writings refer +to it, our Bible several times, once in the sentence, "Greater love +hath no man----" + +A deluge of phenomena from "the other side" has come in during the +present war, all the old martyrs of nationalism said to be called to +the cause of their empires.... + +What is the romantic haunt that lifts a man to such a pitch of +exaltation that he transcends pain, and goes singing down to die? + +These are matters much better known among the young dreamers and +workers of Russia and the Orient than of America.... Varsieff reveals +the child under the man of action; the lover above the intellectualist. +His love story unfolds certain passages which we are making a point of +in these chapters. The woman, Paula Mantone, represents a loved type +in our sort of story-making. She brings, vaguely, at least, into terms +the romantic ideal so calling to us in these days. She means more than +three-score and ten. Her love goes on and on. She becomes a priestess, +in a sense, and conducts her lover through the critical passage of +finding his own Soul. External battles then take his body, but she is +not altogether bereft. An intuitional woman does not always know what +she is doing in her heart story, even when she does greatly. If the +physical action had broken different, if the body of Varsieff had not +been required in martyrdom, for instance, he might have emerged from +the final stress of action in a state of spiritual exaltation, from +which, I can imagine Paula Mantone calling him back to the gardens of +the senses.... Martyr, priestess, revoltee, but always a woman. Every +year of devotion to the feminine in fiction, compels a more fluid, yet +more mystic handling. + +We have been very close to the young students and poets and players of +Russia. In the Fall of 1914 we published the following paragraph: + +There[19] are men in Russia who have heard the mighty music of +humanity. They will sing their dream and grave their message upon the +peasant soul.... Not the Russia of Nicholas Romanoff. His passing and +all the princes of his tainted blood will prove but an incident of the +Great War. Very low in the west among the red blinking points of the +falling constellation, is Nicholas and that Russia. In the east is the +Russian _novi_ before the dawn, commanding the dark before the sun. + + [19] _Fatherland._ George H. Doran Company, New York. + + * * * * * + +The young men of India, the young men of China, the young men of +Russia, the young men of America--I see them working together in the +wondrous story of life, as it reels off in the years to come--mating of +the East and West, the planet seen in one piece, the communal spirit of +the Hive around the globe. + + * * * * * + +... I find myself getting up a rather serious intensity over what +_Romance_ means, a signal to tame down.... _Not to stay_--to drain +nothing, to leave all cleaner, more orderly and richer for one's +tarrying, to glance but lightly, yet with a deep smile of understanding +at the torrent of detached and unmatched things which apparently makes +the world--to love it all better than those caught in detachment can +possibly love one another--to belong to the many by remaining apart +from separate movements--at last to be the Spectator.... + +One may deal lightly with crowds, but never with _man_ or _woman_.... +One may say he has all that civilisation has for any human creature; he +may reasonably be bored by all departments of life, but there is enough +for an eternity of reverent study and adoration in the nearest human +face. The lovelier the human face, the more easily we can discern the +divine in it.... You get nowhere without loving something. This is the +hardest kind of material gospel.... We are all incognito--the greater +we are, the less perfectly disguised. + + * * * * * + +First and last our dream of Romance means Motherhood--mysterious +enactments that the mere male can never know, no longer the motherhood +of the mammal, but the coming of the Guest, the Shining One--the +giving of body and mind and soul, no fear, no stipulation, no impeding +form of thought--more than that, it means a giving of the child to +the world.... The Valley Road Girl expresses it in this sharp, short +picture: + + Once a woman lived in a dense forest, and had a man-child alone + there. As it grew, the woman impressed upon it the greatness of God + and the wonder of all things. Then one day, she led him by the + forest-paths to the Highway, and left him there. + +It means the Madonna who looks up, rather than down, at the head upon +her breast. + +The creative force is never wasted. Man and woman, in love or lust, are +never alone--rather startling, but sooner or later to be accepted. The +point of the triangle is either turned downward or upward. The creative +force feeds either the abominations of the underworld, or is used in +its designed order and loveliness as a point of inception for soul into +form.... The mother-nature of the New Race must be quickened by the +ideal of the coming of a World-teacher, of development a cycle ahead of +this race. Women must partake of this dream in their maternities. It +is the light of such an advent, shining upon the upturned face of the +mother, that touches the brow of the child with light. + +Absolutely the concept of the new Democracy demands the coming of a +great Unifier--a focal point for all world movements and interests +and aspirations. The story of a Master's coming is the ultimate +Romance--the finest story in the world--for that in itself is the story +of Regeneration. + +The work of this particular volume seems to be ended. Much that is +prepared need not be used. Right here is the breathing-space that +always comes in a life or a book.... _Not to stay_.... Some of our +boys are off to the trenches; others may go. Part of the original +group has been unable yet to follow the centre to the West. Our good +Gobind[20] who belonged to the pith of things, arose from one breakfast +and went off to join the cavalry. There's a group in Chicago that we +see all too little of--a diffusion time truly, but only to make more +certain the time of integration again. + + [20] Ben Poteat. + + * * * * * + +There is one who came, changing all. We thought we knew much about the +world. We thought mainly that things were settled for us. It was not +words she brought, but a subtler quickening. I cannot tell it exactly. +There was a day in which I was bored, not satisfied, and another when I +was a child again--breathless, questing, listening for some one to tell +me stories of another and better country. All that I had done and been +and lived was diminished; more, all behind was utterly done, leaving +scarcely any criteria for that which was to be.... No inland lake would +do after that; we wanted a continental headland, the sweep of the earth +and sky--sidereal time, sidereal space. We could only tolerate the +quest of the Impossible after she came. + +... She came and wrote her book through the summer days and then she +went away.... Somehow after that we knew what rains and sunlight +meant--what all nature was saying and doing. At least, we knew +better.... _Not to stay._ We could not follow continually, but at last +out of loneliness, the big new laughing wonder of life came to us ... +and when we told her, she seemed to have known all the time.... + +We teach by making pictures. She brought new pigments and freshened +all the oils. We loved the tints and half-tones before she came, but +she restored us to the virgin beauty of the primal rays. We liked the +blends before she came--the blend of rose and gold, but she brought us +length of vision and redemption of taste to know the meaning of the +Ultimate Red, the red of the Pomegranate, the red of the Inspired Mary, +to whose knees at the last all artists and little children find their +way--the passionate red of the Quest and the Cross and the Son. She was +not surprised when we told her what her gifts mean to us. + + * * * * * + +An artist gives himself full-heartedly to the emotions. Keen and +poignant afterward, is the battle to straighten them out, to comb +them down. The mind holds the truth about it all, the spirit sings +all around, but the heart holds fast to its agonising play of passion +settings. + +Desire is like an old King, sitting in the midst of his dogs, a King +by the fire in his tower. The Shining Heir is born, but the old King +is slow to die. He sits thinking of his old hunts, his rides to kill, +old wars and faces at the window.... He rode well; he thought he loved +very well; a great name, he was, in the hunts, and in all the games of +getting. He meditates now upon his one-time conquests, and forgets his +pain. It is his memories that hold him fast to life a little while. But +at last the head of old King Desire sinks to his breast, the fire fades +from his last memory. The door of the tower room opens, the Shining +Prince is standing there, and the criers run through the palace crying +aloud, "The King is dead. Long live the King!" Desire has ended; the +Bestower takes the throne. + +When we told her of this new breath of life which she had brought, +our Mary seemed to know all about that, too. She smiled and looked +away when we showed her this book (and the inscription to her), so +many pages of which she had read before--our dreams for the New Race +unfolded in letters to her. + + * * * * * + +The instant one perceives the inner meaning of _Equality_, glimpsing +the great Seamless Robe of humanity as one;--he realises that what +is best for him is best for all others--what is best for the many is +his own highest behest.... One must grasp this to know what Democracy +means, to know what is behind the word, a meaning which those who use +it most haven't dreamed of. You must grasp the spirit of the hive--that +winged myriads of golden atoms never stray so far as to break the +spirit-cord that binds them into one--that the one knows all, contains +potentially all goodness and beauty and truth, that all action, art and +thought, come from the spirit of the one--that the fruits of these go +back. I love to tell it again and again. I saw it all afresh to-day. + +The sun plays tricks with the earth at high noon. One feels superbly +well--a kind of seething in the veins. It pulls him away from the great +quest for the Father's House, in gusts of Mother Nature's magic. All +the fragrance of fallow fields is in the hot light and blowing hay and +deathless azure and high noon. Glorious swarms of bees were breaking +out from the Spirit of the hive, all one in Spirit at the top--the +Spirit brooding at all times over all the workings of the hive.... +It was the same with the millions of men who walk the earth, one at +the top--all one, coming and going in the Spirit, replenished and +replenishing always, learning the fusions here in friends and lovers, +each finding his one, and then the new quest together for the Great +Companions. + +Then it came to me that we are only sick and blind and lame and +evil--in the sense of detachment. We must kill that out. Hate spoils +everything. Hate binds us to the object. We mustn't despise another's +coat. It may have been ours yesterday--may be ours to-morrow. We must +kill out the sense of separateness from any creature, for we are +destined to become one spirit with him and all others. Something like a +cloud--all one, as a cloud is one. + +Every morning on the grass--on millions of blades of grass--a globe of +dew at the tip of each.... The Lord Sun arises. The dew warms a little +and slips down the track of the blade into the root. There it breaks +up into infinite fragments. The sun rising higher weaves his warm +magic over the fields; invisibly, like prayers ascending, the drops +of dew, all diffused into a thousand fragments each, thin as steam, +and carrying the perfumes of roses and lilacs and honeysuckles and +meadow lands and fallow lands and lake and ocean shores,--like prayers +ascending, the dewdrops of yesterday return as one to the cloud. Broken +into the farthest diffusion, but not an atom lost. All the richness of +earth in essence returning to the Spirit.... + +The same with bee and dewdrop and man--the same with swarm and cloud +and tribe--each fragment and division lifting to a greater, unto +the Shining Source at last.... The point of it all is that man is +spiritually woven to his brother and to the race; giving himself and +his service to his brother and to the race he glorifies the texture and +stature of his own soul. + +Christmas, 1917. + + + + + * * * * * * + + + + +Transcriber's note: + +The book contains many words spelt to reflect the accent of the +speaker. The spelling has not been changed. + +There are two instances of unmatched ending quotation marks. The +missing opening quotation marks were not added because their +locations were uncertain. + +The following changes to printing errors have been made. + + ouselves is now ourselves + though is now through + unlifted is now uplifted + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44208 *** diff --git a/44208-h/44208-h.htm b/44208-h/44208-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e7bbd7d --- /dev/null +++ b/44208-h/44208-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,8199 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Hive, by Will Levington Comfort</title> + <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> + <style type="text/css"> + +body {margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%;} + + h1,h2,h4 { + text-align: center; + clear: both;} + +p {margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + text-indent: 1.5em; + margin-bottom: .75em;} + +p.drop-cap { + text-indent: 0em;} + +p.drop-cap:first-letter{ + float: left; + margin: 0.03em 0.1em 0em 0em; + font-size: 250%; + line-height:0.85em;} + +@media handheld{ +p.drop-cap:first-letter { + float: none; + margin: 0; + font-size: 100%;}} + +hr.tb {width: 25%; margin-left: 37.5%; margin-right: 37.5%;} + +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} + +table {border-collapse: collapse;} + +table.toc { + margin: auto; + width:auto; + max-width: 40em;} + +th.pag { + font-weight: normal; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + padding-left: 2em;} + +td.chn { + text-align: right; + vertical-align: top; + padding-right: 1em;} + +td.cht { + text-align: left; + vertical-align: top; + padding-left: 1em; + text-indent: -1em;} + +td.pag { + text-align: right; + vertical-align: bottom; + padding-left: 2em;} + +.box {border: 0px; + padding-top: 1em; + padding-bottom: 1em; + max-width: 8em; + margin: auto;} + +.box p {text-align: left; + text-indent: 0em;} + +.boxa {border-top: 4px double black; + border-bottom: 1px solid black; + max-width: 20em; + margin: auto;} + +.boxa p {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em;} + +.boxb {border-top: 1px solid black; + border-bottom: 4px double black; + max-width: 20em; + margin: auto;} + +.boxb p {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em;} + +.boxc {border: 4px double black; + padding-left: 2em; + padding-right: 2em; + max-width: 20em; + margin: auto;} + +.boxc p {text-align: center;} + +.boxd {border-top: double; + border-bottom: solid; + border-left: none; + border-right: none; + text-align: center; + border-top-width: 5px; + border-bottom-width: 2px; + margin: auto;} + +.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em;} + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; + right: 84%; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + +.no-indent {text-indent: 0em;} + +.pagenum { + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right;} + +.plabel{text-align: center; + font-size: large; + font-weight: bold; + text-indent: 0em; + line-height: 1.4;} + +.poetry-container { + text-align: center;} + +.poetry { + text-align: left; + display:inline-block;} + +.poetry .verse { + text-indent: -3em; + padding-left: 3em;} + +.poetry .stanza { + margin: 1em auto;} + +.right {text-align: right;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.space-above{ + margin-top: 3em;} + +.title {text-align: center; + font-size: x-large; + font-weight: normal; + text-indent: 0em; + line-height: 1.6;} + +.titlea {text-align: center; + font-size: 250%; + font-weight: normal; + text-indent: 0em; + line-height: 1.8;} + +.transnote {background-color: #CDCDCD; + color: black; + font-size:smaller; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif;} + + hr.full { width: 100%; + margin-top: 3em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + height: 4px; + border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */ + border-style: solid; + border-color: #000000; + clear: both; } + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44208 ***</div> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Hive, by Will Levington Comfort</h1> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10"> + <tr> + <td valign="top"> + Note: + </td> + <td> + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + <a href="https://archive.org/details/hivewill00comfiala"> + https://archive.org/details/hivewill00comfiala</a> + </td> + </tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="coverpage"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="307" height="400" alt="" /></div> + + + + +<h1>THE HIVE<br /></h1> + + +<div class="boxa"><p> +BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT</p></div> + + + + +<div class="box"><p> +<span class="smcap">The Hive</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Last Ditch</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Child and Country</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Lot & Company</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Red Fleece</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Midstream</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Down Among Men</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Fatherland</span><br /> +</p></div> + +<div class="boxb"><p> +NEW YORK + +GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</p></div> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<div class="boxc"> + +<p class="titlea"><i>The Hive</i></p> + +<p class="no-indent"><small>BY</small><br /> +<br /> +WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT<br /> +<br /> +<small>AUTHOR OF "MIDSTREAM," "CHILD AND COUNTRY,"<br /> +"THE LAST DITCH," "DOWN AMONG MEN," ETC.</small><br /> +<br /></p> + + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/003.png" width="71" height="90" alt="" /> +<br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + + +<p class="no-indent"><br /> +<br /> +<small>NEW YORK</small><br /> + +GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br /><br /> +</p></div> + + + + +<p class="center no-indent space-above"> +<small>COPYRIGHT, 1918,<br /> +BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</small><br /> +<br /></p> + + + + +<p class="center no-indent space-above"><small>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</small><br /> +</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + +<p class="title center space-above">TO MARY</p> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse">... soft gold and deep</div> + <div class="verse">fragrance and pomegranate red.</div> +</div></div></div> + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p> + + + + +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="FOREWORD" id="FOREWORD"></a>FOREWORD</h2></div> + + +<p>There is much to say. Many have a part in this story of our days. +Their work is on the table. Yet no manuscript, no chapter, is a real +beginning. One must start a book this way—with a fresh sheet in the +machine and tell what he is going to tell about.... First of all, it +has to do with the unfolding of the child mind; all the Stonestudy work +has been for that, but the brimming wonder of it all is that we have +chiefly been employed unfolding ourselves.</p> + +<p>No one can begin upon the sweet and sacred story of life to a child +without taking a stride nearer into the centre of things, and living +it. That's what all telling is about—presently to stop talking and to +catch up on conduct. The fairest culture of all is to become artists in +life.... Thinking of this, thinking much upon this one thing, we have +been lured out of the heaviness of work into the dimension of Play. We +tell here about this particular passage.</p> + +<p>Also something about the story of Man and Woman, hinting at what is +contained in pages of the Book of Life not opened heretofore for the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>eyes of the many, but preparing now for the eyes of the children of +the New Race—a beautiful story, be sure of that, but one that requires +art in the telling. No one could bring this story to the lovers and the +children of the New Race who had not found out that Beauty belongs to +the divine trinity with Goodness and Truth.</p> + +<p>Many seers have not held that well in mind, many sages have forgotten +it, many saints have not learned it adequately at all. We have to build +our own heavens here before we can have them anywhere else. The more of +an artist a man is, the more reverent he becomes about perfecting his +thought-forms. Just a mention now—that we rejoice to make much of the +Beauty side of things in this book; that a thing cannot be beautiful +and bad; that Beauty is the next quest of the many, as they escape one +by one from the bondage of Gold.</p> + +<p>We try to express the Soul of things rather than to delineate +boundaries of matter, but a very strong point is made upon the fact +that one cannot deal in the spirit until he has mastered to a good +degree the coarser stuff that bodies and worlds are made of. We do not +care how the young minds aspire mystically, so long as their abutments +hold fast in the bottom-lands. A man must not drag his anchor as he +climbs the hill; he must unfold line all the way—a line made of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>strands of himself, woven of his own wisdom, love and power.</p> + +<p>Much is made in this book of the fact that we are given <i>pounds</i> for a +purpose—that all here below is symbol and intimation of a globe and +perfection elsewhere—that we cannot look upon the archetype of gold +until we have mastered the imitation in clay.... We come even closer +to this precious subject: For instance, we know that it is only from +the soul of things that one can see materials—that no one can get a +glimpse of the meaning of materials so long as he is lost in the ruck +of them. At the same time we do not believe that we have access, even +to the lesser grades of mysticism, until we have all the power and +force of the material-minded. We believe we must do well that which the +world is doing, even the tasks of the average man, that nothing can be +missed.</p> + +<p>We do not encourage that mystic or poet who requires endowment. If we +are to be artists, we believe in supporting our own groups; we have a +suspicion that we are not through with conditions, any conditions no +matter how hateful, so long as they have us whipped.</p> + +<p>We aspire to be writers and politicians and painters and heroes; we +aspire to be masters in all the superb productions of life, but we are +content to begin with the ground. We are content with poverty, yet we +believe that very early as workmen, we are entitled to a fastidious +poverty, which <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>is expensive. No possessions—but all possessions. As +writers we are convinced that it is necessary to do—and inimitably +well—the things that the public wants and pays ten cents the word for, +quite as well as to reveal the deeper folds of our growth for which we +have to finance publication. We are not sure yet which is the worthier +achievement.</p> + +<p>Perhaps we speak much of Soul in this book, but we mean nothing more +formidable than the better part of every man. This is the Big Fellow +who takes us over when we do that which is worth while—in billiards +or diplomacy, in art or love or trade. I think it is the Big Comrade +which we are really unfolding—the Workman and Player. Much of Soul, we +write, because it is the point of our educational drive—to set It free +in the child or the young workman, to make It speak or write or play, +and not mere brain and hand.</p> + +<p>We speak much of love—not as an emotion, not as a sentiment, but as a +cosmic force. You will see much more what we mean by this as you turn +the pages. It is the most challenging thing in the world. It is the +inner white-hot core of the Fatherland that is to be—the great white +Democracy of the future....</p> + +<p><i>Democracy</i>—that's the point of inception of it all; that word is +the seed. The more you dwell upon it—you know what the Seamless Robe +of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>the Christ means—the more you realise that the Master Jesus was +the first Big Democrat.... We have them speak the word softly and +thoughtfully here each day—we like to hear the young ones say it. They +are apt to know as much about it as you do—for the word doesn't mean +exactly what they mean, who have used it most heretofore. It isn't +the name of a political party—yet.... It is government of the people +by the people, but only to those who see the sons of God in the eyes +of passing men. We only ask its magic, not its presence upon these +pages.... They're fighting for it gloriously—every hour. The boys here +thrill with the boys there. We hold our hands high to them. Some of our +boys are there. They are all our boys! Some are waiting the call to +go—but there or here, we are pulling together for the real Fatherland, +for the adequite fraternity, under the endless and thrilling magic of +the word <i>Equality</i>.</p> + +<p> ... I can say no more splendid word to you than My Equal: I know of +no greater adventure than to become one of the Many. It is true that +you and I—the best of us, the Immortal within us each, are of one +house—that this is but a far outpost of the journey, Egypt if you +like, the husks if you like—but that we have arisen and are on our way +home to the Father's House.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>Canyon, Santa Monica, California.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2></div> + + +<table class="toc" summary="Contents"> +<tr> + <th></th> + <th></th> + <th class="pag"><span class="smcap">PAGE</span></th> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">I</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_1">North Americans</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">II</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_2">Quickenings</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">III</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_3">Conquest of Fears</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">IV</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_4">The Stuff of Comrades</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">V</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_5">John's Things</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">VI</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_6">Values of Letter Writing</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">VII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_7">The New Dancing</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">VIII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_8">Old Pictures in Red</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">IX</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_9">Steve</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">X</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_10">Hejira</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XI</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_11">The Spectator</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_12">Tom and the Little Girl</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XIII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_13">The Abbot</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_139">139</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XIV</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_14">The Artist Unleashed</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_155">155</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XV</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_15">Work in Short Stories</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_164">164</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XVI</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_16">Valley Road Girl</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XVII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_17">Beauty</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XVIII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_18">Shuk</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_192">192</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XIX</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_19">Imagination</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XX</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_20">Boys and Dogs</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XXI</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_21">The Man Who Found Peace</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_219">219</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XXII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_22">A Dithyramb and a Letter</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XXIII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_23">The Mating Mystery</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XXIV</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_24">Chapter of Letters</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XXV</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_25">Romance</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_19">267</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XXVI</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_26">The Cosmic Peasant</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XXVII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_27">Résumé</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></td> +</tr> +</table> +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<h2><a name="THE_HIVE" id="THE_HIVE"></a>THE HIVE</h2> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_1" id="chapter_1"></a>1</h2> + +<p class="title center">NORTH AMERICANS</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">The thing called the New Race—the passion of poets, the phantom +running ahead and forever calling the dreamer and revolutionist +and occultist, is far from a reality as yet among the commonplaces +of the world. It is the spirit of everything worth while, but that +means nothing to one who has not a breath of it in his own body.... A +story went forth from this shop recently in which certain ideals and +presences of the new social order were carried through to a cheerful +ending. The publisher wrote, "Yes, but what is the New Race?"</p> + +<p>It's a fair question, but remember one cannot adequately describe a +spiritual thing in terms of matter. It is only possible of portrayal +where it has broken through into terms of three-space. First you are +apt to get the nearest and most striking picture of the New Race at +your own supper-table—the presence of one of your own children, +especially if the young one is hard to understand.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p> + +<p>Parents and children of all times have found confusion and alarm in +each other's ways. But there are rare periods of human history when +the difference between two generations has been not a normal and +superficial crack, but an abyss. It is so now. The Old has reached +its climacteric point of destructivity. All self-passions destroy +themselves in time. Fear, greed, sensuality—all are self-destructive. +Great human numbers and decadent principles have been recently +broken down in the world with a swiftness and abandonment heretofore +unrecorded, except in the traditions of planetary flood and flame....</p> + +<p>You may watch closely the child under seven who plays in the Unseen, +whose companions are not in the room for older eyes; watch the one of +fancies and fairies and fragrances which others cannot quite discern. +Many a child has been driven with a soul-wound into corroding silence +by parents who thought they were punishing falsehood, when they were in +reality repressing the imagination—the faculty which master-artists +denote as the first and loveliest possession of the creative mind. Too +coarse and unlit to see what the child saw, the parents again and again +have looked gravely at each other, saying:</p> + +<p>"This is a crisis. Our child has begun to lie. We must forget her own +feelings and punish her——"</p> + +<p>So often it is <i>her</i>—but not always. The boys <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>who are to do the +great tasks of song and prophecy and architecture—they, too, dream +dreams and see visions and have the rapt eyes of Joan in the forests +of Domremy; they, too, are severely questioned by the pharisees; none +escape this scourging; they, too, in many cases shall be put to death.</p> + +<p>The new ideals of the parenthood, education, romance, are now being +introduced and promulgated by pioneers long since emerged from the old +litter and humus. Education will mean first of all a turning for power +to the Unseen. The quest of the Swan and the Star and the Beloved, are +never carried along on the levels and inequalities of the earth—always +the uplifted face for the saint and the sage and the seer. Great +parents kneel beside their children and beg to be delivered from the +heaviness which holds them to the dim shadows, where the child sees +face to face. Education will mean finding his intrinsic task for the +child—the intensive cultivation of the human spirit from the Soul +outward, not alone from the brain inward.</p> + +<p>The quest of the passing age was for Gold. The real meaning and +symbol and glory of gold, as the highest, smoothest and most finished +of minerals, has been lost in the bulkier products and possessions +it meant to measure and signify. More and more has gold itself hid +away from vulgar hands and been represented by objects intrinsically +inferior. We now behold a civilisation <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>destroying itself for +commodities and destroying the commodities for which the destruction +began.</p> + +<p>Gold itself will serve Beauty in the coming age; commerce will serve +æsthetics. The lovers of Beauty begin with the sand, with the clay. +They love nature from the ground up; they are fervent for light and +air, for sun and sky and water, for fruits and grains and bees, for +stars and rains and romances. They say such things are holy. Words are +inadequate for their loves and appreciations. They find the ways to +love God infinite. They see Him in stone and stream; they see Him in +the eyes of the deep down men; they see Him risen and inevitable in the +eyes of their lovers....</p> + +<p>Straight goodness will not do for the New Race, nor straight +intellectuality. Artists, singers, painters and idealists will be the +heroes of the generations to come, for they will add the quest of +Beauty to the unwashed goodness of the saints and pilgrims.</p> + +<p>These are but flaring points; one is embarrassed in short space because +of a myriad things to say. Free verse is a sign of the New, also the +dream of a free world and the planetary patriotism. The immanence of +the <i>spirit</i> of all things, is a sign; the sense of the underlying +oneness of humanity; not alone the Fatherland, but the Kinterland, +where new Fountains are established and sages and masters come for +inspiration—all these, like a passing train of wonder, a glimpse of +many cars....</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p> + +<p>I think I can bring the picture in closer by using a few pages of work +from one of the young men with me. His name is Steve. I called him The +Dakotan,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> in the book, <i>Child and Country</i>. We've romped and ridden +together for three years, and I've known Steve better every day—still +far from the end. The rest of the chapter is Steve's writing:</p> + + +<p class="plabel">NORTH AMERICANS</p> + +<p>Out of the centuries of moil and mix and fuse of Europe, the orient and +the north countries, a gleaming archetype has emerged here which may +be called the real North Americans. They are scattered here and there +among the younger generation—young people new in name only; in soul +they are as old as Zeus. Often they are strangers in their father's +house. They blend the mind of the occidental with the soul of the east; +splendid firstlings of an untried future. They betray themselves by +their genius. Heredity is the first fetich overthrown by them.</p> + +<p>From the first they are a law unto themselves. They cast off churches, +codes, creeds, schools and parents as preliminary steps in their +teens. In the twenties they are prodigies, leaders in the arts or the +revolutions. It is their aim to over-reach themselves, not to further a +type. Very early they conjourn together in secret and obscure places, +revolting against life as it is lived, like a handful of white dwellers +in a foreign city.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p> + +<p>There is always an alien, intangible something about these people. One +senses the double life they lead, their own, and others. Conditions +are not yet adjusted for them. They are super-nationalists, the first +mark of the new. They are dreamers who make their dreams come true in +matter, and first among their dreams is of the planet in one piece. +They are naturally intolerant of barriers and partitions. They see +ahead a new social order vast and shining as a devachanic vision—the +real democracy of the future. They see that the new has come in not to +kill, but to build. Theirs will be the spiritual heroics. Yet all this, +of the greater patriotism, must not yet be spoken. It only alienates +them the more from those they must live with. Their arch enemy is +Ignorance, personified so often in their elders.</p> + +<p>It is noticeable that these young people are healthier, stronger, +swifter, sharper, tougher, bolder and at the same time lighter and +finer than the passing generation. They have the <i>new healthiness</i>. +They belong to the open and are practically immune to disease. +Theirs is the health of sun and wind and spirit—vitality instead of +constitution, something the old can never understand. Constitution +is weight, solid, ungiving. Vitality is volatile, springy, electric, +constantly being given, constantly being acquired, self-refining. +Constitution does not change; it accumulates all it can, then begins to +die....</p> + +<p>The young women of this new Race are open, strong, eye-to-eye, free +spoken. They are capable <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>of friendships; they are not adverse to being +wholly understood by males. They are not popular with ordinary women, +who surmise their superiority but comprehend it not. Deceit, jealousy +and such common disturbances evident in the sex are unknown to them. +They have character and are lovely rather than beautiful. They are apt +to go half way in their love-making, for who should know better when +the chosen father of their children arrives.</p> + +<p>All of these people are bringers of true love. Love is their philosophy +and religion. They listen to the heart as well as the brain. Others +think them cruel in their discrimination in mating. They take all or +nothing—prodigious riskers, great sufferers, throwing even love's +dream on the board to be played for, and laughing as they play. The +slightest blight on the loved one is deepest agony.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the surest way of discovering these young giants is to search +about for the most sorely harassed children. Invariably they are put +to it, to break into this day and generation. They fight their way up +through all the banked-up ignorance and antagonism of unlit humanity. +Often they are solitaires, coming and going with the secrecy of kings +and eagles.</p> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_2" id="chapter_2"></a>2</h2> + +<p class="title">QUICKENINGS</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">A few pages of drift first of all with the younger boys.... There +is a lane of Lombardy poplars from the Lake to the interurban +car-line—a half mile. It is a lifting walk at any time, but summer +evenings are wonderful with all the sounds and scents of a true +pastorale—lake-breath and meadow-lands, the whole sky to look at, and +the murmuring dissonance of the poplars. Often we walk to the car with +passing guests. One evening a guest went away whom we loved very much. +A lad of seven, named John, and I walked back from the car alone.</p> + +<p>He was ignited. I felt this at last through his hand. I had been +thinking about my own things all too long, missing the beginnings of +his talk.... He hurried forward in the dusk, speaking in a hushed rapt +voice. Because I had missed the first part, I said: "John, I want you +to write that—either to-night or to-morrow."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p> + +<p>And this is what came in:</p> + + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">The Magic Lane:</span></p> + +<p>It was at dusk. Two people left their tracks in Nature's dust road.</p> + +<p>Love is found on that road. It is the road of the mystics.</p> + +<p>They leave their love in it; Nature kisses their feet.</p> + +<p>Many horses' feet have been kissed on that mystic road.</p> + +<p>That mystic road will last forever.</p> + +<p>I long to walk upon that road of love.</p> + +<p>Love on that road will last forever.</p> + +<p>It is all true love.</p> + +<p>Our friends have been met on that road of love.</p> + +<p>It leads to the Hills of God.</p> + +<p>Certain spelling matters have been corrected. We pay little attention +to spelling in the work here. The young ones learn by reading and get +the proper look of a word altogether too soon in many cases. There was +another high moment from John at the same time. The following three +lines have stood out from the period with memorable magic:</p> + + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Wonder</span></p> + +<p>The soft breath of the Mother came in through the window of vines.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p> + +<p>The stars were shining like the face of the New Generation.</p> + +<p>My spirit was away in the Hills. A noise at the door brought me back——</p> + +<p>John then fell into a psychological tangle which we found little +profit in following. By the "Mother" he referred to Nature.... The +verse period has passed for the time. Around the age of seven, boys +change. Often, as in this case, they are not so interesting for a while +afterward. John is coming nine now and is writing "action" stories with +all the worn and regulation props and settings. The early tendency will +return with a dimension added. All transitions are times of disorder, +but they are followed by larger areas and truer fulfilments of order. A +cloud falls upon the sanctuary, but when it is dispelled, one perceives +a lifted dome, bright with its new cloth of gold.</p> + +<p>I am struck every day in dealing with young boys how wisdom and beauty +and truth can be inculcated in their lives, without pain and strain to +them, and with great profit to the teacher. The young mind is quick to +change. It has not grown its pharisaical ivory....</p> + +<p>The sanction of a boy must be won on a physical basis. A man must know +what the boy knows and go him one better. The man must understand boy +points of view, but never expect the boy to be puerile. Parents of the +past generations <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>have had the steady effrontery to expect very little +from children. "Why, they are only children!" has done more to make +for vacuousness and drivel than any other visionless point of view, +none of which has been missed. There is a difference in ages, to be +sure. The child's mind has not massed for use the external impacts +of twenty or thirty years of life in the world, but there is also an +Immortal within—a singer, hero, builder, or a teacher possibly, eager +to manifest through the child's fresh mind, fervid to bring the mind of +the child to its subjection, for the expression of its own revelations. +Indeed, the parents themselves are enjoined to become as little +children. In arriving at this wisdom and humility, they may suddenly +find masters in their own children.</p> + +<p>There is also a lad here of seven named Tom. Yesterday I found him +beside me on the sand, down by the water's edge. I began to tell him +about the Inner Light that we all carry. You can talk over a child's +head, if your words are choked with mental complications (which is apt +to be second-rate talk, anyway), but you seldom are out of reach of a +fine child's grasp when you speak of spiritual things. He was sitting +cross-legged, folded hands between his knees—a little six pointed +star—head and shoulders the three upper points, knees with folded +hands between, the three lower. He was bare from the waist up <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>and +thighs down, and brown as the honey of buckwheat.... I told him that +the seventh and perfect point of his star was within; that if he shut +his eyes and kept very still, putting away for the present all his +thoughts about himself, his feelings, his wants and his rights—looking +into himself as one would look ahead for a lamp in the night, listening +deep within, as one would listen for the voice of a loved friend,—I +promised that at last he would see what the three wise men saw—the +Star in the East. He need only follow that Star and be true to its +guidance to come at last to the Cave and the Solar Babe.... After that +I hinted that I would come to <i>his</i> feet and listen.</p> + +<p>Tom felt that it was worth trying for at once—shut his eyes, turning +all thoughts and gaze within. He held the posture long.... I have +marvelled again and again at the quickness with which the child-mind +attains to concentration so essential for all original production. +The little ones have no mad emotional lists to sort out and subdue; +their wants are simple "yes" and "no" in so many cases. Indeed, they +are spared the struggle of becoming as little children.... Tom held +the posture, until I was actually tense from the strain of waiting and +keeping my thoughts from calling his.</p> + +<p>It was a picture—sun-whitened hair, long yellow lashes, brown body +with a bit of babe's softness left to it, and glorious sunlight. He +opened <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>his eyes at last saying that he had the door, where the light +was, almost opened, when a fly bit him.</p> + +<p>I thought of the perfection of the instance of the mind's +waywardness—the coming of the Master spoiled by a fly bite.... Tom +will search for his Star every day. It is strange that he is closer +to the hill-pastures around Bethlehem, under seven, than for years +afterward.</p> + +<p>To learn concentration in mid-life after the world "has been put +through a man," is an ordeal at best; and yet we are by no means +masters of ourselves, nor capable of significant achievement until the +brain can be stilled at will of its petty affairs (the first aim of +concentration) and becomes the glad servant of the "giant" within.</p> + +<p>A little later I saw Tom on the back of a huge black walk-trot +saddle-horse of show quality—passing up the Lane at a fast clip, his +feet half way to the stirrups, holding on to the saddle with one hand, +the bridle-rein in the other. A year or two ago I should have been +afraid to permit that, but we manage now to relieve the young ones of +a large part of our fears for their welfare. Children have enough to +overcome from their parents. Frequently the New Age young people have +to master their heredity before they begin upon themselves.</p> + +<p>Life is a big horse to ride, so often a black horse. It is well to +start children free and un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>afraid. We do not let them dwell in thought +of pain. We do not permit tears. We inform them early that to be sick +is a confession of uncleanness, that lying is for the use of cowards +only, and that to be cruel marks the idiot.</p> + +<p>We are occasionally serious over repeated failures, but we laugh over +things done well. Tennis has unfolded marvellous possibilities in the +training of will force. Children are shown that there is a mystic +quality to all the perfect games—that the great billiardists and +tennis and baseball players perform feats in higher space, whether they +know it or not. There is the essential ideal first in the making of the +athlete as in the making of the poet. The great moments of play require +faculties swifter and more unerring than the human eye or hand or mind. +Ask the master of any game if he had time to think in pulling off the +stroke that won. It is inspiration that he uses quite the same as the +poet in his high moments.</p> + +<p>Education is the preparation of the mind to receive and answer to +inspiration from a plane above. The more you develop merely the brain +of a child, the more he is detached from the great principles of being, +the more also is he closed to the real, and subjected to the danger of +actual lesion and sickness. The more you develop the spirit of a child, +or rather give the significant One within an opportunity to come forth +and <i>be</i> the child, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>the more you make for beauty, health, goodness and +glory of bodily life.... A lucky day when you start really to associate +with your children, luckier still when you undertake the work of +teaching them incidental to your own work. Then and there, you begin to +realise that children are close to a source of things that you cannot +touch. Presently you realise that they are teaching you....</p> + +<p>Day after day I have studied and practised the development of the +child from within outward. I have seen the capacity to synthesise and +assimilate mere mental matters developed in a year, by training the +mind from the centre of origins outward, that mental training alone +could never accomplish. The mind itself becomes vigorous and avid and +capacious and majestically swift. It is trained to express its true +self. That is power—that is king-play. This sentence covers the whole +matter:</p> + +<p><i>The perfect way to develop the mind of the child is to teach him to +sit and listen at the feet of his own master, the Soul.</i></p> + +<p>The right to live and to bring the laughter of power to the days must +be won afresh each morning. No two days alike. We make ourselves +impossible to children of the New Age by trying to confine them in the +laws and rules of yesterday. The young people whom I serve live in +a different intensity. Their interest flags if I repeat, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>if I fall +into familiar rhythms. Continually they spur me on. I think, after +all, great teaching is the capacity to feel what the younger minds are +thinking. If we are too coarse to catch the first warning of their +resistance, they slip farther and farther from our grasp.</p> + +<p>It would not seem possible to hold American young people with spiritual +affairs; yet this is done daily. We call the Unseen—the great gamble. +I have shown how all else betrays—how all matter is a mockery at the +last—that even love and friendship fail for those who are called to +weep and worship wholly at the tomb of the body.... The truth is out: +The beginnings of real teaching is in making the Unseen interesting and +dramatic.</p> + +<p>We dwell upon the mystic white lines which connect all things—the +sources of daring and beauty and creativeness. I ask my young people +where they were—when they did any rare and improved bit of work, when +they felt like great comrades, met some magnanimous impulse, arose to +superb instants of play, or when in Chapel the big animation touched +us all and set us free. They always answer that they were <i>out of +themselves</i>.</p> + +<p>That's a secret of the new teaching again—to lift the students out +of themselves. Men take to drink or drugs for this same reason: men +and women set out on the great adventures, pleasures <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>and quests for +this. We hunger and toil for this freedom; we suffer and adore—to get +out of ourselves. Mental teachings tie us in more firmly. The teaching +here—and no two days alike—is to startle and encourage the young +minds to arise and live and breathe in that lovelier and more spacious +dimension which at least borders upon the Unseen. The doors open and +shut so softly. One does not know he has been out—until he is back +with strange light in his eyes and in his hands a gift from the gods.</p> + +<p>The essential spirituality of the new teaching must not be confused +with religious affairs as they are known and exploited in the world. +You cannot teach the New Age religion of the world's kind. It has +its own. No dry as dust sage will do. A snort will answer your +sanctimoniousness; flexible science will reply to the abysses of your +logic.... You must be the consummate artist if never before in your +life, to teach the beauty of the soul to youth. The young workers of +the new social order will never bring forth their great harvests from +your <i>reflected</i> light. You must be spontaneous—you must flood them +with pure solar gold; you must show them by your life and your work, +how you come and go into the Unseen.</p> + +<p>There is no rest.... One commands his disciples to go forth at last. +The teacher strides for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>ward faster when they cling. He tells them +one day they must race the gamut to follow him; and the next day he +puts another in his place and begs to be allowed a cushion in the +midst of the children.... We hold them by setting them free—the first +law of love. All unions of the future—in trade and friendship and +matrimony—will be founded upon the principle of freedom; and this is +the essence of the new teaching—to liberate the children into their +larger and God-quickened selves.</p> + +<p>No rest and no two days alike.</p> + +<p>A Bob White called me this morning across the uncut hayfields at the +edge of the lake-bluff.... His two smooth and patient notes seemed +to contain the secret of putting off all fret and fear and unrest. +He seemed to ask if I had not done this already—had not yet put all +boyish and merely temporal things away? "Not yet?... Not yet?" he +called the question.</p> + +<p>I answered that I would try again, and I set out straightway to be +honest once more with the world, with the soil and with myself. I would +begin with the clay again to be clean—to rise and think and dwell in +cleanliness, to think no thought, to perform no action second-rate—to +begin with the Laugh again—the warm laugh of conquest that always +opens some inner door to fresh powers—to arise afresh in the glory +and gamble of the Unseen.... I returned and saw <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>the young ones one by +one—from Tom and John up to the men and women—doing their work. I set +about mine with a laugh and called the day good. The teacher knows best +who is taught.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_3" id="chapter_3"></a>3</h2> + +<p class="title">CONQUEST OF FEARS</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">An interesting boy of ten and I have been much together in the open +weather. We have learned many things, but nothing more important than +what a sham Fear is. I do not mean that we take chances or that it is +wise to risk life or limb. Fine discrimination is back of all training +in the arts of life; still we certainly have found that Fear is a +waster and diminisher of beauty and power—and that it can be mastered.</p> + +<p>About the most fascinating thing that life has shown me is the way in +which fine examples of the younger generation learn the deeper matters +of life—matters of self-mastery which make the very presence of a +lad significant to a stranger, and which formerly were supposed to be +secrets for the sons of kings alone.</p> + +<p>"Do you fear anything?" I ask. "Look deep. Listen deep—do you fear +anything?... It's like the pain that tells you of a weakness or +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>disease. Fear is an unerring reminder of a task of conquest ahead for +you. That which you fear most is the thing to conquer first."</p> + +<p>There had been much of this talk of Fear before a laughable personal +experience showed me how much I asked.</p> + +<p>I crossed a mesa and came to an abrupt drop-off—two hundred feet +sheer. It astonished me. I hadn't experienced anything like this quiver +of horror for years. All members and muscles bolted at the thought of +advancing closer to the edge. I sat down to think it out. It never had +occurred before that I <i>wasn't</i> my nervous system, and must not let it +get me down.</p> + +<p>The more I thought, the more I perceived that I must do the thing I +dreaded so. In fact, I had told trusting young people that they were +not their bodies, not their emotions, not even their minds—that these +must be made to obey. Here I had a chance to prove if I were less in +action than talk. I forced my fluttering young self to the edge.... +Dizziness—wobbly limbs, fancied shoves from behind, the call of the +huge shadowed space below, a queer sense of parting in mid-air, the +body thumping down, another and liberated self gladly spurning the +ground—all these symptoms of panic followed swiftly.</p> + +<p>I held until calm came, and I then could study this little coil of +forgotten fears—a civilised mess.... The weakness was absurdly easy to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>overcome after the will was once aroused. There's no end or limitation +to will force when awakened. The greater the man, the more awe he has +for this subject. There's a glow that follows conquest of any kind; the +mere call of the will to action brings a sense of power in the heart. +There is no way more speedily to dispel pain, anger, passion, fear, or +any of these tentacles of personality—than to summon the power of will +to instant action. The particular matter of this precipice showed me a +trick about calling up the force—priceless to me afterward in bigger +tests, and for opening the way of self-conquest to boys.</p> + +<p>One must decide what one wants to do—then carry it out to the death. +Discrimination, art, all culture and knowledge may be brought to bear +in making the decision—but after that, it must be carried out—just +that.</p> + +<p>Fears belong to the abdomen. You can feel them there. They are quicker +than thought. Perhaps you had a twinge of nerves over some sight or +sound or odour, before your mind could tell you what you were afraid +of.... I have often told the young ones here—listening a bit to my own +voice—that there isn't anything living or dead, phantom, shell, or +living soul, that has got the authority to make the spirit of man quail.</p> + +<p>Courage is spirit.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p> + +<p>Most people don't care to try to deal with it; they let it have its +way.... Do you recall the fears of the dark room as a child—fear +always stealing behind—upstairs alone, the rush to the light, almost +screaming tension?... I heard a patter of steps the other evening and +knew the whole story—a boy of seven. He had been sent upstairs without +a light. I sent him back, told him to stay there until he got himself +in hand—to stay in the dark and think the bogie down. He was well +afterward.</p> + +<p>I have known some under-fire work. A man soon gets himself in hand +to look straight at a white-fringed trench. Fear of sharks furnished +another test. From a child the deep-sea devourers had an exquisite +fascination for me—to be cut in two under brine, white belly, +backward mouth, black-rimmed, hairy pig eyes, the double-rows of +teeth.... Pacific Islanders swim in the same harbour with fourteen-foot +scavengers, careless of whole schools of monsters, yet scurry to their +boats at the sight of one solitary, <i>different</i> fin. I had seen the +so-called, man-eating brutes, "grey nurses," dim grey horrors with dull +black spots. A well-fed imagination also came into play.</p> + +<p>I went swimming in the surf with a splendid Australian chap—a doctor +home from the trenches.... He left me back in the surf lines and +started out to sea. I finished my swim de<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>cently in toward North +America, and lay on the strand. From time to time off in the sunset I +saw my friend's head.... I was glad to grab the beach-comber when he +came in.</p> + +<p>"It's all perfectly sane and splendid," I said, "and I'm glad to have +you back for supper with us, and the billows out yonder are doubtless +all that you say, for an afternoon's lie-up, only I venture to +ask—what if a grey nurse should happen in from the lower islands?"</p> + +<p>"You don't think about them," he said.</p> + +<p>That's about all there is to the fear subject. You don't let it get +you. There is nothing worth fearing in or above or under the plane of +manifestation.... So I tried that out in deep water. The old horrors +succumbed like the fear of the precipice, but not so readily, quite. +One can imagine keenly in the dim deep; the touch of sea-weed quickens +all the monsters of the mind....</p> + +<p>There's nothing fit to be afraid of, unless it is the <i>self</i>. When we +get the ape and the tiger, the peacock and the porpoise, the lizard +and the shark and the carcajou of our own natures mastered, there +isn't anything left to do but to tally them off outside, a friendly +finish with them all. No menagerie is complete as man's, and each of us +favours some species from time to time.</p> + +<p>I have thought much about fear. In another place I told how we have +overcome inertia; how <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>we developed senses through the hard administry +of fear and hunger, anger and the rest. Now, however, these must be +overcome.... One of the last physical fears to let go in my case is +that for the hangman's rope. I think Roger Casement really wanted the +axe in preference to the hemp. Steadily facing a repulsion, it surely +vanishes.</p> + +<p>The point of it all is that you can teach self-command to the +children.... I took a girl of fourteen to my precipice—left her there +standing on the very edge. After a few minutes I called. Her face was +calm as if she had gazed from a porch....</p> + +<p>"Did you feel any fear?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Only yours for me," she answered.</p> + +<p>It was very true. I had the thing whipped for myself, but it had been +hard to leave her there.</p> + +<p>Finally I took the smaller boys out for a test. They didn't know I was +testing them. Children haven't the fear of height such as we put on. I +recalled a score of episodes of my own boy-days, in which I startled +the elders by Sam Patch imitations. Also I have put the young ones +through some deep water affairs....</p> + +<p>You may not be able to get it quite—but all fear is illusion. Every +inner beast mastered makes us stronger. These animals within are our +cosmos to rule. We do not know how beautiful they are until we lose +our fear for them. Boys and girls <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>here are learning these things and +putting them in action.</p> + +<p>The kingdom of heaven is also within. Fear, passion, anger, poverty, +and the like—all represent areas of our own kingdom not yet brought +under perfect cultivation.... After the emotional and physical +conquests come the psychic ones—hard matters of mastery pertaining to +the heart and mind—to know, to do, to dare, to keep silent—then the +finding of the hidden treasures of the subconscious, mystic fleets that +sail those dim seas, as yet uncharted for most of us.... After that, +the Soul. At last we must be potent enough to stand eye to eye in the +presence of the King Himself.</p> + +<p>From looking steadily over an escarpment of two or three hundred feet +drop, to gazing at the world from the forward cockpit of an airplane +at two or three thousand feet, isn't such a long step as you would +imagine. The fact is, I was in no way terrified in my first flight, and +fear certainly crawled me full length as I stood that time at the edge +of the mesa. Our young people have the call to test the new dimension +of wings. This zeal corresponds in a unique way with the new education. +Intellect stays upon the ground. Intuition is the lifting of the wings +of the mind.</p> + +<p>I had already begun to make friendly visits to an aerodrome at the edge +of the Pacific when the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>following letter came from the Abbot,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> who +is now seventeen and in New York:</p> + +<p> ... Perhaps Steve told you that I had a ride in an airplane about three +weeks ago. Man! 'Tis the place for me! Next summer, soon as school +dissipates, I attach my name to the Royal Flying Corps. The psychic +effect of a flight is wonderful—like travelling over a very tall +bridge. The Atlantic coast for many miles lay in profile as a map, the +roads stretched as thin mathematical lines; forests as darker shadows +of the earth; New York as a blotch of smoke and curious patchwork. +For twenty minutes we sailed around and around, just as you've seen a +gull pinion, then we came to earth; waited until it got dark, then up +again.... Lights of the aerodrome lay like jewels upon the earth, but +up, up we went, faster and higher, the roar of the propeller providing +a steady nervous outlet. I could shout my lungs out—I had to relieve +myself of the excess thrill.</p> + +<p>Then what should happen? Red, a tiny rim, like the disc of a golden +dollar, the sun began to lift up from the horizon again. The higher +we went, the higher it lifted, until there it hung, as a golden bulb, +a swollen orange off in the mighty stretches,—pure, golden,—while +below twinkled the town's lights. 'Twas the fullest, richest, most +brimming moment I've ever had. The awe of the cosmos overtakes the +heart and lays down its stupendous laws. The distance between sun and +'plane seemed a golden pathway that ever could <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>absorb your flight. I +was aware only of worshipping God, and that roar of the machine made +one think of the roar of the planets, comets, meteors, all the suns, +roa-oa-ring. What a romance! Finding the sun!</p> + +<p> ... No discussion of the fear element whatsoever in the letter....</p> + +<p>The old thrills won't do for the new race. I took a pair of +screen-trained young ones to a circus recently and became absorbed at +their mild boredom. Alcohol is too slow and coarse for the wastrel +tendencies of the modern hour. The sad ones of the new generation +use high potency drugs to forget the drag of time and space. A new +dimension is required in all things. The young men of the new race make +light of our old dreads and are learning winged ways to heaven and to +hell.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_4" id="chapter_4"></a>4</h2> + +<p class="title">THE STUFF OF COMRADES</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">I wonder if I can make clearer, by turning a few different facets in +this chapter, what we mean by friends, comrades, the spirit of things, +and love not as an emotion but as a cosmic force. Many days I have +faced a Chapel, as I face this day's work, longing to bring in closer +the dream of the new social order, yet dismayed by the limitations +of words and my own mind, trained so long in the life of the old.... +I would begin to talk, drawing the young minds to mine through an +intimate revelation of the heart, then presently lose the sense of +effort, even the sense of thought—and an hour would pass in the joy of +communal blessedness, because we were one.</p> + +<p>Man is not getting larger, though he is continually holding more. +The human brain, after it reaches a certain age and size, may gain +thereafter a conception of the universe without altering the size of +the hat-band. There is a continual <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>condensation at work within us +mentally and physically. We take the cream of the thing, and throw the +rest away. The wiser and the more inclusive we become, the more we take +just the spirit of a thing, and leave the bulk and weight behind.</p> + +<p>This is true in our every refinement, in the clothes we wear, the food +we eat, the books we read and the friends we gather together. We become +harder and harder to suit, because bulk and weight are common, but the +spiritual extract of anything is slow to appear for us. The wiser the +man, the more fastidious he is, and this does not mean that he is a +crank. The excellence of fastidiousness is not in eccentricity but in +inclusiveness. In the spirit of the thing, he sees all. From the spirit +of the thing, he expresses in his own way any part. He can array whole +hierarchies of facts from the spirit of the whole, but mainly he leaves +the facts in reference-libraries, where they belong and are quickly +available, and stores away in his working faculties just a drop of the +<i>oil</i> of a subject or a breath from its essence.</p> + +<p>There are those who believe that the soul of man is made up of essences +of experiences of thousands of lives—yet the refinement of the soul +is so spiritualised that the best surgeon cannot find the little +organ. He knows the brain, which is made up of the stored experiences +of but one <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>life, but because the soul is so small or so diffused, +the surgeon is very apt to say that there is no such organ. And yet, +we all know there is knowledge and power behind us, which drives us, +in our greater moments, to utterances and action entirely without the +scope of the brain. We may call this the soul, or the nth power, or the +fourth dimension—the name doesn't matter.... Listen, if I write well +to-day—I mean well for me—if I rise to the opportunity at all, it +will be because I am writing things which my brain doesn't know.</p> + +<p>I yearn to make this still clearer.... The rose, which is the highest +evolved of flowers, includes all the evolution of plant-life of its +line beneath; the same with gold among the minerals. The fact that each +is the highest necessitates that. In the same way, man includes Nature +and the lower creatures, in that he is the highest. This is easily +proven to you when you recall that a child in the womb passes through +all states of creature evolution. That period is, in a wonderful way, a +review of the evolution of the world.</p> + +<p>The mere fact that the higher one climbs, the farther one can see, +proves it again. This is a law. The scent of a rose is the sublimate +of all plant odours; and the spirit of man is the refinement of all +knowledge and experience beneath.</p> + +<p>The higher man ascends, the more inclusive. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>To heal another, the +physician must be able to include the other. Evolution is continual +refinement—the drawing unto ourselves of the spirit of bulks of +matter. I stood upon a bluff overlooking the ocean recently, and a +breath of the south wind awakened in my mind the story of one whole +summer; others have listened to forest trees or the humming roar of +a distant city, or the rush of a great river, and found in them the +aggregate of all Nature's sounds in one tone. This is the magic of the +spirit of things.</p> + +<p>In all philosophy, there is no difference of opinion as to one fact, +that man is unfolding a microcosm within himself, including in his +consciousness more and more the Idea of the Universe. The cosmic +consciousness, which a few have attained, is the actual perception of +the externals of the Plan.</p> + +<p>The cream of anything includes all the parts. The cosmic mind must +include the essence of all arts and experiences and facts. Just as the +rose and the man and the grain of dust are potential with all beneath, +the highest man, the cosmic intelligence, is potentially the cosmos in +containing the Idea of it.</p> + +<p>This idea may be contained in and expressed outwardly by some great +single, all-including, all-mastering emotion—such as love. And now we +are in a region where there can be no difference <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>of opinion; at least +I have never heard disputed what is the greatest thing in the world.</p> + +<p>There are all kinds of love. The simple man loves simply—himself, +his woman, his children and his animals. The love of the cosmic +consciousness breaks forth in a deluge upon the race, because it +comprehends and includes all beneath. This great outpouring is formed +of earth, air, water, fire, sunlight and all winds, all facts, all +experiences, all arts, light of the moon and stars and all glowing +things under the sun, all sounds and scents and pictures, all ardours, +and sympathies and tolerances. Its outpouring is action, and is of +itself creative. This is the <i>OM</i>. Such a love leavens and impregnates +all things, because it understands and includes all things. It unifies +all separateness; it enfolds all intelligence with intuition; it unites +all parts.</p> + +<p>This brings us to that ancient and unassailable premise of all +religions—that God includes every part of the universe in being the +spirit of it; that His idea of creativeness is expressed in one great +single, all-mastering and including emotion,—which is love. We hear +the little children saying it, "God is love."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p> ... We awaken the Ideal in ourselves first by imitating the virtues of +others. In the earlier days when to me courage meant physical action, +men passed in different fields, leaving an imper<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>ishable remembrance. +I have often seen the expressions of those I loved and idealised as a +boy, live again in the faces of my own children. John T. McCutcheon in +Luzon, filling a reel of films, under a volley of fire at Binan, on his +knees, working the camera with a whole brigade sprawled behind—gave +me one of the finest early building blocks for the courage among men. +He also gave me an ideal of cleanliness: One evening, after a vicious +day's march, and we were all ravenous, John T. left camp to find a +river. There he bathed with government bouquet,—made himself right +with himself, even to shaving, before meat and drink. His constraint +looked like mastery to me then. Grant Wallace was a big star of that +service—ideal in performance of friendship.... Young men at hand now +are different. Not one of them lack in grip and grit. They reveal the +new thing in courage, the courage that begins where the courage of +the soldier ends. These have gone far into the mystery of their own +kingdoms—rapidly becoming kings of themselves.</p> + +<p>The world doesn't understand them. The Abbot[3] is a sensation in +literary matters at Columbia, but unplaced. The Dakotan<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> was said +to be unfit for a soldier because he was twenty pounds under weight +for his height. He can leap five <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>feet six, run or hike indefinitely, +exhaust a cement-mixer, say "stick" in all tongues and "quit" in none. +He has the will and wisdom to make himself a new man over night—and +yet his Government wants him served up just so, in pounds. There isn't +any one loves America more than the Dakotan, whom we now call Steve. +Even the young military surgeons will know before long that endurance +is a matter of spiritual culture, that courage is spirit—that a man +is well because of cleanliness of body and thought and organised +will; that he doesn't fail in a pinch because he is evolved; that all +the higher forms of life call for speed rather than strength, the +levitating force of spirit rather than the gravitating force of flesh, +for brain rather than brute.... Comrade stuff is the stuff of souls.... +I've studied them long and devotedly. I build my days upon the things +these boys show me. Less and less are we different from those who call +to our hearts.</p> + +<p>These young men do not think themselves out; they are not troubled by +misses or personal discrepancies. They simply are themselves. I have +perceived that men of dreams and genius and action are in the larger +sense free from themselves. The main part of their day's performance +is a lifting out of the tangle of emotion and desire, into a large, +unrestricted area full of calm daylight, where events and movements +are seen in their rela<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>tion to one another, not in separateness and +one at a time, an area also where inspiration is momentarily expected +to strike. They do not analyse themselves. They do not hear their own +voices. They are not dismayed if they falter or drop from the key. The +things that most men do with care, and that occupy so much of the days +these young men perform automatically.</p> + +<p>My own path was upward through an intense self-consciousness—the +American, not the oriental way. I lived with myself all the route. I +observed outward conditions and events, domestic, civic and cosmic; but +at the same time observed their effects upon myself. I did not know +until I was adult that there is a big receptivity of consciousness +above this—where intuitions play and weave causes and effects +together—where the mind is more like a child's than a man's, or more +like a giant's, perhaps—where the big faith comes, and the warm laugh +comes, and man surpasses himself, but does not know until afterward, if +at all.</p> + +<p>Warmth flooded into me as I touched this larger consciousness. It +became clear as daylight—that a man is at his best only when out of +himself. I saw much of my misery and depression was the result of +self-analysis. I was a better man when I let myself go utterly. And +this was exactly the thing that happened in moments of dan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>ger, moments +of romance and friendship, moments of the self hurling itself outward. +Capacity for these moments makes the Comrade, and indicates that love +which is not a sentiment, but a cosmic force.</p> + +<p>Again, you cannot describe a spiritual thing with these little tools +and materials in black and white—just intimations.... If we are +sweet enough inside, something of the song will come to us.... Two +words suggest it best. The first is <i>Comrade</i>, which has become a +silliness in a military sense, yet has a high and holy meaning to +all reconstructionists.... I remember when the word first came to me +with a thrill, as a young lad going off to Cuban wars. It was burned +out of me a few days afterward in a Sibley tent full of regular army +soldiers.... I remember the scorn with which I used the word all the +years—or avoided using it—until slowly, smilingly, its new dimension +opened, hard as a diamond, and as clear—its meaning in work and world +and women, its new meaning to Russia and India and China and America.</p> + +<p>It seems to say <i>Equality</i>. It's a kind of deep drink of spirit +together, a word spoken at the last moment between men—an +inner-shrine word, spoken with a smile, and a glimpse into the eternal +indestructibility of the human heart. It expresses the love of the +world, not as it is felt in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>the brain, but in the breast of the soul. +The New Race has already washed it clean. It goes with a Cause fit to +die for. It belongs to men and women who can look at each other with a +kind of prayer in their eyes and face death alone and laugh at it.</p> + +<p>There's a fury, too, in the word—fury against the world, against +things as they are. It stands against the world-darkness now, and for +the day that is to be. It means love for the poor, a love for the +peasants, a passion to serve and be tender to them, not to drive them +into the pits of death—a readiness to die for them without <i>cant</i>, a +readiness also to dare to live for them.</p> + +<p><i>Comrade</i>—there's vision in it to strip off the masks of decadent +nations, to open wide the sepulchres where the priests are still +plotting to crucify the King; its strong magic will uncover the +monotonous crimes of commerce.... It signifies the spirit of the young +men and women who have already begun with gladness and fire to clear +the débris for the building of the New Age.</p> + +<p>They will begin with the soil; they will know and love their own hard +part. They will begin with the grass, with the rice, with the millet +and the wheat, the clean things, the simple and holy things that the +peasants love, with the songs that the peasants sing, the songs of the +soil and the rivers and snows—to build upon them the new<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> heaven and +the new earth.... Above all, there's a laugh in the word—the laugh of +youth and power.</p> + +<p>The other word is <i>Democracy</i>.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_5" id="chapter_5"></a>5</h2> + +<p class="title">JOHN'S THINGS</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Here are some of John's things, mainly letters to the Old Man. +California called hard for the recent winter, and I went out a few +weeks ahead of the Stonestudy outfit. John intended to follow within +three weeks, but overturned a kettle of boiling water in his lap, and +was unable to leave his quarters for three times that period. We all +learned better the hard lesson—to wait. The quoted word "Play" in his +first letter refers to a little slip of paper which I had pasted upon +my typewriter. There has been a big tendency in recent months, in my +case, to let down all tension in relation to literary production—the +idea being that when one has learned all the laws he is capable of, the +time is at hand when it is well to forget them. I have written several +times throughout this book of an ideal emergence of Workman into +Player. We learn many laws, to learn at last that there are none. We +come up through many <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>slaveries to freedom.... I have not corrected all +the spelling in John's documents. The point most interesting is how the +real voice breaks through the mind of a child of nine from time to time.</p> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Dear Younervers<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Pal</span>:</p> + +<p>We got your letter but it was not like you for it was not type-written. +Your old machine here is going grand. I am using it now. It seems that +I am with you all the time. <i>Comrad</i> has meant a lot the last four days +to me. Comrad is everything in the New Race. Masters will be comrads +with every one.</p> + +<p>That "Play" has it all, on your machine. "Play" is in all somewhere. +It is all like a big page and everything is woven on it. There is a +time when Comrads hafto go apart for a little while, but not long. +Their thoughts never go apart. They are always pulling together, always +weaving in thoughts and things that are the same. It is wounderful—a +parting. No sadness over it. It is the best that could come, or it +would not. We are held together. The pull of the world is nothing to us.</p> + +<p>It is hard to keep high, but we will. Fred<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> and I take a swim every +day. I go a hundred <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>and fifty feet. Then we come up and rub each other.</p> + +<p>True Comrads have it all. Love from Comrad to Comrad.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Pal</span>:</p> + +<p>I woke up this morning kind of blurred, and got Irving and Steve to +come out and clean up the barn. They came and we worked there all +morning, and then went in for a swim. It was wounderful, the feel I had +when I got some clean clothes on and had the old dog<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> feeling good. +He is meditating over what a wounderful world it is now. The stall +smells sweet as a hay-stack.</p> + +<p>Fred just got here and is working at your desk.</p> + +<p>How was your morning? I never had a better one, and its the weary old +Sabbath, too.</p> + +<p>Send for me soon now. It seems that it was a year since we have been +together. We can not do without each other. Send for me <i>Soon</i>. I hold +my hand high to you.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Dear Old Magic Fath</span>:</p> + +<p>I am at Steve's desk in the guest room. It is the first time that I +have touched the keys of a type writer since the night I was berned. It +sure does feel good.</p> + +<p>It has been much more wonderful to hafto have Patience for the Meeting. +It will be twice as <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>great for both. I have needed you so since I have +been in bed. In pane and sicknes there is nothing that you need so much +as your Comrad.</p> + +<p>I felt palms up to everything. It is all good. We love it all. It all +was something for us to get. It puts us higher after something comes to +us like that.</p> + +<p>I have all the pores poring out love to you. We are always together.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Your Side Kiker.</span><br /></p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Dear Old Pal</span>:</p> + +<p>Fred and I slept again in the Study. It looked like a storm last night, +but it did not come. Fred is a real Comrad. I got to his heart last +night. I do not know how. The roses have been wounderful the last few +days.</p> + +<p>How is wounderful Mary? We are all sending Thoughts to you. We have had +wounderful full days lately, all heat. The town is howling for rain +now; they are never satisfied. We are always ready for anything. It is +the best. Our wounderful old mailtrain just crossed the magic lane. +I love trains more and more. They have a pull to my heart. We love +everything.</p> + +<p>I do not feel on erth. I feel in space. Out of the draw of the +erth—<i>Free</i>.</p> + +<p>Love always in my heart for you. I hold hard for the time that Comrads +pull together again for <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>the road, us two. Jane is at my hump all the +time—so I will quit.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Dear Old Comrad</span>:</p> + +<p>We are close this morning. I can feel your warm wounderful hand in mine +this morning. We are one. There is the holy breath—such a great pull +of thoughts and work to California. It seems as if all the Comrads were +calling me there. Then I hafto think of the one thing—<i>Patience</i>. When +you have mastered Patience, you are free. All well here. My sores are +getting better fast. I have wanted to work lots lately, since I was in +bed, but I could not. I lost so many ideas in bed. Beds are a curse. I +love you, Comrad. We need to be together.</p> + +<p class="right"> +<span class="smcap">Your old Pal.</span><br /></p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Sunlight Pal</span>:</p> + +<p>A wounderful sun. A little late in getting up. The sun was out full—a +wounderful breakfast and a wounderful bowl of roses.</p> + +<p>Every morning gets greater. The coming together again gets closer. +Separation is a great thing! You find that when it comes. It will be +so big and wounderful to come together on the shores of the sea. The +trains on the Pere Marquette line have a draw to my heart; the whistle +is so wounderful.... To have a bath in the salt water and not in old +Lake Erie.... It was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>another wounderful night with Fred. He has done +so much for me this time that we have been away from each other.</p> + +<p>He is so wounderful if you can get to him. I think I have got right to +him to the heart. I am awful lonesome for you and the sea.</p> + +<p>I walked to the train track with Fred this morning. It was like the day +you were going away. I felt it was nearing the last walk up the old +Lane. Fred has the same feel. It swept over us—a free feel; it was +almost too much.</p> + +<p>How is your Sisity-list coming? Mine is great. It is hard to get along +without you here. Old Abe was drafted, and we don't know when we will +see him. The sea and sunlight sweeping in the open door of your work +room! We will sure have some grand times. We will get horses and have +some more of them Moonlight rides. It will be great to hit the old <i>Tie +path</i> Itself—with the<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> Welcome Mulligan and the<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> Onerbel Chas. +Lipton under our arms. The smell of the burning bark and a caben in the +Rockies! Oh, the open road. Life is Life on the old Road.</p> + +<p>That canyon must be a wounder, and the sea and the misty mountains +and the brown hills. You have it all. Oh man, that is the country for +everything.</p> + +<p>I keep high for our meeting, Comrad of the Road.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p> + + +<p class="plabel"><span class="smcap">Prose Settings</span></p> + + +<p class="center">I</p> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><small>THE RED SUNSET.</small></span></p> + +<p>The red sunset Died away like the close of a forest fire.</p> + +<p>The Dusk ran through the mountains like a scarf of blue.</p> + +<p>The Moon and old Jupiter took the Open Road together.</p> + +<p>The others came out of the everlasting Blue Deeps.</p> + + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><small>THE DESERT NIGHT.</small></span></p> + +<p>The man at the camel corral was fixing the camels for the desert. Other +men were waiting at the front of the Temple. Another came forward with +four camels, a pack-beast and two riders. Then all were off over the +Sun Betin Sand.</p> + +<p>Nothing but Sand and Harizen. Only the Arab who was ahead on the Old +Camel knew the way.</p> + +<p>They went on and on over the Everlasting Sand, the Sun Betin Sand.</p> + + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><small>PINES.</small></span></p> + +<p>The great wood is the Pines. The very whiff of them gives you the +breath of Nature, the great <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>Mother of the planet, the mother of Love. +Her breath is the breath of life and love, and the Mouziek of the world.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Treas</span> (<i>California</i>)</p> + +<p>Treas are grate. They are so wild and wounderful. There is so many +kinds here. The trea I love best of them all, is the U.K. Liptes. It is +fragran; it has the sun and the erth all flowers and the swaying beauty +of its great youth. I loved it from the first. It is beauty that stays.</p> + +<p>I went up to a grove the other day and along a little lone path—the +mist and odor of them lingering in deep shadows. My feet broke the deep +silences and a Voice came and spoke soft to me: "If you listen long +enough you can hear——" I think it was my Master speaking, for a glow +came around me, after He had spoke.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Song of the Sperit</span></p> + +<p>Life is not any good until you forget your boddy; then you get all the +power of living, but you can't do anything that you feel like doing.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Lether</span>:</p> + +<p>All lether has a mystery in it. It is the animal's mystery. The misteks +of the other world know it, and try to tell us. I have been told but +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>my mind has not received it. I will hafto wait until it does. I think +I will know it all in a fue years. I will tell the rest of the world, +if I hear it first. I would like to be the first to hear it.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Stones</span>:</p> + +<p>The whole erth was of stone.</p> + +<p>God thought that he would make it something good. He sent the Old +Mother Nature down and she spent years and years, but she did not know +what to put on it. She went up to God and He took her to a room, and +showed her the things that He had to put on the Erth.</p> + +<p>They were sperits, so she got them one at a time and brought them down.</p> + +<p>In the mean time she was making other things. They were seeds and she +planted these and they came up. It was wheat and barley and other +things like that. The sperits became people and took them for food, and +the old Mother is still putting things and bringing her sperits on the +Erth. This world is just about filled.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Sperit</span></p> + +<p>At night the Sperit goes to see God. It gets fresh to make the boddy +fresh every morning. This is what keeps you clean. If you were all +clean, you would not die. You go thru a hard <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>life and what is not +clean is burned off, and then you are pure to go to heaven. You rest +then until you are ready to come and be a saint.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Alone</span></p> + +<p>The sun beat hard upon the rocks.</p> + +<p>I was alone in the Power of the rocks. Nothing was moving.</p> + +<p>I was Alone. My Sperit was alone.</p> + +<p>It was the loneliest place in the world.</p> + +<p>No animal of any kind, not a bird or a snake—alone.</p> + +<p>Nature did not even have cells of thought.</p> + +<p>The power of the rocks was holden me there.</p> + +<p>A thought came over me that I had never known Home.</p> + +<p>All of a sudden Nature spoke, and I was free from everything.</p> + +<p>I came back to the Father.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Equals</span></p> + +<p>There is a greatness in a man that treats his horse like his brother. +A man is a beast when he beats his horse. He is of a lower Brivahen<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> +than the horse. The man who says to his horse that he is his equal, is +a great man, a master of animals.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Beauty</span></p> + +<p>When the New Race comes, there will be beauty—real beauty. Down thru +the ages people have talked of beauty, but they have not seen it +really, yet. It will come with the New Race—beauty in everything—in +the body, in writing, in talk, in love. Not love one, but all. The +younerverse Lovers will not only love each other, but they will love +all. This war is the great clean up of the world. After it is all over, +and the troops come all home together, there will be the great New Race +waiting for them with open arms—then all will be real beauty.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Hold Up and the Get Away</span></p> + +<p> ... It was the first time Denver Bill had come in without a cigarette +in his mouth. They wanted to know why he wasn't smoking, but they +didn't ask.</p> + +<p>He ordered the same drink and took it fast.... He chucked the chair +over, grabbed the tellfon off the table and gave "Hlo."</p> + +<p>He said, "Horse up here in five minutes."</p> + +<p>It was there.</p> + +<p>He was out of town in a minute more.</p> + +<p>Denver Bill stopped at a cabin where he had made ponmets<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> to rob a +train at 7:45, and it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>was now 6:10. His friend was there. They jumped +on their horses and rode a quarter of a mile. The train whistled around +the curve.</p> + +<p>There was a shout. Denver called: "Stop that engine!"</p> + +<p>It stopped slow.... Bill murdered the engineer, and then flew thru the +train of cars. He grabbed the fifty pound gold box and jumped thru the +window. A shot rang out.</p> + +<p>Bill was pincked.</p> + +<p>The man that he had come with played dirt on him because he went off +with the gold. Bill crawled across the field and laid in the hay stack.</p> + +<p>He rolled the first cigarette of the day.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Letter to the Abbot</span> (from California)</p> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Dear Old Wife</span>:</p> + +<p>How are you coming? I was just up over the hill behind us, getting two +wounderful qwortz of golden honey. How is your type mill pumping these +days? I got a new story in my bean:—Have an old fisherman that takes +those forks and goes after crabs—have him find a pot of pearls instead +of crabs.—Think if it is done right it would make a wounder.</p> + +<p>When will you be out here? We will lead a pack trane over the +mountains! Oh, that is the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>old open road! Pack mules, they mean it to +me—a line of mules in the mountains and a couple of saddel horses! +That's the life.</p> + +<p>I hope you have changed your mind about them airaplanes. I do not like +the Idea. But, old man, it is for the best, and nothing is a mistake. +Take it as it comes. Write soon, and make the pages fly like dust to +me. I need all that I can get.</p> + +<p>Last night was our first bit of rain. Slept in an open window where my +face was sprayed all night with the wounderful cold drops of spring. +When I got up, I was feeling better than I ever did before. I was all +relaxed. I lay a long time just in the wounder of the wounderful free +air and rain. I got up and went down and washed in more of the soft +rain, and ate and went outside to come down to my work shop. I stood +in the wind. Everything around me was so wounderful. All the trees and +flowers were brighter. The hills were a little damp. The birds were +playing and drinking in the rain. The ray of sun was just coming over +the hill. I could almost hear the breathing of the grass and erth. It +was like a song, the great song of spring and breathing of the world.</p> + +<p>That is the way that the new generation will come in after the world is +washed and all countries are <i>one</i>. A Boy, young and clean, will come +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>in, whistling and breathing a Song of the New Race.</p> + +<p class="right"> +<span class="smcap">Your Comrad.</span><br /></p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Another</span></p> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Well, Wife</span>:</p> + +<p>Here I am pumping a little more of my vocabulary at you. I think that I +will go into the ocean and have a swim. It's dulce on my wounds. What +I want to tell you is about an old sea loafer here—a big, black dog. +He isn't any kind of a dog—nothing but a world-man-dog, he is. He is a +lover of the sea and sand. He goes down with us every day. He is a pal +for the road. He can't follow the saddel like Jack, but he can shore be +a frend. I have lerned him and he has lerned me. We stick close.</p> + +<p>Well, pal of the sea and saddel, I am getting awful lonesome, but I am +with you all the time. I need your old paw. I shore keep high for the +Spring Coming. We will have a shack back in the hills all alone, and +drink tea and talk. Don't it sound good? I won't forget it either, not +until we have it. We have planned it for many ages, and we will hafto +have it—old pal of the moonlight rides.</p> + +<p>I am close and always your Comrad.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_6" id="chapter_6"></a>6</h2> + +<p class="title center">VALUES OF LETTER WRITING</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Stonestudy particularly is a shop for writers. A man is at his best in +writing to the one who pulls the most from him. The thing is to pour +out. The pursuit of happiness is a learning how to radiate. Happiness +itself is radiation—incandescence.</p> + +<p>You say you write to the world. A composite? An abstraction? These +will not draw forth your best and greatest.... You pass a thousand +faces in the town, and are suddenly torn by one? Do you think that +the unmanifested, upon which the thousand faces sleep so far as you +are concerned, is capable of bringing out your wisest or tenderest +expression, as is this one face pressed against the very window of your +habitation?</p> + +<p>As a workman, as an artist, as a player, one must give his best, one +by one, to individuals first, before he arouses the force to set +the table for the world.... It is important for the young writer +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>to answer exactly certain listening attitudes. I think, in a story +mood, of the shepherd fires—the endless droning tales of Persia and +Palestine—camel bells, bearded men in white hoods, occasional weary +movements of women in the tent openings as the evening passes to dead +of night. The tale-teller is making his listeners see more or less +dimly something <i>he</i> sees—something he has heard and visualised, +better yet, something he has lived. The finer his telling the more +completely he has lived it. The more listeners pull from him, the more +excellent his animation, his art. A speaker, accustomed to give himself +spontaneously to an audience, said: "If I don't give you what you +want—if I am not at my best to-day—remember it's apt not to be <i>all</i> +my fault."</p> + +<p>Soil and seed in all things.</p> + +<p>We prepare ourselves with much misery and massed experience to tell +our story of life. How strange that we should not have reckoned with +the fact that all this preparation is only half.... Really, it is as +important to think to whom one is writing as what to write about. I've +been afield with many young men, soldiers and the like. Their best and +highest moments afield were spent in writing home, or possibly to the +girl they left under the beeches or sycamores. We should write a myriad +or two love letters, before we are <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>ready to write for the world.... By +writing and dreaming and travelling and living toward the one, we learn +how to focalise our forces. Having done that, we are ready to diffuse, +to radiate. Sooner or later the <i>one</i> point will be taken away.</p> + +<p>Don't be distressed; it is only for the time. But the love we have +learned with one must be turned upon the many. It's all a love story. +The whole universe is that. The stillness of the sun in relation to the +planets tells the first story of radiation—love a cosmic force, not +a sentiment—all one big, brave tale.... The real priest is trained +to draw out, to furnish understanding,—inclusion. One can talk well +to one who includes him. As professional essayists and story-tellers, +we are only beginning to learn that we must talk or write to some one +greater than ourselves, to set ourselves free.</p> + +<p>The wonderful power of letters begins and ends just here.... Write your +story or your essay to one who contains you—to one who draws your +best, to one who sets you free. You can ascertain your relation to +another by your mood as you prepare to write. The more you practise the +art, the more sensitive you are, the more you realise that no two moods +of yours are the same, as you write to different people. One draws +humour, one irony, one a tendency to exaggerate, another deeply to be +serious and reformative. This should <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>reveal the whole secret. Choose +your complement for the portrayal of a mood.</p> + +<p>The thing we call our style is merely the evidence of that which +we have chosen to work toward, plus our particular personality. We +should work to that which sets us free. Certainly one cannot be free +in another's form. There are fixed vehicles for expression—novel, +essay, poem, infinite departments of each, but the fact remains that no +workman or artist or player can be utterly himself, who remains in the +forms laid down by those who went before, or in forms prescribed by the +generation he undertakes to express himself through.</p> + +<p>No good workman ever accepts things as they are. To be the workman +unashamed, he must be considerably beyond his generation in culture and +acumen. He therefore finds the beaten paths—which are the easy paths +for the many—the most irksome paths for himself. He grinds long and +hideously against the things that are, and thus becomes formidable, +since grinding makes the edge. The dullest part of the axe is held the +longest against the wheel.</p> + +<p>Bit by bit, as the consciousness of the chosen workman expands under +years and ordeals, he casts off all the shackles, forms and prescribed +nonsense of the trivial and material-minded. He breathes deeper with +each unbinding, until he <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>reaches the fair eminence upon which lies the +priceless secret of all expression:</p> + +<p><i>That there is no law for the pure in heart.</i></p> + +<p>He reaches this point through many slaveries, and yet a child can +be taught the secret. The child must also be taught, at the same +time however, that the world is wrong and inferior in all its views; +otherwise the child will not have stamina enough to stand against the +opinions of all elders of all times, much less those who sit at the +same breakfast table. Verily, the thing that Rodin and Balzac and +Carpenter and Hugo and Chavannes and Nietzsche and Whitman gave their +prodigious vitalities to learn, before their real work began,—can +be taught to the child, but the child must find his faith in his own +spirit and some true teacher to set him free.</p> + +<p>In the later aspirations beyond professional workmanship for the world, +the Players achieve that master freedom which detaches itself entirely +from causes and effects in materials. They work as do those who are +ambitious, yet refuse to tie themselves in the least way to results. +They work to their Masters, to the Unseen.... All of which is pure and +perfect liberation, but requires one trained in building with spiritual +causes and effects. We seek to furnish this training for a few who are +ready. It is the way to the inmost and the uppermost in all art and +mysticism. We are set free here as expressionists of various kinds <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>by +writing or painting or playing to those we hold dearer than ourselves. +We wouldn't be writing if we could be with them in the flesh—how clear +that is! The fundamental processes of our picture-making are quickened +by our yearning. Here we touch an old and curious law, that you must +have separation for the true romance.</p> + +<p>We learn to mass life into pictures or tones or tales.... All that we +do well shortens the grade for those who receive. If they are quite +ready, they won't have to make the mistakes we did—mistakes painful at +the time, but out of which we make humour now.</p> + +<p>A man brings a gift when he brings forth a good tale. He has done +something with the worn-out tools of incident and experience which +hasn't been done before. To do it well his telling is dependent +upon his audience. His telling will be different for each listening +group. The greater the artist, the less alike will be his methods of +approaching different friends or comrades. Each will bring from him a +different tone, a different look to his eyes, a different grip of hand, +and different order of unfolding his genius....</p> + +<p>The most perfect bits of writing we have from the group of our greatest +novelists—is either in the form of letters or parts of work inspired +by the influence of a woman's heart—some romantic and one-pointed +outbreathing of their souls to one.... The great creative producers +rarely <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>found steady human companionship in one woman. No flesh was +starry enough to endure their idealisation; the break of their picture +was often the shattering of life itself. Experience forces us all at +last to take our idolatry from that which changes—to continue our +lessons of love toward the Unseen. Lovers of the New Race seem to have +learned the agony of trying to find all in each other, of trying to +find the universe eye to eye. They realise at once that man and woman +are but the two earth points of a triangle; that they safely may rear +their passions and their transfigurations only to the pure point of +union above....</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>A man has found something when he cries "Eureka!" He loves something, +when he pours out his heart to it. The first great struggle of the real +workman is to find a form that contains him—a form of expression that +will not maim his dream. It is never the form that has held another, +that has sufficed for another artist. A letter is one way to freedom. A +writer's style should set him free.</p> + +<p>The enduring aphorisms and tablets and discourses of the Masters have +been spoken to their beloved few. A man's sealed orders in the world, +his occult transcriptions from above the world, come in the form of +personal messages. Great documents of the future shall be written this +way. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>We write many personal letters. One of my young comrades has the +idea to gather together names of a score of mill-girls in New York or +somewhere, and write her heart to them—less to try to help them, than +to ease her own heart, to tell her love for them. Radiation—that is +happiness. Mill-girls have been a dream of hers. She is full of force +to pour out.</p> + +<p>Incandescence is happiness. All expression is happiness. Happiness is +creative. To work, to express, that is to radiate. The object is as +important as the thing that aches to go forth. Choose the form that +sets you free. To each his form.</p> + +<p>A tireless woman asked how she might serve. Her lover was lost in +Flanders. We told her to write to the soldiers—to write her heart +out in letters to soldiers—that she would save lives and start great +dreams and bring the gold back to many grey mists—to be Mary the +Mother, the saint, the dream of the film-eyed fighting men—to love +them through the heart of her beloved. That is what focalisation leads +to—to draw forth the great energies from our souls, to set us free, +first to one, then to the world.</p> + +<p>We learn to love the one—in order to give this love to the world. We +learn to love in matter for the moment, in order to become consummate +artists and players in the soul stuff that cannot die. Again and again, +through possessions and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>personalities—missing, destroyed or moved +away—we learn to take the force of our outpouring from the mutative to +the changeless—making a divine bestowal at last of a clinging human +need—lifting from the idolatry of the flesh, which encloses all pain, +to the love of souls which sets us free.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_7" id="chapter_7"></a>7</h2> + +<p class="title center">THE NEW DANCING</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">I have found true North Americans. A woman of twenty-seven, a mother +(with a mysterious man somewhere) and a girl-child with the calm and +power of Joan come again.... I needed a change, was tired of my house +and my voice—close to the end of all human interest that morning as I +set out for a walk up the edge of the Lake. On and on walking, until I +came to the little girl on the shore. She was making a frowning man in +clay. She asked me if I were the Crusader, but answered herself while +I was hoping to fit the dimension of that fascinating title. She had +decided that I wasn't.</p> + +<p><i>North Americans</i>—I think of them so again and again—something great +and calm and deep and beautiful, something arrived, at last, from all +the fusion—en rapport with nature, children of the light, living and +abiding constantly in the essences of sunlight—with the humour and +cer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>tainty of Mother Earth about their ways—the cleanliness of earth +and the sweetness of golden light in their house and mind....</p> + +<p>Mind you, I had walked forth as one would wade out to sea in the path +of the moon—actually yearning for a better land than this.... There on +the shore, after hours, was the child—her eyes turned to mine, putting +me into the enchantment of the wise—stilling hate and ennui. We had +words together, the great awe of life stealing over me again after +many days. Her hand stretched forth to take me to her mother (this day +called the Lonely Queen, for they live in an enchanted story-book). +A climb to the top of the bluff and into the most fragrant and godly +lane, a low house in the distance in the shelter of beeches—solitary +and isolate beeches sheltering a human house, built for sunshine long +ago. Many pages would not tell of the lane and the house, the lawn and +the hives.... I want to touch the core of this inimitable pair that +took me in—poor but dining upon the perfect foods, so poor that they +make and dye the lovely things they wear—a kind of holy handiwork +everywhere—perfume of summer in the house and in the heart of it a +deepdelved peace where broods a sort of lustrous dream.</p> + +<p>The child is but seven—that is, her body and brain are but seven. +Her talk with her mother is the talk of a pair of immortals.... Wheat +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>bread and butter for supper, peaches of the mother's canning—a last +jar, she said, with comb-honey for sweetening and golden cream on +top. It was a repast for the mountain-top where demi-gods stray—all +miracles about us, Apollo just putting his steeds away, Vulcan smoking +sombre and wrathful in the distance.</p> + +<p>Can you see me sitting down to supper in a true handmade house, at the +head of a God-made portal to the lake (the lane is nothing less) in a +grove of white beeches—lingering gold on the vines at the window, the +murmur of hives in the air, and these two mystic presences subduing +their radiance to sit with me?... There's a little can of tea that +is opened the last thing after the table is spread; the brass kettle +begins to sing, and the mother hovers over—a kind of sacred rite, all +this—then the dancing water is poured over the leaves and the room +softly fills with the air of far archipelagoes. Roses of Ireland and +France are in the room. Tearoses—some daughter of poetry must have +named them.</p> + +<p> ... Still I am telling you about <i>things</i>—not about <i>them</i>. I thought +I should write you what they are, yet the longer I sit here, the more +testaments of their adorable lives appear, but their spirits draw +farther apart.... There is never a drone of talk where they are ... +sentences and silences, the myriad voices of evening stealing into the +hushes between.... I must get down to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>earth again. I must begin with +the grass and the shore and the magic which began when the child turned +up to me from the frowning clay....</p> + +<p>I should like to report them moment by moment—to make you see, but +there is a fixed purpose in this chapter. Sitting apart from them that +first night, I contemplated the North America of the future—a kind of +dream that nestles within a dream—the Great Companions, superb men and +women, the vastness of leisure, the structural verity of joy, a new +dimension in the human mind, a new colour and redolence in the light +that plays upon the teeming world. Not for years had I been so near to +the dithyrambic.... I went out into the dusk and smoked a machine-made +cigarette—not for worlds would I desecrate that room. I returned +drowsy—opened the casement windows wide to the stars. As I put out the +lights, the sense came to me that the little room was as fragrant and +sweet as a new-woven basket.</p> + +<p> ... I awoke to low singing. The room was grey and seemed to lift +with me, and the walls to widen. It was as if I had caught the old +house just waking from a sleep of its own. The phenomenon of the +singing lived in my mind. I don't know the song—a rapid bird-like +improvisation possibly—two voices hushed, but a vibration of clear +liquid joy. I went to the window. The earth was still asleep—a +pearl-grey world <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>of dripping trees in a kind of listening ecstasy—two +beings below on the lawn—a lawn that was grey with dew. It was like +looking down upon a cloud from the Matterhorn. These two beings—one +in a veil of rose, one in a veil of gold—were dancing upon the cloud, +dancing bare-armed and limbed, their voices interpreting some soft +harmony that seemed to come from the break of day upon the sphere.</p> + +<p>It was not for me—yet I could not draw back from the vines. I brought +only thankfulness to it—sharing the joy in the dim of a room, in the +dim of a mere man's heart. Yet all I could contain came to me from +the mother and child. They knelt in the grass, the song more hushed, +bringing up to their faces and shoulders hands that dripped with the +holy distillations of the night—a wash in dew and day, their song a +prayer, their dance a sacred rite.... I should have thought it the gift +of dreams, but there was a starry track of deep green across the lawn, +where their bare feet had broken the sheen of dew.</p> + +<p> ... I dwelt with souls—that was the truth. I sat at breakfast with +souls, dew-washed, speaking to each other and to me from that long road +of life which we lose for a squalid by-way when we put on the garments +of the world.... They talked again about what the birds hear in the +morning. They said that what the birds sing is their interpretation +of the great song of day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>break—that the earth does not meet her Lord +Sun in silence.... And then I knew that the song I heard was their +interpretation—think of it—a child of seven eating buttered toast.</p> + +<p>And I knew that power is a song—that the singing of the kettle is the +song of steam, that the inimitable <i>t'sing</i> of an electric burner when +the current first charges through, is the awakening song of steel and +carbon to their native capacity and direction. The same is in the heart +of a boy when he finds his task—the same is in the order of a master +and in the making of his poem.... These two hear it—the song of Mother +Earth as the floods of light pour out and over her from the East.</p> + +<p>Here was a mother who knew how to play. She had launched somehow +into a sphere of her own making—doubtless having found life of the +world insupportable. I had thought much about bringing up children, +about unfolding the child, and here it was being worked out with +brimming joy.... It was all too natural to be called education. It +was nature—it was liberation, rather—a new and higher meaning of +naturalness.</p> + +<p>I was almost afraid to speak. The life here seemed so delicate +and delightful that comments would bruise the fine form of it.... +They played together—that was the point. Play is a liberation of +force—great play is ecstasy. In it one rises to the <i>stillness</i> +of production, wherein <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>one bathes in mystery and potency and all +commonness is cleansed away. Those who reach this stillness are the +great beings of the world.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>When we finally open ourselves to any subject, we find intimations of +it everywhere. I found presently that all the voices of the New Age +had designated the magic of the dance. It seems almost dull to declare +that I do not refer now to the dance as it is taught and used and +exploited as a social accomplishment, but that in which the personality +is subdued and quiescent, quite as absolutely as it is in all great +moments of production. One must give oneself. Music carries the +sensitive soul into its own mystic region. A rhythm within answers to +the external rhythm—the two meet and mate—the fusion is bewildering +beauty.</p> + +<p>As in all creativeness, the first law is spontaneity.</p> + +<p>The great dancers of the future will <i>hear</i> their own music—possibly +give voice to it as they give their body to the rhythm. There shall be +no exact interpretation of song or sonata—at least, not until absolute +genius interprets the exact figure of each tone-set. This is impossible +in a world of mutation. Accordingly, one who establishes a series of +movements to accompany a certain harmony, misses the meaning of the +divine improvisations which is the essential beauty of the New <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>Age +dances. One should dance as freely as one called upon to speak. And one +will neither speak nor dance greatly by prearrangement or following any +arbitrary form.</p> + +<p>The very tone of the voice is different and deeper when one is caught +in the spirit of spontaneity. The prime object of the new education, +which includes dancing, is to set the soul free. Music is one of the +master-lures to call forth the sleeping giant.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>One night a stranger<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> came to Stonestudy. She said she was called by +the way we were doing things, and that she hoped she had something to +bring to us.... The next morning at daybreak, down on the shore, I saw +stars and circles of young women and girls folding and bending together +in exquisite tones of colour and song. Her gift was the new dancing. +Over night she had captured the young people, bringing them a new joy +in the world. For two or three months she remained with us and has +since established classes east and west—life given to the message of +beauty. With us her expression and magic has endured.</p> + +<p>There is no way more swift to merge in the universal, than by the +response to music through movement. Not dancing, which is a response to +time in music more than to rhythm, but the actual blotting out of self, +a spiritual exaltation <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>which many religionists have sought and few +attained.</p> + +<p>The means is very simple; nothing strange or peculiar. It is the +dropping of the human will so that the music may flow through. One +does not move to the music then; one is moved by it. The objective +mind ceases to operate and through the larger consciousness absolute +Beauty streams. The response to the music may be totally different +with several pupils, but where the dancer is really lost to the +objective world, the movement is always true and satisfying to those +who watch. This is easy for those who are close to Nature and God, but +it is fraught with difficulties for those who are over-mental or who +have been terribly repressed. In many ways the will is man's highest +asset and it requires a supreme effort of the will itself to drop the +objective consciousness.</p> + +<p>There is a technique of the dance to be sure, but it is designed only +to free the body so that it may be a purer channel for the music, and +to facilitate the effacement of self. Physical strength, agility, +beauty as mere beauty, are never sought, but only the revelation of +eternal harmony.</p> + +<p>There is rhythm throughout Nature. Man often moves less gracefully +than the higher mammals. He has opposed his will to the law of the +universe, for centuries abusing his ancient right, but through music he +may realise again the harmony of all. The dancer is radiant with the +splendour of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>infinite and there comes an ecstasy into the spirit, +of those who witness the transfiguration—the hush that one feels only +before the highest art and purest religion.</p> + +<p>It is reasonable to suppose that those who dance must bring back with +them into every-day living something of the beauty of those exalted +moments when they touch "the white radiance of eternity." Here is +natural education, natural religion—a practical mysticism, the merging +of self in the Infinite with a consequent fitness for daily living.</p> + +<p>So the dancing of the New Age is but a different form of contemplation +and production, by which the Soul becomes the creature—for the period +achieving that blessedness which is above time and space, and dwelling +in that dimension, where goodness, beauty and truth are one.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The new dancing is "in the air." Like vers libre and all New Age +realisations and creations, its first essential is freedom. This is the +meaning of the word Democracy—equality, liberation. The very spirit +of all that is new demands freedom. The deeper one penetrates, the +lovelier the folds of this marvellous conception. There is no title for +friend or comrade, for child or lover—comparable to the assumption of +equality.</p> + +<p>Equality—its power sings. It dances. When the last is said and done, +we all want the same thing, if we really knew,—goodness, beauty +and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>truth, one at the top. There is joy in the fine new conception +appearing now in all the arts—freedom first and last, even to +lawlessness at first, but that will right itself more swiftly than +smugness, which has had its age-long and hideous trial.... To me, the +house in the beeches slowly unfolds it all—the mystery of the cosmic +peasantry of the future—that fastidious poverty, that delicate plenty +which is perfection. These two, mother and child, mean the new dancing +to me, and the New Race beside. I have not dared to go again, because +I build incorrigible dreams, and this one especially is dear.... Yet I +often recall their loveliness together.</p> + +<p>The mother's beauty had turned to loveliness. It had more than the +mystic chiselling of sorrow—it had passion, it had humour.... I feel +the need of telling you from time to time that I am not rhapsodising, +the need of reminding you, how weathered and drab my mind was, when +I went up the shore that day. She made me think of grapes and olives +and laurel-boughs; she seemed the sister to the child. All about the +two were subtle, pervasive, ever-changing tests of the power of the +soul. The country people around did not think her extraordinary, much +less beautiful. How much is revealed in that? Loveliness requires +certain vision, an interpretative spirit, and thus it is protected +from the vulgar gaze. These good country people carry upon their faces +and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>hands and persons picture-writing of secret sins and dreamless +stolidity, and yet they are scandalised by this woman. You cannot +imagine how sweetly it came to me that she had utterly lost the sense +that she was outcast.</p> + +<p>A lamp burns at her door every evening. I don't suppose it is seen +three times a month—yet the lamp burns.... There's a big wooden +Cross in the room where they sleep—the child led me to it—a +mat of grass before it, <i>kusa</i> grass, who knows?... A great Cross, +a much-worshipped Cross, with spike-holes, the broken edges worn +smooth.... The child whispered to me that <i>she</i> had been brought (when +she was too small to know) and placed on the mat at the foot of the +Cross for her mother to find; also that she came when the white clover +bloomed.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p> ... It is only this way, bit by bit, that I can make the picture. I +have never before been so disturbed by the sense of inadequacy. The +light about their heads is all diffused like morning upon a cloud.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_8" id="chapter_8"></a>8</h2> + +<p class="title center">OLD PICTURES IN RED</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">There was a period between the second and third year of the war, when +it seemed that the guiding, shielding spirits of the planet were slowly +being withdrawn—leaving only the mockery of goods, the chaos of +multiplied things. But at the blackest, in the very hush of desolation, +the new breath stole in upon us, a breath of lilacs on the chill, dank, +wintry air. Many now stand arisen, waiting the flash that changes the +world.... Five men were gathered in Stonestudy one evening; we talked +of our parts, the best we could do in the clean-up. It was hard to look +over the barriers at first; hard for an American to accept the fact +that he dare not say what he thought, nor write what he thought. It was +hard to realise that we were prevented from expressing what we thought, +by the very forces that had drawn us into this deep trouble. We who are +the distant generation of a party of pilgrims and voy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>agers who came to +America to find a free country, were strange and intolerant at first, +when we felt the yoke of Europe settle upon ancient scar-tissue.</p> + +<p>We discussed.</p> + +<p>A country is superb when one is unconscious of it, we said. One's +country should be like one's health, part of the song of life. Suddenly +to find the freedom of the past unremembered, the freedom of the +future unglimpsed, to hear the loathly low beat of talk from groups +of frock-coated Appetites, with heavy half-dead legs and heads like +pitching-quoits, settling our sacred future on the basis of steel +and coal and margin and murder market; to feel ourselves clutched +and borne forward with stub-nailed fingers in the stench of big +business; black-garbed shopmen pointing the way to the ports, urging +and shouldering other people's children to the ports of the gunboats, +advising the efficacy of "Nearer My God to Thee," as a song for sinking +ships,—we forgot at first in our own pain that this was merely the +body of the Old strained to a cracking point by the resistless growth +of the New.</p> + +<p>Presently we grew kinder.... In a way, the Old was the grim stepmother +in whose house we learned how <i>not</i> to do most things; in whose kitchen +we learned cleanliness, because of the vile example of her organic +sloth; in whose walled garden we learned the peril and the passion of +Quest, because we loathed her long snor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>ing of afternoons; from the +death of whose sects and schism-shops we set forth to find the unity of +life; from the obscenity of whose loves we came into the first great +cleansing hatred of ourselves....</p> + +<p>No hatred now. Hatred is part of the Old. It has no part to unsteady +the hands of the reconstructionists. This New Race has come up in +strong soil. The Old nourished and fertilised all its vitalities. The +new green beneath the litter of dead leaves cries out under the decay, +"You are stifling me!" but the plan of it all is wiser, for there is +warmth still in the humus of the old to protect the new and the frosts +may not be finished.</p> + +<p>More and more as the sense of big cleansing and chastening came home +to us, the everlasting principles of reason and order and beauty also +appeared out of the chaos and the pain.... They were saying in Europe +that this war was a war without morale. We believed it would be a war +with morale before the destruction was finished. One of the cleanest +dreams we had was that America would bring, with its guns and knives +and instruments of flagellation, something of the almighty spirit of +the human heart to light the blackness where the Pale Horse has passed. +That's all morale is, and war without morale hasn't any cause or effect +on the constructive side, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>and will continue to destroy itself against +itself as all such forces do in their madness.</p> + +<p>If any one concludes that we were a group of religionists gathered in +Stonestudy that night it will be well to point out that this planet +will be a whole lot more religious before war ends, and no one will be +louder about it than the trade-mind everywhere.</p> + +<p>War brings death, and death enforces the faith of the human heart, +and faith is one of a trinity (as we learned in Sabbath School and +variously since) that inclines the heart of man to God. You take a +loved object from the Seen and place it in the Unseen (thousands each +day the soldiers pass) and faith is born of the agony of separation. +The human heart forces a bridge across the abyss from the Seen to the +Unseen. It's the old story of the bereaved turning to God. Saints are +thus made—thus tenderness and purity come to be.</p> + +<p>Within the next ten years there will be heroisms before our +eyes—heroisms such as seers and saints and sages have dreamed of as +the consummation of the human heart. And those who have lost most and +mourned most will read the eternal joy of the Plan from the Book of +God's Remembrance.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>When you see the remnant of a race of people crying out that there +is no God—then you begin to know what war means. When a country has +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>given its tithe of human blood, <i>or one in five is gone</i>—then you +begin to know what an Austrian woman meant, when she spoke of the +"horrible grinding of war and the answer of the women to man's cries +of pain afield." ... When peace brings a worship of materials and a +dulness that cannot look beyond existing institutions—the end is war, +and after that a sitting in black upon the ground.</p> + +<p>We didn't know what death meant before this war—but many have learned. +The very word death has the sweetest sound of all uttered names to many +a lonely heart to-day. We didn't know enough about death. We had the +habit of thinking this was all. The end of such thinking is war, and +after that, a sitting in black upon the ground.</p> + +<p>When your heart is cleft in twain and one part stays on this side, and +the other over the dim borderland—there's a straining of eyes into the +Unseen, a picture making out of the creative materials of human spirit. +Life of the soul begins again—out of pain—always out of pain.</p> + +<p>We have not yet learned to accept life from the higher masters, Joy and +Beauty. We still learn through Pain. We forget the meaning of death, +even as we gather our things of death about us, and war comes along to +remind us again. Always those who answer to Master Pain must look to +death to find their relation to God. The faith that <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>comes with peace +at last to the human heart, is energised by a love that crosses the +abyss of life and death.... A grand old teacher, Master Pain. When we +know all his lessons, and take his hand from our shoulder, and touch it +to our lips (for we shall know well his wonderful work when the time +comes for us to part with him), then we shall find that he is not a +black man at all—but a Sunburnt God....</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Four at a supper table—a little child, its young mother, and the old +father and mother of a grown son, who has just died for France. The old +man's eyes roved from the child to its mother, back to the old woman, +and lingered there, something rough and deep and wise in his look. The +child suffered vaguely. There was much suffering in the house.... The +young mother asked coldly if they could feel <i>him</i> in the room. Then +just as coldly she asked if there were a God. Then she ran from the +room with a cry like a night animal. The silent child began to weep. +The old man and the old woman stared at each other and wondered what +their daughter-in-law meant about <i>him</i> being in the room.</p> + +<p>A picture of the chastened world.</p> + +<p>The child turned from the strange, sad human beings to the fairies +that played upon the peasant hearth. The child's mother had rushed +forth into the twilight to find a vision or a memory or a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>breath of +God. The old man and the old woman looked so long at each other in the +darkness—that the soul of the son of their flesh stood for one healing +instant between them. Thus the enduring figures of the Unseen reveal +themselves to those who have suffered to the end.</p> + +<p>The nations are but names to fight for. These battle-lines are for +humanity's soul. If America is fighting for humanity, let it be with +surgical calm and healing in her hands. Hate spoils everything.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The babe knows a room; the child knows a house and looks out into a +street; the youth learns the street and then the city; the young man +learns his country, but the man should learn the world. You can never +be the great lover of America by hating the rest of the world; no +human mind can see what is best, what is even good for America, when +the interests of other countries are forgotten. No man's country ever +suffered because he turned his love and service to the feet of humanity.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The few who brought the real American impartiality to the European +war in the first months, found themselves in the midst of the most +challenging chaos that ever reared its head to the light. Profound and +tragic impressions followed each other. It became icy clear that the +greater nations, as well as the pawns of the Balkans and the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>Levant, +were puppets alike, churned together in a great planetary cleansing. +Every partisan path was found to be increasingly crooked the farther +one advanced—and a sheer descent at the last. Any national point of +view used to dupe the people into greater destructive energy, proved +in itself, no matter how sincerely offered, as short-sighted and +ill-founded as the hatred of two soldiers who meet between trenches and +discover, as they gore each other to death, that their only basis for +hostility is a different colour of coat.</p> + +<p>Studying Europe in those dark days, the unprejudiced eye was in danger +of having some truths torn down with the host of illusions. It was +hard to hold fast to the fact that there was anything magic or holy +about nations at war. Indeed, they seemed entities formed of groups of +greedy men who wanted their way—in the main, groups of leaders devoid +of vision and the spirit of fraternity, and careless of the welfare of +the people, quite the same as many great commercial organisations.... +The real enemies of any people are groups of men who want things for +themselves. The real issue of the war has nothing to do with entities +of this kind, nor with alliances of such entities, but with the painful +groping consciousness of the peasant mind—its slow and torturous +awakening to the fact that royalty in its utmost pomp and glow does not +enfold God.</p> + +<p>The people must learn before they can be free. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>Hitherto they have +been duped by the nations; and the nations are now being duped by each +other; but there is a greater plan at work—using men and nations +alike,—a plan to do away with boundaries and hatred and preying, +to strike the spear from the hand of man and leave it free to help +his neighbour, to establish democracy in the place of imperialism, +and fraternity upon the solid footings of the earth in the place of +separateness and strife.... The new volume of human spirit already +has been opened. We felt it that night in Stonestudy before lights +out,—the first beauty as of a song across still waters.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>An American correspondent going home from the field in Europe "the +long way around," met an old Persian Master on the road to Damascus. +With the sage was his nearest disciple, also a Persian; in fact, the +young man was so loved that he had been changed from discipleship into +sonship. This young Persian became very devoted to the American. They +stood together for a moment in silence, when the time for parting came. +The old Master drew near and said:</p> + +<p>"It is good to see you place your hands together. To me it is a symbol +of the marriage of the East and West, for the East and West must mate. +Long ago the East went up to God and the West went down to men. The +East has learned Vision and the West has learned Action. These two +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>must meet and mate again for the glory of God and the splendour of +earth. The East has lifted its soul to the hills and held fast to +its memory of the Father's house. The West has descended into the +folds of the valley, and won from agony and isolation its efficacy in +material things. And now the mystic is looking down and the materialist +is looking up. Soon their hands shall join—like your two hands in +mine—and there shall be great joy in the Father's House."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_9" id="chapter_9"></a>9</h2> + +<p class="title center">STEVE</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Steve and I were camping together for a few weeks on the Southern +California strand. One morning he looked up from the pages of a book in +his hands and remarked:</p> + +<p>"This fellow is one of us."</p> + +<p>The book was <i>Youth</i>, by Joseph Conrad.</p> + +<p>"I haven't read a book for a long time," Steve added. "There are three +stories in this. I've read only one—<i>Heart of Darkness</i>—in fact, I +haven't finished that.... You have to fall into this Conrad and be +his—to get him. You let your mind open into a cup, and presently after +six or seven pages, you find it brimming. If you fall into him deep +enough, you get almost what he sees—not quite though. No reader ever +does. But you get something intense, fascinating, a restlessness, a +terror. You find that all your somnolence and inertia has caught fire."</p> + +<p>There had been a ten minutes' rain at dawn. The smell of the tropics +moved over the sterile <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>sand. It was cool, but there was no wind. The +day promised heat. We had been up in Canada for the winter, and it was +hard to believe that hot sunlight was free. A broad quilt of gulls and +plover sat together on the shore waiting for the drying light or for +the mist to rise, or the tide to ebb....</p> + +<p>Steve resumed:</p> + +<p>"He tells about a boy who loved maps—who used to look for hours at the +continents—thrillingly attracted to the darkest places, the patches +still unprotected. There was one heart of darkness with a river winding +through. He doesn't tell you the continent or the river, but there were +elephants there. He should have called the story <i>Ivory</i>.... Years +afterward, the man, worn to the bone from the world's lies, sets out to +penetrate this deepest black of the planet. He reaches the river and +follows it for endless days, but the world has arrived. Some nation is +there colonising for Ivory—you don't know which. The story is told +like that—unplaced in time and space. Really it doesn't matter what +particular imperialistic tendency is at work. The fact is, he climbed +the river into the ghastliest chaos....</p> + +<p>"You get the deep green of the heart of the continent, the mournful +brooding leafiness—the natives herded and distracted, more afraid of +the blast of a river-steamer's whistle than of any kind of violent +death. Death was familiar to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>them. They were chained to labour, +cast loose to die. Vultures swept the sky waiting for their limbs +to fall still. There was the salty pester of fever in the air—men +foolish with fever and heat—a haze of flies—white men burning out +inside—oxidisation of human souls—a steady and hideous beat of +death—devils of hate and violence and acquisitiveness—clerks making +entries of Ivory—a nation's young men running through the jungles +for Ivory—carloads of bright glass beads and painted calico for +Ivory—all standards of life and career-building set upon Ivory—murder +for that—lives lost, tribes shattered—the leafy heart of a fresh +continent seared with the civil flame of greed—commodities dumped +in river beds—mails that men would die for torn open by vandal +hands—waste, perversity, nothing clean-cut even of crime, the horrible +non-initiative of the middlemen.... All this told with patient +exactitude, but with indescribable intensity; told by a master-hand +that trembles; with the control that one can only know who is sensitive +enough to tremble. You feel a big man bending forward to make you see +something that all but killed him to find out. You feel him scarred +and sick, his heart leaking, because he found it all so hideously and +stupidly rotten. It's a little picture of a trade war—that's the +point—the war of middlemen—middlemen turning to rend each other.... +Heart of darkness—after that the light comes."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p> + +<p>Steve opened and shut his fingers in the sunlight. The warmth was +sweeter every minute.</p> + +<p>"This fellow sees it all," he went on. "He's done a big job for me—for +anybody who gives himself to the book. There's something immortal about +being a workman like that—about any workman. That's why one wants to +cast a weep after the passing hordes of middlemen. They can't do work. +They don't even see the fog of human agony they've painted the world +with. They are <i>it</i>. It is the old against the old. It's all about +Ivory. They crucify for fossil."</p> + +<p>Steve was lighting up.</p> + +<p>"This Conrad brought back to me to-day a bigger love for the workman. +The starved and scorned inventor gets the best of it, after all—not +in Ivory—but he builds something in himself. He quickens something in +himself that goes on in freed consciousness when the body falls. No, I +don't insist that anything goes on in any particular way, but the deep +moments of work somehow show a man that the best of him here is but a +nexus between a savage past and a splendid future.... It's wonderful to +be alive to-day. I believe there are secret agencies at work behind all +the governments—that they are one at the top. I don't mean detectives, +not intelligence or espionage bureaus. Potent, mystic, infallible +forces. It doesn't matter. <i>Some person or some group is holding the +plan of the New Age.</i></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p> + +<p>"We're learning life as never before—plucking the deeper fruits and +mysteries of pain. But one must go apart from the crowd to see. One +must cease to be a partisan. The real seer sees the whole, not the +part. All the war-lands are in pain. One sees only the part, when one +is in pain. Not one man out of a million sees it all. A few Russians +see it all—a few in China—a few in India. Romain Rolland sees it all. +This fellow, Conrad, sees it all.... It's a pity if America doesn't +soon get the full picture. It's worth seeing——"</p> + +<p>Ocean and sunlight and mountains. The world was a brimming cup. If a +man could take all the beauty there was for him, he could never die.... +We went over to the post-office of the little town. The business men of +the place were coming in. The first mail had just been distributed.... +Grocers, butchers, the hardware man, the real estate men, the man +who ran the newspaper, fishermen, barbers, lawyers—mainly fat and +pleasant—children on the way to school.</p> + +<p>They were short-breathed and short-armed. They dressed in wool and wore +heavy dark hats. I had never noticed before how short-armed the race +of tradespeople are. Labourers and peasants are not so; painters and +musicians have a tendency to be long-armed. I mentioned this to Steve.</p> + +<p>"The middlemen," said he. "They are tight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>ened throughout—ligaments +contracted—contraction taking place in the deeper weaves of +mind, a drying up of the deeper sources of life. Contraction, +self-centering—that's what madness is. A man must sing, or weave, or +build or make bricks. The ways of competitive life are paltry ways. +They hide their ways from one another, and afterward from themselves. +They pluck no fruits; they contrive no short cuts; they do not become +intimate even with the commodities of the earth—the very things +they worship and pare margins from. They eat infamously, filch from +each other.... It's all here—all that Conrad pictured in the heart +of darkness. These are the sick, the maimed, the blind of the earth. +They live in the realm of fear, pain, anger, desire. These are the +war-makers.... Their arms are twisting and shortening in to their +navels——"</p> + +<p>Sunlight streamed in through the open doors of the post-office. Motors +going by drowned the soft rustling from the sea. The hell of the +outer world trickled in through bits of conversation. Everybody had +read the morning paper at the same time. No one thought of telling +anything that his neighbour did not know.... Europe was starving—the +President was ill—railroads in strike, coal famine, prohibitive cost +of staples—France cracking with the dry-rot of exhaustion—England ... +a voice—Germany choking in her own blood.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p> + +<p>The tradespeople of the little town by the sea gathered in their bills +and orders and advertisements and hurried back to their shops. Nothing +astonished any more. There were no words for the world's woe—no ears +for lamentations—no mind but to buy cheap at the right time and sell +dear all the time. We walked back to the shore.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>"I once saw a little town on a hill-side," Steve said. "A grand +boot-maker was there, and a man who made clocks with such tools as he +had—big noble clocks that ran unvaryingly eight full days. Another +man made furniture—perfect woods from the forest drying in his kilns +and sheds. There was a sweet smell about his shop. There was a weaver +and a potter there. The days were long and singing, full of labour and +peace. No one multiplied by mechanical means. Every artisan had his +apprentices. The age of the apprentices will come back—with a new +dimension added——"</p> + +<p>"Switzerland or dream?" said I.</p> + +<p>Steve smiled. "They are starting communities all along this coast," he +said. "Many are on the quest of the town I saw."</p> + +<p>We sat down upon the sand again. The sun was higher. White clouds +brooded in heaven's own daylight; white wings moved upon the sea, I +was thinking about Steve and all he had said. What Conrad pictured in +the dark continent <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>existed here in one of the cleanest small towns +of America—an earlier stage of the same malignant disease. From the +broad and beautiful vantage points of democracy and fraternity—every +shop here was a lair, the products, exposed and secreted, a spectacle +of moral decay and insensate devouring; every schoolhouse a place of +dismal enchantment where competition was not only taught but enforced. +Steve knew deeply well when he spoke, that the creative artist, the +producer of every real and true and beautiful thing, comes into the +power to express himself, in spite of such education, not because of +them.</p> + +<p>One can laugh at all mediocre men occupying seats of the mighty and +calling their dead gods to witness that they are right—but one +who knows that the intrinsic gift of each child is the one thing +in sunlight to be promoted, turns away a bit dismally from the +spectacle of the standardisation of the child mind—from the wholesale +manufacture of middlemen by school system.</p> + +<p>Steve loves America. I know of no one who loves America more. He +doesn't rise and cheer when the orchestra plays a questionable bit +of verse and tune in a movie-hall where imagination is being put to +death—<i>but he believes in the vision of the Founders of America</i>. He +believes in the spaciousness and splendour of the American spirit; that +the dream of a few mystics will tri<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>umph at the last, and that the many +will follow the dream of the few. He does not believe that the voice of +the middlemen is the voice of God.</p> + +<p>It's hard to credit, but this young man does not hate one country to +love another. He loves America because the dream of a new heaven and a +new earth has a quicker chance for breaking through into matter here +than elsewhere. He perceives the tissues of the senile and the obscene +breaking down in America, under intense civil and martial and moral +processes. He believes that this breaking down is essential before the +building begins. He believes that the future will be built upon the +thoughts of men who are great enough to stand apart from the dumas, +from the cabinets and the senates, just now. As Steve sees it, all +partisans have to do with the parts, and the parts of the partisans +have to do with the Old, which is destroying itself—sense against +substance, limb against limb, organ against organ.</p> + +<p>The young men of the New Race are born of a mating of the East and +West. They are naturally intolerant of partitions. Steve is one of +these. He isn't a spirit alone. He is a body and brain. He has stayed +awake through the full night and day. He sees the planet in one piece. +He has crossed all the rivers. He knows the young men of America. He +is one of them. He loves America because he knows the rest of the +world. He has friends among the Chinese young <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>men—among the young +men of Russia and India. He says that all three have greater obstacles +to overcome in getting the dream through, than we of America—that +everybody will be singing it after the wreckage is cleared away.</p> + +<p>"America, Russia, India, China—they are lands, not pavements," Steve +declared.</p> + +<p>He was looking across and to the south. The sun was a glory about +us—all the background a tentative, swiftly passing thing, all but +forgotten now, stilled by the rustle of the long, low white lines of +the sea.</p> + +<p>"The New Age will redeem all the broad lands," he said, with a trace of +a smile—"lands for meadows and fields and gardens—meadows for milk, +fields for wheat, gardens for honey—the New Race is particular for the +perfect foods—foods for the giant and the child—broad lands for the +toilers—the great sea coasts for the dreamers.... It's all a matter of +taste," he added.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_10" id="chapter_10"></a>10</h2> + +<p class="title center">HEJIRA</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">We found we were a bit tied in the Middle West, caught somewhat whether +we liked it or not, in the meshes of possession. Steve and I had liked +it much out on the Southern California strand.... When one reads in the +earlier book,<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> the stress that we put on building that big stone +house on Lake Erie; this felicitous hejira may disconcert.</p> + +<p>The fact is, we wearied of possession. We found ourselves yearning +for that beauty which is unconfined. We were athirst for new things, +a different break of seasons and taxes.... The world was so full of +people who could build and buy and own and insure, that we decided we +should be doing the things that the others could not. We were glad to +have built the house for the other fellow. We had to do it. We learned +how to run it well, in and out—but it was a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>stone house. When a man +builds a stone house with walls eighteen inches thick, he must leave a +hole to get out; also he must be sure that he isn't building on his own +chest.... In true Hive spirit, we renounced at the highest moment of +possession.</p> + +<p>The crowd cannot be seen by one who stands in the crowd. On the same +basis a man cannot see the relation of his house to the road or garden +from the inside of the house. The world must be regarded from outside +to be seen as a whole. The New Race is determined to see it so. This +<i>outside</i> is none other than the mystical viewpoint of all world +artists and builders.</p> + +<p>One does not know what friends are, until one discovers that the secret +of friendship is not in getting but in giving. No one knows what love +is until he reverses all the laws that the many follow now. I do not +mean lawlessness. I mean the higher law that is found at last by the +quester after goodness, beauty and truth. We have to finish with the +world as it is before we set out in quest of a better country.... We +found that we had to become active servants of a finer ideal than +householding at its highest. We determined to do more than to dream +this ideal; we set about to make a better country. At worst, we work +for our children.</p> + +<p>It came to us many times before we moved <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>that we were forever +done with things as they are; that we had come to the end of show +and property-measure and hoarding; to the end of the love of self +which destroys the vision for friendship; to the end of domesticity +which holds one's neighbour as prey or rival; to the end of civic +identification, or relation with any federated commonwealth, which +fancies its existence threatened by the prosperity of other political +bodies. No heat about it.</p> + +<p>We came to the edge of the Lake in vanloads; we went away with bags.... +I turned from the eastern distance on the bluff, on one of the last +days, and looked at the vined study and the big stone house, the elms +so strong and green about it. I remembered the early picture of all +this. It began from Stevenson's <i>Treasure of Franchard</i>, many years +ago,—how old Dr. Duprez went out in the morning and tried grapes and +plums with the dew on them, sniffing the perfumes of his own yard, +dwelling in his own orchards.</p> + +<p>I remember one day before building that the man came to us about the +young trees. He had pictures of them in books—blooms and fruits of +such colours that nature would never be guilty of—all the fruits I +heard of as a boy—white grapes that never grow in this country, purple +ones that grow whether you care or not....</p> + +<p>The trees were coming on now, many with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>ripening fruit. The grove of +elms was a matter of collateral, as the bank would say. The break-water +had caught up thousands of yards of sand. It worked—the old struggle +of wasting banks forgotten until a greater storm. The honeysuckles that +were planned to climb the bars of the study windows, had to be trimmed +now for any light at all. The wistaria trailed admirably and imposed +upon the front the sense of years.</p> + +<p> ... We had planned to have all the fruits; some of the finest were now +in flower. We came with many clothes, underwear and outerwear, wool and +dark things. We left with a few light effects in our hands—to find a +place where white garments might be worn in peace. We came with a great +idea of food—game and fishes, meats, poultry, many cans and vegetables +and desserts. We went away with a taste for graham bread and butter—a +spread of honey, a glass of milk. We came with a fear of disease for +the children, fear of colds, fear of losing something, or having +something taken away, doubtless having the fear of death and accident. +We went away with a clear idea of what death is and the advantage of +it, children and adults alike.</p> + +<p>Young children rode the horse that had a reputation for being +wild-spirited and very much a man's mount. We had seen the deep places +of the Lake fill with sunshine. We came with para<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>sols and awnings and +protections against the sun. Most of us would like to have worn nothing +but a breech-clout had the town permitted; and the only time we had +found the world hard to bear, was the long grey Spring days of rain.</p> + +<p>Sunlight—it is closer to God and happiness and manhood and every +delight than words can suggest. The more you know of it, the more you +need; the more you love it, the more its mysterious excellence unfolds. +I know what sunstroke is, and what the sickness from heat is. It's a +vile state of the body, or vile clothing that stifles the body. When +one is well and has learned to come back to the Father of Lights—there +is no fear in his heart. I used to wear a helmet and dark glasses, but +no more—eyes stronger than ever. I look for the sun in the morning and +stare up from the sand into his face at high noon. There is nothing the +matter with sunlight. The sadness and the sickness is with those who +bring their quilts and cloaks to hide it from their flesh....</p> + +<p>It's all in synthesis. The end of bulk possession is pain.... We +started in with many flowers. We ended with roses. It's all in the +tea-rose.... By careful selection of thoughts over a little period, we +can come into the joy of flowers in other people's gardens. There are +brave men who allow you to walk in their orchards; and there are many +who work hard to raise fruits for a price. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>There is much joy, if you +really look at it, in building a house for another fellow.</p> + +<p>We start with the brute materials—beginning with the clay itself. +Our cultivations become more intensive through the years. All life is +so. We take the extract of a thing at last—a shelf of books where +formerly we wanted a roomful—somebody's else little rented bungalow, +where formerly we wanted an estate. We realise, at last, that there is +an essence to be obtained from the extract, an oil from the essence—a +spirit at last from the oil. The whole story is in that—synthesis. +Slowly, at last, we begin to set ourselves free. We descend into +matter; learn its lessons and laws, rise like a plant through the +darkness to the light, integrating force to meet and cope with the new +and lighter element. I held up seven little books in one hand—weighing +no more than a new novel.</p> + +<p>"It's all in these," I said to the Chapel. "One could put these in his +bag and have it all."</p> + +<p> ... And then at last, I went down alone and empty-handed to the shore, +meditated on God with sun and sand and flowing airs.... All matter +is scaffolding which falls away. A man thinks he builds a house for +himself, but no sooner has he put on the last tile than death or the +open road calls. He chooses his climate and grows out of it. He thinks +he must possess, that he must hoard against a rainy day, and he gathers +the stuff <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>of death about him. If he cannot rise, death covers him +for the time. Dr. Duprez didn't speak of the care of his orchard, or +his garden. It was all <i>story</i> to me. Dear R.L.S. He didn't dream +of the work of the hand necessary to keep up an orchard, and have a +connoisseur's joy for a few summer days of the year. He didn't tell +of the parasites, the sprinklings, the arsenates and pumps, nor of +the little winged migrators that sit on the hills, waiting for the +potatoes to come up. The call comes to possess nothing. It had better +be answered.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_11" id="chapter_11"></a>11</h2> + +<p class="title center">THE SPECTATOR</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Some of us here have swiftly reviewed certain old slaveries, that we +may set free the children of to-day.... They do not have to make the +same mistakes we did. I, at thirty-nine, say to those ten and twenty +and thirty years younger:</p> + +<p>"Start where I leave off. I do not relieve you of pain or error or +shortsightedness, of passion or pleasure, or anything that arouses +or wears down body and soul. Only this I ask you—don't make the +same mistakes I did. Let me give you the answer to a few petty and +pestiferous lures. I can put you right on them. Begin now to learn +your lessons by doing things wrong at first, a holy way to get +somewhere, but be a pioneer in your evils; be daring and fastidious +and full-powered and discriminating in your faults! Above all, be +impersonal in them as soon as possible. Let the winds of the world +breeze through. It's all a Laugh."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p> + +<p>Every process of the world to-day is designed to take away that +adorable love and listening of the child to its own soul. Streets, +schools, trade, neighbours, houses in rows, priests, pastors, +charlatans, all standardise. A thousand teachers in technic for one +in the spirit of things; ten thousand teachers of the health of the +body (and every one wrong) for one who shows the way to the single and +sacred fountain of youth; innumerable voices lifted in fly-dronings +of instruction, how to fill the bin and the brain, the bank and the +bourse—how to have and to hold and to die holding, and to bury oneself +in the midst of—for one who laughs and plays and dares to watch the +world go by.... At last to be the Spectator!</p> + +<p>I tell you now from much living that there is nothing here in the world +that is worth fighting for, but the glad tolerance of events, sheer, +laughing joy in the Plan.... Every time you adjust your life to the +standard of the world, you are doing something that is beneath your +soul, and you will suffer for it, and be forced to retrace. Dress for +the world, and the world will find its flaws in you. Work for the world +according to its specification, and it will defile you. Enter into any +of the competitions of the world and your face and your hands and task +will be constricted by visible and invisible impediments and barriers, +less than the real of you in every detail. Search <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>for health according +to the laws of flesh alone, and it will elude you at every point, +showing you all vanities and pits and pains. Search for beauty of face +and body, and it will be the first thing taken. There is nothing in the +world but to make the human divine—that is the job we are here for.</p> + +<p>To cease to hold is the beginning of invincible attraction; want +nothing and the treasures of the world are yours. You cannot have +health until you are ready to give up life here. Cease to cling, +and that which was a body held apart from you, is suddenly a winged +creature returning.... There is nothing here but the love story, and +the power of that must be spiritual. The madonna of the future will +look up, not down at the head upon her breast. Man must overcome +mammon; Woman must overcome the mammal. The lovers of the future will +look a little time in each other's eyes and much above to a Third who +will come nearer and nearer for their adoration.... The friends of the +future will sing in their Partings; they shall know the spirit and the +breath of <i>camaraderie</i> which knows no death.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>There is a tendency on the part of our young associates to be +extravagant in their speech. Much that they see is beyond their +capacity decently to express. A group of us was looking down from a +high balustrade. Flowery vines were woven <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>intricately against the face +of the stucco below. We became conscious of an incredible whirring, so +low that it was difficult to hear, and yet so intense as to give the +thought of a distant seismic disorder. It was the invisible wings of a +humming-bird, flashing from cup to cup in the vines below. The child +standing next to me said:</p> + +<p>"The sound has texture."</p> + +<p>It expressed something very real to me; yet there is not power in words +to portray the exact feeling. All the objects of nature have their +spiritual dimensions also for those who dwell much in the Unseen. These +unusual children see the material object merely as an outpost for a +challenging mystery; while, to the material mind, the outpost is all, +and the lavish adjectives and expressions of the former are deplored as +gush or affectation. As a matter of splendid truth, the most marked and +potent of all adjectives and expressions are pitifully inadequate to +express the lustre and radiance which begins at the point where three +dimensions end.</p> + +<p>The Valley Road Girl came into the Study one day, saying that this +chapel book should be called <i>The Hive</i>. We all thought it a wonderful +name to work toward, yet the unfolding of possibilities has been +steadily interesting since that day.</p> + +<p>The inner sanctuaries of occult literature commend the students to look +to the bees. The pattern of much that man has still to unfold from <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>his +own soul, for his personal and communal uplift, is already expressed +in the hive. There is a period of larva, and a period of wings to each +cycle. Such matters call to those of spiritual discernment. One feels +on the verge of great revelations for humanity, beyond the thing called +death, as he studies this miniature model of a great democracy.</p> + +<p>The most fascinating love episode I ever read was the Nuptial Flight in +Maeterlinck's <i>Life of the Bee</i>. The majesty of winging to the sun, the +falling back of the weaker-winged suitors, the commanding isolation of +sun and sky, fusion under the mighty beat of the wings of the queen, +the broken body of the male, the mother's return to the shadow and the +labour of the generative wheel—magically, it all opened a vista to +the great renunciations, the great passions and aspirations ahead for +the human soul, great fusions of the future, marriages truly made in +heaven, the inevitable trinity of all matings—the drama of love and +death.</p> + +<p>For her one high noon flight in June, the queen toils through years. +She brings back from that superb instant the swarming cities of the +future. On and on, she unfolds her fecundity in the dark, a prodigious +and Herculean labour; from the human standpoint a task of intolerable +pain and monotony. The queen's labour is scarcely more difficult than +the tasks assigned to the hosts of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>workers, which appear to be denied +any separate episode of emancipation. Yet, equally with the queen, +they share the communal spirit; and no one who has stood among the +hives at the end of a long summer day, and heard the song of bounty and +deep-hearted content, can deny the peace that dwells among the myriad +of skilled artisans, each with his perfectly appointed task.</p> + +<p>Bees appear to remember the light, while working at the opposite side +of the wheel. Men, as yet, are detached, lost in the heresies of self +and strife. Only a few visionaries have peered beyond the petty reach +of the optic nerve, to perceive that this, which we make so much of, is +but the hell-portion; that this appearance of ours in pounds is a mere +dressing up in materials of earth to endure the dark and low vibration +of the wheel's most downward sweep. These few visionaries, always +singing the joy of the other arcs of the cycle, somehow keep the dream +alive,—the dream that appears already to be the essential blessedness +and magic of life in the hive.</p> + +<p>All mysticism seeks to teach us this single point which the bees seem +to have learned so well—to transcend time and space in labour; to put +off the sense of separation and strife, to hearken to the soul's own +song of equality and sufficing days. We must be pushed to the last +reaches of pain before we learn this secret. We have to penetrate <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>the +darkness before we earn this flash which swings wide the portals of joy.</p> + +<p>Joy is the most potent thing in the universe. The bee-queen mother +weaves race after race of progeny out of the incredible dynamics of an +instant's joy. Each cell that she fills with life is a living fragment +of her nuptial feast. Fusion is ecstasy, parturition is pain. The many +become one; that is heaven. The one becomes many again; that is earth +and hell. Integration and diffusion—the same story told in the hives +and ant-hills, in the strolling winds and swinging seas, in the hearts +and marts of men, in matings everywhere.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The original idea was to use the title, <i>The Hive</i>, in relation to the +happy intensity of Stonestudy days, but our ideal grew to adapt to the +name, because of its revelations in regard to the new social order; the +pure and instant abnegation of the self to the community; the active +acceptance of the precept: <i>That which is good for the one is good for +the many, and that which is good for the many is good for the one</i>.</p> + +<p>We cannot lose ourselves long in our own misery when we realise the +glory of yesterday, and the more spacious solar adventure of to-morrow. +We cannot continue to feel our own isolation when we perceive a brother +in the eye of a stranger, when we perceive the sons of God in the +eyes of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>passing men. At length appears the task ahead—the great +Fatherland, the Planetary Hive.</p> + +<p>I have taken the hint from the new race children, that to transcend +pain we must make joy of it. Given the hint, one realises that the +masters of all ages have told the same story—how to make light of +human shadow, how to make lustrous our own darkness. No matter what +science says to the contrary, the quest for the Absolute means the same +thing; this is the marriage at Cana, the turning of water into wine; +this is the passion of the ancient alchemists, to transmute base metals +into gold; this is healing; this is regeneration.</p> + +<p>To make joy out of pain is still more: it is power for world's work; +it is the light that one carries among men; it is the fire that makes +man remembered by his fellows, that makes man significant in any +task. It is loss of the sense of self; the death of the lower for the +birth of the higher life; the subjugation of three-score-and-ten for +immortality; an <i>adios</i> to the hands that cling, for the stride and +rhythm of the Great Companions on the long road. It is not for the +saint any more than for the soldier, not for the sage any more than +for the politician, not for the poet any more than for the parent. It +is not piety, it is power. One learns it best from the children. One +becomes as a little child in learning it well.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p> + +<p>We are learning rapidly these days. These are the days of humanity's +passion and pilgrimage. The soul of humanity is passing along the dusty +roads of Palestine, for the healing of its own weaknesses, the casting +out of its own demons. One who is not carrying a part of the world +burdens now, as well as his personal pack, seems forgotten of the gods. +It has come to many of us that we dare not take more than a glimpse of +our own allotted happiness—that we may not have more than a touch of +the beloved's hand in these days of parturition everywhere.</p> + +<p>But personally and nationally we shall come to that significant +crossing where nothing else can be taken from us, where death seems the +highest boon, and Master Pain has driven home his most pointed shaft.</p> + +<p>That is the moment of laughter. Driven to the last ditch we turn and +laugh. That is the moment of our expansion for a new kind of heroism. +One builds from that deep hour.</p> + +<p>The ultimate secret is not to identify oneself with that which changes. +When these objects shift or break down, or some one takes them away, we +suffer the old savage rent. The day comes when we disentangle from the +final mesh of possession—cease the idolatry of things; then, and only +then, are we rich—possessing the spirit and essence of all things, +tallying the universe within according to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>its objective arrangements +with the universe without.</p> + +<p>Finally, to master the world, one must learn actually to enjoy the +mutation of material things, as one of an audience watches the +movements on the stage. No longer torn here and there in the small +fury of detached affairs, one laughs richly at the progress of the +Play. Possessing the spirit of all things within, he realises that +nothing he has can really be taken away. No longer identifying himself +with material objects, he is at last in touch with the perfect and +changeless archetypes. This dispassion, so difficult to reach, at last +extends over all world-forms. One ceases to love bodies; one loves +souls. The son at the front, the daughter taken to a different house, +the empty seat at the table, crash of finance or romance—all but +a passing of symbols—Godspeed and a smile. Bit by bit the valiant +reaches that profound and almost divine indifference to the external, +having bound himself to the real, the enduring, the inner cosmos.</p> + +<p>First passion, then dispassion, then compassion—conquest of pairs of +opposites until night and day are seen as separate sides of the same +globe. So with pain and pleasure and all fluctuations. Day by day, +while learning this great secret, the aspirant is forced to die to +the thing he loves most. Day by day the thing that he hates and fears +most—for that he must live. At last, loves and hates <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>merge together. +One is no longer focalised upon a point, but upon a universe. He +arrives at the great silence in himself, the static momentum. He no +longer moves with the world—the passing show goes by. He transmutes +pain into joy—not lying to the self, but because pain of the body is +joy of the soul—joy of union, joy of birth that comes from pain.</p> + +<p>At last to be the Spectator! To possess the world, to realise the +divinity of others, the ineffable equality of Souls. To have all,—the +mothering winds of the hills and the holy breath of the sea; to move +and laugh and die with all the world.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_12" id="chapter_12"></a>12</h2> + +<p class="title center">TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">The younger boy with us—Tom, now seven, does not find it easy to +express himself through writing. He draws well, but that is a talent +which I would not recognise so quickly as the expression through words. +I mean to send him away to an artist for a time. Tom's imagination is +fertile and expansive. He dictates well—wonderful play of colours +through his mind. He talked the following to an amanuensis, a year or +more ago as he conned over a handful of coloured stones:</p> + +<p>"There's a wonderful mystery about stones.... One like a mountain that +the fire comes up out of—with white on top ... another like a cap of +honey.... Another: this is like a great big mountain, and this is a +dog full of food, and he's standing on a dragon, one of those devilish +dragons; his tail is curved under him, and a spot on him near his neck. +He looks down and he sees the sky, floating. He wonders if he should +leap down and get some. There's a great big lake un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>der him. He thinks +he has more power than anything in the world—he's looking for more +power. He's wondering where it is. See him thinking.</p> + +<p> ... Here's a volcano at night—see the force, and then the rain beating +down behind it—even see fairies dashing by there. Here's a man with +his jaw knocked in. Mystery here—a forest at night. This is like a +coloured man that's been in a prize-fight, and he's gritting his teeth +because he didn't win; he's got a mug-nose too. There's a fried-cake. +Another: Here's 'Agra Falls and fairies dashing, and sparkling stones +at night. That's in Japan—that's true, look at all the lanterns up +there. There's some India—water dashing over a cliff, another like a +smooth cliff, nothing to hurt it, just fairies to fly around it—and a +door-knob, and there's a hole where owls live...."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Many interesting things appear in these dictations provided Tom's +helper effaces himself sufficiently to permit the boy to forget +externals. The remaining pages of this chapter is a sketch of Tom's +case written by the Little Girl<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> who furnishes an interesting +surface of understanding for the complications of this lad. +Incidentally her own development is one of the big winnings of +Stonestudy work. The Little Girl is now four<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>teen and this essay will +show something of her awakening:</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Tom</span></p> + +<p>He is seven, restless as the sea, and just as full of mysteries. Many +times I have felt a strong spirit in the body, a healer, a great lover, +a dear and compassionate comrade. For a time Tom meant India to me. +I could see the blue hills and the wide dusty roads, the cows coming +home through the dusk, and the little Indian mothers bringing food and +their babies to the feet of a withered, white old man in a big Sannysin +robe. Always I seemed one of the mothers, and Tom the master. I used +to sit at his feet when he was very small, and listen carefully to his +wandering, yet deep and wise words. He seemed to unfold many things to +me about myself, and in that way helped me as a teacher would, though +he did not know.</p> + +<p>For a while Tom's quest was in healing—his small hands were always +laid upon our hurts, serious eyes staring upwards. It seemed to awaken +the past in his soul. Gradually his bent turned to other things. When +we went to the country to live, he saw Nature for the first time. Tom +was very much at home with the old Mother. He loved the living things +that most children fear; the bees and beetles, the blind little beings +that live in the earth and the small, red-tongued garter-snakes. He +often spoke of a life he had lived with the snakes—of the big ones +that used to love <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>him and curl around his neck. I never could help +shuddering a little at the thought, but Tom would explain, "They won't +hurt you if you love them. Then they will love you too. Snakes feel +just what you feel—if you're afraid of them, they get mad."</p> + +<p>Again I would think of India—the great cobras that sit before a pure +master, opening their hoods to listen to his chanting. Tom knew what +purity meant, a deep-down purity like the earth itself. Why should +anything hurt him?... He used to hold the bees in his hands and walk +through a cloud of double-winged beetles with utmost carelessness. Many +times he has led me through a cloud of them, murmuring, "They won't +hurt you." Once he disturbed a honeybee in the late afternoon, drunken +and senseless on the fragrant flowers. It stung him. He shook it off +his hand and said in a disgusted voice, "That wasn't my bee!"</p> + +<p>A little later Tom discovered the Unseen of Nature. I mean that it +ceased to be the unseen to him. The fairies opened their mysterious +arms, and we saw little of him for a time, so lost was he in their +wonder. There was a small rock in the front yard that he used to sit +on when he was looking for them. The busy brown gnomes appeared to +him first—often rolling pebbles down the cliff, or gathering leaves +in their little aprons. Then the tree-nymphs would come to him; so +green and fresh and sweet—with bright eyes and coaxing hands. He +would follow laughingly <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>what they said and did, always explaining to +us later what they <i>meant</i>. And he saw the spirits of the water, far +out over the lake, mingled with the sunlight. They gave him much, he +said, but he would like to have gone out to them. He said that burning +wood unlocked the fire fairies—let them out into freedom and light. +He loved to build fires on the beach, watching carefully the leaping +and spreading of the flames. The salamanders were responsible for the +spreading, he thought, and used to watch their little red hands at +work. His eyes seemed to melt as they stared so far and deeply into +things—way past the <i>seen</i> into that which is nothingness to most of +us. And he would come back slowly as though it were hard to detach +himself from the enchantment. Always we kept very still at such a time, +for fear we hurry him.</p> + +<p>Out of the magic and mystery of that summer, out of the warm nights +full of stars and peace, and the days of sunlight spent with the +beckoning fairies, Tom's soul unfolded another big quest. The fairies +were only the start of the Unseen, though we thought at the time that +he saw all that a human being could. At last the Master's voice reached +his open ears. He answered immediately.</p> + +<p>It began with old Indian philosophy. He heard certain reading in the +Study one day, and later asked for the book. It was a little book, +written in words of one syllable by a Hindu boy, telling how to reach +the Feet of the Master. The <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>next morning I found him on his knees +before it in the sunlight. At that time Tom was just learning to read. +It was hard for him, but he wanted to be alone with the spirit of it. +He handed me the book saying, "Please read this page aloud to me."</p> + +<p>The young Master was speaking of Discrimination and Onepointedness. +Tom's face filled with the wonder of one who has found the thing he +has been wanting for a very long time—for ages perhaps. He said, "If +you asked me to go and get you a book, and I went, but instead of +bringing the book back to you, I took it to the shore and commenced +to read, forgetting that you wanted it, that would be the opposite of +onepointedness, wouldn't it?" A little later, he said:</p> + +<p>"The Master watches you from the hills, all the way up. He knows all +that you do. When you do small things, you are taking Him away from +yourself; you are not being the <i>Soul</i>. Each time you do something +great and brave, the Master comes a step nearer. When you become your +soul, the Master comes all the way down the hill and tells your brain +which way to go—tells you the path, the way home. <i>Then</i> you have +earned it. You have got to earn everything, everything that comes to +you.... I think that the Master comes and takes you away at night, +shows you many things—tries to help you. But pain has to teach the +brain, and pain is the lack of soul. It hurts your soul to have you +suffer. It hurts the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>Master too, but they both know that you are +learning to be their comrade through your pain."</p> + +<p>Tom paused. In his eyes there was that wonderful melting again, and a +joy so deep and pure that it made my heart sing.</p> + +<p>"It is all meant," he added. "All is meant, but men do not know that +the Master is watching. For ages and ages the Master waits so patiently +for his <i>friend</i> to come."</p> + +<p>"His friend?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Souls are always comrades. The Master is greater than you are +only because he has been longer on the path. He started before you did. +He has come up through all that we have. Just think how long my Master +has been waiting for me, and I have not even found Him yet."</p> + +<p>I looked at the little body of him, at the innocence of the eyes and +mouth, all untouched by the world—so pure and yet crying out in pain +because he had taken so long on the quest.... His eighth year brought +Tom into regular boyhood. The young brain, always before silently +giving way to intuition, began to speak for itself. This stage is as +important perhaps, but not so beautiful as when the hushedness and +glowing of the Unseen touches a child. Here we turned from Tom, and the +things that creep into the heart of almost every boy of the same age, +crept into Tom's heart. He forgot the fairies—they ceased to call. He +forgot the wide roads of peace and purity. He seemed to forget that the +Master was still waiting so patiently on the hill for him to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>open and +receive. But we knew better than that.</p> + +<p>The development of the brain always robs a child of the inner glowing +for a time, but it all comes back again with a great dimension added; +the instrument is then keen and direct—a power in itself. We turned +from Tom—a young brain standing alone, very conscious of itself, +is anything but interesting. At the time we were in the turmoil of +departure, each of us thinking in different ways about the long journey +just ahead, and the wonder of being at last in California. Tom was more +or less his own director those days.</p> + +<p>He fell into crime, looted the house of a friend, denied everything. He +was sent to his quarters to stay until he found himself again. It took +a week exactly, but he found a deep happiness in being alone in the +little room before he left it. It did him as much good as the long days +in the sunlight ever could; he came out pale and wide eyed, and the +breath of a soul was in the room when he entered.</p> + +<p>One day out of his long week, I went to him. The sun had gone down +behind a nest of grey clouds. Dusk had almost deepened into darkness, +but there was no light in his room. He sat there, his eyes staring +ahead of him, his hands folded tightly in his lap. I walked in quietly +and sat down beside him. I was not even noticed; he was lost in his +thought. At last I asked,</p> + +<p>"Tom, what did you find so interesting in that cheap business?"</p> + +<p>"I haven't found out yet," he said grimly.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Have you been thinking about it?"</p> + +<p>"Sure have. Been thinking all day."</p> + +<p>"Has nothing come?"</p> + +<p>"No, but it's coming soon. It can't take long if I stay here like this, +wishing and pulling every minute."</p> + +<p>"Of course it can't."</p> + +<p>He continued to stare into the darkness ahead.</p> + +<p>"What does it feel like, Tom?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Your soul leaves you.... Your soul won't stay if you are going back."</p> + +<p>"Going back?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I mean if you have been big and listened to its voice, and then +stop. If you are <i>less</i> than yourself after you've been <i>more</i>, your +soul won't stay."</p> + +<p>"What do you do when your soul leaves you?"</p> + +<p>"You walk the Black Path."</p> + +<p>He looked a child seraph.</p> + +<p>"That path is not interesting, is it?"</p> + +<p>"No. You have got to know what it is, got to walk up it a little ways, +so that you are not afraid of it any more. When you know a thing, you +are not afraid of it any longer. Before you know, it looks all dark to +you. Nothing can hurt you when you are not afraid.... It's just the +same as with the animals. All the black things that come into you are +animals. If they find nothing but love and whiteness inside, they will +go away and not even look at you again; but if fear and darkness are +there, they get mad and bite."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span></p> + +<p>Leaning forward with a laugh, he added, "You can't cut across from the +black path to the white. You've got to go all the way back and start +over."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_13" id="chapter_13"></a>13</h2> + +<p class="title center">THE ABBOT</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">The Abbot is now seventeen. He is doing well at Columbia. Classes and +routine there are mere externals. The Abbot is living a life far more +real than appears—a life that few men in America have learned how to +live. He has actually arrived at the conviction of the unfathomable +riches that lie within. Many occultists and a few great artists have +a working knowledge of this kind. We hoped the Abbot could remain at +Stonestudy, but his parents wanted some letters after his family name +as well as before. Our young man was enjoined to make the best of it. +As a matter of fact, he is putting on a lot of brain things that work +admirably with the inner activity which we made much of in our work +together.</p> + +<p>In another book,<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> I told of the Abbot's awakening—how we called +him from mysterious regions of silence and mystification, to a more +or <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>less adequate expression of material facts. Here was a boy almost +overshadowed by his own soul at times, inclined to be half out of the +body and not altogether present in the mind, when moving among the +sordid affairs of the world—a lad who knew the arrangement of planets +and the flow of meteoric matter better than the geography of our own +continent; who swung very readily back into memories of other lives, +mainly monastic, rather than into the episodes of his own kid-days.</p> + +<p>I forget just how it was that we first sensed the giant in this boy. +In any case, we struck one. The ordinary training that I would give an +American youth to breathe the soul of him, was not at all necessary +with the Abbot. Rather, pressure was exerted from the first to make him +come down into our world, to make him be one of us, to make him see +streets and alleys, doorsteps and servant-stairs. They have succeeded +better at Columbia in this regard than we were able to do, but the +wonder and satisfaction of it all is, that the aroused mystic, the +aroused artist, has not receded—but dominates his days and work. I +understand that he is considered a sensation in a literary way.</p> + +<p>He is not different from his fellows. It is part of our ethics to +belong where we happen to be; to do the things that others do, better, +if possible, than the customary performance; to begin after that to be +our inimitable selves. It is our ideal to move about the world, not +to attract attention, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>to be quiet and calm and efficacious, to be +helpful and humorous and wise, to furnish the swift, unerring word or +hand or lift in the midst of affairs; to deny ourselves to no one; to +hold ourselves superior to no one; to strive laughingly toward the big +workmanship, to become Players after the essential apprenticeship, to +win the Laugh at last, and that perfect consummation which only comes +with utter and instant detachment when the task is accomplished.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The Abbot was sprawled in a Study shadow one summer afternoon, when I +suddenly saw him in relation to big sea-tales. Usually we tale-tellers +carry our packs. I saw the Abbot with a sea-chest that day. His was +not the way of the Arabian fires and the Assyrian camel paths—the +word-spinner's usual evolutionary line. He came overseas with his +narratives.... I saw him in the next few years making a circle around +all the capes, touching all the ports of Asiatic and insular water +fronts—a bit of Conrad, a bit of Melville, a bit of Stevenson ... a +most sumptuous sea-chest full of shells, corals, coins and trinkets +from all the Islands; feather of a woman's fan perhaps, here and there, +silks hazy from sea water, crooked knives from Malay Isles, whale-bone +and shark's teeth, pearl of the mollusk, a bit of ambergris—just a top +tray of the Chest! Deep mystic parchments farther within, a corner <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>for +the sacred writings of all the world, a small type mill, a great wad of +white paper, the rest mainly traces of a long glide across the ocean +floors.</p> + +<p>I have learned to go very slow in building a matrix of my own thought +about any young man's mind, yet I told the Abbot that day what I saw +for him—how he was bound to do the big sea-tales, how we were sick of +steam, sick already of the big hydroplanes, sick of all that hurries, +all that explodes, all that has the taint of gas; that the world +presently would be so sick of noise and explosions and show and speed, +that professional soothers would be in great demand, like the Japanese +masseurs who wait upon the sleepless; that the sick world would want +to read of long, loose, lazy days under canvas, of the few ports left +where they haven't set up recruiting offices;—that the world would be +in desperate need of sunlight and surf and wide swinging seas—that he +must be one of those to usher in the old romance of the sailing craft +again.</p> + +<p>I told about his sea-chest better than I have told it here, but the +Abbot's eyes didn't bulge. Presently, however, he began to grow that +way.... His Saturdays and Sabbaths now are spent, not in Morningside +Heights, but down among the shipping and across the harbour, where the +big world tramps hang out. You will see these things in his letters. I +have several of his yarns <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>here, but I am not going to run any of them +in this book. They are good yarns, but too intrinsically big yet for +the handling of a boy of seventeen. He has too much calibre for his +brain so far to carry ten thousand words to superb consummation. I want +to spring a big tale presently. I have a lapful of his random letters +from days spent down on the water front, and nights under the study +lamp:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Dear Old Wasp:</span></p> + +<p>Morning mists over the lake, the <i>Pelee</i> coming up out of them. Just +had a night with John and a corking good run of work. We've been +watching the sun go down from Lynster's<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> back lately, and breathing +the planetary heave under the stars, with the milky way dipping to +the lake before us. This inland place is heavy to take. The weight +of agriculture is like a blanket over all. It takes three or four +pages to bore up through the cuticle. Me for a get-away to the world +soon—to feed up on the hum of feet and voices and cars.... Blackbirds +are beginning to blacken the mornings and nights again; touch of Fall +and Pine-smoke this morning. Real itchings in the ankles—to you! A +wonderful synthesis for us all when we meet up again.... I'd like to +roam the world with John. He is a grand <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>pal. Could joke over an oven +made out of a tomato-can, as well as eat from a banquet table.... #/</p></blockquote> + +<p class="no-indent">A day or two later:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p> ... Black forces strong around Stonestudy last night.... About +eight-thirty I rode over on Lynt, to sleep with John. Decided to have a +debauch with tea. While I worked on, he gathered the cups and tea and +electric tea-kettle together and got things going. He called for me to +come and make the tea. He was seated in the big chair with a tableleaf +in front of him, and on that was the tea-kettle, boiling.... One leg +slipped, and the whole boiling collection went in his lap.... A prince, +the way he stood it. The bunch was just coming back from town. Penel' +rushed over, and the next was a turmoil right, cries, olive oil, lint, +rags, confusion of voices and footsteps—too many people and the little +guy sort o' lost his control—but it all came back again. Almost any +minute I am looking for the laugh from him. All night I was with him. +Penelope, the finished heroine as always. One could see the shades of +pain pass over John's face time and again. His nerves jump—but his +mouth and eyes are certainly getting a grand hue of steel.... Yours +right along.</p></blockquote> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p> + +<p class="no-indent">Another:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>Hazy summer about. Blue over the lake with shadows deepening in the +distance. Crops drying beneath the sun. Leave it at its height—am +headed back for Columbia—where I'll let time shape the winds for +farther "going."</p> + +<p>School is not harmful to one who <i>is</i> himself. I'll take philosophy, +and then be over to tell you who stole your washboard.... It is no +struggle, no test, for one to be lit among his own as we are. One's +depth of listening is best tested in crowds. We've got to separate—go +out and change the continents into tablelands of democracy.</p> + +<p>War seems settling on the world for years longer, but there is a bigger +order coming out of the incredible chaos. Each must see God and worship +through his work to shape the master beauty. Every one's art breaks new +roads which lead to one place.</p> + +<p>Stories are coming freer every day—I've gotten across. Don't know +whether it's the best thing for me. But I've done it, and that's what I +wanted to know. It is all preparation. Results are beginnings. I look +back now on the summer of '14. It <i>was</i> heaven. It <i>was</i> peace. To look +at the cottage lights and hear the voices of rowers through the dusk +was a breath from God. It was peace, it was relaxation, a deep resting +of tissue for turmoil. Depth and mastery to you.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p></blockquote> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">This to John:</span></p> + +<blockquote><p>The thought of your scarred legs has been with me on the borderland of +sleep for many nights, also our hours together on the pine needles. +To-night, with the sun falling sadly over the iron mills, I walked +along the Heights and cast an eye down into brilliant Harlem. The +voices of the bargemen, the wheeze of tugs, the low growl of outpassing +vessels, an occasional curse from a freighted barge, came up with the +hum of the city. There seemed to be some goddess entwined with sea-weed +standing over the ocean of structures. She held a finger to her lips +for silence, and pointed to the Lord knows where—well, where I felt a +tumult to go, to satisfy some hot quest.... I was lost to the multitude +of faces that sent up a passionate and incomprehensible hum ... savour +of youth singing in the veins.</p> + +<p>Presently a drizzle drove me back to the room.... I reached up and +flicked out the lights.... In an apartment across the street lives an +old man who always comes to his window at dark and gazes up and down +the streets. His head is grey—his eyes are deep and old. The light +from his shaded reading lamp falls in a pool of dim yellow about his +carpet. Sometimes he turns out the lamp, and leaves the fire-place +alone. Sometimes his head falls forward on his chest, and he dreams—I +suppose, of boundless seas, for he was once a sea-captain.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span></p> + +<p>His wandering days are over—no more quest. The houses rise to his eyes +like one long, bleak, uncrested wave from the Arctic Sea.... He means +old days, but we—we must never grow old; we must live and ever be full +of creation as the cloud is full of lightning. We must, old pal, ride +the deserts, drift over seas; we must spill our work as we go, as night +spills its stars from a casket. Fill me up with the Pacific in your +letters—the big sunlight—the colour of the mountains where they dip +and rise to clouds. I have a dry palate for it all. Fill me—eye and +ear and soul.</p> + +<p>Yours deep in those scars——</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<blockquote> +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Dear Old Man:</span></p> + +<p>The Hudson is very still this morning; a few battleships have swung out +with the tide; gulls seem to be forever passing up and down the river +in white eddies; smoke from the factories rises straight and white. The +morning sun strikes like a sledge upon the Palisades. How grand that +old river is, and how untiring in its endless ebb and flood—almost +like a solar system in the serene way it deals with human traffic.</p> + +<p>A great new sense of words has come over me lately. At the very birth +of language lies a chest of rich obsolete words—quite like a Spanish +treasure chest, with its doubloons, bezoar stones and "pots of Arica +bronze." The artists go treasure hunting in language, and a few do +startle the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>world with their wealth. The live-long day seems to me now +like a shuttle driving back and forth, weaving from soul to matter, a +golden fabric.</p> + +<p>This word-chest means much to me because it deals with the sea. Lift +up the lid, and tucked away in those little drawers lies the seaman's +religion in bits of turquoise, in coils of fish line and hooks, in +pink sea-shells, perhaps in an old violin, or in a few stray books of +Carlyle, Goethe, Dante and Melville's <i>Moby Dick</i>. The point is we +all bungle along through our world-term somehow; we have our work and +religion and pleasures and tales in a camphor-wood chest with a brass +band around it. Sometimes we bring out the violin and make God-awful +discords, calling it music of the sea; we brighten people's eyes with +our bits of turquoise; terrorise them with the philosophy that Carlyle +and Goethe and Moby Dick have given us; we make them feel that endless +<i>wroom, wroom, wroom</i> of the ocean that is washing in our souls.</p> + +<p>Yes, we must first learn the futility of life before we can live. The +war teaches this lesson well, but won't it be great when everybody is +singing over his golden shuttle and laughing? Won't it be great when +the chastened New Race springs up, like green shoots at the passing +of winter? Won't it be great when the world has grown serene and wise +enough to sit down beside <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>a blazing bark fire, with the shadows of +pine trees about, or near the dim breakers, and consider it profitable +to talk about the stars?</p> + +<p> ... There are times when one feels he must be alone—when he wants to +be connected with nothing—when he wants to go to a distant and high +altitude, and there boil his pot of alchemy—there, where the air is +dust free, and the incense of one's devotion goes straight up. He must +listen and listen, until he believes that he hears the stars humming in +their courses; then the sun drawing like a magnet, then a crescendo of +song up to a deafening roar,—that all things, all stars, are headed +towards one point of balance among that whole mass of sapphires we see +above.</p> + +<p>Man, but the joy of telling tales, of recording the warmth of human +hearts, of loving men and their ways—to fill out a morning with that +golden shuttle! One has but to sit and the sun on the walls and the +shadows in the corners, or if at night, the flame on the stones of the +hearth turn to words!... The old sea is full of that. The heart within +her breast sounds the footfalls of quest; the ecstasy of life tears in +her storm and in still hours she sits in her glitter....</p> + +<p>Some day we shall be together on the blessed Pacific coast. We shall +have bookshelves and packages of dates, bottles of cream and combs +of honey. We shall work with that rugged lunge of mountains in our +products; and that endless and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>insistent <i>wroom, wroom, wroom</i> of the +ocean in all. Listen, here is a day as we shall have it:</p> + +<p>The sun lifting up the depth of Canyon shall awake us. After we have +cooked and eaten of crisp toast and honey and coffee, we shall go +to our desks and bring out a most rigid problem in mathematics,<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> +and dwell perhaps for an hour in drawing all forces of thinking into +play—awaking the mind—shaking off that inertia of body. After that we +shall penetrate the thing which we wish to work upon that particular +morning. We shall see its functions and logical action, then begin +the shuttle and weave back and forth with that pliancy that sees the +deepest of metaphysics in an old man lighting a pipe or loitering over +a pork-pie. To top the morning, we'll have a meal of milk and dates. +The afternoon shall mean an isolation with the books—perhaps on the +sand with the sun tanning our backs. Both healthfully and mentally +an efflux of soul. At about five in the afternoon comes the humming +calm—the poise of mind and soul and body. Another meal of the simple +foods and once more, production, as the sun goes into the sea—giving +one's soul the might and expanse that the planets use in weaving their +ways. Perhaps, at ten or eleven we shall reach up, switch out the +electric bulb and open the door. That shall be a day mastered. Side by +side, we'll walk over to the cliff at whose base mumbles the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>mighty +Pacific. We shall pass no words—the earth'll be good to feel and +smell. We'll honour the still night of stars.</p> + +<p>That day is a privilege to earn—our bodies must suffer and become +scarred and jostled by the currents of people, and cursed upon by foul +mouths. All pleasant presently. We must know the heart of a bartender +as we would want to know the heart of the Christ. Do you know that +Masefield was a bartender? The secret of the real artist is sanity. One +must grow hair the medium length—keep a well muscled and full lunged +body—and if chronic fishermen should happen in on us for a meal we +must be able to argue that a hickory pole is better for a pound-net +than pine; or if a devout pastor—that we would much rather praise +God's work outside on the beach....</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">To Jane:</span></p> + +<blockquote> +<p>Your letter this morning after a long, wonderful run of work. This +is really the highest day I've had—real rugged work—bronze moving +pictures before me—faces—open shirts on sunburnt breasts—and, of +course, the eternal sea. Your letter came like a sudden bag of sunlight +emptied into a mist. The water became blue and the promontories sharp +like ink lines.</p> + +<p>And about Steve. I understand all. The draft explains his not writing. +And this war—<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>it's like a maelstrom rising higher and higher. Next +summer for certain, possibly this Christmas, it means I go. But rather +than go as a private I'm going to enlist voluntarily in the aviation +corps. Flying only would have as much thrill as doing the climax of a +story. That's like the sea. And I'm not panicky or worried about it. I +feel in some unconscious way that the balance of the cosmos demands it. +God, nobody should drag now! It's just like a marshfire that grows and +grows to let the new green shoots come under in spring. It's like a big +song. I would not go to fight Germany, or France or England or America. +I'd go because it's a cleanser. One must play with the song of many +feet and express with the original song. One must flash pictures to the +many eyes of their own being. Oh—it's a song, the whole thing! And I'm +looking forward to it.</p> + +<p>Only the ones such as John and Tom shall escape. Don't you see the joy, +the peace, the grandeur in owning a scar, in being bled white? The +first year of the war, England was black with mourning. Now, she is +white.... The work is on me with talons.</p> + +<p>I am looking only at the impossible heights—of a portrayal of +life—the rugged life in endless volumes. I have made an oath silently +with myself that in three years I shall do a book.... The work comes +now just as if I were to sit down before a fire-place with shadows and +light around <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>stones, and were to grow interested, with stars low on +the horizon like live sparks.</p> + +<p>And friends? A foolish question! I mean that I must be alone in the +formative thrall of work. I <i>did</i> want your letter. But forget pity. +That is a thing that stifles soul. I do not ask, by all the stars, I do +not ask for anything. The highest of all things to you all.</p> + +<p>And Steve? He has too much of the Song to be trodden or be lost or be +ground in mud. You are all friends—but I must be alone now. The work +is rising....</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">To John:</span></p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>There ain't no sun beatin' in my doorway, and there ain't none of +your sacred seas and canyons around; but there is a socialist's riot +in the street below—kerosene torches a-going—one shaggy haired +enthusiast is standing on a soap box and is wagging his jaw in an +athletic way.... How's the fire burning under your type-mill? What's +the brand of smoke it gives up—poetry, action, lumps of granite or +ladles of ocean? I'm all lit up in this place here—because things +are moving—real issues are gathering—and the pulse of living is so +close that I can almost feel it occasionally. Last Saturday, went to a +place called Rockaway—and oh man—rocks—rugged grey and eroded—surf +bitten—gnarled, twisted—and they tossed the sea's white jaws about +like bits of cotton. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>Real sea coast it was—with a little smack in +the purple way, her sails bellied, her mouth lapping the brine—an old +fisherman browsing around the shores for clams while his wife hauled up +the nets, basketed the cod and upturned their boat.</p> + +<p>Put an extra stick under the machine and line a few of your aphorisms.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p></blockquote> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_14" id="chapter_14"></a>14</h2> + +<p class="title center">THE ARTIST UNLEASHED</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">The young workmen here do essays well, earlier than short stories. +Longer training is required for fiction. The reason is obvious. Fiction +work takes brain. The Stonestudy idea is to set free the greater Artist +within. Essays and ethical works are the natural fruits of the inner +life of the ages; story-production requires facility and development +of the every-day working consciousness. Straight brain is needed to +arrange settings, keen development of actual tissue to note and arrange +and remember. Also a big working surface of self-criticism must be +prepared.</p> + +<p>There is a quality of fiction that seems to set free a larger +consciousness and to bring with it settings and atmospheres of another +age. This sort of phenomenon encourages the idea of the continuity of +consciousness—before and after the three-score-and-ten. It may be +that the greater the Artist, the more of these veins of syntheticated +experience are open to his every-day working mind. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>That may really +be what sumptuous artistic equipment is—the capacity to open up the +old loves and scenes and adventures of the long road. Intuition is +explained as the use of the result of massed experiences, intellect the +coping with one at a time; intuition, a light that flashes from peak to +peak, intellect as a running fire up and down from height and vale.</p> + +<p>Certainly intellect alone will never make a great drama of life and +love, yet action and romance of the present hour draw hard upon one's +present life training and the faculties and tastes of his immediate +culture—actual brain possession and the ordering thereof. A child can +portray superbly well some ancient imprint upon the Soul, even the +passages of his own initiations through earth, water, air and fire, +his brain not conscious of the real nature of what is coming forth; +yet, the same child cannot put the cohering line through a series of +episodes occurring under his own notice. Something of this mental +grasp is necessary to make the artful effect required in a short +tale. The child's mind, in the first place, is trained to listen and +interpret the experiences of the larger consciousness; in the second +set of conditions, he is forced to rely upon actual brain tissue which +requires the training and culture of the years.</p> + +<p>Art is composition. The farther you go, the finer the tools. It is +difficult to train the fingers to intricate tricks of weaving, or +the brain to sort <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>and place the facts and colours and surprises of +a present-day narrative or tale, but the soul may be called upon to +express through the narrow temples of an awakened child its cosmic +understanding, its ordered firmament.</p> + +<p>Decades of observation and reporting; firm and verified actuality of +knowledge and opinion; to these, added experience and the excellence +of order—such is the training of the intellectual artist who times +his production to his own generations. He pays the price in pain and +subjection to the things that are; he knows well the meaning of labour; +often, though he may still laugh as an artist, he has forgotten how to +laugh as a man.</p> + +<p>My desk here is covered with papers and poems of a beauty this +intellectual artist cannot reach, of a freedom he can never know, until +he lifts the torch of his consciousness out of and above the brain, +making that serve quite as his knees bend and serve. Thinking of these +things to-day, the door of the Study opened and the Little Girl gave +me her work. She writes things of the larger consciousness without +effort, but finds it hard and wearing to narrate the immediate matters +of life. To her, the fine short story of the present hour is the great +accomplishment, the ideal she is working toward.</p> + +<p>With another she goes often to the cities—rambling among the +rooming-houses, cheaper restaurants and mills. She means to work in +the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>mills soon—to forget herself and forget us for a time, to be +with the harder-lucked girls whom she loves with thrilling passion. +She has brought home from these little adventures wonderful stories +of the patience and the laughter and the heroism crowding like hidden +sacred presences about the duller lives. She brings a humour to the +telling of the divine secrets of the poor—the clutching pang for food, +the soldier going, his baby coming, the tortured spine, the stunted, +the darkened, the wasted—an irresistible divinity about it all—pain +impermanent, joy enduring. Back of the lacking eyes and leaking lives, +she sees wonders that Zola never saw, that none can see with mere +intelligence, that none can dream, who sees only the here and now, +who has not learned to laugh at the so-called injustices of men, who +cannot see the greater order to come because the present chaos is so +devastating.</p> + +<p>One may report minutiæ of torments, mass the items of degradation and +bring forth a great document of the underworld—but these are mere +foundations. The Builders bring the dream, they live the hope, they +open the long-road consciousness, they substantiate their visions of +better days, bring order and coherence to all the splendid toil of the +intellectualist; they raise their edifice upon <i>all</i> that is done.... +Here is the Little Girl's work of to-day's writing:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Meditation</span></p> + +<p>In the night the Master came down to a woman who lay sad and sleepless +in a dark house. He came so near that she felt his holy radiance. Her +soul breathed; her body ceased to tremble; she felt within his sacred +circle. The Master smiled and said:</p> + +<p>"Why do you not sleep?"</p> + +<p>The woman answered, "I am carried away by thoughts that will not hush. +Night after night I lie here so bitterly close to old dreams. I realise +that they are not worthy, but my brain is full of them."</p> + +<p>The Master smiled again. "There is a way to compel the silence of the +brain."</p> + +<p>"I have not found it," said the woman.</p> + +<p>"Learn to be the soul," the Master said. He suggested a way to +begin—then was gone.</p> + +<p>The rest of that night the woman thought of his words. Deeper and +deeper his words sank into her heart. When morning came, a happiness +brooded within; she dressed quickly and went out.... Back of her +little house rose the golden brown hills. She climbed, and at the top +of the nearest, sat down. The peace and purity and fragrance of the +sun-steeped hills filled her soul. For a long time she thought in +silence, then slipping off her loose white sandals, said: "I begin with +the grass. Yes, I begin with my <i>feet</i>.... How wonderful you are—so +ready to obey, to give your service at any time! What would <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>happen +if you carried me other than my will? Supposing some day I should be +walking fast to the house of my beloved, when you suddenly took me the +other way!"</p> + +<p>She laughed, and added: "You stay with me all my life, and little by +little are carrying me up the shining path to the Father's house. And +yet—how strange! I am not you.... And my knees, how wonderful and +willing—all limber and full of life—helping me in all ways to do all +things—bending gently when I bow in holy communion, expressing joy +through free, easy movements, mute, yet strong before pain! There is +nothing more wonderful in the world than you. Yet—I am not my knees.</p> + +<p>"And you, old heart," she added. "You have endured the keenest pain; +you have loved and given yourself, have hated and become black only +through pain to whiten again—old heart of many rendings—until +all life was tragedy, and you almost ceased to beat. Little heart, +sanctuary of the soul—room for <i>his</i> rest.... Yet I am not the heart!</p> + +<p>"And the white throat in which the lotus unfolds its mystic petals of +light—I am not the throat!... And the mind, stream for the soul's +fulfilment—listener, runner, interpreter of light—mate of the soul in +all things, ever ready, sparkling with the inner fire,—I am <i>not</i> the +mind. You can hurt me no longer. I am <i>free</i>!"</p> + +<p>The woman sitting alone upon the hilltop, paused again. "What am I?" +she almost cried.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p> + +<p>It was as though the hills, the air and the rising sun joined her in +the answer—"<i>I Am</i>, ... Longer than the living flame leaps within, <i>I +Am</i>. Longer than sun and planets radiate light, <i>I Am</i>. Longer than +worlds give birth to form, <i>I Am</i>. I am one with the rocks and the sea, +one with the warmth and light, one with the earth, one with Humanity.</p> + +<p>"I am Humanity. <i>I Am.</i>"</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>It is only when the Little Girl brings in a bit of fiction that we +remember her years. The brain that even now can polish a detached +incident, or clip into firing-form a bit of humour of the street, +cannot as yet order the narrative to a culminating effect. She is in +her brain, which is only fourteen, struggling with the matters of time +and space, wherein only lie pain and bewilderment.</p> + +<p>Art is long. The training of the hand and intellect requires the +years—but not the labour, not the agony, not the mad strain supposed +to prepare one for an artistic career by those who believe mental +equipment to be all.... The key to this whole discussion is the fact +that the brain can be developed more in a year through inner awakening +than in a decade by the usual methods of external impacts alone.... The +ideal education is the balancing of the without with the within—the +tallying of the world without with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>the world within—the same old +story of the kingdom without clearing its correspondences with the +kingdom within.</p> + +<p>The Little Girl's ideal is to do great stories. They challenge her by +their very difficulty. When I see where she stands now, and think of +the far ways we elders went to learn the game; when I see what the +twenty-year-olds are doing now, how they command their mysticism—a +harder task for me than the accomplishment of physical results; when I +see the inner bloom and co-ordination and the inimitable surfaces which +come to all the arts by the development of the soul life first, the +listening for the Master within—I want to get my hands on them all, +upon all the young builders of the New Race. I want at once to awaken +within them the Spectator—the One who cannot be swung back and forth +in the pairs of opposites, who cannot give himself to the partisans, +who has glimpsed the Plan and offers it full adoration, who says +accordingly that the best possible thing that can happen is the thing +that happens next. These are the young Players who will reveal life by +living it—portray life as naturally as breathing, whose equipment is +not possessions, not even brain possessions, but spiritual <i>en rapport</i> +with all, oneness with all life.</p> + +<p>I remember struggling for effects. These young people breathe +effects. I remember style as a studied attainment. These young people +ac<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>knowledge but one style—that is being one's self.... I want to set +many of them free from within outward. In their gladness at the finding +of themselves, they will go forth to include the world; they will bring +to it the compassion which enfolds all, reveals all.... Love the world +well and you will understand it. Love the world well, and you will +write well to it. Give it yourself, and the world is yours.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_15" id="chapter_15"></a>15</h2> + +<p class="title center">WORK IN SHORT STORIES</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">The Little Girl sketched this impression of an Indian Summer Dusk:</p> + +<p> ... Just now the great blue dusk, after an Indian summer day. It +deepens and seems to laugh, then all is night. Huge black clouds roll +up, promising a storm. Against them, tall, selfish, unafraid, stand +the poplar trees. The great Mother of the dusk is singing, the God in +Nature is singing, and Nature's belongings, all of them, sing in this +magical moment. One feels it all in one's self, feels the glory, the +romance, the very core-life of the Universe. The matings too, taking +place in the grass and air; the matings of the two streams, the two +grains of sand; the matings of butterflies, birds and bees. It all +flows through one's body like music and honey and sunshine....</p> + +<p>Nothing but space is around me. I feel all hollow inside. Power and +beauty and all things <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>else flow through ... and out, like a sieve. +My body is far below me, yet it will be taken care of. It does not +stumble, nor make any clumsy, unnecessary movement. Finding it alone +and forgotten, Rhythm catches it in her gentle arms. Slowly, softly, +gently, Rhythm carries it along, the same that carries the deer so +swiftly in the forest, the mountain sheep from ledge to ledge and over +valleys, and that which waves the trees' long arms so gracefully.... +The night moves on its way, the threat of storm is passed. I am back +again—an untellable freshness has sweetened hair and clothing. I am +all glowing inside.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>This was done two years ago. There was a kind of dream story which she +recently finished, gratifying the artistic sense entirely, but in a way +that ruined it for the general reader. It was all new to her that there +could possibly be two ways to regard a bit of workmanship. Five or +six story-writers were present for the reading, and out of the fruits +of that evening, we surely saw the lesser beauty give way before a +greater. We forecasted the readers of the future, who would prefer the +more spiritual, more challenging story texture and dénouement.</p> + +<p>There has always been The Few—glad to discover the real, answering +to interior order and clarity, "straight grain,"—but the fact for +enthusiasm now is that the world is being peopled with the awakened. +These young moderns are recognising each other from day to day, pulling +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>together for better social order, utilising the wisdom of the East, +and the drive of the West—labouring in new paths, daring new leaps, +working out philosophies as fresh and ancient as the dawn and, what +is straighter to the point, demanding modern books, written out of an +integrity to match their own....</p> + +<p>Short story writing in America is less a trade and more of an art +since Edward J. O'Brien, the poet, took his chair in the flow of the +output and began to say which was which. There are a number of people +in America who know a good short story when they see one; this is +true among those who buy short stories, but editors cannot always buy +what they want. A deal of mechanism in a magazine has to be oiled and +energised by different kinds of minds from those who paint the pictures +and write the tales. O'Brien knew both ends—also he knew that big, +unobtrusive part of the market that looks long and pointedly for the +real tale.</p> + +<p>He is a queer boy—from the bleak fishing grounds north of Boston. +He is in no hurry. You couldn't tell if he really wants anything. He +doesn't seem to want much—for O'Brien.... After he had his main line +and most of the ramifications of his idea laid, he told the editors to +send on the stories. Most of them did. O'Brien did a lot of work in a +few weeks, did it startlingly well. He started something.... <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>Now, if a +writer sits down, suddenly struck with a fine idea for a tale, and this +fine idea precludes the possibility of selling it for a high price—the +writer dares go ahead and finish the task, because he knows O'Brien +will get to the thing in due time, and that if it is really what it +seems and the performance of the idea adequate, then the work will not +be utterly lost.</p> + +<p>As a matter of fact, this is a bit of self-placation, since no work is +lost; no one gets the value of a big thing to anything like the degree +of the man who does it; no big thing is lost from the world, not even +if dropped in a sewer, if it is really important for the world to +have it. We are all a bit too heavily handicapped with our own idea +of what the world should have from our own shops—at the same time, +when we are young, we pant for the quicker return, the answering hail +within reason—at least, within time and space. Now O'Brien has come, +strangely arrived, his proper phylacteries in place, the touch of +tinted haze about his head, the right man.</p> + +<p>Back of all, however, is the workman's own spine. That's the best +thing to lean on; and when the going is heavy, to learn to do without. +We often remind each other in Chapel of the modern artist Cezanne, +who moved about his painting for many years, painting <i>the thing</i>, +satisfying his soul, and leaving his canvasses around in the fields for +the peasants to laugh at or mull over. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>... They have long since been +brought in out of the rain—those canvasses. I forget the incredible +thousands his littlest sketch brings now.... But Cezanne got the films +out of himself—tallied them off—the landscapes within and without, +when it did him most good. It never fails. What was good for the artist +is good for the rest of us afterward.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile much is still to do in the story world. The big smash of +the moving pictures hasn't cleared from our game yet. It will be the +cause of greater tales before the end is seen, for you can't portray +the realities of romance upon a flat screen. For a time the many +thought it was no longer necessary to learn to read, because there was +such a torrent of pictures everywhere, but it was only through the +pictures that the few has finally managed to realize how marvelously +pictorial mere words are, and how few words are required when they are +imaginatively driven. One day in Stonestudy we discussed these story +and screen affairs, looking ahead somewhat to better times than these. +One of our young men, whose story is told in a later chapter, put down +the things we talked about. This is Shuk's writing:</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>A fresh and different vitality is manifest to-day in American +literature. At various points around us, dealing with words, colours +and the subtler tools, are active young workmen who for <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>the first +time, in the fullest sense, may be termed "North American." The first +characteristic of this new element, these young flexible and vigorous +minds, is that they are workmen—not labourers, not professionals, not +primarily artists in anything unless it be life—but workers first, and +after that novelists, poets, musicians, painters or politicians. They +are not competitors. They have not forgotten the warm side of justice, +but they know well the stern face of compassion—they know that it +takes Christ and anti-Christ to make a world. They are neither modest +nor egotistical, being for the most part busy and intensely alive. This +implies their joy.</p> + +<p>The great love story has not been written. The few great love stories +of the world have to be pieced out by the imagination. We find that +we have been told that certain are great love stories, but they do +not stand examination. The classic form will not do for the New Age. +There is to be a new language—for literary handling. It may be called +American, to distinguish it from English in the accepted form. It is to +be brisk, brief, brave and ebullient—to meet the modification all must +reckon with—the screen-trained mind.</p> + +<p>American-mindedness of itself, cannot yet accept a great love-story. It +would be called "sentimental" if not lascivious. The average American +is an impossible lover, making it incident to business. The real and +the sham are equally above him. He would not know when to be exalted +or when to be ashamed. He thinks his own <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>passion is evil, and thus +makes it so. The great love-story can only be written with creative +dynamics, and can only be accepted as yet by the few of corresponding +receptivity. There is nothing soft about true romance. Some passionate +singer of the New Age will likely appear right soon, his story to have +the full redolence and lustre of the heart, his emotions thoroughbred, +his literary quality at the same time crystalline with reality.</p> + +<p>The big adventure-story has not been done so far. The day of guns, +horses and redskins is over. Photoplays have developed these fiction +resources to the limit, proving to those writers born to be modern +that their full tales can never be shown on a flat surface. There +will be undercurrents, overtones, invisible movements, tensions upon +the reader, not only from between the lines, but between words. +The story-teller of the New Age may handle his theme in words of +one syllable, but his tale will have an intensity scarcely to be +explained—only responded to by minds which cannot be satisfied by +two-plane production—minds which demand more of life than the camera +sees.</p> + +<p>The real war-story of to-day, even for to-morrow, ought to arrive soon. +This is an age for an epic. Some keen and comprehensive mind will +arise—a literary genius who will include the patriot, the anarchist, +the poet, dramatist, humanitarian, theosophist, dreamer, judge and +statesman, even the iciest aces of the air—and tell the story of +War, a tale of trenches, kings and arms; blood, heroism and monstrous +greed; vast far-reaching <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>causes and the slow, inevitable hell of +effects—told from a viewpoint so inclusive that thrones are merely +pawns in a Planetary Game.</p> + +<p>Inclusion is the first business of the writer who is truly allied with +the modern element. Propagandists do not fill the picture. Yesterday +the wreckers and agnostics—to-day the specialists and onesided +enthusiasts—to-morrow, the embodiers, the includers.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_16" id="chapter_16"></a>16</h2> + +<p class="title center">VALLEY ROAD GIRL</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">The Valley Road Girl, who gave us the title, and helped us to see how +the New Race will become in due time the planetary hive, asked not to +appear in this book. A letter this morning asks it again. She is in +the stress and heat of a series of ordeals, learning what it means +suddenly to be parted from friends and the centre of her work. A wise +and sensitive young woman—I rather thrill over her sufferings. We +don't commiserate; we congratulate, when one is called to a stretch +of particularly stiff and solitary going. We know that one must be +passionately worthy to take the big-calibred ordeals. There is pain +to all births—pain, the precursor of greater joys. Pain is not the +expansion of the flower to the sun; that is joy, that comes afterward. +Pain is the necessary rupturing of the bud-sheaths before the final +unfolding into the new dimension. Pain is within, inarticulate—merely +finds a correspondence in some outer cause.</p> + +<p>Part of the Valley Road Girl's letter follows:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p> + +<p> ... It hurt to let that last Lamentation go to you. I thought of the +times when I had put up a braver fight, bolstered only with pride. +But pride is low now, and still dwindling in the glass. Even the gods +withdraw from the pathetic. They love us more when we challenge with +doubt than when we implore. The many are God-fearing. They must have +some divine power to shift their responsibility upon. They can ask the +Flame to cleanse them, but quail at working out their own salvation. I +have done some crying out to God, but I am finished. The one good path +I have is Work—self-expression every day.</p> + +<p>I made another mistake—in looking back. Regret identifies us with +the past and impedes progress. Youth is smileless, inclined to regard +to-day's struggles as ultimate evil, but gradually we learn that +all things pass. To consider everything as in transition, we place +ourselves in the very current of growth.... For rapid journeying, we +must travel light. We can only carry along the spirit of things—the +essence of our joys and lessons. That's what I have from Chapel days.</p> + +<p>I blush for many hours since. Sometimes I have felt as if I were on +a vast plain and there was no God nor earth nor the quality of love +anywhere, but only I—deathless—in long, hideous travail, all life to +be tested against this Me!...</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>How I want to write! Every day more awe enfolds the dream. Days +bring me closer to the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>Town. The war has deepened the hearts of all +the young people here, especially the women. Young women are very +wonderful to me. They have a certain loveliness of body that comes of +girl-whiteness within—thoughtful tenderness about them, and something +else, a lightness that may be just youth. It attracts me because I have +never felt it.</p> + +<p>I do not care if the gods laugh at my ambitions to write. By the very +sign that we are victims of matter now, we shall become victors. I +want the bottom—down among the deeps of pain, where all the sorrow of +the world is my sorrow; all tears, my tears.... I am not ready for the +Hive. No compromise. To accept less in one's work than the dream—that +is failure.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The Valley Road Girl is eighteen. She has hardly been away from the +little town by the lake shore. She is held to it queerly still. I +expect her to make the place long-lived in the memory of many novel +readers. I see the big book of the country-side about her—a gallery +of quaint and curious faces—done with her stern, sweet power. I have +seen this big book building about her, as I see the top trays of The +Abbot's Sea Chest. These are the days of her sketching and tearing +down. Deep draughts of life call to her, deeps of religion, deeps of +cosmic memory—and all about is the little town. The meaning has come +to her at last. Already she has turned to love the nearest; loving the +nearest will unfold the big book and set <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>her free. Six hundred pages +I call for—the leisurely vibration, terrible intensity of romantic +moments, passion of the fields, the hideous mockery of narrow, brittle +lives, the country-wife worn glassy with routine and insane monotony, +and the young of the country-side—quick bloom, pure youth falling into +coarseness before its form is finished, the real and immortal behind it +all. These are her properties. Hundreds of pages have been written and +prayerfully destroyed. Thus is she setting herself free.</p> + +<p>I have a paper of hers on the spiritual adventures of a smileless +child—which I liked much when it came in, more than two years ago. The +Valley Road Girl is close to us in all our preparing and building; so +that these chapters would be strange without her voice:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p> ... Fire was always terrible, so my first aspirations were caused +by fear of hell <i>below</i>. Before that, I had wanted to laugh when +told to pray. As I grew, I thought much of the heavenly state, but +could find only vague pictures. Recently I asked a country minister +his idea of heaven, and he seemed uncertain. He could only assure +me that it was a desirable place. Yet children always wonder about +their destination, questioning as they journey.</p> + +<p>I started early to pray—a grim affair; at first crying out through +fear or hurt. God was too awful for such intimacies so I took the +Christ figure of the Trinity into my confidence. Just here came +a strange transition. It didn't seem sufficient <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>for me to think +those prayers: I felt I must state them clearly or my wish might +be ambiguous. Even to-day, I find that only expressing a thing +simplifies it for me.</p> + +<p>If there were acquaintances whose lives were touched with beauty +or romance, I prayed for them, but mostly named <i>my</i> wants. I made +the discovery that the intensity put forth in holding the image of +a desire brings it into the world. Man may call the answer <i>God</i>, +but that seems his own power. I have sometimes thought of Will with +its divine kindred, Wisdom and Love, as the Three Who stood first +before His Face.</p> + +<p>To-day we dream, and to-morrow our hands are filled. I remember +the early Chapel days when the Old Man would say, "Be careful what +you want—you are apt to get it,"—with a great laugh and mystery +playing about his words. How truly one comes to realise that. +When I started at Stonestudy, the town-people used to ask how we +were taught,—if our English and story-structure were principally +considered as in the schools. I could only tell them, "Oh, no, not +like school!" Then I tried to explain Chapel and they wondered how +that manner of education could make us writers. Yet our writing +improved with the days. Work, a few weeks old, embarrassed us with +its defects.</p> + +<p>Then I actually tried to discover just how we were being helped. +To a young aspirant, there is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>awe about an artist; we had come to +listen. The same thoughts expressed in homely words wouldn't have +quickened us. The Old Man's sentences were rich with figures that +clarified everything. We began to <i>see</i> Stonestudy. About this time +at home I used to start anything that interested me, "I've got a +picture——" Chapel had helped me, as only one can help another, by +quickening the imagination.</p></blockquote> + +<p>That was what drew me to the Little Girl—her vivid impression of +things. She could make <i>her</i> listener see also. Speaking of children +whom school had overwhelmed, she used to tell us of their "lacking +eyes" and the world that had crushed them, as the "solid world." ... +I think that was the secret of her faith in fairies and Nature's most +elusive agencies. I listened doubtfully at first, for school had +tampered with my once-ready belief. One had first to trust her words, +"If you believe, you will see." And I recalled my early religious +experiences, based on "According to your faith, be it unto you."</p> + +<p>This is the "really" religion—faith in the hidden world. We conceive +its light gradually as the seed pushes its way upward through the soil. +All religion that does not make the workshop a Chapel—the place for +picturing heaven, is less than we know. I seem to confuse religion with +the stimulating of the imagination. It is because they are one to me.</p> + +<p>The Valley Road Girl has a beautiful sister who was rather reluctant to +come to Stonestudy. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>She did not think she could ever belong; had no +thought ever of writing or taking part in our things, yet none of the +young people ever brought us more than Esther. I found the following +pages about these two sisters together among the writings of the Little +Girl:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p> ... On the floor below lived two girls who came often to visit +their beloved friends in the attic. One was a year or so older than +the other, and most serious and sober, constantly hunting for her +own philosophy and making her own religion, praying for power and +vision, fearing lest she fail at the appointed task, suffering over +conditions, revolting at times, loving her work and her sister with +an everlasting passion. That was the one whom we call the Valley +Road Girl.</p> + +<p>The other was a perfect giver, born with the thought of her own +smallness, unwilling to accept a different point of view on the +subject from another. A spirit—wide eyes, frail body, living her +life calmly, objecting to nothing, obeying others, loving all, +frightening her parents with her absolute goodness. And that was +Esther.</p> + +<p>When she came at last to Stonestudy, her cushion with the others +round the fire had been waiting for many months. For we all knew +her; through the Valley Road Girl we knew Esther belonged to us. +One Chapel day later, when she remained at home, we wondered how +we'd ever manage without her.... Occasionally Esther brought a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>paper with her and laid it under the black stone—a bit of verse, +perhaps a dream, or something deep and mysterious from her soul. +One day it was a picture of the Desert, I remember.... Noonday, the +white heat of the sun reflected by the sand, the brown of a camel's +eyes, the long road to travel—caravans—then night—the sound of +low music, women dancing, the red of fires on black oily bodies of +slaves.... Esther made us see it all.</p> + +<p>There were long days in the woods—spring quickening life in all +things. We'd gather moss and violets and talk endlessly, Esther +always so free these memorable days, and happy. It was the dance +that set her free—her expression through the dance—a dancer's +body and soul, her wonderful quality of forgetfulness of self, made +her perfect. Literally she could surrender herself to the music, +trust it, and be carried in perfect grace and rhythm. We watched +her unfold, the beauty of her deepening in every way. Her joy in +life grew. She became like a nymph in the pure light of summer....</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>As was set down in the other book,<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> it was the Little Girl who +started these educational proceedings. Less than four years ago I +suggested that she remain home from school, and take a stroll with me +down the Shore. I was a bit bored <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>at the time, doubtless heavy with +the sense of parental care. To my best knowledge, the Little Girl was +in no way extraordinary. She does not seem so now. It seemed natural +for her to turn in the chapter on "Tom" in this book. I did not think +of it as a brimming thing for a child to perform. Incidentally Steve +brought in an essay last night on the young lovers and beauty lovers of +the New Race, covering matters which I planned as necessary for me to +do in this book. <i>Weaving</i>, that's really what a book from the group +amounts to—weaving, more and more. From time to time in years to come, +I hope to take a few weeks and spin a book.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>It is only in matters having to do with actual world-facts that the +Little Girl ever reminds us that she is only finishing her second +period of sevens. There is no one to whom I go more often for wisdom or +consolation. Her comradeship is complete. Others forget the matter of +age in relation to her. Her big friendship with the Valley Road Girl +overrides four years of growth most formidable in the usual attachment. +The soul is out of time and space. The same thing is more emphatically +shown in the case of John and The Abbot—nine and seventeen.</p> + +<p>The Little Girl reads very little—not nearly so much as I do. She +carries no weights. The slightest tendency toward precocity would +sicken <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>me of the whole business. This growth and development which +I speak of is not intellectual in the acquisitive sense. I take the +young minds away from long division examples. One of those a day is +plenty. Excessive use of the young brain is dangerous. One should +handle brain-tissue with delicacy. One should learn well how to think, +so as to escape lesion and avoid rupture of those most delicate fibres. +Any strain sounds a warning. The use and development of the brain from +outside is only safe so long as the process is joyous. The development +of the brain from within is natural and continually felicitous. No two +processes are alike—for the Soul perfects the instrument to serve +Itself. In due time the brain, thus trained, will bring forth the +one perfect and inimitable product. Trained by the world solely from +without, its product is a mere standard at best.</p> + +<p>I have met absolutely no ill results, not even from the gentle +encouragement of the practice of concentration among children. This is +stiff brainwork for a time—stiff because the brain must be mastered. +But the brain that has learned to listen for the voice of the Master +within, is already using the fruits of concentration, and as I have +written before, the children master the distractions more easily than +developed personalities. One must learn how to think obediently <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>before +one can silence the thoughts. One must silence the brain to hear the +Soul, but one must <i>be</i> the Soul to silence the brain.</p> + +<p>Intellectual children have been brought to me several times. They +lack the essential reverence. They wish to show me what they know; +their parents goad them into this showing. These are not the new race +type that thrills us.... I cannot help you out of a predicament if my +hands are full of bundles. I cannot bring to you the one spontaneous +utterance that you long for, if my brain is crowded with the things of +to-day and yesterday. I place upon the ground my bundles, and give you +a hand. I clear my mind of all its recent and immediate acquisitions, +and by the very force and matrix of your need (if I am the valuable +teacher) I supply, from the infinite reservoir of massed experiences, +an intuitional answer that will not leave you as you were.</p> + +<p> ... God pity the good little brain-pans so heavily piled in public +schools, and the brave little memories so cruelly taxed. I want to +brush all junk away from them, let their souls breathe, let them +become as little children, show them how the greatest workmen and the +master-thinkers are great and masterful, simply because they have +learned how to become as little children.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_17" id="chapter_17"></a>17</h2> + +<p class="title center">BEAUTY</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">We develop through expression. I find these paragraphs among many of +the Little Girl's for which there is no place here:</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<blockquote> + +<p> ... Everything in pouring out one's dreams and thoughts, one's very +soul into words! It is relief, fulfilment; it completes all thoughts +and dreams; it gives them strength. They are only half-powers if left +unexpressed. In the moments of great outpouring, order forms—the inner +order that is lasting and divine, the order that every man must have +running rhythmically through him, before his great task can be given +him by the Master. If man lives in truth, he lives in order. There is +no truth without order—no order without truth. They are one at the +top. There are no mistakes in all the Holy Universe.</p></blockquote> + +<p>We speak much of the Master. As every artist becomes significant, I +think he is more and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>more conscious, deep within, of the presence of +one whose word is absolute. The great artist isolates himself from +criticism—that is, he may listen to the observations of a child or the +youngest critic and find values, yet his life is passed in doing things +others cannot do, and for which there are no criteria. He loses the +sense of all laws at the last, in the great ebullition of his soul—to +get its records down. He is not ignited with expression as formerly, +because he <i>is</i> expression. His establishment in flesh is for that, and +no other reason. His Master nears. I think of Tolstoi so intimately and +Carlyle in these things.... We are close, in our best moments, to the +Shop Itself. Kipling touched this mystic arrangement in his inimitable +<i>L'envoi</i>, "When earth's last picture is painted——"</p> + +<p>More and more life teaches us the treachery of matter, as it teaches +us how to love. One by one the things we turn to, vanish, leaving us +rent and crying out. Thus we learn to turn to the Unseen. We long at +last for our particular archetype who embodies potentially the ideal +of parent and teacher and beloved. The last tearing torrential love +of the flesh is for the mate, the first of our more purely spiritual +aspirations for the Master.... The good days of apprenticeship give us +the basic ideal of him—the pure workmanship, the love of truth, need +for utter comprehension with few words—the love of one <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>another, yet +the absolute essential so hard to learn, to cling to nothing in the +realm of change—all these are incentives to the quest of the Master. +More and more we succeed in turning our love to what we still call the +Unseen from old habit. The very love that you turn to the Master builds +the path by which he comes to you. He can only appear in your own +thought-form....</p> + +<p>It comes to us so often that we make our own heavens. So many forget +that we require beauty as well as goodness and truth. Not sages alone, +not saints alone—but artists, workmen and players in beauty, as +well as in love and wisdom. The Master will come to you in your own +thought-form; your heaven will fill your own conception. Saints of the +elder bigotries will have angels with feathers and peasant feet. Those +who have clung so hard to their bodies, must galvanise them again with +rheumatism and senility and mortgage-ridden minds.</p> + +<p>I tell them here to be careful what they dream—to take all the loves, +the safe things, love of child and mother and mate, love of comrades, +the passion for dying for another ... to take Nature's perfect +things,—the grains, the fruits, bees, stars, devas, poems—majesty +of mountain, strength of the field, holy breath of sea—the highest +moments of song and thought and meetings ... to take all that is +consummate for the thought-form—to build the coming of the Mas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>ter +in that—light from the Unseen—to build for eternity.... The Master +can only show you that much of Himself as your own highest picture +contains.... This is the practice of his presence, so liberating to the +minds of dreamers and workmen and mothers.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Steve has done some thinking on the quest of beauty in relation to the +young lovers of the New Race. The rest of the chapter is his writing:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Beauty is the lustre shining from within, because of the sheer +intensity of being. It is proof of spiritual battles won, a gift earned +by ages of renunciation, martyrdom, and self-sacrifice. It is manifest +balance, order and serenity gained from isolation and self-conquest. +The glow seen about the heads of saints is really there. It is a +splendour not of earth, the same ray from which beauty is drawn.</p> + +<p>A certain tragic joy and a terrible serenity, that is mistaken for +melancholy, often goes with beauty. It is the result of turning back +voluntarily for work in the world, renouncing possible bliss for the +service of humanity. Chief among the spiritual victories mentioned, +is this turning back, facing the stream of evolution again, and all +its cold metal, for new work. So its light is a light from behind—a +reflection to the world of the wonders ahead.</p> + +<p>Beauty is an indication of the weave of one's <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>higher life, of +developed discrimination, material proof of the perfecting ordination +of the life, will and emotions. All that is beautiful is good, all +that is good must be beautiful. Ugliness is false and fleeting, a +confession of sickness and turmoil within. There can absolutely be no +great love without a sheer worship of beauty, not for itself, not from +the æsthetic standpoint—no temperamental moth-man ethics—but the calm +mastery of its inner meaning, which is mastery of life itself.</p> + +<p>This does not mean that we must love things merely because they are +beautiful, but because of the truth we know to be in them, manifest in +their beauty. Also it means that we must never accept a thing merely +because it is demonstrated, or seek truth for truth's sake. Beauty is +the one lasting criterion.</p> + +<p>As soon as we truly see these things, we know the secret of real love, +which is beauty's expression. The lover is no longer lover only, but +love-master—all domination of the sexes then becomes a slavery of the +past. The lover is parent, mate and child in one. Each is also the +other's teacher.</p> + +<p>At the beginning these lovers give each other complete freedom, knowing +that nothing can be maintained that is held; that joyous freedom is +its own wise bondage. The finding of the lover is never the end of the +quest as in the world. Rather, it is the beginning. Never is there a +lying back in satisfaction or inconsequence. That <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>would be failure +for themselves as well as their children. Growth is the goal. Growth +goes on after the mating at a rate never before approached, for each +has been opened, liberated. Every relation is evident alternately in +this growth, parent and child, teacher and pupil, master and disciple, +madonna and messiah. At certain high moments, the other appears as the +Master himself; through his eyes the mysteries of the universe are seen.</p> + +<p>The three-ply love yearns to give, knowing that by giving all one gains +all. It yearns to protect, to mother, to love failings and make them +virtues. It loves the failings as well as the gifts, treasuring all the +little humanesses of the loved one, searching them out zealously. Never +are they foolish enough to expect perfection at first. Every fault is +told point-blank, at any cost of pain or injury to the other. For it +is the god-given privilege of each to bring suffering to the other, +because he loves that other more than life, more than self, more than +happiness, and it is understood that their mutual goal is the priceless +heritage, perfection. Nothing short of perfection remains. For this all +else, even life, is a paltry price. There is no hiding the truth. This +is the supreme test for great loves, great friendships. Both mates are +equal. <i>Equality</i>—the word comes to mean more than worship.</p> + +<p>This philosophy is justified by the law of sacrifice. That which we +love more than life is ours more wholly than ourselves, by the great +law. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>In fact, we cannot belong to ourselves; we must work upon +ourselves until we are big enough to cast body mind and soul in the +heart of another, without fear. Separateness—the pitiful sense of +self, has long been the prime illusion of the world, the cause of all +lust, wars and torments. Those who are not great enough lovers to +surrender all to their love find pain and disparity throughout. They +have yet to learn that all that belongs to the self-willed, only half +belongs, for it has not been given its freedom.</p> + +<p>In loves such as the New Age is bringing in, true creativeness is +touched. In worshipping both the soul of her child and that of her mate +more than her own, the mother is given for the moment a beam from the +divine shaft from the Creator. For that moment she has over-reached +herself. Just so is the new love constantly over-reaching itself in +the cause of the loved one, a divine madness the world has not begun +to dream of—to belong and to have, to be in and through and around +the loved one. Thus to over-reach is to create. The ordinary one must +become extraordinary when loved in this god-like manner. To over-reach +oneself—that is the cry of the New!... To think or act in any way +that will hurt the self becomes impossible then, for the self is truly +become the other lover.</p> + +<p>Blindness of passion is far from the nature of things in the new loves. +Or rather such passions have been washed and redeemed until they are +self-governing. There is all the difference <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>between them and the world +idea of passion, as between adoration and infatuation. Deep waters +and deep characters hold to their channels. Only shallow and frothy +currents are loud and turbulent.... Again it is the three in one. How +could one hold a mad destroying passion for one in whom the parent +child and master are equally dominant? Always the spirit of tenderness +is there like an unseen third. Thus passion has become compassion, and +the earth love is seen truly for the first time partaking of the nature +of the infinite love which holds the universe together. This is the +source of calm, of will-lessness.</p> + +<p>The elder generation, judging all things from the standpoint of the +self will, is dumbfounded. Such iron repression among children is +beyond its imagination. The elder generation goes on living sharkish +and predatory lives, experimenting with repression after too much +getting and taking and licentiousness. It concentrates terribly on +repression, throwing up about itself temporary breastworks, developing +cruel red rays of personal will which at best is but a defiant +pugnacity. Its eyes grow red and voice savage. For the time the +gargoyles of the ancient self are locked in the lower room, but they +are not mastered. All personal will is but a confession of inordination +within. Where there is inner order and beauty, it is not needed, +becomes indeed an affront to the most high.</p> + +<p>The beautiful will-lessness which marks the re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>lation of the sexes +of the New Order is the key to the freedom of the future. Tiger and +ape are transformed into white presences—the mutinous slaves of the +earth-self become cosmic servants.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_18" id="chapter_18"></a>18</h2> + +<p class="title center">SHUK</p> +</div> + +<p class="drop-cap">I was talking to a group of young artists in Chicago. There was a boy +there who seemed disturbed because the others dared to be natural in +my presence, and talk about themselves. I was quite at ease, enjoying +myself, and getting altogether as much respect as I deserved.... This +lad walked with me to the train. I wanted to take him home. I liked his +voice and his hand and his mind. I thought at first that he could not +mean all he said, but I was wrong about that. Reverence is sometimes +very hard to take, but the one who brings it has the pure surface of +receptivity. The boy said, as my train pulled out:</p> + +<p>"No, I can't come now. There's a month to be spent at home in Michigan, +and a season's playing with an orchestra up in the lake resorts, but +after that—say October, I'll come to Stonestudy."</p> + +<p>That was exactly what he did. He had it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>all planned months ahead. It's +Shuk's<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> way—a mathematical mind, a crystal mind. The theosophists +would say that he belonged to the intellectual ray.... We are always +better with Shuk in the room. He comes half way to meet our process +of lighting up, which is the devotional process; in fact, Shuk +incorporated himself in our ideals in exchange for a year or two of +living the life at Stonestudy.... These things never die.</p> + +<p>A raincoat, a black bag—these are Shuk's possessions, all weight and +measure minimised, even to the kind of white paper which wears best and +packs best. Shuk means order. A page of his "copy" is a rest to the +eye. There is a finished quality to his sentences. My tendency is to +rush into a mental clean-up when he enters the room. I'm not impressing +these details as his virtues. Shuk's virtues are cosmic. He will +presently be telling the big tales, and telling them fast.</p> + +<p>As a group, we are learning to come and go from each other. We have +learned well not to lean—rather to anticipate the Law and leave the +beloved when the tendency to cling becomes too keen.... There is a time +to come and a time to go. I always think of the Master Jesus, leaving +His disciples—saying that they would not find the Comforter within, if +He remained with them always.</p> + +<p>Shuk had much to do in bringing home to us <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>this valuable concept. +We had a way of thinking the world would come to us on the Lake Erie +bluff. It would. It did. But we were getting fat and baronial; a bit +fat of brain, perhaps.... Better than that, the gaunt, lean face +forever at the window-panes of civilisation.... Comrades are always +together. Big meetings, easy partings. One does not know how close +he is to another, until their thoughts spark warm over a lot of +mileage—the immortality of it all stealing in through the soft airs of +night, perhaps.</p> + +<p>I teach the young ones to stand alone at every chance. The idea is +to make them penetrate for themselves, as swiftly as possible, the +main tricks and illusions of matter; to make them see past any doubt +that to be worldly-minded is to be inferior. Still they must see this +for themselves. I formally renounced parentage in the case of the +Little Girl. I take all my authority from the younger boys at frequent +intervals—especially when they have been real mates:</p> + +<p>"Don't advise with me," I tell them. "Show what you know about +living.... Do it your way. If you begin to botch it, I'll come in and +be a regular parent again, but the idea is to set you loose."</p> + +<p>These matters come out naturally in relation to Shuk. He'll be +surprised to read this. None of the young ones ever adequately credit +the fact that I do a lot of sitting at their feet.... We <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>could see the +world as one piece better with Shuk in the room. His intense listening +pulled my eyes constantly. He wanted to know about stories—about +writing stories. His presence made us all better workmen because he +was so zealous to become one. I had long been absorbed in the romantic +side of world-politics, but Shuk decorated the subject with a new +romance.... The farther away a country is, the more we know about it +from a fiction standpoint. His mental forms are very strong. Shuk and +I have practically covered the same run of thoughts in a morning's +work—our machines a mile apart—no prearrangement. But this has worked +out so often as to cease to be a novelty. The Little Girl's letters +have often crossed with mine, carrying the same spiritual unfoldment—a +four days' journey distant....</p> + +<p>Another realisation related with Shuk's coming, is that I do not belong +as the master of a school in the economic sense. There was much detail +at Stonestudy, much householder's management required. I wouldn't have +given it up, if I had been unable to do that part, but it was a waste +of force—wretched economy for me to take charge of such affairs. We +plan to support ourselves, but I cannot run a school, apportion tasks, +or puzzle devotedly among the meshes of finance. This part of the work +in California will doubtless be taken care of by those who do it well +and profit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>ably. There have been moments when I wanted to go among all +the schools—happen in, stay an hour or a week—until the children and +teachers forgot me, so I could find my own among the many.... But again +it occurs to me that wiser plans than mine are behind it all. Those +who are ready, come; numbers will take care of themselves; all we need +to do is to make the most of the nearest, and keep up our song in such +accord as we can in the midst of the world's sacrificial madness—many +girls' voices now, for the war has plucked the boys....</p> + +<p>Some of the things of Shuk's which I chose for this book were about +the big war and are not profitable discussions now, but with his paper +included in an earlier chapter, and one or two small things here, his +quality can be seen. This is a letter to the Old Man:</p> + +<blockquote><p> ... I haven't ceased to follow the Wars. Big one inside. Tremendous +flights, dizzy careenings, impossible falls. Am tramping noisily +through the forbidden garden of Books. Am becoming more and more +vividly aware of Life, above actuality, beyond sorrow, interior to +joy. Vital and thrilling peace to all your endeavours.... Enclosed +a paragraph or two on tallying off the world-war within, with the +world-war without:</p> + +<p>Evil is stupid mixing of good things into in-harmony. Evil is simply +ignorance. Ignorance does not fade away, but must be worked out, worn +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>down. War is evil in this process. Man's higher nature is naturally +at war with ignorance, manifesting in his lower nature. If man had +always kept at this war against the domination of the lower self, he +would never have needed another war to jar and jog him along. But man +decided, in ignorance, that he had no cause for war with the lower +self. This was his first illusion. The next mistake was natural. Man +thought he would get rid of evil by killing off the lower selves of +other men. All due to his first error in looking outside instead of in.</p> + +<p>It's all wrong to think we must leave our own houses in order to fight +the greatest battles conceivable. If we do not accept the fight within +ourselves, we shall certainly have the same fight, once or twice +removed, forced upon us....</p></blockquote> + +<p>Whatever portion of humankind is chastened and quickened by this big +field-war and sea-war, is the first fruits of a nobler race. Man has +had countless and continuous opportunities of doing this purifying +process to himself in privacy and peace; instead, he has consistently, +with rarest exceptions, used his will to serve the lesser self, or deal +with the lesser selves of other men. Now, in these years, every man who +failed, will learn the lesson, because it will be forced upon him. If +our wisdom is not so great and old as we hope, if we have in the long +past thrown away our chances, then we shall surely go out and fare as +the others fare now—in exactly the right proportion.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span></p> + +<p>Killing another doesn't work as a means of self-correction. Hereafter, +I'm interested in correcting myself. There is very little outside work +left to do. This is a commonplace, of course, yet it reminds me that +the highest wisdom is something grandly simple and easy. Murder is an +aggravated waste of both time and opportunity.</p> + +<p>Yet I am at peace with nobody, not even myself. Peace ought to be more +intense than war, and until it is, we shall have to go through many +wars to arrive at any kind of peace. Many slaveries is the price of +freedom.</p> + +<p>One who fears will be brought up facing monster fears, until he learns +next time that his personal fears were too petty to mention. One who +has greed and envy will surely be made a pawn in a game of greed so +colossal that perhaps, in a future time, he will have no interest in +neighbourhood greeds, but will have learned to see and to desire the +whole world. His greed has been stretched into a passion for dominion; +and the most fascinating field for empire he will discover within +himself.</p> + +<p>So wherever we stand, we can't lose out. We can choose to do good, +better, best—but without choosing, nothing less than all right can +happen.</p> + +<p>The brighter facts are that all these warring energies, whether of +men or ordnance, are the force of one God, energies working out of +the muddles men made. Man has disturbed the balance. Man now makes a +sacrifice in order to restore equilibrium, to release the powers he +misused.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span></p> + +<p>The greatest conceivable struggle must sooner or later come between the +higher and lower nature of every living thing. Man is now preparing +himself, collectively and individually, for this final conquest. His +prime illusion seized him when he turned away from his own faults, to +correct the faults of his brother. The secondary illusion is that the +brother will not be able to care for his own faults. The third is that +we must help our brother correct himself. The fourth is that if he +won't do it himself, in the way we say, we will do it for him.</p> + +<p>The world (and this means me) is just learning the rudiments of +war, just finding out how much vitality man has, how much courage, +the stupidity of all fear, the size of the globe, the depth and +possibilities of the elements, including the human soul; is perceiving +more of life and accepting intenser vibrations than ever before on this +terra. All this knowledge will go into the True Peace some day. But in +these nearby years, men are prayerfully eager to get back "home," where +all these godly lessons may be forgotten.</p> + +<p>Real War will positively show man that he must remember what he is +taught. When he comes "home," he will enlist immediately in the +interior struggle with his lower self. His war with other men will +train him to fight with the greatest enemy on earth, his own ignorance.</p> + +<p>I have already enlisted in this big war. My first victory was in +seizing the fact that the world is me and I am the world and nothing to +the con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>trary. The universe rises and falls with me, subjectively. The +goal is to make it—objectively.</p> + +<p>I am locked with impatience these days.</p> + +<p>After that, comes fear.</p> + +<p>I may go to the red fields to learn the nonsense about fear. Of course +I can theorise it now perfectly, and practise it at periods. But I +want it steadily, the non-wobbling wisdom. Already I have conquered +some fatuousness in myself. Out of my jubilation I write to you.... +Of course, the Many is not a model to follow. The "Many" is a picture +in every man's mind, composed of the inferior things that all other +men do.... Inclusion—intensity—love—creativeness—these Stonestudy +precepts contain all the story. They are certainly the way out and up +and over into Life.</p> + +<p>Shuk has done a little sketch or two on the big Romance of the new +social order:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Humour, universality, the highest good will, he writes, are the symbols +that flame from the temple of the New Race.... Everywhere appear +children of the renovating, re-vitalising, more cosmic tribe. They are +easily recognised. The hope of a full and decent future is with them.</p> + +<p>They will do little according to their immediate predecessors, and +much by an inner light of their own. Being wise and simple and not +destructive, they will gratefully accept all that has proven true for +earlier peoples. But they will in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>stinctively have nothing at all to do +with the traditions based on three-score-and-ten, or any other of the +unfortunately solid viewpoints that frost the world to-day.</p> + +<p>They love the world, have come to claim it whole, to reclaim it from +deluded ancestors who were solemnly, from birth, bent upon deeding +and selling and stealing and fencing in bits of the planet's surface. +Forerunners of this happier race have shown themselves to be masters +of materials, true workmen in the solid stuffs; but by their sense of +humour they are saved from any impulse to seize and sit upon fragments +of earth.</p> + +<p>These new ones are born with an urge towards unity. Their task, to set +the world in order. Their means, not so much a rearrangement of objects +as a very intense activity along the roads of Beauty and Truth, in a +co-operation unstudied and normal with the rest of mankind and with the +Igniting Principle.</p> + +<p>It may be observed that Beauty and Truth are too vague to produce +effective action in a solid world. This is invariably a saying of the +material-minded, however virtuous they may be. It is they who loudly +demand a dull utility over and above Beauty, and apart from it. It is +they who have agglomerated the chaos that is in this hour threshing +about in dust and blood. Their sober iniquities are the fertiliser to +force the seed of the New Race.</p> + +<p>It is not a cosmic blunder that the great minds of the world are found +in art, including the su<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>preme art of mystic religion—and seldom in +the arena of statecraft. The world was never managed from a senate +chamber; the cosmos is not guided by a king. When rulers of the past +have become great figures, that greatness usually rested upon their +gift of poetry, their love of art or wisdom, or some religious quality.</p> + +<p>Poems of twenty words have outlived the might of forty wars. A great +book is a higher achievement than a sweeping political move. The +dullest changeling with an obsession may set his seal upon a war to +the death of ten million men, but in the few lines of a true poem are +stored the honey of millenniums of human life. A genuine work of art +is more potent and practical than any blood-bought wall of tribal +separation, more vital and immediate than the doings of armies. To +judge of this properly, one need only know both kings and poets.</p> + +<p>Of the early kings of Rome, it is Numa who is remembered—and he was +in harmony with Celestial Order. Of countless other Roman figures, the +average mind turns first to Cæsar, who was a literary man, and whose +passion to write outlasted every march of his legions. Greece had kings +and statesmen and great generals, yet it is her wise men who stand +foremost. The conquering Alexander is famed chiefly because he was the +unwitting distributor of Grecian beauty. In fact, Greek history began +with Homer, the poet, and American history with Columbus, the dreamer +who is still our creditor. The mystics of old <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>China reached for the +Torch of Light, and they might have attained a true dominion over the +planet, had not their fear-inspired kings built a Wall and gelded the +Empire once for all. Gautama Buddha gave up kingcraft in order to gain +a higher mastery. Mohammed lived on the Road. Jesus the Christ set free +an energy in the world that is only gaining its real momentum after two +thousand years—and he firmly refused a material crown.</p></blockquote> + +<p> ... A hopeful dream, the poem of an autumn afternoon, the building of a +sphinx or a pyramid—these are not subject to time or conditions. They +remain.</p> + +<p>So the Children who are the hope of the world are not dismayed at the +medley of illusions emanating from the so-called ruling class. Emperors +and premiers do not get very much done either way; they themselves +abandon their own works over night. They are deserving of profound +sympathy. They only spread out more manful chaos to be set straight by +the master craftsmen—the artists, humorists, vitalists, mystics.... +Beauty is the sun-bright flash of the Infinite.</p> + +<p>With duty raised to a joy, and pain forgot, the Singers come, the +Builders, the Quickeners of man. The Unforgettables of the so-called +past were of this stock. Their leisure is deep—of a sort that sustains +the finitudes.</p> + +<p>All the good goals of yesterday are to be counted as mile-posts. +Direction is more impor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>tant than any imaginable goal; unvarying +tendency is more direct and splendid than any creed; the white path of +the quester is more precious than a stationary heaven.</p> + +<p>The modern children cannot stop on this side of the horizon because +they are creators. Life is their religion. Their rites are broad and +deep as man, as ancient and reverent as time, as new as dawn.</p> + +<p>They do not reject the Vedas. They re-fashion the Upanishads in their +own hearts. They study the travels and hopes of Jesus, listen for +the divine songs of Orpheus, penetrate the glitter of numbers with +Pythagoras, find satisfaction in the Mohammedan thinkers who connected +Aristotle with Moses. These names do not belong to the past. The +many Buddhas are perpetually modern. Kabir lives to-day in Tagore. +Heracleitus and Plato are still living springs.</p> + +<p>In just the same sense, the children of the New Race are old as +the Pelasgian Zeus, though in point of time they are here for work +and play in 1920. But their vitality, reality, beauty, power and +achievement—these are affairs of all time.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_19" id="chapter_19"></a>19</h2> + +<p class="title center">IMAGINATION</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Many mystics have lost touch entirely with the deep sunken abutments of +the spiritual edifice—the footings in matter. They are deeply wise in +the mysteries and unfoldments of contemplation, but lose their way like +mindless lambs in the world. We idealise a practical mysticism which +dares to walk the earth in the heat of the day, dares to contemplate +the stars as outposts of the heavenly kingdom, launching the vision at +last, not only to the Holy City, but to the Throne of Itself....</p> + +<p>Talks with Shuk at Stonestudy had a tendency to make us see the big +Unseen politics and diplomacies and rulerships of the planet. Here are +a few paragraphs from one of his letters which show the quality:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p> ... Kings and presidents are the most hampered of men. Great generals +are silly without their armies. To remove externals from us, to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>rid +our minds of the illusive and the inessential, is simply to clear +us for action. Even a gunner, in taking aim, regards the object or +enemy as an abstraction, and focuses his whole attention upon his own +instrument, his sights. If he actually looks at the enemy, he will not +hit him. The billiardist first glances over the entire table, then, +to make a true shot, concentrates his full attention upon the tip +of his own cue. Perhaps the great leader of armies does not regard +individuals or see them as men, but as extensions of his own body, and +in time of stress, he has forgotten them completely save as abstract +power for his use, and that use he determines interiorly. Even the most +material-minded of men, in the crux of worldly and four-square events, +sinks into deep and effective cerebration. Can we, who realise this as +a conscious and direct principle, do any less?</p> + +<p>I think the Guardians are sitting together a little way off, watching +with grand interest, to see just how much of a mess mankind can make. +Man is always given lavish supplies with which to create works of art +that may prove equal in beauty and wonder to the universe itself. Man +does not yet see art in these materials.</p> + +<p>He must open his eyes before the Powers are able to help him. The +Guardians cannot operate against man's will, because their will and +his will, including yours and mine right now, are of one piece. The +will of the Guardians is better trained and cleaner, because more +experienced.... When men cease to shout for different things <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>from the +same Father, they stand a chance of getting the Father's attention.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>We have had many astonishing hours in Chapel talking about these +"Guardians," the arrangements above, as below, one Plan governing all. +We do not care to bandy about the name of God a great deal, for we +realise that He is most unseen when embodied in matter; that He is apt +to be far from the mind that makes familiar with Him in words. Yet all +stands for Him, all reveals Him. The farther we can see beyond mere +eyesight, the more we realise that He is <i>not</i> standing exactly in +person, just outside of the boundaries of matter.</p> + +<p>There are hierarchies, so to speak. There are messengers and couriers +and charioteers, saints, pilgrims, angels, courtiers, priests and +politicians, grades and authorities represented there, such as we find +in Matter and Romance here.... Shuk and Steve and I used to hypothecate +the existence of a White Council back of all the religious movements of +the world. By humour and analogy and romantic speculation, we arrived +at the point of view that the world religions are one at the top, and +that initiates, illuminati, masters are stationed at intervals to help +humanity up the slopes. We conceived the White Council as a centre of +wisdom love and power, holding up the cup continually for revelation, +guiding and guarding humanity's soul. We glimpsed the fact that the +leaders of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>White Council might be beyond embodiment—at least in +avoirdupois—the holy of all holy men. Only a most pure and potent +messenger, we thought, would be permitted to reach this Inner Temple, +this Shamballah, compared to which the Vatican is a salon open to the +public and the monasteries of Thibet a concourse for pilgrims.</p> + +<p>After religion, we realised that there must be an upper centre for +all that is represented here below so diversely in politics and +nationalism. It couldn't be God Himself back of the dumas and senates, +reichstags, diets and parliaments. One does not pass from elevator-boy +to editor in chief in a great commercial office. If there were a White +Council back of all the religious movements of the world, there must +be a Big Mill back of all world-politics—a gathering of directors, +venturing to judge the problems of men because they had risen above +them.... These men could want nothing material. We perceived them +behind armies and thrones, manipulating kings and diplomats and secret +centres, in ways that even the closest agents did not understand.</p> + +<p>We concluded there must be another centre made up of the +master-artists, bringing through into matter (as the world can stand +it and as the little human instruments reach up for them), the great +delivering beauties of song and story, paint and verse and tale. And +this we called the Shop Itself. Sometimes we fancied that it was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>all +too much, even to dream of going there sometime to see the forms, the +marbles, the canvases, the manuscripts—the Artists themselves.... And +then we realised that, just as all the arts and all the religions and +all the political movements were one at the top, that Politics and Art +and Religion were one at the next eminence; that the Inner Council and +the Big Mill and the Shop Itself were one at the top, just as Wisdom, +Love and Power are; as Goodness, Beauty and Truth are; as Father, Son +and Holy Spirit are—three in one at the Top, and that was Himself....</p> + +<p>And then we would rise from Chapel and go out and look at the +lake—Steve and Shuk and I.</p> + +<p>Finally one day we were told that we had done some right good +dreaming—that it was all true. We were advised that it was no affair +of ours if other people didn't get it right away; that they would get +it.... So we began to put these things in stories. They mean Romance +to us. Queerly enough the stories are coming through—one long one +especially, called <i>Archer</i>, that shows the downhere activities of the +Big Mill and the White Council and the Shop Itself.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>I have said it often in this book—that our culture consists of the +quantity of properties that we have tallied off—the within with the +without. The Kingdom is within, also the King; the Sky and the Nest are +one; one are the heavens <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>and the homing heart that finds its peace in +the deep vales where the adorable humanities come to be. The inmost and +the uppermost are one.</p> + +<p>We are where the torch of consciousness is.</p> + +<p>We are in the body, or in the mind, or in the soul; we are in time +or eternity, or we pass back and forth.... First we tally off the +far outposts of the kingdoms without and within; first we are mere +sentries learning to become clear-eyed and brave to stand alone—almost +outsiders, having scarcely heard of the Kingdom, dimly conscious, but +learning to become steady-eyed. Then we are called in a little—called +in to become couriers on foot, running to and from among the outer +provinces of the kingdom; then messengers to the Middle Countries; then +Charioteers to the gates of the City; then ministers to the court of +the King....</p> + +<p>The day comes at last when we have audience with Him—when we rule +with Him, when we become united with Him. From the throne Itself, then +we perceive the outsiders, the sentries, the couriers, messengers, +charioteers, the winged riders and the deep-down men of the +dungeons.... With the fine tranquillity of power, we measure forth to +all, reverence, justice and grace.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_20" id="chapter_20"></a>20</h2> + +<p class="title center">BOYS AND DOGS</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Children of the new social order love strange creatures; they are +passionate about the care and protection of animals, but until they are +made to suffer, they are apt to be sceptical about the infallibility +of their elders. They are usually forced into silence early. I have +noted that their ideas are intrinsically at variance with parental +ideas—about purity, sunlight, dancing, foods, religion, odours.... +It takes a good man to break a horse or a dog. In a sense <i>break</i> is +the word, although I would accomplish it with enchantment rather than +a gad.... This is invariable: "When the pupil is ready—the Master +appears——" an old occult saying, and another: "The first thing the +Master does, is to break the back of his disciple——"</p> + +<p>Stiffness of opinion, rigidity of holding to that which one has, +preconception, deep-rutted habits of mind—all these are fatal to that +swift and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>splendid growth of the disciple when he first finds his +teacher. For days the child is in a bewildering series of changes—made +over new each fortnight—reviewing lives of experience—razing the +old structures to the very footings for new temples of mind and soul. +The child must be ready to give himself—must give himself utterly. +The essential reverence is first required; the self is broken for all +births; one gives one's self to gain all. I would not try to quicken +a child who doubted what I was saying; and yet I have never sought to +make myself unerring or infallible. I like to have the young ones make +humour of my frailties, and at the same time believe there is something +priceless in our better moments together. There is no possibility of +front or acting.</p> + +<p>I seek to make them practise the presence of the Divine in themselves. +I tell them never to do anything alone that they would not do before +me. I take away all sense of sin from them. I sometimes congratulate +them on being especially close to us, because of mistakes. I seek to +set them free in all their ways, stripping the last attraction from +evil, jockeying them higher from a humorous and artistic point of view. +I show them the banality of many popular and obvious evils, the dulness +of paying the price for something <i>off</i> form and of questionable taste.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>There is a lot of humour and nobility about a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>good dog and a good boy +together. John has been sleeping for a few nights in a bit of a cabin +with an open door. He picked up a friend down on the beach somewhere, +the same that he described as "World Man Dog" in one of his letters. +I liked the tone of his voice as he talked with this old loafer named +Seaweed.... One evening I was sitting on the hill above the cabin, +so still that even a bird would have mistaken me for a part of the +landscape.</p> + +<p>World Man Dog came up the cabin grade. His head was down—thinking. His +tail was straight out behind him, as a dog's tail is when very much +engaged with his own thoughts. You could see that he was going to keep +an appointment; it was evident that he was afraid he might be late. He +did not see me, so completely was he engrossed in his own affairs. He +went right on up to John's door, entered, gave a look round the shack, +first eagerly, then to make sure. His face fell, his body sagged—down +he slumped in the middle of the floor—utterly dejected. As plain as +day:</p> + +<p>"Hell,—he ain't here!"</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>A real dog trainer is a wise man. I used to raise collies and was +around the benches some—watching the champions come and go. One old +trainer talked to me:</p> + +<p>"Styles change in dogs," he said, "but a good dog doesn't change. He +goes on and on. You <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>don't get the good collies here on the benches any +more. This year they want the collie so fine that we have to pinch the +brain out of his head and break his lung-room in two. Last year we bred +for hair, not for body and brain. Look at that one——"</p> + +<p>He pointed to an old sire that had three seasons of the bench and +blue, a sweeper of prizes. I remember the time when such a head would +have started a stealer anywhere. The old collie had not lost form, +but styles had changed. A most stupid dog with a straight, narrow +head had won—not the shepherd type at all, but the head of a Russian +wolf-hound—a bit of the monster left in it, a drugged look in the +small black eyes; hysteria there, and not fealty—madness and not soul.</p> + +<p>"We breed them for the cities now—for porches and parlours," the +trainer added. "Yes, those great collie strains that we have been +nurturing for centuries to all that is brave and hard and useful—we +are putting the hair of the lap-dog on them now—long silky stuff, not +for snow and sleet. The collie walks by himself these days. No, we +won't altogether ruin the strain. Many individuals are spoiled, but the +race had come too far and too long to be broken down by a few years of +fancyfying."</p> + +<p>Of course, I was thinking of the children at <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>every stage of the +talk—of city people and children. As a race, the city-bred have become +too fine. Life has worn them thin—given them the drugged look about +the eyes. The race will never get far in the art of living until it +comes home to the land and the restful distances and free flowing airs. +This is so true that it seems to risk wearing the eye and the mind—to +say it again....</p> + +<p>It's good to see them—a boy and a dog together in the hills or down +by the edges of the land. There was a piece of decent collie in a +dog named Jack back on the lake shore. He was long in strength and +courage, but a bit shy in obedience. As a work-dog, he was ruined by +a man who knew less than he did, frequently the case in bringing up +dogs and men—whipped at the wrong time, every forming endeavour in +the pup-brain broken by that. He is seven or eight years old now ... +a clean dog, a very wise and kind dog, with a sly and quiet humour +that seldom is cruel and never falls into horse play—a lover of many +children and confident of an open door in many homes.</p> + +<p>I remember the dignity and beauty of his first appearance over the +bank from the shore, almost timed to our arrival. We were tender to +the collie in general, having passed years with them. Jack moved from +one to another accepting embraces with a kindliness that mellowed +that cloudy day. There was joy about it all. I stood back waiting <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>my +turn with much self-control. He submitted to the welcome—to the last +detail, and a little later refused refreshments with perfect courtesy.</p> + +<p>When we came back the second summer, we found that a bullet had broken +Jack's right front leg. He had wintered out at times, had known much +pain. It was not that he did not have good friends who would have taken +him in, but I think Jack lost faith a bit in the pain and stress. There +was grey about his muzzle. One day he sat in the centre of the little +Chapel class.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to be as good a man as Jack is a dog," one of the boys said.</p> + +<p>"You'd be one more man," said another.</p> + +<p>The fact is Jack has filled his circle rather well. This thought came +to me presently with fuller meaning. I regarded him with knowledge of +three seasons. A clean dog, a gentleman, a master of himself, very +courageous and slow to anger, impossible for small children to anger—a +dog among dogs, but more than dog among men.</p> + +<p>"He <i>has</i> filled his circle," I said aloud. "What makes a man look less +in these very virtues that Jack has mastered, is that a man's circle +is larger, and he has not reached the time of fulfilment as Jack has. +If the dog's accomplishments were suddenly lifted from his circle +and placed in a larger one, we would not be conscious of the fine +integration of virtues that keep us interested now."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span></p> + +<p>Men, lost in the complications of cities, yearn for the simplicity of +their early days on the farms; and yet they could not go back. The +simplicity they yearn for is ahead. That of the old country days is but +a symbol of the cosmic simplicity in store for us. Tolstoi turned back +to the peasants, yet the simplicity he craved was not there.</p> + +<p>The peasants are merely potential of what the New Race will be; the +peasants themselves must suffer the transition—must have their circle +widened and feel their little laws and their little sense of order +suddenly diffused over broad, strange surfaces. Their cosmic simplicity +will appear when the larger dimension is put in order. That which is +lovely in any plane of being, is that which is in flower—when it +has about filled its present circle. We are not less, intrinsically, +because our values are placed in a larger vessel, though we have a +renovating sense of our own insignificance. There is an order of small +men, so obviously a part of their very narrowness, that it becomes +instantly repulsive to larger souls. Many of the latter have flashed +off to the end of their tether for the time, preferring chaos, to the +two by two neatness of small-templed men.</p> + +<p>A secret of growth lies in these observations. We fill a certain +circle, restoring a kind of order in the chaos; and then the circle is +suddenly widened and that which was our order and mas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>tery is loose and +diffused within the larger orbit. Herein are the pangs of transition. +We lose our way for the time in the vaster area, like a man who is +unfamiliar with an estate just purchased. There is but one thing to +do—to begin to work upon the new dimension. As we work, courage and +patience steal in. Presently comes the vision of the completed circle. +When this comes, our labour is pinned to a fresh ideal, and we are safe.</p> + +<p>In a hundred ways I have found it true that the vision comes in the +labouring hours. One may move for weeks about his new estate (or +manuscript), planning this and that, but the glimpse of the cohering +whole is denied him, until he has actually begun upon the nearest or +most pressing task. This is the miraculous benefit of action again. In +giving ourselves forth in action, the replenishment comes. The sense of +self ceases to clutter the faculties as we bend and toil.</p> + +<p>The days that are added to our experience each bring this story in a +different way: that the sense of self impedes reality on every hand; +that the loss of the sense of self in labour and service renders us +instantly quick to the animations of the spirit, without which at least +from time to time, a man belongs to the herd, and is lost, like all +gregarious creatures, in the will of his superiors.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_21" id="chapter_21"></a>21</h2> + +<p class="title center">THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">There is a man here who has found peace. I made a pilgrimage to his +house. A boy from the village went with me part of the way up the +mountain. The Pacific was presently visible upon the right hand, and a +spacious verdant valley on the left. I lingered a moment on the trail, +rejoicing in the quiet splendour, and then noticed a vine-clad hut +still farther up the slope.</p> + +<p>"That's Mr. Dreve's cabin," the boy said.</p> + +<p>I learned from him that this man Dreve was well-loved in the village +and in the big city beyond; that he was a very different man now +from the one who had come here a few years ago; that he was torn and +maddened then, cursing God, but too stubborn to kill himself.</p> + +<p>"What helped him?" said I, because the boy had paused.</p> + +<p>"Well, it wasn't the climate," he answered.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p> + +<p>I saw he was wondering if I were worth risking the truth upon.</p> + +<p>"Did he fight it out with himself?" I asked carelessly.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the boy, and I now met a fine straight pair of eyes....</p> + +<p>There was an old sharp wedge to the story. Dreve's sweetheart had +died—the loss twisting him to the point almost of insanity. He had +climbed this mountain, it was said, and remained for three days, until +the town began to search. The marshal had found him sitting up there, +where the shack is now. Dreve was quiet and normal, but confessed +himself hungry. He had returned to the mountain soon afterward, and +built his cabin. In six months, Dreve was all changed over. He seemed +to have a new body and new mind.</p> + +<p>"You said he's here four days a week," I suggested.</p> + +<p>"Yes, he goes to the city. He has a good business, but has mastered it +to the point that several younger men can run it. Dreve only gives two +or three days a week to business affairs, though he has been a great +worker——"</p> + +<p>"He's up there now?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Does he mind strangers?"</p> + +<p>"Not your kind."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span></p> + +<p>I thanked him, and added, "Tell me—he means a lot to you, doesn't he?"</p> + +<p>"All a man could," said the boy. "I'm going back now."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Dreve was middle-aged, clean-shaven, deep-eyed. Time had been driven +to truce in his case. His face showed many battles, but when he spoke, +a kind of new day dawned and you looked into the face of a boy. I +remained with him three days. We talked of the new magic in the +training of children. We talked of the New Age and the great song of +joy and peace that would break across the world when troops turned home.</p> + +<p>Dreve had <i>something</i>. He seemed to breathe something out of the air +that other men's lungs aren't trained for. He seemed to have <i>within</i> +everything necessary for a human being, including vision and humour and +a firm grasp of the world. He was at peace about God and the world; +at peace also about death. Slowly it dawned upon me that this man had +walked arm in arm with life to the last abyss, and that life had been +forced to confess that she had nothing worse to offer, whereupon the +two had become fast friends.</p> + +<p>When a man can sit tight and lose everything he formerly wanted in the +sense of world possessions; when he has winnowed the last shams out +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>of the things called <i>fame</i> and <i>convention</i> and <i>society</i>; when he +has lost the woman who means all the world to him, and still loves her +memory and her soul better than the living presence of any other woman; +when he has come to realise that death contains everything he wants, +yet is content to wait for it—the idea of hell becomes a boyish thing +to be put away, and Lucifer returns to his old place as a Son of the +Morning.</p> + +<p>We stood together in the noon sun. Dreve did not even wear a hat.</p> + +<p>"I came here in great shadow and could not bear the light," he said. +"But one day I found my heart lifting a little as the sun came out. +Then I found that it was really true—that sunlight helped me. The more +I thought about it, the more I needed it; the more I loved it, the more +its particular excellence for me unfolded. Take anything to the light, +and it ceases to be formidable. Sickness is a confession. The time +is at hand when schools will teach that. Sickness is a confession of +ignorance which is a lack of light. If one is weak he cannot stand the +light. Transplanted things must be protected from the light. St. Paul +on the road to Damascus did not have enough inner light to endure the +great flash from without. Light works upon evil like quicklime—that's +why sunlight hurts the sick ones. It is also hostile to the utterly +stupid idea of what clothing is for—clothing that thwarts and +stran<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>gles every circulatory process of the flesh. There's nothing the +matter with sunlight——"</p> + +<p>The sun had not only redeemed the physical shadows of Dreve's life, but +symbolised the spiritual light which had come to him with the calm and +power of the greater noon-day. He did not speak in exact statements of +the one who was gone, but that romance, too, was like light about his +head. I thought of the wonderful thing that Beatrice said which helped +to heal the forlorn heart of her great lover:</p> + +<p>"I will make you forever, with me, a citizen of that Rome whereof +Christ is a Roman——"</p> + +<p>And I thought of the Blessed Damosel leaning over the barrier of +heaven with sweet and immortal messages for him who waited below in +the very core of earth's agony. In passing, the great lovewomen bridge +the Unseen for their lovers, who in their turn give to the world the +mighty documents of the human heart. In passing, this woman had become +everything to Dreve, so that I, a stranger, felt that he was not alone +but twice-powered. All his life was a prayer to her. He brought to her +spirit now the greatest gift that man can bring to his mate—the love +of the world through her heart.</p> + +<p>We had walked down to the ocean. Many young people were bathing in the +surf or playing on the strand. It was the presence of Dreve perhaps, +but I confess that human beings never be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>fore looked so wonderful to +me—a fearlessness and candour and beauty about the moving groups that +was like a vision of the future. All smallness of self was smoothed +away in the grand harmony of sun and sand and sea.</p> + +<p>"It's a kind of challenge to a war-stricken world, isn't it?" he asked +quietly. "Aren't they splendid together—the big boys and girls of +California?... Don't misunderstand me. I know the world. I'm not lost +in dreams. I know well the darkness of the world. But there are great +ones among the boys and girls playing together here. All are on the +road, but the great ones of the Reconstruction are already here in the +world—playing.</p> + +<p>"Great ones play," he repeated. "First we are labourers, then artisans, +then artists, then workers—at last we learn to play. That means that +we dare to be ourselves, wherein lies our real value to others—when we +dare to become as little children.... Hear them laugh.... You wouldn't +think this was the saddest little planet in the universe.... Look at +that tall young pair of sunburnt giants! She's a Diana, conquesting +again. Look at the wonder in his eyes! Perhaps it is just dawning upon +him that the man who walks with this girl must walk to God.</p> + +<p>"... Oh, yes, I know," he added laughingly, "there is flippancy and a +touch of the uncouth here and there—but we have all played clumsily at +first."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p> + +<p>I continually marvelled at Dreve's remarkable health. His stride up the +mountain-side was actually buoyant.</p> + +<p>"Did you ever feel that you could live as long as you pleased?" he +asked.</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"I think one does not learn this until after one has wanted to die. +One must live above the body and not in it—in order to make it serve +indefinitely—quite the same as you would climb above a street to watch +a parade go by."</p> + +<p>I put that thought away for contemplation, knowing that it belonged to +a certain mystery of Dreve's regeneration.</p> + +<p>"You know," he added, "one has to get very tired to want to die. Those +young people down on the shore—they want to live. They are not tired. +They want to cross all the rivers. They mean to miss nothing down here. +They can't see through it all. It challenges them. But the time comes +when everything on earth seems to betray. Then you have to turn to the +Unseen for the big gamble. The world is learning it rapidly to-day. +Look——"</p> + +<p>We had reached his hill-cabin.</p> + +<p>He turned from the sea to the valley. Night was falling. There was a +big moss-rose plant that smelled like a harvest apple, and filled all +the slope with sweet dry fragrance. There was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>a constancy about it, +and the great sun-shot hill was blessed with the light and creativeness +of the long day. It was like the song of finished labour from a +peasant's heart.... One forgot the world, the war, forgot that the holy +heart of humanity was in intolerable travail.... The valley that Dreve +now pointed to was like an English pastorale. It had the look of age +and long sweet establishment in the dusk. My friend was quick to catch +the thought in my mind.</p> + +<p>"... It is like England," he said. "There was a development of +detail in English country-life as nowhere else. I think of cherries +and cattle, of strawberries with clotted cream, of sheep-dogs and +sheep-tended downs and lawns, of authoritative cookery, natural service +and Elizabethan inns.... Everything was regular and comfortable. One +forgot to-morrow and yesterday in England before the war. I heard a +dog-trainer, speaking of a pup, say, 'He's a fine indiwidual, but his +breeding isn't exactly reglar.' ... With a rush it came to me that +nothing in the world is regular now. England isn't a soothing pastorale +any more—everything changed, demoralised—but only for the present."</p> + +<p>The dusk was stealing down from the far ridges. Our eyes were lost +in the California valley which seemed to be growing deeper in the +thickness of night. Almost as Dreve spoke, I expected to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>hear vesper +bells from some Kentish village. His low voice finished the picture:</p> + +<p>"Country roads and sheep upon the lawns, vine-finished stone-work, +doves in the towers and under the eaves, evening bells and honest +goods.... I think of the ships going forth from England, boys from +the inland countries answering the call of the sea and finding their +fore-and-afters and men-of-war in Plymouth or Bristol.... You know +it is the things that make the romance of a country that endure? All +these will come again. All the good and perfect things of the spirit +of old England will come again.... Our hearts burn within to think of +the yearning in the world for a peaceful valley like this.... Think, if +I could take your hand now and watch the sun go down upon a peaceful +world ... hear the cattle coming home and sheep in the perfumed mist of +evening ... doves under the eaves and the sleepy voices of children.... +I think Europe would fall to screaming and tears, and then lose its +madness for strife—if the big picture of our valley at evening were +placed before the battle-lines as we see it now."</p> + +<p>Dreve stared a moment longer. I fancied I saw a bone-white line under +the tan, running from chin to jaw.</p> + +<p>"A woman was leaving her lover," he added. "It had to be so. Each knew +that. Just as she was going, the woman said, 'I forget—I forget <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>why I +have to go away.' ... It would be that way with the soldiers, if they +could look down upon their own valleys and farms. They would forget war +and hurry down, saying, 'I'm coming!'"</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>I wanted to get closer to Dreve's secret of peace and power. I wanted +to tell it. Apparently Dreve wanted me to. Now, there's a price to pay +for these big things, but many are willing to pay the price if the way +is clear. Dreve had suffered all he could; then something had turned +within him, and he found himself in Day again instead of Death.</p> + +<p>"It must be told differently," he began. "For instance, if I should +tell you that the way is to love your neighbour as yourself, you +wouldn't have anything. Whitman said, 'Happiness is the efflux of +soul,' which is exactly true, but it didn't help me until I had +experience. Happiness is the loss of the sense of self. You can see +that clearly. All pleasure-seeking is to forget self. We loosen +something inside that sets us free for a moment, and we say we've had a +good time.</p> + +<p>"There are great powers within. The greater the man, the more he uses +this fact. We thought of steam as a finished power until the big +straight-line force of electricity was released. We can't explain it, +but we have touched certain of the laws which it obeys. The materialist +is inclined, as <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>ever, to say that electricity is the last force to be +uncorked on the planet, just as he said that the kerosene lamp was the +last word in illumination. The occultist declares that there are still +higher and hotter forces, touching Light itself, and indulging in the +laughter of curves and decoration where the cold monster electricity +moves only in straight lines.</p> + +<p>"Men have died to tell the story that happiness is radiation, not +reflection—that we have it all inside, if we could only turn it +loose—that all pain and fear and anger and self-illusion disappear the +instant we enter the larger dimension of life, exactly as the moon goes +out of sight in the presence of the incandescent sun.</p> + +<p>"I was emptied of all that life meant in the world—but something new +flooded in. I saw that all was not lost, but that all was greater than +I could dream; that all was waiting for fuller and finer expression. +I saw that what I could do for you, or for any man or woman or child, +brought me a living force of the love I was dying for. It became clear +that I needed only to clear away the choking evil of self, in order to +feel that I was a part of the tender and mighty Plan,—to touch the +rhythm of the Source, from which all songs and heroisms and martyrdoms +come.</p> + +<p>"It has all been said again and again. There comes a moment usually +after much pain when the human mind realises that it is invincible when +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>working with the Plan; that it may even merge with a kind of Divine +Potency yet retain itself; that it can actually perform its actions +with the help of that mighty fluid energy in which the stars are swung +and the avatars are born.</p> + +<p>"A cold monster indeed is this electricity compared to the odic force, +the dynamo of which is the human will. But the magic of it all lies in +the reverse of the whole system of use. This force destroys when used +for self, but constructs when it is turned outward. Here we touch the +law again that happiness is in radiation—in the loss of the sense of +self—in incandescence—"</p> + +<p>Dreve smiled at me with sudden revealing charm. "I would say that it +was all in loving one's neighbour," he added, "except that it has been +said so much.... It is true. You seemed to know it to-day on the shore. +You seemed to see the great ones passing there. If the world could only +know the joy of seeing the sons of God in the eyes of passing men!"</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Night had come. We sat at the doorway of his cabin, a waver of +firelight within, stars clearing above the misty sea.</p> + +<p>"It's all play when one gets into the Plan—all pain while one resists +the Plan," Dreve added slowly. "I used to think that I had a strong +will; that I had good will-force, as men go. It was the will of an +invalid child. If men could only <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>know the force that is theirs to use +when they enter the Stream! One is asked to give up old habits and ways +and propensities—but only because they are harmful and impeding. All +which really belongs is merely obscured for the time. It returns to you +with fresh loveliness and power. One does not give up three-space to +understand four-space. The truth is he must rise above the former to +see it all.</p> + +<p>"It isn't you and I who matter," he said abruptly, after a pause. +"These things are for all. I know what comes afterward—to a man or to +a nation—when driven to the last ditch of pain. A new dimension of +power comes. That's what happens. That's what the New Age is all about. +That's what the war means. We shall learn our new chastity. We shall +emerge as a race into a more serene and splendid consciousness.... The +price—the dead.... I could tell you something about that. One must +have prayed for death to know about that. Don't think of that now—only +take it from me, or from your own soul, that the big Plan is all +right—that <i>They</i> haven't made any mistakes yet—that the loved one is +only away for a time—busy—quite right—about the Father's business. +Another time for that.</p> + +<p>"I can't forget them down on the Shore," Dreve finished. "That was +play. It was all a laugh down there. The big forces and the big people +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>are always a part of laughter. The laugh will take you to the throne. +The Gods laugh.... There's a laugh that ends pain. There's a laugh that +challenges power. There is the laugh of the aroused lover in the world. +We shall hear the laugh of the world itself, when the big revelation +breaks upon us all that the Plan is good—that the Plan is for joy."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_22" id="chapter_22"></a>22</h2> + +<p class="title center">A DITHYRAMB AND A LETTER</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">I think we come through at birth with certain sealed orders to be +opened at distant points of the journey.... Ten years ago, as I lay one +night, ready for sleep, hand lifted to put out the light—my eyes found +these lines:</p> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"> +<i>"Listen, I will be honest with you:<br /> +I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.<br /> +<br /> +These are the days that must happen to you:<br /> +You shall not heap up what is called riches;<br /> +<br /> +You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve;<br /> +<br /> +You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd—you hardly<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>settle yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by an<br /> +irresistible call to depart;<br /> +<br /> +You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who<br /> +remain behind you;<br /> +<br /> +What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with<br /> +passionate kisses of parting;<br /> +<br /> +You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd hands<br /> +toward you....<br /> +<br /> +'Allons! After the Great Companions, and to belong to them!'"</i><br /> +</p></blockquote> + +<p>The thing had come around by India—a quotation from Walt, in a +little Hindu book of love and death by Nivedeta. It spoiled my night. +I resisted. Some entity connected with the lines seemed to smile +patiently. Deep within, I knew they belonged to me; that I should +have to realise them, line by line, then live them; that here was +a page from the envelope of my sealed orders to be opened after +clearance—opened far out on the white water.</p> + +<p>They used to strike me as hard lines until the warm laugh came up out +of them.... Romance means <i>Not to stay</i>.... Bit by bit, the story +unfolds that the Plan is good—that the Plan is un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>utterably good, that +one needs only to rise into the spiritual drift to find that all are +God's countries. First the big physical drift, the drift around the +world, along the waterfronts, missing none until the laugh comes, until +the petty things of life, in <i>no</i> arrangements or combinations, can +hold your faculties or even long attract the eye. You know them all.</p> + +<p>One must learn the world first; one must not miss the world tricks. The +men who have lived most have laughed most. But don't stay too long in +the labyrinths. They are passages of pain so long as you give yourself +to them. Still you must solve the maze. After that, don't stay—don't +stay to pick up threads. There are other mazes, other drifts. I +assure you life is rich and brave, but there is nothing so healthy as +a laughing discussion of death in one's own mind—the next step of +the cosmic adventure ... and to travel light there—not to take our +mortgages, our material ambitions, our stone houses full of effects—by +no means to take our card-indexes and letter files—to travel light, +to pick up the brighter shells by the way—every glimpse ahead showing +higher light—a more spacious and splendid prospect.... Why carry +our furs and frost-proof igloos for this adventure in the deeper +tropics? ... To become as little children—to be open hearted and free +handed—to listen, to believe, to make pictures, to see across apparent +separate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>ness, to forget one's self in the daisy fields, to love the +light and the land, to fall into ecstatic speculations! You can't do +that if you carry the plumbing of your house in mind, and stop suddenly +to recall if you turned off the water in the laundry-tubs.</p> + +<p>Weigh up your external possessions—weigh them carefully—for their +amount is the exact measure of your infidelity to God....</p> + +<p>To become as a little child—to know that the forests are filled with +other than things to eat—to love the mysteries awake, to love the +fairies and the hidden flowers into strange unfoldings—to be fearless +and free forever!... The Little Girl writes of her love for it all as +it comes:</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p> ... I have a half a minute to send my love and strong pull for <i>High +Flight</i>. We wanted this to be the magic week of the Home Coming, but it +must be best to wait a little longer. Wait, wait—that is the old song +of Earth—young waiting—big waiting—holy waiting. <i>I love it.</i> I love +the suffering of it. One is great according to how well one can wait. I +am loving Earth terribly. It is close to me, with its strange music.</p> + +<p>Last night, the Valley Road one and Esther and I were together—touched +great white things—talked and laughed and loved until long after +three. Each in her way is a power wherever she touches. Each has +everything within. Each is pure and wonderfully sweet. We wait, +open<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>armed, for you. There are wonders in Muriel—and in others. I +dream constantly of the beauty to come. Nature's ecstasy will be +bursting forth in fulfilment when our Lovers come home. I'm so <i>glad</i> +this morning!</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The children learn it so easily. I like to stop in this book and +let them say it—the big story of the Seamless Robe, the story of +Democracy. The young men say it strongly; and tenderly the young +women,—the dream of the mate in their hearts becoming the dream of +the Master. They all say it so thrillingly for me in their words and +lives—the little boys coming in with their tales of prairie and the +deeps; literally it is here out of the mouths of babes.... Dreve found +it in a woman, another in science, another in music, another in the +open road. Every man is his own way, his own truth and life. It waits +for all.... We keep fanning day and night, many of us who work at +home—the fanners of the Hive! We cool and harden the great spiritual +concept into matter, as the cathedral spires of wax appear and harden +in flaky white under the masses of the bees....</p> + +<p>I laugh at my own intensity.... It is our one tale, told in essay and +story, in different terms for cults and schools, for soldiers and +clergy, in verse and prose, with dignity and in slang, but here it runs +best out of the mouths of babes ... helping the Big Democrat get his +story through.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>... The rest of the chapter is the Little Girl's:</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Soul Speaks.</span></p> + +<p>I walked through a field. The brown soil was upturned and all the +richness of man's labour was in it.... The morning sun was lifting a +grey veil of dew up to its heart; the earth was fresh and cool where +it had rested. My feet were bare and sank into the soft richness. The +field was wide and pure and fragrant and alive. It seemed to sing as +the sun grew warm upon it. Ecstatic birds flew close and balanced +themselves magically in the sparkling air.</p> + +<p>I happened to be just ready to receive the golden loveliness that the +old Mother is always eager to give, that morning. She helped me to feel +the goodness of all things—the power and beauty of all, and the great, +giving spirit.... Inside I felt keenly the presence of Soul—that was +the secret. Soul awakened and breathing, Soul waiting and eager, Soul, +the holy quickener.... The heart beat peacefully, the brain hushed all +unnecessary thought and listened. I lay down upon the sweet ground +there—the body relaxed and forgotten.</p> + +<p>Then, from the depths within, I heard the sound of the Soul's voice +speaking these words:</p> + +<p>"This is the appointed time. Long enough have I sat mute and silent in +the darkness. We have learned the lesson. The circle of separateness +is complete. We are ready to enter a new globe now, a globe much +larger than the one we <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>have known, much more wonderful. In it there +are greater tests than we ever had before. But the new tests, instead +of being painful, are joyous; not separateness is ahead, but union, +oneness in all things.... Long have you gone your way alone, down the +road of deafness and blind eyes and pain; and not the way I would +have led you, though perfectly right, for it was an education. The +blindness and darkness of it has taught us what <i>not</i> to do, therefore +we know the path.... Ours were not object lessons; always we have +learned through opposites.... To learn the great lesson of listening, +we talked much. We told others of the paths they should take long +before we thought of following our own. We hated all things, to learn +how to love; we took all to ourselves, to learn how to give. We did +the things of death, to learn life truly.... We have suffered great +pain to know the secret source of the everlasting joy. We feared, in +order that we may become fearless, and know the mystery of the dark. +We chose the road of separateness to feel the ecstasy of oneness and +completion at last. We entered the terrible sphere of time and space to +transcend both and be free. We took upon ourselves pounds of tiresome +flesh, to make of it a golden symbol of the great spiritual beauty and +freedom. We asked for everything at first, but through our desiring and +brooding, we learned the most wonderful lesson of all—wanting nothing +but to give.</p> + +<p>"All is for us. The Path gleams before our <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>eyes—the long, sunlit path +leading to the Father's house. I go home with my love by my side. By +crying out in agony, and by weeping bitterly we have learned how to +<i>laugh</i>. The world is needing us; we contain all things. From now on, +we live as one in Wisdom, Love and Power."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_23" id="chapter_23"></a>23</h2> + +<p class="title center">THE MATING MYSTERY</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">I thought a great deal about Dreve's love-story in relation to the +young people, in relation to the love of humanity, and in relation to +the mystical growth of a man denied the mate on earth. In the first +place, there must be many great love stories in the coming decades of +reconstruction, if for no other reason than that great children are +coming in. Such friends and brothers and comrades-of-all-the-earth can +only be born through the excellent and adequate love of man and woman. +In a recent novel, an old priest of the Gobi tells something of the +love story of the future to a young American who is greatly troubled in +his romance. I quote three or four paragraphs because this expression +in fiction is clearer than I could write it again. Rajananda says:</p> + +<blockquote><p>I have watched your devotion for the woman and it has been a holy +thing, my son. You love <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>well. She has become more than earth-woman to +you. She has become the way to God. This leads to true <i>yoga</i>. Where +there is love like yours, there is no lust. Without these trials you +could not have known so soon the love that will bring you in good time +to her breast. The ways of easily-wedded pairs sink into commonness +soon—the dull and dreamless death. It is those who are kept apart, +who overcome great obstacles, who learn the greatest thing of all—to +wait—who touch the upper reaches of splendour in the love of man and +woman, and thus prepare themselves for the greater union and the higher +questing which is the love of God together.</p> + +<p>The seer must know the hearts of men. Knowledge of love is the +knowledge of God. Love is the Wheel of Life; love is the Holy Breath +that turns the Wheel. The seer is far from ready for his work in the +world, who has forgotten from his breast the love of man and woman. And +then, my son, we are almost at the end of the night of the world. The +Builders are coming in to take the places of those who have torn down +with war and every other madness of self. These Builders must be born +of men and women—the New Race—but of men and women who have learned +what great love means.</p> + +<p> ... Listen, my son: in the elder days men put away their women to +worship God. The prophets, the seers, the holy men walked alone, and +left the younger-souls of the world to bring forth sons. The time was +not ripe for the race <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>of heroes, therefore the mere children of men +brought forth children. And all the masters spoke of the love of God +for man, and the love of man for man, and the love of woman for her +child, but no one spoke of the love of man and woman. All the sacred +writings passed lightly over that, even the lips of the avatars were +sealed. But now the Old is destroying itself in the outer world; the +last great night of matter and of self is close to breaking into light; +the time for heroes has come, my son, and heroes still must be born +of this sacred mystery—the love of man and woman. So all the priests +have this message now, all the teachers and leaders of men, even I, +old Rajananda who speaks to you, and who has never known the kiss of +woman—all are opening to the world the great story, unsealing the +greatness of the love of man and woman.... For the Builders are coming, +coming to lift the earth—the Saints are coming, my son—old Rajananda +hears them singing; the Heroes are coming with light about their heads +and their voices beautiful with the Story of God.... And now I must +sleep. I go to my daughter, who waits for you.... Once, before you +came, she rested my head and filled my bowl in the stone square at +Nadiram. Even now she waits for you in the hills of my country—not far +from this place, my son——</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>In the big expansions of life, in moments of great happiness, or +hard-driven by pain—most of us have realised that the higher we rise +in human <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>consciousness, the nearer we get to the All. Thousands of +people now living have risen, for short periods at least, above the +sense of separateness, in which they realised that the finest and most +exalted love a man may have is for "the great orphan, Humanity."</p> + +<p>The human heart is awakened through the love of one, to the more +spacious expression for the world. All life is a learning how to love. +The last love of the flesh and the rolling years, before man turns his +love from flesh to spirit, is the grand passion of man and woman, yet +man does not abandon the woman in turning to Humanity or to the Unseen. +Rather, hand in hand, the eyes of the man and woman are uplifted to one +star—the Apex of a Triangle perfected.... Yet one must not turn to the +Unseen until he has learned the full agony and ecstasy of the seen.</p> + +<p>"Love humanity by all means," I tell younger ones, "but learn what love +means first. Do not undertake to destroy passion until you have learned +its glory and madness. Rather lift passion to adoration, and use it, +full-powered, upon that which unfolds forever for your worship. It is +not well to kill out a personality until you get one."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Our youthful reconstructionists are apt to stir the community with +opinions or actions, which <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>have to do with their own heart stories +and the world's romance. They have a way of confounding the seasoned +authorities of pastorate and parish, with embarrassing questions in +regard to method and magic in the making of two souls into one. These +young people may not be modest according to Elizabethan ideals; in +fact, the young women are apt to go half-way in the choice of the man +who is to be the father of her children, but this is an essential of +innate beauty and fastidiousness. More and more the higher types of the +new social order are questers for that single and holy mating which +brings nearer the dream of the beautiful and heroic in children, and +which gives us a glimpse of a future to die for.</p> + +<p>The story of Romance cannot be written nor interpreted in life without +its hill-rock, named Liberty. There is no man-made law for love. The +first business of human beings is to find their own on earth. All +makeshifts part away; all short-range systems scurry past; all comets +and asteroids cease to be considered, when a pair of suns whip into +each other's attraction. And so it is with a true-mated pair. Those +who have dreamed long and kept themselves pure, realise here below for +a time the raptures of the elect. The new generation has a sense of +this; and while its eyes look hard and daringly for its own, its finer +examples preserve an integrity for the one until he is found.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span></p> + +<p>The New Race realises that promiscuity is only a lack of taste. To draw +the fulness and redolence from a book or a friend or a lover, from any +episode or fabric of life, one must search for the true, as well as the +beautiful, and the beautiful as well as the good.... Perhaps that tells +it best—it dares to love Beauty, this New Race. It means to bring +back the beauty of the body as well as to breathe forth the Soul. Its +devil and its danger is Paganism. It loves Nature so well that it is in +danger of forgetting that the old Mother is not complete in herself, +but a manifest of her Lord Sun....</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>As to the liberty of its loves—the New Race realises that one cannot +be held, except by vulgar hands, where that one does not want to stay. +A mated man and woman turn each other absolutely free, and the first +cry of their liberty is toward one immortal nest. Those firmly caught +in the pure dream are content to wait for each other. They do not +experiment. They realise the long road of romance—a road so long that +the three-score and ten is but a caravansary of the night. They build +above the flesh if for no other reason than to come into the greater +beauty of the flesh. Renouncing nothing, devoted to austerity only for +mystical union, carried away in no abandonment, they seek to achieve +that command of the body by the mind, and that command of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>body +and mind by the Soul, which reveals the ultimate truth—that the plan +is for Joy; that the best of all things is for men who have mastered +themselves; that chastity is the breath and inevitable answer to +self-conquest.</p> + +<p>The growth of Romance through an ideal mating becomes a fusion at last +of all the loves of earth. Connubial blessedness is therefore more +reverently to be promoted than procreation, for upon it depends the +loveliness of issue. The New Race acts upon the conviction that the +love between man and woman is the holiest of earth expressions, rather +than the love of mother and child. The first contains the second.</p> + +<p>Still no earth love is the end.... Built through austerity and +idolatry, through denial and abandon, through madness and martyrdom, +through pettiness and chivalry, through pain turning less and less +slowly through the years to power, through a little zone of peace at +last (the calm before the greater storm) the fervour of man and woman +becomes, in the fullness of time, too strong for earth, and in the +final and keenest pain, the administry of a higher force begins.... +I mean to tell this in a queer way through the next three or four +chapters. Straight statements will not contain it quite—for it is +<i>still</i> with dream, as yet. Rather I mean to weave the concept for +you—fold on fold—so that at the end you will have it, as they do who +have listened in Chapel many days.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p> + +<p>Flesh is not integrated finely enough to carry the higher ardours +of devotion. If the great saints who have learned to pour out their +souls in adoration to the Father should turn back to a mere physical +expression, they would blast themselves as well as the object of their +madness. The awakening of the higher forces of love lifts the eye of +the adorer from the breast to the brow of the beloved—from the brow to +the Initiatory Star risen at last to meridian.</p> + +<p>A new dimension of love is entered upon. All life tells the story. +Watch the big birds lift from the sand to the cushion of wings; watch +the airplane quicken its speed until it lifts from the monorail.... +Machinery of racking power in a falling house, is that great love which +has not yet learned to look above the body of the chosen one.</p> + +<p>This change is the last and highest pain of romance—the breaking +apart of the temporal, for the story of the long road. Man and woman +must go apart for the mastery of self, before they are ready for the +higher mating. The great love story invariably crosses the mountains +of separation. If we cling too long to the less, nature is outraged, +beauty is drained. Brief separations are dangerous, because the lovers +build recklessly with ideals and the rarest spiritual materials. +Meeting again too soon, they encounter an unmiraculous creature face +to face. If they had really completed the journey, finished the task +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>apart, they would have come into that tenderness which loves the human +frailties of each other, and which sees the manifest of three-score-ten +merely as a garment particularly made for a particular journey.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>There is always wrecking work, before a new and wider circle is entered +upon. The time will come when men and women shall learn that the +magic of going apart is equal to the magic of coming together. In all +birth-times, in all transitions, the consciousness of the bearer is +changed—often queerly.... One can endure the primitive and the child +in the other's mind; one might adore the great play of passion, and +all the art of it; one might never weary of fragrance of throat, or +magnetism of hand, the inimitable plays and child things—but the mind +is forever the slayer of the real....</p> + +<p>Remember, there is not a full union possible on the physical plane. +The body is the barrier that separates souls. Those who believe they +have all of each other in that which they see and hear and touch—have +far to come in the real love story. Have you ever asked yourself +what physical passion is? It is a frenzy to overcome separation. +This separation was necessary for the diffusion of life. It is the +outbreath, the going forth, the great generative plan.... Physical +passion does not satisfy the agony of the soul; often it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>only makes +the agony more keen. In the early phenomena of all great love stories, +there is encountered that blinding, bewildering need <i>to become the +other</i>—to lose identity, to fly somehow into the breast of the other +and be no more. This is keen pain of love but also an intimation of +greater union.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>There was a man who had found much of beauty and power, much of the +Burning Desert and certain wonderful touches of the peace of the Hill +Country—in his story with a certain woman. She loved him in a way more +real than he dreamed. Life had shown him much to scoff at. He had been +glad to make the most, merely, of an exquisite playwoman. One day she +was down town to meet him, but he left her for a business appointment. +That afternoon, about everything he had in a material way was swept +from him—much to which his ambition had tied itself for several +years. The man was badly rocked. He walked the streets—shocked almost +to laughter, to find all that he had held for, and held to, plucked +from under.... At length he thought of the woman who waited. The +laugh of mockery quickened, because he thought of losing her, too—a +worldly-heart who would go with the rest—goods that perish.</p> + +<p>He knocked at the door where she waited. It was opened swiftly. He +did not need to speak.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>... She seemed above and around him. There was +a great still sweetness he had never dreamed of as a man (and could +only remember dimly as a child to his mother), arms of tenderness +and healing.... He saw that instant in her eyes that nothing of the +world ever did nor ever could really separate them. The queerest thing +about it all was, that he used a word he never could use before—a +word, as he said, that had been so badly worked by the world that it +needed a lot of washing before it was fit for him. Yet it came to his +lips—<i>wife</i>—in a way that showed him also a new meaning to the word +<i>forever</i>.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>This subject of love and mating is only opened. There is much to say +in pages that follow, but now, apropos of nothing, if not this theme, +there is a chapter of letters. They somehow contain the spirit of many +things I have longed to express. Those to whom they appeal will find +the last pages of the book richer because of the insert.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_24" id="chapter_24"></a>24</h2> + +<p class="title center">CHAPTER OF LETTERS</p></div> + + +<p class="plabel">I</p> + +<p class="drop-cap">We come up through many slaveries into freedom. It is the end of a +considerable road to be able to stand against the morning sun, saying: +"I want nothing but to give——" ... To be able to say this without an +answering laugh of mockery in the heart, where old King Desire sits +with his dogs.</p> + +<p>To be free—that is to be irresistible. Do you want love? You only +spoil it when you stipulate what the return shall be—how the +proffering of the return shall be ordered and arranged. The great love +is giving; great love is incandescence. One must be radiant to be +happy. It is so literally. It is so, fold within fold....</p> + +<p>One sees gold, looking up from below, and its attraction becomes +eminent among all desires for the time. We pass it by and look down, as +the spirit of man should look down upon gold, and it becomes a mineral +merely. You can en<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>joy it as you enjoy other people's roses. It bestows +itself. Others seek to bestow it upon you.</p> + +<p>Hold to nothing in matter. It is slavery. Give yourself laughingly to +your work for daily bread without thought of result. Then, and not +until then, are you inimitable in your task. Order the performance of +your task with mere brain and attach it to your ambitions—you but do +what the many accomplish. Your product is multiple, not a perfect cube. +It cannot unfold into the Cross. It misses Resurrection. You must be +free, even to perform your work in the world. You must be free to be +irresistible.... Genius is approach to freedom. It finds its own paths; +it cuts itself free from the forms and vehicles of others.</p> + +<p>We have known the dark slavery of the opinions of others. Many of us +have cast off such bonds, who are still slaves to our own opinions. +We learn to stop lying to others before we learn to stop lying to +ourselves. Until we are free, we have no opinion that is fit to endure; +until we are free, our opinions are coloured and formed in the matrices +of personal self, which is subject to death.</p> + +<p>It's all so simple. We have to put down what is in our hands to help +others. We have to still our own thought to listen to another's saying. +We have to silence the self to hear the Master.</p> + +<p>This silencing goes on and on in all our work. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>Pain shows the way.... +We must traverse the deserts. We must cross all the rivers. We must see +one by one every material thing betray us. This is the Path—money, +opinions, ambitions, health, friends, desires, all betray so long as we +obstruct their approaches with our own conceptions and our own greeds. +We rise one by one above these illusions. The last and greatest is +that desire which is born in generation.... All the old reaches its +highest perfection in the human love story. All Nature binds one to the +loveliness of this tale. It is the way to the Way. Because it is not +the Way itself, it appears to end. The great intensities of agony now +begin. The soul realises that only the foothills of pain are passed; +that here are the mountains, here are the deep valleys that contain the +Gethsemanes and timbers for the Cross, and the plan by which the Cross +must be morticed and tenoned....</p> + +<p>The sea, the mountain, gold, the rose, the child, the peasant's +simplicity, the coming of the coolness of evening, the glory of the +clay and waterfall, mist and cloud and star, the deep healing winds +that come slowly with their heavy fruitage of power from the mountains, +the swift winds with the holy breath of the Sea—all these in the +breast of the mate.... When this dream is taken, one bleeds, laterally +and full-length. One wants to die; thus he overcomes death. He feels +the great burden in which all other burdens lose <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>themselves. When he +passes this highest series of inland peaks, the distances stretch clear +and shining ahead. This the test of faith because you deal with love +itself. Your soul, in its earliest advices, tells you that your love of +earth is pure.</p> + +<p>It is. It is good. It is the highest here.</p> + +<p>It is still to be perfected by the races, even by the new races, who +must be born bright with its untried magic.... But so long as it is +idolatry to that which is subject to change, it is hourly impregnating +the life itself with the seeds of pain....</p> + +<p>You are called to the love of Souls. Sooner or later you must go. It +is the Path. It is the steep path to the Master. You give up all to +go this way—and then you laugh to find it all returned in lovelier +dimensions. You take your idolatry from the plane of mutation—lift it +into the glorious and changeless plateaus of the spirit....</p> + +<p>You turn from the Seen to the Unseen.</p> + +<p>This is the passage. You are called to go alone a little way—to be +worthy of the great Meeting. You carry your gifts of the passage woven +into the Seamless Robe of your being. All that impedes day by day you +cast aside, as an army making a perilous retreat casts off day by day +its impedimenta—until at last you stand naked upon <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>the eminence, and +the Voice says, "Be not Ashamed—I am the Beloved...."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Out of slaveries.... We think at first that God is without—at last we +look for Him within. We come from the happiness of the Father's House +making our great journey, but our Soul's quest continually is for the +happiness again. Yet we must not look back. It is failure to go back. +That which we have left unfinished, is not behind, but awaiting ahead.</p> + +<p>We are slaves to our bodily health until we learn that the body is +superbly fitted for obedience to the Soul; that it comes into its +rhythm and beauty only when mastered. Indeed the very process of +mastery is to lead it to the Fountain of Youth.</p> + +<p>We learn that truly to be rich, we must give continually. We learn by +the quickenings of our spirit that white lines run from the brows of +all creatures to an apex which is God—that God is all. All is God.... +All is one. We are one. We are brothers. One house for all at the end +of the Road.... We find the King in our own Souls. We learn from that +that all men are Kings. We bow to all Souls. All souls are rays of God. +We come at last to see the sons of God in the eyes of passing men.</p> + +<p>Our passion now is outpoured. That is joy. We ask nothing but to give, +to heal,—to permit <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>the spirit of the Healing Masters to flow through +us, but first we clear away the obstructions of the self.</p> + +<p>Achieving our own chastity, we perceive the potential chastity in every +face. We are deluded no longer. The imbecile cannot hide our eyes from +the Flame. All purity must be found within. We have no fault with +others when we are cleansed. We see the heroes then, the giants, the +runners, the singers, the charioteers.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>We learn that we can give nothing real away—that all we do for others +is service for ourselves. We give pain for joy, time for eternity, the +human for the divine—give to receive, give to be radiant. We must be +Flame to be fed by the Flame Itself.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>We are prepared by every suffering, every humiliation, until the +personality bows at last.... Personality is good. It has brought us +where we are. Do not kill it out before its work is finished. We do not +realise its beauty until we see it mastered—until we see it with the +eyes of the Soul. All one story. We learn to love step by step. We love +ourselves, our possessions, our children, our friends, our mates, our +Masters, our God.... The higher we go, the more perfectly we contain +all the gradations.</p> + +<p>The last sufferings, the last tests, are so often through the human +love story, because all weak<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>nesses are easily shown through that—all +our pains so quickly received.... The bright sandals of the Master at +last are heard across the Hills. One laughs then, for He brings with +Him the beloved we have cried for so long.... Not in the love of desire +after that, but the love of giving, the love that casts out fear, that +passes understanding, that fulfils the law, the irresistible love of +the Christ.</p> + + +<p class="plabel">II</p> + +<p> ... A wonderful morning—a rare Monday—the highest hold yet—all is +ascending. All beings are so wonderful. I sit on a certain bench to +work one morning—the next morning cushions are there for me.... I +speak a sentence from a book with a word how much it means and how +worthy to love—and the sentence is brought to me illuminated on +vellum.... They bring the finest fruits—honey for tea, cream for +peeled figs, black bread perfectly toasted, the perfection of unsalted +butter.... I walk up the mountain to work—and the voice of the +gardener is a benediction from the Most High—and I stand for a moment +looking toward your sea over the city, and the birds say, "It is time."</p> + +<p>There is a pool of lilies at the top, an Alhambran villa, great rose +gardens.... I come to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>the pool—dip my feet in the still waters and I +know from that how chill the night has been. I look at the lilies—how +far they have opened—and know the time of day. I pray for a moment +under a priestly Pine ... and my heart goes out in the new joy we have +found—the joy of knowing that one may be the king of the world and the +confirmed Son of God—if he but learn the one lesson—to want nothing.</p> + +<p>Pool of lilies in the morning sun. (A little lizard is walking along +the arm of the bench. My bare feet are quiet, and he wonders what kind +of barkless trees they are. He is here and there. One sees his body +move, not the members. The sun puts him to sleep.) ... The pool is +still as the waters of sleep. The Sea—I think of her always as the +emotional body of the world—the old Sea Mother with diamond-tipped +emotions. And then I think of the Master Jesus walking upon the Sea +and saying "Peace be still" to the stormy waters.... Each Soul must +say that to his emotions. We learn to walk upright upon the earth, +then to still the waters, then to have dominion over the birds of the +air—and last to be seven times refined in the Fire.... Earth, water, +air, fire—the first quaternary.... Yes, we are learning to say "Peace +be still" to the stormy waters. We do not know how beautiful they are +until they obey.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span></p> + +<p> ... Out of the still waters in the pure blue starlight, the lily +blooms—the lotus on the still lagoons of the Soul.... Naked as a +serpent's head, the sealed bud rises from the water in the night.... +Out of the power that follows the peace upon the waters—for the blooms +of the spirit lift greatly in the tranquillity of the heart that +follows the storm—out of the power of peace upon the waters, the lotus +rises and waits like a bride in the dawn-dusk for her Lord Sun to brush +back the veils and find her heart.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>It is only the beginning of heaven we find here. We weary of the +world and turn back to the Father's House. We have plucked the fruits +of pain—we have thirsted and hungered again and again.... Out of +the darkness we have formed the thought, at last, that there must be +quenching waters, and somewhere bread to eat that does not perish.... +You can say it in a thousand ways. The Prodigal tells the story. He +arises and turns back. Evolution has ceased, involution begins again. +He is being folded back to the Father with all the treasures of Egypt. +He has ceased to diffuse himself in generation, through which he has +become an integral part of every fibre of the world, and begins now to +call in and synthesise all his spiritual possessions. The processes of +diffusion were in pain—the integration is joy again. Each day of the +up-slope his step quickens. The more he knows, the more he believes. +The more <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>he sees, the larger his faith—the more his treasures, the +more sumptuous his order. "Unto him who hath it shall be given."</p> + +<p>Again, it is merely lifting the consciousness from time to eternity, +from the cramp of space to the flow of the universe—from pain to +play—from desire to radiation.... One ascends and at each steps sees +farther. Day by day, the work of the installation of the higher powers +goes on. We give up nothing but that which impedes the inflow of +godly forces. That which we think we want to-day will look as absurd +to-morrow as the hopelessness of a child over a plaything broken.</p> + +<p>It's a way of loving every step. Thus we heal from the infinite tears +of the changes of matter and dissolution, and lift our love to the +Masters and the Immortal Gods. We dare love utterly only that which can +contain us. If the Masters loved us with all their power, we would fall +in the madness of too much light.... Always, they give us all the love +that we can endure.... We give our all to them and expand daily, until +we know the passion to break ourselves open in ecstasy, like the king +bee under the whirring wings of the queen.</p> + +<p>In the human body, the diaphragm is the surface of the waters. If +our consciousness is below that, we are in generation. To become +regenerated is to lift the balance of consciousness above—to +rise like the lotus from the face of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>stilled waters.... It is a +quickened vibration. Simultaneously, one lifts from cerebration to +intuition—from the time of matter to the spaciousness of Soul—from +the light of the camp-fire in the night, to the full day upon the +plain—from the son of man to the Son of God—from the pain of loving +with desire to the irresistible creativeness of wanting nothing but to +give.</p> + + +<p class="plabel">III</p> + +<p> ... I was watching the pool this morning—fish and frogs and eels +under the lily-pads—a slow cold life. They have colour and grace—but +eyes of glass. They move so softly down in the dim coppery light.... +I thought of the lakes and the seas, the simple cold of all life—the +coldest and most rudimentary in the great deeps.... Birds were playing +about in the rose gardens, darting in and out of the bamboo clumps and +yucca stalks. Humming-birds were continually fanning the trumpet and +honeysuckle vines.... I thought of the skylarks—throats that open +only as wings beat upward, and the infinite blue harbours where the +white gulls flash—the lonely lakes and tarns where the heron cross in +the evening and the loon cries at night—the cypress deeps where the +flamingoes commune in shaded glory, and the eagles that cross from peak +to peak, along the spine of the continents.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span></p> + +<p> ... And then, of course, it came to me—the old conquest—how we must +lift our consciousness above the face of the waters and put on our +wings.... Many have almost finished with the waters of generation—the +emotional body of man, the same as the planet.... In the beginning, it +was necessary to "go down into the water"—the terms of the baptismal +rite. Regeneration is "coming up out of the water." The struggle +between the two dimensions is dramatically expressed by the faith, and +the lapse of faith, of Peter when he obeyed the Lord, and arose to walk +upon his storm-tossed lower self. His supplication as he sank saved him +from perishing. Regenerated, he walked with the Lord upon the waters. +I remember, too, the saying, "You must be born again of water and of +spirit——," the story of regeneration told once more....</p> + +<p>It's a lifting from the cold, bloodless vibrations of the creatures of +the deep, to the winged passages of air and sun and starlight.... We +think that we give up joys of life—we plunge back again and again to +the dim cold waters—our eyes blinded at first by the light, our senses +frightened by the fragrance and the space.... As if the reflected +light of the lower cosmos could compare with the pure radiance above; +as if the love of desire could compare to the glory of the outpouring +heart—the heart filled with light—the fulness of spirit, the ecstasy +of wings.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span></p> +<p class="plabel">IV</p> + +<p> ... The time comes in the progress of spiritual aspiration when the +generative impulse begins to manifest within rather than without. +Firmly and gently the thoughts are turned to the Image within or above; +the tendencies for outward manifestation slowly but surely give way.... +This work sometimes goes on rapidly. A hundred times a day the thoughts +of earthy attraction are finished with a soul conception, where +formerly the mere physical presence sufficed.</p> + +<p>Nothing answers thought more swiftly, but in this passage of mastery, +if a single desire eludes from the aspirant, he must meet it later +in a tearing and cumulative call. Surely at length the mind rises to +rule. One's conception changes from the fear, the torment and the red +haze, to gentleness and calm, a readiness to know <i>all</i> the mysteries +of life—to care for and respect all functions as one only can who has +mastered himself.</p> + +<p>To cast them out in hatred is failure. That means the hardening. It +blights the beauty of the vales and all magic.</p> + +<p>When one begins to unfold the wonders of the kingdom within, as one is +called to do in the higher and contemplative spheres of the artistic +life, there is an increasing joy that makes it easy, more and more, to +lift the power of life from the torment and unrest of the generative +seas.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span></p> + +<p>One finds his dream of the beloved changed and infinitively endeared to +him. Patience, reverence, tenderness comes to the love that once knew +only the single passion of a male for the mammal. Even that, in memory, +becomes beautiful to eyes of wisdom and calm—all God's plan. One is +sensitive all through his breast for the unfathomable sweetness of life +and love. He sees the child and the immortal in the mate. He finds that +the body is truly sacred because he sees it with love and not with +desire. These are good tidings. They make one happy to write them.</p> + +<p>There are seven centres of ecstasy in the body. Through the mastery +of will and love and action, the life-force is lifted to dwell with +and awaken these centres. With each awakening, a new power comes—a +new joy—a new hill-range crossed toward the Father's House; with each +awakening, the beloved within is quickened in consciousness, and the +beloved without is held more dear. The wondrous story of regeneration +goes on and on, to the love that seeks to give itself utterly. To +love—that is all the Soul asks.</p> + +<p>Momentary passion swiftly passes in the increase of spiritual +aspiration. Its force is not killed, but used for awakening the higher +and immortal principles where real love abides. The hand of the loved +one becomes sacred unto tears, and the joy of life is to serve.</p> + +<p>The whole body is presently repolarised—the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>fire sparking upward—the +apex of the triangle turned upward—desire of soul instead of desire +of the body.... The mating of the mind and the soul is the larger, the +cosmic consciousness, awaited so long. This means that the Lord has +come into His Temple—the body made ready. It means that the mind and +soul are one, the house no longer divided against itself. The lover +is ready for the approach of his mate. Each has been cleansed at the +fountains apart....</p> + +<p>One must be utterly weary of the old. This repolarisation of the +generative force cannot come until one has heard with furious passion, +in the depths of pain, the call to the higher life, the new quest. Not +repression then, but transmutation. One changes gently, often under a +mystic administry, but always with growing love for the body and for +the world, using the life forces for healing and concentration and +the power to listen to the Lord within—the Voice of the Silence.... +Upon the illumination of the seven centres by the life force, another +mystery takes place. The levitation of the spiritual life overpowers +to a considerable extent the natural gravitation of the flesh—the +down-pull of years. The result, of course, is the restoration of health +to all tissues of the body—the Fountain of Youth starts singing +again.... To you.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_25" id="chapter_25"></a>25</h2> + +<p class="title center">ROMANCE</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Affairs like these can only colour and illumine the upper side of the +clouds, so far as American fiction is concerned. One might write a real +novel of Regeneration, but the field of the story is not now for this; +the arteries through which the public is reached by the publisher are +not yet friendly to such a novel. We learn at Stonestudy to write what +we please, but we are content with still small answers, at least for +a time. We have ceased trying to force people to see the thing as we +see it. For money to live by, to take our places comfortably in travel +or sequestration, we retain the handicraft to write for markets that +pay. We keep in touch with the world—that is practical mysticism. We +rejoice in the dense pressures and tortures of world traffic. This is +very calmly told, as it should be. My young associates learn it easily, +performing the actions thereof, but for me, many years were required.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></p> + +<p>Long ago I wrote a novel about a man and woman coming to a fervent +agreement to remain apart for a year before their mating, in order that +they array themselves in fuller glory for each other, so that each day +each would find the other more wonderful than yesterday. The novel +furnished much adventure in the intervening year, otherwise it would +have been still-born. What was the real theme to me apparently wasn't +noted at all. Yet separation is as essential as companionship for the +real Romance. A man who does life in a book must know this much, even +if he use his knowledge sparingly. It's all a laugh in the higher +workmanship. Romance—each has his idea of that. Each does his best by +that. Here's a document of the day from John which gives his idea very +well:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Since I was first with Steve and Fred and Irving and Shuk, I have +had the great sense of wanting to be out and away from the world—to +be with them <i>one at a time</i>. In the Rockies or in the misty isles +of the sea! All of them have a different meaning and sense. <i>One</i> +will mean the Rockies or the misty mountain, saddels, foamy bits and +lathering horses. Another will mean the tarry smell of the hold of a +ship, the flapping of sails in the moonlight, and the smell of black +coffee coming up from the galleys. Another will mean the sun betin +desert—camels, and men stooping over a fire. They are all my comrads.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span></p> + +<p>Fred is a young sea-writer. We are great pals. We yousto go down and +lie in the sand, read, talk and meditate; then a little later we would +take exercise and a long swim, then rub each other down. They were +wounderful days—those. I got right to the heart of Fred, and he did +to me. He yousto come over at night and sleep with me. Those were the +nights! I got so attached to him, but we had to go apart. He is in New +York now, going to college, and I am here in California. It does not +seem right for me to be in this God blest place in the Youneverse, and +he in the slums of the world, going to college. But it is the Plan, or +it would not be this way.</p> + +<p>The new race will stay high all through partings; then they cannot last +long—for there is nothing to stay away for. When pain leaves, then +all will be ready for the road and the great comrads, horses and the +road of greatness. It is all ahead. In the great future—all ahead—my +comrads—all comrads—the world will be all comrads!</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>All our days, as tellers of tales, we try to tell, not stories, so +much, as what Romance means to us. The very glory of life is that there +are no two pictures the same.... To me, Romance means <i>not to stay</i>! +It was hard to learn. Not to tarry in the senses, if for no other +reason than to know the full beauty of the senses. One must not miss +his train; one must not linger after <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>curfew has sounded. There is no +grey confronting of misery—like that of meeting one's own commonness +catching up.</p> + +<p>It's stiff grade work all the way, but there are heroic moments. We +learn to take a supernal, rather than a sensuous joy. The most rending +of lovers is the most passionate saint.... When Mohammed finally got +his morals in working order, the desert was said to be full of slain....</p> + +<p>There is something to do with <i>martyrdom</i> in my dream of Romance in +later years. All pain and fear has gone out of that word—a singing +about it. The name <i>Kuru t'ul Ayn</i> comes to my mind in thoughts of +Romance—"Consolation of the Eyes," martyred soon after the Forerunner +Bab had been shot in Tabriz. I cannot tell why exactly, save that she +had beauty that had turned to loveliness, and many men had looked +through the door of heaven in her eyes—some haunting mystery there of +beauty and bestowal—the blending perhaps of the love of man and God in +the same woman-heart, passion lifted remotely above the common rules of +life, transcending every man-made institution.</p> + +<p>One of the Little Girl's ideas of Romance is a hill cabin, an open door +to the dusk,—baby heads weaving under her hands—warm air coming up +from the valleys, but <i>his</i> step not coming that night.... Here is a +suggestion from one of her letters:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span></p> + +<blockquote><p>Have just been out in the garden planting little seeds that will grow +big and strong so that they can be put into shining pots and cooked for +the Stranger's dinner—tiny carrot seeds. They had to be rolled over +and over between the fingers before they could decide one by one to +fall into the rich warm earth. Planting little seeds at sunset! Does it +not awaken in you something of the old days we spent so close to the +soil? Radiant dusk? But you have to look <i>back</i> to see how sweet the +purity and simplicity of the peasant's life. The peasants themselves +do not know. To-day holy hot sunlight and lilac bloom—could there be +a more wonderful day than that? And Chapel so full of power, then a +planting of little seeds at sunset. Ah, Mary! I am happy as I dare to +be in a world that is choking in its own blood. At least we are open +and ready for any work if it is ours. We hold up our arms asking for +hard and painful tasks that will fill us with that singing conquest +that cries aloud: "None have more pain to hold than we!" ... We are all +working toward you, toward that height. You will be waiting for us with +open arms out there. We all send white love to you—our waiting Mary!</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Peasants and mill-girls, or the dim lacking faces of the +passers-by—always these join to the Little Girl's quests and dreams +of the spirit. Two brief additional cuttings suggestive of her idea of +Romance follow, from the twelve-year period:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span></p> + +<p>The first great vision of the quest must come to a soul over the +plough, in the peasant's body—dissatisfaction with self and +surroundings. This is the beginning of everything. The person who is +content with small things, small thoughts, does not move. His soul +stays asleep. With awakening comes hate and anger and much simple +blackness. It is just <i>that</i>, which gives him the power to stand up +against the ways he has known so long—to stand up for himself—to +push the new vague dreams through to life and light. It is all blind +at first, but great and brave, too. The call that would come to the +peasant would be to the Town—to many men and things, for that is just +the opposite from his life. In a simple way he would go to the depths +of the worst he could find—to the extreme.</p> + +<p>The thing that is holding so many from their own, is contentedness, +satisfaction. The longer one holds to this, the lower he sinks, until +he is buried in himself.... The questers who have come up into the +light, are brilliant, flashing, beautiful. But the souls of the "white +torrent" are rushing on through the dark night, a night that grows +darker and darker as it approaches the day. Their faces are tragic, +drawn, expectant; there is a sort of red-dark cloud that they are +tearing themselves through.... Only the poor fat ones! they fill you +with sadness because you can not help them and they are not trying to +help themselves. They seem to sink almost visibly, farther and farther +down, as they laugh and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>smile, and nod their heads to each other +(only to each other). The light around them is really not a light at +all—just a colour, a cold, grey-black colour that looks almost dead. +You could laugh if they had anything to do with you, any power over +you—you could laugh at them and tell them that you were laughing, but +their helplessness hurts you. <i>They</i> can only hurt themselves. There +is absolutely no humour in their faces nor in any of their movements. +They are all sober; they can not laugh inside. Always it is the sign +of flight from God to lose the sense of humour. For humour is a great +inner glowing—the power to overlook, to forget the meaner things in +people and in life. It is a power to forget one's self also, to laugh +at oneself.... I see the New Race as a line of Classic Ruffians—a +Troop of Mystic Warriors ... singing their glorious song of stern +compassion and deep love, filling all with their questing for power and +beauty.... I hear their laughter."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p class="no-indent">She paints the City Street a bit darker in this:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Dim faces, full of blank suffering and of living death. Dark and noisy +streets, crowded stores of trade.... Men—little men, following their +women, carrying the babies. The mother part of me goes out to those +little men. Down the ages, mothering imprints its pain upon our souls. +And their women now—with faces wanting, always wanting, everything in +them <i>wanting</i>! I have been carried away by these dim hungry faces. I +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>have seen them staring at me with blank surprise. But then they hurry +on, and the forgotten babies cry. Hushing them, the women pass—little +men following.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p> ... The pain of utter isolation—somehow this means Romance to me, in +a deeper fold of being. Isolation—the hate of an undivided people—a +man standing alone against his nation, yet loving it better than any of +the natives.... I remember in an early story of having the hero do his +big task under the fiery stimulus of the hate of London. All this has +something to do with the coming of Saviours.</p> + +<p>Time approaches for many when the little three score and ten fails +longer to hold the full story; one must look out of this sickly +warm room of the body; one longs for the mystic death, which is +<i>martyrdom</i>.... I tell all this from time to time in tales—but only +the children seem to understand....</p> + +<p>Romance—I have walked up and down streets and open highways for days +and found no man's work challenging, nothing to keep alive my interest. +I wanted absolutely nothing that any one else in the world had, nothing +that any one could gain. All worldly activities looked diminished and +pathetic to me—but under it all—the endless iteration of the Soul: +"Here is a <i>man</i>—as much me as myself!" A call in that—always a call +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>in that. One longs to die for that, once and for all.</p> + +<p>I crossed the Yellow Sea with a wound long ago. I had missed a battle +and was suffering, without the satisfaction of suffering with a bullet +wound.... I lay three deep in Chinese coolies in deck passage. I wanted +to see some one at home, or I should have dropped overside. In the fag +of pain, on the border of delirium, I lay with the deep down men of the +world, Chinese coolies in their filth and vomit. I looked into the eyes +of the nearest, and saw a brother, not a stranger.... It was ten years +afterward before I caught the big meaning of that moment—and that's +why I say so often that the time comes when we find the sons of God in +the eyes of passing men. That is <i>Romance</i>.</p> + +<p>There is more of death and less of days in my dream of Romance now.... +I can see a man giving up his woman because she is dearer than his +own life to him. I can see a man going to the scaffold for a country +that is taking his life and hers. (Always I see him loving his country +more dearly than the sober ones of regnancy and war.) ... I see him +taking his woman in his hands—half laughing, half crying, their faces +upturned—one creature in that moment of parting, as they had never +been in street or church, or state.... Romance in that.</p> + +<p class="no-indent">I have a line here from the Valley Road Girl:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span></p> + +<blockquote><p> ... Lastly, it came like a commandment to me—to +give all to the Coming Generation—to acknowledge the New Race +as one's God—remembering always that all Gods are jealous +Gods."</p></blockquote> + +<p>It's all in that, our dream of Romance—Democracy, the Planetary Hive.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>I am using a short story as the next chapter, because it brings nearer +to the centre of the picture certain ideals of romance, workmanship, +martyrdom, love and death, than many essays could do. A tale may be +a master-synthesis. Perhaps it is just the thing to show you what +we mean, as a group,—what we mean about many things. This is not a +marketable tale; in fact, it was done with the idea of making a place +for itself just here in this book.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_26" id="chapter_26"></a>26</h2> + +<p class="title center">THE COSMIC PEASANT</p> + +<p class="plabel"><span class="smcap">A Short Story</span></p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">When I was a lad I remember hearing some one say he had read a story +of love and war. I thought of it just now, as I lay panting a bit in +a queer nest for the night in the Galbraudin Foothills—in the midst +of an army that had no country yet—a tragic document unfolding in +my heart.... A story of love and war—yes, I had seen one. It was +written upon the cells of my brain, the deeper parts engraved upon the +heart—the old red war with a new dream hovering above it, and the old +true love, white as ever, yet a touch of the rose and gold of the new +race in its folds. It seems almost my story. Like Job's servant, only I +am spared to tell it. Such a little while ago, I thought the tales of +love and war all told.</p> + +<p>I saw Varsieff first at school, and went to him <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>at once. Literally, I +went to him. It was at recess, and I followed at his heels to his room +instead of my own. He was not surprised. I was always at my best beside +him. He accepted this gift from me. One who learns to give greatly as +Varsieff did, learns also to accept the best things with grace. I only +left his room long enough to get my bag. Gladly would I have slept at +his door, but he asked me in. We were to be mates. Often he assured me +that we were men, face to face; that I was not his Boswell, not his +disciple, but a man-to-man friend. Yet I knew that my power was not the +power of Varsieff, also that I was most powerful when I realised his +splendid superiority.</p> + +<p>I followed him during all the vacations. He loved the North +Country—snow on the mountains, cold night rains, the filled fields and +shrunken rivers of summer, the sound and natural things. He said he +would find his tropical island when his work was done, but that work +meant Russia to him. He was genius. Every one loved him. One vacation +time we undertook to walk together over the Torqueval Peaks. He +borrowed a guitar at a peasant house there in the mountains, and played +for an hour as I have never heard any one play. I had been with him for +almost three years and had not known he touched the instrument.</p> + +<p>In one of those days of our walking-tour in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>mountains an instance +occurred of Varsieff's immeasurable tenderness of heart. One golden +morning as we walked through a little village, past a vined wicker +fence—a huge yellow cat sprang forth from the leaves and caught a bird +on the wing. A kind of sob came from my friend at the swift little +tragedy enacted in the wonderful morning light. I turned—Varsieff's +face was back to its childhood—a depiction of childish horror—all +finished manhood erased.</p> + +<p>Many times in our talk his sentences formed a poem, which I would rush +away to put down. He learned to do this alone afterward. Once I went +to his room in Moscow after I had been away several months, and found +scattered among clothing, papers, books and tea-things, a set of recent +lyrical gems of his. These I gathered together in the little book, now +marching around the world.</p> + +<p>I smile to remember when I came to learn that Varsieff had other +friends as devoted as I. It hurt at first; I could not understand. His +big magic then was that he wanted nothing. He used to say that a man is +at his worst when he wants anything for himself. The fact is Varsieff +in wanting the <i>letter</i> of nothing, really wanted the spirit of all; +in wanting nothing for himself in those days, he wanted everything for +the world, a new heaven and a new earth, first and especially a new +Russia. Then the day came when he wanted a woman. This was altogether +unex<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>pected. I thought that Varsieff absolutely had given himself to +the revolution—that humanity was his bride.</p> + +<p>I was with him when he first saw Paula Mantone—that is but part of her +name. It was in Moscow. His voice, as he spoke to me, watching her, had +a different and deeper inflection than I ever heard before. She was +just a girl—poorly dressed, who had paused to speak laughingly to an +old flower-woman.</p> + +<p>"Wait, Lange," he said to me, and crossed to her.</p> + +<p>It was in the Spring of the year. The morning was very bright. She +turned from the tray of flowers and looked up at him. His hands went +out to her shoulders. He was searching her face with a queer and tense +smile—as one who finds a woman after a few months' separation in one +whom he has left a child. Of course, my thought was that he had known +her before. She, too, would have slept at his door....</p> + +<p>I heard their voices. He asked her name, where she lived, and how he +could reach her again. It all seemed trifling to me. Varsieff had never +been like this before. The rest of the day he was silent. We walked and +dined together, but his thoughts were not for me. For once, they were +not for Russia. There was a smile in his eyes, and often he turned back +the way we had come. Once he said:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I had to leave her. It was quite all I could stand. I do not think the +world is a place for two such people to be happy in. Possibly, we may +be allowed to meet from time to time——"</p> + +<p>I was inclined to call this nonsense. A little later he added strangely:</p> + +<p>"Yes, it would be dangerous to let go and become merely human in a case +like this."</p> + +<p>The next three years Varsieff and I were much apart. I do not profess +quite to understand the obstacles between him and Paula Mantone. +They had loved each other instantly and torrentially. They were much +together, yet there was some super-human torture about it. Even if I +have a glimpse of the mystery, I'm afraid few will understand. There is +something back of each one of us greater than our actions. We are all +greater than we seem. It was as if Varsieff and Paula Mantone were only +intended to meet here—to meet and quicken each other for a greater +giving to the world. I wonder if it is quite true, what he said toward +the last: That really splendid lovers may consecrate themselves to each +other, but they must also learn to give each other to the world.... In +the beginning they tried to lose themselves in each other, and they +encountered untellable pain.</p> + +<p>At length came the night when Varsieff returned to my lodgings, saying +that it was only a ques<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>tion of time when they should find peace. He +said he knew they would find peace, for he had already touched it +momentarily. I wondered if she were dead, and he caught my thought.</p> + +<p>"No, Lange," he said. "I am still to see her from time to time."</p> + +<p>Before that first meeting with Paula Mantone in the street, Varsieff +had loved Russia and the world, a friend and comrade to me and to many +others. All his love had suddenly been called in and directed upon the +woman. After the three years, he gave himself to all of us again—but +a quickened illuminated man. He had been brilliant to me before that, +but the brilliance of phosphorous compared to sunlight now. Varsieff +was making some strange spiritual initiation out of his love story. His +presence glorified me on the night of his coming—the summer before the +war.</p> + +<p>"There are four layers to Russia," I remember him saying. "The royalty +on top, then the dreamers, then the middlemen, then the peasants. Kings +and middlemen go together; dreamers and peasants go together.... Yes, +time will come when the dreamers and the peasants truly shall belong to +each other. They have been lovers a long time."</p> + +<p>I asked him about the other pair.</p> + +<p>"The kings and the middlemen will cancel each other," he answered.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span></p> + +<p>Varsieff was the most active man I ever knew, and yet he moved easily +as one in a sort of spiritual drift. He was an intellectualist with +those who used their heads, a devotionalist with those who used their +hearts, a mystic among dreamers, a child among children. Though never +known much publicly, he was to my mind the biggest occult force of the +new Russia. I doubt if there was another man, unless it was Christonal, +who gave more impulse and direction to the revolutionary movement.</p> + +<p>The heads of many departments drew inspiration from Varsieff. I +have seen him carry himself lightly through a day of decisions and +improvements and conceptions, which do not come to the ordinary master +of democracy in a year. I have seen him encounter, worked out by +others, suggestions and innovations which he himself had made—Varsieff +not realising that the thought was his own. He would innocently praise +his own work, as carried out by another. The last few months preceding +the revolution were the busiest I ever knew. We became new men. We did +not leave Petrograd, but prepared secretly for the big unburdening of +the soul of a people. The last few days, before the government changed +hands, were charged with a wrecking silence.</p> + +<p>Christonal's nerve broke. For twelve hours he was in and out of a +system of baths and manhandlings, and I was one who stood by. Varsieff +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>smiled it through, his voice calm, his eyes often looking away as he +spoke. The leaders of the younger party saw who was the real chief that +day, though Christonal is a strong leader.</p> + +<p>I was always a good desk man, and was trying to get some order in a +bundle of cipher messages in the heat of the night, when Varsieff came +and lifted me laughingly by the shoulders, thrusting the messages into +one of my deep inner pockets. I thought he was dragging me off to bed, +but when we were alone, he said:</p> + +<p>"<i>She</i> is near. I can't leave. Will you go to her for me?" ...</p> + +<p>He told me many things to say.</p> + +<p>I found Paula Mantone after many hours in one of the Registmonten +hospitals. She was frail and feverish from much labour, not regularly +attached to any nursing staff. The instant I saw her, I realised more +clearly what Varsieff had been doing—trying to kill himself with work +for the Cause. Clearly, she had lost interest in all but death and +service. I had been too much with Varsieff to notice his arrival at the +same point, but I saw their joint endeavour through her. It seemed to +me like a death-pact.</p> + +<p>A new mystery for me. Evidently they had realised they must wait for +release in death, but serve meanwhile. The marvel of Varsieff's sending +me when he might have come himself, gave me just an inkling of the +tremendous power and pa<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>tience which had come to him. Two years, or +even a year ago, he would have endangered new Russia for an hour with +Paula Mantone.</p> + +<p>I could not breathe this rare atmosphere. So far as I knew, there was +no woman for me in earth or heaven, but certainly I would not have been +able to look over a living woman's shoulder for her mystic counterpart, +and long for death to consummate the real mating. But war teaches +lovers many wonderful things.</p> + +<p>Paula Mantone was a kind of white silence. You had to listen keenly +for her step and give your attention to her voice. She was utterly +feminine—malleable like gold. Even to me, she was the meaning of +love. I had no thought of her being <i>my</i> woman, and yet she seemed +spiritually to contain some sister who would answer for me. Soldiers +worshipped her. I think each saw his own in her presence. It was the +finished magic of the Trojan Helen again—every man's desire, as gold +contains potentially all the metals, and the rose the essence of all +the flowers....</p> + +<p>She was the quietest woman I ever saw. She seemed formed of white +cloud—the sun on the other side. That was it—Varsieff was shining on +the other side. She answered him, light for light—gold for gold. For +the rest of us, she had that white, saintly lustre. And even in that, +we found much to make us brave and keep us pure.</p> + +<p>Deep within, there was some wonder about <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>Varsieff and Paula Mantone +which my brain could not interpret exactly. But the world had suddenly +become to me, in her presence, a place of divided hearts—millions of +divided lovers around the world. I had only known the shock and misery +of war before, and the thrilling roar of comrades, the crash of the +wreckers and the songs of the builders ever nearer. Now I heard the +still voices of lovers everywhere. In the pressures of air—callings, +cryings, yearnings made audible.</p> + +<p>It was a new door of the heart that she opened—her particular gift +to me. That moment, though I had loved and served Varsieff for years, +I knew more thrillingly than ever his greatness, because this woman +loved him. To me, to all soldiers, she gave a reflection of that superb +bounty. To him she gave its <i>incandescence</i>. Perhaps together they +found it too terrible a light for earth, or perhaps they were unwilling +to find their fulness of days in a world so charged with agony as these +years.</p> + +<p>She left me a moment, answering some voice which I had not heard, and +stood for several seconds beside the cot of a bearded soldier, her +fingers upon his grey-white brow. I did not realise until after she +moved, that she was there at the moment of his passing. I thought of it +again: She was the white silence. I think the soldier died, believing +that his woman was there.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span></p> + +<p>Twenty cots in the place—a low, cold room lit with a handful of +candles. The smell of blood and sickness and soiled clothing mingled +with the bitterness of iodoform as the chill draught swept through. The +peasant soldiers knew only the meagrest care. Their wounds were dressed +as often as possible, but there were five times too many cases for the +service, and the whole corps was impoverished.</p> + +<p>She stood still in the dim distance a moment longer, her fingers +touching the brow already cold. Then she seemed to remember that I was +waiting at the far door. I was not twenty feet away, and yet in the +few seconds required for her to reach me, a sort of vision filled my +mind—a vision of the peace that soon would come to the world—the song +of fruitful labour sung again, peaceful lands, soft dusks, lit cabins, +filled barns, peaceful flocks and up-reaching baby fingers—all with +such a queer shock to a male consciousness like mine. And when she +stood before me, I felt that the best part of Varsieff was also there. +I even fancied his look in her eyes, such as you see exchanged in an +old pair who have lived long together. I think that a great love always +seeks to make one of two—in different ways than we dream.</p> + +<p>"You came from him?" she whispered.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"How does he look?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"He looks like you," I said, for the moment <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>inspired. "He looks like a +sun-god, too. He looks <i>with your love</i> into the eyes of soldiers and +statesmen and revolutionists, and they find him irresistible."</p> + +<p>"Dear Lange," she said. "He loves you, too. You are changed. You have +come into the big magic of the revolution——"</p> + +<p>"I am Varsieff's friend, first and last—his comrade."</p> + +<p>"And mine," she whispered.</p> + +<p>"The magic comes from standing between, Mlle. Mantone."</p> + +<p>She smiled and bent toward me. She had been like a tall, white flower, +but now for a second as she bent closer, it seemed to me that I saw a +hint of Varsieff's gold flame on the other side—because we talked of +him.</p> + +<p>"What did he say?" she continued in a low whisper.</p> + +<p>"He said to tell you that he and all your friends were busy, day and +night, weaving and binding the Cause into one great fabric. He told me +to tell you this—that the work of the Weavers will be given to the +world in a day or two—possibly the day after to-morrow. I wish you +could have seen Varsieff's face as he spoke to me this last. I remember +his words exactly: 'Tell Paula all that I do is for her. That I read +and write and dream and breathe through her heart—that she has taught +me well to love <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>and wait—that I love the world through her heart.'"</p> + +<p>"Anything more?" she asked in a kind of agony.</p> + +<p>"He told me to say that only you knew his weaknesses, so far——"</p> + +<p>"I love them best," she answered. "A woman always holds a little +tighter to the sweet human things of her child.... But he is a teacher, +a leader. He must be clean and flawless.... If it were only for us—I +should have him, weaknesses and all.... But he is to lead the clean +peasants to their promised land——"</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Varsieff listened as a desert listens for rain. He caught me by the +shoulders when I ceased to speak—as if to shake something more from my +mind and heart.</p> + +<p>"A man must be half-divine to keep step with that woman," he said.</p> + +<p>Then he changed the subject by remarking that Christonal was not +half-divine—quite.</p> + +<p>"Christonal is ambitious," he added.</p> + +<p>"What has he done now?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"He has ordered me to take the field——"</p> + +<p>That turned on a red light in my brain. Varsieff was not a soldier. I +knew instantly that Christonal was not pure—that he wanted personal +power more than the good of the Cause. No one knew Varsieff's place +better than he did. My <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>friend could only have been ordered to the +field for the same reason that David sent the husband of Bathsheba.</p> + +<p>After the revolutionary signal went through, Varsieff and I found +ourselves in the Galbraudin Foothills with thirty thousand men, and +every man of them wanted to go home. Somehow the peasants thought +that if they changed leaders, they would march home at once. They +were willing to fight their way home; they had felt their own power. +Varsieff loved them with a white passion.</p> + +<p>"They won't miss, if <i>we</i> are true! They're clean. God love +them—they're clean!"</p> + +<p>He saw in the peasants the soil for the new earth and the soul of the +new heaven.</p> + +<p>Germans and Austrians were to the south of our nest in the Galbraudin +Foothills, while to the east and north were the big lines of Russian +troops as yet unawakened to the principles that moved our ranks. Our +weakness was that the peasants thought the war was over.... The cold +mountains were in the distance—winter still upon them—a late spring +in the Foothills.... In this dramatic lull, our men talked of their +ploughing, of their women.</p> + +<p>Some one said, "They're enlisting the women and girls——"</p> + +<p>It went through the lines like a taint of gas. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>The men were difficult +then even for Varsieff to hold.</p> + +<p>You must get the picture. We revolutionists were cut off from the +world. The Germans and Austrians sent us messages—some friendly, +some derisive. They thought us fools or gods, but waited to see what +we would do. The old line of Russian troops all about—just as clean +peasantry as our forces—but officered by the straight military class, +impervious so far as a body to any shaft of the propagandist.</p> + +<p>Varsieff whispered to me that those regular forces were honeycombed +with our comrades, but that they were being put to death under the +slightest suspicion—that two or three hundred were martyred each day.</p> + +<p>The strangeness and horror of it all dawned upon me—the sense of the +whole world against us, even America from whom we had drawn the spirit +of our courage—a kind of holding of our army for slaughter. Listen, +I have seen tens of thousands of troops go down to the pits of white +and red, seen their opened veins colour the snows, seen the spots of +red on the brown earth turn black. I have seen the boys lean over the +trenches and the pools from each throat widen and deepen from one man +to another. I have seen a man grab his mate as he fell and say some +absurd whimsical thing that the soldier next didn't understand until +<i>his</i> moment of death—a little <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>sentence that folded them, not in +extinction, but in a new life. All the horrors of death—quantity and +quality—yellow and red and white—pure white passings that made a man +think of the lilies—all manner of death I had seen, and still it had +all been impersonal compared to now.</p> + +<p>This was my own heart business. I shared leadership with Varsieff. +These lives were in my hands. I wanted to go down among the boys—one +by one and say that I was pure, that I loved them—that if they died +they were at least loved and not wasted.</p> + +<p>I always wondered what those young peasant souls thought about death. +Once in a lot of pain when I was just a boy, I wanted badly to die and +was deterred from taking my life, because of a counter-desire to get +home and see my mother. I think it must be like that with the peasants.</p> + +<p>Varsieff saw them in a strange mystic light. No man loved them as he +did. They looked like sons of God to him. That's what he saw when they +went down to death.</p> + +<p>"There are no dreams too fine for them to answer," he whispered. "They +are pure—they come from the North like all invaders—glacially pure! +We'll warm their hearts—lead them home to God—teach them how to live!"</p> + +<p>He was silent suddenly. I asked him to go on and then saw the queerest +look instead. Varsieff was torn by the thought, that now as a leader +of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>revolutionists he must teach his peasants how to <i>die</i> as well.... +A civilian, I repeat, does not realise this quite the same. In the +Capitol, we had worked for a Cause that meant the death of men, but now +we were the officers called upon to charge live troops to the fork and +the grill. I knew Varsieff to be more imaginative and tender than I, +yet I would not have mentioned my qualms, had I known how terribly he +was suffering. He caught my hands, whispering:</p> + +<p>"You have it, too?"</p> + +<p>It was the single hour of weakness that Varsieff had ever revealed to +me. I studied his face without speaking.</p> + +<p>"I brought them to this," he muttered. "I have always thought of the +spirit of things. I was always pure enough, following that dream.... +But, Lange, we're a little mad—we who dream.... I had to come here. +I had to see this fighting end. Perhaps Christonal knew what he was +doing."</p> + +<p>I put my arm around his shoulder. We Russians are allowed that.</p> + +<p>"I have always thought of the spirit of things," he added, "until I met +Paula Mantone. I would have forgotten everything for her beauty, but +she remembered our souls.... And now, because I would have forgotten +the bodies of these men Christonal sent me here to learn that. We are +spirits and bodies, too, Lange. It takes a crowned <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>head to hold to the +two ends at once—God, hear 'em sing——"</p> + +<p>The ruffians always hushed and choked us when they sang. Something new +about it this time, for Varsieff was seeing them across a red stream of +their own blood.</p> + +<p>"I can't drive 'em into the fire-pits," he muttered. "Why, I'd rather +wash and dress 'em. They've got the idea that I am to lead them home. +I can't betray that—not even for the Cause!... I never saw it before. +They are not herds, not groups—but monads—each a man——"</p> + +<p>"We've got to put through the big story," I said quietly. "Thirty +thousand is cheap—our little planting out here is cheap, if we +can give Russia the new heaven and the new earth—Russia—then +America—then the world——"</p> + +<p>I was giving him back his own words.</p> + +<p>"Thirty thousand lives," he repeated. "Yes, the price is cheap—thirty +thousand every day for awhile—your life and mine, Lange—a cheap price +to pay for the glory we see in the days to come. But I can't kill +these—I think Christonal knew it all the time——"</p> + +<p>"You aren't ready for work in the constructive end, if you falter here +among the wreckers——" I said.</p> + +<p>I knew that no Cause had ever uncovered a more valuable servant than +this same Varsieff, though badly out of hand just now. I wasn't <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>making +any effect upon him. He looked at me strangely.</p> + +<p>"That sounds true—exactly and unerringly true," he said wearily.</p> + +<p>There was no quarter possible now.</p> + +<p>"I remember your words in clubs and cabinets and in the ante-rooms of +the dumas.... You weren't afraid of blood there, Varsieff."</p> + +<p>He winced.</p> + +<p>"They called you the 'Fire-eater,'" I added, never knowing when to +stop. "It's just as straight to-day as it was when you talked there: +'The old civilisation must be washed clean with the blood of the +new——'"</p> + +<p>His hand came up piteously.</p> + +<p>"But their hearts are turned homeward, Lange," he said. "Their eyes +are building their homes all over again—eyes turned homeward over the +mountains——"</p> + +<p>"Turned to God," I said reverently.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but taking my word—the word of Varsieff—that God is there——"</p> + +<p>"He is there."</p> + +<p>"But will He come to them at the last, Lange?... Will He show His +face—so they will believe?... When they feel their death-wounds—the +blood sliding out, warm and silent—the cold coming in—will they hold +to what I said? Will He be there for them?"</p> + +<p>"You're shot up, old man, only a bit bewildered <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>to-day. No one knows +better than you how great emotional giving of one's self to Cause or +Country makes death easy—and quickens the Soul."</p> + +<p>Varsieff was ashen.</p> + +<p>"I've got to eat all my words! Even you, bring back my words to me. +I've talked too much.... Suppose I am a madman——?"</p> + +<p>"Then you have no responsibility for what you said," I smiled.</p> + +<p>He stared at the tent-wall.</p> + +<p>"Varsieff," I said at last.</p> + +<p>His hand came out.</p> + +<p>"You were pure in all you undertook."</p> + +<p>Silence.</p> + +<p>"You wanted nothing for yourself."</p> + +<p>"I wanted nothing for me—nothing but——"</p> + +<p>"But what?"</p> + +<p>"Paula Man——"</p> + +<p>"She's a part of you—now. You look like her!"</p> + +<p>"I think I'll have to die to see her—Oh, Lange—I'm sick—I'm +impoverished, cell by cell, with loneliness——" Varsieff laughed +unsteadily and added:</p> + +<p>"I remember asking you to say to her—that she alone knew my +weaknesses. Now you know them, too."</p> + +<p>"She said she loved them.... Varsieff, I have known you a long time," +I added after a moment. "I have shaped my manhood, such as it is, +after <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>you. I am proud of this—to the end. I, too, care more for +you, because of this day—for understanding. To understand—that is +everything. I who always listened before, tell you to-day: <i>The dream +does hold. The dream is good. Thirty thousand men—even our singing, +growling, big-footed, red-hearted thirty thousand—is a cheap price to +pay for the new Russia!</i>"</p> + +<p>"Do you think Paula would say that?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes," I answered, "from the mother-heart of her."</p> + +<p>I had spoken, and now I tried to make myself believe that she would +have ordered him on. I had to change him, at any cost. A rather +questionable way now appeared—to lift him out of himself.</p> + +<p>"Listen, Friend," I added. "You are lonely—but you have the heart of +a woman pulsing with yours—every beat.... You'd have to <i>be me</i> to +know what loneliness means. I'd take all the pain to have a woman like +that. There are times when you are half a man, because you are apart +from her, but there are other times, Varsieff, when you are twice a +man—double dynamics——"</p> + +<p>He caught me in his arms. I knew he was healed, but I felt the cad and +the cur for bringing his sympathy on myself.... He was looking back +toward the cold mountains when I left him, and the look of the woman +was in his eyes. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>That night I dreamed that Paula Mantone came to me +with a message for Varsieff, and that she told me some beautiful thing +about the child of a king—but I could not quite get it down to brain.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Sedgwick, a brigadier, and technically in command of the thirty +thousand, was a straight militarist in training. He looked to Varsieff, +the political head, for orders. The day came when Varsieff had no one +to look to, for we were cut off from Christonal and Petrograd. We +were not long kept in doubt after that as to who were our immediate +enemies—not German, not Austrian, but the old line Russian troops hung +up to the east of us, the same that had recently occupied themselves +making martyrs of the revolutionists in their ranks—two or three +hundred a day.</p> + +<p>It was a red morning when two of our <i>fliers</i> blew down with the word +that our brothers were closing in—that it looked like extermination +for our thirty thousand, unless we strode out and crippled them with +the first shock. Ten miles to the west the Bundalino Marshes began. We +had the secret paths, but it was a wretched fugitive outlook to seek +shelter there. As I looked at it, it would never occur to leaders who +had brought Russia to the moment of parturition, to break up for a +miserable safety in the swamps of Bundalino.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span></p> + +<p>I recall the distant firing of that red morning. My eardrums had not +healed from recent months more or less in touch with the artillery. I +remember brushing the edge of the lines, as I crossed from Sedgwick's +headquarters back to the hut I shared with Varsieff and a servant or +two. The peasants were listening queerly and quietly to the far firing.</p> + +<p>I passed through the sprawl of pup-shelters, and certain ideas occurred +to me: first, that the arrangement of camp was abominable, a pitiful +lack of technique shown in this bit of military handling; second, the +slow cold conviction that we, as revolutionists, must have all the +virtues of the old-line troops to begin with, and to build our real +greatness on top of that; finally I drew from the queer attitudes of +the men toward me, an intuitional flash that to them the distant firing +meant a signal that they were about to fight their way home.</p> + +<p>Varsieff was sitting dejected upon a camp-chest when I rejoined him.</p> + +<p>"Sedgwick is ready when you are," I said. "He suggests that the men be +not kept waiting too long."</p> + +<p>Varsieff looked up. His face was livid. His soul had no chance that +morning. I thought of the old story of Arjuna standing between the +battle-lines, reluctant to join action against his own kindred.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It's the same here that it was in Petrograd," I announced finally. +"The dream holds——"</p> + +<p>He shook his head.... "They are just boys—white-haired boys. They want +to go home——"</p> + +<p>That instant I seemed to see the world laughing at this great man; +I saw the end of Varsieff politically.... Superb genius broken down +by an intrinsic weakness—as a man who, trying to lead the world, +falls for the lure of an actress maid.... I saw all his work of +early years—straight, clean, unerring, selfless labour of a man to +a Cause—the inspired labour of the past two years when he gave the +whole fruit of his quickened heart to the new Russia—the magic of +a man loved by a woman great enough to be his divine sculptor and +priestess.... It was the thought of Paula Mantone that helped me that +instant. Sedgwick was on the path outside. I hurried out and whispered:</p> + +<p>"Don't come now. Come back in ten minutes——"</p> + +<p>The General paused to let me hear the firing. "But the troops——" he +said.</p> + +<p>"Give me ten minutes more with Varsieff——"</p> + +<p>"The attack may be called——"</p> + +<p>"I know, but I need that time."</p> + +<p>The old soldier turned back, hating me....</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>"Varsieff," I said a moment later.</p> + +<p>"Yes——"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I've got to tell you something——"</p> + +<p>He turned quickly.</p> + +<p>"Paula Mantone is near——"</p> + +<p>"No!"</p> + +<p>"I saw her last night."</p> + +<p>"Will she see me?"</p> + +<p>I laughed at him. "Do you think she would want to see you now?... +You're a sick man, Varsieff—morally sick. Any decision is better +than your present incapacity.... I think she must have sensed your +weakness—that she came to bring you strength, for she is your +strength."</p> + +<p>"Does she love me?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"That's a slap in her face to ask that—a woman who gives you her +soul's strength—the love of her life. That's lack of faith, my +friend——"</p> + +<p>"I am whipped. The white-haired boys—they want to go home——"</p> + +<p>"You can't wash your hands. You can't say, 'Go home, boys.' They have +to fight their way home. First, they have to fight their way to the +east out of this valley—against old Russia!... It's the first great +battle of the Old and New—first time in the history of the world. We +hold the New for better or worse—this little Theban band. You would +let us fail and dribble away and slink into the Marshes—you, her +lover, whom she calls Boy and Strongheart——"</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>"What did she say?" he asked fiercely.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span></p> + +<p>"——that I need not speak of her coming unless you needed help. +She said you would not need help on account of your own lack of +courage—rather that it would be your great tenderness that might +defeat our Cause now. She said this was but a last ordeal, hardest of +all for Builders, who have ceased to kill...."</p> + +<p>"Where did you see her?"</p> + +<p>It was all a lie, of course, except I had dreamed of her coming. I +invented a place of meeting and added to his question that Sedgwick did +not know of her presence.</p> + +<p>"I agreed that we were not killers, but I told her that we dared to be +cruel to ourselves," I added.</p> + +<p>"What did she say to that?" Varsieff asked hoarsely. He had suddenly +become like a child—one who dared not go to her, who scarcely trusted +himself to speak.</p> + +<p>"She said <i>that</i> was the key to the whole matter—that we dare to +sacrifice ourselves—dare to inflict pain upon each other because one's +true love is the self—"</p> + +<p>I was startled and awed at my own words. The idea was unlike anything +of mine. It was exactly as if she had told me something of the kind in +the dream. Varsieff groaned:</p> + +<p>"The glory of her," he whispered. "Was there more?"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Only that you must not falter now ... and that she would be waiting +for you at the end of the day——"</p> + +<p>"'In the cool of the evening,' she would say," he muttered.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps that was it," I said.</p> + +<p>"Nothing more?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—but only if you needed it——"</p> + +<p>"I do."</p> + +<p>"That she never loved you so well as now—that you mean new Russia +to her—that she will come running to you in the cool of the +evening—either here or <i>on the other side</i>—and something about the +child of a king."</p> + +<p>His back stiffened. He arose. I saw him splendid again. I drew back in +the shadow, afraid that he would see the sweat that had broken out upon +me, though the place was cold.</p> + +<p>Of course the idea, as I saw it, was to give the old-line troops the +fight of their lives—to show the whole of Russia a martyrdom if +necessary, thus revealing the temper of the revolutionists. Varsieff +had been tempted to let them slip back into the Marshes to save their +lives.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>We were in the saddle side by side an hour later, and close to the +front—the two big lines moving slowly and craftily together. Varsieff +looked back at his precious boys, following willingly enough so far.</p> + +<p>"It's their white heads that kill me," he mut<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>tered. "They are like +children, and that I should——"</p> + +<p>"They are all our children," I answered, sweeping my hand in a circle +ahead where the troops of old Russia had filled in, waiting to deliver +us to death.</p> + +<p>"Dear old Lange," he muttered, "I'm glad you know her——"</p> + +<p>I wondered what that had to do with his peasant children. Her spirit +seemed a blend of his every thought and emotion.... We galloped along +the fronts, talking to the different commanders. Some were students, +in their teens, faces of boys who loved Varsieff with a love that +yearned to die for him immediately, without words, a readiness to leap +under his horse's feet.... In a kind of madness, all the mysteries of +life seemed to unfold for me that morning, the spirit of Paula Mantone +always near because I was so close to her lover.</p> + +<p>He talked to the different leaders quite careless if the peasant ranks +listened. He told them that the outer world was watching—that new +Russia, Poland, Finland, the new Europe, the new World—all depended +upon <i>them</i> now. He said they were chosen men—that he would never +leave the field except in victory—that he was brother and father and +lover to them—that the world would be better for this day. He talked +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>like a man at a bar, or standing among the river-boats, or a father to +his sons in the fields.</p> + +<p>We rode along the lines as they marched. Our horses lathered and dried +and lathered again in the morning sun. I saw my comrade, Varsieff, +giving up his soul to the peasants:</p> + +<p>"... I, too, have my farm that waits for me—my woman who waits for +me—my country, my dream!... I build with you. I stand or fall with +you!... We shall be better for this day, my children. This is a day for +living men and comrades——"</p> + +<p>He filled me with a kind of white flame.</p> + +<p>Then the crash. After that, was a moment of silence and gloom like a +cloud passing over the sun. Then our eyes began to reap.... A blizzard +of hot, stinking metal had broken in front of us—in the midst of our +marching and listening battalion. If you have ever felt the mockery +and cruelty of raging seas, you can know something of the shock +that twisted the core of me that instant. That which had been the +white-haired peasants with open laughing mouths and lifted hands, their +souls answering the leader who loved them, a song forming on their lips +... now it was as if a carcass had been moved—one that had lain long +in the sun, the devastation long continued underneath....</p> + +<p>These were my boys. Next to Varsieff and Paula Mantone, I loved them. +Now they were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>down, dismembered, shaking—the air a whir of white to +my tortured ears, like a shriek of bewildered ghosts. And here and +there, like Varsieff and myself—men standing unhurt in the midst of +human fragments, like maggots, shaking themselves to cover.</p> + +<p>I wonder if you can understand? It seemed that I still could see the +welter of our boys in the leader's face. Also I saw the death of my +good friend—the death-stroke of that superb mind—the face of a man, +whose soul had vanished.</p> + +<p>Both our horses were down, though we were unhurt so far.... A distance +of fifteen feet separated us. I called to him. I tried to tell him that +he had not failed. I thought I should die before I moved, before I +could get started toward him. The staring failure in his face paralysed +me. For the time, he was cut off even from the spirit of Paula Mantone.</p> + +<p>I had to look down and watch my steps as I made my way to him. I knew +some hideous fear that he would fall in that blackness—if I looked +away.... There were voices from the ground. None of the parts of men +could be still. Lips writhed before my eyes—and words were spoken like +little claps of force in thin air.... I caught his opened collar....</p> + +<p>"It's all right, Varsieff," I whispered.</p> + +<p>"You lie!" said he.</p> + +<p>It was like a blow from a man's mother. I <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>had to look into his face +before my brain accepted his words. Then I remembered <i>my</i> lie.... The +evil of it had not come to me until now, with him breaking down before +my eyes.... I saw the look again—that I had seen by the peasant's yard +long ago as we crossed the Torqueval Peaks—the look of a frightened +child in that face of finished manhood.</p> + +<p>I pulled him to me, and led him back toward Sedgwick's staff. I heard +myself talking and laughing, jockeying with words.... His head was +twisted to the side—his draggled remnant of a mind pulled back to the +scene of that havoc. And now, if you please, we were catching the real +thing. The old-line Russians were breaking upon us with machines and +shrapnel—the old combing and carding that seldom fails.... I saw the +cold mountains all about.</p> + +<p>Did you ever see a slaughter of drones? Perfect economy it is, from +the standpoint of the hive. The work of providing for the future is +accomplished—no mistake in the plan. The workers gather from all +sides. One by one the big clumsy drones are put to death—wrestling, +tugging, stinging, many workers giving themselves to death to carry out +the spirit of the hive.... The officers ahead who ordered our brother +Russians upon us, thought they were right—those great grey lines +ahead, honeycombed with our own precious comrades, all of whom were not +yet <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>martyred, as was proved. But they had not found their voice. It +looked like straight death they brought to us.</p> + +<p> ... Ages. I would turn from Varsieff's face to the cold mountains. +Something of the changelessness of the beyond and above came to me out +of the hideous fluctuation of the near and below. I could not keep +Varsieff back. He wouldn't resist so long as I held him, but the moment +my hands released, his body would rise like some automatic thing and +blindly stagger forward into the pale smoke-charged sunlight. The men +who saw him—many who knew what he had been and had heard him speak but +a few moments ago—lost their concentration on the battle. He became +everywhere the centre of a rotting line. Clearly they had been fighting +on his spirit—that, and the thought of going home....</p> + +<p>Sedgwick rode up and saw my struggle—beckoned me back, as one in +authority would bully a guard in a madhouse.... I obeyed, thinking of +the lie I had told. Here were human fragments; the air filled with the +shrieks of the fallen—the face of my friend beside me, the face of a +blasted mind—all because of that lie of mine.</p> + +<p>Then, as I trundled him to the rear, sometimes swinging him from one +elbow to the other, I saw a line, as one would draw a bloody finger +across his cheek. Then—it was like a monkey-bite in the bone and hair +of his eye-brow.... We were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>in a hail from the machines and the men +were falling back.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>I think we are half-mad in such moments, or else touched with a divine +sanity. In the midst of utter loss, the lines breaking back, the men +beginning to stampede—the plan flashed into my mind that I could only +save the first lie by a second. If the remnant fell back to starve in +the Marshes—Varsieff forever was put from me. Such was my thought. The +personal issue was greater than the Cause. I was beside myself—never +so little, never so formidable.</p> + +<p>My arm slipped from Varsieff who sank to his knees and flopped back +at the wheels of a four-inch <i>Sanguinary</i>, bursting hot. I ran back +to Sedgwick's staff, leaped into an empty saddle—then rode along the +cracking fronts.</p> + +<p>"Halt——" I yelled to the faces of the slipping lines.... "Halt—and +don't you see you're running from your own Comrades?... They're taking +over the Imperialists yonder. Our men have risen in the ranks of the +enemy!..."</p> + +<p>All along the lines, I yelled it—and it came forth like an inspired +message—lie that it was from my angle. For to me, death was better +than retreat, with the eyes of the world on our little nucleus of the +new order.... My shouts were checking them.</p> + +<p>"Our Comrades are coming to us—hold for <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>them!... Don't run away ... +they are coming! They are coming to join us, when they clean themselves +up over yonder—only a little clean-up first, my children. Hear the +noise?"</p> + +<p>I don't know how long I rode. I only knew that the fighting death was +victory—that there is no propaganda like martyrdom....</p> + +<p>They answered at first with a kind of half-hearted halt. I was struck +with the silence. A queer thing happened. I saw that I had spoken the +truth.... There was firing ahead, but it had no meaning of death to our +ranks. They were firing in the air, and some threw down their guns and +were running toward us. Presently we saw the tent-cloths hoisted in +truce. It was like seeing my mother again—shaking the table-cloth to +the birds.</p> + +<p>Then I saw their lines and ours running together—yes, Varsieff's +new heaven and new earth—saw them running together bare-headed, +white-haired peasant boys, hands outstretched, mouths open.... Freedom +was an aureola of different sunlight around their heads. On they came +like glorious ruffians, seizing their brothers in their arms—the lines +folding together like good mates before the Lord.</p> + +<p>Then it was like a blast—that Varsieff must see this! A cold blast +in the heart—that he must not miss this glory—that my eyes must not +dwell <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>upon this great consummation alone! Deep within, I knew my pain +was because his head was not lifted to the picture of his conquest. +Deep within, I knew that for some inexplicable reason of fate, he was +held back like the old Master on the other side of the Jordan—not +allowed to enter and witness the beauty of the promised land.</p> + +<p>In the midst of that radiant tumult, I ran back to the place that I +had left him. It was trampled; the mud was deeper, but Varsieff was +not there.... In the midst of the shouting and the glory, I searched +for him.... Hours passed, the fighting ceased ... we were a hundred +thousand strong, armed, provisioned, hearts turned homeward.... Scores +of us were looking for the Varsieff now.</p> + +<p>And then I heard my name called, and two young student-officers caught +me, one to each elbow and carried me forward, running to where the +woman stood ... Paula Mantone. She was standing in the midst of her own +people—the sun on her face. And I saw, too, the white look of one who +has conquered fear, but the weariness of her eyes was like the presence +of death....</p> + +<p>"Where is he?" she whispered.</p> + +<p>"Oh, God, I do not know——"</p> + +<p>"Poor dear Lange—all is well with us.... The boys of two armies +rushing together—yes, Lange, this is a good day for us——"</p> + +<p>She spoke rapidly, like lines committed—the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>same death-like weariness +in her tones.... She had taken my hand:</p> + +<p>"Come, we must find him ... take me to the place where you left +him—come quickly——"</p> + +<p>It was some distance. We walked at first in silence. It seemed as if +I could not live if I did not find out what she would have done this +morning in my place. Presently she said:</p> + +<p>"I thought he would fail when it came to ordering a charge. He was very +brave, they say."</p> + +<p>I loved the students who told her that, but I had known too much +torture to keep the perfect silence.</p> + +<p>"... It was hard for him.... He isn't a killer—he saw only the +white-haired boys——"</p> + +<p>"My beloved——" she whispered.</p> + +<p>"I told him that it was the same in Petrograd as here—that the dream +held here—that you would have told him to be strong at the death +part——"</p> + +<p>She was not listening. She did not answer.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>"It was just here. He was wounded a trifle. I left him to stop the +troops. They were breaking a bit," I explained.</p> + +<p>I had passed the place a dozen times. I remembered by the big +<i>Sanguinary</i>—hot when I had let go of Varsieff's arm. The dead had +been covered. The big gun was a wreck now—even the caisson with a +broken wheel.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span></p> + +<p>Then I realised it had been moved. There was a queer mound under the +wreckage. I reached down; my hand felt warmth in the mud. The woman was +with me.... I think we moved that mammoth caisson together.... There +was no white on him—a coating of mud but warm. We lifted him and the +woman's breast covered him from my eyes.... I heard him say her name. I +heard him speak of the tropical island they would go to together....</p> + +<p>I stood apart—I who had stood at his side so long.... There were +seconds when I heard her low passionate whispers—when I watched the +arch of her shoulder, the beauty of her bended brow.... I did not see +his face again. She held it fast to her and talked somehow out of the +world. Then I saw her raise her eyes as she had done that night in the +tent. For the first time I realised that he had only kept alive for her +coming.... But still I felt he must know the whole story. I did not go +closer, but called in half a whisper:</p> + +<p>"Tell him how the boys came together—arms out and laughing like +brothers. Don't let him go without knowing that—tell him how they +threw their guns away and then sat down on the ground together—singing +of home and the rivers and the ploughed lands and the women waiting for +us——"</p> + +<p>"I told him—I told him!" she answered. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>"You may come to him ... but +he—he only waited to see me.... Ah, Lange, you had him so much——"</p> + +<p>I looked away. Dusk was falling, the white peaks like spirits.... I had +not seen his face again, but it suddenly came to me how it had looked +when I saw it before—that which was the bravest and most beautiful +face that I knew in manhood—how it had been beaten and bruised under +the boots of running peasants—crushed into the mire by the feet of +the men he loved so well. For a moment, I was in the red world of rage +that this should be, but then the mighty drama of it came nearer, +the supreme laughing art of it all—that only the saviours call to +them. And I smiled, looking away to the dusk falling on the cold +mountains—and I knew that my friend's spirit was as close to us as the +body she held against her breast....</p> + +<p>Then back in the bivouacs a song began—the men of two armies roaring +out a song of the great white democracy of the future....</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_27" id="chapter_27"></a>27</h2> + +<p class="title center">RÉSUMÉ</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">The end of Varsieff is satisfying to us, and yet I wonder if I can +make this sort of romance clear. Martyrdom—they call it a short cut. +There is a saying that the soul of a man who dies for something, goes +marching on. The Irish become hopeless of their cause, if some one +dies for the opposition. All revolutionists have reckoned with this +subtlety—no propaganda like martyrdom; all the sacred writings refer +to it, our Bible several times, once in the sentence, "Greater love +hath no man——"</p> + +<p>A deluge of phenomena from "the other side" has come in during the +present war, all the old martyrs of nationalism said to be called to +the cause of their empires....</p> + +<p>What is the romantic haunt that lifts a man to such a pitch of +exaltation that he transcends pain, and goes singing down to die?</p> + +<p>These are matters much better known among the young dreamers and +workers of Russia and the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>Orient than of America.... Varsieff reveals +the child under the man of action; the lover above the intellectualist. +His love story unfolds certain passages which we are making a point of +in these chapters. The woman, Paula Mantone, represents a loved type +in our sort of story-making. She brings, vaguely, at least, into terms +the romantic ideal so calling to us in these days. She means more than +three-score and ten. Her love goes on and on. She becomes a priestess, +in a sense, and conducts her lover through the critical passage of +finding his own Soul. External battles then take his body, but she is +not altogether bereft. An intuitional woman does not always know what +she is doing in her heart story, even when she does greatly. If the +physical action had broken different, if the body of Varsieff had not +been required in martyrdom, for instance, he might have emerged from +the final stress of action in a state of spiritual exaltation, from +which, I can imagine Paula Mantone calling him back to the gardens of +the senses.... Martyr, priestess, revoltee, but always a woman. Every +year of devotion to the feminine in fiction, compels a more fluid, yet +more mystic handling.</p> + +<p>We have been very close to the young students and poets and players of +Russia. In the Fall of 1914 we published the following paragraph:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span></p> + +<p>There<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> are men in Russia who have heard the mighty music of +humanity. They will sing their dream and grave their message upon the +peasant soul.... Not the Russia of Nicholas Romanoff. His passing and +all the princes of his tainted blood will prove but an incident of the +Great War. Very low in the west among the red blinking points of the +falling constellation, is Nicholas and that Russia. In the east is the +Russian <i>novi</i> before the dawn, commanding the dark before the sun.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The young men of India, the young men of China, the young men of +Russia, the young men of America—I see them working together in the +wondrous story of life, as it reels off in the years to come—mating of +the East and West, the planet seen in one piece, the communal spirit of +the Hive around the globe.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p> ... I find myself getting up a rather serious intensity over what +<i>Romance</i> means, a signal to tame down.... <i>Not to stay</i>—to drain +nothing, to leave all cleaner, more orderly and richer for one's +tarrying, to glance but lightly, yet with a deep smile of understanding +at the torrent of detached and unmatched things which apparently makes +the world—to love it all better than those caught in detachment can +possibly love one an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>other—to belong to the many by remaining apart +from separate movements—at last to be the Spectator....</p> + +<p>One may deal lightly with crowds, but never with <i>man</i> or <i>woman</i>.... +One may say he has all that civilisation has for any human creature; he +may reasonably be bored by all departments of life, but there is enough +for an eternity of reverent study and adoration in the nearest human +face. The lovelier the human face, the more easily we can discern the +divine in it.... You get nowhere without loving something. This is the +hardest kind of material gospel.... We are all incognito—the greater +we are, the less perfectly disguised.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>First and last our dream of Romance means Motherhood—mysterious +enactments that the mere male can never know, no longer the motherhood +of the mammal, but the coming of the Guest, the Shining One—the +giving of body and mind and soul, no fear, no stipulation, no impeding +form of thought—more than that, it means a giving of the child to +the world.... The Valley Road Girl expresses it in this sharp, short +picture:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Once a woman lived in a dense forest, and had a man-child alone there. +As it grew, the woman impressed upon it the greatness of God and the +wonder of all things. Then one day, she led him <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>by the forest-paths to +the Highway, and left him there.</p></blockquote> + +<p>It means the Madonna who looks up, rather than down, at the head upon +her breast.</p> + +<p>The creative force is never wasted. Man and woman, in love or lust, are +never alone—rather startling, but sooner or later to be accepted. The +point of the triangle is either turned downward or upward. The creative +force feeds either the abominations of the underworld, or is used in +its designed order and loveliness as a point of inception for soul into +form.... The mother-nature of the New Race must be quickened by the +ideal of the coming of a World-teacher, of development a cycle ahead of +this race. Women must partake of this dream in their maternities. It +is the light of such an advent, shining upon the upturned face of the +mother, that touches the brow of the child with light.</p> + +<p>Absolutely the concept of the new Democracy demands the coming of a +great Unifier—a focal point for all world movements and interests +and aspirations. The story of a Master's coming is the ultimate +Romance—the finest story in the world—for that in itself is the story +of Regeneration.</p> + +<p>The work of this particular volume seems to be ended. Much that is +prepared need not be used. Right here is the breathing-space that +always comes in a life or a book.... <i>Not to stay</i>.... <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>Some of our +boys are off to the trenches; others may go. Part of the original +group has been unable yet to follow the centre to the West. Our good +Gobind<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> who belonged to the pith of things, arose from one breakfast +and went off to join the cavalry. There's a group in Chicago that we +see all too little of—a diffusion time truly, but only to make more +certain the time of integration again.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>There is one who came, changing all. We thought we knew much about the +world. We thought mainly that things were settled for us. It was not +words she brought, but a subtler quickening. I cannot tell it exactly. +There was a day in which I was bored, not satisfied, and another when I +was a child again—breathless, questing, listening for some one to tell +me stories of another and better country. All that I had done and been +and lived was diminished; more, all behind was utterly done, leaving +scarcely any criteria for that which was to be.... No inland lake would +do after that; we wanted a continental headland, the sweep of the earth +and sky—sidereal time, sidereal space. We could only tolerate the +quest of the Impossible after she came.</p> + +<p> ... She came and wrote her book through the summer days and then she +went away.... Somehow after that we knew what rains and sunlight +meant—what all nature was saying and do<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span>ing. At least, we knew +better.... <i>Not to stay.</i> We could not follow continually, but at last +out of loneliness, the big new laughing wonder of life came to us ... +and when we told her, she seemed to have known all the time....</p> + +<p>We teach by making pictures. She brought new pigments and freshened +all the oils. We loved the tints and half-tones before she came, but +she restored us to the virgin beauty of the primal rays. We liked the +blends before she came—the blend of rose and gold, but she brought us +length of vision and redemption of taste to know the meaning of the +Ultimate Red, the red of the Pomegranate, the red of the Inspired Mary, +to whose knees at the last all artists and little children find their +way—the passionate red of the Quest and the Cross and the Son. She was +not surprised when we told her what her gifts mean to us.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>An artist gives himself full-heartedly to the emotions. Keen and +poignant afterward, is the battle to straighten them out, to comb +them down. The mind holds the truth about it all, the spirit sings +all around, but the heart holds fast to its agonising play of passion +settings.</p> + +<p>Desire is like an old King, sitting in the midst of his dogs, a King +by the fire in his tower. The Shining Heir is born, but the old King +is slow to die. He sits thinking of his old hunts, his rides <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>to kill, +old wars and faces at the window.... He rode well; he thought he loved +very well; a great name, he was, in the hunts, and in all the games of +getting. He meditates now upon his one-time conquests, and forgets his +pain. It is his memories that hold him fast to life a little while. But +at last the head of old King Desire sinks to his breast, the fire fades +from his last memory. The door of the tower room opens, the Shining +Prince is standing there, and the criers run through the palace crying +aloud, "The King is dead. Long live the King!" Desire has ended; the +Bestower takes the throne.</p> + +<p>When we told her of this new breath of life which she had brought, +our Mary seemed to know all about that, too. She smiled and looked +away when we showed her this book (and the inscription to her), so +many pages of which she had read before—our dreams for the New Race +unfolded in letters to her.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The instant one perceives the inner meaning of <i>Equality</i>, glimpsing +the great Seamless Robe of humanity as one;—he realises that what +is best for him is best for all others—what is best for the many is +his own highest behest.... One must grasp this to know what Democracy +means, to know what is behind the word, a meaning which those who use +it most haven't dreamed of. You must grasp the spirit of the hive—that +winged <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>myriads of golden atoms never stray so far as to break the +spirit-cord that binds them into one—that the one knows all, contains +potentially all goodness and beauty and truth, that all action, art and +thought, come from the spirit of the one—that the fruits of these go +back. I love to tell it again and again. I saw it all afresh to-day.</p> + +<p>The sun plays tricks with the earth at high noon. One feels superbly +well—a kind of seething in the veins. It pulls him away from the great +quest for the Father's House, in gusts of Mother Nature's magic. All +the fragrance of fallow fields is in the hot light and blowing hay and +deathless azure and high noon. Glorious swarms of bees were breaking +out from the Spirit of the hive, all one in Spirit at the top—the +Spirit brooding at all times over all the workings of the hive.... +It was the same with the millions of men who walk the earth, one at +the top—all one, coming and going in the Spirit, replenished and +replenishing always, learning the fusions here in friends and lovers, +each finding his one, and then the new quest together for the Great +Companions.</p> + +<p>Then it came to me that we are only sick and blind and lame and +evil—in the sense of detachment. We must kill that out. Hate spoils +everything. Hate binds us to the object. We mustn't despise another's +coat. It may have been ours yesterday—may be ours to-morrow. We <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>must +kill out the sense of separateness from any creature, for we are +destined to become one spirit with him and all others. Something like a +cloud—all one, as a cloud is one.</p> + +<p>Every morning on the grass—on millions of blades of grass—a globe of +dew at the tip of each.... The Lord Sun arises. The dew warms a little +and slips down the track of the blade into the root. There it breaks +up into infinite fragments. The sun rising higher weaves his warm +magic over the fields; invisibly, like prayers ascending, the drops +of dew, all diffused into a thousand fragments each, thin as steam, +and carrying the perfumes of roses and lilacs and honeysuckles and +meadow lands and fallow lands and lake and ocean shores,—like prayers +ascending, the dewdrops of yesterday return as one to the cloud. Broken +into the farthest diffusion, but not an atom lost. All the richness of +earth in essence returning to the Spirit....</p> + +<p>The same with bee and dewdrop and man—the same with swarm and cloud +and tribe—each fragment and division lifting to a greater, unto +the Shining Source at last.... The point of it all is that man is +spiritually woven to his brother and to the race; giving himself and +his service to his brother and to the race he glorifies the texture and +stature of his own soul.</p> + +<p>Christmas, 1917.</p> + + +<hr class="tb" /> + + +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> + + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> H.A. Sturtzel.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Fred Jasperson.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> These appear in <i>Child and Country</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Universe.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The Abbot.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> The saddle horse.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Frying Pan.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Teapot.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Vibration.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Appointment.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Helen Cramp.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Child and Country.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Jane Levington Comfort.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>Child and Country.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> The saddle horse.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Help!</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Child and Country.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Herman S. Schuchert.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Fatherland.</i> George H. Doran Company, New York.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Ben Poteat.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="chap" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<div class="transnote"> +Transcriber's Note + +<p>The book contains many words spelt to reflect the accent of the +speaker. The spelling has not been changed.</p> + +<p>There are two instances of unmatched ending quotation marks. The +missing opening quotation marks were not added because their +locations were uncertain.</p> + +<p>The following changes to printing errors have been made.</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">ouselves is now ourselves</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">though is now through</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">unlifted is now uplifted</span><br /></div> + +<p> </p> +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44208 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/44208-h/images/003.png b/44208-h/images/003.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d727f3c --- /dev/null +++ b/44208-h/images/003.png diff --git a/44208-h/images/cover.jpg b/44208-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..71ec90b --- /dev/null +++ b/44208-h/images/cover.jpg 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..892a9fa --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #44208 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44208) diff --git a/old/44208-8.txt b/old/44208-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3e46c33 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/44208-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8151 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Hive, by Will Levington Comfort + + +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: The Hive + + +Author: Will Levington Comfort + + + +Release Date: November 17, 2013 [eBook #44208] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HIVE*** + + +E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Sue Fleming, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images +generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries +(https://archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + https://archive.org/details/hivewill00comfiala + + + + + +THE HIVE + + + * * * * * * + +BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT + + + THE HIVE + THE LAST DITCH + CHILD AND COUNTRY + LOT & COMPANY + RED FLEECE + MIDSTREAM + DOWN AMONG MEN + FATHERLAND + + + NEW YORK + + GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + + * * * * * * + + +THE HIVE + +by + +WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT + +Author of "Midstream," "Child and Country," +"The Last Ditch," "Down Among Men," etc. + + + + + + + +[Illustration] + +New York +George H. Doran Company + +Copyright, 1918, +By George H. Doran Company + +Printed in the United States of America + + + + + TO MARY + + + ... soft gold and deep + fragrance and pomegranate red. + + + + +FOREWORD + + +There is much to say. Many have a part in this story of our days. +Their work is on the table. Yet no manuscript, no chapter, is a real +beginning. One must start a book this way--with a fresh sheet in the +machine and tell what he is going to tell about.... First of all, it +has to do with the unfolding of the child mind; all the Stonestudy work +has been for that, but the brimming wonder of it all is that we have +chiefly been employed unfolding ourselves. + +No one can begin upon the sweet and sacred story of life to a child +without taking a stride nearer into the centre of things, and living +it. That's what all telling is about--presently to stop talking and to +catch up on conduct. The fairest culture of all is to become artists in +life.... Thinking of this, thinking much upon this one thing, we have +been lured out of the heaviness of work into the dimension of Play. We +tell here about this particular passage. + +Also something about the story of Man and Woman, hinting at what is +contained in pages of the Book of Life not opened heretofore for the +eyes of the many, but preparing now for the eyes of the children of +the New Race--a beautiful story, be sure of that, but one that requires +art in the telling. No one could bring this story to the lovers and the +children of the New Race who had not found out that Beauty belongs to +the divine trinity with Goodness and Truth. + +Many seers have not held that well in mind, many sages have forgotten +it, many saints have not learned it adequately at all. We have to build +our own heavens here before we can have them anywhere else. The more of +an artist a man is, the more reverent he becomes about perfecting his +thought-forms. Just a mention now--that we rejoice to make much of the +Beauty side of things in this book; that a thing cannot be beautiful +and bad; that Beauty is the next quest of the many, as they escape one +by one from the bondage of Gold. + +We try to express the Soul of things rather than to delineate +boundaries of matter, but a very strong point is made upon the fact +that one cannot deal in the spirit until he has mastered to a good +degree the coarser stuff that bodies and worlds are made of. We do not +care how the young minds aspire mystically, so long as their abutments +hold fast in the bottom-lands. A man must not drag his anchor as he +climbs the hill; he must unfold line all the way--a line made of +strands of himself, woven of his own wisdom, love and power. + +Much is made in this book of the fact that we are given _pounds_ for a +purpose--that all here below is symbol and intimation of a globe and +perfection elsewhere--that we cannot look upon the archetype of gold +until we have mastered the imitation in clay.... We come even closer +to this precious subject: For instance, we know that it is only from +the soul of things that one can see materials--that no one can get a +glimpse of the meaning of materials so long as he is lost in the ruck +of them. At the same time we do not believe that we have access, even +to the lesser grades of mysticism, until we have all the power and +force of the material-minded. We believe we must do well that which the +world is doing, even the tasks of the average man, that nothing can be +missed. + +We do not encourage that mystic or poet who requires endowment. If we +are to be artists, we believe in supporting our own groups; we have a +suspicion that we are not through with conditions, any conditions no +matter how hateful, so long as they have us whipped. + +We aspire to be writers and politicians and painters and heroes; we +aspire to be masters in all the superb productions of life, but we are +content to begin with the ground. We are content with poverty, yet we +believe that very early as workmen, we are entitled to a fastidious +poverty, which is expensive. No possessions--but all possessions. As +writers we are convinced that it is necessary to do--and inimitably +well--the things that the public wants and pays ten cents the word for, +quite as well as to reveal the deeper folds of our growth for which we +have to finance publication. We are not sure yet which is the worthier +achievement. + +Perhaps we speak much of Soul in this book, but we mean nothing more +formidable than the better part of every man. This is the Big Fellow +who takes us over when we do that which is worth while--in billiards +or diplomacy, in art or love or trade. I think it is the Big Comrade +which we are really unfolding--the Workman and Player. Much of Soul, we +write, because it is the point of our educational drive--to set It free +in the child or the young workman, to make It speak or write or play, +and not mere brain and hand. + +We speak much of love--not as an emotion, not as a sentiment, but as a +cosmic force. You will see much more what we mean by this as you turn +the pages. It is the most challenging thing in the world. It is the +inner white-hot core of the Fatherland that is to be--the great white +Democracy of the future.... + +_Democracy_--that's the point of inception of it all; that word is +the seed. The more you dwell upon it--you know what the Seamless Robe +of the Christ means--the more you realise that the Master Jesus was +the first Big Democrat.... We have them speak the word softly and +thoughtfully here each day--we like to hear the young ones say it. They +are apt to know as much about it as you do--for the word doesn't mean +exactly what they mean, who have used it most heretofore. It isn't +the name of a political party--yet.... It is government of the people +by the people, but only to those who see the sons of God in the eyes +of passing men. We only ask its magic, not its presence upon these +pages.... They're fighting for it gloriously--every hour. The boys here +thrill with the boys there. We hold our hands high to them. Some of our +boys are there. They are all our boys! Some are waiting the call to +go--but there or here, we are pulling together for the real Fatherland, +for the adequite fraternity, under the endless and thrilling magic of +the word _Equality_. + +... I can say no more splendid word to you than My Equal: I know of +no greater adventure than to become one of the Many. It is true that +you and I--the best of us, the Immortal within us each, are of one +house--that this is but a far outpost of the journey, Egypt if you +like, the husks if you like--but that we have arisen and are on our way +home to the Father's House. + + + Canyon, Santa Monica, California. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + NORTH AMERICANS 17 + + QUICKENINGS 24 + + CONQUEST OF FEARS 36 + + THE STUFF OF COMRADES 45 + + JOHN'S THINGS 56 + + VALUES OF LETTER WRITING 70 + + THE NEW DANCING 79 + + OLD PICTURES IN RED 91 + + STEVE 101 + + HEJIRA 111 + + THE SPECTATOR 118 + + TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL 129 + + THE ABBOT 139 + + THE ARTIST UNLEASHED 155 + + WORK IN SHORT STORIES 164 + + VALLEY ROAD GIRL 172 + + BEAUTY 183 + + SHUK 192 + + IMAGINATION 205 + + BOYS AND DOGS 211 + + THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE 219 + + THE MATING MYSTERY 241 + + CHAPTER OF LETTERS 252 + + ROMANCE 267 + + THE COSMIC PEASANT 277 + + RÉSUMÉ 315 + + + + + THE HIVE + + + + +1 + +NORTH AMERICANS + + +The thing called the New Race--the passion of poets, the phantom +running ahead and forever calling the dreamer and revolutionist +and occultist, is far from a reality as yet among the commonplaces +of the world. It is the spirit of everything worth while, but that +means nothing to one who has not a breath of it in his own body.... A +story went forth from this shop recently in which certain ideals and +presences of the new social order were carried through to a cheerful +ending. The publisher wrote, "Yes, but what is the New Race?" + +It's a fair question, but remember one cannot adequately describe a +spiritual thing in terms of matter. It is only possible of portrayal +where it has broken through into terms of three-space. First you are +apt to get the nearest and most striking picture of the New Race at +your own supper-table--the presence of one of your own children, +especially if the young one is hard to understand. + +Parents and children of all times have found confusion and alarm in +each other's ways. But there are rare periods of human history when +the difference between two generations has been not a normal and +superficial crack, but an abyss. It is so now. The Old has reached +its climacteric point of destructivity. All self-passions destroy +themselves in time. Fear, greed, sensuality--all are self-destructive. +Great human numbers and decadent principles have been recently +broken down in the world with a swiftness and abandonment heretofore +unrecorded, except in the traditions of planetary flood and flame.... + +You may watch closely the child under seven who plays in the Unseen, +whose companions are not in the room for older eyes; watch the one of +fancies and fairies and fragrances which others cannot quite discern. +Many a child has been driven with a soul-wound into corroding silence +by parents who thought they were punishing falsehood, when they were in +reality repressing the imagination--the faculty which master-artists +denote as the first and loveliest possession of the creative mind. Too +coarse and unlit to see what the child saw, the parents again and again +have looked gravely at each other, saying: + +"This is a crisis. Our child has begun to lie. We must forget her own +feelings and punish her----" + +So often it is _her_--but not always. The boys who are to do the +great tasks of song and prophecy and architecture--they, too, dream +dreams and see visions and have the rapt eyes of Joan in the forests +of Domremy; they, too, are severely questioned by the pharisees; none +escape this scourging; they, too, in many cases shall be put to death. + +The new ideals of the parenthood, education, romance, are now being +introduced and promulgated by pioneers long since emerged from the old +litter and humus. Education will mean first of all a turning for power +to the Unseen. The quest of the Swan and the Star and the Beloved, are +never carried along on the levels and inequalities of the earth--always +the uplifted face for the saint and the sage and the seer. Great +parents kneel beside their children and beg to be delivered from the +heaviness which holds them to the dim shadows, where the child sees +face to face. Education will mean finding his intrinsic task for the +child--the intensive cultivation of the human spirit from the Soul +outward, not alone from the brain inward. + +The quest of the passing age was for Gold. The real meaning and +symbol and glory of gold, as the highest, smoothest and most finished +of minerals, has been lost in the bulkier products and possessions +it meant to measure and signify. More and more has gold itself hid +away from vulgar hands and been represented by objects intrinsically +inferior. We now behold a civilisation destroying itself for +commodities and destroying the commodities for which the destruction +began. + +Gold itself will serve Beauty in the coming age; commerce will serve +æsthetics. The lovers of Beauty begin with the sand, with the clay. +They love nature from the ground up; they are fervent for light and +air, for sun and sky and water, for fruits and grains and bees, for +stars and rains and romances. They say such things are holy. Words are +inadequate for their loves and appreciations. They find the ways to +love God infinite. They see Him in stone and stream; they see Him in +the eyes of the deep down men; they see Him risen and inevitable in the +eyes of their lovers.... + +Straight goodness will not do for the New Race, nor straight +intellectuality. Artists, singers, painters and idealists will be the +heroes of the generations to come, for they will add the quest of +Beauty to the unwashed goodness of the saints and pilgrims. + +These are but flaring points; one is embarrassed in short space because +of a myriad things to say. Free verse is a sign of the New, also the +dream of a free world and the planetary patriotism. The immanence of +the _spirit_ of all things, is a sign; the sense of the underlying +oneness of humanity; not alone the Fatherland, but the Kinterland, +where new Fountains are established and sages and masters come for +inspiration--all these, like a passing train of wonder, a glimpse of +many cars.... + +I think I can bring the picture in closer by using a few pages of work +from one of the young men with me. His name is Steve. I called him The +Dakotan,[1] in the book, _Child and Country_. We've romped and ridden +together for three years, and I've known Steve better every day--still +far from the end. The rest of the chapter is Steve's writing: + + [1] H.A. Sturtzel. + + +NORTH AMERICANS + +Out of the centuries of moil and mix and fuse of Europe, the orient and +the north countries, a gleaming archetype has emerged here which may +be called the real North Americans. They are scattered here and there +among the younger generation--young people new in name only; in soul +they are as old as Zeus. Often they are strangers in their father's +house. They blend the mind of the occidental with the soul of the east; +splendid firstlings of an untried future. They betray themselves by +their genius. Heredity is the first fetich overthrown by them. + +From the first they are a law unto themselves. They cast off churches, +codes, creeds, schools and parents as preliminary steps in their +teens. In the twenties they are prodigies, leaders in the arts or the +revolutions. It is their aim to over-reach themselves, not to further a +type. Very early they conjourn together in secret and obscure places, +revolting against life as it is lived, like a handful of white dwellers +in a foreign city. + +There is always an alien, intangible something about these people. One +senses the double life they lead, their own, and others. Conditions +are not yet adjusted for them. They are super-nationalists, the first +mark of the new. They are dreamers who make their dreams come true in +matter, and first among their dreams is of the planet in one piece. +They are naturally intolerant of barriers and partitions. They see +ahead a new social order vast and shining as a devachanic vision--the +real democracy of the future. They see that the new has come in not to +kill, but to build. Theirs will be the spiritual heroics. Yet all this, +of the greater patriotism, must not yet be spoken. It only alienates +them the more from those they must live with. Their arch enemy is +Ignorance, personified so often in their elders. + +It is noticeable that these young people are healthier, stronger, +swifter, sharper, tougher, bolder and at the same time lighter and +finer than the passing generation. They have the _new healthiness_. +They belong to the open and are practically immune to disease. +Theirs is the health of sun and wind and spirit--vitality instead of +constitution, something the old can never understand. Constitution +is weight, solid, ungiving. Vitality is volatile, springy, electric, +constantly being given, constantly being acquired, self-refining. +Constitution does not change; it accumulates all it can, then begins to +die.... + +The young women of this new Race are open, strong, eye-to-eye, free +spoken. They are capable of friendships; they are not adverse to being +wholly understood by males. They are not popular with ordinary women, +who surmise their superiority but comprehend it not. Deceit, jealousy +and such common disturbances evident in the sex are unknown to them. +They have character and are lovely rather than beautiful. They are apt +to go half way in their love-making, for who should know better when +the chosen father of their children arrives. + +All of these people are bringers of true love. Love is their philosophy +and religion. They listen to the heart as well as the brain. Others +think them cruel in their discrimination in mating. They take all or +nothing--prodigious riskers, great sufferers, throwing even love's +dream on the board to be played for, and laughing as they play. The +slightest blight on the loved one is deepest agony. + +Perhaps the surest way of discovering these young giants is to search +about for the most sorely harassed children. Invariably they are put +to it, to break into this day and generation. They fight their way up +through all the banked-up ignorance and antagonism of unlit humanity. +Often they are solitaires, coming and going with the secrecy of kings +and eagles. + + * * * * * + + + + +2 + +QUICKENINGS + + +A few pages of drift first of all with the younger boys.... There +is a lane of Lombardy poplars from the Lake to the interurban +car-line--a half mile. It is a lifting walk at any time, but summer +evenings are wonderful with all the sounds and scents of a true +pastorale--lake-breath and meadow-lands, the whole sky to look at, and +the murmuring dissonance of the poplars. Often we walk to the car with +passing guests. One evening a guest went away whom we loved very much. +A lad of seven, named John, and I walked back from the car alone. + +He was ignited. I felt this at last through his hand. I had been +thinking about my own things all too long, missing the beginnings of +his talk.... He hurried forward in the dusk, speaking in a hushed rapt +voice. Because I had missed the first part, I said: "John, I want you +to write that--either to-night or to-morrow." + +And this is what came in: + + +THE MAGIC LANE: + +It was at dusk. Two people left their tracks in Nature's dust road. + +Love is found on that road. It is the road of the mystics. + +They leave their love in it; Nature kisses their feet. + +Many horses' feet have been kissed on that mystic road. + +That mystic road will last forever. + +I long to walk upon that road of love. + +Love on that road will last forever. + +It is all true love. + +Our friends have been met on that road of love. + +It leads to the Hills of God. + +Certain spelling matters have been corrected. We pay little attention +to spelling in the work here. The young ones learn by reading and get +the proper look of a word altogether too soon in many cases. There was +another high moment from John at the same time. The following three +lines have stood out from the period with memorable magic: + + +WONDER + +The soft breath of the Mother came in through the window of vines. + +The stars were shining like the face of the New Generation. + +My spirit was away in the Hills. A noise at the door brought me back---- + +John then fell into a psychological tangle which we found little +profit in following. By the "Mother" he referred to Nature.... The +verse period has passed for the time. Around the age of seven, boys +change. Often, as in this case, they are not so interesting for a while +afterward. John is coming nine now and is writing "action" stories with +all the worn and regulation props and settings. The early tendency will +return with a dimension added. All transitions are times of disorder, +but they are followed by larger areas and truer fulfilments of order. A +cloud falls upon the sanctuary, but when it is dispelled, one perceives +a lifted dome, bright with its new cloth of gold. + +I am struck every day in dealing with young boys how wisdom and beauty +and truth can be inculcated in their lives, without pain and strain to +them, and with great profit to the teacher. The young mind is quick to +change. It has not grown its pharisaical ivory.... + +The sanction of a boy must be won on a physical basis. A man must know +what the boy knows and go him one better. The man must understand boy +points of view, but never expect the boy to be puerile. Parents of the +past generations have had the steady effrontery to expect very little +from children. "Why, they are only children!" has done more to make +for vacuousness and drivel than any other visionless point of view, +none of which has been missed. There is a difference in ages, to be +sure. The child's mind has not massed for use the external impacts +of twenty or thirty years of life in the world, but there is also an +Immortal within--a singer, hero, builder, or a teacher possibly, eager +to manifest through the child's fresh mind, fervid to bring the mind of +the child to its subjection, for the expression of its own revelations. +Indeed, the parents themselves are enjoined to become as little +children. In arriving at this wisdom and humility, they may suddenly +find masters in their own children. + +There is also a lad here of seven named Tom. Yesterday I found him +beside me on the sand, down by the water's edge. I began to tell him +about the Inner Light that we all carry. You can talk over a child's +head, if your words are choked with mental complications (which is apt +to be second-rate talk, anyway), but you seldom are out of reach of a +fine child's grasp when you speak of spiritual things. He was sitting +cross-legged, folded hands between his knees--a little six pointed +star--head and shoulders the three upper points, knees with folded +hands between, the three lower. He was bare from the waist up and +thighs down, and brown as the honey of buckwheat.... I told him that +the seventh and perfect point of his star was within; that if he shut +his eyes and kept very still, putting away for the present all his +thoughts about himself, his feelings, his wants and his rights--looking +into himself as one would look ahead for a lamp in the night, listening +deep within, as one would listen for the voice of a loved friend,--I +promised that at last he would see what the three wise men saw--the +Star in the East. He need only follow that Star and be true to its +guidance to come at last to the Cave and the Solar Babe.... After that +I hinted that I would come to _his_ feet and listen. + +Tom felt that it was worth trying for at once--shut his eyes, turning +all thoughts and gaze within. He held the posture long.... I have +marvelled again and again at the quickness with which the child-mind +attains to concentration so essential for all original production. +The little ones have no mad emotional lists to sort out and subdue; +their wants are simple "yes" and "no" in so many cases. Indeed, they +are spared the struggle of becoming as little children.... Tom held +the posture, until I was actually tense from the strain of waiting and +keeping my thoughts from calling his. + +It was a picture--sun-whitened hair, long yellow lashes, brown body +with a bit of babe's softness left to it, and glorious sunlight. He +opened his eyes at last saying that he had the door, where the light +was, almost opened, when a fly bit him. + +I thought of the perfection of the instance of the mind's +waywardness--the coming of the Master spoiled by a fly bite.... Tom +will search for his Star every day. It is strange that he is closer +to the hill-pastures around Bethlehem, under seven, than for years +afterward. + +To learn concentration in mid-life after the world "has been put +through a man," is an ordeal at best; and yet we are by no means +masters of ourselves, nor capable of significant achievement until the +brain can be stilled at will of its petty affairs (the first aim of +concentration) and becomes the glad servant of the "giant" within. + +A little later I saw Tom on the back of a huge black walk-trot +saddle-horse of show quality--passing up the Lane at a fast clip, his +feet half way to the stirrups, holding on to the saddle with one hand, +the bridle-rein in the other. A year or two ago I should have been +afraid to permit that, but we manage now to relieve the young ones of +a large part of our fears for their welfare. Children have enough to +overcome from their parents. Frequently the New Age young people have +to master their heredity before they begin upon themselves. + +Life is a big horse to ride, so often a black horse. It is well to +start children free and unafraid. We do not let them dwell in thought +of pain. We do not permit tears. We inform them early that to be sick +is a confession of uncleanness, that lying is for the use of cowards +only, and that to be cruel marks the idiot. + +We are occasionally serious over repeated failures, but we laugh over +things done well. Tennis has unfolded marvellous possibilities in the +training of will force. Children are shown that there is a mystic +quality to all the perfect games--that the great billiardists and +tennis and baseball players perform feats in higher space, whether they +know it or not. There is the essential ideal first in the making of the +athlete as in the making of the poet. The great moments of play require +faculties swifter and more unerring than the human eye or hand or mind. +Ask the master of any game if he had time to think in pulling off the +stroke that won. It is inspiration that he uses quite the same as the +poet in his high moments. + +Education is the preparation of the mind to receive and answer to +inspiration from a plane above. The more you develop merely the brain +of a child, the more he is detached from the great principles of being, +the more also is he closed to the real, and subjected to the danger of +actual lesion and sickness. The more you develop the spirit of a child, +or rather give the significant One within an opportunity to come forth +and _be_ the child, the more you make for beauty, health, goodness and +glory of bodily life.... A lucky day when you start really to associate +with your children, luckier still when you undertake the work of +teaching them incidental to your own work. Then and there, you begin to +realise that children are close to a source of things that you cannot +touch. Presently you realise that they are teaching you.... + +Day after day I have studied and practised the development of the +child from within outward. I have seen the capacity to synthesise and +assimilate mere mental matters developed in a year, by training the +mind from the centre of origins outward, that mental training alone +could never accomplish. The mind itself becomes vigorous and avid and +capacious and majestically swift. It is trained to express its true +self. That is power--that is king-play. This sentence covers the whole +matter: + +_The perfect way to develop the mind of the child is to teach him to +sit and listen at the feet of his own master, the Soul._ + +The right to live and to bring the laughter of power to the days must +be won afresh each morning. No two days alike. We make ourselves +impossible to children of the New Age by trying to confine them in the +laws and rules of yesterday. The young people whom I serve live in +a different intensity. Their interest flags if I repeat, if I fall +into familiar rhythms. Continually they spur me on. I think, after +all, great teaching is the capacity to feel what the younger minds are +thinking. If we are too coarse to catch the first warning of their +resistance, they slip farther and farther from our grasp. + +It would not seem possible to hold American young people with spiritual +affairs; yet this is done daily. We call the Unseen--the great gamble. +I have shown how all else betrays--how all matter is a mockery at the +last--that even love and friendship fail for those who are called to +weep and worship wholly at the tomb of the body.... The truth is out: +The beginnings of real teaching is in making the Unseen interesting and +dramatic. + +We dwell upon the mystic white lines which connect all things--the +sources of daring and beauty and creativeness. I ask my young people +where they were--when they did any rare and improved bit of work, when +they felt like great comrades, met some magnanimous impulse, arose to +superb instants of play, or when in Chapel the big animation touched +us all and set us free. They always answer that they were _out of +themselves_. + +That's a secret of the new teaching again--to lift the students out +of themselves. Men take to drink or drugs for this same reason: men +and women set out on the great adventures, pleasures and quests for +this. We hunger and toil for this freedom; we suffer and adore--to get +out of ourselves. Mental teachings tie us in more firmly. The teaching +here--and no two days alike--is to startle and encourage the young +minds to arise and live and breathe in that lovelier and more spacious +dimension which at least borders upon the Unseen. The doors open and +shut so softly. One does not know he has been out--until he is back +with strange light in his eyes and in his hands a gift from the gods. + +The essential spirituality of the new teaching must not be confused +with religious affairs as they are known and exploited in the world. +You cannot teach the New Age religion of the world's kind. It has +its own. No dry as dust sage will do. A snort will answer your +sanctimoniousness; flexible science will reply to the abysses of your +logic.... You must be the consummate artist if never before in your +life, to teach the beauty of the soul to youth. The young workers of +the new social order will never bring forth their great harvests from +your _reflected_ light. You must be spontaneous--you must flood them +with pure solar gold; you must show them by your life and your work, +how you come and go into the Unseen. + +There is no rest.... One commands his disciples to go forth at last. +The teacher strides forward faster when they cling. He tells them +one day they must race the gamut to follow him; and the next day he +puts another in his place and begs to be allowed a cushion in the +midst of the children.... We hold them by setting them free--the first +law of love. All unions of the future--in trade and friendship and +matrimony--will be founded upon the principle of freedom; and this is +the essence of the new teaching--to liberate the children into their +larger and God-quickened selves. + +No rest and no two days alike. + +A Bob White called me this morning across the uncut hayfields at the +edge of the lake-bluff.... His two smooth and patient notes seemed +to contain the secret of putting off all fret and fear and unrest. +He seemed to ask if I had not done this already--had not yet put all +boyish and merely temporal things away? "Not yet?... Not yet?" he +called the question. + +I answered that I would try again, and I set out straightway to be +honest once more with the world, with the soil and with myself. I would +begin with the clay again to be clean--to rise and think and dwell in +cleanliness, to think no thought, to perform no action second-rate--to +begin with the Laugh again--the warm laugh of conquest that always +opens some inner door to fresh powers--to arise afresh in the glory +and gamble of the Unseen.... I returned and saw the young ones one by +one--from Tom and John up to the men and women--doing their work. I set +about mine with a laugh and called the day good. The teacher knows best +who is taught. + + + + +3 + +CONQUEST OF FEARS + + +An interesting boy of ten and I have been much together in the open +weather. We have learned many things, but nothing more important than +what a sham Fear is. I do not mean that we take chances or that it is +wise to risk life or limb. Fine discrimination is back of all training +in the arts of life; still we certainly have found that Fear is a +waster and diminisher of beauty and power--and that it can be mastered. + +About the most fascinating thing that life has shown me is the way in +which fine examples of the younger generation learn the deeper matters +of life--matters of self-mastery which make the very presence of a +lad significant to a stranger, and which formerly were supposed to be +secrets for the sons of kings alone. + +"Do you fear anything?" I ask. "Look deep. Listen deep--do you fear +anything?... It's like the pain that tells you of a weakness or +disease. Fear is an unerring reminder of a task of conquest ahead for +you. That which you fear most is the thing to conquer first." + +There had been much of this talk of Fear before a laughable personal +experience showed me how much I asked. + +I crossed a mesa and came to an abrupt drop-off--two hundred feet +sheer. It astonished me. I hadn't experienced anything like this quiver +of horror for years. All members and muscles bolted at the thought of +advancing closer to the edge. I sat down to think it out. It never had +occurred before that I _wasn't_ my nervous system, and must not let it +get me down. + +The more I thought, the more I perceived that I must do the thing I +dreaded so. In fact, I had told trusting young people that they were +not their bodies, not their emotions, not even their minds--that these +must be made to obey. Here I had a chance to prove if I were less in +action than talk. I forced my fluttering young self to the edge.... +Dizziness--wobbly limbs, fancied shoves from behind, the call of the +huge shadowed space below, a queer sense of parting in mid-air, the +body thumping down, another and liberated self gladly spurning the +ground--all these symptoms of panic followed swiftly. + +I held until calm came, and I then could study this little coil of +forgotten fears--a civilised mess.... The weakness was absurdly easy to +overcome after the will was once aroused. There's no end or limitation +to will force when awakened. The greater the man, the more awe he has +for this subject. There's a glow that follows conquest of any kind; the +mere call of the will to action brings a sense of power in the heart. +There is no way more speedily to dispel pain, anger, passion, fear, or +any of these tentacles of personality--than to summon the power of will +to instant action. The particular matter of this precipice showed me a +trick about calling up the force--priceless to me afterward in bigger +tests, and for opening the way of self-conquest to boys. + +One must decide what one wants to do--then carry it out to the death. +Discrimination, art, all culture and knowledge may be brought to bear +in making the decision--but after that, it must be carried out--just +that. + +Fears belong to the abdomen. You can feel them there. They are quicker +than thought. Perhaps you had a twinge of nerves over some sight or +sound or odour, before your mind could tell you what you were afraid +of.... I have often told the young ones here--listening a bit to my own +voice--that there isn't anything living or dead, phantom, shell, or +living soul, that has got the authority to make the spirit of man quail. + +Courage is spirit. + +Most people don't care to try to deal with it; they let it have its +way.... Do you recall the fears of the dark room as a child--fear +always stealing behind--upstairs alone, the rush to the light, almost +screaming tension?... I heard a patter of steps the other evening and +knew the whole story--a boy of seven. He had been sent upstairs without +a light. I sent him back, told him to stay there until he got himself +in hand--to stay in the dark and think the bogie down. He was well +afterward. + +I have known some under-fire work. A man soon gets himself in hand +to look straight at a white-fringed trench. Fear of sharks furnished +another test. From a child the deep-sea devourers had an exquisite +fascination for me--to be cut in two under brine, white belly, +backward mouth, black-rimmed, hairy pig eyes, the double-rows of +teeth.... Pacific Islanders swim in the same harbour with fourteen-foot +scavengers, careless of whole schools of monsters, yet scurry to their +boats at the sight of one solitary, _different_ fin. I had seen the +so-called, man-eating brutes, "grey nurses," dim grey horrors with dull +black spots. A well-fed imagination also came into play. + +I went swimming in the surf with a splendid Australian chap--a doctor +home from the trenches.... He left me back in the surf lines and +started out to sea. I finished my swim decently in toward North +America, and lay on the strand. From time to time off in the sunset I +saw my friend's head.... I was glad to grab the beach-comber when he +came in. + +"It's all perfectly sane and splendid," I said, "and I'm glad to have +you back for supper with us, and the billows out yonder are doubtless +all that you say, for an afternoon's lie-up, only I venture to +ask--what if a grey nurse should happen in from the lower islands?" + +"You don't think about them," he said. + +That's about all there is to the fear subject. You don't let it get +you. There is nothing worth fearing in or above or under the plane of +manifestation.... So I tried that out in deep water. The old horrors +succumbed like the fear of the precipice, but not so readily, quite. +One can imagine keenly in the dim deep; the touch of sea-weed quickens +all the monsters of the mind.... + +There's nothing fit to be afraid of, unless it is the _self_. When we +get the ape and the tiger, the peacock and the porpoise, the lizard +and the shark and the carcajou of our own natures mastered, there +isn't anything left to do but to tally them off outside, a friendly +finish with them all. No menagerie is complete as man's, and each of us +favours some species from time to time. + +I have thought much about fear. In another place I told how we have +overcome inertia; how we developed senses through the hard administry +of fear and hunger, anger and the rest. Now, however, these must be +overcome.... One of the last physical fears to let go in my case is +that for the hangman's rope. I think Roger Casement really wanted the +axe in preference to the hemp. Steadily facing a repulsion, it surely +vanishes. + +The point of it all is that you can teach self-command to the +children.... I took a girl of fourteen to my precipice--left her there +standing on the very edge. After a few minutes I called. Her face was +calm as if she had gazed from a porch.... + +"Did you feel any fear?" I asked. + +"Only yours for me," she answered. + +It was very true. I had the thing whipped for myself, but it had been +hard to leave her there. + +Finally I took the smaller boys out for a test. They didn't know I was +testing them. Children haven't the fear of height such as we put on. I +recalled a score of episodes of my own boy-days, in which I startled +the elders by Sam Patch imitations. Also I have put the young ones +through some deep water affairs.... + +You may not be able to get it quite--but all fear is illusion. Every +inner beast mastered makes us stronger. These animals within are our +cosmos to rule. We do not know how beautiful they are until we lose +our fear for them. Boys and girls here are learning these things and +putting them in action. + +The kingdom of heaven is also within. Fear, passion, anger, poverty, +and the like--all represent areas of our own kingdom not yet brought +under perfect cultivation.... After the emotional and physical +conquests come the psychic ones--hard matters of mastery pertaining to +the heart and mind--to know, to do, to dare, to keep silent--then the +finding of the hidden treasures of the subconscious, mystic fleets that +sail those dim seas, as yet uncharted for most of us.... After that, +the Soul. At last we must be potent enough to stand eye to eye in the +presence of the King Himself. + +From looking steadily over an escarpment of two or three hundred feet +drop, to gazing at the world from the forward cockpit of an airplane +at two or three thousand feet, isn't such a long step as you would +imagine. The fact is, I was in no way terrified in my first flight, and +fear certainly crawled me full length as I stood that time at the edge +of the mesa. Our young people have the call to test the new dimension +of wings. This zeal corresponds in a unique way with the new education. +Intellect stays upon the ground. Intuition is the lifting of the wings +of the mind. + +I had already begun to make friendly visits to an aerodrome at the edge +of the Pacific when the following letter came from the Abbot,[2] who +is now seventeen and in New York: + +... Perhaps Steve told you that I had a ride in an airplane about three +weeks ago. Man! 'Tis the place for me! Next summer, soon as school +dissipates, I attach my name to the Royal Flying Corps. The psychic +effect of a flight is wonderful--like travelling over a very tall +bridge. The Atlantic coast for many miles lay in profile as a map, the +roads stretched as thin mathematical lines; forests as darker shadows +of the earth; New York as a blotch of smoke and curious patchwork. +For twenty minutes we sailed around and around, just as you've seen a +gull pinion, then we came to earth; waited until it got dark, then up +again.... Lights of the aerodrome lay like jewels upon the earth, but +up, up we went, faster and higher, the roar of the propeller providing +a steady nervous outlet. I could shout my lungs out--I had to relieve +myself of the excess thrill. + +Then what should happen? Red, a tiny rim, like the disc of a golden +dollar, the sun began to lift up from the horizon again. The higher +we went, the higher it lifted, until there it hung, as a golden bulb, +a swollen orange off in the mighty stretches,--pure, golden,--while +below twinkled the town's lights. 'Twas the fullest, richest, most +brimming moment I've ever had. The awe of the cosmos overtakes the +heart and lays down its stupendous laws. The distance between sun and +'plane seemed a golden pathway that ever could absorb your flight. I +was aware only of worshipping God, and that roar of the machine made +one think of the roar of the planets, comets, meteors, all the suns, +roa-oa-ring. What a romance! Finding the sun! + +... No discussion of the fear element whatsoever in the letter.... + + [2] Fred Jasperson. + +The old thrills won't do for the new race. I took a pair of +screen-trained young ones to a circus recently and became absorbed at +their mild boredom. Alcohol is too slow and coarse for the wastrel +tendencies of the modern hour. The sad ones of the new generation +use high potency drugs to forget the drag of time and space. A new +dimension is required in all things. The young men of the new race make +light of our old dreads and are learning winged ways to heaven and to +hell. + + + + +4 + +THE STUFF OF COMRADES + + +I wonder if I can make clearer, by turning a few different facets in +this chapter, what we mean by friends, comrades, the spirit of things, +and love not as an emotion but as a cosmic force. Many days I have +faced a Chapel, as I face this day's work, longing to bring in closer +the dream of the new social order, yet dismayed by the limitations +of words and my own mind, trained so long in the life of the old.... +I would begin to talk, drawing the young minds to mine through an +intimate revelation of the heart, then presently lose the sense of +effort, even the sense of thought--and an hour would pass in the joy of +communal blessedness, because we were one. + +Man is not getting larger, though he is continually holding more. +The human brain, after it reaches a certain age and size, may gain +thereafter a conception of the universe without altering the size of +the hat-band. There is a continual condensation at work within us +mentally and physically. We take the cream of the thing, and throw the +rest away. The wiser and the more inclusive we become, the more we take +just the spirit of a thing, and leave the bulk and weight behind. + +This is true in our every refinement, in the clothes we wear, the food +we eat, the books we read and the friends we gather together. We become +harder and harder to suit, because bulk and weight are common, but the +spiritual extract of anything is slow to appear for us. The wiser the +man, the more fastidious he is, and this does not mean that he is a +crank. The excellence of fastidiousness is not in eccentricity but in +inclusiveness. In the spirit of the thing, he sees all. From the spirit +of the thing, he expresses in his own way any part. He can array whole +hierarchies of facts from the spirit of the whole, but mainly he leaves +the facts in reference-libraries, where they belong and are quickly +available, and stores away in his working faculties just a drop of the +_oil_ of a subject or a breath from its essence. + +There are those who believe that the soul of man is made up of essences +of experiences of thousands of lives--yet the refinement of the soul +is so spiritualised that the best surgeon cannot find the little +organ. He knows the brain, which is made up of the stored experiences +of but one life, but because the soul is so small or so diffused, +the surgeon is very apt to say that there is no such organ. And yet, +we all know there is knowledge and power behind us, which drives us, +in our greater moments, to utterances and action entirely without the +scope of the brain. We may call this the soul, or the nth power, or the +fourth dimension--the name doesn't matter.... Listen, if I write well +to-day--I mean well for me--if I rise to the opportunity at all, it +will be because I am writing things which my brain doesn't know. + +I yearn to make this still clearer.... The rose, which is the highest +evolved of flowers, includes all the evolution of plant-life of its +line beneath; the same with gold among the minerals. The fact that each +is the highest necessitates that. In the same way, man includes Nature +and the lower creatures, in that he is the highest. This is easily +proven to you when you recall that a child in the womb passes through +all states of creature evolution. That period is, in a wonderful way, a +review of the evolution of the world. + +The mere fact that the higher one climbs, the farther one can see, +proves it again. This is a law. The scent of a rose is the sublimate +of all plant odours; and the spirit of man is the refinement of all +knowledge and experience beneath. + +The higher man ascends, the more inclusive. To heal another, the +physician must be able to include the other. Evolution is continual +refinement--the drawing unto ourselves of the spirit of bulks of +matter. I stood upon a bluff overlooking the ocean recently, and a +breath of the south wind awakened in my mind the story of one whole +summer; others have listened to forest trees or the humming roar of +a distant city, or the rush of a great river, and found in them the +aggregate of all Nature's sounds in one tone. This is the magic of the +spirit of things. + +In all philosophy, there is no difference of opinion as to one fact, +that man is unfolding a microcosm within himself, including in his +consciousness more and more the Idea of the Universe. The cosmic +consciousness, which a few have attained, is the actual perception of +the externals of the Plan. + +The cream of anything includes all the parts. The cosmic mind must +include the essence of all arts and experiences and facts. Just as the +rose and the man and the grain of dust are potential with all beneath, +the highest man, the cosmic intelligence, is potentially the cosmos in +containing the Idea of it. + +This idea may be contained in and expressed outwardly by some great +single, all-including, all-mastering emotion--such as love. And now we +are in a region where there can be no difference of opinion; at least +I have never heard disputed what is the greatest thing in the world. + +There are all kinds of love. The simple man loves simply--himself, +his woman, his children and his animals. The love of the cosmic +consciousness breaks forth in a deluge upon the race, because it +comprehends and includes all beneath. This great outpouring is formed +of earth, air, water, fire, sunlight and all winds, all facts, all +experiences, all arts, light of the moon and stars and all glowing +things under the sun, all sounds and scents and pictures, all ardours, +and sympathies and tolerances. Its outpouring is action, and is of +itself creative. This is the _OM_. Such a love leavens and impregnates +all things, because it understands and includes all things. It unifies +all separateness; it enfolds all intelligence with intuition; it unites +all parts. + +This brings us to that ancient and unassailable premise of all +religions--that God includes every part of the universe in being the +spirit of it; that His idea of creativeness is expressed in one great +single, all-mastering and including emotion,--which is love. We hear +the little children saying it, "God is love." + + * * * * * + +... We awaken the Ideal in ourselves first by imitating the virtues of +others. In the earlier days when to me courage meant physical action, +men passed in different fields, leaving an imperishable remembrance. +I have often seen the expressions of those I loved and idealised as a +boy, live again in the faces of my own children. John T. McCutcheon in +Luzon, filling a reel of films, under a volley of fire at Binan, on his +knees, working the camera with a whole brigade sprawled behind--gave +me one of the finest early building blocks for the courage among men. +He also gave me an ideal of cleanliness: One evening, after a vicious +day's march, and we were all ravenous, John T. left camp to find a +river. There he bathed with government bouquet,--made himself right +with himself, even to shaving, before meat and drink. His constraint +looked like mastery to me then. Grant Wallace was a big star of that +service--ideal in performance of friendship.... Young men at hand now +are different. Not one of them lack in grip and grit. They reveal the +new thing in courage, the courage that begins where the courage of +the soldier ends. These have gone far into the mystery of their own +kingdoms--rapidly becoming kings of themselves. + +The world doesn't understand them. The Abbot[3] is a sensation in +literary matters at Columbia, but unplaced. The Dakotan[3] was said +to be unfit for a soldier because he was twenty pounds under weight +for his height. He can leap five feet six, run or hike indefinitely, +exhaust a cement-mixer, say "stick" in all tongues and "quit" in none. +He has the will and wisdom to make himself a new man over night--and +yet his Government wants him served up just so, in pounds. There isn't +any one loves America more than the Dakotan, whom we now call Steve. +Even the young military surgeons will know before long that endurance +is a matter of spiritual culture, that courage is spirit--that a man +is well because of cleanliness of body and thought and organised +will; that he doesn't fail in a pinch because he is evolved; that all +the higher forms of life call for speed rather than strength, the +levitating force of spirit rather than the gravitating force of flesh, +for brain rather than brute.... Comrade stuff is the stuff of souls.... +I've studied them long and devotedly. I build my days upon the things +these boys show me. Less and less are we different from those who call +to our hearts. + + [3] These appear in _Child and Country_. + +These young men do not think themselves out; they are not troubled by +misses or personal discrepancies. They simply are themselves. I have +perceived that men of dreams and genius and action are in the larger +sense free from themselves. The main part of their day's performance +is a lifting out of the tangle of emotion and desire, into a large, +unrestricted area full of calm daylight, where events and movements +are seen in their relation to one another, not in separateness and +one at a time, an area also where inspiration is momentarily expected +to strike. They do not analyse themselves. They do not hear their own +voices. They are not dismayed if they falter or drop from the key. The +things that most men do with care, and that occupy so much of the days +these young men perform automatically. + +My own path was upward through an intense self-consciousness--the +American, not the oriental way. I lived with myself all the route. I +observed outward conditions and events, domestic, civic and cosmic; but +at the same time observed their effects upon myself. I did not know +until I was adult that there is a big receptivity of consciousness +above this--where intuitions play and weave causes and effects +together--where the mind is more like a child's than a man's, or more +like a giant's, perhaps--where the big faith comes, and the warm laugh +comes, and man surpasses himself, but does not know until afterward, if +at all. + +Warmth flooded into me as I touched this larger consciousness. It +became clear as daylight--that a man is at his best only when out of +himself. I saw much of my misery and depression was the result of +self-analysis. I was a better man when I let myself go utterly. And +this was exactly the thing that happened in moments of danger, moments +of romance and friendship, moments of the self hurling itself outward. +Capacity for these moments makes the Comrade, and indicates that love +which is not a sentiment, but a cosmic force. + +Again, you cannot describe a spiritual thing with these little tools +and materials in black and white--just intimations.... If we are +sweet enough inside, something of the song will come to us.... Two +words suggest it best. The first is _Comrade_, which has become a +silliness in a military sense, yet has a high and holy meaning to +all reconstructionists.... I remember when the word first came to me +with a thrill, as a young lad going off to Cuban wars. It was burned +out of me a few days afterward in a Sibley tent full of regular army +soldiers.... I remember the scorn with which I used the word all the +years--or avoided using it--until slowly, smilingly, its new dimension +opened, hard as a diamond, and as clear--its meaning in work and world +and women, its new meaning to Russia and India and China and America. + +It seems to say _Equality_. It's a kind of deep drink of spirit +together, a word spoken at the last moment between men--an +inner-shrine word, spoken with a smile, and a glimpse into the eternal +indestructibility of the human heart. It expresses the love of the +world, not as it is felt in the brain, but in the breast of the soul. +The New Race has already washed it clean. It goes with a Cause fit to +die for. It belongs to men and women who can look at each other with a +kind of prayer in their eyes and face death alone and laugh at it. + +There's a fury, too, in the word--fury against the world, against +things as they are. It stands against the world-darkness now, and for +the day that is to be. It means love for the poor, a love for the +peasants, a passion to serve and be tender to them, not to drive them +into the pits of death--a readiness to die for them without _cant_, a +readiness also to dare to live for them. + +_Comrade_--there's vision in it to strip off the masks of decadent +nations, to open wide the sepulchres where the priests are still +plotting to crucify the King; its strong magic will uncover the +monotonous crimes of commerce.... It signifies the spirit of the young +men and women who have already begun with gladness and fire to clear +the débris for the building of the New Age. + +They will begin with the soil; they will know and love their own hard +part. They will begin with the grass, with the rice, with the millet +and the wheat, the clean things, the simple and holy things that the +peasants love, with the songs that the peasants sing, the songs of the +soil and the rivers and snows--to build upon them the new heaven and +the new earth.... Above all, there's a laugh in the word--the laugh of +youth and power. + +The other word is _Democracy_. + + * * * * * + + + + +5 + +JOHN'S THINGS + + +Here are some of John's things, mainly letters to the Old Man. +California called hard for the recent winter, and I went out a few +weeks ahead of the Stonestudy outfit. John intended to follow within +three weeks, but overturned a kettle of boiling water in his lap, and +was unable to leave his quarters for three times that period. We all +learned better the hard lesson--to wait. The quoted word "Play" in his +first letter refers to a little slip of paper which I had pasted upon +my typewriter. There has been a big tendency in recent months, in my +case, to let down all tension in relation to literary production--the +idea being that when one has learned all the laws he is capable of, the +time is at hand when it is well to forget them. I have written several +times throughout this book of an ideal emergence of Workman into +Player. We learn many laws, to learn at last that there are none. We +come up through many slaveries to freedom.... I have not corrected all +the spelling in John's documents. The point most interesting is how the +real voice breaks through the mind of a child of nine from time to time. + + DEAR YOUNERVERS[4] PAL: + + We got your letter but it was not like you for it was not + type-written. Your old machine here is going grand. I am using it + now. It seems that I am with you all the time. _Comrad_ has meant a + lot the last four days to me. Comrad is everything in the New Race. + Masters will be comrads with every one. + + That "Play" has it all, on your machine. "Play" is in all + somewhere. It is all like a big page and everything is woven on it. + There is a time when Comrads hafto go apart for a little while, but + not long. Their thoughts never go apart. They are always pulling + together, always weaving in thoughts and things that are the same. + It is wounderful--a parting. No sadness over it. It is the best + that could come, or it would not. We are held together. The pull of + the world is nothing to us. + + It is hard to keep high, but we will. Fred[5] and I take a swim + every day. I go a hundred and fifty feet. Then we come up and rub + each other. + + True Comrads have it all. Love from Comrad to Comrad. + + [4] Universe. + + [5] The Abbot. + + + + PAL: + + I woke up this morning kind of blurred, and got Irving and Steve to + come out and clean up the barn. They came and we worked there all + morning, and then went in for a swim. It was wounderful, the feel I + had when I got some clean clothes on and had the old dog[6] feeling + good. He is meditating over what a wounderful world it is now. The + stall smells sweet as a hay-stack. + + Fred just got here and is working at your desk. + + How was your morning? I never had a better one, and its the weary + old Sabbath, too. + + Send for me soon now. It seems that it was a year since we have + been together. We can not do without each other. Send for me + _Soon_. I hold my hand high to you. + + [6] The saddle horse. + + + DEAR OLD MAGIC FATH: + + I am at Steve's desk in the guest room. It is the first time that + I have touched the keys of a type writer since the night I was + berned. It sure does feel good. + + It has been much more wonderful to hafto have Patience for the + Meeting. It will be twice as great for both. I have needed you so + since I have been in bed. In pane and sicknes there is nothing that + you need so much as your Comrad. + + I felt palms up to everything. It is all good. We love it all. It + all was something for us to get. It puts us higher after something + comes to us like that. + + I have all the pores poring out love to you. We are always together. + + YOUR SIDE KIKER. + + + DEAR OLD PAL: + + Fred and I slept again in the Study. It looked like a storm last + night, but it did not come. Fred is a real Comrad. I got to his + heart last night. I do not know how. The roses have been wounderful + the last few days. + + How is wounderful Mary? We are all sending Thoughts to you. We have + had wounderful full days lately, all heat. The town is howling + for rain now; they are never satisfied. We are always ready for + anything. It is the best. Our wounderful old mailtrain just crossed + the magic lane. I love trains more and more. They have a pull to my + heart. We love everything. + + I do not feel on erth. I feel in space. Out of the draw of the + erth--_Free_. + + Love always in my heart for you. I hold hard for the time that + Comrads pull together again for the road, us two. Jane is at my + hump all the time--so I will quit. + + + DEAR OLD COMRAD: + + We are close this morning. I can feel your warm wounderful hand in + mine this morning. We are one. There is the holy breath--such a + great pull of thoughts and work to California. It seems as if all + the Comrads were calling me there. Then I hafto think of the one + thing--_Patience_. When you have mastered Patience, you are free. + All well here. My sores are getting better fast. I have wanted to + work lots lately, since I was in bed, but I could not. I lost so + many ideas in bed. Beds are a curse. I love you, Comrad. We need to + be together. + + YOUR OLD PAL. + + + SUNLIGHT PAL: + + A wounderful sun. A little late in getting up. The sun was out + full--a wounderful breakfast and a wounderful bowl of roses. + + Every morning gets greater. The coming together again gets closer. + Separation is a great thing! You find that when it comes. It will + be so big and wounderful to come together on the shores of the sea. + The trains on the Pere Marquette line have a draw to my heart; the + whistle is so wounderful.... To have a bath in the salt water and + not in old Lake Erie.... It was another wounderful night with + Fred. He has done so much for me this time that we have been away + from each other. + + He is so wounderful if you can get to him. I think I have got right + to him to the heart. I am awful lonesome for you and the sea. + + I walked to the train track with Fred this morning. It was like the + day you were going away. I felt it was nearing the last walk up the + old Lane. Fred has the same feel. It swept over us--a free feel; it + was almost too much. + + How is your Sisity-list coming? Mine is great. It is hard to get + along without you here. Old Abe was drafted, and we don't know when + we will see him. The sea and sunlight sweeping in the open door of + your work room! We will sure have some grand times. We will get + horses and have some more of them Moonlight rides. It will be great + to hit the old _Tie path_ Itself--with the[7] Welcome Mulligan + and the[8] Onerbel Chas. Lipton under our arms. The smell of the + burning bark and a caben in the Rockies! Oh, the open road. Life is + Life on the old Road. + + That canyon must be a wounder, and the sea and the misty mountains + and the brown hills. You have it all. Oh man, that is the country + for everything. + + I keep high for our meeting, Comrad of the Road. + + [7] Frying Pan. + + [8] Teapot. + + +PROSE SETTINGS + + +I + +THE RED SUNSET. + +The red sunset Died away like the close of a forest fire. + +The Dusk ran through the mountains like a scarf of blue. + +The Moon and old Jupiter took the Open Road together. + +The others came out of the everlasting Blue Deeps. + + +II + +THE DESERT NIGHT. + +The man at the camel corral was fixing the camels for the desert. Other +men were waiting at the front of the Temple. Another came forward with +four camels, a pack-beast and two riders. Then all were off over the +Sun Betin Sand. + +Nothing but Sand and Harizen. Only the Arab who was ahead on the Old +Camel knew the way. + +They went on and on over the Everlasting Sand, the Sun Betin Sand. + + +III + +PINES. + +The great wood is the Pines. The very whiff of them gives you the +breath of Nature, the great Mother of the planet, the mother of Love. +Her breath is the breath of life and love, and the Mouziek of the world. + + +TREAS (_California_) + +Treas are grate. They are so wild and wounderful. There is so many +kinds here. The trea I love best of them all, is the U.K. Liptes. It is +fragran; it has the sun and the erth all flowers and the swaying beauty +of its great youth. I loved it from the first. It is beauty that stays. + +I went up to a grove the other day and along a little lone path--the +mist and odor of them lingering in deep shadows. My feet broke the deep +silences and a Voice came and spoke soft to me: "If you listen long +enough you can hear----" I think it was my Master speaking, for a glow +came around me, after He had spoke. + + +THE SONG OF THE SPERIT + +Life is not any good until you forget your boddy; then you get all the +power of living, but you can't do anything that you feel like doing. + + +LETHER: + +All lether has a mystery in it. It is the animal's mystery. The misteks +of the other world know it, and try to tell us. I have been told but +my mind has not received it. I will hafto wait until it does. I think +I will know it all in a fue years. I will tell the rest of the world, +if I hear it first. I would like to be the first to hear it. + + +STONES: + +The whole erth was of stone. + +God thought that he would make it something good. He sent the Old +Mother Nature down and she spent years and years, but she did not know +what to put on it. She went up to God and He took her to a room, and +showed her the things that He had to put on the Erth. + +They were sperits, so she got them one at a time and brought them down. + +In the mean time she was making other things. They were seeds and she +planted these and they came up. It was wheat and barley and other +things like that. The sperits became people and took them for food, and +the old Mother is still putting things and bringing her sperits on the +Erth. This world is just about filled. + + +THE SPERIT + +At night the Sperit goes to see God. It gets fresh to make the boddy +fresh every morning. This is what keeps you clean. If you were all +clean, you would not die. You go thru a hard life and what is not +clean is burned off, and then you are pure to go to heaven. You rest +then until you are ready to come and be a saint. + + +ALONE + +The sun beat hard upon the rocks. + +I was alone in the Power of the rocks. Nothing was moving. + +I was Alone. My Sperit was alone. + +It was the loneliest place in the world. + +No animal of any kind, not a bird or a snake--alone. + +Nature did not even have cells of thought. + +The power of the rocks was holden me there. + +A thought came over me that I had never known Home. + +All of a sudden Nature spoke, and I was free from everything. + +I came back to the Father. + + +EQUALS + +There is a greatness in a man that treats his horse like his brother. +A man is a beast when he beats his horse. He is of a lower Brivahen[9] +than the horse. The man who says to his horse that he is his equal, is +a great man, a master of animals. + + [9] Vibration. + + +BEAUTY + +When the New Race comes, there will be beauty--real beauty. Down thru +the ages people have talked of beauty, but they have not seen it +really, yet. It will come with the New Race--beauty in everything--in +the body, in writing, in talk, in love. Not love one, but all. The +younerverse Lovers will not only love each other, but they will love +all. This war is the great clean up of the world. After it is all over, +and the troops come all home together, there will be the great New Race +waiting for them with open arms--then all will be real beauty. + + +THE HOLD UP AND THE GET AWAY + +... It was the first time Denver Bill had come in without a cigarette +in his mouth. They wanted to know why he wasn't smoking, but they +didn't ask. + +He ordered the same drink and took it fast.... He chucked the chair +over, grabbed the tellfon off the table and gave "Hlo." + +He said, "Horse up here in five minutes." + +It was there. + +He was out of town in a minute more. + +Denver Bill stopped at a cabin where he had made ponmets[10] to rob a +train at 7:45, and it was now 6:10. His friend was there. They jumped +on their horses and rode a quarter of a mile. The train whistled around +the curve. + + [10] Appointment. + +There was a shout. Denver called: "Stop that engine!" + +It stopped slow.... Bill murdered the engineer, and then flew thru the +train of cars. He grabbed the fifty pound gold box and jumped thru the +window. A shot rang out. + +Bill was pincked. + +The man that he had come with played dirt on him because he went off +with the gold. Bill crawled across the field and laid in the hay stack. + +He rolled the first cigarette of the day. + + * * * * * + + +LETTER TO THE ABBOT (from California) + + DEAR OLD WIFE: + + How are you coming? I was just up over the hill behind us, getting + two wounderful qwortz of golden honey. How is your type mill + pumping these days? I got a new story in my bean:--Have an old + fisherman that takes those forks and goes after crabs--have him + find a pot of pearls instead of crabs.--Think if it is done right + it would make a wounder. + + When will you be out here? We will lead a pack trane over the + mountains! Oh, that is the old open road! Pack mules, they mean + it to me--a line of mules in the mountains and a couple of saddel + horses! That's the life. + + I hope you have changed your mind about them airaplanes. I do not + like the Idea. But, old man, it is for the best, and nothing is a + mistake. Take it as it comes. Write soon, and make the pages fly + like dust to me. I need all that I can get. + + Last night was our first bit of rain. Slept in an open window where + my face was sprayed all night with the wounderful cold drops of + spring. When I got up, I was feeling better than I ever did before. + I was all relaxed. I lay a long time just in the wounder of the + wounderful free air and rain. I got up and went down and washed + in more of the soft rain, and ate and went outside to come down + to my work shop. I stood in the wind. Everything around me was so + wounderful. All the trees and flowers were brighter. The hills were + a little damp. The birds were playing and drinking in the rain. The + ray of sun was just coming over the hill. I could almost hear the + breathing of the grass and erth. It was like a song, the great song + of spring and breathing of the world. + + That is the way that the new generation will come in after the + world is washed and all countries are _one_. A Boy, young and + clean, will come in, whistling and breathing a Song of the New + Race. + + YOUR COMRAD. + + * * * * * + + +ANOTHER + + WELL, WIFE: + + Here I am pumping a little more of my vocabulary at you. I think + that I will go into the ocean and have a swim. It's dulce on + my wounds. What I want to tell you is about an old sea loafer + here--a big, black dog. He isn't any kind of a dog--nothing but a + world-man-dog, he is. He is a lover of the sea and sand. He goes + down with us every day. He is a pal for the road. He can't follow + the saddel like Jack, but he can shore be a frend. I have lerned + him and he has lerned me. We stick close. + + Well, pal of the sea and saddel, I am getting awful lonesome, but + I am with you all the time. I need your old paw. I shore keep high + for the Spring Coming. We will have a shack back in the hills all + alone, and drink tea and talk. Don't it sound good? I won't forget + it either, not until we have it. We have planned it for many ages, + and we will hafto have it--old pal of the moonlight rides. + + I am close and always your Comrad. + + + + +6 + +VALUES OF LETTER WRITING + + +Stonestudy particularly is a shop for writers. A man is at his best in +writing to the one who pulls the most from him. The thing is to pour +out. The pursuit of happiness is a learning how to radiate. Happiness +itself is radiation--incandescence. + +You say you write to the world. A composite? An abstraction? These +will not draw forth your best and greatest.... You pass a thousand +faces in the town, and are suddenly torn by one? Do you think that +the unmanifested, upon which the thousand faces sleep so far as you +are concerned, is capable of bringing out your wisest or tenderest +expression, as is this one face pressed against the very window of your +habitation? + +As a workman, as an artist, as a player, one must give his best, one +by one, to individuals first, before he arouses the force to set +the table for the world.... It is important for the young writer +to answer exactly certain listening attitudes. I think, in a story +mood, of the shepherd fires--the endless droning tales of Persia and +Palestine--camel bells, bearded men in white hoods, occasional weary +movements of women in the tent openings as the evening passes to dead +of night. The tale-teller is making his listeners see more or less +dimly something _he_ sees--something he has heard and visualised, +better yet, something he has lived. The finer his telling the more +completely he has lived it. The more listeners pull from him, the more +excellent his animation, his art. A speaker, accustomed to give himself +spontaneously to an audience, said: "If I don't give you what you +want--if I am not at my best to-day--remember it's apt not to be _all_ +my fault." + +Soil and seed in all things. + +We prepare ourselves with much misery and massed experience to tell +our story of life. How strange that we should not have reckoned with +the fact that all this preparation is only half.... Really, it is as +important to think to whom one is writing as what to write about. I've +been afield with many young men, soldiers and the like. Their best and +highest moments afield were spent in writing home, or possibly to the +girl they left under the beeches or sycamores. We should write a myriad +or two love letters, before we are ready to write for the world.... By +writing and dreaming and travelling and living toward the one, we learn +how to focalise our forces. Having done that, we are ready to diffuse, +to radiate. Sooner or later the _one_ point will be taken away. + +Don't be distressed; it is only for the time. But the love we have +learned with one must be turned upon the many. It's all a love story. +The whole universe is that. The stillness of the sun in relation to the +planets tells the first story of radiation--love a cosmic force, not +a sentiment--all one big, brave tale.... The real priest is trained +to draw out, to furnish understanding,--inclusion. One can talk well +to one who includes him. As professional essayists and story-tellers, +we are only beginning to learn that we must talk or write to some one +greater than ourselves, to set ourselves free. + +The wonderful power of letters begins and ends just here.... Write your +story or your essay to one who contains you--to one who draws your +best, to one who sets you free. You can ascertain your relation to +another by your mood as you prepare to write. The more you practise the +art, the more sensitive you are, the more you realise that no two moods +of yours are the same, as you write to different people. One draws +humour, one irony, one a tendency to exaggerate, another deeply to be +serious and reformative. This should reveal the whole secret. Choose +your complement for the portrayal of a mood. + +The thing we call our style is merely the evidence of that which +we have chosen to work toward, plus our particular personality. We +should work to that which sets us free. Certainly one cannot be free +in another's form. There are fixed vehicles for expression--novel, +essay, poem, infinite departments of each, but the fact remains that no +workman or artist or player can be utterly himself, who remains in the +forms laid down by those who went before, or in forms prescribed by the +generation he undertakes to express himself through. + +No good workman ever accepts things as they are. To be the workman +unashamed, he must be considerably beyond his generation in culture and +acumen. He therefore finds the beaten paths--which are the easy paths +for the many--the most irksome paths for himself. He grinds long and +hideously against the things that are, and thus becomes formidable, +since grinding makes the edge. The dullest part of the axe is held the +longest against the wheel. + +Bit by bit, as the consciousness of the chosen workman expands under +years and ordeals, he casts off all the shackles, forms and prescribed +nonsense of the trivial and material-minded. He breathes deeper with +each unbinding, until he reaches the fair eminence upon which lies the +priceless secret of all expression: + +_That there is no law for the pure in heart._ + +He reaches this point through many slaveries, and yet a child can +be taught the secret. The child must also be taught, at the same +time however, that the world is wrong and inferior in all its views; +otherwise the child will not have stamina enough to stand against the +opinions of all elders of all times, much less those who sit at the +same breakfast table. Verily, the thing that Rodin and Balzac and +Carpenter and Hugo and Chavannes and Nietzsche and Whitman gave their +prodigious vitalities to learn, before their real work began,--can +be taught to the child, but the child must find his faith in his own +spirit and some true teacher to set him free. + +In the later aspirations beyond professional workmanship for the world, +the Players achieve that master freedom which detaches itself entirely +from causes and effects in materials. They work as do those who are +ambitious, yet refuse to tie themselves in the least way to results. +They work to their Masters, to the Unseen.... All of which is pure and +perfect liberation, but requires one trained in building with spiritual +causes and effects. We seek to furnish this training for a few who are +ready. It is the way to the inmost and the uppermost in all art and +mysticism. We are set free here as expressionists of various kinds by +writing or painting or playing to those we hold dearer than ourselves. +We wouldn't be writing if we could be with them in the flesh--how clear +that is! The fundamental processes of our picture-making are quickened +by our yearning. Here we touch an old and curious law, that you must +have separation for the true romance. + +We learn to mass life into pictures or tones or tales.... All that we +do well shortens the grade for those who receive. If they are quite +ready, they won't have to make the mistakes we did--mistakes painful at +the time, but out of which we make humour now. + +A man brings a gift when he brings forth a good tale. He has done +something with the worn-out tools of incident and experience which +hasn't been done before. To do it well his telling is dependent +upon his audience. His telling will be different for each listening +group. The greater the artist, the less alike will be his methods of +approaching different friends or comrades. Each will bring from him a +different tone, a different look to his eyes, a different grip of hand, +and different order of unfolding his genius.... + +The most perfect bits of writing we have from the group of our greatest +novelists--is either in the form of letters or parts of work inspired +by the influence of a woman's heart--some romantic and one-pointed +outbreathing of their souls to one.... The great creative producers +rarely found steady human companionship in one woman. No flesh was +starry enough to endure their idealisation; the break of their picture +was often the shattering of life itself. Experience forces us all at +last to take our idolatry from that which changes--to continue our +lessons of love toward the Unseen. Lovers of the New Race seem to have +learned the agony of trying to find all in each other, of trying to +find the universe eye to eye. They realise at once that man and woman +are but the two earth points of a triangle; that they safely may rear +their passions and their transfigurations only to the pure point of +union above.... + + * * * * * + +A man has found something when he cries "Eureka!" He loves something, +when he pours out his heart to it. The first great struggle of the real +workman is to find a form that contains him--a form of expression that +will not maim his dream. It is never the form that has held another, +that has sufficed for another artist. A letter is one way to freedom. A +writer's style should set him free. + +The enduring aphorisms and tablets and discourses of the Masters have +been spoken to their beloved few. A man's sealed orders in the world, +his occult transcriptions from above the world, come in the form of +personal messages. Great documents of the future shall be written this +way. We write many personal letters. One of my young comrades has the +idea to gather together names of a score of mill-girls in New York or +somewhere, and write her heart to them--less to try to help them, than +to ease her own heart, to tell her love for them. Radiation--that is +happiness. Mill-girls have been a dream of hers. She is full of force +to pour out. + +Incandescence is happiness. All expression is happiness. Happiness is +creative. To work, to express, that is to radiate. The object is as +important as the thing that aches to go forth. Choose the form that +sets you free. To each his form. + +A tireless woman asked how she might serve. Her lover was lost in +Flanders. We told her to write to the soldiers--to write her heart +out in letters to soldiers--that she would save lives and start great +dreams and bring the gold back to many grey mists--to be Mary the +Mother, the saint, the dream of the film-eyed fighting men--to love +them through the heart of her beloved. That is what focalisation leads +to--to draw forth the great energies from our souls, to set us free, +first to one, then to the world. + +We learn to love the one--in order to give this love to the world. We +learn to love in matter for the moment, in order to become consummate +artists and players in the soul stuff that cannot die. Again and again, +through possessions and personalities--missing, destroyed or moved +away--we learn to take the force of our outpouring from the mutative to +the changeless--making a divine bestowal at last of a clinging human +need--lifting from the idolatry of the flesh, which encloses all pain, +to the love of souls which sets us free. + + + + +7 + +THE NEW DANCING + + +I have found true North Americans. A woman of twenty-seven, a mother +(with a mysterious man somewhere) and a girl-child with the calm and +power of Joan come again.... I needed a change, was tired of my house +and my voice--close to the end of all human interest that morning as I +set out for a walk up the edge of the Lake. On and on walking, until I +came to the little girl on the shore. She was making a frowning man in +clay. She asked me if I were the Crusader, but answered herself while +I was hoping to fit the dimension of that fascinating title. She had +decided that I wasn't. + +_North Americans_--I think of them so again and again--something great +and calm and deep and beautiful, something arrived, at last, from all +the fusion--en rapport with nature, children of the light, living and +abiding constantly in the essences of sunlight--with the humour and +certainty of Mother Earth about their ways--the cleanliness of earth +and the sweetness of golden light in their house and mind.... + +Mind you, I had walked forth as one would wade out to sea in the path +of the moon--actually yearning for a better land than this.... There on +the shore, after hours, was the child--her eyes turned to mine, putting +me into the enchantment of the wise--stilling hate and ennui. We had +words together, the great awe of life stealing over me again after +many days. Her hand stretched forth to take me to her mother (this day +called the Lonely Queen, for they live in an enchanted story-book). +A climb to the top of the bluff and into the most fragrant and godly +lane, a low house in the distance in the shelter of beeches--solitary +and isolate beeches sheltering a human house, built for sunshine long +ago. Many pages would not tell of the lane and the house, the lawn and +the hives.... I want to touch the core of this inimitable pair that +took me in--poor but dining upon the perfect foods, so poor that they +make and dye the lovely things they wear--a kind of holy handiwork +everywhere--perfume of summer in the house and in the heart of it a +deepdelved peace where broods a sort of lustrous dream. + +The child is but seven--that is, her body and brain are but seven. +Her talk with her mother is the talk of a pair of immortals.... Wheat +bread and butter for supper, peaches of the mother's canning--a last +jar, she said, with comb-honey for sweetening and golden cream on +top. It was a repast for the mountain-top where demi-gods stray--all +miracles about us, Apollo just putting his steeds away, Vulcan smoking +sombre and wrathful in the distance. + +Can you see me sitting down to supper in a true handmade house, at the +head of a God-made portal to the lake (the lane is nothing less) in a +grove of white beeches--lingering gold on the vines at the window, the +murmur of hives in the air, and these two mystic presences subduing +their radiance to sit with me?... There's a little can of tea that +is opened the last thing after the table is spread; the brass kettle +begins to sing, and the mother hovers over--a kind of sacred rite, all +this--then the dancing water is poured over the leaves and the room +softly fills with the air of far archipelagoes. Roses of Ireland and +France are in the room. Tearoses--some daughter of poetry must have +named them. + +... Still I am telling you about _things_--not about _them_. I thought +I should write you what they are, yet the longer I sit here, the more +testaments of their adorable lives appear, but their spirits draw +farther apart.... There is never a drone of talk where they are ... +sentences and silences, the myriad voices of evening stealing into the +hushes between.... I must get down to earth again. I must begin with +the grass and the shore and the magic which began when the child turned +up to me from the frowning clay.... + +I should like to report them moment by moment--to make you see, but +there is a fixed purpose in this chapter. Sitting apart from them that +first night, I contemplated the North America of the future--a kind of +dream that nestles within a dream--the Great Companions, superb men and +women, the vastness of leisure, the structural verity of joy, a new +dimension in the human mind, a new colour and redolence in the light +that plays upon the teeming world. Not for years had I been so near to +the dithyrambic.... I went out into the dusk and smoked a machine-made +cigarette--not for worlds would I desecrate that room. I returned +drowsy--opened the casement windows wide to the stars. As I put out the +lights, the sense came to me that the little room was as fragrant and +sweet as a new-woven basket. + +... I awoke to low singing. The room was grey and seemed to lift +with me, and the walls to widen. It was as if I had caught the old +house just waking from a sleep of its own. The phenomenon of the +singing lived in my mind. I don't know the song--a rapid bird-like +improvisation possibly--two voices hushed, but a vibration of clear +liquid joy. I went to the window. The earth was still asleep--a +pearl-grey world of dripping trees in a kind of listening ecstasy--two +beings below on the lawn--a lawn that was grey with dew. It was like +looking down upon a cloud from the Matterhorn. These two beings--one +in a veil of rose, one in a veil of gold--were dancing upon the cloud, +dancing bare-armed and limbed, their voices interpreting some soft +harmony that seemed to come from the break of day upon the sphere. + +It was not for me--yet I could not draw back from the vines. I brought +only thankfulness to it--sharing the joy in the dim of a room, in the +dim of a mere man's heart. Yet all I could contain came to me from +the mother and child. They knelt in the grass, the song more hushed, +bringing up to their faces and shoulders hands that dripped with the +holy distillations of the night--a wash in dew and day, their song a +prayer, their dance a sacred rite.... I should have thought it the gift +of dreams, but there was a starry track of deep green across the lawn, +where their bare feet had broken the sheen of dew. + +... I dwelt with souls--that was the truth. I sat at breakfast with +souls, dew-washed, speaking to each other and to me from that long road +of life which we lose for a squalid by-way when we put on the garments +of the world.... They talked again about what the birds hear in the +morning. They said that what the birds sing is their interpretation +of the great song of daybreak--that the earth does not meet her Lord +Sun in silence.... And then I knew that the song I heard was their +interpretation--think of it--a child of seven eating buttered toast. + +And I knew that power is a song--that the singing of the kettle is the +song of steam, that the inimitable _t'sing_ of an electric burner when +the current first charges through, is the awakening song of steel and +carbon to their native capacity and direction. The same is in the heart +of a boy when he finds his task--the same is in the order of a master +and in the making of his poem.... These two hear it--the song of Mother +Earth as the floods of light pour out and over her from the East. + +Here was a mother who knew how to play. She had launched somehow +into a sphere of her own making--doubtless having found life of the +world insupportable. I had thought much about bringing up children, +about unfolding the child, and here it was being worked out with +brimming joy.... It was all too natural to be called education. It +was nature--it was liberation, rather--a new and higher meaning of +naturalness. + +I was almost afraid to speak. The life here seemed so delicate +and delightful that comments would bruise the fine form of it.... +They played together--that was the point. Play is a liberation of +force--great play is ecstasy. In it one rises to the _stillness_ +of production, wherein one bathes in mystery and potency and all +commonness is cleansed away. Those who reach this stillness are the +great beings of the world. + + * * * * * + +When we finally open ourselves to any subject, we find intimations of +it everywhere. I found presently that all the voices of the New Age +had designated the magic of the dance. It seems almost dull to declare +that I do not refer now to the dance as it is taught and used and +exploited as a social accomplishment, but that in which the personality +is subdued and quiescent, quite as absolutely as it is in all great +moments of production. One must give oneself. Music carries the +sensitive soul into its own mystic region. A rhythm within answers to +the external rhythm--the two meet and mate--the fusion is bewildering +beauty. + +As in all creativeness, the first law is spontaneity. + +The great dancers of the future will _hear_ their own music--possibly +give voice to it as they give their body to the rhythm. There shall be +no exact interpretation of song or sonata--at least, not until absolute +genius interprets the exact figure of each tone-set. This is impossible +in a world of mutation. Accordingly, one who establishes a series of +movements to accompany a certain harmony, misses the meaning of the +divine improvisations which is the essential beauty of the New Age +dances. One should dance as freely as one called upon to speak. And one +will neither speak nor dance greatly by prearrangement or following any +arbitrary form. + +The very tone of the voice is different and deeper when one is caught +in the spirit of spontaneity. The prime object of the new education, +which includes dancing, is to set the soul free. Music is one of the +master-lures to call forth the sleeping giant. + + * * * * * + +One night a stranger[11] came to Stonestudy. She said she was called by +the way we were doing things, and that she hoped she had something to +bring to us.... The next morning at daybreak, down on the shore, I saw +stars and circles of young women and girls folding and bending together +in exquisite tones of colour and song. Her gift was the new dancing. +Over night she had captured the young people, bringing them a new joy +in the world. For two or three months she remained with us and has +since established classes east and west--life given to the message of +beauty. With us her expression and magic has endured. + + [11] Helen Cramp. + +There is no way more swift to merge in the universal, than by the +response to music through movement. Not dancing, which is a response to +time in music more than to rhythm, but the actual blotting out of self, +a spiritual exaltation which many religionists have sought and few +attained. + +The means is very simple; nothing strange or peculiar. It is the +dropping of the human will so that the music may flow through. One +does not move to the music then; one is moved by it. The objective +mind ceases to operate and through the larger consciousness absolute +Beauty streams. The response to the music may be totally different +with several pupils, but where the dancer is really lost to the +objective world, the movement is always true and satisfying to those +who watch. This is easy for those who are close to Nature and God, but +it is fraught with difficulties for those who are over-mental or who +have been terribly repressed. In many ways the will is man's highest +asset and it requires a supreme effort of the will itself to drop the +objective consciousness. + +There is a technique of the dance to be sure, but it is designed only +to free the body so that it may be a purer channel for the music, and +to facilitate the effacement of self. Physical strength, agility, +beauty as mere beauty, are never sought, but only the revelation of +eternal harmony. + +There is rhythm throughout Nature. Man often moves less gracefully +than the higher mammals. He has opposed his will to the law of the +universe, for centuries abusing his ancient right, but through music he +may realise again the harmony of all. The dancer is radiant with the +splendour of the infinite and there comes an ecstasy into the spirit, +of those who witness the transfiguration--the hush that one feels only +before the highest art and purest religion. + +It is reasonable to suppose that those who dance must bring back with +them into every-day living something of the beauty of those exalted +moments when they touch "the white radiance of eternity." Here is +natural education, natural religion--a practical mysticism, the merging +of self in the Infinite with a consequent fitness for daily living. + +So the dancing of the New Age is but a different form of contemplation +and production, by which the Soul becomes the creature--for the period +achieving that blessedness which is above time and space, and dwelling +in that dimension, where goodness, beauty and truth are one. + + * * * * * + +The new dancing is "in the air." Like vers libre and all New Age +realisations and creations, its first essential is freedom. This is the +meaning of the word Democracy--equality, liberation. The very spirit +of all that is new demands freedom. The deeper one penetrates, the +lovelier the folds of this marvellous conception. There is no title for +friend or comrade, for child or lover--comparable to the assumption of +equality. + +Equality--its power sings. It dances. When the last is said and done, +we all want the same thing, if we really knew,--goodness, beauty +and truth, one at the top. There is joy in the fine new conception +appearing now in all the arts--freedom first and last, even to +lawlessness at first, but that will right itself more swiftly than +smugness, which has had its age-long and hideous trial.... To me, the +house in the beeches slowly unfolds it all--the mystery of the cosmic +peasantry of the future--that fastidious poverty, that delicate plenty +which is perfection. These two, mother and child, mean the new dancing +to me, and the New Race beside. I have not dared to go again, because +I build incorrigible dreams, and this one especially is dear.... Yet I +often recall their loveliness together. + +The mother's beauty had turned to loveliness. It had more than the +mystic chiselling of sorrow--it had passion, it had humour.... I feel +the need of telling you from time to time that I am not rhapsodising, +the need of reminding you, how weathered and drab my mind was, when +I went up the shore that day. She made me think of grapes and olives +and laurel-boughs; she seemed the sister to the child. All about the +two were subtle, pervasive, ever-changing tests of the power of the +soul. The country people around did not think her extraordinary, much +less beautiful. How much is revealed in that? Loveliness requires +certain vision, an interpretative spirit, and thus it is protected +from the vulgar gaze. These good country people carry upon their faces +and hands and persons picture-writing of secret sins and dreamless +stolidity, and yet they are scandalised by this woman. You cannot +imagine how sweetly it came to me that she had utterly lost the sense +that she was outcast. + +A lamp burns at her door every evening. I don't suppose it is seen +three times a month--yet the lamp burns.... There's a big wooden Cross +in the room where they sleep--the child led me to it--a mat of grass +before it, _kusa_ grass, who knows?... A great Cross, a much-worshipped +Cross, with spike-holes, the broken edges worn smooth.... The child +whispered to me that _she_ had been brought (when she was too small to +know) and placed on the mat at the foot of the Cross for her mother to +find; also that she came when the white clover bloomed. + + * * * * * + +... It is only this way, bit by bit, that I can make the picture. I +have never before been so disturbed by the sense of inadequacy. The +light about their heads is all diffused like morning upon a cloud. + + * * * * * + + + + +8 + +OLD PICTURES IN RED + + +There was a period between the second and third year of the war, when +it seemed that the guiding, shielding spirits of the planet were slowly +being withdrawn--leaving only the mockery of goods, the chaos of +multiplied things. But at the blackest, in the very hush of desolation, +the new breath stole in upon us, a breath of lilacs on the chill, dank, +wintry air. Many now stand arisen, waiting the flash that changes the +world.... Five men were gathered in Stonestudy one evening; we talked +of our parts, the best we could do in the clean-up. It was hard to look +over the barriers at first; hard for an American to accept the fact +that he dare not say what he thought, nor write what he thought. It was +hard to realise that we were prevented from expressing what we thought, +by the very forces that had drawn us into this deep trouble. We who are +the distant generation of a party of pilgrims and voyagers who came to +America to find a free country, were strange and intolerant at first, +when we felt the yoke of Europe settle upon ancient scar-tissue. + +We discussed. + +A country is superb when one is unconscious of it, we said. One's +country should be like one's health, part of the song of life. Suddenly +to find the freedom of the past unremembered, the freedom of the +future unglimpsed, to hear the loathly low beat of talk from groups +of frock-coated Appetites, with heavy half-dead legs and heads like +pitching-quoits, settling our sacred future on the basis of steel +and coal and margin and murder market; to feel ourselves clutched +and borne forward with stub-nailed fingers in the stench of big +business; black-garbed shopmen pointing the way to the ports, urging +and shouldering other people's children to the ports of the gunboats, +advising the efficacy of "Nearer My God to Thee," as a song for sinking +ships,--we forgot at first in our own pain that this was merely the +body of the Old strained to a cracking point by the resistless growth +of the New. + +Presently we grew kinder.... In a way, the Old was the grim stepmother +in whose house we learned how _not_ to do most things; in whose kitchen +we learned cleanliness, because of the vile example of her organic +sloth; in whose walled garden we learned the peril and the passion of +Quest, because we loathed her long snoring of afternoons; from the +death of whose sects and schism-shops we set forth to find the unity of +life; from the obscenity of whose loves we came into the first great +cleansing hatred of ourselves.... + +No hatred now. Hatred is part of the Old. It has no part to unsteady +the hands of the reconstructionists. This New Race has come up in +strong soil. The Old nourished and fertilised all its vitalities. The +new green beneath the litter of dead leaves cries out under the decay, +"You are stifling me!" but the plan of it all is wiser, for there is +warmth still in the humus of the old to protect the new and the frosts +may not be finished. + +More and more as the sense of big cleansing and chastening came home +to us, the everlasting principles of reason and order and beauty also +appeared out of the chaos and the pain.... They were saying in Europe +that this war was a war without morale. We believed it would be a war +with morale before the destruction was finished. One of the cleanest +dreams we had was that America would bring, with its guns and knives +and instruments of flagellation, something of the almighty spirit of +the human heart to light the blackness where the Pale Horse has passed. +That's all morale is, and war without morale hasn't any cause or effect +on the constructive side, and will continue to destroy itself against +itself as all such forces do in their madness. + +If any one concludes that we were a group of religionists gathered in +Stonestudy that night it will be well to point out that this planet +will be a whole lot more religious before war ends, and no one will be +louder about it than the trade-mind everywhere. + +War brings death, and death enforces the faith of the human heart, +and faith is one of a trinity (as we learned in Sabbath School and +variously since) that inclines the heart of man to God. You take a +loved object from the Seen and place it in the Unseen (thousands each +day the soldiers pass) and faith is born of the agony of separation. +The human heart forces a bridge across the abyss from the Seen to the +Unseen. It's the old story of the bereaved turning to God. Saints are +thus made--thus tenderness and purity come to be. + +Within the next ten years there will be heroisms before our +eyes--heroisms such as seers and saints and sages have dreamed of as +the consummation of the human heart. And those who have lost most and +mourned most will read the eternal joy of the Plan from the Book of +God's Remembrance. + + * * * * * + +When you see the remnant of a race of people crying out that there +is no God--then you begin to know what war means. When a country has +given its tithe of human blood, _or one in five is gone_--then you +begin to know what an Austrian woman meant, when she spoke of the +"horrible grinding of war and the answer of the women to man's cries +of pain afield." ... When peace brings a worship of materials and a +dulness that cannot look beyond existing institutions--the end is war, +and after that a sitting in black upon the ground. + +We didn't know what death meant before this war--but many have learned. +The very word death has the sweetest sound of all uttered names to many +a lonely heart to-day. We didn't know enough about death. We had the +habit of thinking this was all. The end of such thinking is war, and +after that, a sitting in black upon the ground. + +When your heart is cleft in twain and one part stays on this side, and +the other over the dim borderland--there's a straining of eyes into the +Unseen, a picture making out of the creative materials of human spirit. +Life of the soul begins again--out of pain--always out of pain. + +We have not yet learned to accept life from the higher masters, Joy and +Beauty. We still learn through Pain. We forget the meaning of death, +even as we gather our things of death about us, and war comes along to +remind us again. Always those who answer to Master Pain must look to +death to find their relation to God. The faith that comes with peace +at last to the human heart, is energised by a love that crosses the +abyss of life and death.... A grand old teacher, Master Pain. When we +know all his lessons, and take his hand from our shoulder, and touch it +to our lips (for we shall know well his wonderful work when the time +comes for us to part with him), then we shall find that he is not a +black man at all--but a Sunburnt God.... + + * * * * * + +Four at a supper table--a little child, its young mother, and the old +father and mother of a grown son, who has just died for France. The old +man's eyes roved from the child to its mother, back to the old woman, +and lingered there, something rough and deep and wise in his look. The +child suffered vaguely. There was much suffering in the house.... The +young mother asked coldly if they could feel _him_ in the room. Then +just as coldly she asked if there were a God. Then she ran from the +room with a cry like a night animal. The silent child began to weep. +The old man and the old woman stared at each other and wondered what +their daughter-in-law meant about _him_ being in the room. + +A picture of the chastened world. + +The child turned from the strange, sad human beings to the fairies +that played upon the peasant hearth. The child's mother had rushed +forth into the twilight to find a vision or a memory or a breath of +God. The old man and the old woman looked so long at each other in the +darkness--that the soul of the son of their flesh stood for one healing +instant between them. Thus the enduring figures of the Unseen reveal +themselves to those who have suffered to the end. + +The nations are but names to fight for. These battle-lines are for +humanity's soul. If America is fighting for humanity, let it be with +surgical calm and healing in her hands. Hate spoils everything. + + * * * * * + +The babe knows a room; the child knows a house and looks out into a +street; the youth learns the street and then the city; the young man +learns his country, but the man should learn the world. You can never +be the great lover of America by hating the rest of the world; no +human mind can see what is best, what is even good for America, when +the interests of other countries are forgotten. No man's country ever +suffered because he turned his love and service to the feet of humanity. + + * * * * * + +The few who brought the real American impartiality to the European +war in the first months, found themselves in the midst of the most +challenging chaos that ever reared its head to the light. Profound and +tragic impressions followed each other. It became icy clear that the +greater nations, as well as the pawns of the Balkans and the Levant, +were puppets alike, churned together in a great planetary cleansing. +Every partisan path was found to be increasingly crooked the farther +one advanced--and a sheer descent at the last. Any national point of +view used to dupe the people into greater destructive energy, proved +in itself, no matter how sincerely offered, as short-sighted and +ill-founded as the hatred of two soldiers who meet between trenches and +discover, as they gore each other to death, that their only basis for +hostility is a different colour of coat. + +Studying Europe in those dark days, the unprejudiced eye was in danger +of having some truths torn down with the host of illusions. It was +hard to hold fast to the fact that there was anything magic or holy +about nations at war. Indeed, they seemed entities formed of groups of +greedy men who wanted their way--in the main, groups of leaders devoid +of vision and the spirit of fraternity, and careless of the welfare of +the people, quite the same as many great commercial organisations.... +The real enemies of any people are groups of men who want things for +themselves. The real issue of the war has nothing to do with entities +of this kind, nor with alliances of such entities, but with the painful +groping consciousness of the peasant mind--its slow and torturous +awakening to the fact that royalty in its utmost pomp and glow does not +enfold God. + +The people must learn before they can be free. Hitherto they have +been duped by the nations; and the nations are now being duped by each +other; but there is a greater plan at work--using men and nations +alike,--a plan to do away with boundaries and hatred and preying, +to strike the spear from the hand of man and leave it free to help +his neighbour, to establish democracy in the place of imperialism, +and fraternity upon the solid footings of the earth in the place of +separateness and strife.... The new volume of human spirit already +has been opened. We felt it that night in Stonestudy before lights +out,--the first beauty as of a song across still waters. + + * * * * * + +An American correspondent going home from the field in Europe "the +long way around," met an old Persian Master on the road to Damascus. +With the sage was his nearest disciple, also a Persian; in fact, the +young man was so loved that he had been changed from discipleship into +sonship. This young Persian became very devoted to the American. They +stood together for a moment in silence, when the time for parting came. +The old Master drew near and said: + +"It is good to see you place your hands together. To me it is a symbol +of the marriage of the East and West, for the East and West must mate. +Long ago the East went up to God and the West went down to men. The +East has learned Vision and the West has learned Action. These two +must meet and mate again for the glory of God and the splendour of +earth. The East has lifted its soul to the hills and held fast to +its memory of the Father's house. The West has descended into the +folds of the valley, and won from agony and isolation its efficacy in +material things. And now the mystic is looking down and the materialist +is looking up. Soon their hands shall join--like your two hands in +mine--and there shall be great joy in the Father's House." + + * * * * * + + + + +9 + +STEVE + + +Steve and I were camping together for a few weeks on the Southern +California strand. One morning he looked up from the pages of a book in +his hands and remarked: + +"This fellow is one of us." + +The book was _Youth_, by Joseph Conrad. + +"I haven't read a book for a long time," Steve added. "There are three +stories in this. I've read only one--_Heart of Darkness_--in fact, I +haven't finished that.... You have to fall into this Conrad and be +his--to get him. You let your mind open into a cup, and presently after +six or seven pages, you find it brimming. If you fall into him deep +enough, you get almost what he sees--not quite though. No reader ever +does. But you get something intense, fascinating, a restlessness, a +terror. You find that all your somnolence and inertia has caught fire." + +There had been a ten minutes' rain at dawn. The smell of the tropics +moved over the sterile sand. It was cool, but there was no wind. The +day promised heat. We had been up in Canada for the winter, and it was +hard to believe that hot sunlight was free. A broad quilt of gulls and +plover sat together on the shore waiting for the drying light or for +the mist to rise, or the tide to ebb.... + +Steve resumed: + +"He tells about a boy who loved maps--who used to look for hours at the +continents--thrillingly attracted to the darkest places, the patches +still unprotected. There was one heart of darkness with a river winding +through. He doesn't tell you the continent or the river, but there were +elephants there. He should have called the story _Ivory_.... Years +afterward, the man, worn to the bone from the world's lies, sets out to +penetrate this deepest black of the planet. He reaches the river and +follows it for endless days, but the world has arrived. Some nation is +there colonising for Ivory--you don't know which. The story is told +like that--unplaced in time and space. Really it doesn't matter what +particular imperialistic tendency is at work. The fact is, he climbed +the river into the ghastliest chaos.... + +"You get the deep green of the heart of the continent, the mournful +brooding leafiness--the natives herded and distracted, more afraid of +the blast of a river-steamer's whistle than of any kind of violent +death. Death was familiar to them. They were chained to labour, +cast loose to die. Vultures swept the sky waiting for their limbs +to fall still. There was the salty pester of fever in the air--men +foolish with fever and heat--a haze of flies--white men burning out +inside--oxidisation of human souls--a steady and hideous beat of +death--devils of hate and violence and acquisitiveness--clerks making +entries of Ivory--a nation's young men running through the jungles +for Ivory--carloads of bright glass beads and painted calico for +Ivory--all standards of life and career-building set upon Ivory--murder +for that--lives lost, tribes shattered--the leafy heart of a fresh +continent seared with the civil flame of greed--commodities dumped +in river beds--mails that men would die for torn open by vandal +hands--waste, perversity, nothing clean-cut even of crime, the horrible +non-initiative of the middlemen.... All this told with patient +exactitude, but with indescribable intensity; told by a master-hand +that trembles; with the control that one can only know who is sensitive +enough to tremble. You feel a big man bending forward to make you see +something that all but killed him to find out. You feel him scarred +and sick, his heart leaking, because he found it all so hideously and +stupidly rotten. It's a little picture of a trade war--that's the +point--the war of middlemen--middlemen turning to rend each other.... +Heart of darkness--after that the light comes." + +Steve opened and shut his fingers in the sunlight. The warmth was +sweeter every minute. + +"This fellow sees it all," he went on. "He's done a big job for me--for +anybody who gives himself to the book. There's something immortal about +being a workman like that--about any workman. That's why one wants to +cast a weep after the passing hordes of middlemen. They can't do work. +They don't even see the fog of human agony they've painted the world +with. They are _it_. It is the old against the old. It's all about +Ivory. They crucify for fossil." + +Steve was lighting up. + +"This Conrad brought back to me to-day a bigger love for the workman. +The starved and scorned inventor gets the best of it, after all--not +in Ivory--but he builds something in himself. He quickens something in +himself that goes on in freed consciousness when the body falls. No, I +don't insist that anything goes on in any particular way, but the deep +moments of work somehow show a man that the best of him here is but a +nexus between a savage past and a splendid future.... It's wonderful to +be alive to-day. I believe there are secret agencies at work behind all +the governments--that they are one at the top. I don't mean detectives, +not intelligence or espionage bureaus. Potent, mystic, infallible +forces. It doesn't matter. _Some person or some group is holding the +plan of the New Age._ + +"We're learning life as never before--plucking the deeper fruits and +mysteries of pain. But one must go apart from the crowd to see. One +must cease to be a partisan. The real seer sees the whole, not the +part. All the war-lands are in pain. One sees only the part, when one +is in pain. Not one man out of a million sees it all. A few Russians +see it all--a few in China--a few in India. Romain Rolland sees it all. +This fellow, Conrad, sees it all.... It's a pity if America doesn't +soon get the full picture. It's worth seeing----" + +Ocean and sunlight and mountains. The world was a brimming cup. If a +man could take all the beauty there was for him, he could never die.... +We went over to the post-office of the little town. The business men of +the place were coming in. The first mail had just been distributed.... +Grocers, butchers, the hardware man, the real estate men, the man +who ran the newspaper, fishermen, barbers, lawyers--mainly fat and +pleasant--children on the way to school. + +They were short-breathed and short-armed. They dressed in wool and wore +heavy dark hats. I had never noticed before how short-armed the race +of tradespeople are. Labourers and peasants are not so; painters and +musicians have a tendency to be long-armed. I mentioned this to Steve. + +"The middlemen," said he. "They are tightened throughout--ligaments +contracted--contraction taking place in the deeper weaves of +mind, a drying up of the deeper sources of life. Contraction, +self-centering--that's what madness is. A man must sing, or weave, or +build or make bricks. The ways of competitive life are paltry ways. +They hide their ways from one another, and afterward from themselves. +They pluck no fruits; they contrive no short cuts; they do not become +intimate even with the commodities of the earth--the very things +they worship and pare margins from. They eat infamously, filch from +each other.... It's all here--all that Conrad pictured in the heart +of darkness. These are the sick, the maimed, the blind of the earth. +They live in the realm of fear, pain, anger, desire. These are the +war-makers.... Their arms are twisting and shortening in to their +navels----" + +Sunlight streamed in through the open doors of the post-office. Motors +going by drowned the soft rustling from the sea. The hell of the +outer world trickled in through bits of conversation. Everybody had +read the morning paper at the same time. No one thought of telling +anything that his neighbour did not know.... Europe was starving--the +President was ill--railroads in strike, coal famine, prohibitive cost +of staples--France cracking with the dry-rot of exhaustion--England ... +a voice--Germany choking in her own blood. + +The tradespeople of the little town by the sea gathered in their bills +and orders and advertisements and hurried back to their shops. Nothing +astonished any more. There were no words for the world's woe--no ears +for lamentations--no mind but to buy cheap at the right time and sell +dear all the time. We walked back to the shore. + + * * * * * + +"I once saw a little town on a hill-side," Steve said. "A grand +boot-maker was there, and a man who made clocks with such tools as he +had--big noble clocks that ran unvaryingly eight full days. Another +man made furniture--perfect woods from the forest drying in his kilns +and sheds. There was a sweet smell about his shop. There was a weaver +and a potter there. The days were long and singing, full of labour and +peace. No one multiplied by mechanical means. Every artisan had his +apprentices. The age of the apprentices will come back--with a new +dimension added----" + +"Switzerland or dream?" said I. + +Steve smiled. "They are starting communities all along this coast," he +said. "Many are on the quest of the town I saw." + +We sat down upon the sand again. The sun was higher. White clouds +brooded in heaven's own daylight; white wings moved upon the sea, I +was thinking about Steve and all he had said. What Conrad pictured in +the dark continent existed here in one of the cleanest small towns +of America--an earlier stage of the same malignant disease. From the +broad and beautiful vantage points of democracy and fraternity--every +shop here was a lair, the products, exposed and secreted, a spectacle +of moral decay and insensate devouring; every schoolhouse a place of +dismal enchantment where competition was not only taught but enforced. +Steve knew deeply well when he spoke, that the creative artist, the +producer of every real and true and beautiful thing, comes into the +power to express himself, in spite of such education, not because of +them. + +One can laugh at all mediocre men occupying seats of the mighty and +calling their dead gods to witness that they are right--but one +who knows that the intrinsic gift of each child is the one thing +in sunlight to be promoted, turns away a bit dismally from the +spectacle of the standardisation of the child mind--from the wholesale +manufacture of middlemen by school system. + +Steve loves America. I know of no one who loves America more. He +doesn't rise and cheer when the orchestra plays a questionable bit +of verse and tune in a movie-hall where imagination is being put to +death--_but he believes in the vision of the Founders of America_. He +believes in the spaciousness and splendour of the American spirit; that +the dream of a few mystics will triumph at the last, and that the many +will follow the dream of the few. He does not believe that the voice of +the middlemen is the voice of God. + +It's hard to credit, but this young man does not hate one country to +love another. He loves America because the dream of a new heaven and a +new earth has a quicker chance for breaking through into matter here +than elsewhere. He perceives the tissues of the senile and the obscene +breaking down in America, under intense civil and martial and moral +processes. He believes that this breaking down is essential before the +building begins. He believes that the future will be built upon the +thoughts of men who are great enough to stand apart from the dumas, +from the cabinets and the senates, just now. As Steve sees it, all +partisans have to do with the parts, and the parts of the partisans +have to do with the Old, which is destroying itself--sense against +substance, limb against limb, organ against organ. + +The young men of the New Race are born of a mating of the East and +West. They are naturally intolerant of partitions. Steve is one of +these. He isn't a spirit alone. He is a body and brain. He has stayed +awake through the full night and day. He sees the planet in one piece. +He has crossed all the rivers. He knows the young men of America. He +is one of them. He loves America because he knows the rest of the +world. He has friends among the Chinese young men--among the young +men of Russia and India. He says that all three have greater obstacles +to overcome in getting the dream through, than we of America--that +everybody will be singing it after the wreckage is cleared away. + +"America, Russia, India, China--they are lands, not pavements," Steve +declared. + +He was looking across and to the south. The sun was a glory about +us--all the background a tentative, swiftly passing thing, all but +forgotten now, stilled by the rustle of the long, low white lines of +the sea. + +"The New Age will redeem all the broad lands," he said, with a trace of +a smile--"lands for meadows and fields and gardens--meadows for milk, +fields for wheat, gardens for honey--the New Race is particular for the +perfect foods--foods for the giant and the child--broad lands for the +toilers--the great sea coasts for the dreamers.... It's all a matter of +taste," he added. + + * * * * * + + + + +10 + +HEJIRA + + +We found we were a bit tied in the Middle West, caught somewhat whether +we liked it or not, in the meshes of possession. Steve and I had liked +it much out on the Southern California strand.... When one reads in the +earlier book,[12] the stress that we put on building that big stone +house on Lake Erie; this felicitous hejira may disconcert. + + [12] _Child and Country._ + +The fact is, we wearied of possession. We found ourselves yearning +for that beauty which is unconfined. We were athirst for new things, +a different break of seasons and taxes.... The world was so full of +people who could build and buy and own and insure, that we decided we +should be doing the things that the others could not. We were glad to +have built the house for the other fellow. We had to do it. We learned +how to run it well, in and out--but it was a stone house. When a man +builds a stone house with walls eighteen inches thick, he must leave a +hole to get out; also he must be sure that he isn't building on his own +chest.... In true Hive spirit, we renounced at the highest moment of +possession. + +The crowd cannot be seen by one who stands in the crowd. On the same +basis a man cannot see the relation of his house to the road or garden +from the inside of the house. The world must be regarded from outside +to be seen as a whole. The New Race is determined to see it so. This +_outside_ is none other than the mystical viewpoint of all world +artists and builders. + +One does not know what friends are, until one discovers that the secret +of friendship is not in getting but in giving. No one knows what love +is until he reverses all the laws that the many follow now. I do not +mean lawlessness. I mean the higher law that is found at last by the +quester after goodness, beauty and truth. We have to finish with the +world as it is before we set out in quest of a better country.... We +found that we had to become active servants of a finer ideal than +householding at its highest. We determined to do more than to dream +this ideal; we set about to make a better country. At worst, we work +for our children. + +It came to us many times before we moved that we were forever +done with things as they are; that we had come to the end of show +and property-measure and hoarding; to the end of the love of self +which destroys the vision for friendship; to the end of domesticity +which holds one's neighbour as prey or rival; to the end of civic +identification, or relation with any federated commonwealth, which +fancies its existence threatened by the prosperity of other political +bodies. No heat about it. + +We came to the edge of the Lake in vanloads; we went away with bags.... +I turned from the eastern distance on the bluff, on one of the last +days, and looked at the vined study and the big stone house, the elms +so strong and green about it. I remembered the early picture of all +this. It began from Stevenson's _Treasure of Franchard_, many years +ago,--how old Dr. Duprez went out in the morning and tried grapes and +plums with the dew on them, sniffing the perfumes of his own yard, +dwelling in his own orchards. + +I remember one day before building that the man came to us about the +young trees. He had pictures of them in books--blooms and fruits of +such colours that nature would never be guilty of--all the fruits I +heard of as a boy--white grapes that never grow in this country, purple +ones that grow whether you care or not.... + +The trees were coming on now, many with ripening fruit. The grove of +elms was a matter of collateral, as the bank would say. The break-water +had caught up thousands of yards of sand. It worked--the old struggle +of wasting banks forgotten until a greater storm. The honeysuckles that +were planned to climb the bars of the study windows, had to be trimmed +now for any light at all. The wistaria trailed admirably and imposed +upon the front the sense of years. + +... We had planned to have all the fruits; some of the finest were now +in flower. We came with many clothes, underwear and outerwear, wool and +dark things. We left with a few light effects in our hands--to find a +place where white garments might be worn in peace. We came with a great +idea of food--game and fishes, meats, poultry, many cans and vegetables +and desserts. We went away with a taste for graham bread and butter--a +spread of honey, a glass of milk. We came with a fear of disease for +the children, fear of colds, fear of losing something, or having +something taken away, doubtless having the fear of death and accident. +We went away with a clear idea of what death is and the advantage of +it, children and adults alike. + +Young children rode the horse that had a reputation for being +wild-spirited and very much a man's mount. We had seen the deep places +of the Lake fill with sunshine. We came with parasols and awnings and +protections against the sun. Most of us would like to have worn nothing +but a breech-clout had the town permitted; and the only time we had +found the world hard to bear, was the long grey Spring days of rain. + +Sunlight--it is closer to God and happiness and manhood and every +delight than words can suggest. The more you know of it, the more you +need; the more you love it, the more its mysterious excellence unfolds. +I know what sunstroke is, and what the sickness from heat is. It's a +vile state of the body, or vile clothing that stifles the body. When +one is well and has learned to come back to the Father of Lights--there +is no fear in his heart. I used to wear a helmet and dark glasses, but +no more--eyes stronger than ever. I look for the sun in the morning and +stare up from the sand into his face at high noon. There is nothing the +matter with sunlight. The sadness and the sickness is with those who +bring their quilts and cloaks to hide it from their flesh.... + +It's all in synthesis. The end of bulk possession is pain.... We +started in with many flowers. We ended with roses. It's all in the +tea-rose.... By careful selection of thoughts over a little period, we +can come into the joy of flowers in other people's gardens. There are +brave men who allow you to walk in their orchards; and there are many +who work hard to raise fruits for a price. There is much joy, if you +really look at it, in building a house for another fellow. + +We start with the brute materials--beginning with the clay itself. +Our cultivations become more intensive through the years. All life is +so. We take the extract of a thing at last--a shelf of books where +formerly we wanted a roomful--somebody's else little rented bungalow, +where formerly we wanted an estate. We realise, at last, that there is +an essence to be obtained from the extract, an oil from the essence--a +spirit at last from the oil. The whole story is in that--synthesis. +Slowly, at last, we begin to set ourselves free. We descend into +matter; learn its lessons and laws, rise like a plant through the +darkness to the light, integrating force to meet and cope with the new +and lighter element. I held up seven little books in one hand--weighing +no more than a new novel. + +"It's all in these," I said to the Chapel. "One could put these in his +bag and have it all." + +... And then at last, I went down alone and empty-handed to the shore, +meditated on God with sun and sand and flowing airs.... All matter +is scaffolding which falls away. A man thinks he builds a house for +himself, but no sooner has he put on the last tile than death or the +open road calls. He chooses his climate and grows out of it. He thinks +he must possess, that he must hoard against a rainy day, and he gathers +the stuff of death about him. If he cannot rise, death covers him +for the time. Dr. Duprez didn't speak of the care of his orchard, or +his garden. It was all _story_ to me. Dear R.L.S. He didn't dream +of the work of the hand necessary to keep up an orchard, and have a +connoisseur's joy for a few summer days of the year. He didn't tell +of the parasites, the sprinklings, the arsenates and pumps, nor of +the little winged migrators that sit on the hills, waiting for the +potatoes to come up. The call comes to possess nothing. It had better +be answered. + + + + +11 + +THE SPECTATOR + + +Some of us here have swiftly reviewed certain old slaveries, that we +may set free the children of to-day.... They do not have to make the +same mistakes we did. I, at thirty-nine, say to those ten and twenty +and thirty years younger: + +"Start where I leave off. I do not relieve you of pain or error or +shortsightedness, of passion or pleasure, or anything that arouses +or wears down body and soul. Only this I ask you--don't make the +same mistakes I did. Let me give you the answer to a few petty and +pestiferous lures. I can put you right on them. Begin now to learn +your lessons by doing things wrong at first, a holy way to get +somewhere, but be a pioneer in your evils; be daring and fastidious +and full-powered and discriminating in your faults! Above all, be +impersonal in them as soon as possible. Let the winds of the world +breeze through. It's all a Laugh." + +Every process of the world to-day is designed to take away that +adorable love and listening of the child to its own soul. Streets, +schools, trade, neighbours, houses in rows, priests, pastors, +charlatans, all standardise. A thousand teachers in technic for one +in the spirit of things; ten thousand teachers of the health of the +body (and every one wrong) for one who shows the way to the single and +sacred fountain of youth; innumerable voices lifted in fly-dronings +of instruction, how to fill the bin and the brain, the bank and the +bourse--how to have and to hold and to die holding, and to bury oneself +in the midst of--for one who laughs and plays and dares to watch the +world go by.... At last to be the Spectator! + +I tell you now from much living that there is nothing here in the world +that is worth fighting for, but the glad tolerance of events, sheer, +laughing joy in the Plan.... Every time you adjust your life to the +standard of the world, you are doing something that is beneath your +soul, and you will suffer for it, and be forced to retrace. Dress for +the world, and the world will find its flaws in you. Work for the world +according to its specification, and it will defile you. Enter into any +of the competitions of the world and your face and your hands and task +will be constricted by visible and invisible impediments and barriers, +less than the real of you in every detail. Search for health according +to the laws of flesh alone, and it will elude you at every point, +showing you all vanities and pits and pains. Search for beauty of face +and body, and it will be the first thing taken. There is nothing in the +world but to make the human divine--that is the job we are here for. + +To cease to hold is the beginning of invincible attraction; want +nothing and the treasures of the world are yours. You cannot have +health until you are ready to give up life here. Cease to cling, +and that which was a body held apart from you, is suddenly a winged +creature returning.... There is nothing here but the love story, and +the power of that must be spiritual. The madonna of the future will +look up, not down at the head upon her breast. Man must overcome +mammon; Woman must overcome the mammal. The lovers of the future will +look a little time in each other's eyes and much above to a Third who +will come nearer and nearer for their adoration.... The friends of the +future will sing in their Partings; they shall know the spirit and the +breath of _camaraderie_ which knows no death. + + * * * * * + +There is a tendency on the part of our young associates to be +extravagant in their speech. Much that they see is beyond their +capacity decently to express. A group of us was looking down from a +high balustrade. Flowery vines were woven intricately against the face +of the stucco below. We became conscious of an incredible whirring, so +low that it was difficult to hear, and yet so intense as to give the +thought of a distant seismic disorder. It was the invisible wings of a +humming-bird, flashing from cup to cup in the vines below. The child +standing next to me said: + +"The sound has texture." + +It expressed something very real to me; yet there is not power in words +to portray the exact feeling. All the objects of nature have their +spiritual dimensions also for those who dwell much in the Unseen. These +unusual children see the material object merely as an outpost for a +challenging mystery; while, to the material mind, the outpost is all, +and the lavish adjectives and expressions of the former are deplored as +gush or affectation. As a matter of splendid truth, the most marked and +potent of all adjectives and expressions are pitifully inadequate to +express the lustre and radiance which begins at the point where three +dimensions end. + +The Valley Road Girl came into the Study one day, saying that this +chapel book should be called _The Hive_. We all thought it a wonderful +name to work toward, yet the unfolding of possibilities has been +steadily interesting since that day. + +The inner sanctuaries of occult literature commend the students to look +to the bees. The pattern of much that man has still to unfold from his +own soul, for his personal and communal uplift, is already expressed +in the hive. There is a period of larva, and a period of wings to each +cycle. Such matters call to those of spiritual discernment. One feels +on the verge of great revelations for humanity, beyond the thing called +death, as he studies this miniature model of a great democracy. + +The most fascinating love episode I ever read was the Nuptial Flight in +Maeterlinck's _Life of the Bee_. The majesty of winging to the sun, the +falling back of the weaker-winged suitors, the commanding isolation of +sun and sky, fusion under the mighty beat of the wings of the queen, +the broken body of the male, the mother's return to the shadow and the +labour of the generative wheel--magically, it all opened a vista to +the great renunciations, the great passions and aspirations ahead for +the human soul, great fusions of the future, marriages truly made in +heaven, the inevitable trinity of all matings--the drama of love and +death. + +For her one high noon flight in June, the queen toils through years. +She brings back from that superb instant the swarming cities of the +future. On and on, she unfolds her fecundity in the dark, a prodigious +and Herculean labour; from the human standpoint a task of intolerable +pain and monotony. The queen's labour is scarcely more difficult than +the tasks assigned to the hosts of workers, which appear to be denied +any separate episode of emancipation. Yet, equally with the queen, +they share the communal spirit; and no one who has stood among the +hives at the end of a long summer day, and heard the song of bounty and +deep-hearted content, can deny the peace that dwells among the myriad +of skilled artisans, each with his perfectly appointed task. + +Bees appear to remember the light, while working at the opposite side +of the wheel. Men, as yet, are detached, lost in the heresies of self +and strife. Only a few visionaries have peered beyond the petty reach +of the optic nerve, to perceive that this, which we make so much of, is +but the hell-portion; that this appearance of ours in pounds is a mere +dressing up in materials of earth to endure the dark and low vibration +of the wheel's most downward sweep. These few visionaries, always +singing the joy of the other arcs of the cycle, somehow keep the dream +alive,--the dream that appears already to be the essential blessedness +and magic of life in the hive. + +All mysticism seeks to teach us this single point which the bees seem +to have learned so well--to transcend time and space in labour; to put +off the sense of separation and strife, to hearken to the soul's own +song of equality and sufficing days. We must be pushed to the last +reaches of pain before we learn this secret. We have to penetrate the +darkness before we earn this flash which swings wide the portals of joy. + +Joy is the most potent thing in the universe. The bee-queen mother +weaves race after race of progeny out of the incredible dynamics of an +instant's joy. Each cell that she fills with life is a living fragment +of her nuptial feast. Fusion is ecstasy, parturition is pain. The many +become one; that is heaven. The one becomes many again; that is earth +and hell. Integration and diffusion--the same story told in the hives +and ant-hills, in the strolling winds and swinging seas, in the hearts +and marts of men, in matings everywhere. + + * * * * * + +The original idea was to use the title, _The Hive_, in relation to the +happy intensity of Stonestudy days, but our ideal grew to adapt to the +name, because of its revelations in regard to the new social order; the +pure and instant abnegation of the self to the community; the active +acceptance of the precept: _That which is good for the one is good for +the many, and that which is good for the many is good for the one_. + +We cannot lose ourselves long in our own misery when we realise the +glory of yesterday, and the more spacious solar adventure of to-morrow. +We cannot continue to feel our own isolation when we perceive a brother +in the eye of a stranger, when we perceive the sons of God in the +eyes of passing men. At length appears the task ahead--the great +Fatherland, the Planetary Hive. + +I have taken the hint from the new race children, that to transcend +pain we must make joy of it. Given the hint, one realises that the +masters of all ages have told the same story--how to make light of +human shadow, how to make lustrous our own darkness. No matter what +science says to the contrary, the quest for the Absolute means the same +thing; this is the marriage at Cana, the turning of water into wine; +this is the passion of the ancient alchemists, to transmute base metals +into gold; this is healing; this is regeneration. + +To make joy out of pain is still more: it is power for world's work; +it is the light that one carries among men; it is the fire that makes +man remembered by his fellows, that makes man significant in any +task. It is loss of the sense of self; the death of the lower for the +birth of the higher life; the subjugation of three-score-and-ten for +immortality; an _adios_ to the hands that cling, for the stride and +rhythm of the Great Companions on the long road. It is not for the +saint any more than for the soldier, not for the sage any more than +for the politician, not for the poet any more than for the parent. It +is not piety, it is power. One learns it best from the children. One +becomes as a little child in learning it well. + +We are learning rapidly these days. These are the days of humanity's +passion and pilgrimage. The soul of humanity is passing along the dusty +roads of Palestine, for the healing of its own weaknesses, the casting +out of its own demons. One who is not carrying a part of the world +burdens now, as well as his personal pack, seems forgotten of the gods. +It has come to many of us that we dare not take more than a glimpse of +our own allotted happiness--that we may not have more than a touch of +the beloved's hand in these days of parturition everywhere. + +But personally and nationally we shall come to that significant +crossing where nothing else can be taken from us, where death seems the +highest boon, and Master Pain has driven home his most pointed shaft. + +That is the moment of laughter. Driven to the last ditch we turn and +laugh. That is the moment of our expansion for a new kind of heroism. +One builds from that deep hour. + +The ultimate secret is not to identify oneself with that which changes. +When these objects shift or break down, or some one takes them away, we +suffer the old savage rent. The day comes when we disentangle from the +final mesh of possession--cease the idolatry of things; then, and only +then, are we rich--possessing the spirit and essence of all things, +tallying the universe within according to its objective arrangements +with the universe without. + +Finally, to master the world, one must learn actually to enjoy the +mutation of material things, as one of an audience watches the +movements on the stage. No longer torn here and there in the small +fury of detached affairs, one laughs richly at the progress of the +Play. Possessing the spirit of all things within, he realises that +nothing he has can really be taken away. No longer identifying himself +with material objects, he is at last in touch with the perfect and +changeless archetypes. This dispassion, so difficult to reach, at last +extends over all world-forms. One ceases to love bodies; one loves +souls. The son at the front, the daughter taken to a different house, +the empty seat at the table, crash of finance or romance--all but +a passing of symbols--Godspeed and a smile. Bit by bit the valiant +reaches that profound and almost divine indifference to the external, +having bound himself to the real, the enduring, the inner cosmos. + +First passion, then dispassion, then compassion--conquest of pairs of +opposites until night and day are seen as separate sides of the same +globe. So with pain and pleasure and all fluctuations. Day by day, +while learning this great secret, the aspirant is forced to die to +the thing he loves most. Day by day the thing that he hates and fears +most--for that he must live. At last, loves and hates merge together. +One is no longer focalised upon a point, but upon a universe. He +arrives at the great silence in himself, the static momentum. He no +longer moves with the world--the passing show goes by. He transmutes +pain into joy--not lying to the self, but because pain of the body is +joy of the soul--joy of union, joy of birth that comes from pain. + +At last to be the Spectator! To possess the world, to realise the +divinity of others, the ineffable equality of Souls. To have all,--the +mothering winds of the hills and the holy breath of the sea; to move +and laugh and die with all the world. + + + + +12 + +TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL + + +The younger boy with us--Tom, now seven, does not find it easy to +express himself through writing. He draws well, but that is a talent +which I would not recognise so quickly as the expression through words. +I mean to send him away to an artist for a time. Tom's imagination is +fertile and expansive. He dictates well--wonderful play of colours +through his mind. He talked the following to an amanuensis, a year or +more ago as he conned over a handful of coloured stones: + +"There's a wonderful mystery about stones.... One like a mountain that +the fire comes up out of--with white on top ... another like a cap of +honey.... Another: this is like a great big mountain, and this is a +dog full of food, and he's standing on a dragon, one of those devilish +dragons; his tail is curved under him, and a spot on him near his neck. +He looks down and he sees the sky, floating. He wonders if he should +leap down and get some. There's a great big lake under him. He thinks +he has more power than anything in the world--he's looking for more +power. He's wondering where it is. See him thinking. + +... Here's a volcano at night--see the force, and then the rain beating +down behind it--even see fairies dashing by there. Here's a man with +his jaw knocked in. Mystery here--a forest at night. This is like a +coloured man that's been in a prize-fight, and he's gritting his teeth +because he didn't win; he's got a mug-nose too. There's a fried-cake. +Another: Here's 'Agra Falls and fairies dashing, and sparkling stones +at night. That's in Japan--that's true, look at all the lanterns up +there. There's some India--water dashing over a cliff, another like a +smooth cliff, nothing to hurt it, just fairies to fly around it--and a +door-knob, and there's a hole where owls live...." + + * * * * * + +Many interesting things appear in these dictations provided Tom's +helper effaces himself sufficiently to permit the boy to forget +externals. The remaining pages of this chapter is a sketch of Tom's +case written by the Little Girl[13] who furnishes an interesting +surface of understanding for the complications of this lad. +Incidentally her own development is one of the big winnings of +Stonestudy work. The Little Girl is now fourteen and this essay will +show something of her awakening: + + [13] Jane Levington Comfort. + + +TOM + +He is seven, restless as the sea, and just as full of mysteries. Many +times I have felt a strong spirit in the body, a healer, a great lover, +a dear and compassionate comrade. For a time Tom meant India to me. +I could see the blue hills and the wide dusty roads, the cows coming +home through the dusk, and the little Indian mothers bringing food and +their babies to the feet of a withered, white old man in a big Sannysin +robe. Always I seemed one of the mothers, and Tom the master. I used +to sit at his feet when he was very small, and listen carefully to his +wandering, yet deep and wise words. He seemed to unfold many things to +me about myself, and in that way helped me as a teacher would, though +he did not know. + +For a while Tom's quest was in healing--his small hands were always +laid upon our hurts, serious eyes staring upwards. It seemed to awaken +the past in his soul. Gradually his bent turned to other things. When +we went to the country to live, he saw Nature for the first time. Tom +was very much at home with the old Mother. He loved the living things +that most children fear; the bees and beetles, the blind little beings +that live in the earth and the small, red-tongued garter-snakes. He +often spoke of a life he had lived with the snakes--of the big ones +that used to love him and curl around his neck. I never could help +shuddering a little at the thought, but Tom would explain, "They won't +hurt you if you love them. Then they will love you too. Snakes feel +just what you feel--if you're afraid of them, they get mad." + +Again I would think of India--the great cobras that sit before a pure +master, opening their hoods to listen to his chanting. Tom knew what +purity meant, a deep-down purity like the earth itself. Why should +anything hurt him?... He used to hold the bees in his hands and walk +through a cloud of double-winged beetles with utmost carelessness. Many +times he has led me through a cloud of them, murmuring, "They won't +hurt you." Once he disturbed a honeybee in the late afternoon, drunken +and senseless on the fragrant flowers. It stung him. He shook it off +his hand and said in a disgusted voice, "That wasn't my bee!" + +A little later Tom discovered the Unseen of Nature. I mean that it +ceased to be the unseen to him. The fairies opened their mysterious +arms, and we saw little of him for a time, so lost was he in their +wonder. There was a small rock in the front yard that he used to sit +on when he was looking for them. The busy brown gnomes appeared to +him first--often rolling pebbles down the cliff, or gathering leaves +in their little aprons. Then the tree-nymphs would come to him; so +green and fresh and sweet--with bright eyes and coaxing hands. He +would follow laughingly what they said and did, always explaining to +us later what they _meant_. And he saw the spirits of the water, far +out over the lake, mingled with the sunlight. They gave him much, he +said, but he would like to have gone out to them. He said that burning +wood unlocked the fire fairies--let them out into freedom and light. +He loved to build fires on the beach, watching carefully the leaping +and spreading of the flames. The salamanders were responsible for the +spreading, he thought, and used to watch their little red hands at +work. His eyes seemed to melt as they stared so far and deeply into +things--way past the _seen_ into that which is nothingness to most of +us. And he would come back slowly as though it were hard to detach +himself from the enchantment. Always we kept very still at such a time, +for fear we hurry him. + +Out of the magic and mystery of that summer, out of the warm nights +full of stars and peace, and the days of sunlight spent with the +beckoning fairies, Tom's soul unfolded another big quest. The fairies +were only the start of the Unseen, though we thought at the time that +he saw all that a human being could. At last the Master's voice reached +his open ears. He answered immediately. + +It began with old Indian philosophy. He heard certain reading in the +Study one day, and later asked for the book. It was a little book, +written in words of one syllable by a Hindu boy, telling how to reach +the Feet of the Master. The next morning I found him on his knees +before it in the sunlight. At that time Tom was just learning to read. +It was hard for him, but he wanted to be alone with the spirit of it. +He handed me the book saying, "Please read this page aloud to me." + +The young Master was speaking of Discrimination and Onepointedness. +Tom's face filled with the wonder of one who has found the thing he +has been wanting for a very long time--for ages perhaps. He said, "If +you asked me to go and get you a book, and I went, but instead of +bringing the book back to you, I took it to the shore and commenced +to read, forgetting that you wanted it, that would be the opposite of +onepointedness, wouldn't it?" A little later, he said: + +"The Master watches you from the hills, all the way up. He knows all +that you do. When you do small things, you are taking Him away from +yourself; you are not being the _Soul_. Each time you do something +great and brave, the Master comes a step nearer. When you become your +soul, the Master comes all the way down the hill and tells your brain +which way to go--tells you the path, the way home. _Then_ you have +earned it. You have got to earn everything, everything that comes to +you.... I think that the Master comes and takes you away at night, +shows you many things--tries to help you. But pain has to teach the +brain, and pain is the lack of soul. It hurts your soul to have you +suffer. It hurts the Master too, but they both know that you are +learning to be their comrade through your pain." + +Tom paused. In his eyes there was that wonderful melting again, and a +joy so deep and pure that it made my heart sing. + +"It is all meant," he added. "All is meant, but men do not know that +the Master is watching. For ages and ages the Master waits so patiently +for his _friend_ to come." + +"His friend?" I asked. + +"Yes. Souls are always comrades. The Master is greater than you are +only because he has been longer on the path. He started before you did. +He has come up through all that we have. Just think how long my Master +has been waiting for me, and I have not even found Him yet." + +I looked at the little body of him, at the innocence of the eyes and +mouth, all untouched by the world--so pure and yet crying out in pain +because he had taken so long on the quest.... His eighth year brought +Tom into regular boyhood. The young brain, always before silently +giving way to intuition, began to speak for itself. This stage is as +important perhaps, but not so beautiful as when the hushedness and +glowing of the Unseen touches a child. Here we turned from Tom, and the +things that creep into the heart of almost every boy of the same age, +crept into Tom's heart. He forgot the fairies--they ceased to call. He +forgot the wide roads of peace and purity. He seemed to forget that the +Master was still waiting so patiently on the hill for him to open and +receive. But we knew better than that. + +The development of the brain always robs a child of the inner glowing +for a time, but it all comes back again with a great dimension added; +the instrument is then keen and direct--a power in itself. We turned +from Tom--a young brain standing alone, very conscious of itself, +is anything but interesting. At the time we were in the turmoil of +departure, each of us thinking in different ways about the long journey +just ahead, and the wonder of being at last in California. Tom was more +or less his own director those days. + +He fell into crime, looted the house of a friend, denied everything. He +was sent to his quarters to stay until he found himself again. It took +a week exactly, but he found a deep happiness in being alone in the +little room before he left it. It did him as much good as the long days +in the sunlight ever could; he came out pale and wide eyed, and the +breath of a soul was in the room when he entered. + +One day out of his long week, I went to him. The sun had gone down +behind a nest of grey clouds. Dusk had almost deepened into darkness, +but there was no light in his room. He sat there, his eyes staring +ahead of him, his hands folded tightly in his lap. I walked in quietly +and sat down beside him. I was not even noticed; he was lost in his +thought. At last I asked, + +"Tom, what did you find so interesting in that cheap business?" + +"I haven't found out yet," he said grimly. + +"Have you been thinking about it?" + +"Sure have. Been thinking all day." + +"Has nothing come?" + +"No, but it's coming soon. It can't take long if I stay here like this, +wishing and pulling every minute." + +"Of course it can't." + +He continued to stare into the darkness ahead. + +"What does it feel like, Tom?" I asked. + +"Your soul leaves you.... Your soul won't stay if you are going back." + +"Going back?" + +"Yes. I mean if you have been big and listened to its voice, and then +stop. If you are _less_ than yourself after you've been _more_, your +soul won't stay." + +"What do you do when your soul leaves you?" + +"You walk the Black Path." + +He looked a child seraph. + +"That path is not interesting, is it?" + +"No. You have got to know what it is, got to walk up it a little ways, +so that you are not afraid of it any more. When you know a thing, you +are not afraid of it any longer. Before you know, it looks all dark to +you. Nothing can hurt you when you are not afraid.... It's just the +same as with the animals. All the black things that come into you are +animals. If they find nothing but love and whiteness inside, they will +go away and not even look at you again; but if fear and darkness are +there, they get mad and bite." + +Leaning forward with a laugh, he added, "You can't cut across from the +black path to the white. You've got to go all the way back and start +over." + + * * * * * + + + + +13 + +THE ABBOT + + +The Abbot is now seventeen. He is doing well at Columbia. Classes and +routine there are mere externals. The Abbot is living a life far more +real than appears--a life that few men in America have learned how to +live. He has actually arrived at the conviction of the unfathomable +riches that lie within. Many occultists and a few great artists have +a working knowledge of this kind. We hoped the Abbot could remain at +Stonestudy, but his parents wanted some letters after his family name +as well as before. Our young man was enjoined to make the best of it. +As a matter of fact, he is putting on a lot of brain things that work +admirably with the inner activity which we made much of in our work +together. + +In another book,[14] I told of the Abbot's awakening--how we called +him from mysterious regions of silence and mystification, to a more +or less adequate expression of material facts. Here was a boy almost +overshadowed by his own soul at times, inclined to be half out of the +body and not altogether present in the mind, when moving among the +sordid affairs of the world--a lad who knew the arrangement of planets +and the flow of meteoric matter better than the geography of our own +continent; who swung very readily back into memories of other lives, +mainly monastic, rather than into the episodes of his own kid-days. + + [14] _Child and Country._ + +I forget just how it was that we first sensed the giant in this boy. +In any case, we struck one. The ordinary training that I would give an +American youth to breathe the soul of him, was not at all necessary +with the Abbot. Rather, pressure was exerted from the first to make him +come down into our world, to make him be one of us, to make him see +streets and alleys, doorsteps and servant-stairs. They have succeeded +better at Columbia in this regard than we were able to do, but the +wonder and satisfaction of it all is, that the aroused mystic, the +aroused artist, has not receded--but dominates his days and work. I +understand that he is considered a sensation in a literary way. + +He is not different from his fellows. It is part of our ethics to +belong where we happen to be; to do the things that others do, better, +if possible, than the customary performance; to begin after that to be +our inimitable selves. It is our ideal to move about the world, not +to attract attention, to be quiet and calm and efficacious, to be +helpful and humorous and wise, to furnish the swift, unerring word or +hand or lift in the midst of affairs; to deny ourselves to no one; to +hold ourselves superior to no one; to strive laughingly toward the big +workmanship, to become Players after the essential apprenticeship, to +win the Laugh at last, and that perfect consummation which only comes +with utter and instant detachment when the task is accomplished. + + * * * * * + +The Abbot was sprawled in a Study shadow one summer afternoon, when I +suddenly saw him in relation to big sea-tales. Usually we tale-tellers +carry our packs. I saw the Abbot with a sea-chest that day. His was +not the way of the Arabian fires and the Assyrian camel paths--the +word-spinner's usual evolutionary line. He came overseas with his +narratives.... I saw him in the next few years making a circle around +all the capes, touching all the ports of Asiatic and insular water +fronts--a bit of Conrad, a bit of Melville, a bit of Stevenson ... a +most sumptuous sea-chest full of shells, corals, coins and trinkets +from all the Islands; feather of a woman's fan perhaps, here and there, +silks hazy from sea water, crooked knives from Malay Isles, whale-bone +and shark's teeth, pearl of the mollusk, a bit of ambergris--just a top +tray of the Chest! Deep mystic parchments farther within, a corner for +the sacred writings of all the world, a small type mill, a great wad of +white paper, the rest mainly traces of a long glide across the ocean +floors. + +I have learned to go very slow in building a matrix of my own thought +about any young man's mind, yet I told the Abbot that day what I saw +for him--how he was bound to do the big sea-tales, how we were sick of +steam, sick already of the big hydroplanes, sick of all that hurries, +all that explodes, all that has the taint of gas; that the world +presently would be so sick of noise and explosions and show and speed, +that professional soothers would be in great demand, like the Japanese +masseurs who wait upon the sleepless; that the sick world would want +to read of long, loose, lazy days under canvas, of the few ports left +where they haven't set up recruiting offices;--that the world would be +in desperate need of sunlight and surf and wide swinging seas--that he +must be one of those to usher in the old romance of the sailing craft +again. + +I told about his sea-chest better than I have told it here, but the +Abbot's eyes didn't bulge. Presently, however, he began to grow that +way.... His Saturdays and Sabbaths now are spent, not in Morningside +Heights, but down among the shipping and across the harbour, where the +big world tramps hang out. You will see these things in his letters. I +have several of his yarns here, but I am not going to run any of them +in this book. They are good yarns, but too intrinsically big yet for +the handling of a boy of seventeen. He has too much calibre for his +brain so far to carry ten thousand words to superb consummation. I want +to spring a big tale presently. I have a lapful of his random letters +from days spent down on the water front, and nights under the study +lamp: + + DEAR OLD WASP: + + Morning mists over the lake, the _Pelee_ coming up out of them. + Just had a night with John and a corking good run of work. We've + been watching the sun go down from Lynster's[15] back lately, and + breathing the planetary heave under the stars, with the milky + way dipping to the lake before us. This inland place is heavy + to take. The weight of agriculture is like a blanket over all. + It takes three or four pages to bore up through the cuticle. Me + for a get-away to the world soon--to feed up on the hum of feet + and voices and cars.... Blackbirds are beginning to blacken the + mornings and nights again; touch of Fall and Pine-smoke this + morning. Real itchings in the ankles--to you! A wonderful synthesis + for us all when we meet up again.... I'd like to roam the world + with John. He is a grand pal. Could joke over an oven made out of + a tomato-can, as well as eat from a banquet table.... + + [15] The saddle horse. + +A day or two later: + + ... Black forces strong around Stonestudy last night.... About + eight-thirty I rode over on Lynt, to sleep with John. Decided to + have a debauch with tea. While I worked on, he gathered the cups + and tea and electric tea-kettle together and got things going. + He called for me to come and make the tea. He was seated in the + big chair with a tableleaf in front of him, and on that was the + tea-kettle, boiling.... One leg slipped, and the whole boiling + collection went in his lap.... A prince, the way he stood it. The + bunch was just coming back from town. Penel' rushed over, and the + next was a turmoil right, cries, olive oil, lint, rags, confusion + of voices and footsteps--too many people and the little guy sort + o' lost his control--but it all came back again. Almost any minute + I am looking for the laugh from him. All night I was with him. + Penelope, the finished heroine as always. One could see the shades + of pain pass over John's face time and again. His nerves jump--but + his mouth and eyes are certainly getting a grand hue of steel.... + Yours right along. + +Another: + + Hazy summer about. Blue over the lake with shadows deepening in the + distance. Crops drying beneath the sun. Leave it at its height--am + headed back for Columbia--where I'll let time shape the winds for + farther "going." + + School is not harmful to one who _is_ himself. I'll take + philosophy, and then be over to tell you who stole your + washboard.... It is no struggle, no test, for one to be lit among + his own as we are. One's depth of listening is best tested in + crowds. We've got to separate--go out and change the continents + into tablelands of democracy. + + War seems settling on the world for years longer, but there is a + bigger order coming out of the incredible chaos. Each must see God + and worship through his work to shape the master beauty. Every + one's art breaks new roads which lead to one place. + + Stories are coming freer every day--I've gotten across. Don't + know whether it's the best thing for me. But I've done it, and + that's what I wanted to know. It is all preparation. Results are + beginnings. I look back now on the summer of '14. It _was_ heaven. + It _was_ peace. To look at the cottage lights and hear the voices + of rowers through the dusk was a breath from God. It was peace, it + was relaxation, a deep resting of tissue for turmoil. Depth and + mastery to you. + +THIS TO JOHN: + + The thought of your scarred legs has been with me on the borderland + of sleep for many nights, also our hours together on the pine + needles. To-night, with the sun falling sadly over the iron mills, + I walked along the Heights and cast an eye down into brilliant + Harlem. The voices of the bargemen, the wheeze of tugs, the low + growl of outpassing vessels, an occasional curse from a freighted + barge, came up with the hum of the city. There seemed to be + some goddess entwined with sea-weed standing over the ocean of + structures. She held a finger to her lips for silence, and pointed + to the Lord knows where--well, where I felt a tumult to go, to + satisfy some hot quest.... I was lost to the multitude of faces + that sent up a passionate and incomprehensible hum ... savour of + youth singing in the veins. + + Presently a drizzle drove me back to the room.... I reached up and + flicked out the lights.... In an apartment across the street lives + an old man who always comes to his window at dark and gazes up and + down the streets. His head is grey--his eyes are deep and old. The + light from his shaded reading lamp falls in a pool of dim yellow + about his carpet. Sometimes he turns out the lamp, and leaves the + fire-place alone. Sometimes his head falls forward on his chest, + and he dreams--I suppose, of boundless seas, for he was once a + sea-captain. + + His wandering days are over--no more quest. The houses rise to his + eyes like one long, bleak, uncrested wave from the Arctic Sea.... + He means old days, but we--we must never grow old; we must live + and ever be full of creation as the cloud is full of lightning. We + must, old pal, ride the deserts, drift over seas; we must spill our + work as we go, as night spills its stars from a casket. Fill me + up with the Pacific in your letters--the big sunlight--the colour + of the mountains where they dip and rise to clouds. I have a dry + palate for it all. Fill me--eye and ear and soul. + + Yours deep in those scars---- + + * * * * * + + DEAR OLD MAN: + + The Hudson is very still this morning; a few battleships have swung + out with the tide; gulls seem to be forever passing up and down the + river in white eddies; smoke from the factories rises straight and + white. The morning sun strikes like a sledge upon the Palisades. + How grand that old river is, and how untiring in its endless ebb + and flood--almost like a solar system in the serene way it deals + with human traffic. + + A great new sense of words has come over me lately. At the very + birth of language lies a chest of rich obsolete words--quite like a + Spanish treasure chest, with its doubloons, bezoar stones and "pots + of Arica bronze." The artists go treasure hunting in language, and + a few do startle the world with their wealth. The live-long day + seems to me now like a shuttle driving back and forth, weaving from + soul to matter, a golden fabric. + + This word-chest means much to me because it deals with the sea. + Lift up the lid, and tucked away in those little drawers lies the + seaman's religion in bits of turquoise, in coils of fish line + and hooks, in pink sea-shells, perhaps in an old violin, or in a + few stray books of Carlyle, Goethe, Dante and Melville's _Moby + Dick_. The point is we all bungle along through our world-term + somehow; we have our work and religion and pleasures and tales in + a camphor-wood chest with a brass band around it. Sometimes we + bring out the violin and make God-awful discords, calling it music + of the sea; we brighten people's eyes with our bits of turquoise; + terrorise them with the philosophy that Carlyle and Goethe and Moby + Dick have given us; we make them feel that endless _wroom, wroom, + wroom_ of the ocean that is washing in our souls. + + Yes, we must first learn the futility of life before we can live. + The war teaches this lesson well, but won't it be great when + everybody is singing over his golden shuttle and laughing? Won't + it be great when the chastened New Race springs up, like green + shoots at the passing of winter? Won't it be great when the world + has grown serene and wise enough to sit down beside a blazing + bark fire, with the shadows of pine trees about, or near the dim + breakers, and consider it profitable to talk about the stars? + + ... There are times when one feels he must be alone--when he wants + to be connected with nothing--when he wants to go to a distant and + high altitude, and there boil his pot of alchemy--there, where the + air is dust free, and the incense of one's devotion goes straight + up. He must listen and listen, until he believes that he hears the + stars humming in their courses; then the sun drawing like a magnet, + then a crescendo of song up to a deafening roar,--that all things, + all stars, are headed towards one point of balance among that whole + mass of sapphires we see above. + + Man, but the joy of telling tales, of recording the warmth of human + hearts, of loving men and their ways--to fill out a morning with + that golden shuttle! One has but to sit and the sun on the walls + and the shadows in the corners, or if at night, the flame on the + stones of the hearth turn to words!... The old sea is full of that. + The heart within her breast sounds the footfalls of quest; the + ecstasy of life tears in her storm and in still hours she sits in + her glitter.... + + Some day we shall be together on the blessed Pacific coast. We + shall have bookshelves and packages of dates, bottles of cream and + combs of honey. We shall work with that rugged lunge of mountains + in our products; and that endless and insistent _wroom, wroom, + wroom_ of the ocean in all. Listen, here is a day as we shall have + it: + + The sun lifting up the depth of Canyon shall awake us. After + we have cooked and eaten of crisp toast and honey and coffee, + we shall go to our desks and bring out a most rigid problem in + mathematics,[16] and dwell perhaps for an hour in drawing all + forces of thinking into play--awaking the mind--shaking off that + inertia of body. After that we shall penetrate the thing which + we wish to work upon that particular morning. We shall see its + functions and logical action, then begin the shuttle and weave back + and forth with that pliancy that sees the deepest of metaphysics in + an old man lighting a pipe or loitering over a pork-pie. To top the + morning, we'll have a meal of milk and dates. The afternoon shall + mean an isolation with the books--perhaps on the sand with the sun + tanning our backs. Both healthfully and mentally an efflux of soul. + At about five in the afternoon comes the humming calm--the poise + of mind and soul and body. Another meal of the simple foods and + once more, production, as the sun goes into the sea--giving one's + soul the might and expanse that the planets use in weaving their + ways. Perhaps, at ten or eleven we shall reach up, switch out the + electric bulb and open the door. That shall be a day mastered. Side + by side, we'll walk over to the cliff at whose base mumbles the + mighty Pacific. We shall pass no words--the earth'll be good to + feel and smell. We'll honour the still night of stars. + + [16] Help! + + That day is a privilege to earn--our bodies must suffer and become + scarred and jostled by the currents of people, and cursed upon + by foul mouths. All pleasant presently. We must know the heart + of a bartender as we would want to know the heart of the Christ. + Do you know that Masefield was a bartender? The secret of the + real artist is sanity. One must grow hair the medium length--keep + a well muscled and full lunged body--and if chronic fishermen + should happen in on us for a meal we must be able to argue that a + hickory pole is better for a pound-net than pine; or if a devout + pastor--that we would much rather praise God's work outside on the + beach.... + + * * * * * + +TO JANE: + + Your letter this morning after a long, wonderful run of work. This + is really the highest day I've had--real rugged work--bronze moving + pictures before me--faces--open shirts on sunburnt breasts--and, + of course, the eternal sea. Your letter came like a sudden bag + of sunlight emptied into a mist. The water became blue and the + promontories sharp like ink lines. + + And about Steve. I understand all. The draft explains his not + writing. And this war--it's like a maelstrom rising higher and + higher. Next summer for certain, possibly this Christmas, it + means I go. But rather than go as a private I'm going to enlist + voluntarily in the aviation corps. Flying only would have as much + thrill as doing the climax of a story. That's like the sea. And I'm + not panicky or worried about it. I feel in some unconscious way + that the balance of the cosmos demands it. God, nobody should drag + now! It's just like a marshfire that grows and grows to let the new + green shoots come under in spring. It's like a big song. I would + not go to fight Germany, or France or England or America. I'd go + because it's a cleanser. One must play with the song of many feet + and express with the original song. One must flash pictures to the + many eyes of their own being. Oh--it's a song, the whole thing! And + I'm looking forward to it. + + Only the ones such as John and Tom shall escape. Don't you see the + joy, the peace, the grandeur in owning a scar, in being bled white? + The first year of the war, England was black with mourning. Now, + she is white.... The work is on me with talons. + + I am looking only at the impossible heights--of a portrayal of + life--the rugged life in endless volumes. I have made an oath + silently with myself that in three years I shall do a book.... The + work comes now just as if I were to sit down before a fire-place + with shadows and light around stones, and were to grow interested, + with stars low on the horizon like live sparks. + + And friends? A foolish question! I mean that I must be alone in + the formative thrall of work. I _did_ want your letter. But forget + pity. That is a thing that stifles soul. I do not ask, by all the + stars, I do not ask for anything. The highest of all things to you + all. + + And Steve? He has too much of the Song to be trodden or be lost or + be ground in mud. You are all friends--but I must be alone now. The + work is rising.... + + * * * * * + +TO JOHN: + + There ain't no sun beatin' in my doorway, and there ain't none of + your sacred seas and canyons around; but there is a socialist's + riot in the street below--kerosene torches a-going--one shaggy + haired enthusiast is standing on a soap box and is wagging his + jaw in an athletic way.... How's the fire burning under your + type-mill? What's the brand of smoke it gives up--poetry, action, + lumps of granite or ladles of ocean? I'm all lit up in this place + here--because things are moving--real issues are gathering--and + the pulse of living is so close that I can almost feel it + occasionally. Last Saturday, went to a place called Rockaway--and + oh man--rocks--rugged grey and eroded--surf bitten--gnarled, + twisted--and they tossed the sea's white jaws about like bits + of cotton. Real sea coast it was--with a little smack in the + purple way, her sails bellied, her mouth lapping the brine--an + old fisherman browsing around the shores for clams while his wife + hauled up the nets, basketed the cod and upturned their boat. + + Put an extra stick under the machine and line a few of your + aphorisms. + + * * * * * + + + + +14 + +THE ARTIST UNLEASHED + + +The young workmen here do essays well, earlier than short stories. +Longer training is required for fiction. The reason is obvious. Fiction +work takes brain. The Stonestudy idea is to set free the greater Artist +within. Essays and ethical works are the natural fruits of the inner +life of the ages; story-production requires facility and development +of the every-day working consciousness. Straight brain is needed to +arrange settings, keen development of actual tissue to note and arrange +and remember. Also a big working surface of self-criticism must be +prepared. + +There is a quality of fiction that seems to set free a larger +consciousness and to bring with it settings and atmospheres of another +age. This sort of phenomenon encourages the idea of the continuity of +consciousness--before and after the three-score-and-ten. It may be +that the greater the Artist, the more of these veins of syntheticated +experience are open to his every-day working mind. That may really +be what sumptuous artistic equipment is--the capacity to open up the +old loves and scenes and adventures of the long road. Intuition is +explained as the use of the result of massed experiences, intellect the +coping with one at a time; intuition, a light that flashes from peak to +peak, intellect as a running fire up and down from height and vale. + +Certainly intellect alone will never make a great drama of life and +love, yet action and romance of the present hour draw hard upon one's +present life training and the faculties and tastes of his immediate +culture--actual brain possession and the ordering thereof. A child can +portray superbly well some ancient imprint upon the Soul, even the +passages of his own initiations through earth, water, air and fire, +his brain not conscious of the real nature of what is coming forth; +yet, the same child cannot put the cohering line through a series of +episodes occurring under his own notice. Something of this mental +grasp is necessary to make the artful effect required in a short +tale. The child's mind, in the first place, is trained to listen and +interpret the experiences of the larger consciousness; in the second +set of conditions, he is forced to rely upon actual brain tissue which +requires the training and culture of the years. + +Art is composition. The farther you go, the finer the tools. It is +difficult to train the fingers to intricate tricks of weaving, or +the brain to sort and place the facts and colours and surprises of +a present-day narrative or tale, but the soul may be called upon to +express through the narrow temples of an awakened child its cosmic +understanding, its ordered firmament. + +Decades of observation and reporting; firm and verified actuality of +knowledge and opinion; to these, added experience and the excellence +of order--such is the training of the intellectual artist who times +his production to his own generations. He pays the price in pain and +subjection to the things that are; he knows well the meaning of labour; +often, though he may still laugh as an artist, he has forgotten how to +laugh as a man. + +My desk here is covered with papers and poems of a beauty this +intellectual artist cannot reach, of a freedom he can never know, until +he lifts the torch of his consciousness out of and above the brain, +making that serve quite as his knees bend and serve. Thinking of these +things to-day, the door of the Study opened and the Little Girl gave +me her work. She writes things of the larger consciousness without +effort, but finds it hard and wearing to narrate the immediate matters +of life. To her, the fine short story of the present hour is the great +accomplishment, the ideal she is working toward. + +With another she goes often to the cities--rambling among the +rooming-houses, cheaper restaurants and mills. She means to work in +the mills soon--to forget herself and forget us for a time, to be +with the harder-lucked girls whom she loves with thrilling passion. +She has brought home from these little adventures wonderful stories +of the patience and the laughter and the heroism crowding like hidden +sacred presences about the duller lives. She brings a humour to the +telling of the divine secrets of the poor--the clutching pang for food, +the soldier going, his baby coming, the tortured spine, the stunted, +the darkened, the wasted--an irresistible divinity about it all--pain +impermanent, joy enduring. Back of the lacking eyes and leaking lives, +she sees wonders that Zola never saw, that none can see with mere +intelligence, that none can dream, who sees only the here and now, +who has not learned to laugh at the so-called injustices of men, who +cannot see the greater order to come because the present chaos is so +devastating. + +One may report minutiæ of torments, mass the items of degradation and +bring forth a great document of the underworld--but these are mere +foundations. The Builders bring the dream, they live the hope, they +open the long-road consciousness, they substantiate their visions of +better days, bring order and coherence to all the splendid toil of the +intellectualist; they raise their edifice upon _all_ that is done.... +Here is the Little Girl's work of to-day's writing: + + +MEDITATION + +In the night the Master came down to a woman who lay sad and sleepless +in a dark house. He came so near that she felt his holy radiance. Her +soul breathed; her body ceased to tremble; she felt within his sacred +circle. The Master smiled and said: + +"Why do you not sleep?" + +The woman answered, "I am carried away by thoughts that will not hush. +Night after night I lie here so bitterly close to old dreams. I realise +that they are not worthy, but my brain is full of them." + +The Master smiled again. "There is a way to compel the silence of the +brain." + +"I have not found it," said the woman. + +"Learn to be the soul," the Master said. He suggested a way to +begin--then was gone. + +The rest of that night the woman thought of his words. Deeper and +deeper his words sank into her heart. When morning came, a happiness +brooded within; she dressed quickly and went out.... Back of her +little house rose the golden brown hills. She climbed, and at the top +of the nearest, sat down. The peace and purity and fragrance of the +sun-steeped hills filled her soul. For a long time she thought in +silence, then slipping off her loose white sandals, said: "I begin with +the grass. Yes, I begin with my _feet_.... How wonderful you are--so +ready to obey, to give your service at any time! What would happen +if you carried me other than my will? Supposing some day I should be +walking fast to the house of my beloved, when you suddenly took me the +other way!" + +She laughed, and added: "You stay with me all my life, and little by +little are carrying me up the shining path to the Father's house. And +yet--how strange! I am not you.... And my knees, how wonderful and +willing--all limber and full of life--helping me in all ways to do all +things--bending gently when I bow in holy communion, expressing joy +through free, easy movements, mute, yet strong before pain! There is +nothing more wonderful in the world than you. Yet--I am not my knees. + +"And you, old heart," she added. "You have endured the keenest pain; +you have loved and given yourself, have hated and become black only +through pain to whiten again--old heart of many rendings--until +all life was tragedy, and you almost ceased to beat. Little heart, +sanctuary of the soul--room for _his_ rest.... Yet I am not the heart! + +"And the white throat in which the lotus unfolds its mystic petals of +light--I am not the throat!... And the mind, stream for the soul's +fulfilment--listener, runner, interpreter of light--mate of the soul in +all things, ever ready, sparkling with the inner fire,--I am _not_ the +mind. You can hurt me no longer. I am _free_!" + +The woman sitting alone upon the hilltop, paused again. "What am I?" +she almost cried. + +It was as though the hills, the air and the rising sun joined her in +the answer--"_I Am_, ... Longer than the living flame leaps within, _I +Am_. Longer than sun and planets radiate light, _I Am_. Longer than +worlds give birth to form, _I Am_. I am one with the rocks and the sea, +one with the warmth and light, one with the earth, one with Humanity. + +"I am Humanity. _I Am._" + + * * * * * + +It is only when the Little Girl brings in a bit of fiction that we +remember her years. The brain that even now can polish a detached +incident, or clip into firing-form a bit of humour of the street, +cannot as yet order the narrative to a culminating effect. She is in +her brain, which is only fourteen, struggling with the matters of time +and space, wherein only lie pain and bewilderment. + +Art is long. The training of the hand and intellect requires the +years--but not the labour, not the agony, not the mad strain supposed +to prepare one for an artistic career by those who believe mental +equipment to be all.... The key to this whole discussion is the fact +that the brain can be developed more in a year through inner awakening +than in a decade by the usual methods of external impacts alone.... The +ideal education is the balancing of the without with the within--the +tallying of the world without with the world within--the same old +story of the kingdom without clearing its correspondences with the +kingdom within. + +The Little Girl's ideal is to do great stories. They challenge her by +their very difficulty. When I see where she stands now, and think of +the far ways we elders went to learn the game; when I see what the +twenty-year-olds are doing now, how they command their mysticism--a +harder task for me than the accomplishment of physical results; when I +see the inner bloom and co-ordination and the inimitable surfaces which +come to all the arts by the development of the soul life first, the +listening for the Master within--I want to get my hands on them all, +upon all the young builders of the New Race. I want at once to awaken +within them the Spectator--the One who cannot be swung back and forth +in the pairs of opposites, who cannot give himself to the partisans, +who has glimpsed the Plan and offers it full adoration, who says +accordingly that the best possible thing that can happen is the thing +that happens next. These are the young Players who will reveal life by +living it--portray life as naturally as breathing, whose equipment is +not possessions, not even brain possessions, but spiritual _en rapport_ +with all, oneness with all life. + +I remember struggling for effects. These young people breathe +effects. I remember style as a studied attainment. These young people +acknowledge but one style--that is being one's self.... I want to set +many of them free from within outward. In their gladness at the finding +of themselves, they will go forth to include the world; they will bring +to it the compassion which enfolds all, reveals all.... Love the world +well and you will understand it. Love the world well, and you will +write well to it. Give it yourself, and the world is yours. + + * * * * * + + + + +15 + +WORK IN SHORT STORIES + + +The Little Girl sketched this impression of an Indian Summer Dusk: + + * * * * * + +... Just now the great blue dusk, after an Indian summer day. It +deepens and seems to laugh, then all is night. Huge black clouds roll +up, promising a storm. Against them, tall, selfish, unafraid, stand +the poplar trees. The great Mother of the dusk is singing, the God in +Nature is singing, and Nature's belongings, all of them, sing in this +magical moment. One feels it all in one's self, feels the glory, the +romance, the very core-life of the Universe. The matings too, taking +place in the grass and air; the matings of the two streams, the two +grains of sand; the matings of butterflies, birds and bees. It all +flows through one's body like music and honey and sunshine.... + +Nothing but space is around me. I feel all hollow inside. Power and +beauty and all things else flow through ... and out, like a sieve. +My body is far below me, yet it will be taken care of. It does not +stumble, nor make any clumsy, unnecessary movement. Finding it alone +and forgotten, Rhythm catches it in her gentle arms. Slowly, softly, +gently, Rhythm carries it along, the same that carries the deer so +swiftly in the forest, the mountain sheep from ledge to ledge and over +valleys, and that which waves the trees' long arms so gracefully.... +The night moves on its way, the threat of storm is passed. I am back +again--an untellable freshness has sweetened hair and clothing. I am +all glowing inside. + + * * * * * + +This was done two years ago. There was a kind of dream story which she +recently finished, gratifying the artistic sense entirely, but in a way +that ruined it for the general reader. It was all new to her that there +could possibly be two ways to regard a bit of workmanship. Five or +six story-writers were present for the reading, and out of the fruits +of that evening, we surely saw the lesser beauty give way before a +greater. We forecasted the readers of the future, who would prefer the +more spiritual, more challenging story texture and dénouement. + +There has always been The Few--glad to discover the real, answering +to interior order and clarity, "straight grain,"--but the fact for +enthusiasm now is that the world is being peopled with the awakened. +These young moderns are recognising each other from day to day, pulling +together for better social order, utilising the wisdom of the East, +and the drive of the West--labouring in new paths, daring new leaps, +working out philosophies as fresh and ancient as the dawn and, what +is straighter to the point, demanding modern books, written out of an +integrity to match their own.... + +Short story writing in America is less a trade and more of an art +since Edward J. O'Brien, the poet, took his chair in the flow of the +output and began to say which was which. There are a number of people +in America who know a good short story when they see one; this is +true among those who buy short stories, but editors cannot always buy +what they want. A deal of mechanism in a magazine has to be oiled and +energised by different kinds of minds from those who paint the pictures +and write the tales. O'Brien knew both ends--also he knew that big, +unobtrusive part of the market that looks long and pointedly for the +real tale. + +He is a queer boy--from the bleak fishing grounds north of Boston. +He is in no hurry. You couldn't tell if he really wants anything. He +doesn't seem to want much--for O'Brien.... After he had his main line +and most of the ramifications of his idea laid, he told the editors to +send on the stories. Most of them did. O'Brien did a lot of work in a +few weeks, did it startlingly well. He started something.... Now, if a +writer sits down, suddenly struck with a fine idea for a tale, and this +fine idea precludes the possibility of selling it for a high price--the +writer dares go ahead and finish the task, because he knows O'Brien +will get to the thing in due time, and that if it is really what it +seems and the performance of the idea adequate, then the work will not +be utterly lost. + +As a matter of fact, this is a bit of self-placation, since no work is +lost; no one gets the value of a big thing to anything like the degree +of the man who does it; no big thing is lost from the world, not even +if dropped in a sewer, if it is really important for the world to +have it. We are all a bit too heavily handicapped with our own idea +of what the world should have from our own shops--at the same time, +when we are young, we pant for the quicker return, the answering hail +within reason--at least, within time and space. Now O'Brien has come, +strangely arrived, his proper phylacteries in place, the touch of +tinted haze about his head, the right man. + +Back of all, however, is the workman's own spine. That's the best +thing to lean on; and when the going is heavy, to learn to do without. +We often remind each other in Chapel of the modern artist Cezanne, +who moved about his painting for many years, painting _the thing_, +satisfying his soul, and leaving his canvasses around in the fields for +the peasants to laugh at or mull over.... They have long since been +brought in out of the rain--those canvasses. I forget the incredible +thousands his littlest sketch brings now.... But Cezanne got the films +out of himself--tallied them off--the landscapes within and without, +when it did him most good. It never fails. What was good for the artist +is good for the rest of us afterward. + +Meanwhile much is still to do in the story world. The big smash of +the moving pictures hasn't cleared from our game yet. It will be the +cause of greater tales before the end is seen, for you can't portray +the realities of romance upon a flat screen. For a time the many +thought it was no longer necessary to learn to read, because there was +such a torrent of pictures everywhere, but it was only through the +pictures that the few has finally managed to realize how marvelously +pictorial mere words are, and how few words are required when they are +imaginatively driven. One day in Stonestudy we discussed these story +and screen affairs, looking ahead somewhat to better times than these. +One of our young men, whose story is told in a later chapter, put down +the things we talked about. This is Shuk's writing: + + * * * * * + +A fresh and different vitality is manifest to-day in American +literature. At various points around us, dealing with words, colours +and the subtler tools, are active young workmen who for the first +time, in the fullest sense, may be termed "North American." The first +characteristic of this new element, these young flexible and vigorous +minds, is that they are workmen--not labourers, not professionals, not +primarily artists in anything unless it be life--but workers first, and +after that novelists, poets, musicians, painters or politicians. They +are not competitors. They have not forgotten the warm side of justice, +but they know well the stern face of compassion--they know that it +takes Christ and anti-Christ to make a world. They are neither modest +nor egotistical, being for the most part busy and intensely alive. This +implies their joy. + +The great love story has not been written. The few great love stories +of the world have to be pieced out by the imagination. We find that +we have been told that certain are great love stories, but they do +not stand examination. The classic form will not do for the New Age. +There is to be a new language--for literary handling. It may be called +American, to distinguish it from English in the accepted form. It is to +be brisk, brief, brave and ebullient--to meet the modification all must +reckon with--the screen-trained mind. + +American-mindedness of itself, cannot yet accept a great love-story. It +would be called "sentimental" if not lascivious. The average American +is an impossible lover, making it incident to business. The real and +the sham are equally above him. He would not know when to be exalted +or when to be ashamed. He thinks his own passion is evil, and thus +makes it so. The great love-story can only be written with creative +dynamics, and can only be accepted as yet by the few of corresponding +receptivity. There is nothing soft about true romance. Some passionate +singer of the New Age will likely appear right soon, his story to have +the full redolence and lustre of the heart, his emotions thoroughbred, +his literary quality at the same time crystalline with reality. + +The big adventure-story has not been done so far. The day of guns, +horses and redskins is over. Photoplays have developed these fiction +resources to the limit, proving to those writers born to be modern +that their full tales can never be shown on a flat surface. There +will be undercurrents, overtones, invisible movements, tensions upon +the reader, not only from between the lines, but between words. +The story-teller of the New Age may handle his theme in words of +one syllable, but his tale will have an intensity scarcely to be +explained--only responded to by minds which cannot be satisfied by +two-plane production--minds which demand more of life than the camera +sees. + +The real war-story of to-day, even for to-morrow, ought to arrive soon. +This is an age for an epic. Some keen and comprehensive mind will +arise--a literary genius who will include the patriot, the anarchist, +the poet, dramatist, humanitarian, theosophist, dreamer, judge and +statesman, even the iciest aces of the air--and tell the story of +War, a tale of trenches, kings and arms; blood, heroism and monstrous +greed; vast far-reaching causes and the slow, inevitable hell of +effects--told from a viewpoint so inclusive that thrones are merely +pawns in a Planetary Game. + +Inclusion is the first business of the writer who is truly allied with +the modern element. Propagandists do not fill the picture. Yesterday +the wreckers and agnostics--to-day the specialists and onesided +enthusiasts--to-morrow, the embodiers, the includers. + + * * * * * + + + + +16 + +VALLEY ROAD GIRL + + +The Valley Road Girl, who gave us the title, and helped us to see how +the New Race will become in due time the planetary hive, asked not to +appear in this book. A letter this morning asks it again. She is in +the stress and heat of a series of ordeals, learning what it means +suddenly to be parted from friends and the centre of her work. A wise +and sensitive young woman--I rather thrill over her sufferings. We +don't commiserate; we congratulate, when one is called to a stretch +of particularly stiff and solitary going. We know that one must be +passionately worthy to take the big-calibred ordeals. There is pain +to all births--pain, the precursor of greater joys. Pain is not the +expansion of the flower to the sun; that is joy, that comes afterward. +Pain is the necessary rupturing of the bud-sheaths before the final +unfolding into the new dimension. Pain is within, inarticulate--merely +finds a correspondence in some outer cause. + +Part of the Valley Road Girl's letter follows: + +... It hurt to let that last Lamentation go to you. I thought of the +times when I had put up a braver fight, bolstered only with pride. +But pride is low now, and still dwindling in the glass. Even the gods +withdraw from the pathetic. They love us more when we challenge with +doubt than when we implore. The many are God-fearing. They must have +some divine power to shift their responsibility upon. They can ask the +Flame to cleanse them, but quail at working out their own salvation. I +have done some crying out to God, but I am finished. The one good path +I have is Work--self-expression every day. + +I made another mistake--in looking back. Regret identifies us with +the past and impedes progress. Youth is smileless, inclined to regard +to-day's struggles as ultimate evil, but gradually we learn that +all things pass. To consider everything as in transition, we place +ourselves in the very current of growth.... For rapid journeying, we +must travel light. We can only carry along the spirit of things--the +essence of our joys and lessons. That's what I have from Chapel days. + +I blush for many hours since. Sometimes I have felt as if I were on +a vast plain and there was no God nor earth nor the quality of love +anywhere, but only I--deathless--in long, hideous travail, all life to +be tested against this Me!... + + * * * * * + +How I want to write! Every day more awe enfolds the dream. Days +bring me closer to the Town. The war has deepened the hearts of all +the young people here, especially the women. Young women are very +wonderful to me. They have a certain loveliness of body that comes of +girl-whiteness within--thoughtful tenderness about them, and something +else, a lightness that may be just youth. It attracts me because I have +never felt it. + +I do not care if the gods laugh at my ambitions to write. By the very +sign that we are victims of matter now, we shall become victors. I +want the bottom--down among the deeps of pain, where all the sorrow of +the world is my sorrow; all tears, my tears.... I am not ready for the +Hive. No compromise. To accept less in one's work than the dream--that +is failure. + + * * * * * + +The Valley Road Girl is eighteen. She has hardly been away from the +little town by the lake shore. She is held to it queerly still. I +expect her to make the place long-lived in the memory of many novel +readers. I see the big book of the country-side about her--a gallery +of quaint and curious faces--done with her stern, sweet power. I have +seen this big book building about her, as I see the top trays of The +Abbot's Sea Chest. These are the days of her sketching and tearing +down. Deep draughts of life call to her, deeps of religion, deeps of +cosmic memory--and all about is the little town. The meaning has come +to her at last. Already she has turned to love the nearest; loving the +nearest will unfold the big book and set her free. Six hundred pages +I call for--the leisurely vibration, terrible intensity of romantic +moments, passion of the fields, the hideous mockery of narrow, brittle +lives, the country-wife worn glassy with routine and insane monotony, +and the young of the country-side--quick bloom, pure youth falling into +coarseness before its form is finished, the real and immortal behind it +all. These are her properties. Hundreds of pages have been written and +prayerfully destroyed. Thus is she setting herself free. + +I have a paper of hers on the spiritual adventures of a smileless +child--which I liked much when it came in, more than two years ago. The +Valley Road Girl is close to us in all our preparing and building; so +that these chapters would be strange without her voice: + + ... Fire was always terrible, so my first aspirations were caused + by fear of hell _below_. Before that, I had wanted to laugh when + told to pray. As I grew, I thought much of the heavenly state, but + could find only vague pictures. Recently I asked a country minister + his idea of heaven, and he seemed uncertain. He could only assure + me that it was a desirable place. Yet children always wonder about + their destination, questioning as they journey. + + I started early to pray--a grim affair; at first crying out through + fear or hurt. God was too awful for such intimacies so I took the + Christ figure of the Trinity into my confidence. Just here came + a strange transition. It didn't seem sufficient for me to think + those prayers: I felt I must state them clearly or my wish might + be ambiguous. Even to-day, I find that only expressing a thing + simplifies it for me. + + If there were acquaintances whose lives were touched with beauty + or romance, I prayed for them, but mostly named _my_ wants. I made + the discovery that the intensity put forth in holding the image of + a desire brings it into the world. Man may call the answer _God_, + but that seems his own power. I have sometimes thought of Will with + its divine kindred, Wisdom and Love, as the Three Who stood first + before His Face. + + To-day we dream, and to-morrow our hands are filled. I remember + the early Chapel days when the Old Man would say, "Be careful what + you want--you are apt to get it,"--with a great laugh and mystery + playing about his words. How truly one comes to realise that. + When I started at Stonestudy, the town-people used to ask how we + were taught,--if our English and story-structure were principally + considered as in the schools. I could only tell them, "Oh, no, not + like school!" Then I tried to explain Chapel and they wondered how + that manner of education could make us writers. Yet our writing + improved with the days. Work, a few weeks old, embarrassed us with + its defects. + + Then I actually tried to discover just how we were being helped. + To a young aspirant, there is awe about an artist; we had come to + listen. The same thoughts expressed in homely words wouldn't have + quickened us. The Old Man's sentences were rich with figures that + clarified everything. We began to _see_ Stonestudy. About this time + at home I used to start anything that interested me, "I've got a + picture----" Chapel had helped me, as only one can help another, by + quickening the imagination. + +That was what drew me to the Little Girl--her vivid impression of +things. She could make _her_ listener see also. Speaking of children +whom school had overwhelmed, she used to tell us of their "lacking +eyes" and the world that had crushed them, as the "solid world." ... +I think that was the secret of her faith in fairies and Nature's most +elusive agencies. I listened doubtfully at first, for school had +tampered with my once-ready belief. One had first to trust her words, +"If you believe, you will see." And I recalled my early religious +experiences, based on "According to your faith, be it unto you." + +This is the "really" religion--faith in the hidden world. We conceive +its light gradually as the seed pushes its way upward through the soil. +All religion that does not make the workshop a Chapel--the place for +picturing heaven, is less than we know. I seem to confuse religion with +the stimulating of the imagination. It is because they are one to me. + +The Valley Road Girl has a beautiful sister who was rather reluctant to +come to Stonestudy. She did not think she could ever belong; had no +thought ever of writing or taking part in our things, yet none of the +young people ever brought us more than Esther. I found the following +pages about these two sisters together among the writings of the Little +Girl: + + ... On the floor below lived two girls who came often to visit + their beloved friends in the attic. One was a year or so older than + the other, and most serious and sober, constantly hunting for her + own philosophy and making her own religion, praying for power and + vision, fearing lest she fail at the appointed task, suffering over + conditions, revolting at times, loving her work and her sister with + an everlasting passion. That was the one whom we call the Valley + Road Girl. + + The other was a perfect giver, born with the thought of her own + smallness, unwilling to accept a different point of view on the + subject from another. A spirit--wide eyes, frail body, living her + life calmly, objecting to nothing, obeying others, loving all, + frightening her parents with her absolute goodness. And that was + Esther. + + When she came at last to Stonestudy, her cushion with the others + round the fire had been waiting for many months. For we all knew + her; through the Valley Road Girl we knew Esther belonged to us. + One Chapel day later, when she remained at home, we wondered how + we'd ever manage without her.... Occasionally Esther brought a + paper with her and laid it under the black stone--a bit of verse, + perhaps a dream, or something deep and mysterious from her soul. + One day it was a picture of the Desert, I remember.... Noonday, the + white heat of the sun reflected by the sand, the brown of a camel's + eyes, the long road to travel--caravans--then night--the sound of + low music, women dancing, the red of fires on black oily bodies of + slaves.... Esther made us see it all. + + There were long days in the woods--spring quickening life in all + things. We'd gather moss and violets and talk endlessly, Esther + always so free these memorable days, and happy. It was the dance + that set her free--her expression through the dance--a dancer's + body and soul, her wonderful quality of forgetfulness of self, made + her perfect. Literally she could surrender herself to the music, + trust it, and be carried in perfect grace and rhythm. We watched + her unfold, the beauty of her deepening in every way. Her joy in + life grew. She became like a nymph in the pure light of summer.... + + * * * * * + +As was set down in the other book,[17] it was the Little Girl who +started these educational proceedings. Less than four years ago I +suggested that she remain home from school, and take a stroll with me +down the Shore. I was a bit bored at the time, doubtless heavy with +the sense of parental care. To my best knowledge, the Little Girl was +in no way extraordinary. She does not seem so now. It seemed natural +for her to turn in the chapter on "Tom" in this book. I did not think +of it as a brimming thing for a child to perform. Incidentally Steve +brought in an essay last night on the young lovers and beauty lovers of +the New Race, covering matters which I planned as necessary for me to +do in this book. _Weaving_, that's really what a book from the group +amounts to--weaving, more and more. From time to time in years to come, +I hope to take a few weeks and spin a book. + + [17] Child and Country. + + * * * * * + +It is only in matters having to do with actual world-facts that the +Little Girl ever reminds us that she is only finishing her second +period of sevens. There is no one to whom I go more often for wisdom or +consolation. Her comradeship is complete. Others forget the matter of +age in relation to her. Her big friendship with the Valley Road Girl +overrides four years of growth most formidable in the usual attachment. +The soul is out of time and space. The same thing is more emphatically +shown in the case of John and The Abbot--nine and seventeen. + +The Little Girl reads very little--not nearly so much as I do. She +carries no weights. The slightest tendency toward precocity would +sicken me of the whole business. This growth and development which +I speak of is not intellectual in the acquisitive sense. I take the +young minds away from long division examples. One of those a day is +plenty. Excessive use of the young brain is dangerous. One should +handle brain-tissue with delicacy. One should learn well how to think, +so as to escape lesion and avoid rupture of those most delicate fibres. +Any strain sounds a warning. The use and development of the brain from +outside is only safe so long as the process is joyous. The development +of the brain from within is natural and continually felicitous. No two +processes are alike--for the Soul perfects the instrument to serve +Itself. In due time the brain, thus trained, will bring forth the +one perfect and inimitable product. Trained by the world solely from +without, its product is a mere standard at best. + +I have met absolutely no ill results, not even from the gentle +encouragement of the practice of concentration among children. This is +stiff brainwork for a time--stiff because the brain must be mastered. +But the brain that has learned to listen for the voice of the Master +within, is already using the fruits of concentration, and as I have +written before, the children master the distractions more easily than +developed personalities. One must learn how to think obediently before +one can silence the thoughts. One must silence the brain to hear the +Soul, but one must _be_ the Soul to silence the brain. + +Intellectual children have been brought to me several times. They +lack the essential reverence. They wish to show me what they know; +their parents goad them into this showing. These are not the new race +type that thrills us.... I cannot help you out of a predicament if my +hands are full of bundles. I cannot bring to you the one spontaneous +utterance that you long for, if my brain is crowded with the things of +to-day and yesterday. I place upon the ground my bundles, and give you +a hand. I clear my mind of all its recent and immediate acquisitions, +and by the very force and matrix of your need (if I am the valuable +teacher) I supply, from the infinite reservoir of massed experiences, +an intuitional answer that will not leave you as you were. + +... God pity the good little brain-pans so heavily piled in public +schools, and the brave little memories so cruelly taxed. I want to +brush all junk away from them, let their souls breathe, let them +become as little children, show them how the greatest workmen and the +master-thinkers are great and masterful, simply because they have +learned how to become as little children. + + * * * * * + + + + +17 + +BEAUTY + + +We develop through expression. I find these paragraphs among many of +the Little Girl's for which there is no place here: + + * * * * * + + ... Everything in pouring out one's dreams and thoughts, one's + very soul into words! It is relief, fulfilment; it completes + all thoughts and dreams; it gives them strength. They are + only half-powers if left unexpressed. In the moments of great + outpouring, order forms--the inner order that is lasting and + divine, the order that every man must have running rhythmically + through him, before his great task can be given him by the Master. + If man lives in truth, he lives in order. There is no truth without + order--no order without truth. They are one at the top. There are + no mistakes in all the Holy Universe. + + * * * * * + +We speak much of the Master. As every artist becomes significant, I +think he is more and more conscious, deep within, of the presence of +one whose word is absolute. The great artist isolates himself from +criticism--that is, he may listen to the observations of a child or the +youngest critic and find values, yet his life is passed in doing things +others cannot do, and for which there are no criteria. He loses the +sense of all laws at the last, in the great ebullition of his soul--to +get its records down. He is not ignited with expression as formerly, +because he _is_ expression. His establishment in flesh is for that, and +no other reason. His Master nears. I think of Tolstoi so intimately and +Carlyle in these things.... We are close, in our best moments, to the +Shop Itself. Kipling touched this mystic arrangement in his inimitable +_L'envoi_, "When earth's last picture is painted----" + +More and more life teaches us the treachery of matter, as it teaches +us how to love. One by one the things we turn to, vanish, leaving us +rent and crying out. Thus we learn to turn to the Unseen. We long at +last for our particular archetype who embodies potentially the ideal +of parent and teacher and beloved. The last tearing torrential love +of the flesh is for the mate, the first of our more purely spiritual +aspirations for the Master.... The good days of apprenticeship give us +the basic ideal of him--the pure workmanship, the love of truth, need +for utter comprehension with few words--the love of one another, yet +the absolute essential so hard to learn, to cling to nothing in the +realm of change--all these are incentives to the quest of the Master. +More and more we succeed in turning our love to what we still call the +Unseen from old habit. The very love that you turn to the Master builds +the path by which he comes to you. He can only appear in your own +thought-form.... + +It comes to us so often that we make our own heavens. So many forget +that we require beauty as well as goodness and truth. Not sages alone, +not saints alone--but artists, workmen and players in beauty, as +well as in love and wisdom. The Master will come to you in your own +thought-form; your heaven will fill your own conception. Saints of the +elder bigotries will have angels with feathers and peasant feet. Those +who have clung so hard to their bodies, must galvanise them again with +rheumatism and senility and mortgage-ridden minds. + +I tell them here to be careful what they dream--to take all the loves, +the safe things, love of child and mother and mate, love of comrades, +the passion for dying for another ... to take Nature's perfect +things,--the grains, the fruits, bees, stars, devas, poems--majesty +of mountain, strength of the field, holy breath of sea--the highest +moments of song and thought and meetings ... to take all that is +consummate for the thought-form--to build the coming of the Master +in that--light from the Unseen--to build for eternity.... The Master +can only show you that much of Himself as your own highest picture +contains.... This is the practice of his presence, so liberating to the +minds of dreamers and workmen and mothers. + + * * * * * + +Steve has done some thinking on the quest of beauty in relation to the +young lovers of the New Race. The rest of the chapter is his writing: + + Beauty is the lustre shining from within, because of the sheer + intensity of being. It is proof of spiritual battles won, a gift + earned by ages of renunciation, martyrdom, and self-sacrifice. It + is manifest balance, order and serenity gained from isolation and + self-conquest. The glow seen about the heads of saints is really + there. It is a splendour not of earth, the same ray from which + beauty is drawn. + + A certain tragic joy and a terrible serenity, that is mistaken for + melancholy, often goes with beauty. It is the result of turning + back voluntarily for work in the world, renouncing possible bliss + for the service of humanity. Chief among the spiritual victories + mentioned, is this turning back, facing the stream of evolution + again, and all its cold metal, for new work. So its light is a + light from behind--a reflection to the world of the wonders ahead. + + Beauty is an indication of the weave of one's higher life, + of developed discrimination, material proof of the perfecting + ordination of the life, will and emotions. All that is beautiful + is good, all that is good must be beautiful. Ugliness is false and + fleeting, a confession of sickness and turmoil within. There can + absolutely be no great love without a sheer worship of beauty, not + for itself, not from the æsthetic standpoint--no temperamental + moth-man ethics--but the calm mastery of its inner meaning, which + is mastery of life itself. + + This does not mean that we must love things merely because they are + beautiful, but because of the truth we know to be in them, manifest + in their beauty. Also it means that we must never accept a thing + merely because it is demonstrated, or seek truth for truth's sake. + Beauty is the one lasting criterion. + + As soon as we truly see these things, we know the secret of real + love, which is beauty's expression. The lover is no longer lover + only, but love-master--all domination of the sexes then becomes a + slavery of the past. The lover is parent, mate and child in one. + Each is also the other's teacher. + + At the beginning these lovers give each other complete freedom, + knowing that nothing can be maintained that is held; that joyous + freedom is its own wise bondage. The finding of the lover is never + the end of the quest as in the world. Rather, it is the beginning. + Never is there a lying back in satisfaction or inconsequence. That + would be failure for themselves as well as their children. Growth + is the goal. Growth goes on after the mating at a rate never before + approached, for each has been opened, liberated. Every relation is + evident alternately in this growth, parent and child, teacher and + pupil, master and disciple, madonna and messiah. At certain high + moments, the other appears as the Master himself; through his eyes + the mysteries of the universe are seen. + + The three-ply love yearns to give, knowing that by giving all one + gains all. It yearns to protect, to mother, to love failings and + make them virtues. It loves the failings as well as the gifts, + treasuring all the little humanesses of the loved one, searching + them out zealously. Never are they foolish enough to expect + perfection at first. Every fault is told point-blank, at any cost + of pain or injury to the other. For it is the god-given privilege + of each to bring suffering to the other, because he loves that + other more than life, more than self, more than happiness, and it + is understood that their mutual goal is the priceless heritage, + perfection. Nothing short of perfection remains. For this all else, + even life, is a paltry price. There is no hiding the truth. This is + the supreme test for great loves, great friendships. Both mates are + equal. _Equality_--the word comes to mean more than worship. + + This philosophy is justified by the law of sacrifice. That which + we love more than life is ours more wholly than ourselves, by + the great law. In fact, we cannot belong to ourselves; we must + work upon ourselves until we are big enough to cast body mind and + soul in the heart of another, without fear. Separateness--the + pitiful sense of self, has long been the prime illusion of the + world, the cause of all lust, wars and torments. Those who are not + great enough lovers to surrender all to their love find pain and + disparity throughout. They have yet to learn that all that belongs + to the self-willed, only half belongs, for it has not been given + its freedom. + + In loves such as the New Age is bringing in, true creativeness is + touched. In worshipping both the soul of her child and that of + her mate more than her own, the mother is given for the moment + a beam from the divine shaft from the Creator. For that moment + she has over-reached herself. Just so is the new love constantly + over-reaching itself in the cause of the loved one, a divine + madness the world has not begun to dream of--to belong and to have, + to be in and through and around the loved one. Thus to over-reach + is to create. The ordinary one must become extraordinary when loved + in this god-like manner. To over-reach oneself--that is the cry + of the New!... To think or act in any way that will hurt the self + becomes impossible then, for the self is truly become the other + lover. + + Blindness of passion is far from the nature of things in the new + loves. Or rather such passions have been washed and redeemed + until they are self-governing. There is all the difference + between them and the world idea of passion, as between adoration + and infatuation. Deep waters and deep characters hold to + their channels. Only shallow and frothy currents are loud and + turbulent.... Again it is the three in one. How could one hold a + mad destroying passion for one in whom the parent child and master + are equally dominant? Always the spirit of tenderness is there like + an unseen third. Thus passion has become compassion, and the earth + love is seen truly for the first time partaking of the nature of + the infinite love which holds the universe together. This is the + source of calm, of will-lessness. + + The elder generation, judging all things from the standpoint of + the self will, is dumbfounded. Such iron repression among children + is beyond its imagination. The elder generation goes on living + sharkish and predatory lives, experimenting with repression after + too much getting and taking and licentiousness. It concentrates + terribly on repression, throwing up about itself temporary + breastworks, developing cruel red rays of personal will which + at best is but a defiant pugnacity. Its eyes grow red and voice + savage. For the time the gargoyles of the ancient self are locked + in the lower room, but they are not mastered. All personal will is + but a confession of inordination within. Where there is inner order + and beauty, it is not needed, becomes indeed an affront to the most + high. + + The beautiful will-lessness which marks the relation of the sexes + of the New Order is the key to the freedom of the future. Tiger and + ape are transformed into white presences--the mutinous slaves of + the earth-self become cosmic servants. + + * * * * * + + + + +18 + +SHUK + + +I was talking to a group of young artists in Chicago. There was a boy +there who seemed disturbed because the others dared to be natural in +my presence, and talk about themselves. I was quite at ease, enjoying +myself, and getting altogether as much respect as I deserved.... This +lad walked with me to the train. I wanted to take him home. I liked his +voice and his hand and his mind. I thought at first that he could not +mean all he said, but I was wrong about that. Reverence is sometimes +very hard to take, but the one who brings it has the pure surface of +receptivity. The boy said, as my train pulled out: + +"No, I can't come now. There's a month to be spent at home in Michigan, +and a season's playing with an orchestra up in the lake resorts, but +after that--say October, I'll come to Stonestudy." + +That was exactly what he did. He had it all planned months ahead. It's +Shuk's[18] way--a mathematical mind, a crystal mind. The theosophists +would say that he belonged to the intellectual ray.... We are always +better with Shuk in the room. He comes half way to meet our process +of lighting up, which is the devotional process; in fact, Shuk +incorporated himself in our ideals in exchange for a year or two of +living the life at Stonestudy.... These things never die. + + [18] Herman S. Schuchert. + +A raincoat, a black bag--these are Shuk's possessions, all weight and +measure minimised, even to the kind of white paper which wears best and +packs best. Shuk means order. A page of his "copy" is a rest to the +eye. There is a finished quality to his sentences. My tendency is to +rush into a mental clean-up when he enters the room. I'm not impressing +these details as his virtues. Shuk's virtues are cosmic. He will +presently be telling the big tales, and telling them fast. + +As a group, we are learning to come and go from each other. We have +learned well not to lean--rather to anticipate the Law and leave the +beloved when the tendency to cling becomes too keen.... There is a time +to come and a time to go. I always think of the Master Jesus, leaving +His disciples--saying that they would not find the Comforter within, if +He remained with them always. + +Shuk had much to do in bringing home to us this valuable concept. +We had a way of thinking the world would come to us on the Lake Erie +bluff. It would. It did. But we were getting fat and baronial; a bit +fat of brain, perhaps.... Better than that, the gaunt, lean face +forever at the window-panes of civilisation.... Comrades are always +together. Big meetings, easy partings. One does not know how close +he is to another, until their thoughts spark warm over a lot of +mileage--the immortality of it all stealing in through the soft airs of +night, perhaps. + +I teach the young ones to stand alone at every chance. The idea is +to make them penetrate for themselves, as swiftly as possible, the +main tricks and illusions of matter; to make them see past any doubt +that to be worldly-minded is to be inferior. Still they must see this +for themselves. I formally renounced parentage in the case of the +Little Girl. I take all my authority from the younger boys at frequent +intervals--especially when they have been real mates: + +"Don't advise with me," I tell them. "Show what you know about +living.... Do it your way. If you begin to botch it, I'll come in and +be a regular parent again, but the idea is to set you loose." + +These matters come out naturally in relation to Shuk. He'll be +surprised to read this. None of the young ones ever adequately credit +the fact that I do a lot of sitting at their feet.... We could see the +world as one piece better with Shuk in the room. His intense listening +pulled my eyes constantly. He wanted to know about stories--about +writing stories. His presence made us all better workmen because he +was so zealous to become one. I had long been absorbed in the romantic +side of world-politics, but Shuk decorated the subject with a new +romance.... The farther away a country is, the more we know about it +from a fiction standpoint. His mental forms are very strong. Shuk and +I have practically covered the same run of thoughts in a morning's +work--our machines a mile apart--no prearrangement. But this has worked +out so often as to cease to be a novelty. The Little Girl's letters +have often crossed with mine, carrying the same spiritual unfoldment--a +four days' journey distant.... + +Another realisation related with Shuk's coming, is that I do not belong +as the master of a school in the economic sense. There was much detail +at Stonestudy, much householder's management required. I wouldn't have +given it up, if I had been unable to do that part, but it was a waste +of force--wretched economy for me to take charge of such affairs. We +plan to support ourselves, but I cannot run a school, apportion tasks, +or puzzle devotedly among the meshes of finance. This part of the work +in California will doubtless be taken care of by those who do it well +and profitably. There have been moments when I wanted to go among all +the schools--happen in, stay an hour or a week--until the children and +teachers forgot me, so I could find my own among the many.... But again +it occurs to me that wiser plans than mine are behind it all. Those +who are ready, come; numbers will take care of themselves; all we need +to do is to make the most of the nearest, and keep up our song in such +accord as we can in the midst of the world's sacrificial madness--many +girls' voices now, for the war has plucked the boys.... + +Some of the things of Shuk's which I chose for this book were about +the big war and are not profitable discussions now, but with his paper +included in an earlier chapter, and one or two small things here, his +quality can be seen. This is a letter to the Old Man: + + ... I haven't ceased to follow the Wars. Big one inside. Tremendous + flights, dizzy careenings, impossible falls. Am tramping noisily + through the forbidden garden of Books. Am becoming more and more + vividly aware of Life, above actuality, beyond sorrow, interior to + joy. Vital and thrilling peace to all your endeavours.... Enclosed + a paragraph or two on tallying off the world-war within, with the + world-war without: + + Evil is stupid mixing of good things into in-harmony. Evil is + simply ignorance. Ignorance does not fade away, but must be worked + out, worn down. War is evil in this process. Man's higher nature + is naturally at war with ignorance, manifesting in his lower + nature. If man had always kept at this war against the domination + of the lower self, he would never have needed another war to jar + and jog him along. But man decided, in ignorance, that he had no + cause for war with the lower self. This was his first illusion. + The next mistake was natural. Man thought he would get rid of evil + by killing off the lower selves of other men. All due to his first + error in looking outside instead of in. + + It's all wrong to think we must leave our own houses in order to + fight the greatest battles conceivable. If we do not accept the + fight within ourselves, we shall certainly have the same fight, + once or twice removed, forced upon us.... + +Whatever portion of humankind is chastened and quickened by this big +field-war and sea-war, is the first fruits of a nobler race. Man has +had countless and continuous opportunities of doing this purifying +process to himself in privacy and peace; instead, he has consistently, +with rarest exceptions, used his will to serve the lesser self, or deal +with the lesser selves of other men. Now, in these years, every man who +failed, will learn the lesson, because it will be forced upon him. If +our wisdom is not so great and old as we hope, if we have in the long +past thrown away our chances, then we shall surely go out and fare as +the others fare now--in exactly the right proportion. + +Killing another doesn't work as a means of self-correction. Hereafter, +I'm interested in correcting myself. There is very little outside work +left to do. This is a commonplace, of course, yet it reminds me that +the highest wisdom is something grandly simple and easy. Murder is an +aggravated waste of both time and opportunity. + +Yet I am at peace with nobody, not even myself. Peace ought to be more +intense than war, and until it is, we shall have to go through many +wars to arrive at any kind of peace. Many slaveries is the price of +freedom. + +One who fears will be brought up facing monster fears, until he learns +next time that his personal fears were too petty to mention. One who +has greed and envy will surely be made a pawn in a game of greed so +colossal that perhaps, in a future time, he will have no interest in +neighbourhood greeds, but will have learned to see and to desire the +whole world. His greed has been stretched into a passion for dominion; +and the most fascinating field for empire he will discover within +himself. + +So wherever we stand, we can't lose out. We can choose to do good, +better, best--but without choosing, nothing less than all right can +happen. + +The brighter facts are that all these warring energies, whether of +men or ordnance, are the force of one God, energies working out of +the muddles men made. Man has disturbed the balance. Man now makes a +sacrifice in order to restore equilibrium, to release the powers he +misused. + +The greatest conceivable struggle must sooner or later come between the +higher and lower nature of every living thing. Man is now preparing +himself, collectively and individually, for this final conquest. His +prime illusion seized him when he turned away from his own faults, to +correct the faults of his brother. The secondary illusion is that the +brother will not be able to care for his own faults. The third is that +we must help our brother correct himself. The fourth is that if he +won't do it himself, in the way we say, we will do it for him. + +The world (and this means me) is just learning the rudiments of +war, just finding out how much vitality man has, how much courage, +the stupidity of all fear, the size of the globe, the depth and +possibilities of the elements, including the human soul; is perceiving +more of life and accepting intenser vibrations than ever before on this +terra. All this knowledge will go into the True Peace some day. But in +these nearby years, men are prayerfully eager to get back "home," where +all these godly lessons may be forgotten. + +Real War will positively show man that he must remember what he is +taught. When he comes "home," he will enlist immediately in the +interior struggle with his lower self. His war with other men will +train him to fight with the greatest enemy on earth, his own ignorance. + +I have already enlisted in this big war. My first victory was in +seizing the fact that the world is me and I am the world and nothing to +the contrary. The universe rises and falls with me, subjectively. The +goal is to make it--objectively. + +I am locked with impatience these days. + +After that, comes fear. + +I may go to the red fields to learn the nonsense about fear. Of course +I can theorise it now perfectly, and practise it at periods. But I +want it steadily, the non-wobbling wisdom. Already I have conquered +some fatuousness in myself. Out of my jubilation I write to you.... +Of course, the Many is not a model to follow. The "Many" is a picture +in every man's mind, composed of the inferior things that all other +men do.... Inclusion--intensity--love--creativeness--these Stonestudy +precepts contain all the story. They are certainly the way out and up +and over into Life. + + * * * * * + +Shuk has done a little sketch or two on the big Romance of the new +social order: + + Humour, universality, the highest good will, he writes, are the + symbols that flame from the temple of the New Race.... Everywhere + appear children of the renovating, re-vitalising, more cosmic + tribe. They are easily recognised. The hope of a full and decent + future is with them. + + They will do little according to their immediate predecessors, and + much by an inner light of their own. Being wise and simple and not + destructive, they will gratefully accept all that has proven true + for earlier peoples. But they will instinctively have nothing at + all to do with the traditions based on three-score-and-ten, or any + other of the unfortunately solid viewpoints that frost the world + to-day. + + They love the world, have come to claim it whole, to reclaim + it from deluded ancestors who were solemnly, from birth, bent + upon deeding and selling and stealing and fencing in bits of the + planet's surface. Forerunners of this happier race have shown + themselves to be masters of materials, true workmen in the solid + stuffs; but by their sense of humour they are saved from any + impulse to seize and sit upon fragments of earth. + + These new ones are born with an urge towards unity. Their task, to + set the world in order. Their means, not so much a rearrangement + of objects as a very intense activity along the roads of Beauty + and Truth, in a co-operation unstudied and normal with the rest of + mankind and with the Igniting Principle. + + It may be observed that Beauty and Truth are too vague to produce + effective action in a solid world. This is invariably a saying of + the material-minded, however virtuous they may be. It is they who + loudly demand a dull utility over and above Beauty, and apart from + it. It is they who have agglomerated the chaos that is in this hour + threshing about in dust and blood. Their sober iniquities are the + fertiliser to force the seed of the New Race. + + It is not a cosmic blunder that the great minds of the world are + found in art, including the supreme art of mystic religion--and + seldom in the arena of statecraft. The world was never managed from + a senate chamber; the cosmos is not guided by a king. When rulers + of the past have become great figures, that greatness usually + rested upon their gift of poetry, their love of art or wisdom, or + some religious quality. + + Poems of twenty words have outlived the might of forty wars. A + great book is a higher achievement than a sweeping political move. + The dullest changeling with an obsession may set his seal upon a + war to the death of ten million men, but in the few lines of a true + poem are stored the honey of millenniums of human life. A genuine + work of art is more potent and practical than any blood-bought wall + of tribal separation, more vital and immediate than the doings of + armies. To judge of this properly, one need only know both kings + and poets. + + Of the early kings of Rome, it is Numa who is remembered--and he + was in harmony with Celestial Order. Of countless other Roman + figures, the average mind turns first to Cæsar, who was a literary + man, and whose passion to write outlasted every march of his + legions. Greece had kings and statesmen and great generals, yet + it is her wise men who stand foremost. The conquering Alexander + is famed chiefly because he was the unwitting distributor of + Grecian beauty. In fact, Greek history began with Homer, the poet, + and American history with Columbus, the dreamer who is still our + creditor. The mystics of old China reached for the Torch of Light, + and they might have attained a true dominion over the planet, had + not their fear-inspired kings built a Wall and gelded the Empire + once for all. Gautama Buddha gave up kingcraft in order to gain a + higher mastery. Mohammed lived on the Road. Jesus the Christ set + free an energy in the world that is only gaining its real momentum + after two thousand years--and he firmly refused a material crown. + +... A hopeful dream, the poem of an autumn afternoon, the building of a +sphinx or a pyramid--these are not subject to time or conditions. They +remain. + +So the Children who are the hope of the world are not dismayed at the +medley of illusions emanating from the so-called ruling class. Emperors +and premiers do not get very much done either way; they themselves +abandon their own works over night. They are deserving of profound +sympathy. They only spread out more manful chaos to be set straight by +the master craftsmen--the artists, humorists, vitalists, mystics.... +Beauty is the sun-bright flash of the Infinite. + +With duty raised to a joy, and pain forgot, the Singers come, the +Builders, the Quickeners of man. The Unforgettables of the so-called +past were of this stock. Their leisure is deep--of a sort that sustains +the finitudes. + +All the good goals of yesterday are to be counted as mile-posts. +Direction is more important than any imaginable goal; unvarying +tendency is more direct and splendid than any creed; the white path of +the quester is more precious than a stationary heaven. + +The modern children cannot stop on this side of the horizon because +they are creators. Life is their religion. Their rites are broad and +deep as man, as ancient and reverent as time, as new as dawn. + +They do not reject the Vedas. They re-fashion the Upanishads in their +own hearts. They study the travels and hopes of Jesus, listen for +the divine songs of Orpheus, penetrate the glitter of numbers with +Pythagoras, find satisfaction in the Mohammedan thinkers who connected +Aristotle with Moses. These names do not belong to the past. The +many Buddhas are perpetually modern. Kabir lives to-day in Tagore. +Heracleitus and Plato are still living springs. + +In just the same sense, the children of the New Race are old as +the Pelasgian Zeus, though in point of time they are here for work +and play in 1920. But their vitality, reality, beauty, power and +achievement--these are affairs of all time. + + * * * * * + + + + +19 + +IMAGINATION + + +Many mystics have lost touch entirely with the deep sunken abutments of +the spiritual edifice--the footings in matter. They are deeply wise in +the mysteries and unfoldments of contemplation, but lose their way like +mindless lambs in the world. We idealise a practical mysticism which +dares to walk the earth in the heat of the day, dares to contemplate +the stars as outposts of the heavenly kingdom, launching the vision at +last, not only to the Holy City, but to the Throne of Itself.... + +Talks with Shuk at Stonestudy had a tendency to make us see the big +Unseen politics and diplomacies and rulerships of the planet. Here are +a few paragraphs from one of his letters which show the quality: + + ... Kings and presidents are the most hampered of men. Great + generals are silly without their armies. To remove externals + from us, to rid our minds of the illusive and the inessential, + is simply to clear us for action. Even a gunner, in taking aim, + regards the object or enemy as an abstraction, and focuses his + whole attention upon his own instrument, his sights. If he + actually looks at the enemy, he will not hit him. The billiardist + first glances over the entire table, then, to make a true shot, + concentrates his full attention upon the tip of his own cue. + Perhaps the great leader of armies does not regard individuals or + see them as men, but as extensions of his own body, and in time of + stress, he has forgotten them completely save as abstract power + for his use, and that use he determines interiorly. Even the most + material-minded of men, in the crux of worldly and four-square + events, sinks into deep and effective cerebration. Can we, who + realise this as a conscious and direct principle, do any less? + + I think the Guardians are sitting together a little way off, + watching with grand interest, to see just how much of a mess + mankind can make. Man is always given lavish supplies with which to + create works of art that may prove equal in beauty and wonder to + the universe itself. Man does not yet see art in these materials. + + He must open his eyes before the Powers are able to help him. The + Guardians cannot operate against man's will, because their will and + his will, including yours and mine right now, are of one piece. + The will of the Guardians is better trained and cleaner, because + more experienced.... When men cease to shout for different things + from the same Father, they stand a chance of getting the Father's + attention. + + * * * * * + +We have had many astonishing hours in Chapel talking about these +"Guardians," the arrangements above, as below, one Plan governing all. +We do not care to bandy about the name of God a great deal, for we +realise that He is most unseen when embodied in matter; that He is apt +to be far from the mind that makes familiar with Him in words. Yet all +stands for Him, all reveals Him. The farther we can see beyond mere +eyesight, the more we realise that He is _not_ standing exactly in +person, just outside of the boundaries of matter. + +There are hierarchies, so to speak. There are messengers and couriers +and charioteers, saints, pilgrims, angels, courtiers, priests and +politicians, grades and authorities represented there, such as we find +in Matter and Romance here.... Shuk and Steve and I used to hypothecate +the existence of a White Council back of all the religious movements of +the world. By humour and analogy and romantic speculation, we arrived +at the point of view that the world religions are one at the top, and +that initiates, illuminati, masters are stationed at intervals to help +humanity up the slopes. We conceived the White Council as a centre of +wisdom love and power, holding up the cup continually for revelation, +guiding and guarding humanity's soul. We glimpsed the fact that the +leaders of the White Council might be beyond embodiment--at least in +avoirdupois--the holy of all holy men. Only a most pure and potent +messenger, we thought, would be permitted to reach this Inner Temple, +this Shamballah, compared to which the Vatican is a salon open to the +public and the monasteries of Thibet a concourse for pilgrims. + +After religion, we realised that there must be an upper centre for +all that is represented here below so diversely in politics and +nationalism. It couldn't be God Himself back of the dumas and senates, +reichstags, diets and parliaments. One does not pass from elevator-boy +to editor in chief in a great commercial office. If there were a White +Council back of all the religious movements of the world, there must +be a Big Mill back of all world-politics--a gathering of directors, +venturing to judge the problems of men because they had risen above +them.... These men could want nothing material. We perceived them +behind armies and thrones, manipulating kings and diplomats and secret +centres, in ways that even the closest agents did not understand. + +We concluded there must be another centre made up of the +master-artists, bringing through into matter (as the world can stand +it and as the little human instruments reach up for them), the great +delivering beauties of song and story, paint and verse and tale. And +this we called the Shop Itself. Sometimes we fancied that it was all +too much, even to dream of going there sometime to see the forms, the +marbles, the canvases, the manuscripts--the Artists themselves.... And +then we realised that, just as all the arts and all the religions and +all the political movements were one at the top, that Politics and Art +and Religion were one at the next eminence; that the Inner Council and +the Big Mill and the Shop Itself were one at the top, just as Wisdom, +Love and Power are; as Goodness, Beauty and Truth are; as Father, Son +and Holy Spirit are--three in one at the Top, and that was Himself.... + +And then we would rise from Chapel and go out and look at the +lake--Steve and Shuk and I. + +Finally one day we were told that we had done some right good +dreaming--that it was all true. We were advised that it was no affair +of ours if other people didn't get it right away; that they would get +it.... So we began to put these things in stories. They mean Romance +to us. Queerly enough the stories are coming through--one long one +especially, called _Archer_, that shows the downhere activities of the +Big Mill and the White Council and the Shop Itself. + + * * * * * + +I have said it often in this book--that our culture consists of the +quantity of properties that we have tallied off--the within with the +without. The Kingdom is within, also the King; the Sky and the Nest are +one; one are the heavens and the homing heart that finds its peace in +the deep vales where the adorable humanities come to be. The inmost and +the uppermost are one. + +We are where the torch of consciousness is. + +We are in the body, or in the mind, or in the soul; we are in time +or eternity, or we pass back and forth.... First we tally off the +far outposts of the kingdoms without and within; first we are mere +sentries learning to become clear-eyed and brave to stand alone--almost +outsiders, having scarcely heard of the Kingdom, dimly conscious, but +learning to become steady-eyed. Then we are called in a little--called +in to become couriers on foot, running to and from among the outer +provinces of the kingdom; then messengers to the Middle Countries; then +Charioteers to the gates of the City; then ministers to the court of +the King.... + +The day comes at last when we have audience with Him--when we rule +with Him, when we become united with Him. From the throne Itself, then +we perceive the outsiders, the sentries, the couriers, messengers, +charioteers, the winged riders and the deep-down men of the +dungeons.... With the fine tranquillity of power, we measure forth to +all, reverence, justice and grace. + + * * * * * + + + + +20 + +BOYS AND DOGS + + +Children of the new social order love strange creatures; they are +passionate about the care and protection of animals, but until they are +made to suffer, they are apt to be sceptical about the infallibility +of their elders. They are usually forced into silence early. I have +noted that their ideas are intrinsically at variance with parental +ideas--about purity, sunlight, dancing, foods, religion, odours.... +It takes a good man to break a horse or a dog. In a sense _break_ is +the word, although I would accomplish it with enchantment rather than +a gad.... This is invariable: "When the pupil is ready--the Master +appears----" an old occult saying, and another: "The first thing the +Master does, is to break the back of his disciple----" + +Stiffness of opinion, rigidity of holding to that which one has, +preconception, deep-rutted habits of mind--all these are fatal to that +swift and splendid growth of the disciple when he first finds his +teacher. For days the child is in a bewildering series of changes--made +over new each fortnight--reviewing lives of experience--razing the +old structures to the very footings for new temples of mind and soul. +The child must be ready to give himself--must give himself utterly. +The essential reverence is first required; the self is broken for all +births; one gives one's self to gain all. I would not try to quicken +a child who doubted what I was saying; and yet I have never sought to +make myself unerring or infallible. I like to have the young ones make +humour of my frailties, and at the same time believe there is something +priceless in our better moments together. There is no possibility of +front or acting. + +I seek to make them practise the presence of the Divine in themselves. +I tell them never to do anything alone that they would not do before +me. I take away all sense of sin from them. I sometimes congratulate +them on being especially close to us, because of mistakes. I seek to +set them free in all their ways, stripping the last attraction from +evil, jockeying them higher from a humorous and artistic point of view. +I show them the banality of many popular and obvious evils, the dulness +of paying the price for something _off_ form and of questionable taste. + + * * * * * + +There is a lot of humour and nobility about a good dog and a good boy +together. John has been sleeping for a few nights in a bit of a cabin +with an open door. He picked up a friend down on the beach somewhere, +the same that he described as "World Man Dog" in one of his letters. +I liked the tone of his voice as he talked with this old loafer named +Seaweed.... One evening I was sitting on the hill above the cabin, +so still that even a bird would have mistaken me for a part of the +landscape. + +World Man Dog came up the cabin grade. His head was down--thinking. His +tail was straight out behind him, as a dog's tail is when very much +engaged with his own thoughts. You could see that he was going to keep +an appointment; it was evident that he was afraid he might be late. He +did not see me, so completely was he engrossed in his own affairs. He +went right on up to John's door, entered, gave a look round the shack, +first eagerly, then to make sure. His face fell, his body sagged--down +he slumped in the middle of the floor--utterly dejected. As plain as +day: + +"Hell,--he ain't here!" + + * * * * * + +A real dog trainer is a wise man. I used to raise collies and was +around the benches some--watching the champions come and go. One old +trainer talked to me: + +"Styles change in dogs," he said, "but a good dog doesn't change. He +goes on and on. You don't get the good collies here on the benches any +more. This year they want the collie so fine that we have to pinch the +brain out of his head and break his lung-room in two. Last year we bred +for hair, not for body and brain. Look at that one----" + +He pointed to an old sire that had three seasons of the bench and +blue, a sweeper of prizes. I remember the time when such a head would +have started a stealer anywhere. The old collie had not lost form, +but styles had changed. A most stupid dog with a straight, narrow +head had won--not the shepherd type at all, but the head of a Russian +wolf-hound--a bit of the monster left in it, a drugged look in the +small black eyes; hysteria there, and not fealty--madness and not soul. + +"We breed them for the cities now--for porches and parlours," the +trainer added. "Yes, those great collie strains that we have been +nurturing for centuries to all that is brave and hard and useful--we +are putting the hair of the lap-dog on them now--long silky stuff, not +for snow and sleet. The collie walks by himself these days. No, we +won't altogether ruin the strain. Many individuals are spoiled, but the +race had come too far and too long to be broken down by a few years of +fancyfying." + +Of course, I was thinking of the children at every stage of the +talk--of city people and children. As a race, the city-bred have become +too fine. Life has worn them thin--given them the drugged look about +the eyes. The race will never get far in the art of living until it +comes home to the land and the restful distances and free flowing airs. +This is so true that it seems to risk wearing the eye and the mind--to +say it again.... + +It's good to see them--a boy and a dog together in the hills or down +by the edges of the land. There was a piece of decent collie in a +dog named Jack back on the lake shore. He was long in strength and +courage, but a bit shy in obedience. As a work-dog, he was ruined by +a man who knew less than he did, frequently the case in bringing up +dogs and men--whipped at the wrong time, every forming endeavour in +the pup-brain broken by that. He is seven or eight years old now ... +a clean dog, a very wise and kind dog, with a sly and quiet humour +that seldom is cruel and never falls into horse play--a lover of many +children and confident of an open door in many homes. + +I remember the dignity and beauty of his first appearance over the +bank from the shore, almost timed to our arrival. We were tender to +the collie in general, having passed years with them. Jack moved from +one to another accepting embraces with a kindliness that mellowed +that cloudy day. There was joy about it all. I stood back waiting my +turn with much self-control. He submitted to the welcome--to the last +detail, and a little later refused refreshments with perfect courtesy. + +When we came back the second summer, we found that a bullet had broken +Jack's right front leg. He had wintered out at times, had known much +pain. It was not that he did not have good friends who would have taken +him in, but I think Jack lost faith a bit in the pain and stress. There +was grey about his muzzle. One day he sat in the centre of the little +Chapel class. + +"I'd like to be as good a man as Jack is a dog," one of the boys said. + +"You'd be one more man," said another. + +The fact is Jack has filled his circle rather well. This thought came +to me presently with fuller meaning. I regarded him with knowledge of +three seasons. A clean dog, a gentleman, a master of himself, very +courageous and slow to anger, impossible for small children to anger--a +dog among dogs, but more than dog among men. + +"He _has_ filled his circle," I said aloud. "What makes a man look less +in these very virtues that Jack has mastered, is that a man's circle +is larger, and he has not reached the time of fulfilment as Jack has. +If the dog's accomplishments were suddenly lifted from his circle +and placed in a larger one, we would not be conscious of the fine +integration of virtues that keep us interested now." + +Men, lost in the complications of cities, yearn for the simplicity of +their early days on the farms; and yet they could not go back. The +simplicity they yearn for is ahead. That of the old country days is but +a symbol of the cosmic simplicity in store for us. Tolstoi turned back +to the peasants, yet the simplicity he craved was not there. + +The peasants are merely potential of what the New Race will be; the +peasants themselves must suffer the transition--must have their circle +widened and feel their little laws and their little sense of order +suddenly diffused over broad, strange surfaces. Their cosmic simplicity +will appear when the larger dimension is put in order. That which is +lovely in any plane of being, is that which is in flower--when it +has about filled its present circle. We are not less, intrinsically, +because our values are placed in a larger vessel, though we have a +renovating sense of our own insignificance. There is an order of small +men, so obviously a part of their very narrowness, that it becomes +instantly repulsive to larger souls. Many of the latter have flashed +off to the end of their tether for the time, preferring chaos, to the +two by two neatness of small-templed men. + +A secret of growth lies in these observations. We fill a certain +circle, restoring a kind of order in the chaos; and then the circle is +suddenly widened and that which was our order and mastery is loose and +diffused within the larger orbit. Herein are the pangs of transition. +We lose our way for the time in the vaster area, like a man who is +unfamiliar with an estate just purchased. There is but one thing to +do--to begin to work upon the new dimension. As we work, courage and +patience steal in. Presently comes the vision of the completed circle. +When this comes, our labour is pinned to a fresh ideal, and we are safe. + +In a hundred ways I have found it true that the vision comes in the +labouring hours. One may move for weeks about his new estate (or +manuscript), planning this and that, but the glimpse of the cohering +whole is denied him, until he has actually begun upon the nearest or +most pressing task. This is the miraculous benefit of action again. In +giving ourselves forth in action, the replenishment comes. The sense of +self ceases to clutter the faculties as we bend and toil. + +The days that are added to our experience each bring this story in a +different way: that the sense of self impedes reality on every hand; +that the loss of the sense of self in labour and service renders us +instantly quick to the animations of the spirit, without which at least +from time to time, a man belongs to the herd, and is lost, like all +gregarious creatures, in the will of his superiors. + + * * * * * + + + + +21 + +THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE + + +There is a man here who has found peace. I made a pilgrimage to his +house. A boy from the village went with me part of the way up the +mountain. The Pacific was presently visible upon the right hand, and a +spacious verdant valley on the left. I lingered a moment on the trail, +rejoicing in the quiet splendour, and then noticed a vine-clad hut +still farther up the slope. + +"That's Mr. Dreve's cabin," the boy said. + +I learned from him that this man Dreve was well-loved in the village +and in the big city beyond; that he was a very different man now +from the one who had come here a few years ago; that he was torn and +maddened then, cursing God, but too stubborn to kill himself. + +"What helped him?" said I, because the boy had paused. + +"Well, it wasn't the climate," he answered. + +I saw he was wondering if I were worth risking the truth upon. + +"Did he fight it out with himself?" I asked carelessly. + +"Yes," said the boy, and I now met a fine straight pair of eyes.... + +There was an old sharp wedge to the story. Dreve's sweetheart had +died--the loss twisting him to the point almost of insanity. He had +climbed this mountain, it was said, and remained for three days, until +the town began to search. The marshal had found him sitting up there, +where the shack is now. Dreve was quiet and normal, but confessed +himself hungry. He had returned to the mountain soon afterward, and +built his cabin. In six months, Dreve was all changed over. He seemed +to have a new body and new mind. + +"You said he's here four days a week," I suggested. + +"Yes, he goes to the city. He has a good business, but has mastered it +to the point that several younger men can run it. Dreve only gives two +or three days a week to business affairs, though he has been a great +worker----" + +"He's up there now?" I asked. + +"Yes." + +"Does he mind strangers?" + +"Not your kind." + +I thanked him, and added, "Tell me--he means a lot to you, doesn't he?" + +"All a man could," said the boy. "I'm going back now." + + * * * * * + +Dreve was middle-aged, clean-shaven, deep-eyed. Time had been driven +to truce in his case. His face showed many battles, but when he spoke, +a kind of new day dawned and you looked into the face of a boy. I +remained with him three days. We talked of the new magic in the +training of children. We talked of the New Age and the great song of +joy and peace that would break across the world when troops turned home. + +Dreve had _something_. He seemed to breathe something out of the air +that other men's lungs aren't trained for. He seemed to have _within_ +everything necessary for a human being, including vision and humour and +a firm grasp of the world. He was at peace about God and the world; +at peace also about death. Slowly it dawned upon me that this man had +walked arm in arm with life to the last abyss, and that life had been +forced to confess that she had nothing worse to offer, whereupon the +two had become fast friends. + +When a man can sit tight and lose everything he formerly wanted in the +sense of world possessions; when he has winnowed the last shams out +of the things called _fame_ and _convention_ and _society_; when he +has lost the woman who means all the world to him, and still loves her +memory and her soul better than the living presence of any other woman; +when he has come to realise that death contains everything he wants, +yet is content to wait for it--the idea of hell becomes a boyish thing +to be put away, and Lucifer returns to his old place as a Son of the +Morning. + +We stood together in the noon sun. Dreve did not even wear a hat. + +"I came here in great shadow and could not bear the light," he said. +"But one day I found my heart lifting a little as the sun came out. +Then I found that it was really true--that sunlight helped me. The more +I thought about it, the more I needed it; the more I loved it, the more +its particular excellence for me unfolded. Take anything to the light, +and it ceases to be formidable. Sickness is a confession. The time +is at hand when schools will teach that. Sickness is a confession of +ignorance which is a lack of light. If one is weak he cannot stand the +light. Transplanted things must be protected from the light. St. Paul +on the road to Damascus did not have enough inner light to endure the +great flash from without. Light works upon evil like quicklime--that's +why sunlight hurts the sick ones. It is also hostile to the utterly +stupid idea of what clothing is for--clothing that thwarts and +strangles every circulatory process of the flesh. There's nothing the +matter with sunlight----" + +The sun had not only redeemed the physical shadows of Dreve's life, but +symbolised the spiritual light which had come to him with the calm and +power of the greater noon-day. He did not speak in exact statements of +the one who was gone, but that romance, too, was like light about his +head. I thought of the wonderful thing that Beatrice said which helped +to heal the forlorn heart of her great lover: + +"I will make you forever, with me, a citizen of that Rome whereof +Christ is a Roman----" + +And I thought of the Blessed Damosel leaning over the barrier of +heaven with sweet and immortal messages for him who waited below in +the very core of earth's agony. In passing, the great lovewomen bridge +the Unseen for their lovers, who in their turn give to the world the +mighty documents of the human heart. In passing, this woman had become +everything to Dreve, so that I, a stranger, felt that he was not alone +but twice-powered. All his life was a prayer to her. He brought to her +spirit now the greatest gift that man can bring to his mate--the love +of the world through her heart. + +We had walked down to the ocean. Many young people were bathing in the +surf or playing on the strand. It was the presence of Dreve perhaps, +but I confess that human beings never before looked so wonderful to +me--a fearlessness and candour and beauty about the moving groups that +was like a vision of the future. All smallness of self was smoothed +away in the grand harmony of sun and sand and sea. + +"It's a kind of challenge to a war-stricken world, isn't it?" he asked +quietly. "Aren't they splendid together--the big boys and girls of +California?... Don't misunderstand me. I know the world. I'm not lost +in dreams. I know well the darkness of the world. But there are great +ones among the boys and girls playing together here. All are on the +road, but the great ones of the Reconstruction are already here in the +world--playing. + +"Great ones play," he repeated. "First we are labourers, then artisans, +then artists, then workers--at last we learn to play. That means that +we dare to be ourselves, wherein lies our real value to others--when we +dare to become as little children.... Hear them laugh.... You wouldn't +think this was the saddest little planet in the universe.... Look at +that tall young pair of sunburnt giants! She's a Diana, conquesting +again. Look at the wonder in his eyes! Perhaps it is just dawning upon +him that the man who walks with this girl must walk to God. + +"... Oh, yes, I know," he added laughingly, "there is flippancy and a +touch of the uncouth here and there--but we have all played clumsily at +first." + +I continually marvelled at Dreve's remarkable health. His stride up the +mountain-side was actually buoyant. + +"Did you ever feel that you could live as long as you pleased?" he +asked. + +"No." + +"I think one does not learn this until after one has wanted to die. +One must live above the body and not in it--in order to make it serve +indefinitely--quite the same as you would climb above a street to watch +a parade go by." + +I put that thought away for contemplation, knowing that it belonged to +a certain mystery of Dreve's regeneration. + +"You know," he added, "one has to get very tired to want to die. Those +young people down on the shore--they want to live. They are not tired. +They want to cross all the rivers. They mean to miss nothing down here. +They can't see through it all. It challenges them. But the time comes +when everything on earth seems to betray. Then you have to turn to the +Unseen for the big gamble. The world is learning it rapidly to-day. +Look----" + +We had reached his hill-cabin. + +He turned from the sea to the valley. Night was falling. There was a +big moss-rose plant that smelled like a harvest apple, and filled all +the slope with sweet dry fragrance. There was a constancy about it, +and the great sun-shot hill was blessed with the light and creativeness +of the long day. It was like the song of finished labour from a +peasant's heart.... One forgot the world, the war, forgot that the holy +heart of humanity was in intolerable travail.... The valley that Dreve +now pointed to was like an English pastorale. It had the look of age +and long sweet establishment in the dusk. My friend was quick to catch +the thought in my mind. + +"... It is like England," he said. "There was a development of +detail in English country-life as nowhere else. I think of cherries +and cattle, of strawberries with clotted cream, of sheep-dogs and +sheep-tended downs and lawns, of authoritative cookery, natural service +and Elizabethan inns.... Everything was regular and comfortable. One +forgot to-morrow and yesterday in England before the war. I heard a +dog-trainer, speaking of a pup, say, 'He's a fine indiwidual, but his +breeding isn't exactly reglar.' ... With a rush it came to me that +nothing in the world is regular now. England isn't a soothing pastorale +any more--everything changed, demoralised--but only for the present." + +The dusk was stealing down from the far ridges. Our eyes were lost +in the California valley which seemed to be growing deeper in the +thickness of night. Almost as Dreve spoke, I expected to hear vesper +bells from some Kentish village. His low voice finished the picture: + +"Country roads and sheep upon the lawns, vine-finished stone-work, +doves in the towers and under the eaves, evening bells and honest +goods.... I think of the ships going forth from England, boys from +the inland countries answering the call of the sea and finding their +fore-and-afters and men-of-war in Plymouth or Bristol.... You know +it is the things that make the romance of a country that endure? All +these will come again. All the good and perfect things of the spirit +of old England will come again.... Our hearts burn within to think of +the yearning in the world for a peaceful valley like this.... Think, if +I could take your hand now and watch the sun go down upon a peaceful +world ... hear the cattle coming home and sheep in the perfumed mist of +evening ... doves under the eaves and the sleepy voices of children.... +I think Europe would fall to screaming and tears, and then lose its +madness for strife--if the big picture of our valley at evening were +placed before the battle-lines as we see it now." + +Dreve stared a moment longer. I fancied I saw a bone-white line under +the tan, running from chin to jaw. + +"A woman was leaving her lover," he added. "It had to be so. Each knew +that. Just as she was going, the woman said, 'I forget--I forget why I +have to go away.' ... It would be that way with the soldiers, if they +could look down upon their own valleys and farms. They would forget war +and hurry down, saying, 'I'm coming!'" + + * * * * * + +I wanted to get closer to Dreve's secret of peace and power. I wanted +to tell it. Apparently Dreve wanted me to. Now, there's a price to pay +for these big things, but many are willing to pay the price if the way +is clear. Dreve had suffered all he could; then something had turned +within him, and he found himself in Day again instead of Death. + +"It must be told differently," he began. "For instance, if I should +tell you that the way is to love your neighbour as yourself, you +wouldn't have anything. Whitman said, 'Happiness is the efflux of +soul,' which is exactly true, but it didn't help me until I had +experience. Happiness is the loss of the sense of self. You can see +that clearly. All pleasure-seeking is to forget self. We loosen +something inside that sets us free for a moment, and we say we've had a +good time. + +"There are great powers within. The greater the man, the more he uses +this fact. We thought of steam as a finished power until the big +straight-line force of electricity was released. We can't explain it, +but we have touched certain of the laws which it obeys. The materialist +is inclined, as ever, to say that electricity is the last force to be +uncorked on the planet, just as he said that the kerosene lamp was the +last word in illumination. The occultist declares that there are still +higher and hotter forces, touching Light itself, and indulging in the +laughter of curves and decoration where the cold monster electricity +moves only in straight lines. + +"Men have died to tell the story that happiness is radiation, not +reflection--that we have it all inside, if we could only turn it +loose--that all pain and fear and anger and self-illusion disappear the +instant we enter the larger dimension of life, exactly as the moon goes +out of sight in the presence of the incandescent sun. + +"I was emptied of all that life meant in the world--but something new +flooded in. I saw that all was not lost, but that all was greater than +I could dream; that all was waiting for fuller and finer expression. +I saw that what I could do for you, or for any man or woman or child, +brought me a living force of the love I was dying for. It became clear +that I needed only to clear away the choking evil of self, in order to +feel that I was a part of the tender and mighty Plan,--to touch the +rhythm of the Source, from which all songs and heroisms and martyrdoms +come. + +"It has all been said again and again. There comes a moment usually +after much pain when the human mind realises that it is invincible when +working with the Plan; that it may even merge with a kind of Divine +Potency yet retain itself; that it can actually perform its actions +with the help of that mighty fluid energy in which the stars are swung +and the avatars are born. + +"A cold monster indeed is this electricity compared to the odic force, +the dynamo of which is the human will. But the magic of it all lies in +the reverse of the whole system of use. This force destroys when used +for self, but constructs when it is turned outward. Here we touch the +law again that happiness is in radiation--in the loss of the sense of +self--in incandescence--" + +Dreve smiled at me with sudden revealing charm. "I would say that it +was all in loving one's neighbour," he added, "except that it has been +said so much.... It is true. You seemed to know it to-day on the shore. +You seemed to see the great ones passing there. If the world could only +know the joy of seeing the sons of God in the eyes of passing men!" + + * * * * * + +Night had come. We sat at the doorway of his cabin, a waver of +firelight within, stars clearing above the misty sea. + +"It's all play when one gets into the Plan--all pain while one resists +the Plan," Dreve added slowly. "I used to think that I had a strong +will; that I had good will-force, as men go. It was the will of an +invalid child. If men could only know the force that is theirs to use +when they enter the Stream! One is asked to give up old habits and ways +and propensities--but only because they are harmful and impeding. All +which really belongs is merely obscured for the time. It returns to you +with fresh loveliness and power. One does not give up three-space to +understand four-space. The truth is he must rise above the former to +see it all. + +"It isn't you and I who matter," he said abruptly, after a pause. +"These things are for all. I know what comes afterward--to a man or to +a nation--when driven to the last ditch of pain. A new dimension of +power comes. That's what happens. That's what the New Age is all about. +That's what the war means. We shall learn our new chastity. We shall +emerge as a race into a more serene and splendid consciousness.... The +price--the dead.... I could tell you something about that. One must +have prayed for death to know about that. Don't think of that now--only +take it from me, or from your own soul, that the big Plan is all +right--that _They_ haven't made any mistakes yet--that the loved one is +only away for a time--busy--quite right--about the Father's business. +Another time for that. + +"I can't forget them down on the Shore," Dreve finished. "That was +play. It was all a laugh down there. The big forces and the big people +are always a part of laughter. The laugh will take you to the throne. +The Gods laugh.... There's a laugh that ends pain. There's a laugh that +challenges power. There is the laugh of the aroused lover in the world. +We shall hear the laugh of the world itself, when the big revelation +breaks upon us all that the Plan is good--that the Plan is for joy." + + + + +22 + +A DITHYRAMB AND A LETTER + + +I think we come through at birth with certain sealed orders to be +opened at distant points of the journey.... Ten years ago, as I lay one +night, ready for sleep, hand lifted to put out the light--my eyes found +these lines: + + _"Listen, I will be honest with you: + I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes. + + These are the days that must happen to you: + You shall not heap up what is called riches; + + You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve; + + You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd--you hardly + settle yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by an + irresistible call to depart; + + You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who + remain behind you; + + What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with + passionate kisses of parting; + + You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd hands + toward you.... + + 'Allons! After the Great Companions, and to belong to them!'"_ + +The thing had come around by India--a quotation from Walt, in a +little Hindu book of love and death by Nivedeta. It spoiled my night. +I resisted. Some entity connected with the lines seemed to smile +patiently. Deep within, I knew they belonged to me; that I should +have to realise them, line by line, then live them; that here was +a page from the envelope of my sealed orders to be opened after +clearance--opened far out on the white water. + +They used to strike me as hard lines until the warm laugh came up out +of them.... Romance means _Not to stay_.... Bit by bit, the story +unfolds that the Plan is good--that the Plan is unutterably good, that +one needs only to rise into the spiritual drift to find that all are +God's countries. First the big physical drift, the drift around the +world, along the waterfronts, missing none until the laugh comes, until +the petty things of life, in _no_ arrangements or combinations, can +hold your faculties or even long attract the eye. You know them all. + +One must learn the world first; one must not miss the world tricks. The +men who have lived most have laughed most. But don't stay too long in +the labyrinths. They are passages of pain so long as you give yourself +to them. Still you must solve the maze. After that, don't stay--don't +stay to pick up threads. There are other mazes, other drifts. I +assure you life is rich and brave, but there is nothing so healthy as +a laughing discussion of death in one's own mind--the next step of +the cosmic adventure ... and to travel light there--not to take our +mortgages, our material ambitions, our stone houses full of effects--by +no means to take our card-indexes and letter files--to travel light, +to pick up the brighter shells by the way--every glimpse ahead showing +higher light--a more spacious and splendid prospect.... Why carry +our furs and frost-proof igloos for this adventure in the deeper +tropics?... To become as little children--to be open hearted and free +handed--to listen, to believe, to make pictures, to see across apparent +separateness, to forget one's self in the daisy fields, to love the +light and the land, to fall into ecstatic speculations! You can't do +that if you carry the plumbing of your house in mind, and stop suddenly +to recall if you turned off the water in the laundry-tubs. + +Weigh up your external possessions--weigh them carefully--for their +amount is the exact measure of your infidelity to God.... + +To become as a little child--to know that the forests are filled with +other than things to eat--to love the mysteries awake, to love the +fairies and the hidden flowers into strange unfoldings--to be fearless +and free forever!... The Little Girl writes of her love for it all as +it comes: + + * * * * * + +... I have a half a minute to send my love and strong pull for _High +Flight_. We wanted this to be the magic week of the Home Coming, but it +must be best to wait a little longer. Wait, wait--that is the old song +of Earth--young waiting--big waiting--holy waiting. _I love it._ I love +the suffering of it. One is great according to how well one can wait. I +am loving Earth terribly. It is close to me, with its strange music. + +Last night, the Valley Road one and Esther and I were together--touched +great white things--talked and laughed and loved until long after +three. Each in her way is a power wherever she touches. Each has +everything within. Each is pure and wonderfully sweet. We wait, +openarmed, for you. There are wonders in Muriel--and in others. I +dream constantly of the beauty to come. Nature's ecstasy will be +bursting forth in fulfilment when our Lovers come home. I'm so _glad_ +this morning! + + * * * * * + +The children learn it so easily. I like to stop in this book and +let them say it--the big story of the Seamless Robe, the story of +Democracy. The young men say it strongly; and tenderly the young +women,--the dream of the mate in their hearts becoming the dream of +the Master. They all say it so thrillingly for me in their words and +lives--the little boys coming in with their tales of prairie and the +deeps; literally it is here out of the mouths of babes.... Dreve found +it in a woman, another in science, another in music, another in the +open road. Every man is his own way, his own truth and life. It waits +for all.... We keep fanning day and night, many of us who work at +home--the fanners of the Hive! We cool and harden the great spiritual +concept into matter, as the cathedral spires of wax appear and harden +in flaky white under the masses of the bees.... + +I laugh at my own intensity.... It is our one tale, told in essay and +story, in different terms for cults and schools, for soldiers and +clergy, in verse and prose, with dignity and in slang, but here it runs +best out of the mouths of babes ... helping the Big Democrat get his +story through.... The rest of the chapter is the Little Girl's: + + +THE SOUL SPEAKS. + +I walked through a field. The brown soil was upturned and all the +richness of man's labour was in it.... The morning sun was lifting a +grey veil of dew up to its heart; the earth was fresh and cool where +it had rested. My feet were bare and sank into the soft richness. The +field was wide and pure and fragrant and alive. It seemed to sing as +the sun grew warm upon it. Ecstatic birds flew close and balanced +themselves magically in the sparkling air. + +I happened to be just ready to receive the golden loveliness that the +old Mother is always eager to give, that morning. She helped me to feel +the goodness of all things--the power and beauty of all, and the great, +giving spirit.... Inside I felt keenly the presence of Soul--that was +the secret. Soul awakened and breathing, Soul waiting and eager, Soul, +the holy quickener.... The heart beat peacefully, the brain hushed all +unnecessary thought and listened. I lay down upon the sweet ground +there--the body relaxed and forgotten. + +Then, from the depths within, I heard the sound of the Soul's voice +speaking these words: + +"This is the appointed time. Long enough have I sat mute and silent in +the darkness. We have learned the lesson. The circle of separateness +is complete. We are ready to enter a new globe now, a globe much +larger than the one we have known, much more wonderful. In it there +are greater tests than we ever had before. But the new tests, instead +of being painful, are joyous; not separateness is ahead, but union, +oneness in all things.... Long have you gone your way alone, down the +road of deafness and blind eyes and pain; and not the way I would +have led you, though perfectly right, for it was an education. The +blindness and darkness of it has taught us what _not_ to do, therefore +we know the path.... Ours were not object lessons; always we have +learned through opposites.... To learn the great lesson of listening, +we talked much. We told others of the paths they should take long +before we thought of following our own. We hated all things, to learn +how to love; we took all to ourselves, to learn how to give. We did +the things of death, to learn life truly.... We have suffered great +pain to know the secret source of the everlasting joy. We feared, in +order that we may become fearless, and know the mystery of the dark. +We chose the road of separateness to feel the ecstasy of oneness and +completion at last. We entered the terrible sphere of time and space to +transcend both and be free. We took upon ourselves pounds of tiresome +flesh, to make of it a golden symbol of the great spiritual beauty and +freedom. We asked for everything at first, but through our desiring and +brooding, we learned the most wonderful lesson of all--wanting nothing +but to give. + +"All is for us. The Path gleams before our eyes--the long, sunlit path +leading to the Father's house. I go home with my love by my side. By +crying out in agony, and by weeping bitterly we have learned how to +_laugh_. The world is needing us; we contain all things. From now on, +we live as one in Wisdom, Love and Power." + + * * * * * + + + + +23 + +THE MATING MYSTERY + +I thought a great deal about Dreve's love-story in relation to the +young people, in relation to the love of humanity, and in relation to +the mystical growth of a man denied the mate on earth. In the first +place, there must be many great love stories in the coming decades of +reconstruction, if for no other reason than that great children are +coming in. Such friends and brothers and comrades-of-all-the-earth can +only be born through the excellent and adequate love of man and woman. +In a recent novel, an old priest of the Gobi tells something of the +love story of the future to a young American who is greatly troubled in +his romance. I quote three or four paragraphs because this expression +in fiction is clearer than I could write it again. Rajananda says: + + I have watched your devotion for the woman and it has been a holy + thing, my son. You love well. She has become more than earth-woman + to you. She has become the way to God. This leads to true _yoga_. + Where there is love like yours, there is no lust. Without these + trials you could not have known so soon the love that will bring + you in good time to her breast. The ways of easily-wedded pairs + sink into commonness soon--the dull and dreamless death. It is + those who are kept apart, who overcome great obstacles, who learn + the greatest thing of all--to wait--who touch the upper reaches of + splendour in the love of man and woman, and thus prepare themselves + for the greater union and the higher questing which is the love of + God together. + + The seer must know the hearts of men. Knowledge of love is the + knowledge of God. Love is the Wheel of Life; love is the Holy + Breath that turns the Wheel. The seer is far from ready for his + work in the world, who has forgotten from his breast the love of + man and woman. And then, my son, we are almost at the end of the + night of the world. The Builders are coming in to take the places + of those who have torn down with war and every other madness + of self. These Builders must be born of men and women--the New + Race--but of men and women who have learned what great love means. + + ... Listen, my son: in the elder days men put away their women to + worship God. The prophets, the seers, the holy men walked alone, + and left the younger-souls of the world to bring forth sons. The + time was not ripe for the race of heroes, therefore the mere + children of men brought forth children. And all the masters spoke + of the love of God for man, and the love of man for man, and the + love of woman for her child, but no one spoke of the love of man + and woman. All the sacred writings passed lightly over that, even + the lips of the avatars were sealed. But now the Old is destroying + itself in the outer world; the last great night of matter and of + self is close to breaking into light; the time for heroes has come, + my son, and heroes still must be born of this sacred mystery--the + love of man and woman. So all the priests have this message now, + all the teachers and leaders of men, even I, old Rajananda who + speaks to you, and who has never known the kiss of woman--all are + opening to the world the great story, unsealing the greatness of + the love of man and woman.... For the Builders are coming, coming + to lift the earth--the Saints are coming, my son--old Rajananda + hears them singing; the Heroes are coming with light about their + heads and their voices beautiful with the Story of God.... And now + I must sleep. I go to my daughter, who waits for you.... Once, + before you came, she rested my head and filled my bowl in the stone + square at Nadiram. Even now she waits for you in the hills of my + country--not far from this place, my son---- + + * * * * * + +In the big expansions of life, in moments of great happiness, or +hard-driven by pain--most of us have realised that the higher we rise +in human consciousness, the nearer we get to the All. Thousands of +people now living have risen, for short periods at least, above the +sense of separateness, in which they realised that the finest and most +exalted love a man may have is for "the great orphan, Humanity." + +The human heart is awakened through the love of one, to the more +spacious expression for the world. All life is a learning how to love. +The last love of the flesh and the rolling years, before man turns his +love from flesh to spirit, is the grand passion of man and woman, yet +man does not abandon the woman in turning to Humanity or to the Unseen. +Rather, hand in hand, the eyes of the man and woman are uplifted to one +star--the Apex of a Triangle perfected.... Yet one must not turn to the +Unseen until he has learned the full agony and ecstasy of the seen. + +"Love humanity by all means," I tell younger ones, "but learn what love +means first. Do not undertake to destroy passion until you have learned +its glory and madness. Rather lift passion to adoration, and use it, +full-powered, upon that which unfolds forever for your worship. It is +not well to kill out a personality until you get one." + + * * * * * + +Our youthful reconstructionists are apt to stir the community with +opinions or actions, which have to do with their own heart stories +and the world's romance. They have a way of confounding the seasoned +authorities of pastorate and parish, with embarrassing questions in +regard to method and magic in the making of two souls into one. These +young people may not be modest according to Elizabethan ideals; in +fact, the young women are apt to go half-way in the choice of the man +who is to be the father of her children, but this is an essential of +innate beauty and fastidiousness. More and more the higher types of the +new social order are questers for that single and holy mating which +brings nearer the dream of the beautiful and heroic in children, and +which gives us a glimpse of a future to die for. + +The story of Romance cannot be written nor interpreted in life without +its hill-rock, named Liberty. There is no man-made law for love. The +first business of human beings is to find their own on earth. All +makeshifts part away; all short-range systems scurry past; all comets +and asteroids cease to be considered, when a pair of suns whip into +each other's attraction. And so it is with a true-mated pair. Those +who have dreamed long and kept themselves pure, realise here below for +a time the raptures of the elect. The new generation has a sense of +this; and while its eyes look hard and daringly for its own, its finer +examples preserve an integrity for the one until he is found. + +The New Race realises that promiscuity is only a lack of taste. To draw +the fulness and redolence from a book or a friend or a lover, from any +episode or fabric of life, one must search for the true, as well as the +beautiful, and the beautiful as well as the good.... Perhaps that tells +it best--it dares to love Beauty, this New Race. It means to bring +back the beauty of the body as well as to breathe forth the Soul. Its +devil and its danger is Paganism. It loves Nature so well that it is in +danger of forgetting that the old Mother is not complete in herself, +but a manifest of her Lord Sun.... + + * * * * * + +As to the liberty of its loves--the New Race realises that one cannot +be held, except by vulgar hands, where that one does not want to stay. +A mated man and woman turn each other absolutely free, and the first +cry of their liberty is toward one immortal nest. Those firmly caught +in the pure dream are content to wait for each other. They do not +experiment. They realise the long road of romance--a road so long that +the three-score and ten is but a caravansary of the night. They build +above the flesh if for no other reason than to come into the greater +beauty of the flesh. Renouncing nothing, devoted to austerity only for +mystical union, carried away in no abandonment, they seek to achieve +that command of the body by the mind, and that command of the body +and mind by the Soul, which reveals the ultimate truth--that the plan +is for Joy; that the best of all things is for men who have mastered +themselves; that chastity is the breath and inevitable answer to +self-conquest. + +The growth of Romance through an ideal mating becomes a fusion at last +of all the loves of earth. Connubial blessedness is therefore more +reverently to be promoted than procreation, for upon it depends the +loveliness of issue. The New Race acts upon the conviction that the +love between man and woman is the holiest of earth expressions, rather +than the love of mother and child. The first contains the second. + +Still no earth love is the end.... Built through austerity and +idolatry, through denial and abandon, through madness and martyrdom, +through pettiness and chivalry, through pain turning less and less +slowly through the years to power, through a little zone of peace at +last (the calm before the greater storm) the fervour of man and woman +becomes, in the fullness of time, too strong for earth, and in the +final and keenest pain, the administry of a higher force begins.... +I mean to tell this in a queer way through the next three or four +chapters. Straight statements will not contain it quite--for it is +_still_ with dream, as yet. Rather I mean to weave the concept for +you--fold on fold--so that at the end you will have it, as they do who +have listened in Chapel many days. + +Flesh is not integrated finely enough to carry the higher ardours +of devotion. If the great saints who have learned to pour out their +souls in adoration to the Father should turn back to a mere physical +expression, they would blast themselves as well as the object of their +madness. The awakening of the higher forces of love lifts the eye of +the adorer from the breast to the brow of the beloved--from the brow to +the Initiatory Star risen at last to meridian. + +A new dimension of love is entered upon. All life tells the story. +Watch the big birds lift from the sand to the cushion of wings; watch +the airplane quicken its speed until it lifts from the monorail.... +Machinery of racking power in a falling house, is that great love which +has not yet learned to look above the body of the chosen one. + +This change is the last and highest pain of romance--the breaking +apart of the temporal, for the story of the long road. Man and woman +must go apart for the mastery of self, before they are ready for the +higher mating. The great love story invariably crosses the mountains +of separation. If we cling too long to the less, nature is outraged, +beauty is drained. Brief separations are dangerous, because the lovers +build recklessly with ideals and the rarest spiritual materials. +Meeting again too soon, they encounter an unmiraculous creature face +to face. If they had really completed the journey, finished the task +apart, they would have come into that tenderness which loves the human +frailties of each other, and which sees the manifest of three-score-ten +merely as a garment particularly made for a particular journey. + + * * * * * + +There is always wrecking work, before a new and wider circle is entered +upon. The time will come when men and women shall learn that the +magic of going apart is equal to the magic of coming together. In all +birth-times, in all transitions, the consciousness of the bearer is +changed--often queerly.... One can endure the primitive and the child +in the other's mind; one might adore the great play of passion, and +all the art of it; one might never weary of fragrance of throat, or +magnetism of hand, the inimitable plays and child things--but the mind +is forever the slayer of the real.... + +Remember, there is not a full union possible on the physical plane. +The body is the barrier that separates souls. Those who believe they +have all of each other in that which they see and hear and touch--have +far to come in the real love story. Have you ever asked yourself +what physical passion is? It is a frenzy to overcome separation. +This separation was necessary for the diffusion of life. It is the +outbreath, the going forth, the great generative plan.... Physical +passion does not satisfy the agony of the soul; often it only makes +the agony more keen. In the early phenomena of all great love stories, +there is encountered that blinding, bewildering need _to become the +other_--to lose identity, to fly somehow into the breast of the other +and be no more. This is keen pain of love but also an intimation of +greater union. + + * * * * * + +There was a man who had found much of beauty and power, much of the +Burning Desert and certain wonderful touches of the peace of the Hill +Country--in his story with a certain woman. She loved him in a way more +real than he dreamed. Life had shown him much to scoff at. He had been +glad to make the most, merely, of an exquisite playwoman. One day she +was down town to meet him, but he left her for a business appointment. +That afternoon, about everything he had in a material way was swept +from him--much to which his ambition had tied itself for several +years. The man was badly rocked. He walked the streets--shocked almost +to laughter, to find all that he had held for, and held to, plucked +from under.... At length he thought of the woman who waited. The +laugh of mockery quickened, because he thought of losing her, too--a +worldly-heart who would go with the rest--goods that perish. + +He knocked at the door where she waited. It was opened swiftly. He +did not need to speak.... She seemed above and around him. There was +a great still sweetness he had never dreamed of as a man (and could +only remember dimly as a child to his mother), arms of tenderness +and healing.... He saw that instant in her eyes that nothing of the +world ever did nor ever could really separate them. The queerest thing +about it all was, that he used a word he never could use before--a +word, as he said, that had been so badly worked by the world that it +needed a lot of washing before it was fit for him. Yet it came to his +lips--_wife_--in a way that showed him also a new meaning to the word +_forever_. + + * * * * * + +This subject of love and mating is only opened. There is much to say +in pages that follow, but now, apropos of nothing, if not this theme, +there is a chapter of letters. They somehow contain the spirit of many +things I have longed to express. Those to whom they appeal will find +the last pages of the book richer because of the insert. + + * * * * * + + + + +24 + +CHAPTER OF LETTERS + +I + + +We come up through many slaveries into freedom. It is the end of a +considerable road to be able to stand against the morning sun, saying: +"I want nothing but to give----" ... To be able to say this without an +answering laugh of mockery in the heart, where old King Desire sits +with his dogs. + +To be free--that is to be irresistible. Do you want love? You only +spoil it when you stipulate what the return shall be--how the +proffering of the return shall be ordered and arranged. The great love +is giving; great love is incandescence. One must be radiant to be +happy. It is so literally. It is so, fold within fold.... + +One sees gold, looking up from below, and its attraction becomes +eminent among all desires for the time. We pass it by and look down, as +the spirit of man should look down upon gold, and it becomes a mineral +merely. You can enjoy it as you enjoy other people's roses. It bestows +itself. Others seek to bestow it upon you. + +Hold to nothing in matter. It is slavery. Give yourself laughingly to +your work for daily bread without thought of result. Then, and not +until then, are you inimitable in your task. Order the performance of +your task with mere brain and attach it to your ambitions--you but do +what the many accomplish. Your product is multiple, not a perfect cube. +It cannot unfold into the Cross. It misses Resurrection. You must be +free, even to perform your work in the world. You must be free to be +irresistible.... Genius is approach to freedom. It finds its own paths; +it cuts itself free from the forms and vehicles of others. + +We have known the dark slavery of the opinions of others. Many of us +have cast off such bonds, who are still slaves to our own opinions. +We learn to stop lying to others before we learn to stop lying to +ourselves. Until we are free, we have no opinion that is fit to endure; +until we are free, our opinions are coloured and formed in the matrices +of personal self, which is subject to death. + +It's all so simple. We have to put down what is in our hands to help +others. We have to still our own thought to listen to another's saying. +We have to silence the self to hear the Master. + +This silencing goes on and on in all our work. Pain shows the way.... +We must traverse the deserts. We must cross all the rivers. We must see +one by one every material thing betray us. This is the Path--money, +opinions, ambitions, health, friends, desires, all betray so long as we +obstruct their approaches with our own conceptions and our own greeds. +We rise one by one above these illusions. The last and greatest is +that desire which is born in generation.... All the old reaches its +highest perfection in the human love story. All Nature binds one to the +loveliness of this tale. It is the way to the Way. Because it is not +the Way itself, it appears to end. The great intensities of agony now +begin. The soul realises that only the foothills of pain are passed; +that here are the mountains, here are the deep valleys that contain the +Gethsemanes and timbers for the Cross, and the plan by which the Cross +must be morticed and tenoned.... + +The sea, the mountain, gold, the rose, the child, the peasant's +simplicity, the coming of the coolness of evening, the glory of the +clay and waterfall, mist and cloud and star, the deep healing winds +that come slowly with their heavy fruitage of power from the mountains, +the swift winds with the holy breath of the Sea--all these in the +breast of the mate.... When this dream is taken, one bleeds, laterally +and full-length. One wants to die; thus he overcomes death. He feels +the great burden in which all other burdens lose themselves. When he +passes this highest series of inland peaks, the distances stretch clear +and shining ahead. This the test of faith because you deal with love +itself. Your soul, in its earliest advices, tells you that your love of +earth is pure. + +It is. It is good. It is the highest here. + +It is still to be perfected by the races, even by the new races, who +must be born bright with its untried magic.... But so long as it is +idolatry to that which is subject to change, it is hourly impregnating +the life itself with the seeds of pain.... + +You are called to the love of Souls. Sooner or later you must go. It +is the Path. It is the steep path to the Master. You give up all to +go this way--and then you laugh to find it all returned in lovelier +dimensions. You take your idolatry from the plane of mutation--lift it +into the glorious and changeless plateaus of the spirit.... + +You turn from the Seen to the Unseen. + +This is the passage. You are called to go alone a little way--to be +worthy of the great Meeting. You carry your gifts of the passage woven +into the Seamless Robe of your being. All that impedes day by day you +cast aside, as an army making a perilous retreat casts off day by day +its impedimenta--until at last you stand naked upon the eminence, and +the Voice says, "Be not Ashamed--I am the Beloved...." + + * * * * * + +Out of slaveries.... We think at first that God is without--at last we +look for Him within. We come from the happiness of the Father's House +making our great journey, but our Soul's quest continually is for the +happiness again. Yet we must not look back. It is failure to go back. +That which we have left unfinished, is not behind, but awaiting ahead. + +We are slaves to our bodily health until we learn that the body is +superbly fitted for obedience to the Soul; that it comes into its +rhythm and beauty only when mastered. Indeed the very process of +mastery is to lead it to the Fountain of Youth. + +We learn that truly to be rich, we must give continually. We learn by +the quickenings of our spirit that white lines run from the brows of +all creatures to an apex which is God--that God is all. All is God.... +All is one. We are one. We are brothers. One house for all at the end +of the Road.... We find the King in our own Souls. We learn from that +that all men are Kings. We bow to all Souls. All souls are rays of God. +We come at last to see the sons of God in the eyes of passing men. + +Our passion now is outpoured. That is joy. We ask nothing but to give, +to heal,--to permit the spirit of the Healing Masters to flow through +us, but first we clear away the obstructions of the self. + +Achieving our own chastity, we perceive the potential chastity in every +face. We are deluded no longer. The imbecile cannot hide our eyes from +the Flame. All purity must be found within. We have no fault with +others when we are cleansed. We see the heroes then, the giants, the +runners, the singers, the charioteers. + + * * * * * + +We learn that we can give nothing real away--that all we do for others +is service for ourselves. We give pain for joy, time for eternity, the +human for the divine--give to receive, give to be radiant. We must be +Flame to be fed by the Flame Itself. + + * * * * * + +We are prepared by every suffering, every humiliation, until the +personality bows at last.... Personality is good. It has brought us +where we are. Do not kill it out before its work is finished. We do not +realise its beauty until we see it mastered--until we see it with the +eyes of the Soul. All one story. We learn to love step by step. We love +ourselves, our possessions, our children, our friends, our mates, our +Masters, our God.... The higher we go, the more perfectly we contain +all the gradations. + +The last sufferings, the last tests, are so often through the human +love story, because all weaknesses are easily shown through that--all +our pains so quickly received.... The bright sandals of the Master at +last are heard across the Hills. One laughs then, for He brings with +Him the beloved we have cried for so long.... Not in the love of desire +after that, but the love of giving, the love that casts out fear, that +passes understanding, that fulfils the law, the irresistible love of +the Christ. + + +II + +... A wonderful morning--a rare Monday--the highest hold yet--all is +ascending. All beings are so wonderful. I sit on a certain bench to +work one morning--the next morning cushions are there for me.... I +speak a sentence from a book with a word how much it means and how +worthy to love--and the sentence is brought to me illuminated on +vellum.... They bring the finest fruits--honey for tea, cream for +peeled figs, black bread perfectly toasted, the perfection of unsalted +butter.... I walk up the mountain to work--and the voice of the +gardener is a benediction from the Most High--and I stand for a moment +looking toward your sea over the city, and the birds say, "It is time." + +There is a pool of lilies at the top, an Alhambran villa, great rose +gardens.... I come to the pool--dip my feet in the still waters and I +know from that how chill the night has been. I look at the lilies--how +far they have opened--and know the time of day. I pray for a moment +under a priestly Pine ... and my heart goes out in the new joy we have +found--the joy of knowing that one may be the king of the world and the +confirmed Son of God--if he but learn the one lesson--to want nothing. + +Pool of lilies in the morning sun. (A little lizard is walking along +the arm of the bench. My bare feet are quiet, and he wonders what kind +of barkless trees they are. He is here and there. One sees his body +move, not the members. The sun puts him to sleep.) ... The pool is +still as the waters of sleep. The Sea--I think of her always as the +emotional body of the world--the old Sea Mother with diamond-tipped +emotions. And then I think of the Master Jesus walking upon the Sea +and saying "Peace be still" to the stormy waters.... Each Soul must +say that to his emotions. We learn to walk upright upon the earth, +then to still the waters, then to have dominion over the birds of the +air--and last to be seven times refined in the Fire.... Earth, water, +air, fire--the first quaternary.... Yes, we are learning to say "Peace +be still" to the stormy waters. We do not know how beautiful they are +until they obey. + +... Out of the still waters in the pure blue starlight, the lily +blooms--the lotus on the still lagoons of the Soul.... Naked as a +serpent's head, the sealed bud rises from the water in the night.... +Out of the power that follows the peace upon the waters--for the blooms +of the spirit lift greatly in the tranquillity of the heart that +follows the storm--out of the power of peace upon the waters, the lotus +rises and waits like a bride in the dawn-dusk for her Lord Sun to brush +back the veils and find her heart. + + * * * * * + +It is only the beginning of heaven we find here. We weary of the +world and turn back to the Father's House. We have plucked the fruits +of pain--we have thirsted and hungered again and again.... Out of +the darkness we have formed the thought, at last, that there must be +quenching waters, and somewhere bread to eat that does not perish.... +You can say it in a thousand ways. The Prodigal tells the story. He +arises and turns back. Evolution has ceased, involution begins again. +He is being folded back to the Father with all the treasures of Egypt. +He has ceased to diffuse himself in generation, through which he has +become an integral part of every fibre of the world, and begins now to +call in and synthesise all his spiritual possessions. The processes of +diffusion were in pain--the integration is joy again. Each day of the +up-slope his step quickens. The more he knows, the more he believes. +The more he sees, the larger his faith--the more his treasures, the +more sumptuous his order. "Unto him who hath it shall be given." + +Again, it is merely lifting the consciousness from time to eternity, +from the cramp of space to the flow of the universe--from pain to +play--from desire to radiation.... One ascends and at each steps sees +farther. Day by day, the work of the installation of the higher powers +goes on. We give up nothing but that which impedes the inflow of +godly forces. That which we think we want to-day will look as absurd +to-morrow as the hopelessness of a child over a plaything broken. + +It's a way of loving every step. Thus we heal from the infinite tears +of the changes of matter and dissolution, and lift our love to the +Masters and the Immortal Gods. We dare love utterly only that which can +contain us. If the Masters loved us with all their power, we would fall +in the madness of too much light.... Always, they give us all the love +that we can endure.... We give our all to them and expand daily, until +we know the passion to break ourselves open in ecstasy, like the king +bee under the whirring wings of the queen. + +In the human body, the diaphragm is the surface of the waters. If +our consciousness is below that, we are in generation. To become +regenerated is to lift the balance of consciousness above--to +rise like the lotus from the face of stilled waters.... It is a +quickened vibration. Simultaneously, one lifts from cerebration to +intuition--from the time of matter to the spaciousness of Soul--from +the light of the camp-fire in the night, to the full day upon the +plain--from the son of man to the Son of God--from the pain of loving +with desire to the irresistible creativeness of wanting nothing but to +give. + + +III + +... I was watching the pool this morning--fish and frogs and eels +under the lily-pads--a slow cold life. They have colour and grace--but +eyes of glass. They move so softly down in the dim coppery light.... +I thought of the lakes and the seas, the simple cold of all life--the +coldest and most rudimentary in the great deeps.... Birds were playing +about in the rose gardens, darting in and out of the bamboo clumps and +yucca stalks. Humming-birds were continually fanning the trumpet and +honeysuckle vines.... I thought of the skylarks--throats that open +only as wings beat upward, and the infinite blue harbours where the +white gulls flash--the lonely lakes and tarns where the heron cross in +the evening and the loon cries at night--the cypress deeps where the +flamingoes commune in shaded glory, and the eagles that cross from peak +to peak, along the spine of the continents. + +... And then, of course, it came to me--the old conquest--how we must +lift our consciousness above the face of the waters and put on our +wings.... Many have almost finished with the waters of generation--the +emotional body of man, the same as the planet.... In the beginning, it +was necessary to "go down into the water"--the terms of the baptismal +rite. Regeneration is "coming up out of the water." The struggle +between the two dimensions is dramatically expressed by the faith, and +the lapse of faith, of Peter when he obeyed the Lord, and arose to walk +upon his storm-tossed lower self. His supplication as he sank saved him +from perishing. Regenerated, he walked with the Lord upon the waters. +I remember, too, the saying, "You must be born again of water and of +spirit----," the story of regeneration told once more.... + +It's a lifting from the cold, bloodless vibrations of the creatures of +the deep, to the winged passages of air and sun and starlight.... We +think that we give up joys of life--we plunge back again and again to +the dim cold waters--our eyes blinded at first by the light, our senses +frightened by the fragrance and the space.... As if the reflected +light of the lower cosmos could compare with the pure radiance above; +as if the love of desire could compare to the glory of the outpouring +heart--the heart filled with light--the fulness of spirit, the ecstasy +of wings. + + * * * * * + + +IV + +... The time comes in the progress of spiritual aspiration when the +generative impulse begins to manifest within rather than without. +Firmly and gently the thoughts are turned to the Image within or above; +the tendencies for outward manifestation slowly but surely give way.... +This work sometimes goes on rapidly. A hundred times a day the thoughts +of earthy attraction are finished with a soul conception, where +formerly the mere physical presence sufficed. + +Nothing answers thought more swiftly, but in this passage of mastery, +if a single desire eludes from the aspirant, he must meet it later +in a tearing and cumulative call. Surely at length the mind rises to +rule. One's conception changes from the fear, the torment and the red +haze, to gentleness and calm, a readiness to know _all_ the mysteries +of life--to care for and respect all functions as one only can who has +mastered himself. + +To cast them out in hatred is failure. That means the hardening. It +blights the beauty of the vales and all magic. + +When one begins to unfold the wonders of the kingdom within, as one is +called to do in the higher and contemplative spheres of the artistic +life, there is an increasing joy that makes it easy, more and more, to +lift the power of life from the torment and unrest of the generative +seas. + +One finds his dream of the beloved changed and infinitively endeared to +him. Patience, reverence, tenderness comes to the love that once knew +only the single passion of a male for the mammal. Even that, in memory, +becomes beautiful to eyes of wisdom and calm--all God's plan. One is +sensitive all through his breast for the unfathomable sweetness of life +and love. He sees the child and the immortal in the mate. He finds that +the body is truly sacred because he sees it with love and not with +desire. These are good tidings. They make one happy to write them. + +There are seven centres of ecstasy in the body. Through the mastery +of will and love and action, the life-force is lifted to dwell with +and awaken these centres. With each awakening, a new power comes--a +new joy--a new hill-range crossed toward the Father's House; with each +awakening, the beloved within is quickened in consciousness, and the +beloved without is held more dear. The wondrous story of regeneration +goes on and on, to the love that seeks to give itself utterly. To +love--that is all the Soul asks. + +Momentary passion swiftly passes in the increase of spiritual +aspiration. Its force is not killed, but used for awakening the higher +and immortal principles where real love abides. The hand of the loved +one becomes sacred unto tears, and the joy of life is to serve. + +The whole body is presently repolarised--the fire sparking upward--the +apex of the triangle turned upward--desire of soul instead of desire +of the body.... The mating of the mind and the soul is the larger, the +cosmic consciousness, awaited so long. This means that the Lord has +come into His Temple--the body made ready. It means that the mind and +soul are one, the house no longer divided against itself. The lover +is ready for the approach of his mate. Each has been cleansed at the +fountains apart.... + +One must be utterly weary of the old. This repolarisation of the +generative force cannot come until one has heard with furious passion, +in the depths of pain, the call to the higher life, the new quest. Not +repression then, but transmutation. One changes gently, often under a +mystic administry, but always with growing love for the body and for +the world, using the life forces for healing and concentration and +the power to listen to the Lord within--the Voice of the Silence.... +Upon the illumination of the seven centres by the life force, another +mystery takes place. The levitation of the spiritual life overpowers +to a considerable extent the natural gravitation of the flesh--the +down-pull of years. The result, of course, is the restoration of health +to all tissues of the body--the Fountain of Youth starts singing +again.... To you. + + * * * * * + + + + +25 + +ROMANCE + + +Affairs like these can only colour and illumine the upper side of the +clouds, so far as American fiction is concerned. One might write a real +novel of Regeneration, but the field of the story is not now for this; +the arteries through which the public is reached by the publisher are +not yet friendly to such a novel. We learn at Stonestudy to write what +we please, but we are content with still small answers, at least for +a time. We have ceased trying to force people to see the thing as we +see it. For money to live by, to take our places comfortably in travel +or sequestration, we retain the handicraft to write for markets that +pay. We keep in touch with the world--that is practical mysticism. We +rejoice in the dense pressures and tortures of world traffic. This is +very calmly told, as it should be. My young associates learn it easily, +performing the actions thereof, but for me, many years were required. + +Long ago I wrote a novel about a man and woman coming to a fervent +agreement to remain apart for a year before their mating, in order that +they array themselves in fuller glory for each other, so that each day +each would find the other more wonderful than yesterday. The novel +furnished much adventure in the intervening year, otherwise it would +have been still-born. What was the real theme to me apparently wasn't +noted at all. Yet separation is as essential as companionship for the +real Romance. A man who does life in a book must know this much, even +if he use his knowledge sparingly. It's all a laugh in the higher +workmanship. Romance--each has his idea of that. Each does his best by +that. Here's a document of the day from John which gives his idea very +well: + + Since I was first with Steve and Fred and Irving and Shuk, I + have had the great sense of wanting to be out and away from the + world--to be with them _one at a time_. In the Rockies or in the + misty isles of the sea! All of them have a different meaning and + sense. _One_ will mean the Rockies or the misty mountain, saddels, + foamy bits and lathering horses. Another will mean the tarry smell + of the hold of a ship, the flapping of sails in the moonlight, and + the smell of black coffee coming up from the galleys. Another will + mean the sun betin desert--camels, and men stooping over a fire. + They are all my comrads. + + Fred is a young sea-writer. We are great pals. We yousto go down + and lie in the sand, read, talk and meditate; then a little later + we would take exercise and a long swim, then rub each other down. + They were wounderful days--those. I got right to the heart of Fred, + and he did to me. He yousto come over at night and sleep with me. + Those were the nights! I got so attached to him, but we had to go + apart. He is in New York now, going to college, and I am here in + California. It does not seem right for me to be in this God blest + place in the Youneverse, and he in the slums of the world, going to + college. But it is the Plan, or it would not be this way. + + The new race will stay high all through partings; then they cannot + last long--for there is nothing to stay away for. When pain + leaves, then all will be ready for the road and the great comrads, + horses and the road of greatness. It is all ahead. In the great + future--all ahead--my comrads--all comrads--the world will be all + comrads! + + * * * * * + +All our days, as tellers of tales, we try to tell, not stories, so +much, as what Romance means to us. The very glory of life is that there +are no two pictures the same.... To me, Romance means _not to stay_! +It was hard to learn. Not to tarry in the senses, if for no other +reason than to know the full beauty of the senses. One must not miss +his train; one must not linger after curfew has sounded. There is no +grey confronting of misery--like that of meeting one's own commonness +catching up. + +It's stiff grade work all the way, but there are heroic moments. We +learn to take a supernal, rather than a sensuous joy. The most rending +of lovers is the most passionate saint.... When Mohammed finally got +his morals in working order, the desert was said to be full of slain.... + +There is something to do with _martyrdom_ in my dream of Romance in +later years. All pain and fear has gone out of that word--a singing +about it. The name _Kuru t'ul Ayn_ comes to my mind in thoughts of +Romance--"Consolation of the Eyes," martyred soon after the Forerunner +Bab had been shot in Tabriz. I cannot tell why exactly, save that she +had beauty that had turned to loveliness, and many men had looked +through the door of heaven in her eyes--some haunting mystery there of +beauty and bestowal--the blending perhaps of the love of man and God in +the same woman-heart, passion lifted remotely above the common rules of +life, transcending every man-made institution. + +One of the Little Girl's ideas of Romance is a hill cabin, an open door +to the dusk,--baby heads weaving under her hands--warm air coming up +from the valleys, but _his_ step not coming that night.... Here is a +suggestion from one of her letters: + +Have just been out in the garden planting little seeds that will grow +big and strong so that they can be put into shining pots and cooked for +the Stranger's dinner--tiny carrot seeds. They had to be rolled over +and over between the fingers before they could decide one by one to +fall into the rich warm earth. Planting little seeds at sunset! Does it +not awaken in you something of the old days we spent so close to the +soil? Radiant dusk? But you have to look _back_ to see how sweet the +purity and simplicity of the peasant's life. The peasants themselves +do not know. To-day holy hot sunlight and lilac bloom--could there be +a more wonderful day than that? And Chapel so full of power, then a +planting of little seeds at sunset. Ah, Mary! I am happy as I dare to +be in a world that is choking in its own blood. At least we are open +and ready for any work if it is ours. We hold up our arms asking for +hard and painful tasks that will fill us with that singing conquest +that cries aloud: "None have more pain to hold than we!" ... We are all +working toward you, toward that height. You will be waiting for us with +open arms out there. We all send white love to you--our waiting Mary! + + * * * * * + +Peasants and mill-girls, or the dim lacking faces of the +passers-by--always these join to the Little Girl's quests and dreams +of the spirit. Two brief additional cuttings suggestive of her idea of +Romance follow, from the twelve-year period: + + The first great vision of the quest must come to a soul over the + plough, in the peasant's body--dissatisfaction with self and + surroundings. This is the beginning of everything. The person who + is content with small things, small thoughts, does not move. His + soul stays asleep. With awakening comes hate and anger and much + simple blackness. It is just _that_, which gives him the power to + stand up against the ways he has known so long--to stand up for + himself--to push the new vague dreams through to life and light. + It is all blind at first, but great and brave, too. The call that + would come to the peasant would be to the Town--to many men and + things, for that is just the opposite from his life. In a simple + way he would go to the depths of the worst he could find--to the + extreme. + + The thing that is holding so many from their own, is contentedness, + satisfaction. The longer one holds to this, the lower he sinks, + until he is buried in himself.... The questers who have come up + into the light, are brilliant, flashing, beautiful. But the souls + of the "white torrent" are rushing on through the dark night, a + night that grows darker and darker as it approaches the day. Their + faces are tragic, drawn, expectant; there is a sort of red-dark + cloud that they are tearing themselves through.... Only the poor + fat ones! they fill you with sadness because you can not help them + and they are not trying to help themselves. They seem to sink + almost visibly, farther and farther down, as they laugh and smile, + and nod their heads to each other (only to each other). The light + around them is really not a light at all--just a colour, a cold, + grey-black colour that looks almost dead. You could laugh if they + had anything to do with you, any power over you--you could laugh at + them and tell them that you were laughing, but their helplessness + hurts you. _They_ can only hurt themselves. There is absolutely + no humour in their faces nor in any of their movements. They are + all sober; they can not laugh inside. Always it is the sign of + flight from God to lose the sense of humour. For humour is a great + inner glowing--the power to overlook, to forget the meaner things + in people and in life. It is a power to forget one's self also, + to laugh at oneself.... I see the New Race as a line of Classic + Ruffians--a Troop of Mystic Warriors ... singing their glorious + song of stern compassion and deep love, filling all with their + questing for power and beauty.... I hear their laughter." + + * * * * * + +She paints the City Street a bit darker in this: + + * * * * * + + Dim faces, full of blank suffering and of living death. Dark + and noisy streets, crowded stores of trade.... Men--little men, + following their women, carrying the babies. The mother part of me + goes out to those little men. Down the ages, mothering imprints + its pain upon our souls. And their women now--with faces wanting, + always wanting, everything in them _wanting_! I have been carried + away by these dim hungry faces. I have seen them staring at me + with blank surprise. But then they hurry on, and the forgotten + babies cry. Hushing them, the women pass--little men following. + + * * * * * + +... The pain of utter isolation--somehow this means Romance to me, in +a deeper fold of being. Isolation--the hate of an undivided people--a +man standing alone against his nation, yet loving it better than any of +the natives.... I remember in an early story of having the hero do his +big task under the fiery stimulus of the hate of London. All this has +something to do with the coming of Saviours. + +Time approaches for many when the little three score and ten fails +longer to hold the full story; one must look out of this sickly +warm room of the body; one longs for the mystic death, which is +_martyrdom_.... I tell all this from time to time in tales--but only +the children seem to understand.... + +Romance--I have walked up and down streets and open highways for days +and found no man's work challenging, nothing to keep alive my interest. +I wanted absolutely nothing that any one else in the world had, nothing +that any one could gain. All worldly activities looked diminished and +pathetic to me--but under it all--the endless iteration of the Soul: +"Here is a _man_--as much me as myself!" A call in that--always a call +in that. One longs to die for that, once and for all. + +I crossed the Yellow Sea with a wound long ago. I had missed a battle +and was suffering, without the satisfaction of suffering with a bullet +wound.... I lay three deep in Chinese coolies in deck passage. I wanted +to see some one at home, or I should have dropped overside. In the fag +of pain, on the border of delirium, I lay with the deep down men of the +world, Chinese coolies in their filth and vomit. I looked into the eyes +of the nearest, and saw a brother, not a stranger.... It was ten years +afterward before I caught the big meaning of that moment--and that's +why I say so often that the time comes when we find the sons of God in +the eyes of passing men. That is _Romance_. + +There is more of death and less of days in my dream of Romance now.... +I can see a man giving up his woman because she is dearer than his +own life to him. I can see a man going to the scaffold for a country +that is taking his life and hers. (Always I see him loving his country +more dearly than the sober ones of regnancy and war.) ... I see him +taking his woman in his hands--half laughing, half crying, their faces +upturned--one creature in that moment of parting, as they had never +been in street or church, or state.... Romance in that. + +I have a line here from the Valley Road Girl: + + ... Lastly, it came like a commandment to me--to give all to + the Coming Generation--to acknowledge the New Race as one's + God--remembering always that all Gods are jealous Gods." + +It's all in that, our dream of Romance--Democracy, the Planetary Hive. + + * * * * * + +I am using a short story as the next chapter, because it brings nearer +to the centre of the picture certain ideals of romance, workmanship, +martyrdom, love and death, than many essays could do. A tale may be +a master-synthesis. Perhaps it is just the thing to show you what +we mean, as a group,--what we mean about many things. This is not a +marketable tale; in fact, it was done with the idea of making a place +for itself just here in this book. + + * * * * * + + + + +26 + +THE COSMIC PEASANT + +A SHORT STORY + + +When I was a lad I remember hearing some one say he had read a story +of love and war. I thought of it just now, as I lay panting a bit in +a queer nest for the night in the Galbraudin Foothills--in the midst +of an army that had no country yet--a tragic document unfolding in +my heart.... A story of love and war--yes, I had seen one. It was +written upon the cells of my brain, the deeper parts engraved upon the +heart--the old red war with a new dream hovering above it, and the old +true love, white as ever, yet a touch of the rose and gold of the new +race in its folds. It seems almost my story. Like Job's servant, only I +am spared to tell it. Such a little while ago, I thought the tales of +love and war all told. + +I saw Varsieff first at school, and went to him at once. Literally, I +went to him. It was at recess, and I followed at his heels to his room +instead of my own. He was not surprised. I was always at my best beside +him. He accepted this gift from me. One who learns to give greatly as +Varsieff did, learns also to accept the best things with grace. I only +left his room long enough to get my bag. Gladly would I have slept at +his door, but he asked me in. We were to be mates. Often he assured me +that we were men, face to face; that I was not his Boswell, not his +disciple, but a man-to-man friend. Yet I knew that my power was not the +power of Varsieff, also that I was most powerful when I realised his +splendid superiority. + +I followed him during all the vacations. He loved the North +Country--snow on the mountains, cold night rains, the filled fields and +shrunken rivers of summer, the sound and natural things. He said he +would find his tropical island when his work was done, but that work +meant Russia to him. He was genius. Every one loved him. One vacation +time we undertook to walk together over the Torqueval Peaks. He +borrowed a guitar at a peasant house there in the mountains, and played +for an hour as I have never heard any one play. I had been with him for +almost three years and had not known he touched the instrument. + +In one of those days of our walking-tour in the mountains an instance +occurred of Varsieff's immeasurable tenderness of heart. One golden +morning as we walked through a little village, past a vined wicker +fence--a huge yellow cat sprang forth from the leaves and caught a bird +on the wing. A kind of sob came from my friend at the swift little +tragedy enacted in the wonderful morning light. I turned--Varsieff's +face was back to its childhood--a depiction of childish horror--all +finished manhood erased. + +Many times in our talk his sentences formed a poem, which I would rush +away to put down. He learned to do this alone afterward. Once I went +to his room in Moscow after I had been away several months, and found +scattered among clothing, papers, books and tea-things, a set of recent +lyrical gems of his. These I gathered together in the little book, now +marching around the world. + +I smile to remember when I came to learn that Varsieff had other +friends as devoted as I. It hurt at first; I could not understand. His +big magic then was that he wanted nothing. He used to say that a man is +at his worst when he wants anything for himself. The fact is Varsieff +in wanting the _letter_ of nothing, really wanted the spirit of all; +in wanting nothing for himself in those days, he wanted everything for +the world, a new heaven and a new earth, first and especially a new +Russia. Then the day came when he wanted a woman. This was altogether +unexpected. I thought that Varsieff absolutely had given himself to +the revolution--that humanity was his bride. + +I was with him when he first saw Paula Mantone--that is but part of her +name. It was in Moscow. His voice, as he spoke to me, watching her, had +a different and deeper inflection than I ever heard before. She was +just a girl--poorly dressed, who had paused to speak laughingly to an +old flower-woman. + +"Wait, Lange," he said to me, and crossed to her. + +It was in the Spring of the year. The morning was very bright. She +turned from the tray of flowers and looked up at him. His hands went +out to her shoulders. He was searching her face with a queer and tense +smile--as one who finds a woman after a few months' separation in one +whom he has left a child. Of course, my thought was that he had known +her before. She, too, would have slept at his door.... + +I heard their voices. He asked her name, where she lived, and how he +could reach her again. It all seemed trifling to me. Varsieff had never +been like this before. The rest of the day he was silent. We walked and +dined together, but his thoughts were not for me. For once, they were +not for Russia. There was a smile in his eyes, and often he turned back +the way we had come. Once he said: + +"I had to leave her. It was quite all I could stand. I do not think the +world is a place for two such people to be happy in. Possibly, we may +be allowed to meet from time to time----" + +I was inclined to call this nonsense. A little later he added strangely: + +"Yes, it would be dangerous to let go and become merely human in a case +like this." + +The next three years Varsieff and I were much apart. I do not profess +quite to understand the obstacles between him and Paula Mantone. +They had loved each other instantly and torrentially. They were much +together, yet there was some super-human torture about it. Even if I +have a glimpse of the mystery, I'm afraid few will understand. There is +something back of each one of us greater than our actions. We are all +greater than we seem. It was as if Varsieff and Paula Mantone were only +intended to meet here--to meet and quicken each other for a greater +giving to the world. I wonder if it is quite true, what he said toward +the last: That really splendid lovers may consecrate themselves to each +other, but they must also learn to give each other to the world.... In +the beginning they tried to lose themselves in each other, and they +encountered untellable pain. + +At length came the night when Varsieff returned to my lodgings, saying +that it was only a question of time when they should find peace. He +said he knew they would find peace, for he had already touched it +momentarily. I wondered if she were dead, and he caught my thought. + +"No, Lange," he said. "I am still to see her from time to time." + +Before that first meeting with Paula Mantone in the street, Varsieff +had loved Russia and the world, a friend and comrade to me and to many +others. All his love had suddenly been called in and directed upon the +woman. After the three years, he gave himself to all of us again--but +a quickened illuminated man. He had been brilliant to me before that, +but the brilliance of phosphorous compared to sunlight now. Varsieff +was making some strange spiritual initiation out of his love story. His +presence glorified me on the night of his coming--the summer before the +war. + +"There are four layers to Russia," I remember him saying. "The royalty +on top, then the dreamers, then the middlemen, then the peasants. Kings +and middlemen go together; dreamers and peasants go together.... Yes, +time will come when the dreamers and the peasants truly shall belong to +each other. They have been lovers a long time." + +I asked him about the other pair. + +"The kings and the middlemen will cancel each other," he answered. + +Varsieff was the most active man I ever knew, and yet he moved easily +as one in a sort of spiritual drift. He was an intellectualist with +those who used their heads, a devotionalist with those who used their +hearts, a mystic among dreamers, a child among children. Though never +known much publicly, he was to my mind the biggest occult force of the +new Russia. I doubt if there was another man, unless it was Christonal, +who gave more impulse and direction to the revolutionary movement. + +The heads of many departments drew inspiration from Varsieff. I +have seen him carry himself lightly through a day of decisions and +improvements and conceptions, which do not come to the ordinary master +of democracy in a year. I have seen him encounter, worked out by +others, suggestions and innovations which he himself had made--Varsieff +not realising that the thought was his own. He would innocently praise +his own work, as carried out by another. The last few months preceding +the revolution were the busiest I ever knew. We became new men. We did +not leave Petrograd, but prepared secretly for the big unburdening of +the soul of a people. The last few days, before the government changed +hands, were charged with a wrecking silence. + +Christonal's nerve broke. For twelve hours he was in and out of a +system of baths and manhandlings, and I was one who stood by. Varsieff +smiled it through, his voice calm, his eyes often looking away as he +spoke. The leaders of the younger party saw who was the real chief that +day, though Christonal is a strong leader. + +I was always a good desk man, and was trying to get some order in a +bundle of cipher messages in the heat of the night, when Varsieff came +and lifted me laughingly by the shoulders, thrusting the messages into +one of my deep inner pockets. I thought he was dragging me off to bed, +but when we were alone, he said: + +"_She_ is near. I can't leave. Will you go to her for me?" ... + +He told me many things to say. + +I found Paula Mantone after many hours in one of the Registmonten +hospitals. She was frail and feverish from much labour, not regularly +attached to any nursing staff. The instant I saw her, I realised more +clearly what Varsieff had been doing--trying to kill himself with work +for the Cause. Clearly, she had lost interest in all but death and +service. I had been too much with Varsieff to notice his arrival at the +same point, but I saw their joint endeavour through her. It seemed to +me like a death-pact. + +A new mystery for me. Evidently they had realised they must wait for +release in death, but serve meanwhile. The marvel of Varsieff's sending +me when he might have come himself, gave me just an inkling of the +tremendous power and patience which had come to him. Two years, or +even a year ago, he would have endangered new Russia for an hour with +Paula Mantone. + +I could not breathe this rare atmosphere. So far as I knew, there was +no woman for me in earth or heaven, but certainly I would not have been +able to look over a living woman's shoulder for her mystic counterpart, +and long for death to consummate the real mating. But war teaches +lovers many wonderful things. + +Paula Mantone was a kind of white silence. You had to listen keenly +for her step and give your attention to her voice. She was utterly +feminine--malleable like gold. Even to me, she was the meaning of +love. I had no thought of her being _my_ woman, and yet she seemed +spiritually to contain some sister who would answer for me. Soldiers +worshipped her. I think each saw his own in her presence. It was the +finished magic of the Trojan Helen again--every man's desire, as gold +contains potentially all the metals, and the rose the essence of all +the flowers.... + +She was the quietest woman I ever saw. She seemed formed of white +cloud--the sun on the other side. That was it--Varsieff was shining on +the other side. She answered him, light for light--gold for gold. For +the rest of us, she had that white, saintly lustre. And even in that, +we found much to make us brave and keep us pure. + +Deep within, there was some wonder about Varsieff and Paula Mantone +which my brain could not interpret exactly. But the world had suddenly +become to me, in her presence, a place of divided hearts--millions of +divided lovers around the world. I had only known the shock and misery +of war before, and the thrilling roar of comrades, the crash of the +wreckers and the songs of the builders ever nearer. Now I heard the +still voices of lovers everywhere. In the pressures of air--callings, +cryings, yearnings made audible. + +It was a new door of the heart that she opened--her particular gift +to me. That moment, though I had loved and served Varsieff for years, +I knew more thrillingly than ever his greatness, because this woman +loved him. To me, to all soldiers, she gave a reflection of that superb +bounty. To him she gave its _incandescence_. Perhaps together they +found it too terrible a light for earth, or perhaps they were unwilling +to find their fulness of days in a world so charged with agony as these +years. + +She left me a moment, answering some voice which I had not heard, and +stood for several seconds beside the cot of a bearded soldier, her +fingers upon his grey-white brow. I did not realise until after she +moved, that she was there at the moment of his passing. I thought of it +again: She was the white silence. I think the soldier died, believing +that his woman was there. + +Twenty cots in the place--a low, cold room lit with a handful of +candles. The smell of blood and sickness and soiled clothing mingled +with the bitterness of iodoform as the chill draught swept through. The +peasant soldiers knew only the meagrest care. Their wounds were dressed +as often as possible, but there were five times too many cases for the +service, and the whole corps was impoverished. + +She stood still in the dim distance a moment longer, her fingers +touching the brow already cold. Then she seemed to remember that I was +waiting at the far door. I was not twenty feet away, and yet in the +few seconds required for her to reach me, a sort of vision filled my +mind--a vision of the peace that soon would come to the world--the song +of fruitful labour sung again, peaceful lands, soft dusks, lit cabins, +filled barns, peaceful flocks and up-reaching baby fingers--all with +such a queer shock to a male consciousness like mine. And when she +stood before me, I felt that the best part of Varsieff was also there. +I even fancied his look in her eyes, such as you see exchanged in an +old pair who have lived long together. I think that a great love always +seeks to make one of two--in different ways than we dream. + +"You came from him?" she whispered. + +"Yes." + +"How does he look?" she asked. + +"He looks like you," I said, for the moment inspired. "He looks like a +sun-god, too. He looks _with your love_ into the eyes of soldiers and +statesmen and revolutionists, and they find him irresistible." + +"Dear Lange," she said. "He loves you, too. You are changed. You have +come into the big magic of the revolution----" + +"I am Varsieff's friend, first and last--his comrade." + +"And mine," she whispered. + +"The magic comes from standing between, Mlle. Mantone." + +She smiled and bent toward me. She had been like a tall, white flower, +but now for a second as she bent closer, it seemed to me that I saw a +hint of Varsieff's gold flame on the other side--because we talked of +him. + +"What did he say?" she continued in a low whisper. + +"He said to tell you that he and all your friends were busy, day and +night, weaving and binding the Cause into one great fabric. He told me +to tell you this--that the work of the Weavers will be given to the +world in a day or two--possibly the day after to-morrow. I wish you +could have seen Varsieff's face as he spoke to me this last. I remember +his words exactly: 'Tell Paula all that I do is for her. That I read +and write and dream and breathe through her heart--that she has taught +me well to love and wait--that I love the world through her heart.'" + +"Anything more?" she asked in a kind of agony. + +"He told me to say that only you knew his weaknesses, so far----" + +"I love them best," she answered. "A woman always holds a little +tighter to the sweet human things of her child.... But he is a teacher, +a leader. He must be clean and flawless.... If it were only for us--I +should have him, weaknesses and all.... But he is to lead the clean +peasants to their promised land----" + + * * * * * + +Varsieff listened as a desert listens for rain. He caught me by the +shoulders when I ceased to speak--as if to shake something more from my +mind and heart. + +"A man must be half-divine to keep step with that woman," he said. + +Then he changed the subject by remarking that Christonal was not +half-divine--quite. + +"Christonal is ambitious," he added. + +"What has he done now?" I asked. + +"He has ordered me to take the field----" + +That turned on a red light in my brain. Varsieff was not a soldier. I +knew instantly that Christonal was not pure--that he wanted personal +power more than the good of the Cause. No one knew Varsieff's place +better than he did. My friend could only have been ordered to the +field for the same reason that David sent the husband of Bathsheba. + +After the revolutionary signal went through, Varsieff and I found +ourselves in the Galbraudin Foothills with thirty thousand men, and +every man of them wanted to go home. Somehow the peasants thought +that if they changed leaders, they would march home at once. They +were willing to fight their way home; they had felt their own power. +Varsieff loved them with a white passion. + +"They won't miss, if _we_ are true! They're clean. God love +them--they're clean!" + +He saw in the peasants the soil for the new earth and the soul of the +new heaven. + +Germans and Austrians were to the south of our nest in the Galbraudin +Foothills, while to the east and north were the big lines of Russian +troops as yet unawakened to the principles that moved our ranks. Our +weakness was that the peasants thought the war was over.... The cold +mountains were in the distance--winter still upon them--a late spring +in the Foothills.... In this dramatic lull, our men talked of their +ploughing, of their women. + +Some one said, "They're enlisting the women and girls----" + +It went through the lines like a taint of gas. The men were difficult +then even for Varsieff to hold. + +You must get the picture. We revolutionists were cut off from the +world. The Germans and Austrians sent us messages--some friendly, +some derisive. They thought us fools or gods, but waited to see what +we would do. The old line of Russian troops all about--just as clean +peasantry as our forces--but officered by the straight military class, +impervious so far as a body to any shaft of the propagandist. + +Varsieff whispered to me that those regular forces were honeycombed +with our comrades, but that they were being put to death under the +slightest suspicion--that two or three hundred were martyred each day. + +The strangeness and horror of it all dawned upon me--the sense of the +whole world against us, even America from whom we had drawn the spirit +of our courage--a kind of holding of our army for slaughter. Listen, +I have seen tens of thousands of troops go down to the pits of white +and red, seen their opened veins colour the snows, seen the spots of +red on the brown earth turn black. I have seen the boys lean over the +trenches and the pools from each throat widen and deepen from one man +to another. I have seen a man grab his mate as he fell and say some +absurd whimsical thing that the soldier next didn't understand until +_his_ moment of death--a little sentence that folded them, not in +extinction, but in a new life. All the horrors of death--quantity and +quality--yellow and red and white--pure white passings that made a man +think of the lilies--all manner of death I had seen, and still it had +all been impersonal compared to now. + +This was my own heart business. I shared leadership with Varsieff. +These lives were in my hands. I wanted to go down among the boys--one +by one and say that I was pure, that I loved them--that if they died +they were at least loved and not wasted. + +I always wondered what those young peasant souls thought about death. +Once in a lot of pain when I was just a boy, I wanted badly to die and +was deterred from taking my life, because of a counter-desire to get +home and see my mother. I think it must be like that with the peasants. + +Varsieff saw them in a strange mystic light. No man loved them as he +did. They looked like sons of God to him. That's what he saw when they +went down to death. + +"There are no dreams too fine for them to answer," he whispered. "They +are pure--they come from the North like all invaders--glacially pure! +We'll warm their hearts--lead them home to God--teach them how to live!" + +He was silent suddenly. I asked him to go on and then saw the queerest +look instead. Varsieff was torn by the thought, that now as a leader +of revolutionists he must teach his peasants how to _die_ as well.... +A civilian, I repeat, does not realise this quite the same. In the +Capitol, we had worked for a Cause that meant the death of men, but now +we were the officers called upon to charge live troops to the fork and +the grill. I knew Varsieff to be more imaginative and tender than I, +yet I would not have mentioned my qualms, had I known how terribly he +was suffering. He caught my hands, whispering: + +"You have it, too?" + +It was the single hour of weakness that Varsieff had ever revealed to +me. I studied his face without speaking. + +"I brought them to this," he muttered. "I have always thought of the +spirit of things. I was always pure enough, following that dream.... +But, Lange, we're a little mad--we who dream.... I had to come here. +I had to see this fighting end. Perhaps Christonal knew what he was +doing." + +I put my arm around his shoulder. We Russians are allowed that. + +"I have always thought of the spirit of things," he added, "until I met +Paula Mantone. I would have forgotten everything for her beauty, but +she remembered our souls.... And now, because I would have forgotten +the bodies of these men Christonal sent me here to learn that. We are +spirits and bodies, too, Lange. It takes a crowned head to hold to the +two ends at once--God, hear 'em sing----" + +The ruffians always hushed and choked us when they sang. Something new +about it this time, for Varsieff was seeing them across a red stream of +their own blood. + +"I can't drive 'em into the fire-pits," he muttered. "Why, I'd rather +wash and dress 'em. They've got the idea that I am to lead them home. +I can't betray that--not even for the Cause!... I never saw it before. +They are not herds, not groups--but monads--each a man----" + +"We've got to put through the big story," I said quietly. "Thirty +thousand is cheap--our little planting out here is cheap, if we +can give Russia the new heaven and the new earth--Russia--then +America--then the world----" + +I was giving him back his own words. + +"Thirty thousand lives," he repeated. "Yes, the price is cheap--thirty +thousand every day for awhile--your life and mine, Lange--a cheap price +to pay for the glory we see in the days to come. But I can't kill +these--I think Christonal knew it all the time----" + +"You aren't ready for work in the constructive end, if you falter here +among the wreckers----" I said. + +I knew that no Cause had ever uncovered a more valuable servant than +this same Varsieff, though badly out of hand just now. I wasn't making +any effect upon him. He looked at me strangely. + +"That sounds true--exactly and unerringly true," he said wearily. + +There was no quarter possible now. + +"I remember your words in clubs and cabinets and in the ante-rooms of +the dumas.... You weren't afraid of blood there, Varsieff." + +He winced. + +"They called you the 'Fire-eater,'" I added, never knowing when to +stop. "It's just as straight to-day as it was when you talked there: +'The old civilisation must be washed clean with the blood of the +new----'" + +His hand came up piteously. + +"But their hearts are turned homeward, Lange," he said. "Their eyes +are building their homes all over again--eyes turned homeward over the +mountains----" + +"Turned to God," I said reverently. + +"Yes, but taking my word--the word of Varsieff--that God is there----" + +"He is there." + +"But will He come to them at the last, Lange?... Will He show His +face--so they will believe?... When they feel their death-wounds--the +blood sliding out, warm and silent--the cold coming in--will they hold +to what I said? Will He be there for them?" + +"You're shot up, old man, only a bit bewildered to-day. No one knows +better than you how great emotional giving of one's self to Cause or +Country makes death easy--and quickens the Soul." + +Varsieff was ashen. + +"I've got to eat all my words! Even you, bring back my words to me. +I've talked too much.... Suppose I am a madman----?" + +"Then you have no responsibility for what you said," I smiled. + +He stared at the tent-wall. + +"Varsieff," I said at last. + +His hand came out. + +"You were pure in all you undertook." + +Silence. + +"You wanted nothing for yourself." + +"I wanted nothing for me--nothing but----" + +"But what?" + +"Paula Man----" + +"She's a part of you--now. You look like her!" + +"I think I'll have to die to see her--Oh, Lange--I'm sick--I'm +impoverished, cell by cell, with loneliness----" Varsieff laughed +unsteadily and added: + +"I remember asking you to say to her--that she alone knew my +weaknesses. Now you know them, too." + +"She said she loved them.... Varsieff, I have known you a long time," +I added after a moment. "I have shaped my manhood, such as it is, +after you. I am proud of this--to the end. I, too, care more for +you, because of this day--for understanding. To understand--that is +everything. I who always listened before, tell you to-day: _The dream +does hold. The dream is good. Thirty thousand men--even our singing, +growling, big-footed, red-hearted thirty thousand--is a cheap price to +pay for the new Russia!_" + +"Do you think Paula would say that?" he asked. + +"Yes," I answered, "from the mother-heart of her." + +I had spoken, and now I tried to make myself believe that she would +have ordered him on. I had to change him, at any cost. A rather +questionable way now appeared--to lift him out of himself. + +"Listen, Friend," I added. "You are lonely--but you have the heart of +a woman pulsing with yours--every beat.... You'd have to _be me_ to +know what loneliness means. I'd take all the pain to have a woman like +that. There are times when you are half a man, because you are apart +from her, but there are other times, Varsieff, when you are twice a +man--double dynamics----" + +He caught me in his arms. I knew he was healed, but I felt the cad and +the cur for bringing his sympathy on myself.... He was looking back +toward the cold mountains when I left him, and the look of the woman +was in his eyes. That night I dreamed that Paula Mantone came to me +with a message for Varsieff, and that she told me some beautiful thing +about the child of a king--but I could not quite get it down to brain. + + * * * * * + +Sedgwick, a brigadier, and technically in command of the thirty +thousand, was a straight militarist in training. He looked to Varsieff, +the political head, for orders. The day came when Varsieff had no one +to look to, for we were cut off from Christonal and Petrograd. We +were not long kept in doubt after that as to who were our immediate +enemies--not German, not Austrian, but the old line Russian troops hung +up to the east of us, the same that had recently occupied themselves +making martyrs of the revolutionists in their ranks--two or three +hundred a day. + +It was a red morning when two of our _fliers_ blew down with the word +that our brothers were closing in--that it looked like extermination +for our thirty thousand, unless we strode out and crippled them with +the first shock. Ten miles to the west the Bundalino Marshes began. We +had the secret paths, but it was a wretched fugitive outlook to seek +shelter there. As I looked at it, it would never occur to leaders who +had brought Russia to the moment of parturition, to break up for a +miserable safety in the swamps of Bundalino. + +I recall the distant firing of that red morning. My eardrums had not +healed from recent months more or less in touch with the artillery. I +remember brushing the edge of the lines, as I crossed from Sedgwick's +headquarters back to the hut I shared with Varsieff and a servant or +two. The peasants were listening queerly and quietly to the far firing. + +I passed through the sprawl of pup-shelters, and certain ideas occurred +to me: first, that the arrangement of camp was abominable, a pitiful +lack of technique shown in this bit of military handling; second, the +slow cold conviction that we, as revolutionists, must have all the +virtues of the old-line troops to begin with, and to build our real +greatness on top of that; finally I drew from the queer attitudes of +the men toward me, an intuitional flash that to them the distant firing +meant a signal that they were about to fight their way home. + +Varsieff was sitting dejected upon a camp-chest when I rejoined him. + +"Sedgwick is ready when you are," I said. "He suggests that the men be +not kept waiting too long." + +Varsieff looked up. His face was livid. His soul had no chance that +morning. I thought of the old story of Arjuna standing between the +battle-lines, reluctant to join action against his own kindred. + +"It's the same here that it was in Petrograd," I announced finally. +"The dream holds----" + +He shook his head.... "They are just boys--white-haired boys. They want +to go home----" + +That instant I seemed to see the world laughing at this great man; +I saw the end of Varsieff politically.... Superb genius broken down +by an intrinsic weakness--as a man who, trying to lead the world, +falls for the lure of an actress maid.... I saw all his work of +early years--straight, clean, unerring, selfless labour of a man to +a Cause--the inspired labour of the past two years when he gave the +whole fruit of his quickened heart to the new Russia--the magic of +a man loved by a woman great enough to be his divine sculptor and +priestess.... It was the thought of Paula Mantone that helped me that +instant. Sedgwick was on the path outside. I hurried out and whispered: + +"Don't come now. Come back in ten minutes----" + +The General paused to let me hear the firing. "But the troops----" he +said. + +"Give me ten minutes more with Varsieff----" + +"The attack may be called----" + +"I know, but I need that time." + +The old soldier turned back, hating me.... + + * * * * * + +"Varsieff," I said a moment later. + +"Yes----" + +"I've got to tell you something----" + +He turned quickly. + +"Paula Mantone is near----" + +"No!" + +"I saw her last night." + +"Will she see me?" + +I laughed at him. "Do you think she would want to see you now?... +You're a sick man, Varsieff--morally sick. Any decision is better +than your present incapacity.... I think she must have sensed your +weakness--that she came to bring you strength, for she is your +strength." + +"Does she love me?" he asked. + +"That's a slap in her face to ask that--a woman who gives you her +soul's strength--the love of her life. That's lack of faith, my +friend----" + +"I am whipped. The white-haired boys--they want to go home----" + +"You can't wash your hands. You can't say, 'Go home, boys.' They have +to fight their way home. First, they have to fight their way to the +east out of this valley--against old Russia!... It's the first great +battle of the Old and New--first time in the history of the world. We +hold the New for better or worse--this little Theban band. You would +let us fail and dribble away and slink into the Marshes--you, her +lover, whom she calls Boy and Strongheart----" + + * * * * * + +"What did she say?" he asked fiercely. + +"----that I need not speak of her coming unless you needed help. +She said you would not need help on account of your own lack of +courage--rather that it would be your great tenderness that might +defeat our Cause now. She said this was but a last ordeal, hardest of +all for Builders, who have ceased to kill...." + +"Where did you see her?" + +It was all a lie, of course, except I had dreamed of her coming. I +invented a place of meeting and added to his question that Sedgwick did +not know of her presence. + +"I agreed that we were not killers, but I told her that we dared to be +cruel to ourselves," I added. + +"What did she say to that?" Varsieff asked hoarsely. He had suddenly +become like a child--one who dared not go to her, who scarcely trusted +himself to speak. + +"She said _that_ was the key to the whole matter--that we dare to +sacrifice ourselves--dare to inflict pain upon each other because one's +true love is the self--" + +I was startled and awed at my own words. The idea was unlike anything +of mine. It was exactly as if she had told me something of the kind in +the dream. Varsieff groaned: + +"The glory of her," he whispered. "Was there more?" + +"Only that you must not falter now ... and that she would be waiting +for you at the end of the day----" + +"'In the cool of the evening,' she would say," he muttered. + +"Perhaps that was it," I said. + +"Nothing more?" + +"Yes--but only if you needed it----" + +"I do." + +"That she never loved you so well as now--that you mean new Russia +to her--that she will come running to you in the cool of the +evening--either here or _on the other side_--and something about the +child of a king." + +His back stiffened. He arose. I saw him splendid again. I drew back in +the shadow, afraid that he would see the sweat that had broken out upon +me, though the place was cold. + +Of course the idea, as I saw it, was to give the old-line troops the +fight of their lives--to show the whole of Russia a martyrdom if +necessary, thus revealing the temper of the revolutionists. Varsieff +had been tempted to let them slip back into the Marshes to save their +lives. + + * * * * * + +We were in the saddle side by side an hour later, and close to the +front--the two big lines moving slowly and craftily together. Varsieff +looked back at his precious boys, following willingly enough so far. + +"It's their white heads that kill me," he muttered. "They are like +children, and that I should----" + +"They are all our children," I answered, sweeping my hand in a circle +ahead where the troops of old Russia had filled in, waiting to deliver +us to death. + +"Dear old Lange," he muttered, "I'm glad you know her----" + +I wondered what that had to do with his peasant children. Her spirit +seemed a blend of his every thought and emotion.... We galloped along +the fronts, talking to the different commanders. Some were students, +in their teens, faces of boys who loved Varsieff with a love that +yearned to die for him immediately, without words, a readiness to leap +under his horse's feet.... In a kind of madness, all the mysteries of +life seemed to unfold for me that morning, the spirit of Paula Mantone +always near because I was so close to her lover. + +He talked to the different leaders quite careless if the peasant ranks +listened. He told them that the outer world was watching--that new +Russia, Poland, Finland, the new Europe, the new World--all depended +upon _them_ now. He said they were chosen men--that he would never +leave the field except in victory--that he was brother and father and +lover to them--that the world would be better for this day. He talked +like a man at a bar, or standing among the river-boats, or a father to +his sons in the fields. + +We rode along the lines as they marched. Our horses lathered and dried +and lathered again in the morning sun. I saw my comrade, Varsieff, +giving up his soul to the peasants: + +"... I, too, have my farm that waits for me--my woman who waits for +me--my country, my dream!... I build with you. I stand or fall with +you!... We shall be better for this day, my children. This is a day for +living men and comrades----" + +He filled me with a kind of white flame. + +Then the crash. After that, was a moment of silence and gloom like a +cloud passing over the sun. Then our eyes began to reap.... A blizzard +of hot, stinking metal had broken in front of us--in the midst of our +marching and listening battalion. If you have ever felt the mockery +and cruelty of raging seas, you can know something of the shock +that twisted the core of me that instant. That which had been the +white-haired peasants with open laughing mouths and lifted hands, their +souls answering the leader who loved them, a song forming on their lips +... now it was as if a carcass had been moved--one that had lain long +in the sun, the devastation long continued underneath.... + +These were my boys. Next to Varsieff and Paula Mantone, I loved them. +Now they were down, dismembered, shaking--the air a whir of white to +my tortured ears, like a shriek of bewildered ghosts. And here and +there, like Varsieff and myself--men standing unhurt in the midst of +human fragments, like maggots, shaking themselves to cover. + +I wonder if you can understand? It seemed that I still could see the +welter of our boys in the leader's face. Also I saw the death of my +good friend--the death-stroke of that superb mind--the face of a man, +whose soul had vanished. + +Both our horses were down, though we were unhurt so far.... A distance +of fifteen feet separated us. I called to him. I tried to tell him that +he had not failed. I thought I should die before I moved, before I +could get started toward him. The staring failure in his face paralysed +me. For the time, he was cut off even from the spirit of Paula Mantone. + +I had to look down and watch my steps as I made my way to him. I knew +some hideous fear that he would fall in that blackness--if I looked +away.... There were voices from the ground. None of the parts of men +could be still. Lips writhed before my eyes--and words were spoken like +little claps of force in thin air.... I caught his opened collar.... + +"It's all right, Varsieff," I whispered. + +"You lie!" said he. + +It was like a blow from a man's mother. I had to look into his face +before my brain accepted his words. Then I remembered _my_ lie.... The +evil of it had not come to me until now, with him breaking down before +my eyes.... I saw the look again--that I had seen by the peasant's yard +long ago as we crossed the Torqueval Peaks--the look of a frightened +child in that face of finished manhood. + +I pulled him to me, and led him back toward Sedgwick's staff. I heard +myself talking and laughing, jockeying with words.... His head was +twisted to the side--his draggled remnant of a mind pulled back to the +scene of that havoc. And now, if you please, we were catching the real +thing. The old-line Russians were breaking upon us with machines and +shrapnel--the old combing and carding that seldom fails.... I saw the +cold mountains all about. + +Did you ever see a slaughter of drones? Perfect economy it is, from +the standpoint of the hive. The work of providing for the future is +accomplished--no mistake in the plan. The workers gather from all +sides. One by one the big clumsy drones are put to death--wrestling, +tugging, stinging, many workers giving themselves to death to carry out +the spirit of the hive.... The officers ahead who ordered our brother +Russians upon us, thought they were right--those great grey lines +ahead, honeycombed with our own precious comrades, all of whom were not +yet martyred, as was proved. But they had not found their voice. It +looked like straight death they brought to us. + +... Ages. I would turn from Varsieff's face to the cold mountains. +Something of the changelessness of the beyond and above came to me out +of the hideous fluctuation of the near and below. I could not keep +Varsieff back. He wouldn't resist so long as I held him, but the moment +my hands released, his body would rise like some automatic thing and +blindly stagger forward into the pale smoke-charged sunlight. The men +who saw him--many who knew what he had been and had heard him speak but +a few moments ago--lost their concentration on the battle. He became +everywhere the centre of a rotting line. Clearly they had been fighting +on his spirit--that, and the thought of going home.... + +Sedgwick rode up and saw my struggle--beckoned me back, as one in +authority would bully a guard in a madhouse.... I obeyed, thinking of +the lie I had told. Here were human fragments; the air filled with the +shrieks of the fallen--the face of my friend beside me, the face of a +blasted mind--all because of that lie of mine. + +Then, as I trundled him to the rear, sometimes swinging him from one +elbow to the other, I saw a line, as one would draw a bloody finger +across his cheek. Then--it was like a monkey-bite in the bone and hair +of his eye-brow.... We were in a hail from the machines and the men +were falling back. + + * * * * * + +I think we are half-mad in such moments, or else touched with a divine +sanity. In the midst of utter loss, the lines breaking back, the men +beginning to stampede--the plan flashed into my mind that I could only +save the first lie by a second. If the remnant fell back to starve in +the Marshes--Varsieff forever was put from me. Such was my thought. The +personal issue was greater than the Cause. I was beside myself--never +so little, never so formidable. + +My arm slipped from Varsieff who sank to his knees and flopped back +at the wheels of a four-inch _Sanguinary_, bursting hot. I ran back +to Sedgwick's staff, leaped into an empty saddle--then rode along the +cracking fronts. + +"Halt----" I yelled to the faces of the slipping lines.... "Halt--and +don't you see you're running from your own Comrades?... They're taking +over the Imperialists yonder. Our men have risen in the ranks of the +enemy!..." + +All along the lines, I yelled it--and it came forth like an inspired +message--lie that it was from my angle. For to me, death was better +than retreat, with the eyes of the world on our little nucleus of the +new order.... My shouts were checking them. + +"Our Comrades are coming to us--hold for them!... Don't run away ... +they are coming! They are coming to join us, when they clean themselves +up over yonder--only a little clean-up first, my children. Hear the +noise?" + +I don't know how long I rode. I only knew that the fighting death was +victory--that there is no propaganda like martyrdom.... + +They answered at first with a kind of half-hearted halt. I was struck +with the silence. A queer thing happened. I saw that I had spoken the +truth.... There was firing ahead, but it had no meaning of death to our +ranks. They were firing in the air, and some threw down their guns and +were running toward us. Presently we saw the tent-cloths hoisted in +truce. It was like seeing my mother again--shaking the table-cloth to +the birds. + +Then I saw their lines and ours running together--yes, Varsieff's +new heaven and new earth--saw them running together bare-headed, +white-haired peasant boys, hands outstretched, mouths open.... Freedom +was an aureola of different sunlight around their heads. On they came +like glorious ruffians, seizing their brothers in their arms--the lines +folding together like good mates before the Lord. + +Then it was like a blast--that Varsieff must see this! A cold blast +in the heart--that he must not miss this glory--that my eyes must not +dwell upon this great consummation alone! Deep within, I knew my pain +was because his head was not lifted to the picture of his conquest. +Deep within, I knew that for some inexplicable reason of fate, he was +held back like the old Master on the other side of the Jordan--not +allowed to enter and witness the beauty of the promised land. + +In the midst of that radiant tumult, I ran back to the place that I +had left him. It was trampled; the mud was deeper, but Varsieff was +not there.... In the midst of the shouting and the glory, I searched +for him.... Hours passed, the fighting ceased ... we were a hundred +thousand strong, armed, provisioned, hearts turned homeward.... Scores +of us were looking for the Varsieff now. + +And then I heard my name called, and two young student-officers caught +me, one to each elbow and carried me forward, running to where the +woman stood ... Paula Mantone. She was standing in the midst of her own +people--the sun on her face. And I saw, too, the white look of one who +has conquered fear, but the weariness of her eyes was like the presence +of death.... + +"Where is he?" she whispered. + +"Oh, God, I do not know----" + +"Poor dear Lange--all is well with us.... The boys of two armies +rushing together--yes, Lange, this is a good day for us----" + +She spoke rapidly, like lines committed--the same death-like weariness +in her tones.... She had taken my hand: + +"Come, we must find him ... take me to the place where you left +him--come quickly----" + +It was some distance. We walked at first in silence. It seemed as if +I could not live if I did not find out what she would have done this +morning in my place. Presently she said: + +"I thought he would fail when it came to ordering a charge. He was very +brave, they say." + +I loved the students who told her that, but I had known too much +torture to keep the perfect silence. + +"... It was hard for him.... He isn't a killer--he saw only the +white-haired boys----" + +"My beloved----" she whispered. + +"I told him that it was the same in Petrograd as here--that the dream +held here--that you would have told him to be strong at the death +part----" + +She was not listening. She did not answer. + + * * * * * + +"It was just here. He was wounded a trifle. I left him to stop the +troops. They were breaking a bit," I explained. + +I had passed the place a dozen times. I remembered by the big +_Sanguinary_--hot when I had let go of Varsieff's arm. The dead had +been covered. The big gun was a wreck now--even the caisson with a +broken wheel. + +Then I realised it had been moved. There was a queer mound under the +wreckage. I reached down; my hand felt warmth in the mud. The woman was +with me.... I think we moved that mammoth caisson together.... There +was no white on him--a coating of mud but warm. We lifted him and the +woman's breast covered him from my eyes.... I heard him say her name. I +heard him speak of the tropical island they would go to together.... + +I stood apart--I who had stood at his side so long.... There were +seconds when I heard her low passionate whispers--when I watched the +arch of her shoulder, the beauty of her bended brow.... I did not see +his face again. She held it fast to her and talked somehow out of the +world. Then I saw her raise her eyes as she had done that night in the +tent. For the first time I realised that he had only kept alive for her +coming.... But still I felt he must know the whole story. I did not go +closer, but called in half a whisper: + +"Tell him how the boys came together--arms out and laughing like +brothers. Don't let him go without knowing that--tell him how they +threw their guns away and then sat down on the ground together--singing +of home and the rivers and the ploughed lands and the women waiting for +us----" + +"I told him--I told him!" she answered. "You may come to him ... but +he--he only waited to see me.... Ah, Lange, you had him so much----" + +I looked away. Dusk was falling, the white peaks like spirits.... I had +not seen his face again, but it suddenly came to me how it had looked +when I saw it before--that which was the bravest and most beautiful +face that I knew in manhood--how it had been beaten and bruised under +the boots of running peasants--crushed into the mire by the feet of +the men he loved so well. For a moment, I was in the red world of rage +that this should be, but then the mighty drama of it came nearer, +the supreme laughing art of it all--that only the saviours call to +them. And I smiled, looking away to the dusk falling on the cold +mountains--and I knew that my friend's spirit was as close to us as the +body she held against her breast.... + +Then back in the bivouacs a song began--the men of two armies roaring +out a song of the great white democracy of the future.... + + * * * * * + + + + +27 + +RÉSUMÉ + + +The end of Varsieff is satisfying to us, and yet I wonder if I can +make this sort of romance clear. Martyrdom--they call it a short cut. +There is a saying that the soul of a man who dies for something, goes +marching on. The Irish become hopeless of their cause, if some one +dies for the opposition. All revolutionists have reckoned with this +subtlety--no propaganda like martyrdom; all the sacred writings refer +to it, our Bible several times, once in the sentence, "Greater love +hath no man----" + +A deluge of phenomena from "the other side" has come in during the +present war, all the old martyrs of nationalism said to be called to +the cause of their empires.... + +What is the romantic haunt that lifts a man to such a pitch of +exaltation that he transcends pain, and goes singing down to die? + +These are matters much better known among the young dreamers and +workers of Russia and the Orient than of America.... Varsieff reveals +the child under the man of action; the lover above the intellectualist. +His love story unfolds certain passages which we are making a point of +in these chapters. The woman, Paula Mantone, represents a loved type +in our sort of story-making. She brings, vaguely, at least, into terms +the romantic ideal so calling to us in these days. She means more than +three-score and ten. Her love goes on and on. She becomes a priestess, +in a sense, and conducts her lover through the critical passage of +finding his own Soul. External battles then take his body, but she is +not altogether bereft. An intuitional woman does not always know what +she is doing in her heart story, even when she does greatly. If the +physical action had broken different, if the body of Varsieff had not +been required in martyrdom, for instance, he might have emerged from +the final stress of action in a state of spiritual exaltation, from +which, I can imagine Paula Mantone calling him back to the gardens of +the senses.... Martyr, priestess, revoltee, but always a woman. Every +year of devotion to the feminine in fiction, compels a more fluid, yet +more mystic handling. + +We have been very close to the young students and poets and players of +Russia. In the Fall of 1914 we published the following paragraph: + +There[19] are men in Russia who have heard the mighty music of +humanity. They will sing their dream and grave their message upon the +peasant soul.... Not the Russia of Nicholas Romanoff. His passing and +all the princes of his tainted blood will prove but an incident of the +Great War. Very low in the west among the red blinking points of the +falling constellation, is Nicholas and that Russia. In the east is the +Russian _novi_ before the dawn, commanding the dark before the sun. + + [19] _Fatherland._ George H. Doran Company, New York. + + * * * * * + +The young men of India, the young men of China, the young men of +Russia, the young men of America--I see them working together in the +wondrous story of life, as it reels off in the years to come--mating of +the East and West, the planet seen in one piece, the communal spirit of +the Hive around the globe. + + * * * * * + +... I find myself getting up a rather serious intensity over what +_Romance_ means, a signal to tame down.... _Not to stay_--to drain +nothing, to leave all cleaner, more orderly and richer for one's +tarrying, to glance but lightly, yet with a deep smile of understanding +at the torrent of detached and unmatched things which apparently makes +the world--to love it all better than those caught in detachment can +possibly love one another--to belong to the many by remaining apart +from separate movements--at last to be the Spectator.... + +One may deal lightly with crowds, but never with _man_ or _woman_.... +One may say he has all that civilisation has for any human creature; he +may reasonably be bored by all departments of life, but there is enough +for an eternity of reverent study and adoration in the nearest human +face. The lovelier the human face, the more easily we can discern the +divine in it.... You get nowhere without loving something. This is the +hardest kind of material gospel.... We are all incognito--the greater +we are, the less perfectly disguised. + + * * * * * + +First and last our dream of Romance means Motherhood--mysterious +enactments that the mere male can never know, no longer the motherhood +of the mammal, but the coming of the Guest, the Shining One--the +giving of body and mind and soul, no fear, no stipulation, no impeding +form of thought--more than that, it means a giving of the child to +the world.... The Valley Road Girl expresses it in this sharp, short +picture: + + Once a woman lived in a dense forest, and had a man-child alone + there. As it grew, the woman impressed upon it the greatness of God + and the wonder of all things. Then one day, she led him by the + forest-paths to the Highway, and left him there. + +It means the Madonna who looks up, rather than down, at the head upon +her breast. + +The creative force is never wasted. Man and woman, in love or lust, are +never alone--rather startling, but sooner or later to be accepted. The +point of the triangle is either turned downward or upward. The creative +force feeds either the abominations of the underworld, or is used in +its designed order and loveliness as a point of inception for soul into +form.... The mother-nature of the New Race must be quickened by the +ideal of the coming of a World-teacher, of development a cycle ahead of +this race. Women must partake of this dream in their maternities. It +is the light of such an advent, shining upon the upturned face of the +mother, that touches the brow of the child with light. + +Absolutely the concept of the new Democracy demands the coming of a +great Unifier--a focal point for all world movements and interests +and aspirations. The story of a Master's coming is the ultimate +Romance--the finest story in the world--for that in itself is the story +of Regeneration. + +The work of this particular volume seems to be ended. Much that is +prepared need not be used. Right here is the breathing-space that +always comes in a life or a book.... _Not to stay_.... Some of our +boys are off to the trenches; others may go. Part of the original +group has been unable yet to follow the centre to the West. Our good +Gobind[20] who belonged to the pith of things, arose from one breakfast +and went off to join the cavalry. There's a group in Chicago that we +see all too little of--a diffusion time truly, but only to make more +certain the time of integration again. + + [20] Ben Poteat. + + * * * * * + +There is one who came, changing all. We thought we knew much about the +world. We thought mainly that things were settled for us. It was not +words she brought, but a subtler quickening. I cannot tell it exactly. +There was a day in which I was bored, not satisfied, and another when I +was a child again--breathless, questing, listening for some one to tell +me stories of another and better country. All that I had done and been +and lived was diminished; more, all behind was utterly done, leaving +scarcely any criteria for that which was to be.... No inland lake would +do after that; we wanted a continental headland, the sweep of the earth +and sky--sidereal time, sidereal space. We could only tolerate the +quest of the Impossible after she came. + +... She came and wrote her book through the summer days and then she +went away.... Somehow after that we knew what rains and sunlight +meant--what all nature was saying and doing. At least, we knew +better.... _Not to stay._ We could not follow continually, but at last +out of loneliness, the big new laughing wonder of life came to us ... +and when we told her, she seemed to have known all the time.... + +We teach by making pictures. She brought new pigments and freshened +all the oils. We loved the tints and half-tones before she came, but +she restored us to the virgin beauty of the primal rays. We liked the +blends before she came--the blend of rose and gold, but she brought us +length of vision and redemption of taste to know the meaning of the +Ultimate Red, the red of the Pomegranate, the red of the Inspired Mary, +to whose knees at the last all artists and little children find their +way--the passionate red of the Quest and the Cross and the Son. She was +not surprised when we told her what her gifts mean to us. + + * * * * * + +An artist gives himself full-heartedly to the emotions. Keen and +poignant afterward, is the battle to straighten them out, to comb +them down. The mind holds the truth about it all, the spirit sings +all around, but the heart holds fast to its agonising play of passion +settings. + +Desire is like an old King, sitting in the midst of his dogs, a King +by the fire in his tower. The Shining Heir is born, but the old King +is slow to die. He sits thinking of his old hunts, his rides to kill, +old wars and faces at the window.... He rode well; he thought he loved +very well; a great name, he was, in the hunts, and in all the games of +getting. He meditates now upon his one-time conquests, and forgets his +pain. It is his memories that hold him fast to life a little while. But +at last the head of old King Desire sinks to his breast, the fire fades +from his last memory. The door of the tower room opens, the Shining +Prince is standing there, and the criers run through the palace crying +aloud, "The King is dead. Long live the King!" Desire has ended; the +Bestower takes the throne. + +When we told her of this new breath of life which she had brought, +our Mary seemed to know all about that, too. She smiled and looked +away when we showed her this book (and the inscription to her), so +many pages of which she had read before--our dreams for the New Race +unfolded in letters to her. + + * * * * * + +The instant one perceives the inner meaning of _Equality_, glimpsing +the great Seamless Robe of humanity as one;--he realises that what +is best for him is best for all others--what is best for the many is +his own highest behest.... One must grasp this to know what Democracy +means, to know what is behind the word, a meaning which those who use +it most haven't dreamed of. You must grasp the spirit of the hive--that +winged myriads of golden atoms never stray so far as to break the +spirit-cord that binds them into one--that the one knows all, contains +potentially all goodness and beauty and truth, that all action, art and +thought, come from the spirit of the one--that the fruits of these go +back. I love to tell it again and again. I saw it all afresh to-day. + +The sun plays tricks with the earth at high noon. One feels superbly +well--a kind of seething in the veins. It pulls him away from the great +quest for the Father's House, in gusts of Mother Nature's magic. All +the fragrance of fallow fields is in the hot light and blowing hay and +deathless azure and high noon. Glorious swarms of bees were breaking +out from the Spirit of the hive, all one in Spirit at the top--the +Spirit brooding at all times over all the workings of the hive.... +It was the same with the millions of men who walk the earth, one at +the top--all one, coming and going in the Spirit, replenished and +replenishing always, learning the fusions here in friends and lovers, +each finding his one, and then the new quest together for the Great +Companions. + +Then it came to me that we are only sick and blind and lame and +evil--in the sense of detachment. We must kill that out. Hate spoils +everything. Hate binds us to the object. We mustn't despise another's +coat. It may have been ours yesterday--may be ours to-morrow. We must +kill out the sense of separateness from any creature, for we are +destined to become one spirit with him and all others. Something like a +cloud--all one, as a cloud is one. + +Every morning on the grass--on millions of blades of grass--a globe of +dew at the tip of each.... The Lord Sun arises. The dew warms a little +and slips down the track of the blade into the root. There it breaks +up into infinite fragments. The sun rising higher weaves his warm +magic over the fields; invisibly, like prayers ascending, the drops +of dew, all diffused into a thousand fragments each, thin as steam, +and carrying the perfumes of roses and lilacs and honeysuckles and +meadow lands and fallow lands and lake and ocean shores,--like prayers +ascending, the dewdrops of yesterday return as one to the cloud. Broken +into the farthest diffusion, but not an atom lost. All the richness of +earth in essence returning to the Spirit.... + +The same with bee and dewdrop and man--the same with swarm and cloud +and tribe--each fragment and division lifting to a greater, unto +the Shining Source at last.... The point of it all is that man is +spiritually woven to his brother and to the race; giving himself and +his service to his brother and to the race he glorifies the texture and +stature of his own soul. + +Christmas, 1917. + + + + + * * * * * * + + + + +Transcriber's note: + +The book contains many words spelt to reflect the accent of the +speaker. The spelling has not been changed. + +There are two instances of unmatched ending quotation marks. The +missing opening quotation marks were not added because their +locations were uncertain. + +The following changes to printing errors have been made. + + ouselves is now ourselves + though is now through + unlifted is now uplifted + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HIVE*** + + +******* This file should be named 44208-8.txt or 44208-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/4/4/2/0/44208 + + + +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. 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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 <a +href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></p> +<p>Title: The Hive</p> +<p>Author: Will Levington Comfort</p> +<p>Release Date: November 17, 2013 [eBook #44208]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HIVE***</p> +<p> </p> +<h4>E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Sue Fleming,<br /> + and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br /> + from page images generously made available by<br /> + Internet Archive/American Libraries<br /> + (<a href="https://archive.org/details/americana">https://archive.org/details/americana</a>)</h4> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10"> + <tr> + <td valign="top"> + Note: + </td> + <td> + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + <a href="https://archive.org/details/hivewill00comfiala"> + https://archive.org/details/hivewill00comfiala</a> + </td> + </tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="coverpage"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="307" height="400" alt="" /></div> + + + + +<h1>THE HIVE<br /></h1> + + +<div class="boxa"><p> +BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT</p></div> + + + + +<div class="box"><p> +<span class="smcap">The Hive</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Last Ditch</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Child and Country</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Lot & Company</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Red Fleece</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Midstream</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Down Among Men</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Fatherland</span><br /> +</p></div> + +<div class="boxb"><p> +NEW YORK + +GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</p></div> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<div class="boxc"> + +<p class="titlea"><i>The Hive</i></p> + +<p class="no-indent"><small>BY</small><br /> +<br /> +WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT<br /> +<br /> +<small>AUTHOR OF "MIDSTREAM," "CHILD AND COUNTRY,"<br /> +"THE LAST DITCH," "DOWN AMONG MEN," ETC.</small><br /> +<br /></p> + + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/003.png" width="71" height="90" alt="" /> +<br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + + +<p class="no-indent"><br /> +<br /> +<small>NEW YORK</small><br /> + +GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br /><br /> +</p></div> + + + + +<p class="center no-indent space-above"> +<small>COPYRIGHT, 1918,<br /> +BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</small><br /> +<br /></p> + + + + +<p class="center no-indent space-above"><small>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</small><br /> +</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + +<p class="title center space-above">TO MARY</p> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse">... soft gold and deep</div> + <div class="verse">fragrance and pomegranate red.</div> +</div></div></div> + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p> + + + + +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="FOREWORD" id="FOREWORD"></a>FOREWORD</h2></div> + + +<p>There is much to say. Many have a part in this story of our days. +Their work is on the table. Yet no manuscript, no chapter, is a real +beginning. One must start a book this way—with a fresh sheet in the +machine and tell what he is going to tell about.... First of all, it +has to do with the unfolding of the child mind; all the Stonestudy work +has been for that, but the brimming wonder of it all is that we have +chiefly been employed unfolding ourselves.</p> + +<p>No one can begin upon the sweet and sacred story of life to a child +without taking a stride nearer into the centre of things, and living +it. That's what all telling is about—presently to stop talking and to +catch up on conduct. The fairest culture of all is to become artists in +life.... Thinking of this, thinking much upon this one thing, we have +been lured out of the heaviness of work into the dimension of Play. We +tell here about this particular passage.</p> + +<p>Also something about the story of Man and Woman, hinting at what is +contained in pages of the Book of Life not opened heretofore for the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>eyes of the many, but preparing now for the eyes of the children of +the New Race—a beautiful story, be sure of that, but one that requires +art in the telling. No one could bring this story to the lovers and the +children of the New Race who had not found out that Beauty belongs to +the divine trinity with Goodness and Truth.</p> + +<p>Many seers have not held that well in mind, many sages have forgotten +it, many saints have not learned it adequately at all. We have to build +our own heavens here before we can have them anywhere else. The more of +an artist a man is, the more reverent he becomes about perfecting his +thought-forms. Just a mention now—that we rejoice to make much of the +Beauty side of things in this book; that a thing cannot be beautiful +and bad; that Beauty is the next quest of the many, as they escape one +by one from the bondage of Gold.</p> + +<p>We try to express the Soul of things rather than to delineate +boundaries of matter, but a very strong point is made upon the fact +that one cannot deal in the spirit until he has mastered to a good +degree the coarser stuff that bodies and worlds are made of. We do not +care how the young minds aspire mystically, so long as their abutments +hold fast in the bottom-lands. A man must not drag his anchor as he +climbs the hill; he must unfold line all the way—a line made of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>strands of himself, woven of his own wisdom, love and power.</p> + +<p>Much is made in this book of the fact that we are given <i>pounds</i> for a +purpose—that all here below is symbol and intimation of a globe and +perfection elsewhere—that we cannot look upon the archetype of gold +until we have mastered the imitation in clay.... We come even closer +to this precious subject: For instance, we know that it is only from +the soul of things that one can see materials—that no one can get a +glimpse of the meaning of materials so long as he is lost in the ruck +of them. At the same time we do not believe that we have access, even +to the lesser grades of mysticism, until we have all the power and +force of the material-minded. We believe we must do well that which the +world is doing, even the tasks of the average man, that nothing can be +missed.</p> + +<p>We do not encourage that mystic or poet who requires endowment. If we +are to be artists, we believe in supporting our own groups; we have a +suspicion that we are not through with conditions, any conditions no +matter how hateful, so long as they have us whipped.</p> + +<p>We aspire to be writers and politicians and painters and heroes; we +aspire to be masters in all the superb productions of life, but we are +content to begin with the ground. We are content with poverty, yet we +believe that very early as workmen, we are entitled to a fastidious +poverty, which <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>is expensive. No possessions—but all possessions. As +writers we are convinced that it is necessary to do—and inimitably +well—the things that the public wants and pays ten cents the word for, +quite as well as to reveal the deeper folds of our growth for which we +have to finance publication. We are not sure yet which is the worthier +achievement.</p> + +<p>Perhaps we speak much of Soul in this book, but we mean nothing more +formidable than the better part of every man. This is the Big Fellow +who takes us over when we do that which is worth while—in billiards +or diplomacy, in art or love or trade. I think it is the Big Comrade +which we are really unfolding—the Workman and Player. Much of Soul, we +write, because it is the point of our educational drive—to set It free +in the child or the young workman, to make It speak or write or play, +and not mere brain and hand.</p> + +<p>We speak much of love—not as an emotion, not as a sentiment, but as a +cosmic force. You will see much more what we mean by this as you turn +the pages. It is the most challenging thing in the world. It is the +inner white-hot core of the Fatherland that is to be—the great white +Democracy of the future....</p> + +<p><i>Democracy</i>—that's the point of inception of it all; that word is +the seed. The more you dwell upon it—you know what the Seamless Robe +of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>the Christ means—the more you realise that the Master Jesus was +the first Big Democrat.... We have them speak the word softly and +thoughtfully here each day—we like to hear the young ones say it. They +are apt to know as much about it as you do—for the word doesn't mean +exactly what they mean, who have used it most heretofore. It isn't +the name of a political party—yet.... It is government of the people +by the people, but only to those who see the sons of God in the eyes +of passing men. We only ask its magic, not its presence upon these +pages.... They're fighting for it gloriously—every hour. The boys here +thrill with the boys there. We hold our hands high to them. Some of our +boys are there. They are all our boys! Some are waiting the call to +go—but there or here, we are pulling together for the real Fatherland, +for the adequite fraternity, under the endless and thrilling magic of +the word <i>Equality</i>.</p> + +<p> ... I can say no more splendid word to you than My Equal: I know of +no greater adventure than to become one of the Many. It is true that +you and I—the best of us, the Immortal within us each, are of one +house—that this is but a far outpost of the journey, Egypt if you +like, the husks if you like—but that we have arisen and are on our way +home to the Father's House.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>Canyon, Santa Monica, California.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2></div> + + +<table class="toc" summary="Contents"> +<tr> + <th></th> + <th></th> + <th class="pag"><span class="smcap">PAGE</span></th> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">I</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_1">North Americans</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">II</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_2">Quickenings</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">III</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_3">Conquest of Fears</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">IV</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_4">The Stuff of Comrades</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">V</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_5">John's Things</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">VI</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_6">Values of Letter Writing</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">VII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_7">The New Dancing</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">VIII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_8">Old Pictures in Red</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">IX</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_9">Steve</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">X</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_10">Hejira</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XI</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_11">The Spectator</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_12">Tom and the Little Girl</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XIII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_13">The Abbot</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_139">139</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XIV</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_14">The Artist Unleashed</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_155">155</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XV</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_15">Work in Short Stories</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_164">164</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XVI</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_16">Valley Road Girl</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XVII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_17">Beauty</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XVIII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_18">Shuk</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_192">192</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XIX</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_19">Imagination</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XX</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_20">Boys and Dogs</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XXI</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_21">The Man Who Found Peace</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_219">219</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XXII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_22">A Dithyramb and a Letter</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XXIII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_23">The Mating Mystery</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XXIV</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_24">Chapter of Letters</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XXV</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_25">Romance</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_19">267</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XXVI</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_26">The Cosmic Peasant</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td> +</tr><tr> + <td class="chn">XXVII</td> + <td class="cht"><span class="smcap"><a href="#chapter_27">Résumé</a></span></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></td> +</tr> +</table> +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<h2><a name="THE_HIVE" id="THE_HIVE"></a>THE HIVE</h2> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_1" id="chapter_1"></a>1</h2> + +<p class="title center">NORTH AMERICANS</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">The thing called the New Race—the passion of poets, the phantom +running ahead and forever calling the dreamer and revolutionist +and occultist, is far from a reality as yet among the commonplaces +of the world. It is the spirit of everything worth while, but that +means nothing to one who has not a breath of it in his own body.... A +story went forth from this shop recently in which certain ideals and +presences of the new social order were carried through to a cheerful +ending. The publisher wrote, "Yes, but what is the New Race?"</p> + +<p>It's a fair question, but remember one cannot adequately describe a +spiritual thing in terms of matter. It is only possible of portrayal +where it has broken through into terms of three-space. First you are +apt to get the nearest and most striking picture of the New Race at +your own supper-table—the presence of one of your own children, +especially if the young one is hard to understand.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p> + +<p>Parents and children of all times have found confusion and alarm in +each other's ways. But there are rare periods of human history when +the difference between two generations has been not a normal and +superficial crack, but an abyss. It is so now. The Old has reached +its climacteric point of destructivity. All self-passions destroy +themselves in time. Fear, greed, sensuality—all are self-destructive. +Great human numbers and decadent principles have been recently +broken down in the world with a swiftness and abandonment heretofore +unrecorded, except in the traditions of planetary flood and flame....</p> + +<p>You may watch closely the child under seven who plays in the Unseen, +whose companions are not in the room for older eyes; watch the one of +fancies and fairies and fragrances which others cannot quite discern. +Many a child has been driven with a soul-wound into corroding silence +by parents who thought they were punishing falsehood, when they were in +reality repressing the imagination—the faculty which master-artists +denote as the first and loveliest possession of the creative mind. Too +coarse and unlit to see what the child saw, the parents again and again +have looked gravely at each other, saying:</p> + +<p>"This is a crisis. Our child has begun to lie. We must forget her own +feelings and punish her——"</p> + +<p>So often it is <i>her</i>—but not always. The boys <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>who are to do the +great tasks of song and prophecy and architecture—they, too, dream +dreams and see visions and have the rapt eyes of Joan in the forests +of Domremy; they, too, are severely questioned by the pharisees; none +escape this scourging; they, too, in many cases shall be put to death.</p> + +<p>The new ideals of the parenthood, education, romance, are now being +introduced and promulgated by pioneers long since emerged from the old +litter and humus. Education will mean first of all a turning for power +to the Unseen. The quest of the Swan and the Star and the Beloved, are +never carried along on the levels and inequalities of the earth—always +the uplifted face for the saint and the sage and the seer. Great +parents kneel beside their children and beg to be delivered from the +heaviness which holds them to the dim shadows, where the child sees +face to face. Education will mean finding his intrinsic task for the +child—the intensive cultivation of the human spirit from the Soul +outward, not alone from the brain inward.</p> + +<p>The quest of the passing age was for Gold. The real meaning and +symbol and glory of gold, as the highest, smoothest and most finished +of minerals, has been lost in the bulkier products and possessions +it meant to measure and signify. More and more has gold itself hid +away from vulgar hands and been represented by objects intrinsically +inferior. We now behold a civilisation <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>destroying itself for +commodities and destroying the commodities for which the destruction +began.</p> + +<p>Gold itself will serve Beauty in the coming age; commerce will serve +æsthetics. The lovers of Beauty begin with the sand, with the clay. +They love nature from the ground up; they are fervent for light and +air, for sun and sky and water, for fruits and grains and bees, for +stars and rains and romances. They say such things are holy. Words are +inadequate for their loves and appreciations. They find the ways to +love God infinite. They see Him in stone and stream; they see Him in +the eyes of the deep down men; they see Him risen and inevitable in the +eyes of their lovers....</p> + +<p>Straight goodness will not do for the New Race, nor straight +intellectuality. Artists, singers, painters and idealists will be the +heroes of the generations to come, for they will add the quest of +Beauty to the unwashed goodness of the saints and pilgrims.</p> + +<p>These are but flaring points; one is embarrassed in short space because +of a myriad things to say. Free verse is a sign of the New, also the +dream of a free world and the planetary patriotism. The immanence of +the <i>spirit</i> of all things, is a sign; the sense of the underlying +oneness of humanity; not alone the Fatherland, but the Kinterland, +where new Fountains are established and sages and masters come for +inspiration—all these, like a passing train of wonder, a glimpse of +many cars....</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p> + +<p>I think I can bring the picture in closer by using a few pages of work +from one of the young men with me. His name is Steve. I called him The +Dakotan,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> in the book, <i>Child and Country</i>. We've romped and ridden +together for three years, and I've known Steve better every day—still +far from the end. The rest of the chapter is Steve's writing:</p> + + +<p class="plabel">NORTH AMERICANS</p> + +<p>Out of the centuries of moil and mix and fuse of Europe, the orient and +the north countries, a gleaming archetype has emerged here which may +be called the real North Americans. They are scattered here and there +among the younger generation—young people new in name only; in soul +they are as old as Zeus. Often they are strangers in their father's +house. They blend the mind of the occidental with the soul of the east; +splendid firstlings of an untried future. They betray themselves by +their genius. Heredity is the first fetich overthrown by them.</p> + +<p>From the first they are a law unto themselves. They cast off churches, +codes, creeds, schools and parents as preliminary steps in their +teens. In the twenties they are prodigies, leaders in the arts or the +revolutions. It is their aim to over-reach themselves, not to further a +type. Very early they conjourn together in secret and obscure places, +revolting against life as it is lived, like a handful of white dwellers +in a foreign city.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p> + +<p>There is always an alien, intangible something about these people. One +senses the double life they lead, their own, and others. Conditions +are not yet adjusted for them. They are super-nationalists, the first +mark of the new. They are dreamers who make their dreams come true in +matter, and first among their dreams is of the planet in one piece. +They are naturally intolerant of barriers and partitions. They see +ahead a new social order vast and shining as a devachanic vision—the +real democracy of the future. They see that the new has come in not to +kill, but to build. Theirs will be the spiritual heroics. Yet all this, +of the greater patriotism, must not yet be spoken. It only alienates +them the more from those they must live with. Their arch enemy is +Ignorance, personified so often in their elders.</p> + +<p>It is noticeable that these young people are healthier, stronger, +swifter, sharper, tougher, bolder and at the same time lighter and +finer than the passing generation. They have the <i>new healthiness</i>. +They belong to the open and are practically immune to disease. +Theirs is the health of sun and wind and spirit—vitality instead of +constitution, something the old can never understand. Constitution +is weight, solid, ungiving. Vitality is volatile, springy, electric, +constantly being given, constantly being acquired, self-refining. +Constitution does not change; it accumulates all it can, then begins to +die....</p> + +<p>The young women of this new Race are open, strong, eye-to-eye, free +spoken. They are capable <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>of friendships; they are not adverse to being +wholly understood by males. They are not popular with ordinary women, +who surmise their superiority but comprehend it not. Deceit, jealousy +and such common disturbances evident in the sex are unknown to them. +They have character and are lovely rather than beautiful. They are apt +to go half way in their love-making, for who should know better when +the chosen father of their children arrives.</p> + +<p>All of these people are bringers of true love. Love is their philosophy +and religion. They listen to the heart as well as the brain. Others +think them cruel in their discrimination in mating. They take all or +nothing—prodigious riskers, great sufferers, throwing even love's +dream on the board to be played for, and laughing as they play. The +slightest blight on the loved one is deepest agony.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the surest way of discovering these young giants is to search +about for the most sorely harassed children. Invariably they are put +to it, to break into this day and generation. They fight their way up +through all the banked-up ignorance and antagonism of unlit humanity. +Often they are solitaires, coming and going with the secrecy of kings +and eagles.</p> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_2" id="chapter_2"></a>2</h2> + +<p class="title">QUICKENINGS</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">A few pages of drift first of all with the younger boys.... There +is a lane of Lombardy poplars from the Lake to the interurban +car-line—a half mile. It is a lifting walk at any time, but summer +evenings are wonderful with all the sounds and scents of a true +pastorale—lake-breath and meadow-lands, the whole sky to look at, and +the murmuring dissonance of the poplars. Often we walk to the car with +passing guests. One evening a guest went away whom we loved very much. +A lad of seven, named John, and I walked back from the car alone.</p> + +<p>He was ignited. I felt this at last through his hand. I had been +thinking about my own things all too long, missing the beginnings of +his talk.... He hurried forward in the dusk, speaking in a hushed rapt +voice. Because I had missed the first part, I said: "John, I want you +to write that—either to-night or to-morrow."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p> + +<p>And this is what came in:</p> + + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">The Magic Lane:</span></p> + +<p>It was at dusk. Two people left their tracks in Nature's dust road.</p> + +<p>Love is found on that road. It is the road of the mystics.</p> + +<p>They leave their love in it; Nature kisses their feet.</p> + +<p>Many horses' feet have been kissed on that mystic road.</p> + +<p>That mystic road will last forever.</p> + +<p>I long to walk upon that road of love.</p> + +<p>Love on that road will last forever.</p> + +<p>It is all true love.</p> + +<p>Our friends have been met on that road of love.</p> + +<p>It leads to the Hills of God.</p> + +<p>Certain spelling matters have been corrected. We pay little attention +to spelling in the work here. The young ones learn by reading and get +the proper look of a word altogether too soon in many cases. There was +another high moment from John at the same time. The following three +lines have stood out from the period with memorable magic:</p> + + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Wonder</span></p> + +<p>The soft breath of the Mother came in through the window of vines.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p> + +<p>The stars were shining like the face of the New Generation.</p> + +<p>My spirit was away in the Hills. A noise at the door brought me back——</p> + +<p>John then fell into a psychological tangle which we found little +profit in following. By the "Mother" he referred to Nature.... The +verse period has passed for the time. Around the age of seven, boys +change. Often, as in this case, they are not so interesting for a while +afterward. John is coming nine now and is writing "action" stories with +all the worn and regulation props and settings. The early tendency will +return with a dimension added. All transitions are times of disorder, +but they are followed by larger areas and truer fulfilments of order. A +cloud falls upon the sanctuary, but when it is dispelled, one perceives +a lifted dome, bright with its new cloth of gold.</p> + +<p>I am struck every day in dealing with young boys how wisdom and beauty +and truth can be inculcated in their lives, without pain and strain to +them, and with great profit to the teacher. The young mind is quick to +change. It has not grown its pharisaical ivory....</p> + +<p>The sanction of a boy must be won on a physical basis. A man must know +what the boy knows and go him one better. The man must understand boy +points of view, but never expect the boy to be puerile. Parents of the +past generations <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>have had the steady effrontery to expect very little +from children. "Why, they are only children!" has done more to make +for vacuousness and drivel than any other visionless point of view, +none of which has been missed. There is a difference in ages, to be +sure. The child's mind has not massed for use the external impacts +of twenty or thirty years of life in the world, but there is also an +Immortal within—a singer, hero, builder, or a teacher possibly, eager +to manifest through the child's fresh mind, fervid to bring the mind of +the child to its subjection, for the expression of its own revelations. +Indeed, the parents themselves are enjoined to become as little +children. In arriving at this wisdom and humility, they may suddenly +find masters in their own children.</p> + +<p>There is also a lad here of seven named Tom. Yesterday I found him +beside me on the sand, down by the water's edge. I began to tell him +about the Inner Light that we all carry. You can talk over a child's +head, if your words are choked with mental complications (which is apt +to be second-rate talk, anyway), but you seldom are out of reach of a +fine child's grasp when you speak of spiritual things. He was sitting +cross-legged, folded hands between his knees—a little six pointed +star—head and shoulders the three upper points, knees with folded +hands between, the three lower. He was bare from the waist up <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>and +thighs down, and brown as the honey of buckwheat.... I told him that +the seventh and perfect point of his star was within; that if he shut +his eyes and kept very still, putting away for the present all his +thoughts about himself, his feelings, his wants and his rights—looking +into himself as one would look ahead for a lamp in the night, listening +deep within, as one would listen for the voice of a loved friend,—I +promised that at last he would see what the three wise men saw—the +Star in the East. He need only follow that Star and be true to its +guidance to come at last to the Cave and the Solar Babe.... After that +I hinted that I would come to <i>his</i> feet and listen.</p> + +<p>Tom felt that it was worth trying for at once—shut his eyes, turning +all thoughts and gaze within. He held the posture long.... I have +marvelled again and again at the quickness with which the child-mind +attains to concentration so essential for all original production. +The little ones have no mad emotional lists to sort out and subdue; +their wants are simple "yes" and "no" in so many cases. Indeed, they +are spared the struggle of becoming as little children.... Tom held +the posture, until I was actually tense from the strain of waiting and +keeping my thoughts from calling his.</p> + +<p>It was a picture—sun-whitened hair, long yellow lashes, brown body +with a bit of babe's softness left to it, and glorious sunlight. He +opened <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>his eyes at last saying that he had the door, where the light +was, almost opened, when a fly bit him.</p> + +<p>I thought of the perfection of the instance of the mind's +waywardness—the coming of the Master spoiled by a fly bite.... Tom +will search for his Star every day. It is strange that he is closer +to the hill-pastures around Bethlehem, under seven, than for years +afterward.</p> + +<p>To learn concentration in mid-life after the world "has been put +through a man," is an ordeal at best; and yet we are by no means +masters of ourselves, nor capable of significant achievement until the +brain can be stilled at will of its petty affairs (the first aim of +concentration) and becomes the glad servant of the "giant" within.</p> + +<p>A little later I saw Tom on the back of a huge black walk-trot +saddle-horse of show quality—passing up the Lane at a fast clip, his +feet half way to the stirrups, holding on to the saddle with one hand, +the bridle-rein in the other. A year or two ago I should have been +afraid to permit that, but we manage now to relieve the young ones of +a large part of our fears for their welfare. Children have enough to +overcome from their parents. Frequently the New Age young people have +to master their heredity before they begin upon themselves.</p> + +<p>Life is a big horse to ride, so often a black horse. It is well to +start children free and un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>afraid. We do not let them dwell in thought +of pain. We do not permit tears. We inform them early that to be sick +is a confession of uncleanness, that lying is for the use of cowards +only, and that to be cruel marks the idiot.</p> + +<p>We are occasionally serious over repeated failures, but we laugh over +things done well. Tennis has unfolded marvellous possibilities in the +training of will force. Children are shown that there is a mystic +quality to all the perfect games—that the great billiardists and +tennis and baseball players perform feats in higher space, whether they +know it or not. There is the essential ideal first in the making of the +athlete as in the making of the poet. The great moments of play require +faculties swifter and more unerring than the human eye or hand or mind. +Ask the master of any game if he had time to think in pulling off the +stroke that won. It is inspiration that he uses quite the same as the +poet in his high moments.</p> + +<p>Education is the preparation of the mind to receive and answer to +inspiration from a plane above. The more you develop merely the brain +of a child, the more he is detached from the great principles of being, +the more also is he closed to the real, and subjected to the danger of +actual lesion and sickness. The more you develop the spirit of a child, +or rather give the significant One within an opportunity to come forth +and <i>be</i> the child, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>the more you make for beauty, health, goodness and +glory of bodily life.... A lucky day when you start really to associate +with your children, luckier still when you undertake the work of +teaching them incidental to your own work. Then and there, you begin to +realise that children are close to a source of things that you cannot +touch. Presently you realise that they are teaching you....</p> + +<p>Day after day I have studied and practised the development of the +child from within outward. I have seen the capacity to synthesise and +assimilate mere mental matters developed in a year, by training the +mind from the centre of origins outward, that mental training alone +could never accomplish. The mind itself becomes vigorous and avid and +capacious and majestically swift. It is trained to express its true +self. That is power—that is king-play. This sentence covers the whole +matter:</p> + +<p><i>The perfect way to develop the mind of the child is to teach him to +sit and listen at the feet of his own master, the Soul.</i></p> + +<p>The right to live and to bring the laughter of power to the days must +be won afresh each morning. No two days alike. We make ourselves +impossible to children of the New Age by trying to confine them in the +laws and rules of yesterday. The young people whom I serve live in +a different intensity. Their interest flags if I repeat, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>if I fall +into familiar rhythms. Continually they spur me on. I think, after +all, great teaching is the capacity to feel what the younger minds are +thinking. If we are too coarse to catch the first warning of their +resistance, they slip farther and farther from our grasp.</p> + +<p>It would not seem possible to hold American young people with spiritual +affairs; yet this is done daily. We call the Unseen—the great gamble. +I have shown how all else betrays—how all matter is a mockery at the +last—that even love and friendship fail for those who are called to +weep and worship wholly at the tomb of the body.... The truth is out: +The beginnings of real teaching is in making the Unseen interesting and +dramatic.</p> + +<p>We dwell upon the mystic white lines which connect all things—the +sources of daring and beauty and creativeness. I ask my young people +where they were—when they did any rare and improved bit of work, when +they felt like great comrades, met some magnanimous impulse, arose to +superb instants of play, or when in Chapel the big animation touched +us all and set us free. They always answer that they were <i>out of +themselves</i>.</p> + +<p>That's a secret of the new teaching again—to lift the students out +of themselves. Men take to drink or drugs for this same reason: men +and women set out on the great adventures, pleasures <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>and quests for +this. We hunger and toil for this freedom; we suffer and adore—to get +out of ourselves. Mental teachings tie us in more firmly. The teaching +here—and no two days alike—is to startle and encourage the young +minds to arise and live and breathe in that lovelier and more spacious +dimension which at least borders upon the Unseen. The doors open and +shut so softly. One does not know he has been out—until he is back +with strange light in his eyes and in his hands a gift from the gods.</p> + +<p>The essential spirituality of the new teaching must not be confused +with religious affairs as they are known and exploited in the world. +You cannot teach the New Age religion of the world's kind. It has +its own. No dry as dust sage will do. A snort will answer your +sanctimoniousness; flexible science will reply to the abysses of your +logic.... You must be the consummate artist if never before in your +life, to teach the beauty of the soul to youth. The young workers of +the new social order will never bring forth their great harvests from +your <i>reflected</i> light. You must be spontaneous—you must flood them +with pure solar gold; you must show them by your life and your work, +how you come and go into the Unseen.</p> + +<p>There is no rest.... One commands his disciples to go forth at last. +The teacher strides for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>ward faster when they cling. He tells them +one day they must race the gamut to follow him; and the next day he +puts another in his place and begs to be allowed a cushion in the +midst of the children.... We hold them by setting them free—the first +law of love. All unions of the future—in trade and friendship and +matrimony—will be founded upon the principle of freedom; and this is +the essence of the new teaching—to liberate the children into their +larger and God-quickened selves.</p> + +<p>No rest and no two days alike.</p> + +<p>A Bob White called me this morning across the uncut hayfields at the +edge of the lake-bluff.... His two smooth and patient notes seemed +to contain the secret of putting off all fret and fear and unrest. +He seemed to ask if I had not done this already—had not yet put all +boyish and merely temporal things away? "Not yet?... Not yet?" he +called the question.</p> + +<p>I answered that I would try again, and I set out straightway to be +honest once more with the world, with the soil and with myself. I would +begin with the clay again to be clean—to rise and think and dwell in +cleanliness, to think no thought, to perform no action second-rate—to +begin with the Laugh again—the warm laugh of conquest that always +opens some inner door to fresh powers—to arise afresh in the glory +and gamble of the Unseen.... I returned and saw <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>the young ones one by +one—from Tom and John up to the men and women—doing their work. I set +about mine with a laugh and called the day good. The teacher knows best +who is taught.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_3" id="chapter_3"></a>3</h2> + +<p class="title">CONQUEST OF FEARS</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">An interesting boy of ten and I have been much together in the open +weather. We have learned many things, but nothing more important than +what a sham Fear is. I do not mean that we take chances or that it is +wise to risk life or limb. Fine discrimination is back of all training +in the arts of life; still we certainly have found that Fear is a +waster and diminisher of beauty and power—and that it can be mastered.</p> + +<p>About the most fascinating thing that life has shown me is the way in +which fine examples of the younger generation learn the deeper matters +of life—matters of self-mastery which make the very presence of a +lad significant to a stranger, and which formerly were supposed to be +secrets for the sons of kings alone.</p> + +<p>"Do you fear anything?" I ask. "Look deep. Listen deep—do you fear +anything?... It's like the pain that tells you of a weakness or +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>disease. Fear is an unerring reminder of a task of conquest ahead for +you. That which you fear most is the thing to conquer first."</p> + +<p>There had been much of this talk of Fear before a laughable personal +experience showed me how much I asked.</p> + +<p>I crossed a mesa and came to an abrupt drop-off—two hundred feet +sheer. It astonished me. I hadn't experienced anything like this quiver +of horror for years. All members and muscles bolted at the thought of +advancing closer to the edge. I sat down to think it out. It never had +occurred before that I <i>wasn't</i> my nervous system, and must not let it +get me down.</p> + +<p>The more I thought, the more I perceived that I must do the thing I +dreaded so. In fact, I had told trusting young people that they were +not their bodies, not their emotions, not even their minds—that these +must be made to obey. Here I had a chance to prove if I were less in +action than talk. I forced my fluttering young self to the edge.... +Dizziness—wobbly limbs, fancied shoves from behind, the call of the +huge shadowed space below, a queer sense of parting in mid-air, the +body thumping down, another and liberated self gladly spurning the +ground—all these symptoms of panic followed swiftly.</p> + +<p>I held until calm came, and I then could study this little coil of +forgotten fears—a civilised mess.... The weakness was absurdly easy to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>overcome after the will was once aroused. There's no end or limitation +to will force when awakened. The greater the man, the more awe he has +for this subject. There's a glow that follows conquest of any kind; the +mere call of the will to action brings a sense of power in the heart. +There is no way more speedily to dispel pain, anger, passion, fear, or +any of these tentacles of personality—than to summon the power of will +to instant action. The particular matter of this precipice showed me a +trick about calling up the force—priceless to me afterward in bigger +tests, and for opening the way of self-conquest to boys.</p> + +<p>One must decide what one wants to do—then carry it out to the death. +Discrimination, art, all culture and knowledge may be brought to bear +in making the decision—but after that, it must be carried out—just +that.</p> + +<p>Fears belong to the abdomen. You can feel them there. They are quicker +than thought. Perhaps you had a twinge of nerves over some sight or +sound or odour, before your mind could tell you what you were afraid +of.... I have often told the young ones here—listening a bit to my own +voice—that there isn't anything living or dead, phantom, shell, or +living soul, that has got the authority to make the spirit of man quail.</p> + +<p>Courage is spirit.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p> + +<p>Most people don't care to try to deal with it; they let it have its +way.... Do you recall the fears of the dark room as a child—fear +always stealing behind—upstairs alone, the rush to the light, almost +screaming tension?... I heard a patter of steps the other evening and +knew the whole story—a boy of seven. He had been sent upstairs without +a light. I sent him back, told him to stay there until he got himself +in hand—to stay in the dark and think the bogie down. He was well +afterward.</p> + +<p>I have known some under-fire work. A man soon gets himself in hand +to look straight at a white-fringed trench. Fear of sharks furnished +another test. From a child the deep-sea devourers had an exquisite +fascination for me—to be cut in two under brine, white belly, +backward mouth, black-rimmed, hairy pig eyes, the double-rows of +teeth.... Pacific Islanders swim in the same harbour with fourteen-foot +scavengers, careless of whole schools of monsters, yet scurry to their +boats at the sight of one solitary, <i>different</i> fin. I had seen the +so-called, man-eating brutes, "grey nurses," dim grey horrors with dull +black spots. A well-fed imagination also came into play.</p> + +<p>I went swimming in the surf with a splendid Australian chap—a doctor +home from the trenches.... He left me back in the surf lines and +started out to sea. I finished my swim de<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>cently in toward North +America, and lay on the strand. From time to time off in the sunset I +saw my friend's head.... I was glad to grab the beach-comber when he +came in.</p> + +<p>"It's all perfectly sane and splendid," I said, "and I'm glad to have +you back for supper with us, and the billows out yonder are doubtless +all that you say, for an afternoon's lie-up, only I venture to +ask—what if a grey nurse should happen in from the lower islands?"</p> + +<p>"You don't think about them," he said.</p> + +<p>That's about all there is to the fear subject. You don't let it get +you. There is nothing worth fearing in or above or under the plane of +manifestation.... So I tried that out in deep water. The old horrors +succumbed like the fear of the precipice, but not so readily, quite. +One can imagine keenly in the dim deep; the touch of sea-weed quickens +all the monsters of the mind....</p> + +<p>There's nothing fit to be afraid of, unless it is the <i>self</i>. When we +get the ape and the tiger, the peacock and the porpoise, the lizard +and the shark and the carcajou of our own natures mastered, there +isn't anything left to do but to tally them off outside, a friendly +finish with them all. No menagerie is complete as man's, and each of us +favours some species from time to time.</p> + +<p>I have thought much about fear. In another place I told how we have +overcome inertia; how <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>we developed senses through the hard administry +of fear and hunger, anger and the rest. Now, however, these must be +overcome.... One of the last physical fears to let go in my case is +that for the hangman's rope. I think Roger Casement really wanted the +axe in preference to the hemp. Steadily facing a repulsion, it surely +vanishes.</p> + +<p>The point of it all is that you can teach self-command to the +children.... I took a girl of fourteen to my precipice—left her there +standing on the very edge. After a few minutes I called. Her face was +calm as if she had gazed from a porch....</p> + +<p>"Did you feel any fear?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Only yours for me," she answered.</p> + +<p>It was very true. I had the thing whipped for myself, but it had been +hard to leave her there.</p> + +<p>Finally I took the smaller boys out for a test. They didn't know I was +testing them. Children haven't the fear of height such as we put on. I +recalled a score of episodes of my own boy-days, in which I startled +the elders by Sam Patch imitations. Also I have put the young ones +through some deep water affairs....</p> + +<p>You may not be able to get it quite—but all fear is illusion. Every +inner beast mastered makes us stronger. These animals within are our +cosmos to rule. We do not know how beautiful they are until we lose +our fear for them. Boys and girls <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>here are learning these things and +putting them in action.</p> + +<p>The kingdom of heaven is also within. Fear, passion, anger, poverty, +and the like—all represent areas of our own kingdom not yet brought +under perfect cultivation.... After the emotional and physical +conquests come the psychic ones—hard matters of mastery pertaining to +the heart and mind—to know, to do, to dare, to keep silent—then the +finding of the hidden treasures of the subconscious, mystic fleets that +sail those dim seas, as yet uncharted for most of us.... After that, +the Soul. At last we must be potent enough to stand eye to eye in the +presence of the King Himself.</p> + +<p>From looking steadily over an escarpment of two or three hundred feet +drop, to gazing at the world from the forward cockpit of an airplane +at two or three thousand feet, isn't such a long step as you would +imagine. The fact is, I was in no way terrified in my first flight, and +fear certainly crawled me full length as I stood that time at the edge +of the mesa. Our young people have the call to test the new dimension +of wings. This zeal corresponds in a unique way with the new education. +Intellect stays upon the ground. Intuition is the lifting of the wings +of the mind.</p> + +<p>I had already begun to make friendly visits to an aerodrome at the edge +of the Pacific when the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>following letter came from the Abbot,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> who +is now seventeen and in New York:</p> + +<p> ... Perhaps Steve told you that I had a ride in an airplane about three +weeks ago. Man! 'Tis the place for me! Next summer, soon as school +dissipates, I attach my name to the Royal Flying Corps. The psychic +effect of a flight is wonderful—like travelling over a very tall +bridge. The Atlantic coast for many miles lay in profile as a map, the +roads stretched as thin mathematical lines; forests as darker shadows +of the earth; New York as a blotch of smoke and curious patchwork. +For twenty minutes we sailed around and around, just as you've seen a +gull pinion, then we came to earth; waited until it got dark, then up +again.... Lights of the aerodrome lay like jewels upon the earth, but +up, up we went, faster and higher, the roar of the propeller providing +a steady nervous outlet. I could shout my lungs out—I had to relieve +myself of the excess thrill.</p> + +<p>Then what should happen? Red, a tiny rim, like the disc of a golden +dollar, the sun began to lift up from the horizon again. The higher +we went, the higher it lifted, until there it hung, as a golden bulb, +a swollen orange off in the mighty stretches,—pure, golden,—while +below twinkled the town's lights. 'Twas the fullest, richest, most +brimming moment I've ever had. The awe of the cosmos overtakes the +heart and lays down its stupendous laws. The distance between sun and +'plane seemed a golden pathway that ever could <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>absorb your flight. I +was aware only of worshipping God, and that roar of the machine made +one think of the roar of the planets, comets, meteors, all the suns, +roa-oa-ring. What a romance! Finding the sun!</p> + +<p> ... No discussion of the fear element whatsoever in the letter....</p> + +<p>The old thrills won't do for the new race. I took a pair of +screen-trained young ones to a circus recently and became absorbed at +their mild boredom. Alcohol is too slow and coarse for the wastrel +tendencies of the modern hour. The sad ones of the new generation +use high potency drugs to forget the drag of time and space. A new +dimension is required in all things. The young men of the new race make +light of our old dreads and are learning winged ways to heaven and to +hell.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_4" id="chapter_4"></a>4</h2> + +<p class="title">THE STUFF OF COMRADES</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">I wonder if I can make clearer, by turning a few different facets in +this chapter, what we mean by friends, comrades, the spirit of things, +and love not as an emotion but as a cosmic force. Many days I have +faced a Chapel, as I face this day's work, longing to bring in closer +the dream of the new social order, yet dismayed by the limitations +of words and my own mind, trained so long in the life of the old.... +I would begin to talk, drawing the young minds to mine through an +intimate revelation of the heart, then presently lose the sense of +effort, even the sense of thought—and an hour would pass in the joy of +communal blessedness, because we were one.</p> + +<p>Man is not getting larger, though he is continually holding more. +The human brain, after it reaches a certain age and size, may gain +thereafter a conception of the universe without altering the size of +the hat-band. There is a continual <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>condensation at work within us +mentally and physically. We take the cream of the thing, and throw the +rest away. The wiser and the more inclusive we become, the more we take +just the spirit of a thing, and leave the bulk and weight behind.</p> + +<p>This is true in our every refinement, in the clothes we wear, the food +we eat, the books we read and the friends we gather together. We become +harder and harder to suit, because bulk and weight are common, but the +spiritual extract of anything is slow to appear for us. The wiser the +man, the more fastidious he is, and this does not mean that he is a +crank. The excellence of fastidiousness is not in eccentricity but in +inclusiveness. In the spirit of the thing, he sees all. From the spirit +of the thing, he expresses in his own way any part. He can array whole +hierarchies of facts from the spirit of the whole, but mainly he leaves +the facts in reference-libraries, where they belong and are quickly +available, and stores away in his working faculties just a drop of the +<i>oil</i> of a subject or a breath from its essence.</p> + +<p>There are those who believe that the soul of man is made up of essences +of experiences of thousands of lives—yet the refinement of the soul +is so spiritualised that the best surgeon cannot find the little +organ. He knows the brain, which is made up of the stored experiences +of but one <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>life, but because the soul is so small or so diffused, +the surgeon is very apt to say that there is no such organ. And yet, +we all know there is knowledge and power behind us, which drives us, +in our greater moments, to utterances and action entirely without the +scope of the brain. We may call this the soul, or the nth power, or the +fourth dimension—the name doesn't matter.... Listen, if I write well +to-day—I mean well for me—if I rise to the opportunity at all, it +will be because I am writing things which my brain doesn't know.</p> + +<p>I yearn to make this still clearer.... The rose, which is the highest +evolved of flowers, includes all the evolution of plant-life of its +line beneath; the same with gold among the minerals. The fact that each +is the highest necessitates that. In the same way, man includes Nature +and the lower creatures, in that he is the highest. This is easily +proven to you when you recall that a child in the womb passes through +all states of creature evolution. That period is, in a wonderful way, a +review of the evolution of the world.</p> + +<p>The mere fact that the higher one climbs, the farther one can see, +proves it again. This is a law. The scent of a rose is the sublimate +of all plant odours; and the spirit of man is the refinement of all +knowledge and experience beneath.</p> + +<p>The higher man ascends, the more inclusive. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>To heal another, the +physician must be able to include the other. Evolution is continual +refinement—the drawing unto ourselves of the spirit of bulks of +matter. I stood upon a bluff overlooking the ocean recently, and a +breath of the south wind awakened in my mind the story of one whole +summer; others have listened to forest trees or the humming roar of +a distant city, or the rush of a great river, and found in them the +aggregate of all Nature's sounds in one tone. This is the magic of the +spirit of things.</p> + +<p>In all philosophy, there is no difference of opinion as to one fact, +that man is unfolding a microcosm within himself, including in his +consciousness more and more the Idea of the Universe. The cosmic +consciousness, which a few have attained, is the actual perception of +the externals of the Plan.</p> + +<p>The cream of anything includes all the parts. The cosmic mind must +include the essence of all arts and experiences and facts. Just as the +rose and the man and the grain of dust are potential with all beneath, +the highest man, the cosmic intelligence, is potentially the cosmos in +containing the Idea of it.</p> + +<p>This idea may be contained in and expressed outwardly by some great +single, all-including, all-mastering emotion—such as love. And now we +are in a region where there can be no difference <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>of opinion; at least +I have never heard disputed what is the greatest thing in the world.</p> + +<p>There are all kinds of love. The simple man loves simply—himself, +his woman, his children and his animals. The love of the cosmic +consciousness breaks forth in a deluge upon the race, because it +comprehends and includes all beneath. This great outpouring is formed +of earth, air, water, fire, sunlight and all winds, all facts, all +experiences, all arts, light of the moon and stars and all glowing +things under the sun, all sounds and scents and pictures, all ardours, +and sympathies and tolerances. Its outpouring is action, and is of +itself creative. This is the <i>OM</i>. Such a love leavens and impregnates +all things, because it understands and includes all things. It unifies +all separateness; it enfolds all intelligence with intuition; it unites +all parts.</p> + +<p>This brings us to that ancient and unassailable premise of all +religions—that God includes every part of the universe in being the +spirit of it; that His idea of creativeness is expressed in one great +single, all-mastering and including emotion,—which is love. We hear +the little children saying it, "God is love."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p> ... We awaken the Ideal in ourselves first by imitating the virtues of +others. In the earlier days when to me courage meant physical action, +men passed in different fields, leaving an imper<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>ishable remembrance. +I have often seen the expressions of those I loved and idealised as a +boy, live again in the faces of my own children. John T. McCutcheon in +Luzon, filling a reel of films, under a volley of fire at Binan, on his +knees, working the camera with a whole brigade sprawled behind—gave +me one of the finest early building blocks for the courage among men. +He also gave me an ideal of cleanliness: One evening, after a vicious +day's march, and we were all ravenous, John T. left camp to find a +river. There he bathed with government bouquet,—made himself right +with himself, even to shaving, before meat and drink. His constraint +looked like mastery to me then. Grant Wallace was a big star of that +service—ideal in performance of friendship.... Young men at hand now +are different. Not one of them lack in grip and grit. They reveal the +new thing in courage, the courage that begins where the courage of +the soldier ends. These have gone far into the mystery of their own +kingdoms—rapidly becoming kings of themselves.</p> + +<p>The world doesn't understand them. The Abbot[3] is a sensation in +literary matters at Columbia, but unplaced. The Dakotan<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> was said +to be unfit for a soldier because he was twenty pounds under weight +for his height. He can leap five <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>feet six, run or hike indefinitely, +exhaust a cement-mixer, say "stick" in all tongues and "quit" in none. +He has the will and wisdom to make himself a new man over night—and +yet his Government wants him served up just so, in pounds. There isn't +any one loves America more than the Dakotan, whom we now call Steve. +Even the young military surgeons will know before long that endurance +is a matter of spiritual culture, that courage is spirit—that a man +is well because of cleanliness of body and thought and organised +will; that he doesn't fail in a pinch because he is evolved; that all +the higher forms of life call for speed rather than strength, the +levitating force of spirit rather than the gravitating force of flesh, +for brain rather than brute.... Comrade stuff is the stuff of souls.... +I've studied them long and devotedly. I build my days upon the things +these boys show me. Less and less are we different from those who call +to our hearts.</p> + +<p>These young men do not think themselves out; they are not troubled by +misses or personal discrepancies. They simply are themselves. I have +perceived that men of dreams and genius and action are in the larger +sense free from themselves. The main part of their day's performance +is a lifting out of the tangle of emotion and desire, into a large, +unrestricted area full of calm daylight, where events and movements +are seen in their rela<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>tion to one another, not in separateness and +one at a time, an area also where inspiration is momentarily expected +to strike. They do not analyse themselves. They do not hear their own +voices. They are not dismayed if they falter or drop from the key. The +things that most men do with care, and that occupy so much of the days +these young men perform automatically.</p> + +<p>My own path was upward through an intense self-consciousness—the +American, not the oriental way. I lived with myself all the route. I +observed outward conditions and events, domestic, civic and cosmic; but +at the same time observed their effects upon myself. I did not know +until I was adult that there is a big receptivity of consciousness +above this—where intuitions play and weave causes and effects +together—where the mind is more like a child's than a man's, or more +like a giant's, perhaps—where the big faith comes, and the warm laugh +comes, and man surpasses himself, but does not know until afterward, if +at all.</p> + +<p>Warmth flooded into me as I touched this larger consciousness. It +became clear as daylight—that a man is at his best only when out of +himself. I saw much of my misery and depression was the result of +self-analysis. I was a better man when I let myself go utterly. And +this was exactly the thing that happened in moments of dan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>ger, moments +of romance and friendship, moments of the self hurling itself outward. +Capacity for these moments makes the Comrade, and indicates that love +which is not a sentiment, but a cosmic force.</p> + +<p>Again, you cannot describe a spiritual thing with these little tools +and materials in black and white—just intimations.... If we are +sweet enough inside, something of the song will come to us.... Two +words suggest it best. The first is <i>Comrade</i>, which has become a +silliness in a military sense, yet has a high and holy meaning to +all reconstructionists.... I remember when the word first came to me +with a thrill, as a young lad going off to Cuban wars. It was burned +out of me a few days afterward in a Sibley tent full of regular army +soldiers.... I remember the scorn with which I used the word all the +years—or avoided using it—until slowly, smilingly, its new dimension +opened, hard as a diamond, and as clear—its meaning in work and world +and women, its new meaning to Russia and India and China and America.</p> + +<p>It seems to say <i>Equality</i>. It's a kind of deep drink of spirit +together, a word spoken at the last moment between men—an +inner-shrine word, spoken with a smile, and a glimpse into the eternal +indestructibility of the human heart. It expresses the love of the +world, not as it is felt in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>the brain, but in the breast of the soul. +The New Race has already washed it clean. It goes with a Cause fit to +die for. It belongs to men and women who can look at each other with a +kind of prayer in their eyes and face death alone and laugh at it.</p> + +<p>There's a fury, too, in the word—fury against the world, against +things as they are. It stands against the world-darkness now, and for +the day that is to be. It means love for the poor, a love for the +peasants, a passion to serve and be tender to them, not to drive them +into the pits of death—a readiness to die for them without <i>cant</i>, a +readiness also to dare to live for them.</p> + +<p><i>Comrade</i>—there's vision in it to strip off the masks of decadent +nations, to open wide the sepulchres where the priests are still +plotting to crucify the King; its strong magic will uncover the +monotonous crimes of commerce.... It signifies the spirit of the young +men and women who have already begun with gladness and fire to clear +the débris for the building of the New Age.</p> + +<p>They will begin with the soil; they will know and love their own hard +part. They will begin with the grass, with the rice, with the millet +and the wheat, the clean things, the simple and holy things that the +peasants love, with the songs that the peasants sing, the songs of the +soil and the rivers and snows—to build upon them the new<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> heaven and +the new earth.... Above all, there's a laugh in the word—the laugh of +youth and power.</p> + +<p>The other word is <i>Democracy</i>.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_5" id="chapter_5"></a>5</h2> + +<p class="title">JOHN'S THINGS</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Here are some of John's things, mainly letters to the Old Man. +California called hard for the recent winter, and I went out a few +weeks ahead of the Stonestudy outfit. John intended to follow within +three weeks, but overturned a kettle of boiling water in his lap, and +was unable to leave his quarters for three times that period. We all +learned better the hard lesson—to wait. The quoted word "Play" in his +first letter refers to a little slip of paper which I had pasted upon +my typewriter. There has been a big tendency in recent months, in my +case, to let down all tension in relation to literary production—the +idea being that when one has learned all the laws he is capable of, the +time is at hand when it is well to forget them. I have written several +times throughout this book of an ideal emergence of Workman into +Player. We learn many laws, to learn at last that there are none. We +come up through many <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>slaveries to freedom.... I have not corrected all +the spelling in John's documents. The point most interesting is how the +real voice breaks through the mind of a child of nine from time to time.</p> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Dear Younervers<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Pal</span>:</p> + +<p>We got your letter but it was not like you for it was not type-written. +Your old machine here is going grand. I am using it now. It seems that +I am with you all the time. <i>Comrad</i> has meant a lot the last four days +to me. Comrad is everything in the New Race. Masters will be comrads +with every one.</p> + +<p>That "Play" has it all, on your machine. "Play" is in all somewhere. +It is all like a big page and everything is woven on it. There is a +time when Comrads hafto go apart for a little while, but not long. +Their thoughts never go apart. They are always pulling together, always +weaving in thoughts and things that are the same. It is wounderful—a +parting. No sadness over it. It is the best that could come, or it +would not. We are held together. The pull of the world is nothing to us.</p> + +<p>It is hard to keep high, but we will. Fred<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> and I take a swim every +day. I go a hundred <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>and fifty feet. Then we come up and rub each other.</p> + +<p>True Comrads have it all. Love from Comrad to Comrad.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Pal</span>:</p> + +<p>I woke up this morning kind of blurred, and got Irving and Steve to +come out and clean up the barn. They came and we worked there all +morning, and then went in for a swim. It was wounderful, the feel I had +when I got some clean clothes on and had the old dog<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> feeling good. +He is meditating over what a wounderful world it is now. The stall +smells sweet as a hay-stack.</p> + +<p>Fred just got here and is working at your desk.</p> + +<p>How was your morning? I never had a better one, and its the weary old +Sabbath, too.</p> + +<p>Send for me soon now. It seems that it was a year since we have been +together. We can not do without each other. Send for me <i>Soon</i>. I hold +my hand high to you.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Dear Old Magic Fath</span>:</p> + +<p>I am at Steve's desk in the guest room. It is the first time that I +have touched the keys of a type writer since the night I was berned. It +sure does feel good.</p> + +<p>It has been much more wonderful to hafto have Patience for the Meeting. +It will be twice as <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>great for both. I have needed you so since I have +been in bed. In pane and sicknes there is nothing that you need so much +as your Comrad.</p> + +<p>I felt palms up to everything. It is all good. We love it all. It all +was something for us to get. It puts us higher after something comes to +us like that.</p> + +<p>I have all the pores poring out love to you. We are always together.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Your Side Kiker.</span><br /></p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Dear Old Pal</span>:</p> + +<p>Fred and I slept again in the Study. It looked like a storm last night, +but it did not come. Fred is a real Comrad. I got to his heart last +night. I do not know how. The roses have been wounderful the last few +days.</p> + +<p>How is wounderful Mary? We are all sending Thoughts to you. We have had +wounderful full days lately, all heat. The town is howling for rain +now; they are never satisfied. We are always ready for anything. It is +the best. Our wounderful old mailtrain just crossed the magic lane. +I love trains more and more. They have a pull to my heart. We love +everything.</p> + +<p>I do not feel on erth. I feel in space. Out of the draw of the +erth—<i>Free</i>.</p> + +<p>Love always in my heart for you. I hold hard for the time that Comrads +pull together again for <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>the road, us two. Jane is at my hump all the +time—so I will quit.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Dear Old Comrad</span>:</p> + +<p>We are close this morning. I can feel your warm wounderful hand in mine +this morning. We are one. There is the holy breath—such a great pull +of thoughts and work to California. It seems as if all the Comrads were +calling me there. Then I hafto think of the one thing—<i>Patience</i>. When +you have mastered Patience, you are free. All well here. My sores are +getting better fast. I have wanted to work lots lately, since I was in +bed, but I could not. I lost so many ideas in bed. Beds are a curse. I +love you, Comrad. We need to be together.</p> + +<p class="right"> +<span class="smcap">Your old Pal.</span><br /></p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Sunlight Pal</span>:</p> + +<p>A wounderful sun. A little late in getting up. The sun was out full—a +wounderful breakfast and a wounderful bowl of roses.</p> + +<p>Every morning gets greater. The coming together again gets closer. +Separation is a great thing! You find that when it comes. It will be +so big and wounderful to come together on the shores of the sea. The +trains on the Pere Marquette line have a draw to my heart; the whistle +is so wounderful.... To have a bath in the salt water and not in old +Lake Erie.... It was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>another wounderful night with Fred. He has done +so much for me this time that we have been away from each other.</p> + +<p>He is so wounderful if you can get to him. I think I have got right to +him to the heart. I am awful lonesome for you and the sea.</p> + +<p>I walked to the train track with Fred this morning. It was like the day +you were going away. I felt it was nearing the last walk up the old +Lane. Fred has the same feel. It swept over us—a free feel; it was +almost too much.</p> + +<p>How is your Sisity-list coming? Mine is great. It is hard to get along +without you here. Old Abe was drafted, and we don't know when we will +see him. The sea and sunlight sweeping in the open door of your work +room! We will sure have some grand times. We will get horses and have +some more of them Moonlight rides. It will be great to hit the old <i>Tie +path</i> Itself—with the<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> Welcome Mulligan and the<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> Onerbel Chas. +Lipton under our arms. The smell of the burning bark and a caben in the +Rockies! Oh, the open road. Life is Life on the old Road.</p> + +<p>That canyon must be a wounder, and the sea and the misty mountains +and the brown hills. You have it all. Oh man, that is the country for +everything.</p> + +<p>I keep high for our meeting, Comrad of the Road.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p> + + +<p class="plabel"><span class="smcap">Prose Settings</span></p> + + +<p class="center">I</p> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><small>THE RED SUNSET.</small></span></p> + +<p>The red sunset Died away like the close of a forest fire.</p> + +<p>The Dusk ran through the mountains like a scarf of blue.</p> + +<p>The Moon and old Jupiter took the Open Road together.</p> + +<p>The others came out of the everlasting Blue Deeps.</p> + + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><small>THE DESERT NIGHT.</small></span></p> + +<p>The man at the camel corral was fixing the camels for the desert. Other +men were waiting at the front of the Temple. Another came forward with +four camels, a pack-beast and two riders. Then all were off over the +Sun Betin Sand.</p> + +<p>Nothing but Sand and Harizen. Only the Arab who was ahead on the Old +Camel knew the way.</p> + +<p>They went on and on over the Everlasting Sand, the Sun Betin Sand.</p> + + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><small>PINES.</small></span></p> + +<p>The great wood is the Pines. The very whiff of them gives you the +breath of Nature, the great <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>Mother of the planet, the mother of Love. +Her breath is the breath of life and love, and the Mouziek of the world.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Treas</span> (<i>California</i>)</p> + +<p>Treas are grate. They are so wild and wounderful. There is so many +kinds here. The trea I love best of them all, is the U.K. Liptes. It is +fragran; it has the sun and the erth all flowers and the swaying beauty +of its great youth. I loved it from the first. It is beauty that stays.</p> + +<p>I went up to a grove the other day and along a little lone path—the +mist and odor of them lingering in deep shadows. My feet broke the deep +silences and a Voice came and spoke soft to me: "If you listen long +enough you can hear——" I think it was my Master speaking, for a glow +came around me, after He had spoke.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Song of the Sperit</span></p> + +<p>Life is not any good until you forget your boddy; then you get all the +power of living, but you can't do anything that you feel like doing.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Lether</span>:</p> + +<p>All lether has a mystery in it. It is the animal's mystery. The misteks +of the other world know it, and try to tell us. I have been told but +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>my mind has not received it. I will hafto wait until it does. I think +I will know it all in a fue years. I will tell the rest of the world, +if I hear it first. I would like to be the first to hear it.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Stones</span>:</p> + +<p>The whole erth was of stone.</p> + +<p>God thought that he would make it something good. He sent the Old +Mother Nature down and she spent years and years, but she did not know +what to put on it. She went up to God and He took her to a room, and +showed her the things that He had to put on the Erth.</p> + +<p>They were sperits, so she got them one at a time and brought them down.</p> + +<p>In the mean time she was making other things. They were seeds and she +planted these and they came up. It was wheat and barley and other +things like that. The sperits became people and took them for food, and +the old Mother is still putting things and bringing her sperits on the +Erth. This world is just about filled.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Sperit</span></p> + +<p>At night the Sperit goes to see God. It gets fresh to make the boddy +fresh every morning. This is what keeps you clean. If you were all +clean, you would not die. You go thru a hard <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>life and what is not +clean is burned off, and then you are pure to go to heaven. You rest +then until you are ready to come and be a saint.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Alone</span></p> + +<p>The sun beat hard upon the rocks.</p> + +<p>I was alone in the Power of the rocks. Nothing was moving.</p> + +<p>I was Alone. My Sperit was alone.</p> + +<p>It was the loneliest place in the world.</p> + +<p>No animal of any kind, not a bird or a snake—alone.</p> + +<p>Nature did not even have cells of thought.</p> + +<p>The power of the rocks was holden me there.</p> + +<p>A thought came over me that I had never known Home.</p> + +<p>All of a sudden Nature spoke, and I was free from everything.</p> + +<p>I came back to the Father.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Equals</span></p> + +<p>There is a greatness in a man that treats his horse like his brother. +A man is a beast when he beats his horse. He is of a lower Brivahen<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> +than the horse. The man who says to his horse that he is his equal, is +a great man, a master of animals.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Beauty</span></p> + +<p>When the New Race comes, there will be beauty—real beauty. Down thru +the ages people have talked of beauty, but they have not seen it +really, yet. It will come with the New Race—beauty in everything—in +the body, in writing, in talk, in love. Not love one, but all. The +younerverse Lovers will not only love each other, but they will love +all. This war is the great clean up of the world. After it is all over, +and the troops come all home together, there will be the great New Race +waiting for them with open arms—then all will be real beauty.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Hold Up and the Get Away</span></p> + +<p> ... It was the first time Denver Bill had come in without a cigarette +in his mouth. They wanted to know why he wasn't smoking, but they +didn't ask.</p> + +<p>He ordered the same drink and took it fast.... He chucked the chair +over, grabbed the tellfon off the table and gave "Hlo."</p> + +<p>He said, "Horse up here in five minutes."</p> + +<p>It was there.</p> + +<p>He was out of town in a minute more.</p> + +<p>Denver Bill stopped at a cabin where he had made ponmets<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> to rob a +train at 7:45, and it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>was now 6:10. His friend was there. They jumped +on their horses and rode a quarter of a mile. The train whistled around +the curve.</p> + +<p>There was a shout. Denver called: "Stop that engine!"</p> + +<p>It stopped slow.... Bill murdered the engineer, and then flew thru the +train of cars. He grabbed the fifty pound gold box and jumped thru the +window. A shot rang out.</p> + +<p>Bill was pincked.</p> + +<p>The man that he had come with played dirt on him because he went off +with the gold. Bill crawled across the field and laid in the hay stack.</p> + +<p>He rolled the first cigarette of the day.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Letter to the Abbot</span> (from California)</p> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Dear Old Wife</span>:</p> + +<p>How are you coming? I was just up over the hill behind us, getting two +wounderful qwortz of golden honey. How is your type mill pumping these +days? I got a new story in my bean:—Have an old fisherman that takes +those forks and goes after crabs—have him find a pot of pearls instead +of crabs.—Think if it is done right it would make a wounder.</p> + +<p>When will you be out here? We will lead a pack trane over the +mountains! Oh, that is the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>old open road! Pack mules, they mean it to +me—a line of mules in the mountains and a couple of saddel horses! +That's the life.</p> + +<p>I hope you have changed your mind about them airaplanes. I do not like +the Idea. But, old man, it is for the best, and nothing is a mistake. +Take it as it comes. Write soon, and make the pages fly like dust to +me. I need all that I can get.</p> + +<p>Last night was our first bit of rain. Slept in an open window where my +face was sprayed all night with the wounderful cold drops of spring. +When I got up, I was feeling better than I ever did before. I was all +relaxed. I lay a long time just in the wounder of the wounderful free +air and rain. I got up and went down and washed in more of the soft +rain, and ate and went outside to come down to my work shop. I stood +in the wind. Everything around me was so wounderful. All the trees and +flowers were brighter. The hills were a little damp. The birds were +playing and drinking in the rain. The ray of sun was just coming over +the hill. I could almost hear the breathing of the grass and erth. It +was like a song, the great song of spring and breathing of the world.</p> + +<p>That is the way that the new generation will come in after the world is +washed and all countries are <i>one</i>. A Boy, young and clean, will come +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>in, whistling and breathing a Song of the New Race.</p> + +<p class="right"> +<span class="smcap">Your Comrad.</span><br /></p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Another</span></p> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Well, Wife</span>:</p> + +<p>Here I am pumping a little more of my vocabulary at you. I think that I +will go into the ocean and have a swim. It's dulce on my wounds. What +I want to tell you is about an old sea loafer here—a big, black dog. +He isn't any kind of a dog—nothing but a world-man-dog, he is. He is a +lover of the sea and sand. He goes down with us every day. He is a pal +for the road. He can't follow the saddel like Jack, but he can shore be +a frend. I have lerned him and he has lerned me. We stick close.</p> + +<p>Well, pal of the sea and saddel, I am getting awful lonesome, but I am +with you all the time. I need your old paw. I shore keep high for the +Spring Coming. We will have a shack back in the hills all alone, and +drink tea and talk. Don't it sound good? I won't forget it either, not +until we have it. We have planned it for many ages, and we will hafto +have it—old pal of the moonlight rides.</p> + +<p>I am close and always your Comrad.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_6" id="chapter_6"></a>6</h2> + +<p class="title center">VALUES OF LETTER WRITING</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Stonestudy particularly is a shop for writers. A man is at his best in +writing to the one who pulls the most from him. The thing is to pour +out. The pursuit of happiness is a learning how to radiate. Happiness +itself is radiation—incandescence.</p> + +<p>You say you write to the world. A composite? An abstraction? These +will not draw forth your best and greatest.... You pass a thousand +faces in the town, and are suddenly torn by one? Do you think that +the unmanifested, upon which the thousand faces sleep so far as you +are concerned, is capable of bringing out your wisest or tenderest +expression, as is this one face pressed against the very window of your +habitation?</p> + +<p>As a workman, as an artist, as a player, one must give his best, one +by one, to individuals first, before he arouses the force to set +the table for the world.... It is important for the young writer +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>to answer exactly certain listening attitudes. I think, in a story +mood, of the shepherd fires—the endless droning tales of Persia and +Palestine—camel bells, bearded men in white hoods, occasional weary +movements of women in the tent openings as the evening passes to dead +of night. The tale-teller is making his listeners see more or less +dimly something <i>he</i> sees—something he has heard and visualised, +better yet, something he has lived. The finer his telling the more +completely he has lived it. The more listeners pull from him, the more +excellent his animation, his art. A speaker, accustomed to give himself +spontaneously to an audience, said: "If I don't give you what you +want—if I am not at my best to-day—remember it's apt not to be <i>all</i> +my fault."</p> + +<p>Soil and seed in all things.</p> + +<p>We prepare ourselves with much misery and massed experience to tell +our story of life. How strange that we should not have reckoned with +the fact that all this preparation is only half.... Really, it is as +important to think to whom one is writing as what to write about. I've +been afield with many young men, soldiers and the like. Their best and +highest moments afield were spent in writing home, or possibly to the +girl they left under the beeches or sycamores. We should write a myriad +or two love letters, before we are <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>ready to write for the world.... By +writing and dreaming and travelling and living toward the one, we learn +how to focalise our forces. Having done that, we are ready to diffuse, +to radiate. Sooner or later the <i>one</i> point will be taken away.</p> + +<p>Don't be distressed; it is only for the time. But the love we have +learned with one must be turned upon the many. It's all a love story. +The whole universe is that. The stillness of the sun in relation to the +planets tells the first story of radiation—love a cosmic force, not +a sentiment—all one big, brave tale.... The real priest is trained +to draw out, to furnish understanding,—inclusion. One can talk well +to one who includes him. As professional essayists and story-tellers, +we are only beginning to learn that we must talk or write to some one +greater than ourselves, to set ourselves free.</p> + +<p>The wonderful power of letters begins and ends just here.... Write your +story or your essay to one who contains you—to one who draws your +best, to one who sets you free. You can ascertain your relation to +another by your mood as you prepare to write. The more you practise the +art, the more sensitive you are, the more you realise that no two moods +of yours are the same, as you write to different people. One draws +humour, one irony, one a tendency to exaggerate, another deeply to be +serious and reformative. This should <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>reveal the whole secret. Choose +your complement for the portrayal of a mood.</p> + +<p>The thing we call our style is merely the evidence of that which +we have chosen to work toward, plus our particular personality. We +should work to that which sets us free. Certainly one cannot be free +in another's form. There are fixed vehicles for expression—novel, +essay, poem, infinite departments of each, but the fact remains that no +workman or artist or player can be utterly himself, who remains in the +forms laid down by those who went before, or in forms prescribed by the +generation he undertakes to express himself through.</p> + +<p>No good workman ever accepts things as they are. To be the workman +unashamed, he must be considerably beyond his generation in culture and +acumen. He therefore finds the beaten paths—which are the easy paths +for the many—the most irksome paths for himself. He grinds long and +hideously against the things that are, and thus becomes formidable, +since grinding makes the edge. The dullest part of the axe is held the +longest against the wheel.</p> + +<p>Bit by bit, as the consciousness of the chosen workman expands under +years and ordeals, he casts off all the shackles, forms and prescribed +nonsense of the trivial and material-minded. He breathes deeper with +each unbinding, until he <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>reaches the fair eminence upon which lies the +priceless secret of all expression:</p> + +<p><i>That there is no law for the pure in heart.</i></p> + +<p>He reaches this point through many slaveries, and yet a child can +be taught the secret. The child must also be taught, at the same +time however, that the world is wrong and inferior in all its views; +otherwise the child will not have stamina enough to stand against the +opinions of all elders of all times, much less those who sit at the +same breakfast table. Verily, the thing that Rodin and Balzac and +Carpenter and Hugo and Chavannes and Nietzsche and Whitman gave their +prodigious vitalities to learn, before their real work began,—can +be taught to the child, but the child must find his faith in his own +spirit and some true teacher to set him free.</p> + +<p>In the later aspirations beyond professional workmanship for the world, +the Players achieve that master freedom which detaches itself entirely +from causes and effects in materials. They work as do those who are +ambitious, yet refuse to tie themselves in the least way to results. +They work to their Masters, to the Unseen.... All of which is pure and +perfect liberation, but requires one trained in building with spiritual +causes and effects. We seek to furnish this training for a few who are +ready. It is the way to the inmost and the uppermost in all art and +mysticism. We are set free here as expressionists of various kinds <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>by +writing or painting or playing to those we hold dearer than ourselves. +We wouldn't be writing if we could be with them in the flesh—how clear +that is! The fundamental processes of our picture-making are quickened +by our yearning. Here we touch an old and curious law, that you must +have separation for the true romance.</p> + +<p>We learn to mass life into pictures or tones or tales.... All that we +do well shortens the grade for those who receive. If they are quite +ready, they won't have to make the mistakes we did—mistakes painful at +the time, but out of which we make humour now.</p> + +<p>A man brings a gift when he brings forth a good tale. He has done +something with the worn-out tools of incident and experience which +hasn't been done before. To do it well his telling is dependent +upon his audience. His telling will be different for each listening +group. The greater the artist, the less alike will be his methods of +approaching different friends or comrades. Each will bring from him a +different tone, a different look to his eyes, a different grip of hand, +and different order of unfolding his genius....</p> + +<p>The most perfect bits of writing we have from the group of our greatest +novelists—is either in the form of letters or parts of work inspired +by the influence of a woman's heart—some romantic and one-pointed +outbreathing of their souls to one.... The great creative producers +rarely <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>found steady human companionship in one woman. No flesh was +starry enough to endure their idealisation; the break of their picture +was often the shattering of life itself. Experience forces us all at +last to take our idolatry from that which changes—to continue our +lessons of love toward the Unseen. Lovers of the New Race seem to have +learned the agony of trying to find all in each other, of trying to +find the universe eye to eye. They realise at once that man and woman +are but the two earth points of a triangle; that they safely may rear +their passions and their transfigurations only to the pure point of +union above....</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>A man has found something when he cries "Eureka!" He loves something, +when he pours out his heart to it. The first great struggle of the real +workman is to find a form that contains him—a form of expression that +will not maim his dream. It is never the form that has held another, +that has sufficed for another artist. A letter is one way to freedom. A +writer's style should set him free.</p> + +<p>The enduring aphorisms and tablets and discourses of the Masters have +been spoken to their beloved few. A man's sealed orders in the world, +his occult transcriptions from above the world, come in the form of +personal messages. Great documents of the future shall be written this +way. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>We write many personal letters. One of my young comrades has the +idea to gather together names of a score of mill-girls in New York or +somewhere, and write her heart to them—less to try to help them, than +to ease her own heart, to tell her love for them. Radiation—that is +happiness. Mill-girls have been a dream of hers. She is full of force +to pour out.</p> + +<p>Incandescence is happiness. All expression is happiness. Happiness is +creative. To work, to express, that is to radiate. The object is as +important as the thing that aches to go forth. Choose the form that +sets you free. To each his form.</p> + +<p>A tireless woman asked how she might serve. Her lover was lost in +Flanders. We told her to write to the soldiers—to write her heart +out in letters to soldiers—that she would save lives and start great +dreams and bring the gold back to many grey mists—to be Mary the +Mother, the saint, the dream of the film-eyed fighting men—to love +them through the heart of her beloved. That is what focalisation leads +to—to draw forth the great energies from our souls, to set us free, +first to one, then to the world.</p> + +<p>We learn to love the one—in order to give this love to the world. We +learn to love in matter for the moment, in order to become consummate +artists and players in the soul stuff that cannot die. Again and again, +through possessions and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>personalities—missing, destroyed or moved +away—we learn to take the force of our outpouring from the mutative to +the changeless—making a divine bestowal at last of a clinging human +need—lifting from the idolatry of the flesh, which encloses all pain, +to the love of souls which sets us free.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_7" id="chapter_7"></a>7</h2> + +<p class="title center">THE NEW DANCING</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">I have found true North Americans. A woman of twenty-seven, a mother +(with a mysterious man somewhere) and a girl-child with the calm and +power of Joan come again.... I needed a change, was tired of my house +and my voice—close to the end of all human interest that morning as I +set out for a walk up the edge of the Lake. On and on walking, until I +came to the little girl on the shore. She was making a frowning man in +clay. She asked me if I were the Crusader, but answered herself while +I was hoping to fit the dimension of that fascinating title. She had +decided that I wasn't.</p> + +<p><i>North Americans</i>—I think of them so again and again—something great +and calm and deep and beautiful, something arrived, at last, from all +the fusion—en rapport with nature, children of the light, living and +abiding constantly in the essences of sunlight—with the humour and +cer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>tainty of Mother Earth about their ways—the cleanliness of earth +and the sweetness of golden light in their house and mind....</p> + +<p>Mind you, I had walked forth as one would wade out to sea in the path +of the moon—actually yearning for a better land than this.... There on +the shore, after hours, was the child—her eyes turned to mine, putting +me into the enchantment of the wise—stilling hate and ennui. We had +words together, the great awe of life stealing over me again after +many days. Her hand stretched forth to take me to her mother (this day +called the Lonely Queen, for they live in an enchanted story-book). +A climb to the top of the bluff and into the most fragrant and godly +lane, a low house in the distance in the shelter of beeches—solitary +and isolate beeches sheltering a human house, built for sunshine long +ago. Many pages would not tell of the lane and the house, the lawn and +the hives.... I want to touch the core of this inimitable pair that +took me in—poor but dining upon the perfect foods, so poor that they +make and dye the lovely things they wear—a kind of holy handiwork +everywhere—perfume of summer in the house and in the heart of it a +deepdelved peace where broods a sort of lustrous dream.</p> + +<p>The child is but seven—that is, her body and brain are but seven. +Her talk with her mother is the talk of a pair of immortals.... Wheat +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>bread and butter for supper, peaches of the mother's canning—a last +jar, she said, with comb-honey for sweetening and golden cream on +top. It was a repast for the mountain-top where demi-gods stray—all +miracles about us, Apollo just putting his steeds away, Vulcan smoking +sombre and wrathful in the distance.</p> + +<p>Can you see me sitting down to supper in a true handmade house, at the +head of a God-made portal to the lake (the lane is nothing less) in a +grove of white beeches—lingering gold on the vines at the window, the +murmur of hives in the air, and these two mystic presences subduing +their radiance to sit with me?... There's a little can of tea that +is opened the last thing after the table is spread; the brass kettle +begins to sing, and the mother hovers over—a kind of sacred rite, all +this—then the dancing water is poured over the leaves and the room +softly fills with the air of far archipelagoes. Roses of Ireland and +France are in the room. Tearoses—some daughter of poetry must have +named them.</p> + +<p> ... Still I am telling you about <i>things</i>—not about <i>them</i>. I thought +I should write you what they are, yet the longer I sit here, the more +testaments of their adorable lives appear, but their spirits draw +farther apart.... There is never a drone of talk where they are ... +sentences and silences, the myriad voices of evening stealing into the +hushes between.... I must get down to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>earth again. I must begin with +the grass and the shore and the magic which began when the child turned +up to me from the frowning clay....</p> + +<p>I should like to report them moment by moment—to make you see, but +there is a fixed purpose in this chapter. Sitting apart from them that +first night, I contemplated the North America of the future—a kind of +dream that nestles within a dream—the Great Companions, superb men and +women, the vastness of leisure, the structural verity of joy, a new +dimension in the human mind, a new colour and redolence in the light +that plays upon the teeming world. Not for years had I been so near to +the dithyrambic.... I went out into the dusk and smoked a machine-made +cigarette—not for worlds would I desecrate that room. I returned +drowsy—opened the casement windows wide to the stars. As I put out the +lights, the sense came to me that the little room was as fragrant and +sweet as a new-woven basket.</p> + +<p> ... I awoke to low singing. The room was grey and seemed to lift +with me, and the walls to widen. It was as if I had caught the old +house just waking from a sleep of its own. The phenomenon of the +singing lived in my mind. I don't know the song—a rapid bird-like +improvisation possibly—two voices hushed, but a vibration of clear +liquid joy. I went to the window. The earth was still asleep—a +pearl-grey world <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>of dripping trees in a kind of listening ecstasy—two +beings below on the lawn—a lawn that was grey with dew. It was like +looking down upon a cloud from the Matterhorn. These two beings—one +in a veil of rose, one in a veil of gold—were dancing upon the cloud, +dancing bare-armed and limbed, their voices interpreting some soft +harmony that seemed to come from the break of day upon the sphere.</p> + +<p>It was not for me—yet I could not draw back from the vines. I brought +only thankfulness to it—sharing the joy in the dim of a room, in the +dim of a mere man's heart. Yet all I could contain came to me from +the mother and child. They knelt in the grass, the song more hushed, +bringing up to their faces and shoulders hands that dripped with the +holy distillations of the night—a wash in dew and day, their song a +prayer, their dance a sacred rite.... I should have thought it the gift +of dreams, but there was a starry track of deep green across the lawn, +where their bare feet had broken the sheen of dew.</p> + +<p> ... I dwelt with souls—that was the truth. I sat at breakfast with +souls, dew-washed, speaking to each other and to me from that long road +of life which we lose for a squalid by-way when we put on the garments +of the world.... They talked again about what the birds hear in the +morning. They said that what the birds sing is their interpretation +of the great song of day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>break—that the earth does not meet her Lord +Sun in silence.... And then I knew that the song I heard was their +interpretation—think of it—a child of seven eating buttered toast.</p> + +<p>And I knew that power is a song—that the singing of the kettle is the +song of steam, that the inimitable <i>t'sing</i> of an electric burner when +the current first charges through, is the awakening song of steel and +carbon to their native capacity and direction. The same is in the heart +of a boy when he finds his task—the same is in the order of a master +and in the making of his poem.... These two hear it—the song of Mother +Earth as the floods of light pour out and over her from the East.</p> + +<p>Here was a mother who knew how to play. She had launched somehow +into a sphere of her own making—doubtless having found life of the +world insupportable. I had thought much about bringing up children, +about unfolding the child, and here it was being worked out with +brimming joy.... It was all too natural to be called education. It +was nature—it was liberation, rather—a new and higher meaning of +naturalness.</p> + +<p>I was almost afraid to speak. The life here seemed so delicate +and delightful that comments would bruise the fine form of it.... +They played together—that was the point. Play is a liberation of +force—great play is ecstasy. In it one rises to the <i>stillness</i> +of production, wherein <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>one bathes in mystery and potency and all +commonness is cleansed away. Those who reach this stillness are the +great beings of the world.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>When we finally open ourselves to any subject, we find intimations of +it everywhere. I found presently that all the voices of the New Age +had designated the magic of the dance. It seems almost dull to declare +that I do not refer now to the dance as it is taught and used and +exploited as a social accomplishment, but that in which the personality +is subdued and quiescent, quite as absolutely as it is in all great +moments of production. One must give oneself. Music carries the +sensitive soul into its own mystic region. A rhythm within answers to +the external rhythm—the two meet and mate—the fusion is bewildering +beauty.</p> + +<p>As in all creativeness, the first law is spontaneity.</p> + +<p>The great dancers of the future will <i>hear</i> their own music—possibly +give voice to it as they give their body to the rhythm. There shall be +no exact interpretation of song or sonata—at least, not until absolute +genius interprets the exact figure of each tone-set. This is impossible +in a world of mutation. Accordingly, one who establishes a series of +movements to accompany a certain harmony, misses the meaning of the +divine improvisations which is the essential beauty of the New <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>Age +dances. One should dance as freely as one called upon to speak. And one +will neither speak nor dance greatly by prearrangement or following any +arbitrary form.</p> + +<p>The very tone of the voice is different and deeper when one is caught +in the spirit of spontaneity. The prime object of the new education, +which includes dancing, is to set the soul free. Music is one of the +master-lures to call forth the sleeping giant.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>One night a stranger<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> came to Stonestudy. She said she was called by +the way we were doing things, and that she hoped she had something to +bring to us.... The next morning at daybreak, down on the shore, I saw +stars and circles of young women and girls folding and bending together +in exquisite tones of colour and song. Her gift was the new dancing. +Over night she had captured the young people, bringing them a new joy +in the world. For two or three months she remained with us and has +since established classes east and west—life given to the message of +beauty. With us her expression and magic has endured.</p> + +<p>There is no way more swift to merge in the universal, than by the +response to music through movement. Not dancing, which is a response to +time in music more than to rhythm, but the actual blotting out of self, +a spiritual exaltation <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>which many religionists have sought and few +attained.</p> + +<p>The means is very simple; nothing strange or peculiar. It is the +dropping of the human will so that the music may flow through. One +does not move to the music then; one is moved by it. The objective +mind ceases to operate and through the larger consciousness absolute +Beauty streams. The response to the music may be totally different +with several pupils, but where the dancer is really lost to the +objective world, the movement is always true and satisfying to those +who watch. This is easy for those who are close to Nature and God, but +it is fraught with difficulties for those who are over-mental or who +have been terribly repressed. In many ways the will is man's highest +asset and it requires a supreme effort of the will itself to drop the +objective consciousness.</p> + +<p>There is a technique of the dance to be sure, but it is designed only +to free the body so that it may be a purer channel for the music, and +to facilitate the effacement of self. Physical strength, agility, +beauty as mere beauty, are never sought, but only the revelation of +eternal harmony.</p> + +<p>There is rhythm throughout Nature. Man often moves less gracefully +than the higher mammals. He has opposed his will to the law of the +universe, for centuries abusing his ancient right, but through music he +may realise again the harmony of all. The dancer is radiant with the +splendour of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>infinite and there comes an ecstasy into the spirit, +of those who witness the transfiguration—the hush that one feels only +before the highest art and purest religion.</p> + +<p>It is reasonable to suppose that those who dance must bring back with +them into every-day living something of the beauty of those exalted +moments when they touch "the white radiance of eternity." Here is +natural education, natural religion—a practical mysticism, the merging +of self in the Infinite with a consequent fitness for daily living.</p> + +<p>So the dancing of the New Age is but a different form of contemplation +and production, by which the Soul becomes the creature—for the period +achieving that blessedness which is above time and space, and dwelling +in that dimension, where goodness, beauty and truth are one.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The new dancing is "in the air." Like vers libre and all New Age +realisations and creations, its first essential is freedom. This is the +meaning of the word Democracy—equality, liberation. The very spirit +of all that is new demands freedom. The deeper one penetrates, the +lovelier the folds of this marvellous conception. There is no title for +friend or comrade, for child or lover—comparable to the assumption of +equality.</p> + +<p>Equality—its power sings. It dances. When the last is said and done, +we all want the same thing, if we really knew,—goodness, beauty +and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>truth, one at the top. There is joy in the fine new conception +appearing now in all the arts—freedom first and last, even to +lawlessness at first, but that will right itself more swiftly than +smugness, which has had its age-long and hideous trial.... To me, the +house in the beeches slowly unfolds it all—the mystery of the cosmic +peasantry of the future—that fastidious poverty, that delicate plenty +which is perfection. These two, mother and child, mean the new dancing +to me, and the New Race beside. I have not dared to go again, because +I build incorrigible dreams, and this one especially is dear.... Yet I +often recall their loveliness together.</p> + +<p>The mother's beauty had turned to loveliness. It had more than the +mystic chiselling of sorrow—it had passion, it had humour.... I feel +the need of telling you from time to time that I am not rhapsodising, +the need of reminding you, how weathered and drab my mind was, when +I went up the shore that day. She made me think of grapes and olives +and laurel-boughs; she seemed the sister to the child. All about the +two were subtle, pervasive, ever-changing tests of the power of the +soul. The country people around did not think her extraordinary, much +less beautiful. How much is revealed in that? Loveliness requires +certain vision, an interpretative spirit, and thus it is protected +from the vulgar gaze. These good country people carry upon their faces +and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>hands and persons picture-writing of secret sins and dreamless +stolidity, and yet they are scandalised by this woman. You cannot +imagine how sweetly it came to me that she had utterly lost the sense +that she was outcast.</p> + +<p>A lamp burns at her door every evening. I don't suppose it is seen +three times a month—yet the lamp burns.... There's a big wooden +Cross in the room where they sleep—the child led me to it—a +mat of grass before it, <i>kusa</i> grass, who knows?... A great Cross, +a much-worshipped Cross, with spike-holes, the broken edges worn +smooth.... The child whispered to me that <i>she</i> had been brought (when +she was too small to know) and placed on the mat at the foot of the +Cross for her mother to find; also that she came when the white clover +bloomed.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p> ... It is only this way, bit by bit, that I can make the picture. I +have never before been so disturbed by the sense of inadequacy. The +light about their heads is all diffused like morning upon a cloud.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_8" id="chapter_8"></a>8</h2> + +<p class="title center">OLD PICTURES IN RED</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">There was a period between the second and third year of the war, when +it seemed that the guiding, shielding spirits of the planet were slowly +being withdrawn—leaving only the mockery of goods, the chaos of +multiplied things. But at the blackest, in the very hush of desolation, +the new breath stole in upon us, a breath of lilacs on the chill, dank, +wintry air. Many now stand arisen, waiting the flash that changes the +world.... Five men were gathered in Stonestudy one evening; we talked +of our parts, the best we could do in the clean-up. It was hard to look +over the barriers at first; hard for an American to accept the fact +that he dare not say what he thought, nor write what he thought. It was +hard to realise that we were prevented from expressing what we thought, +by the very forces that had drawn us into this deep trouble. We who are +the distant generation of a party of pilgrims and voy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>agers who came to +America to find a free country, were strange and intolerant at first, +when we felt the yoke of Europe settle upon ancient scar-tissue.</p> + +<p>We discussed.</p> + +<p>A country is superb when one is unconscious of it, we said. One's +country should be like one's health, part of the song of life. Suddenly +to find the freedom of the past unremembered, the freedom of the +future unglimpsed, to hear the loathly low beat of talk from groups +of frock-coated Appetites, with heavy half-dead legs and heads like +pitching-quoits, settling our sacred future on the basis of steel +and coal and margin and murder market; to feel ourselves clutched +and borne forward with stub-nailed fingers in the stench of big +business; black-garbed shopmen pointing the way to the ports, urging +and shouldering other people's children to the ports of the gunboats, +advising the efficacy of "Nearer My God to Thee," as a song for sinking +ships,—we forgot at first in our own pain that this was merely the +body of the Old strained to a cracking point by the resistless growth +of the New.</p> + +<p>Presently we grew kinder.... In a way, the Old was the grim stepmother +in whose house we learned how <i>not</i> to do most things; in whose kitchen +we learned cleanliness, because of the vile example of her organic +sloth; in whose walled garden we learned the peril and the passion of +Quest, because we loathed her long snor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>ing of afternoons; from the +death of whose sects and schism-shops we set forth to find the unity of +life; from the obscenity of whose loves we came into the first great +cleansing hatred of ourselves....</p> + +<p>No hatred now. Hatred is part of the Old. It has no part to unsteady +the hands of the reconstructionists. This New Race has come up in +strong soil. The Old nourished and fertilised all its vitalities. The +new green beneath the litter of dead leaves cries out under the decay, +"You are stifling me!" but the plan of it all is wiser, for there is +warmth still in the humus of the old to protect the new and the frosts +may not be finished.</p> + +<p>More and more as the sense of big cleansing and chastening came home +to us, the everlasting principles of reason and order and beauty also +appeared out of the chaos and the pain.... They were saying in Europe +that this war was a war without morale. We believed it would be a war +with morale before the destruction was finished. One of the cleanest +dreams we had was that America would bring, with its guns and knives +and instruments of flagellation, something of the almighty spirit of +the human heart to light the blackness where the Pale Horse has passed. +That's all morale is, and war without morale hasn't any cause or effect +on the constructive side, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>and will continue to destroy itself against +itself as all such forces do in their madness.</p> + +<p>If any one concludes that we were a group of religionists gathered in +Stonestudy that night it will be well to point out that this planet +will be a whole lot more religious before war ends, and no one will be +louder about it than the trade-mind everywhere.</p> + +<p>War brings death, and death enforces the faith of the human heart, +and faith is one of a trinity (as we learned in Sabbath School and +variously since) that inclines the heart of man to God. You take a +loved object from the Seen and place it in the Unseen (thousands each +day the soldiers pass) and faith is born of the agony of separation. +The human heart forces a bridge across the abyss from the Seen to the +Unseen. It's the old story of the bereaved turning to God. Saints are +thus made—thus tenderness and purity come to be.</p> + +<p>Within the next ten years there will be heroisms before our +eyes—heroisms such as seers and saints and sages have dreamed of as +the consummation of the human heart. And those who have lost most and +mourned most will read the eternal joy of the Plan from the Book of +God's Remembrance.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>When you see the remnant of a race of people crying out that there +is no God—then you begin to know what war means. When a country has +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>given its tithe of human blood, <i>or one in five is gone</i>—then you +begin to know what an Austrian woman meant, when she spoke of the +"horrible grinding of war and the answer of the women to man's cries +of pain afield." ... When peace brings a worship of materials and a +dulness that cannot look beyond existing institutions—the end is war, +and after that a sitting in black upon the ground.</p> + +<p>We didn't know what death meant before this war—but many have learned. +The very word death has the sweetest sound of all uttered names to many +a lonely heart to-day. We didn't know enough about death. We had the +habit of thinking this was all. The end of such thinking is war, and +after that, a sitting in black upon the ground.</p> + +<p>When your heart is cleft in twain and one part stays on this side, and +the other over the dim borderland—there's a straining of eyes into the +Unseen, a picture making out of the creative materials of human spirit. +Life of the soul begins again—out of pain—always out of pain.</p> + +<p>We have not yet learned to accept life from the higher masters, Joy and +Beauty. We still learn through Pain. We forget the meaning of death, +even as we gather our things of death about us, and war comes along to +remind us again. Always those who answer to Master Pain must look to +death to find their relation to God. The faith that <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>comes with peace +at last to the human heart, is energised by a love that crosses the +abyss of life and death.... A grand old teacher, Master Pain. When we +know all his lessons, and take his hand from our shoulder, and touch it +to our lips (for we shall know well his wonderful work when the time +comes for us to part with him), then we shall find that he is not a +black man at all—but a Sunburnt God....</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Four at a supper table—a little child, its young mother, and the old +father and mother of a grown son, who has just died for France. The old +man's eyes roved from the child to its mother, back to the old woman, +and lingered there, something rough and deep and wise in his look. The +child suffered vaguely. There was much suffering in the house.... The +young mother asked coldly if they could feel <i>him</i> in the room. Then +just as coldly she asked if there were a God. Then she ran from the +room with a cry like a night animal. The silent child began to weep. +The old man and the old woman stared at each other and wondered what +their daughter-in-law meant about <i>him</i> being in the room.</p> + +<p>A picture of the chastened world.</p> + +<p>The child turned from the strange, sad human beings to the fairies +that played upon the peasant hearth. The child's mother had rushed +forth into the twilight to find a vision or a memory or a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>breath of +God. The old man and the old woman looked so long at each other in the +darkness—that the soul of the son of their flesh stood for one healing +instant between them. Thus the enduring figures of the Unseen reveal +themselves to those who have suffered to the end.</p> + +<p>The nations are but names to fight for. These battle-lines are for +humanity's soul. If America is fighting for humanity, let it be with +surgical calm and healing in her hands. Hate spoils everything.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The babe knows a room; the child knows a house and looks out into a +street; the youth learns the street and then the city; the young man +learns his country, but the man should learn the world. You can never +be the great lover of America by hating the rest of the world; no +human mind can see what is best, what is even good for America, when +the interests of other countries are forgotten. No man's country ever +suffered because he turned his love and service to the feet of humanity.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The few who brought the real American impartiality to the European +war in the first months, found themselves in the midst of the most +challenging chaos that ever reared its head to the light. Profound and +tragic impressions followed each other. It became icy clear that the +greater nations, as well as the pawns of the Balkans and the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>Levant, +were puppets alike, churned together in a great planetary cleansing. +Every partisan path was found to be increasingly crooked the farther +one advanced—and a sheer descent at the last. Any national point of +view used to dupe the people into greater destructive energy, proved +in itself, no matter how sincerely offered, as short-sighted and +ill-founded as the hatred of two soldiers who meet between trenches and +discover, as they gore each other to death, that their only basis for +hostility is a different colour of coat.</p> + +<p>Studying Europe in those dark days, the unprejudiced eye was in danger +of having some truths torn down with the host of illusions. It was +hard to hold fast to the fact that there was anything magic or holy +about nations at war. Indeed, they seemed entities formed of groups of +greedy men who wanted their way—in the main, groups of leaders devoid +of vision and the spirit of fraternity, and careless of the welfare of +the people, quite the same as many great commercial organisations.... +The real enemies of any people are groups of men who want things for +themselves. The real issue of the war has nothing to do with entities +of this kind, nor with alliances of such entities, but with the painful +groping consciousness of the peasant mind—its slow and torturous +awakening to the fact that royalty in its utmost pomp and glow does not +enfold God.</p> + +<p>The people must learn before they can be free. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>Hitherto they have +been duped by the nations; and the nations are now being duped by each +other; but there is a greater plan at work—using men and nations +alike,—a plan to do away with boundaries and hatred and preying, +to strike the spear from the hand of man and leave it free to help +his neighbour, to establish democracy in the place of imperialism, +and fraternity upon the solid footings of the earth in the place of +separateness and strife.... The new volume of human spirit already +has been opened. We felt it that night in Stonestudy before lights +out,—the first beauty as of a song across still waters.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>An American correspondent going home from the field in Europe "the +long way around," met an old Persian Master on the road to Damascus. +With the sage was his nearest disciple, also a Persian; in fact, the +young man was so loved that he had been changed from discipleship into +sonship. This young Persian became very devoted to the American. They +stood together for a moment in silence, when the time for parting came. +The old Master drew near and said:</p> + +<p>"It is good to see you place your hands together. To me it is a symbol +of the marriage of the East and West, for the East and West must mate. +Long ago the East went up to God and the West went down to men. The +East has learned Vision and the West has learned Action. These two +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>must meet and mate again for the glory of God and the splendour of +earth. The East has lifted its soul to the hills and held fast to +its memory of the Father's house. The West has descended into the +folds of the valley, and won from agony and isolation its efficacy in +material things. And now the mystic is looking down and the materialist +is looking up. Soon their hands shall join—like your two hands in +mine—and there shall be great joy in the Father's House."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_9" id="chapter_9"></a>9</h2> + +<p class="title center">STEVE</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Steve and I were camping together for a few weeks on the Southern +California strand. One morning he looked up from the pages of a book in +his hands and remarked:</p> + +<p>"This fellow is one of us."</p> + +<p>The book was <i>Youth</i>, by Joseph Conrad.</p> + +<p>"I haven't read a book for a long time," Steve added. "There are three +stories in this. I've read only one—<i>Heart of Darkness</i>—in fact, I +haven't finished that.... You have to fall into this Conrad and be +his—to get him. You let your mind open into a cup, and presently after +six or seven pages, you find it brimming. If you fall into him deep +enough, you get almost what he sees—not quite though. No reader ever +does. But you get something intense, fascinating, a restlessness, a +terror. You find that all your somnolence and inertia has caught fire."</p> + +<p>There had been a ten minutes' rain at dawn. The smell of the tropics +moved over the sterile <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>sand. It was cool, but there was no wind. The +day promised heat. We had been up in Canada for the winter, and it was +hard to believe that hot sunlight was free. A broad quilt of gulls and +plover sat together on the shore waiting for the drying light or for +the mist to rise, or the tide to ebb....</p> + +<p>Steve resumed:</p> + +<p>"He tells about a boy who loved maps—who used to look for hours at the +continents—thrillingly attracted to the darkest places, the patches +still unprotected. There was one heart of darkness with a river winding +through. He doesn't tell you the continent or the river, but there were +elephants there. He should have called the story <i>Ivory</i>.... Years +afterward, the man, worn to the bone from the world's lies, sets out to +penetrate this deepest black of the planet. He reaches the river and +follows it for endless days, but the world has arrived. Some nation is +there colonising for Ivory—you don't know which. The story is told +like that—unplaced in time and space. Really it doesn't matter what +particular imperialistic tendency is at work. The fact is, he climbed +the river into the ghastliest chaos....</p> + +<p>"You get the deep green of the heart of the continent, the mournful +brooding leafiness—the natives herded and distracted, more afraid of +the blast of a river-steamer's whistle than of any kind of violent +death. Death was familiar to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>them. They were chained to labour, +cast loose to die. Vultures swept the sky waiting for their limbs +to fall still. There was the salty pester of fever in the air—men +foolish with fever and heat—a haze of flies—white men burning out +inside—oxidisation of human souls—a steady and hideous beat of +death—devils of hate and violence and acquisitiveness—clerks making +entries of Ivory—a nation's young men running through the jungles +for Ivory—carloads of bright glass beads and painted calico for +Ivory—all standards of life and career-building set upon Ivory—murder +for that—lives lost, tribes shattered—the leafy heart of a fresh +continent seared with the civil flame of greed—commodities dumped +in river beds—mails that men would die for torn open by vandal +hands—waste, perversity, nothing clean-cut even of crime, the horrible +non-initiative of the middlemen.... All this told with patient +exactitude, but with indescribable intensity; told by a master-hand +that trembles; with the control that one can only know who is sensitive +enough to tremble. You feel a big man bending forward to make you see +something that all but killed him to find out. You feel him scarred +and sick, his heart leaking, because he found it all so hideously and +stupidly rotten. It's a little picture of a trade war—that's the +point—the war of middlemen—middlemen turning to rend each other.... +Heart of darkness—after that the light comes."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p> + +<p>Steve opened and shut his fingers in the sunlight. The warmth was +sweeter every minute.</p> + +<p>"This fellow sees it all," he went on. "He's done a big job for me—for +anybody who gives himself to the book. There's something immortal about +being a workman like that—about any workman. That's why one wants to +cast a weep after the passing hordes of middlemen. They can't do work. +They don't even see the fog of human agony they've painted the world +with. They are <i>it</i>. It is the old against the old. It's all about +Ivory. They crucify for fossil."</p> + +<p>Steve was lighting up.</p> + +<p>"This Conrad brought back to me to-day a bigger love for the workman. +The starved and scorned inventor gets the best of it, after all—not +in Ivory—but he builds something in himself. He quickens something in +himself that goes on in freed consciousness when the body falls. No, I +don't insist that anything goes on in any particular way, but the deep +moments of work somehow show a man that the best of him here is but a +nexus between a savage past and a splendid future.... It's wonderful to +be alive to-day. I believe there are secret agencies at work behind all +the governments—that they are one at the top. I don't mean detectives, +not intelligence or espionage bureaus. Potent, mystic, infallible +forces. It doesn't matter. <i>Some person or some group is holding the +plan of the New Age.</i></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p> + +<p>"We're learning life as never before—plucking the deeper fruits and +mysteries of pain. But one must go apart from the crowd to see. One +must cease to be a partisan. The real seer sees the whole, not the +part. All the war-lands are in pain. One sees only the part, when one +is in pain. Not one man out of a million sees it all. A few Russians +see it all—a few in China—a few in India. Romain Rolland sees it all. +This fellow, Conrad, sees it all.... It's a pity if America doesn't +soon get the full picture. It's worth seeing——"</p> + +<p>Ocean and sunlight and mountains. The world was a brimming cup. If a +man could take all the beauty there was for him, he could never die.... +We went over to the post-office of the little town. The business men of +the place were coming in. The first mail had just been distributed.... +Grocers, butchers, the hardware man, the real estate men, the man +who ran the newspaper, fishermen, barbers, lawyers—mainly fat and +pleasant—children on the way to school.</p> + +<p>They were short-breathed and short-armed. They dressed in wool and wore +heavy dark hats. I had never noticed before how short-armed the race +of tradespeople are. Labourers and peasants are not so; painters and +musicians have a tendency to be long-armed. I mentioned this to Steve.</p> + +<p>"The middlemen," said he. "They are tight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>ened throughout—ligaments +contracted—contraction taking place in the deeper weaves of +mind, a drying up of the deeper sources of life. Contraction, +self-centering—that's what madness is. A man must sing, or weave, or +build or make bricks. The ways of competitive life are paltry ways. +They hide their ways from one another, and afterward from themselves. +They pluck no fruits; they contrive no short cuts; they do not become +intimate even with the commodities of the earth—the very things +they worship and pare margins from. They eat infamously, filch from +each other.... It's all here—all that Conrad pictured in the heart +of darkness. These are the sick, the maimed, the blind of the earth. +They live in the realm of fear, pain, anger, desire. These are the +war-makers.... Their arms are twisting and shortening in to their +navels——"</p> + +<p>Sunlight streamed in through the open doors of the post-office. Motors +going by drowned the soft rustling from the sea. The hell of the +outer world trickled in through bits of conversation. Everybody had +read the morning paper at the same time. No one thought of telling +anything that his neighbour did not know.... Europe was starving—the +President was ill—railroads in strike, coal famine, prohibitive cost +of staples—France cracking with the dry-rot of exhaustion—England ... +a voice—Germany choking in her own blood.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p> + +<p>The tradespeople of the little town by the sea gathered in their bills +and orders and advertisements and hurried back to their shops. Nothing +astonished any more. There were no words for the world's woe—no ears +for lamentations—no mind but to buy cheap at the right time and sell +dear all the time. We walked back to the shore.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>"I once saw a little town on a hill-side," Steve said. "A grand +boot-maker was there, and a man who made clocks with such tools as he +had—big noble clocks that ran unvaryingly eight full days. Another +man made furniture—perfect woods from the forest drying in his kilns +and sheds. There was a sweet smell about his shop. There was a weaver +and a potter there. The days were long and singing, full of labour and +peace. No one multiplied by mechanical means. Every artisan had his +apprentices. The age of the apprentices will come back—with a new +dimension added——"</p> + +<p>"Switzerland or dream?" said I.</p> + +<p>Steve smiled. "They are starting communities all along this coast," he +said. "Many are on the quest of the town I saw."</p> + +<p>We sat down upon the sand again. The sun was higher. White clouds +brooded in heaven's own daylight; white wings moved upon the sea, I +was thinking about Steve and all he had said. What Conrad pictured in +the dark continent <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>existed here in one of the cleanest small towns +of America—an earlier stage of the same malignant disease. From the +broad and beautiful vantage points of democracy and fraternity—every +shop here was a lair, the products, exposed and secreted, a spectacle +of moral decay and insensate devouring; every schoolhouse a place of +dismal enchantment where competition was not only taught but enforced. +Steve knew deeply well when he spoke, that the creative artist, the +producer of every real and true and beautiful thing, comes into the +power to express himself, in spite of such education, not because of +them.</p> + +<p>One can laugh at all mediocre men occupying seats of the mighty and +calling their dead gods to witness that they are right—but one +who knows that the intrinsic gift of each child is the one thing +in sunlight to be promoted, turns away a bit dismally from the +spectacle of the standardisation of the child mind—from the wholesale +manufacture of middlemen by school system.</p> + +<p>Steve loves America. I know of no one who loves America more. He +doesn't rise and cheer when the orchestra plays a questionable bit +of verse and tune in a movie-hall where imagination is being put to +death—<i>but he believes in the vision of the Founders of America</i>. He +believes in the spaciousness and splendour of the American spirit; that +the dream of a few mystics will tri<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>umph at the last, and that the many +will follow the dream of the few. He does not believe that the voice of +the middlemen is the voice of God.</p> + +<p>It's hard to credit, but this young man does not hate one country to +love another. He loves America because the dream of a new heaven and a +new earth has a quicker chance for breaking through into matter here +than elsewhere. He perceives the tissues of the senile and the obscene +breaking down in America, under intense civil and martial and moral +processes. He believes that this breaking down is essential before the +building begins. He believes that the future will be built upon the +thoughts of men who are great enough to stand apart from the dumas, +from the cabinets and the senates, just now. As Steve sees it, all +partisans have to do with the parts, and the parts of the partisans +have to do with the Old, which is destroying itself—sense against +substance, limb against limb, organ against organ.</p> + +<p>The young men of the New Race are born of a mating of the East and +West. They are naturally intolerant of partitions. Steve is one of +these. He isn't a spirit alone. He is a body and brain. He has stayed +awake through the full night and day. He sees the planet in one piece. +He has crossed all the rivers. He knows the young men of America. He +is one of them. He loves America because he knows the rest of the +world. He has friends among the Chinese young <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>men—among the young +men of Russia and India. He says that all three have greater obstacles +to overcome in getting the dream through, than we of America—that +everybody will be singing it after the wreckage is cleared away.</p> + +<p>"America, Russia, India, China—they are lands, not pavements," Steve +declared.</p> + +<p>He was looking across and to the south. The sun was a glory about +us—all the background a tentative, swiftly passing thing, all but +forgotten now, stilled by the rustle of the long, low white lines of +the sea.</p> + +<p>"The New Age will redeem all the broad lands," he said, with a trace of +a smile—"lands for meadows and fields and gardens—meadows for milk, +fields for wheat, gardens for honey—the New Race is particular for the +perfect foods—foods for the giant and the child—broad lands for the +toilers—the great sea coasts for the dreamers.... It's all a matter of +taste," he added.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_10" id="chapter_10"></a>10</h2> + +<p class="title center">HEJIRA</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">We found we were a bit tied in the Middle West, caught somewhat whether +we liked it or not, in the meshes of possession. Steve and I had liked +it much out on the Southern California strand.... When one reads in the +earlier book,<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> the stress that we put on building that big stone +house on Lake Erie; this felicitous hejira may disconcert.</p> + +<p>The fact is, we wearied of possession. We found ourselves yearning +for that beauty which is unconfined. We were athirst for new things, +a different break of seasons and taxes.... The world was so full of +people who could build and buy and own and insure, that we decided we +should be doing the things that the others could not. We were glad to +have built the house for the other fellow. We had to do it. We learned +how to run it well, in and out—but it was a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>stone house. When a man +builds a stone house with walls eighteen inches thick, he must leave a +hole to get out; also he must be sure that he isn't building on his own +chest.... In true Hive spirit, we renounced at the highest moment of +possession.</p> + +<p>The crowd cannot be seen by one who stands in the crowd. On the same +basis a man cannot see the relation of his house to the road or garden +from the inside of the house. The world must be regarded from outside +to be seen as a whole. The New Race is determined to see it so. This +<i>outside</i> is none other than the mystical viewpoint of all world +artists and builders.</p> + +<p>One does not know what friends are, until one discovers that the secret +of friendship is not in getting but in giving. No one knows what love +is until he reverses all the laws that the many follow now. I do not +mean lawlessness. I mean the higher law that is found at last by the +quester after goodness, beauty and truth. We have to finish with the +world as it is before we set out in quest of a better country.... We +found that we had to become active servants of a finer ideal than +householding at its highest. We determined to do more than to dream +this ideal; we set about to make a better country. At worst, we work +for our children.</p> + +<p>It came to us many times before we moved <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>that we were forever +done with things as they are; that we had come to the end of show +and property-measure and hoarding; to the end of the love of self +which destroys the vision for friendship; to the end of domesticity +which holds one's neighbour as prey or rival; to the end of civic +identification, or relation with any federated commonwealth, which +fancies its existence threatened by the prosperity of other political +bodies. No heat about it.</p> + +<p>We came to the edge of the Lake in vanloads; we went away with bags.... +I turned from the eastern distance on the bluff, on one of the last +days, and looked at the vined study and the big stone house, the elms +so strong and green about it. I remembered the early picture of all +this. It began from Stevenson's <i>Treasure of Franchard</i>, many years +ago,—how old Dr. Duprez went out in the morning and tried grapes and +plums with the dew on them, sniffing the perfumes of his own yard, +dwelling in his own orchards.</p> + +<p>I remember one day before building that the man came to us about the +young trees. He had pictures of them in books—blooms and fruits of +such colours that nature would never be guilty of—all the fruits I +heard of as a boy—white grapes that never grow in this country, purple +ones that grow whether you care or not....</p> + +<p>The trees were coming on now, many with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>ripening fruit. The grove of +elms was a matter of collateral, as the bank would say. The break-water +had caught up thousands of yards of sand. It worked—the old struggle +of wasting banks forgotten until a greater storm. The honeysuckles that +were planned to climb the bars of the study windows, had to be trimmed +now for any light at all. The wistaria trailed admirably and imposed +upon the front the sense of years.</p> + +<p> ... We had planned to have all the fruits; some of the finest were now +in flower. We came with many clothes, underwear and outerwear, wool and +dark things. We left with a few light effects in our hands—to find a +place where white garments might be worn in peace. We came with a great +idea of food—game and fishes, meats, poultry, many cans and vegetables +and desserts. We went away with a taste for graham bread and butter—a +spread of honey, a glass of milk. We came with a fear of disease for +the children, fear of colds, fear of losing something, or having +something taken away, doubtless having the fear of death and accident. +We went away with a clear idea of what death is and the advantage of +it, children and adults alike.</p> + +<p>Young children rode the horse that had a reputation for being +wild-spirited and very much a man's mount. We had seen the deep places +of the Lake fill with sunshine. We came with para<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>sols and awnings and +protections against the sun. Most of us would like to have worn nothing +but a breech-clout had the town permitted; and the only time we had +found the world hard to bear, was the long grey Spring days of rain.</p> + +<p>Sunlight—it is closer to God and happiness and manhood and every +delight than words can suggest. The more you know of it, the more you +need; the more you love it, the more its mysterious excellence unfolds. +I know what sunstroke is, and what the sickness from heat is. It's a +vile state of the body, or vile clothing that stifles the body. When +one is well and has learned to come back to the Father of Lights—there +is no fear in his heart. I used to wear a helmet and dark glasses, but +no more—eyes stronger than ever. I look for the sun in the morning and +stare up from the sand into his face at high noon. There is nothing the +matter with sunlight. The sadness and the sickness is with those who +bring their quilts and cloaks to hide it from their flesh....</p> + +<p>It's all in synthesis. The end of bulk possession is pain.... We +started in with many flowers. We ended with roses. It's all in the +tea-rose.... By careful selection of thoughts over a little period, we +can come into the joy of flowers in other people's gardens. There are +brave men who allow you to walk in their orchards; and there are many +who work hard to raise fruits for a price. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>There is much joy, if you +really look at it, in building a house for another fellow.</p> + +<p>We start with the brute materials—beginning with the clay itself. +Our cultivations become more intensive through the years. All life is +so. We take the extract of a thing at last—a shelf of books where +formerly we wanted a roomful—somebody's else little rented bungalow, +where formerly we wanted an estate. We realise, at last, that there is +an essence to be obtained from the extract, an oil from the essence—a +spirit at last from the oil. The whole story is in that—synthesis. +Slowly, at last, we begin to set ourselves free. We descend into +matter; learn its lessons and laws, rise like a plant through the +darkness to the light, integrating force to meet and cope with the new +and lighter element. I held up seven little books in one hand—weighing +no more than a new novel.</p> + +<p>"It's all in these," I said to the Chapel. "One could put these in his +bag and have it all."</p> + +<p> ... And then at last, I went down alone and empty-handed to the shore, +meditated on God with sun and sand and flowing airs.... All matter +is scaffolding which falls away. A man thinks he builds a house for +himself, but no sooner has he put on the last tile than death or the +open road calls. He chooses his climate and grows out of it. He thinks +he must possess, that he must hoard against a rainy day, and he gathers +the stuff <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>of death about him. If he cannot rise, death covers him +for the time. Dr. Duprez didn't speak of the care of his orchard, or +his garden. It was all <i>story</i> to me. Dear R.L.S. He didn't dream +of the work of the hand necessary to keep up an orchard, and have a +connoisseur's joy for a few summer days of the year. He didn't tell +of the parasites, the sprinklings, the arsenates and pumps, nor of +the little winged migrators that sit on the hills, waiting for the +potatoes to come up. The call comes to possess nothing. It had better +be answered.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_11" id="chapter_11"></a>11</h2> + +<p class="title center">THE SPECTATOR</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Some of us here have swiftly reviewed certain old slaveries, that we +may set free the children of to-day.... They do not have to make the +same mistakes we did. I, at thirty-nine, say to those ten and twenty +and thirty years younger:</p> + +<p>"Start where I leave off. I do not relieve you of pain or error or +shortsightedness, of passion or pleasure, or anything that arouses +or wears down body and soul. Only this I ask you—don't make the +same mistakes I did. Let me give you the answer to a few petty and +pestiferous lures. I can put you right on them. Begin now to learn +your lessons by doing things wrong at first, a holy way to get +somewhere, but be a pioneer in your evils; be daring and fastidious +and full-powered and discriminating in your faults! Above all, be +impersonal in them as soon as possible. Let the winds of the world +breeze through. It's all a Laugh."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p> + +<p>Every process of the world to-day is designed to take away that +adorable love and listening of the child to its own soul. Streets, +schools, trade, neighbours, houses in rows, priests, pastors, +charlatans, all standardise. A thousand teachers in technic for one +in the spirit of things; ten thousand teachers of the health of the +body (and every one wrong) for one who shows the way to the single and +sacred fountain of youth; innumerable voices lifted in fly-dronings +of instruction, how to fill the bin and the brain, the bank and the +bourse—how to have and to hold and to die holding, and to bury oneself +in the midst of—for one who laughs and plays and dares to watch the +world go by.... At last to be the Spectator!</p> + +<p>I tell you now from much living that there is nothing here in the world +that is worth fighting for, but the glad tolerance of events, sheer, +laughing joy in the Plan.... Every time you adjust your life to the +standard of the world, you are doing something that is beneath your +soul, and you will suffer for it, and be forced to retrace. Dress for +the world, and the world will find its flaws in you. Work for the world +according to its specification, and it will defile you. Enter into any +of the competitions of the world and your face and your hands and task +will be constricted by visible and invisible impediments and barriers, +less than the real of you in every detail. Search <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>for health according +to the laws of flesh alone, and it will elude you at every point, +showing you all vanities and pits and pains. Search for beauty of face +and body, and it will be the first thing taken. There is nothing in the +world but to make the human divine—that is the job we are here for.</p> + +<p>To cease to hold is the beginning of invincible attraction; want +nothing and the treasures of the world are yours. You cannot have +health until you are ready to give up life here. Cease to cling, +and that which was a body held apart from you, is suddenly a winged +creature returning.... There is nothing here but the love story, and +the power of that must be spiritual. The madonna of the future will +look up, not down at the head upon her breast. Man must overcome +mammon; Woman must overcome the mammal. The lovers of the future will +look a little time in each other's eyes and much above to a Third who +will come nearer and nearer for their adoration.... The friends of the +future will sing in their Partings; they shall know the spirit and the +breath of <i>camaraderie</i> which knows no death.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>There is a tendency on the part of our young associates to be +extravagant in their speech. Much that they see is beyond their +capacity decently to express. A group of us was looking down from a +high balustrade. Flowery vines were woven <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>intricately against the face +of the stucco below. We became conscious of an incredible whirring, so +low that it was difficult to hear, and yet so intense as to give the +thought of a distant seismic disorder. It was the invisible wings of a +humming-bird, flashing from cup to cup in the vines below. The child +standing next to me said:</p> + +<p>"The sound has texture."</p> + +<p>It expressed something very real to me; yet there is not power in words +to portray the exact feeling. All the objects of nature have their +spiritual dimensions also for those who dwell much in the Unseen. These +unusual children see the material object merely as an outpost for a +challenging mystery; while, to the material mind, the outpost is all, +and the lavish adjectives and expressions of the former are deplored as +gush or affectation. As a matter of splendid truth, the most marked and +potent of all adjectives and expressions are pitifully inadequate to +express the lustre and radiance which begins at the point where three +dimensions end.</p> + +<p>The Valley Road Girl came into the Study one day, saying that this +chapel book should be called <i>The Hive</i>. We all thought it a wonderful +name to work toward, yet the unfolding of possibilities has been +steadily interesting since that day.</p> + +<p>The inner sanctuaries of occult literature commend the students to look +to the bees. The pattern of much that man has still to unfold from <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>his +own soul, for his personal and communal uplift, is already expressed +in the hive. There is a period of larva, and a period of wings to each +cycle. Such matters call to those of spiritual discernment. One feels +on the verge of great revelations for humanity, beyond the thing called +death, as he studies this miniature model of a great democracy.</p> + +<p>The most fascinating love episode I ever read was the Nuptial Flight in +Maeterlinck's <i>Life of the Bee</i>. The majesty of winging to the sun, the +falling back of the weaker-winged suitors, the commanding isolation of +sun and sky, fusion under the mighty beat of the wings of the queen, +the broken body of the male, the mother's return to the shadow and the +labour of the generative wheel—magically, it all opened a vista to +the great renunciations, the great passions and aspirations ahead for +the human soul, great fusions of the future, marriages truly made in +heaven, the inevitable trinity of all matings—the drama of love and +death.</p> + +<p>For her one high noon flight in June, the queen toils through years. +She brings back from that superb instant the swarming cities of the +future. On and on, she unfolds her fecundity in the dark, a prodigious +and Herculean labour; from the human standpoint a task of intolerable +pain and monotony. The queen's labour is scarcely more difficult than +the tasks assigned to the hosts of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>workers, which appear to be denied +any separate episode of emancipation. Yet, equally with the queen, +they share the communal spirit; and no one who has stood among the +hives at the end of a long summer day, and heard the song of bounty and +deep-hearted content, can deny the peace that dwells among the myriad +of skilled artisans, each with his perfectly appointed task.</p> + +<p>Bees appear to remember the light, while working at the opposite side +of the wheel. Men, as yet, are detached, lost in the heresies of self +and strife. Only a few visionaries have peered beyond the petty reach +of the optic nerve, to perceive that this, which we make so much of, is +but the hell-portion; that this appearance of ours in pounds is a mere +dressing up in materials of earth to endure the dark and low vibration +of the wheel's most downward sweep. These few visionaries, always +singing the joy of the other arcs of the cycle, somehow keep the dream +alive,—the dream that appears already to be the essential blessedness +and magic of life in the hive.</p> + +<p>All mysticism seeks to teach us this single point which the bees seem +to have learned so well—to transcend time and space in labour; to put +off the sense of separation and strife, to hearken to the soul's own +song of equality and sufficing days. We must be pushed to the last +reaches of pain before we learn this secret. We have to penetrate <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>the +darkness before we earn this flash which swings wide the portals of joy.</p> + +<p>Joy is the most potent thing in the universe. The bee-queen mother +weaves race after race of progeny out of the incredible dynamics of an +instant's joy. Each cell that she fills with life is a living fragment +of her nuptial feast. Fusion is ecstasy, parturition is pain. The many +become one; that is heaven. The one becomes many again; that is earth +and hell. Integration and diffusion—the same story told in the hives +and ant-hills, in the strolling winds and swinging seas, in the hearts +and marts of men, in matings everywhere.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The original idea was to use the title, <i>The Hive</i>, in relation to the +happy intensity of Stonestudy days, but our ideal grew to adapt to the +name, because of its revelations in regard to the new social order; the +pure and instant abnegation of the self to the community; the active +acceptance of the precept: <i>That which is good for the one is good for +the many, and that which is good for the many is good for the one</i>.</p> + +<p>We cannot lose ourselves long in our own misery when we realise the +glory of yesterday, and the more spacious solar adventure of to-morrow. +We cannot continue to feel our own isolation when we perceive a brother +in the eye of a stranger, when we perceive the sons of God in the +eyes of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>passing men. At length appears the task ahead—the great +Fatherland, the Planetary Hive.</p> + +<p>I have taken the hint from the new race children, that to transcend +pain we must make joy of it. Given the hint, one realises that the +masters of all ages have told the same story—how to make light of +human shadow, how to make lustrous our own darkness. No matter what +science says to the contrary, the quest for the Absolute means the same +thing; this is the marriage at Cana, the turning of water into wine; +this is the passion of the ancient alchemists, to transmute base metals +into gold; this is healing; this is regeneration.</p> + +<p>To make joy out of pain is still more: it is power for world's work; +it is the light that one carries among men; it is the fire that makes +man remembered by his fellows, that makes man significant in any +task. It is loss of the sense of self; the death of the lower for the +birth of the higher life; the subjugation of three-score-and-ten for +immortality; an <i>adios</i> to the hands that cling, for the stride and +rhythm of the Great Companions on the long road. It is not for the +saint any more than for the soldier, not for the sage any more than +for the politician, not for the poet any more than for the parent. It +is not piety, it is power. One learns it best from the children. One +becomes as a little child in learning it well.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p> + +<p>We are learning rapidly these days. These are the days of humanity's +passion and pilgrimage. The soul of humanity is passing along the dusty +roads of Palestine, for the healing of its own weaknesses, the casting +out of its own demons. One who is not carrying a part of the world +burdens now, as well as his personal pack, seems forgotten of the gods. +It has come to many of us that we dare not take more than a glimpse of +our own allotted happiness—that we may not have more than a touch of +the beloved's hand in these days of parturition everywhere.</p> + +<p>But personally and nationally we shall come to that significant +crossing where nothing else can be taken from us, where death seems the +highest boon, and Master Pain has driven home his most pointed shaft.</p> + +<p>That is the moment of laughter. Driven to the last ditch we turn and +laugh. That is the moment of our expansion for a new kind of heroism. +One builds from that deep hour.</p> + +<p>The ultimate secret is not to identify oneself with that which changes. +When these objects shift or break down, or some one takes them away, we +suffer the old savage rent. The day comes when we disentangle from the +final mesh of possession—cease the idolatry of things; then, and only +then, are we rich—possessing the spirit and essence of all things, +tallying the universe within according to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>its objective arrangements +with the universe without.</p> + +<p>Finally, to master the world, one must learn actually to enjoy the +mutation of material things, as one of an audience watches the +movements on the stage. No longer torn here and there in the small +fury of detached affairs, one laughs richly at the progress of the +Play. Possessing the spirit of all things within, he realises that +nothing he has can really be taken away. No longer identifying himself +with material objects, he is at last in touch with the perfect and +changeless archetypes. This dispassion, so difficult to reach, at last +extends over all world-forms. One ceases to love bodies; one loves +souls. The son at the front, the daughter taken to a different house, +the empty seat at the table, crash of finance or romance—all but +a passing of symbols—Godspeed and a smile. Bit by bit the valiant +reaches that profound and almost divine indifference to the external, +having bound himself to the real, the enduring, the inner cosmos.</p> + +<p>First passion, then dispassion, then compassion—conquest of pairs of +opposites until night and day are seen as separate sides of the same +globe. So with pain and pleasure and all fluctuations. Day by day, +while learning this great secret, the aspirant is forced to die to +the thing he loves most. Day by day the thing that he hates and fears +most—for that he must live. At last, loves and hates <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>merge together. +One is no longer focalised upon a point, but upon a universe. He +arrives at the great silence in himself, the static momentum. He no +longer moves with the world—the passing show goes by. He transmutes +pain into joy—not lying to the self, but because pain of the body is +joy of the soul—joy of union, joy of birth that comes from pain.</p> + +<p>At last to be the Spectator! To possess the world, to realise the +divinity of others, the ineffable equality of Souls. To have all,—the +mothering winds of the hills and the holy breath of the sea; to move +and laugh and die with all the world.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_12" id="chapter_12"></a>12</h2> + +<p class="title center">TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">The younger boy with us—Tom, now seven, does not find it easy to +express himself through writing. He draws well, but that is a talent +which I would not recognise so quickly as the expression through words. +I mean to send him away to an artist for a time. Tom's imagination is +fertile and expansive. He dictates well—wonderful play of colours +through his mind. He talked the following to an amanuensis, a year or +more ago as he conned over a handful of coloured stones:</p> + +<p>"There's a wonderful mystery about stones.... One like a mountain that +the fire comes up out of—with white on top ... another like a cap of +honey.... Another: this is like a great big mountain, and this is a +dog full of food, and he's standing on a dragon, one of those devilish +dragons; his tail is curved under him, and a spot on him near his neck. +He looks down and he sees the sky, floating. He wonders if he should +leap down and get some. There's a great big lake un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>der him. He thinks +he has more power than anything in the world—he's looking for more +power. He's wondering where it is. See him thinking.</p> + +<p> ... Here's a volcano at night—see the force, and then the rain beating +down behind it—even see fairies dashing by there. Here's a man with +his jaw knocked in. Mystery here—a forest at night. This is like a +coloured man that's been in a prize-fight, and he's gritting his teeth +because he didn't win; he's got a mug-nose too. There's a fried-cake. +Another: Here's 'Agra Falls and fairies dashing, and sparkling stones +at night. That's in Japan—that's true, look at all the lanterns up +there. There's some India—water dashing over a cliff, another like a +smooth cliff, nothing to hurt it, just fairies to fly around it—and a +door-knob, and there's a hole where owls live...."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Many interesting things appear in these dictations provided Tom's +helper effaces himself sufficiently to permit the boy to forget +externals. The remaining pages of this chapter is a sketch of Tom's +case written by the Little Girl<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> who furnishes an interesting +surface of understanding for the complications of this lad. +Incidentally her own development is one of the big winnings of +Stonestudy work. The Little Girl is now four<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>teen and this essay will +show something of her awakening:</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Tom</span></p> + +<p>He is seven, restless as the sea, and just as full of mysteries. Many +times I have felt a strong spirit in the body, a healer, a great lover, +a dear and compassionate comrade. For a time Tom meant India to me. +I could see the blue hills and the wide dusty roads, the cows coming +home through the dusk, and the little Indian mothers bringing food and +their babies to the feet of a withered, white old man in a big Sannysin +robe. Always I seemed one of the mothers, and Tom the master. I used +to sit at his feet when he was very small, and listen carefully to his +wandering, yet deep and wise words. He seemed to unfold many things to +me about myself, and in that way helped me as a teacher would, though +he did not know.</p> + +<p>For a while Tom's quest was in healing—his small hands were always +laid upon our hurts, serious eyes staring upwards. It seemed to awaken +the past in his soul. Gradually his bent turned to other things. When +we went to the country to live, he saw Nature for the first time. Tom +was very much at home with the old Mother. He loved the living things +that most children fear; the bees and beetles, the blind little beings +that live in the earth and the small, red-tongued garter-snakes. He +often spoke of a life he had lived with the snakes—of the big ones +that used to love <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>him and curl around his neck. I never could help +shuddering a little at the thought, but Tom would explain, "They won't +hurt you if you love them. Then they will love you too. Snakes feel +just what you feel—if you're afraid of them, they get mad."</p> + +<p>Again I would think of India—the great cobras that sit before a pure +master, opening their hoods to listen to his chanting. Tom knew what +purity meant, a deep-down purity like the earth itself. Why should +anything hurt him?... He used to hold the bees in his hands and walk +through a cloud of double-winged beetles with utmost carelessness. Many +times he has led me through a cloud of them, murmuring, "They won't +hurt you." Once he disturbed a honeybee in the late afternoon, drunken +and senseless on the fragrant flowers. It stung him. He shook it off +his hand and said in a disgusted voice, "That wasn't my bee!"</p> + +<p>A little later Tom discovered the Unseen of Nature. I mean that it +ceased to be the unseen to him. The fairies opened their mysterious +arms, and we saw little of him for a time, so lost was he in their +wonder. There was a small rock in the front yard that he used to sit +on when he was looking for them. The busy brown gnomes appeared to +him first—often rolling pebbles down the cliff, or gathering leaves +in their little aprons. Then the tree-nymphs would come to him; so +green and fresh and sweet—with bright eyes and coaxing hands. He +would follow laughingly <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>what they said and did, always explaining to +us later what they <i>meant</i>. And he saw the spirits of the water, far +out over the lake, mingled with the sunlight. They gave him much, he +said, but he would like to have gone out to them. He said that burning +wood unlocked the fire fairies—let them out into freedom and light. +He loved to build fires on the beach, watching carefully the leaping +and spreading of the flames. The salamanders were responsible for the +spreading, he thought, and used to watch their little red hands at +work. His eyes seemed to melt as they stared so far and deeply into +things—way past the <i>seen</i> into that which is nothingness to most of +us. And he would come back slowly as though it were hard to detach +himself from the enchantment. Always we kept very still at such a time, +for fear we hurry him.</p> + +<p>Out of the magic and mystery of that summer, out of the warm nights +full of stars and peace, and the days of sunlight spent with the +beckoning fairies, Tom's soul unfolded another big quest. The fairies +were only the start of the Unseen, though we thought at the time that +he saw all that a human being could. At last the Master's voice reached +his open ears. He answered immediately.</p> + +<p>It began with old Indian philosophy. He heard certain reading in the +Study one day, and later asked for the book. It was a little book, +written in words of one syllable by a Hindu boy, telling how to reach +the Feet of the Master. The <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>next morning I found him on his knees +before it in the sunlight. At that time Tom was just learning to read. +It was hard for him, but he wanted to be alone with the spirit of it. +He handed me the book saying, "Please read this page aloud to me."</p> + +<p>The young Master was speaking of Discrimination and Onepointedness. +Tom's face filled with the wonder of one who has found the thing he +has been wanting for a very long time—for ages perhaps. He said, "If +you asked me to go and get you a book, and I went, but instead of +bringing the book back to you, I took it to the shore and commenced +to read, forgetting that you wanted it, that would be the opposite of +onepointedness, wouldn't it?" A little later, he said:</p> + +<p>"The Master watches you from the hills, all the way up. He knows all +that you do. When you do small things, you are taking Him away from +yourself; you are not being the <i>Soul</i>. Each time you do something +great and brave, the Master comes a step nearer. When you become your +soul, the Master comes all the way down the hill and tells your brain +which way to go—tells you the path, the way home. <i>Then</i> you have +earned it. You have got to earn everything, everything that comes to +you.... I think that the Master comes and takes you away at night, +shows you many things—tries to help you. But pain has to teach the +brain, and pain is the lack of soul. It hurts your soul to have you +suffer. It hurts the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>Master too, but they both know that you are +learning to be their comrade through your pain."</p> + +<p>Tom paused. In his eyes there was that wonderful melting again, and a +joy so deep and pure that it made my heart sing.</p> + +<p>"It is all meant," he added. "All is meant, but men do not know that +the Master is watching. For ages and ages the Master waits so patiently +for his <i>friend</i> to come."</p> + +<p>"His friend?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Souls are always comrades. The Master is greater than you are +only because he has been longer on the path. He started before you did. +He has come up through all that we have. Just think how long my Master +has been waiting for me, and I have not even found Him yet."</p> + +<p>I looked at the little body of him, at the innocence of the eyes and +mouth, all untouched by the world—so pure and yet crying out in pain +because he had taken so long on the quest.... His eighth year brought +Tom into regular boyhood. The young brain, always before silently +giving way to intuition, began to speak for itself. This stage is as +important perhaps, but not so beautiful as when the hushedness and +glowing of the Unseen touches a child. Here we turned from Tom, and the +things that creep into the heart of almost every boy of the same age, +crept into Tom's heart. He forgot the fairies—they ceased to call. He +forgot the wide roads of peace and purity. He seemed to forget that the +Master was still waiting so patiently on the hill for him to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>open and +receive. But we knew better than that.</p> + +<p>The development of the brain always robs a child of the inner glowing +for a time, but it all comes back again with a great dimension added; +the instrument is then keen and direct—a power in itself. We turned +from Tom—a young brain standing alone, very conscious of itself, +is anything but interesting. At the time we were in the turmoil of +departure, each of us thinking in different ways about the long journey +just ahead, and the wonder of being at last in California. Tom was more +or less his own director those days.</p> + +<p>He fell into crime, looted the house of a friend, denied everything. He +was sent to his quarters to stay until he found himself again. It took +a week exactly, but he found a deep happiness in being alone in the +little room before he left it. It did him as much good as the long days +in the sunlight ever could; he came out pale and wide eyed, and the +breath of a soul was in the room when he entered.</p> + +<p>One day out of his long week, I went to him. The sun had gone down +behind a nest of grey clouds. Dusk had almost deepened into darkness, +but there was no light in his room. He sat there, his eyes staring +ahead of him, his hands folded tightly in his lap. I walked in quietly +and sat down beside him. I was not even noticed; he was lost in his +thought. At last I asked,</p> + +<p>"Tom, what did you find so interesting in that cheap business?"</p> + +<p>"I haven't found out yet," he said grimly.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Have you been thinking about it?"</p> + +<p>"Sure have. Been thinking all day."</p> + +<p>"Has nothing come?"</p> + +<p>"No, but it's coming soon. It can't take long if I stay here like this, +wishing and pulling every minute."</p> + +<p>"Of course it can't."</p> + +<p>He continued to stare into the darkness ahead.</p> + +<p>"What does it feel like, Tom?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Your soul leaves you.... Your soul won't stay if you are going back."</p> + +<p>"Going back?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I mean if you have been big and listened to its voice, and then +stop. If you are <i>less</i> than yourself after you've been <i>more</i>, your +soul won't stay."</p> + +<p>"What do you do when your soul leaves you?"</p> + +<p>"You walk the Black Path."</p> + +<p>He looked a child seraph.</p> + +<p>"That path is not interesting, is it?"</p> + +<p>"No. You have got to know what it is, got to walk up it a little ways, +so that you are not afraid of it any more. When you know a thing, you +are not afraid of it any longer. Before you know, it looks all dark to +you. Nothing can hurt you when you are not afraid.... It's just the +same as with the animals. All the black things that come into you are +animals. If they find nothing but love and whiteness inside, they will +go away and not even look at you again; but if fear and darkness are +there, they get mad and bite."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span></p> + +<p>Leaning forward with a laugh, he added, "You can't cut across from the +black path to the white. You've got to go all the way back and start +over."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_13" id="chapter_13"></a>13</h2> + +<p class="title center">THE ABBOT</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">The Abbot is now seventeen. He is doing well at Columbia. Classes and +routine there are mere externals. The Abbot is living a life far more +real than appears—a life that few men in America have learned how to +live. He has actually arrived at the conviction of the unfathomable +riches that lie within. Many occultists and a few great artists have +a working knowledge of this kind. We hoped the Abbot could remain at +Stonestudy, but his parents wanted some letters after his family name +as well as before. Our young man was enjoined to make the best of it. +As a matter of fact, he is putting on a lot of brain things that work +admirably with the inner activity which we made much of in our work +together.</p> + +<p>In another book,<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> I told of the Abbot's awakening—how we called +him from mysterious regions of silence and mystification, to a more +or <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>less adequate expression of material facts. Here was a boy almost +overshadowed by his own soul at times, inclined to be half out of the +body and not altogether present in the mind, when moving among the +sordid affairs of the world—a lad who knew the arrangement of planets +and the flow of meteoric matter better than the geography of our own +continent; who swung very readily back into memories of other lives, +mainly monastic, rather than into the episodes of his own kid-days.</p> + +<p>I forget just how it was that we first sensed the giant in this boy. +In any case, we struck one. The ordinary training that I would give an +American youth to breathe the soul of him, was not at all necessary +with the Abbot. Rather, pressure was exerted from the first to make him +come down into our world, to make him be one of us, to make him see +streets and alleys, doorsteps and servant-stairs. They have succeeded +better at Columbia in this regard than we were able to do, but the +wonder and satisfaction of it all is, that the aroused mystic, the +aroused artist, has not receded—but dominates his days and work. I +understand that he is considered a sensation in a literary way.</p> + +<p>He is not different from his fellows. It is part of our ethics to +belong where we happen to be; to do the things that others do, better, +if possible, than the customary performance; to begin after that to be +our inimitable selves. It is our ideal to move about the world, not +to attract attention, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>to be quiet and calm and efficacious, to be +helpful and humorous and wise, to furnish the swift, unerring word or +hand or lift in the midst of affairs; to deny ourselves to no one; to +hold ourselves superior to no one; to strive laughingly toward the big +workmanship, to become Players after the essential apprenticeship, to +win the Laugh at last, and that perfect consummation which only comes +with utter and instant detachment when the task is accomplished.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The Abbot was sprawled in a Study shadow one summer afternoon, when I +suddenly saw him in relation to big sea-tales. Usually we tale-tellers +carry our packs. I saw the Abbot with a sea-chest that day. His was +not the way of the Arabian fires and the Assyrian camel paths—the +word-spinner's usual evolutionary line. He came overseas with his +narratives.... I saw him in the next few years making a circle around +all the capes, touching all the ports of Asiatic and insular water +fronts—a bit of Conrad, a bit of Melville, a bit of Stevenson ... a +most sumptuous sea-chest full of shells, corals, coins and trinkets +from all the Islands; feather of a woman's fan perhaps, here and there, +silks hazy from sea water, crooked knives from Malay Isles, whale-bone +and shark's teeth, pearl of the mollusk, a bit of ambergris—just a top +tray of the Chest! Deep mystic parchments farther within, a corner <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>for +the sacred writings of all the world, a small type mill, a great wad of +white paper, the rest mainly traces of a long glide across the ocean +floors.</p> + +<p>I have learned to go very slow in building a matrix of my own thought +about any young man's mind, yet I told the Abbot that day what I saw +for him—how he was bound to do the big sea-tales, how we were sick of +steam, sick already of the big hydroplanes, sick of all that hurries, +all that explodes, all that has the taint of gas; that the world +presently would be so sick of noise and explosions and show and speed, +that professional soothers would be in great demand, like the Japanese +masseurs who wait upon the sleepless; that the sick world would want +to read of long, loose, lazy days under canvas, of the few ports left +where they haven't set up recruiting offices;—that the world would be +in desperate need of sunlight and surf and wide swinging seas—that he +must be one of those to usher in the old romance of the sailing craft +again.</p> + +<p>I told about his sea-chest better than I have told it here, but the +Abbot's eyes didn't bulge. Presently, however, he began to grow that +way.... His Saturdays and Sabbaths now are spent, not in Morningside +Heights, but down among the shipping and across the harbour, where the +big world tramps hang out. You will see these things in his letters. I +have several of his yarns <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>here, but I am not going to run any of them +in this book. They are good yarns, but too intrinsically big yet for +the handling of a boy of seventeen. He has too much calibre for his +brain so far to carry ten thousand words to superb consummation. I want +to spring a big tale presently. I have a lapful of his random letters +from days spent down on the water front, and nights under the study +lamp:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Dear Old Wasp:</span></p> + +<p>Morning mists over the lake, the <i>Pelee</i> coming up out of them. Just +had a night with John and a corking good run of work. We've been +watching the sun go down from Lynster's<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> back lately, and breathing +the planetary heave under the stars, with the milky way dipping to +the lake before us. This inland place is heavy to take. The weight +of agriculture is like a blanket over all. It takes three or four +pages to bore up through the cuticle. Me for a get-away to the world +soon—to feed up on the hum of feet and voices and cars.... Blackbirds +are beginning to blacken the mornings and nights again; touch of Fall +and Pine-smoke this morning. Real itchings in the ankles—to you! A +wonderful synthesis for us all when we meet up again.... I'd like to +roam the world with John. He is a grand <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>pal. Could joke over an oven +made out of a tomato-can, as well as eat from a banquet table.... #/</p></blockquote> + +<p class="no-indent">A day or two later:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p> ... Black forces strong around Stonestudy last night.... About +eight-thirty I rode over on Lynt, to sleep with John. Decided to have a +debauch with tea. While I worked on, he gathered the cups and tea and +electric tea-kettle together and got things going. He called for me to +come and make the tea. He was seated in the big chair with a tableleaf +in front of him, and on that was the tea-kettle, boiling.... One leg +slipped, and the whole boiling collection went in his lap.... A prince, +the way he stood it. The bunch was just coming back from town. Penel' +rushed over, and the next was a turmoil right, cries, olive oil, lint, +rags, confusion of voices and footsteps—too many people and the little +guy sort o' lost his control—but it all came back again. Almost any +minute I am looking for the laugh from him. All night I was with him. +Penelope, the finished heroine as always. One could see the shades of +pain pass over John's face time and again. His nerves jump—but his +mouth and eyes are certainly getting a grand hue of steel.... Yours +right along.</p></blockquote> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p> + +<p class="no-indent">Another:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>Hazy summer about. Blue over the lake with shadows deepening in the +distance. Crops drying beneath the sun. Leave it at its height—am +headed back for Columbia—where I'll let time shape the winds for +farther "going."</p> + +<p>School is not harmful to one who <i>is</i> himself. I'll take philosophy, +and then be over to tell you who stole your washboard.... It is no +struggle, no test, for one to be lit among his own as we are. One's +depth of listening is best tested in crowds. We've got to separate—go +out and change the continents into tablelands of democracy.</p> + +<p>War seems settling on the world for years longer, but there is a bigger +order coming out of the incredible chaos. Each must see God and worship +through his work to shape the master beauty. Every one's art breaks new +roads which lead to one place.</p> + +<p>Stories are coming freer every day—I've gotten across. Don't know +whether it's the best thing for me. But I've done it, and that's what I +wanted to know. It is all preparation. Results are beginnings. I look +back now on the summer of '14. It <i>was</i> heaven. It <i>was</i> peace. To look +at the cottage lights and hear the voices of rowers through the dusk +was a breath from God. It was peace, it was relaxation, a deep resting +of tissue for turmoil. Depth and mastery to you.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p></blockquote> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">This to John:</span></p> + +<blockquote><p>The thought of your scarred legs has been with me on the borderland of +sleep for many nights, also our hours together on the pine needles. +To-night, with the sun falling sadly over the iron mills, I walked +along the Heights and cast an eye down into brilliant Harlem. The +voices of the bargemen, the wheeze of tugs, the low growl of outpassing +vessels, an occasional curse from a freighted barge, came up with the +hum of the city. There seemed to be some goddess entwined with sea-weed +standing over the ocean of structures. She held a finger to her lips +for silence, and pointed to the Lord knows where—well, where I felt a +tumult to go, to satisfy some hot quest.... I was lost to the multitude +of faces that sent up a passionate and incomprehensible hum ... savour +of youth singing in the veins.</p> + +<p>Presently a drizzle drove me back to the room.... I reached up and +flicked out the lights.... In an apartment across the street lives an +old man who always comes to his window at dark and gazes up and down +the streets. His head is grey—his eyes are deep and old. The light +from his shaded reading lamp falls in a pool of dim yellow about his +carpet. Sometimes he turns out the lamp, and leaves the fire-place +alone. Sometimes his head falls forward on his chest, and he dreams—I +suppose, of boundless seas, for he was once a sea-captain.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span></p> + +<p>His wandering days are over—no more quest. The houses rise to his eyes +like one long, bleak, uncrested wave from the Arctic Sea.... He means +old days, but we—we must never grow old; we must live and ever be full +of creation as the cloud is full of lightning. We must, old pal, ride +the deserts, drift over seas; we must spill our work as we go, as night +spills its stars from a casket. Fill me up with the Pacific in your +letters—the big sunlight—the colour of the mountains where they dip +and rise to clouds. I have a dry palate for it all. Fill me—eye and +ear and soul.</p> + +<p>Yours deep in those scars——</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<blockquote> +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Dear Old Man:</span></p> + +<p>The Hudson is very still this morning; a few battleships have swung out +with the tide; gulls seem to be forever passing up and down the river +in white eddies; smoke from the factories rises straight and white. The +morning sun strikes like a sledge upon the Palisades. How grand that +old river is, and how untiring in its endless ebb and flood—almost +like a solar system in the serene way it deals with human traffic.</p> + +<p>A great new sense of words has come over me lately. At the very birth +of language lies a chest of rich obsolete words—quite like a Spanish +treasure chest, with its doubloons, bezoar stones and "pots of Arica +bronze." The artists go treasure hunting in language, and a few do +startle the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>world with their wealth. The live-long day seems to me now +like a shuttle driving back and forth, weaving from soul to matter, a +golden fabric.</p> + +<p>This word-chest means much to me because it deals with the sea. Lift +up the lid, and tucked away in those little drawers lies the seaman's +religion in bits of turquoise, in coils of fish line and hooks, in +pink sea-shells, perhaps in an old violin, or in a few stray books of +Carlyle, Goethe, Dante and Melville's <i>Moby Dick</i>. The point is we +all bungle along through our world-term somehow; we have our work and +religion and pleasures and tales in a camphor-wood chest with a brass +band around it. Sometimes we bring out the violin and make God-awful +discords, calling it music of the sea; we brighten people's eyes with +our bits of turquoise; terrorise them with the philosophy that Carlyle +and Goethe and Moby Dick have given us; we make them feel that endless +<i>wroom, wroom, wroom</i> of the ocean that is washing in our souls.</p> + +<p>Yes, we must first learn the futility of life before we can live. The +war teaches this lesson well, but won't it be great when everybody is +singing over his golden shuttle and laughing? Won't it be great when +the chastened New Race springs up, like green shoots at the passing +of winter? Won't it be great when the world has grown serene and wise +enough to sit down beside <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>a blazing bark fire, with the shadows of +pine trees about, or near the dim breakers, and consider it profitable +to talk about the stars?</p> + +<p> ... There are times when one feels he must be alone—when he wants to +be connected with nothing—when he wants to go to a distant and high +altitude, and there boil his pot of alchemy—there, where the air is +dust free, and the incense of one's devotion goes straight up. He must +listen and listen, until he believes that he hears the stars humming in +their courses; then the sun drawing like a magnet, then a crescendo of +song up to a deafening roar,—that all things, all stars, are headed +towards one point of balance among that whole mass of sapphires we see +above.</p> + +<p>Man, but the joy of telling tales, of recording the warmth of human +hearts, of loving men and their ways—to fill out a morning with that +golden shuttle! One has but to sit and the sun on the walls and the +shadows in the corners, or if at night, the flame on the stones of the +hearth turn to words!... The old sea is full of that. The heart within +her breast sounds the footfalls of quest; the ecstasy of life tears in +her storm and in still hours she sits in her glitter....</p> + +<p>Some day we shall be together on the blessed Pacific coast. We shall +have bookshelves and packages of dates, bottles of cream and combs +of honey. We shall work with that rugged lunge of mountains in our +products; and that endless and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>insistent <i>wroom, wroom, wroom</i> of the +ocean in all. Listen, here is a day as we shall have it:</p> + +<p>The sun lifting up the depth of Canyon shall awake us. After we have +cooked and eaten of crisp toast and honey and coffee, we shall go +to our desks and bring out a most rigid problem in mathematics,<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> +and dwell perhaps for an hour in drawing all forces of thinking into +play—awaking the mind—shaking off that inertia of body. After that we +shall penetrate the thing which we wish to work upon that particular +morning. We shall see its functions and logical action, then begin +the shuttle and weave back and forth with that pliancy that sees the +deepest of metaphysics in an old man lighting a pipe or loitering over +a pork-pie. To top the morning, we'll have a meal of milk and dates. +The afternoon shall mean an isolation with the books—perhaps on the +sand with the sun tanning our backs. Both healthfully and mentally +an efflux of soul. At about five in the afternoon comes the humming +calm—the poise of mind and soul and body. Another meal of the simple +foods and once more, production, as the sun goes into the sea—giving +one's soul the might and expanse that the planets use in weaving their +ways. Perhaps, at ten or eleven we shall reach up, switch out the +electric bulb and open the door. That shall be a day mastered. Side by +side, we'll walk over to the cliff at whose base mumbles the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>mighty +Pacific. We shall pass no words—the earth'll be good to feel and +smell. We'll honour the still night of stars.</p> + +<p>That day is a privilege to earn—our bodies must suffer and become +scarred and jostled by the currents of people, and cursed upon by foul +mouths. All pleasant presently. We must know the heart of a bartender +as we would want to know the heart of the Christ. Do you know that +Masefield was a bartender? The secret of the real artist is sanity. One +must grow hair the medium length—keep a well muscled and full lunged +body—and if chronic fishermen should happen in on us for a meal we +must be able to argue that a hickory pole is better for a pound-net +than pine; or if a devout pastor—that we would much rather praise +God's work outside on the beach....</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">To Jane:</span></p> + +<blockquote> +<p>Your letter this morning after a long, wonderful run of work. This +is really the highest day I've had—real rugged work—bronze moving +pictures before me—faces—open shirts on sunburnt breasts—and, of +course, the eternal sea. Your letter came like a sudden bag of sunlight +emptied into a mist. The water became blue and the promontories sharp +like ink lines.</p> + +<p>And about Steve. I understand all. The draft explains his not writing. +And this war—<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>it's like a maelstrom rising higher and higher. Next +summer for certain, possibly this Christmas, it means I go. But rather +than go as a private I'm going to enlist voluntarily in the aviation +corps. Flying only would have as much thrill as doing the climax of a +story. That's like the sea. And I'm not panicky or worried about it. I +feel in some unconscious way that the balance of the cosmos demands it. +God, nobody should drag now! It's just like a marshfire that grows and +grows to let the new green shoots come under in spring. It's like a big +song. I would not go to fight Germany, or France or England or America. +I'd go because it's a cleanser. One must play with the song of many +feet and express with the original song. One must flash pictures to the +many eyes of their own being. Oh—it's a song, the whole thing! And I'm +looking forward to it.</p> + +<p>Only the ones such as John and Tom shall escape. Don't you see the joy, +the peace, the grandeur in owning a scar, in being bled white? The +first year of the war, England was black with mourning. Now, she is +white.... The work is on me with talons.</p> + +<p>I am looking only at the impossible heights—of a portrayal of +life—the rugged life in endless volumes. I have made an oath silently +with myself that in three years I shall do a book.... The work comes +now just as if I were to sit down before a fire-place with shadows and +light around <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>stones, and were to grow interested, with stars low on +the horizon like live sparks.</p> + +<p>And friends? A foolish question! I mean that I must be alone in the +formative thrall of work. I <i>did</i> want your letter. But forget pity. +That is a thing that stifles soul. I do not ask, by all the stars, I do +not ask for anything. The highest of all things to you all.</p> + +<p>And Steve? He has too much of the Song to be trodden or be lost or be +ground in mud. You are all friends—but I must be alone now. The work +is rising....</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">To John:</span></p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>There ain't no sun beatin' in my doorway, and there ain't none of +your sacred seas and canyons around; but there is a socialist's riot +in the street below—kerosene torches a-going—one shaggy haired +enthusiast is standing on a soap box and is wagging his jaw in an +athletic way.... How's the fire burning under your type-mill? What's +the brand of smoke it gives up—poetry, action, lumps of granite or +ladles of ocean? I'm all lit up in this place here—because things +are moving—real issues are gathering—and the pulse of living is so +close that I can almost feel it occasionally. Last Saturday, went to a +place called Rockaway—and oh man—rocks—rugged grey and eroded—surf +bitten—gnarled, twisted—and they tossed the sea's white jaws about +like bits of cotton. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>Real sea coast it was—with a little smack in +the purple way, her sails bellied, her mouth lapping the brine—an old +fisherman browsing around the shores for clams while his wife hauled up +the nets, basketed the cod and upturned their boat.</p> + +<p>Put an extra stick under the machine and line a few of your aphorisms.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p></blockquote> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_14" id="chapter_14"></a>14</h2> + +<p class="title center">THE ARTIST UNLEASHED</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">The young workmen here do essays well, earlier than short stories. +Longer training is required for fiction. The reason is obvious. Fiction +work takes brain. The Stonestudy idea is to set free the greater Artist +within. Essays and ethical works are the natural fruits of the inner +life of the ages; story-production requires facility and development +of the every-day working consciousness. Straight brain is needed to +arrange settings, keen development of actual tissue to note and arrange +and remember. Also a big working surface of self-criticism must be +prepared.</p> + +<p>There is a quality of fiction that seems to set free a larger +consciousness and to bring with it settings and atmospheres of another +age. This sort of phenomenon encourages the idea of the continuity of +consciousness—before and after the three-score-and-ten. It may be +that the greater the Artist, the more of these veins of syntheticated +experience are open to his every-day working mind. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>That may really +be what sumptuous artistic equipment is—the capacity to open up the +old loves and scenes and adventures of the long road. Intuition is +explained as the use of the result of massed experiences, intellect the +coping with one at a time; intuition, a light that flashes from peak to +peak, intellect as a running fire up and down from height and vale.</p> + +<p>Certainly intellect alone will never make a great drama of life and +love, yet action and romance of the present hour draw hard upon one's +present life training and the faculties and tastes of his immediate +culture—actual brain possession and the ordering thereof. A child can +portray superbly well some ancient imprint upon the Soul, even the +passages of his own initiations through earth, water, air and fire, +his brain not conscious of the real nature of what is coming forth; +yet, the same child cannot put the cohering line through a series of +episodes occurring under his own notice. Something of this mental +grasp is necessary to make the artful effect required in a short +tale. The child's mind, in the first place, is trained to listen and +interpret the experiences of the larger consciousness; in the second +set of conditions, he is forced to rely upon actual brain tissue which +requires the training and culture of the years.</p> + +<p>Art is composition. The farther you go, the finer the tools. It is +difficult to train the fingers to intricate tricks of weaving, or +the brain to sort <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>and place the facts and colours and surprises of +a present-day narrative or tale, but the soul may be called upon to +express through the narrow temples of an awakened child its cosmic +understanding, its ordered firmament.</p> + +<p>Decades of observation and reporting; firm and verified actuality of +knowledge and opinion; to these, added experience and the excellence +of order—such is the training of the intellectual artist who times +his production to his own generations. He pays the price in pain and +subjection to the things that are; he knows well the meaning of labour; +often, though he may still laugh as an artist, he has forgotten how to +laugh as a man.</p> + +<p>My desk here is covered with papers and poems of a beauty this +intellectual artist cannot reach, of a freedom he can never know, until +he lifts the torch of his consciousness out of and above the brain, +making that serve quite as his knees bend and serve. Thinking of these +things to-day, the door of the Study opened and the Little Girl gave +me her work. She writes things of the larger consciousness without +effort, but finds it hard and wearing to narrate the immediate matters +of life. To her, the fine short story of the present hour is the great +accomplishment, the ideal she is working toward.</p> + +<p>With another she goes often to the cities—rambling among the +rooming-houses, cheaper restaurants and mills. She means to work in +the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>mills soon—to forget herself and forget us for a time, to be +with the harder-lucked girls whom she loves with thrilling passion. +She has brought home from these little adventures wonderful stories +of the patience and the laughter and the heroism crowding like hidden +sacred presences about the duller lives. She brings a humour to the +telling of the divine secrets of the poor—the clutching pang for food, +the soldier going, his baby coming, the tortured spine, the stunted, +the darkened, the wasted—an irresistible divinity about it all—pain +impermanent, joy enduring. Back of the lacking eyes and leaking lives, +she sees wonders that Zola never saw, that none can see with mere +intelligence, that none can dream, who sees only the here and now, +who has not learned to laugh at the so-called injustices of men, who +cannot see the greater order to come because the present chaos is so +devastating.</p> + +<p>One may report minutiæ of torments, mass the items of degradation and +bring forth a great document of the underworld—but these are mere +foundations. The Builders bring the dream, they live the hope, they +open the long-road consciousness, they substantiate their visions of +better days, bring order and coherence to all the splendid toil of the +intellectualist; they raise their edifice upon <i>all</i> that is done.... +Here is the Little Girl's work of to-day's writing:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Meditation</span></p> + +<p>In the night the Master came down to a woman who lay sad and sleepless +in a dark house. He came so near that she felt his holy radiance. Her +soul breathed; her body ceased to tremble; she felt within his sacred +circle. The Master smiled and said:</p> + +<p>"Why do you not sleep?"</p> + +<p>The woman answered, "I am carried away by thoughts that will not hush. +Night after night I lie here so bitterly close to old dreams. I realise +that they are not worthy, but my brain is full of them."</p> + +<p>The Master smiled again. "There is a way to compel the silence of the +brain."</p> + +<p>"I have not found it," said the woman.</p> + +<p>"Learn to be the soul," the Master said. He suggested a way to +begin—then was gone.</p> + +<p>The rest of that night the woman thought of his words. Deeper and +deeper his words sank into her heart. When morning came, a happiness +brooded within; she dressed quickly and went out.... Back of her +little house rose the golden brown hills. She climbed, and at the top +of the nearest, sat down. The peace and purity and fragrance of the +sun-steeped hills filled her soul. For a long time she thought in +silence, then slipping off her loose white sandals, said: "I begin with +the grass. Yes, I begin with my <i>feet</i>.... How wonderful you are—so +ready to obey, to give your service at any time! What would <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>happen +if you carried me other than my will? Supposing some day I should be +walking fast to the house of my beloved, when you suddenly took me the +other way!"</p> + +<p>She laughed, and added: "You stay with me all my life, and little by +little are carrying me up the shining path to the Father's house. And +yet—how strange! I am not you.... And my knees, how wonderful and +willing—all limber and full of life—helping me in all ways to do all +things—bending gently when I bow in holy communion, expressing joy +through free, easy movements, mute, yet strong before pain! There is +nothing more wonderful in the world than you. Yet—I am not my knees.</p> + +<p>"And you, old heart," she added. "You have endured the keenest pain; +you have loved and given yourself, have hated and become black only +through pain to whiten again—old heart of many rendings—until +all life was tragedy, and you almost ceased to beat. Little heart, +sanctuary of the soul—room for <i>his</i> rest.... Yet I am not the heart!</p> + +<p>"And the white throat in which the lotus unfolds its mystic petals of +light—I am not the throat!... And the mind, stream for the soul's +fulfilment—listener, runner, interpreter of light—mate of the soul in +all things, ever ready, sparkling with the inner fire,—I am <i>not</i> the +mind. You can hurt me no longer. I am <i>free</i>!"</p> + +<p>The woman sitting alone upon the hilltop, paused again. "What am I?" +she almost cried.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p> + +<p>It was as though the hills, the air and the rising sun joined her in +the answer—"<i>I Am</i>, ... Longer than the living flame leaps within, <i>I +Am</i>. Longer than sun and planets radiate light, <i>I Am</i>. Longer than +worlds give birth to form, <i>I Am</i>. I am one with the rocks and the sea, +one with the warmth and light, one with the earth, one with Humanity.</p> + +<p>"I am Humanity. <i>I Am.</i>"</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>It is only when the Little Girl brings in a bit of fiction that we +remember her years. The brain that even now can polish a detached +incident, or clip into firing-form a bit of humour of the street, +cannot as yet order the narrative to a culminating effect. She is in +her brain, which is only fourteen, struggling with the matters of time +and space, wherein only lie pain and bewilderment.</p> + +<p>Art is long. The training of the hand and intellect requires the +years—but not the labour, not the agony, not the mad strain supposed +to prepare one for an artistic career by those who believe mental +equipment to be all.... The key to this whole discussion is the fact +that the brain can be developed more in a year through inner awakening +than in a decade by the usual methods of external impacts alone.... The +ideal education is the balancing of the without with the within—the +tallying of the world without with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>the world within—the same old +story of the kingdom without clearing its correspondences with the +kingdom within.</p> + +<p>The Little Girl's ideal is to do great stories. They challenge her by +their very difficulty. When I see where she stands now, and think of +the far ways we elders went to learn the game; when I see what the +twenty-year-olds are doing now, how they command their mysticism—a +harder task for me than the accomplishment of physical results; when I +see the inner bloom and co-ordination and the inimitable surfaces which +come to all the arts by the development of the soul life first, the +listening for the Master within—I want to get my hands on them all, +upon all the young builders of the New Race. I want at once to awaken +within them the Spectator—the One who cannot be swung back and forth +in the pairs of opposites, who cannot give himself to the partisans, +who has glimpsed the Plan and offers it full adoration, who says +accordingly that the best possible thing that can happen is the thing +that happens next. These are the young Players who will reveal life by +living it—portray life as naturally as breathing, whose equipment is +not possessions, not even brain possessions, but spiritual <i>en rapport</i> +with all, oneness with all life.</p> + +<p>I remember struggling for effects. These young people breathe +effects. I remember style as a studied attainment. These young people +ac<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>knowledge but one style—that is being one's self.... I want to set +many of them free from within outward. In their gladness at the finding +of themselves, they will go forth to include the world; they will bring +to it the compassion which enfolds all, reveals all.... Love the world +well and you will understand it. Love the world well, and you will +write well to it. Give it yourself, and the world is yours.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_15" id="chapter_15"></a>15</h2> + +<p class="title center">WORK IN SHORT STORIES</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">The Little Girl sketched this impression of an Indian Summer Dusk:</p> + +<p> ... Just now the great blue dusk, after an Indian summer day. It +deepens and seems to laugh, then all is night. Huge black clouds roll +up, promising a storm. Against them, tall, selfish, unafraid, stand +the poplar trees. The great Mother of the dusk is singing, the God in +Nature is singing, and Nature's belongings, all of them, sing in this +magical moment. One feels it all in one's self, feels the glory, the +romance, the very core-life of the Universe. The matings too, taking +place in the grass and air; the matings of the two streams, the two +grains of sand; the matings of butterflies, birds and bees. It all +flows through one's body like music and honey and sunshine....</p> + +<p>Nothing but space is around me. I feel all hollow inside. Power and +beauty and all things <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>else flow through ... and out, like a sieve. +My body is far below me, yet it will be taken care of. It does not +stumble, nor make any clumsy, unnecessary movement. Finding it alone +and forgotten, Rhythm catches it in her gentle arms. Slowly, softly, +gently, Rhythm carries it along, the same that carries the deer so +swiftly in the forest, the mountain sheep from ledge to ledge and over +valleys, and that which waves the trees' long arms so gracefully.... +The night moves on its way, the threat of storm is passed. I am back +again—an untellable freshness has sweetened hair and clothing. I am +all glowing inside.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>This was done two years ago. There was a kind of dream story which she +recently finished, gratifying the artistic sense entirely, but in a way +that ruined it for the general reader. It was all new to her that there +could possibly be two ways to regard a bit of workmanship. Five or +six story-writers were present for the reading, and out of the fruits +of that evening, we surely saw the lesser beauty give way before a +greater. We forecasted the readers of the future, who would prefer the +more spiritual, more challenging story texture and dénouement.</p> + +<p>There has always been The Few—glad to discover the real, answering +to interior order and clarity, "straight grain,"—but the fact for +enthusiasm now is that the world is being peopled with the awakened. +These young moderns are recognising each other from day to day, pulling +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>together for better social order, utilising the wisdom of the East, +and the drive of the West—labouring in new paths, daring new leaps, +working out philosophies as fresh and ancient as the dawn and, what +is straighter to the point, demanding modern books, written out of an +integrity to match their own....</p> + +<p>Short story writing in America is less a trade and more of an art +since Edward J. O'Brien, the poet, took his chair in the flow of the +output and began to say which was which. There are a number of people +in America who know a good short story when they see one; this is +true among those who buy short stories, but editors cannot always buy +what they want. A deal of mechanism in a magazine has to be oiled and +energised by different kinds of minds from those who paint the pictures +and write the tales. O'Brien knew both ends—also he knew that big, +unobtrusive part of the market that looks long and pointedly for the +real tale.</p> + +<p>He is a queer boy—from the bleak fishing grounds north of Boston. +He is in no hurry. You couldn't tell if he really wants anything. He +doesn't seem to want much—for O'Brien.... After he had his main line +and most of the ramifications of his idea laid, he told the editors to +send on the stories. Most of them did. O'Brien did a lot of work in a +few weeks, did it startlingly well. He started something.... <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>Now, if a +writer sits down, suddenly struck with a fine idea for a tale, and this +fine idea precludes the possibility of selling it for a high price—the +writer dares go ahead and finish the task, because he knows O'Brien +will get to the thing in due time, and that if it is really what it +seems and the performance of the idea adequate, then the work will not +be utterly lost.</p> + +<p>As a matter of fact, this is a bit of self-placation, since no work is +lost; no one gets the value of a big thing to anything like the degree +of the man who does it; no big thing is lost from the world, not even +if dropped in a sewer, if it is really important for the world to +have it. We are all a bit too heavily handicapped with our own idea +of what the world should have from our own shops—at the same time, +when we are young, we pant for the quicker return, the answering hail +within reason—at least, within time and space. Now O'Brien has come, +strangely arrived, his proper phylacteries in place, the touch of +tinted haze about his head, the right man.</p> + +<p>Back of all, however, is the workman's own spine. That's the best +thing to lean on; and when the going is heavy, to learn to do without. +We often remind each other in Chapel of the modern artist Cezanne, +who moved about his painting for many years, painting <i>the thing</i>, +satisfying his soul, and leaving his canvasses around in the fields for +the peasants to laugh at or mull over. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>... They have long since been +brought in out of the rain—those canvasses. I forget the incredible +thousands his littlest sketch brings now.... But Cezanne got the films +out of himself—tallied them off—the landscapes within and without, +when it did him most good. It never fails. What was good for the artist +is good for the rest of us afterward.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile much is still to do in the story world. The big smash of +the moving pictures hasn't cleared from our game yet. It will be the +cause of greater tales before the end is seen, for you can't portray +the realities of romance upon a flat screen. For a time the many +thought it was no longer necessary to learn to read, because there was +such a torrent of pictures everywhere, but it was only through the +pictures that the few has finally managed to realize how marvelously +pictorial mere words are, and how few words are required when they are +imaginatively driven. One day in Stonestudy we discussed these story +and screen affairs, looking ahead somewhat to better times than these. +One of our young men, whose story is told in a later chapter, put down +the things we talked about. This is Shuk's writing:</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>A fresh and different vitality is manifest to-day in American +literature. At various points around us, dealing with words, colours +and the subtler tools, are active young workmen who for <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>the first +time, in the fullest sense, may be termed "North American." The first +characteristic of this new element, these young flexible and vigorous +minds, is that they are workmen—not labourers, not professionals, not +primarily artists in anything unless it be life—but workers first, and +after that novelists, poets, musicians, painters or politicians. They +are not competitors. They have not forgotten the warm side of justice, +but they know well the stern face of compassion—they know that it +takes Christ and anti-Christ to make a world. They are neither modest +nor egotistical, being for the most part busy and intensely alive. This +implies their joy.</p> + +<p>The great love story has not been written. The few great love stories +of the world have to be pieced out by the imagination. We find that +we have been told that certain are great love stories, but they do +not stand examination. The classic form will not do for the New Age. +There is to be a new language—for literary handling. It may be called +American, to distinguish it from English in the accepted form. It is to +be brisk, brief, brave and ebullient—to meet the modification all must +reckon with—the screen-trained mind.</p> + +<p>American-mindedness of itself, cannot yet accept a great love-story. It +would be called "sentimental" if not lascivious. The average American +is an impossible lover, making it incident to business. The real and +the sham are equally above him. He would not know when to be exalted +or when to be ashamed. He thinks his own <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>passion is evil, and thus +makes it so. The great love-story can only be written with creative +dynamics, and can only be accepted as yet by the few of corresponding +receptivity. There is nothing soft about true romance. Some passionate +singer of the New Age will likely appear right soon, his story to have +the full redolence and lustre of the heart, his emotions thoroughbred, +his literary quality at the same time crystalline with reality.</p> + +<p>The big adventure-story has not been done so far. The day of guns, +horses and redskins is over. Photoplays have developed these fiction +resources to the limit, proving to those writers born to be modern +that their full tales can never be shown on a flat surface. There +will be undercurrents, overtones, invisible movements, tensions upon +the reader, not only from between the lines, but between words. +The story-teller of the New Age may handle his theme in words of +one syllable, but his tale will have an intensity scarcely to be +explained—only responded to by minds which cannot be satisfied by +two-plane production—minds which demand more of life than the camera +sees.</p> + +<p>The real war-story of to-day, even for to-morrow, ought to arrive soon. +This is an age for an epic. Some keen and comprehensive mind will +arise—a literary genius who will include the patriot, the anarchist, +the poet, dramatist, humanitarian, theosophist, dreamer, judge and +statesman, even the iciest aces of the air—and tell the story of +War, a tale of trenches, kings and arms; blood, heroism and monstrous +greed; vast far-reaching <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>causes and the slow, inevitable hell of +effects—told from a viewpoint so inclusive that thrones are merely +pawns in a Planetary Game.</p> + +<p>Inclusion is the first business of the writer who is truly allied with +the modern element. Propagandists do not fill the picture. Yesterday +the wreckers and agnostics—to-day the specialists and onesided +enthusiasts—to-morrow, the embodiers, the includers.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_16" id="chapter_16"></a>16</h2> + +<p class="title center">VALLEY ROAD GIRL</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">The Valley Road Girl, who gave us the title, and helped us to see how +the New Race will become in due time the planetary hive, asked not to +appear in this book. A letter this morning asks it again. She is in +the stress and heat of a series of ordeals, learning what it means +suddenly to be parted from friends and the centre of her work. A wise +and sensitive young woman—I rather thrill over her sufferings. We +don't commiserate; we congratulate, when one is called to a stretch +of particularly stiff and solitary going. We know that one must be +passionately worthy to take the big-calibred ordeals. There is pain +to all births—pain, the precursor of greater joys. Pain is not the +expansion of the flower to the sun; that is joy, that comes afterward. +Pain is the necessary rupturing of the bud-sheaths before the final +unfolding into the new dimension. Pain is within, inarticulate—merely +finds a correspondence in some outer cause.</p> + +<p>Part of the Valley Road Girl's letter follows:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p> + +<p> ... It hurt to let that last Lamentation go to you. I thought of the +times when I had put up a braver fight, bolstered only with pride. +But pride is low now, and still dwindling in the glass. Even the gods +withdraw from the pathetic. They love us more when we challenge with +doubt than when we implore. The many are God-fearing. They must have +some divine power to shift their responsibility upon. They can ask the +Flame to cleanse them, but quail at working out their own salvation. I +have done some crying out to God, but I am finished. The one good path +I have is Work—self-expression every day.</p> + +<p>I made another mistake—in looking back. Regret identifies us with +the past and impedes progress. Youth is smileless, inclined to regard +to-day's struggles as ultimate evil, but gradually we learn that +all things pass. To consider everything as in transition, we place +ourselves in the very current of growth.... For rapid journeying, we +must travel light. We can only carry along the spirit of things—the +essence of our joys and lessons. That's what I have from Chapel days.</p> + +<p>I blush for many hours since. Sometimes I have felt as if I were on +a vast plain and there was no God nor earth nor the quality of love +anywhere, but only I—deathless—in long, hideous travail, all life to +be tested against this Me!...</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>How I want to write! Every day more awe enfolds the dream. Days +bring me closer to the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>Town. The war has deepened the hearts of all +the young people here, especially the women. Young women are very +wonderful to me. They have a certain loveliness of body that comes of +girl-whiteness within—thoughtful tenderness about them, and something +else, a lightness that may be just youth. It attracts me because I have +never felt it.</p> + +<p>I do not care if the gods laugh at my ambitions to write. By the very +sign that we are victims of matter now, we shall become victors. I +want the bottom—down among the deeps of pain, where all the sorrow of +the world is my sorrow; all tears, my tears.... I am not ready for the +Hive. No compromise. To accept less in one's work than the dream—that +is failure.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The Valley Road Girl is eighteen. She has hardly been away from the +little town by the lake shore. She is held to it queerly still. I +expect her to make the place long-lived in the memory of many novel +readers. I see the big book of the country-side about her—a gallery +of quaint and curious faces—done with her stern, sweet power. I have +seen this big book building about her, as I see the top trays of The +Abbot's Sea Chest. These are the days of her sketching and tearing +down. Deep draughts of life call to her, deeps of religion, deeps of +cosmic memory—and all about is the little town. The meaning has come +to her at last. Already she has turned to love the nearest; loving the +nearest will unfold the big book and set <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>her free. Six hundred pages +I call for—the leisurely vibration, terrible intensity of romantic +moments, passion of the fields, the hideous mockery of narrow, brittle +lives, the country-wife worn glassy with routine and insane monotony, +and the young of the country-side—quick bloom, pure youth falling into +coarseness before its form is finished, the real and immortal behind it +all. These are her properties. Hundreds of pages have been written and +prayerfully destroyed. Thus is she setting herself free.</p> + +<p>I have a paper of hers on the spiritual adventures of a smileless +child—which I liked much when it came in, more than two years ago. The +Valley Road Girl is close to us in all our preparing and building; so +that these chapters would be strange without her voice:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p> ... Fire was always terrible, so my first aspirations were caused +by fear of hell <i>below</i>. Before that, I had wanted to laugh when +told to pray. As I grew, I thought much of the heavenly state, but +could find only vague pictures. Recently I asked a country minister +his idea of heaven, and he seemed uncertain. He could only assure +me that it was a desirable place. Yet children always wonder about +their destination, questioning as they journey.</p> + +<p>I started early to pray—a grim affair; at first crying out through +fear or hurt. God was too awful for such intimacies so I took the +Christ figure of the Trinity into my confidence. Just here came +a strange transition. It didn't seem sufficient <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>for me to think +those prayers: I felt I must state them clearly or my wish might +be ambiguous. Even to-day, I find that only expressing a thing +simplifies it for me.</p> + +<p>If there were acquaintances whose lives were touched with beauty +or romance, I prayed for them, but mostly named <i>my</i> wants. I made +the discovery that the intensity put forth in holding the image of +a desire brings it into the world. Man may call the answer <i>God</i>, +but that seems his own power. I have sometimes thought of Will with +its divine kindred, Wisdom and Love, as the Three Who stood first +before His Face.</p> + +<p>To-day we dream, and to-morrow our hands are filled. I remember +the early Chapel days when the Old Man would say, "Be careful what +you want—you are apt to get it,"—with a great laugh and mystery +playing about his words. How truly one comes to realise that. +When I started at Stonestudy, the town-people used to ask how we +were taught,—if our English and story-structure were principally +considered as in the schools. I could only tell them, "Oh, no, not +like school!" Then I tried to explain Chapel and they wondered how +that manner of education could make us writers. Yet our writing +improved with the days. Work, a few weeks old, embarrassed us with +its defects.</p> + +<p>Then I actually tried to discover just how we were being helped. +To a young aspirant, there is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>awe about an artist; we had come to +listen. The same thoughts expressed in homely words wouldn't have +quickened us. The Old Man's sentences were rich with figures that +clarified everything. We began to <i>see</i> Stonestudy. About this time +at home I used to start anything that interested me, "I've got a +picture——" Chapel had helped me, as only one can help another, by +quickening the imagination.</p></blockquote> + +<p>That was what drew me to the Little Girl—her vivid impression of +things. She could make <i>her</i> listener see also. Speaking of children +whom school had overwhelmed, she used to tell us of their "lacking +eyes" and the world that had crushed them, as the "solid world." ... +I think that was the secret of her faith in fairies and Nature's most +elusive agencies. I listened doubtfully at first, for school had +tampered with my once-ready belief. One had first to trust her words, +"If you believe, you will see." And I recalled my early religious +experiences, based on "According to your faith, be it unto you."</p> + +<p>This is the "really" religion—faith in the hidden world. We conceive +its light gradually as the seed pushes its way upward through the soil. +All religion that does not make the workshop a Chapel—the place for +picturing heaven, is less than we know. I seem to confuse religion with +the stimulating of the imagination. It is because they are one to me.</p> + +<p>The Valley Road Girl has a beautiful sister who was rather reluctant to +come to Stonestudy. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>She did not think she could ever belong; had no +thought ever of writing or taking part in our things, yet none of the +young people ever brought us more than Esther. I found the following +pages about these two sisters together among the writings of the Little +Girl:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p> ... On the floor below lived two girls who came often to visit +their beloved friends in the attic. One was a year or so older than +the other, and most serious and sober, constantly hunting for her +own philosophy and making her own religion, praying for power and +vision, fearing lest she fail at the appointed task, suffering over +conditions, revolting at times, loving her work and her sister with +an everlasting passion. That was the one whom we call the Valley +Road Girl.</p> + +<p>The other was a perfect giver, born with the thought of her own +smallness, unwilling to accept a different point of view on the +subject from another. A spirit—wide eyes, frail body, living her +life calmly, objecting to nothing, obeying others, loving all, +frightening her parents with her absolute goodness. And that was +Esther.</p> + +<p>When she came at last to Stonestudy, her cushion with the others +round the fire had been waiting for many months. For we all knew +her; through the Valley Road Girl we knew Esther belonged to us. +One Chapel day later, when she remained at home, we wondered how +we'd ever manage without her.... Occasionally Esther brought a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>paper with her and laid it under the black stone—a bit of verse, +perhaps a dream, or something deep and mysterious from her soul. +One day it was a picture of the Desert, I remember.... Noonday, the +white heat of the sun reflected by the sand, the brown of a camel's +eyes, the long road to travel—caravans—then night—the sound of +low music, women dancing, the red of fires on black oily bodies of +slaves.... Esther made us see it all.</p> + +<p>There were long days in the woods—spring quickening life in all +things. We'd gather moss and violets and talk endlessly, Esther +always so free these memorable days, and happy. It was the dance +that set her free—her expression through the dance—a dancer's +body and soul, her wonderful quality of forgetfulness of self, made +her perfect. Literally she could surrender herself to the music, +trust it, and be carried in perfect grace and rhythm. We watched +her unfold, the beauty of her deepening in every way. Her joy in +life grew. She became like a nymph in the pure light of summer....</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>As was set down in the other book,<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> it was the Little Girl who +started these educational proceedings. Less than four years ago I +suggested that she remain home from school, and take a stroll with me +down the Shore. I was a bit bored <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>at the time, doubtless heavy with +the sense of parental care. To my best knowledge, the Little Girl was +in no way extraordinary. She does not seem so now. It seemed natural +for her to turn in the chapter on "Tom" in this book. I did not think +of it as a brimming thing for a child to perform. Incidentally Steve +brought in an essay last night on the young lovers and beauty lovers of +the New Race, covering matters which I planned as necessary for me to +do in this book. <i>Weaving</i>, that's really what a book from the group +amounts to—weaving, more and more. From time to time in years to come, +I hope to take a few weeks and spin a book.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>It is only in matters having to do with actual world-facts that the +Little Girl ever reminds us that she is only finishing her second +period of sevens. There is no one to whom I go more often for wisdom or +consolation. Her comradeship is complete. Others forget the matter of +age in relation to her. Her big friendship with the Valley Road Girl +overrides four years of growth most formidable in the usual attachment. +The soul is out of time and space. The same thing is more emphatically +shown in the case of John and The Abbot—nine and seventeen.</p> + +<p>The Little Girl reads very little—not nearly so much as I do. She +carries no weights. The slightest tendency toward precocity would +sicken <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>me of the whole business. This growth and development which +I speak of is not intellectual in the acquisitive sense. I take the +young minds away from long division examples. One of those a day is +plenty. Excessive use of the young brain is dangerous. One should +handle brain-tissue with delicacy. One should learn well how to think, +so as to escape lesion and avoid rupture of those most delicate fibres. +Any strain sounds a warning. The use and development of the brain from +outside is only safe so long as the process is joyous. The development +of the brain from within is natural and continually felicitous. No two +processes are alike—for the Soul perfects the instrument to serve +Itself. In due time the brain, thus trained, will bring forth the +one perfect and inimitable product. Trained by the world solely from +without, its product is a mere standard at best.</p> + +<p>I have met absolutely no ill results, not even from the gentle +encouragement of the practice of concentration among children. This is +stiff brainwork for a time—stiff because the brain must be mastered. +But the brain that has learned to listen for the voice of the Master +within, is already using the fruits of concentration, and as I have +written before, the children master the distractions more easily than +developed personalities. One must learn how to think obediently <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>before +one can silence the thoughts. One must silence the brain to hear the +Soul, but one must <i>be</i> the Soul to silence the brain.</p> + +<p>Intellectual children have been brought to me several times. They +lack the essential reverence. They wish to show me what they know; +their parents goad them into this showing. These are not the new race +type that thrills us.... I cannot help you out of a predicament if my +hands are full of bundles. I cannot bring to you the one spontaneous +utterance that you long for, if my brain is crowded with the things of +to-day and yesterday. I place upon the ground my bundles, and give you +a hand. I clear my mind of all its recent and immediate acquisitions, +and by the very force and matrix of your need (if I am the valuable +teacher) I supply, from the infinite reservoir of massed experiences, +an intuitional answer that will not leave you as you were.</p> + +<p> ... God pity the good little brain-pans so heavily piled in public +schools, and the brave little memories so cruelly taxed. I want to +brush all junk away from them, let their souls breathe, let them +become as little children, show them how the greatest workmen and the +master-thinkers are great and masterful, simply because they have +learned how to become as little children.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_17" id="chapter_17"></a>17</h2> + +<p class="title center">BEAUTY</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">We develop through expression. I find these paragraphs among many of +the Little Girl's for which there is no place here:</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<blockquote> + +<p> ... Everything in pouring out one's dreams and thoughts, one's very +soul into words! It is relief, fulfilment; it completes all thoughts +and dreams; it gives them strength. They are only half-powers if left +unexpressed. In the moments of great outpouring, order forms—the inner +order that is lasting and divine, the order that every man must have +running rhythmically through him, before his great task can be given +him by the Master. If man lives in truth, he lives in order. There is +no truth without order—no order without truth. They are one at the +top. There are no mistakes in all the Holy Universe.</p></blockquote> + +<p>We speak much of the Master. As every artist becomes significant, I +think he is more and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>more conscious, deep within, of the presence of +one whose word is absolute. The great artist isolates himself from +criticism—that is, he may listen to the observations of a child or the +youngest critic and find values, yet his life is passed in doing things +others cannot do, and for which there are no criteria. He loses the +sense of all laws at the last, in the great ebullition of his soul—to +get its records down. He is not ignited with expression as formerly, +because he <i>is</i> expression. His establishment in flesh is for that, and +no other reason. His Master nears. I think of Tolstoi so intimately and +Carlyle in these things.... We are close, in our best moments, to the +Shop Itself. Kipling touched this mystic arrangement in his inimitable +<i>L'envoi</i>, "When earth's last picture is painted——"</p> + +<p>More and more life teaches us the treachery of matter, as it teaches +us how to love. One by one the things we turn to, vanish, leaving us +rent and crying out. Thus we learn to turn to the Unseen. We long at +last for our particular archetype who embodies potentially the ideal +of parent and teacher and beloved. The last tearing torrential love +of the flesh is for the mate, the first of our more purely spiritual +aspirations for the Master.... The good days of apprenticeship give us +the basic ideal of him—the pure workmanship, the love of truth, need +for utter comprehension with few words—the love of one <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>another, yet +the absolute essential so hard to learn, to cling to nothing in the +realm of change—all these are incentives to the quest of the Master. +More and more we succeed in turning our love to what we still call the +Unseen from old habit. The very love that you turn to the Master builds +the path by which he comes to you. He can only appear in your own +thought-form....</p> + +<p>It comes to us so often that we make our own heavens. So many forget +that we require beauty as well as goodness and truth. Not sages alone, +not saints alone—but artists, workmen and players in beauty, as +well as in love and wisdom. The Master will come to you in your own +thought-form; your heaven will fill your own conception. Saints of the +elder bigotries will have angels with feathers and peasant feet. Those +who have clung so hard to their bodies, must galvanise them again with +rheumatism and senility and mortgage-ridden minds.</p> + +<p>I tell them here to be careful what they dream—to take all the loves, +the safe things, love of child and mother and mate, love of comrades, +the passion for dying for another ... to take Nature's perfect +things,—the grains, the fruits, bees, stars, devas, poems—majesty +of mountain, strength of the field, holy breath of sea—the highest +moments of song and thought and meetings ... to take all that is +consummate for the thought-form—to build the coming of the Mas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>ter +in that—light from the Unseen—to build for eternity.... The Master +can only show you that much of Himself as your own highest picture +contains.... This is the practice of his presence, so liberating to the +minds of dreamers and workmen and mothers.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Steve has done some thinking on the quest of beauty in relation to the +young lovers of the New Race. The rest of the chapter is his writing:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Beauty is the lustre shining from within, because of the sheer +intensity of being. It is proof of spiritual battles won, a gift earned +by ages of renunciation, martyrdom, and self-sacrifice. It is manifest +balance, order and serenity gained from isolation and self-conquest. +The glow seen about the heads of saints is really there. It is a +splendour not of earth, the same ray from which beauty is drawn.</p> + +<p>A certain tragic joy and a terrible serenity, that is mistaken for +melancholy, often goes with beauty. It is the result of turning back +voluntarily for work in the world, renouncing possible bliss for the +service of humanity. Chief among the spiritual victories mentioned, +is this turning back, facing the stream of evolution again, and all +its cold metal, for new work. So its light is a light from behind—a +reflection to the world of the wonders ahead.</p> + +<p>Beauty is an indication of the weave of one's <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>higher life, of +developed discrimination, material proof of the perfecting ordination +of the life, will and emotions. All that is beautiful is good, all +that is good must be beautiful. Ugliness is false and fleeting, a +confession of sickness and turmoil within. There can absolutely be no +great love without a sheer worship of beauty, not for itself, not from +the æsthetic standpoint—no temperamental moth-man ethics—but the calm +mastery of its inner meaning, which is mastery of life itself.</p> + +<p>This does not mean that we must love things merely because they are +beautiful, but because of the truth we know to be in them, manifest in +their beauty. Also it means that we must never accept a thing merely +because it is demonstrated, or seek truth for truth's sake. Beauty is +the one lasting criterion.</p> + +<p>As soon as we truly see these things, we know the secret of real love, +which is beauty's expression. The lover is no longer lover only, but +love-master—all domination of the sexes then becomes a slavery of the +past. The lover is parent, mate and child in one. Each is also the +other's teacher.</p> + +<p>At the beginning these lovers give each other complete freedom, knowing +that nothing can be maintained that is held; that joyous freedom is +its own wise bondage. The finding of the lover is never the end of the +quest as in the world. Rather, it is the beginning. Never is there a +lying back in satisfaction or inconsequence. That <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>would be failure +for themselves as well as their children. Growth is the goal. Growth +goes on after the mating at a rate never before approached, for each +has been opened, liberated. Every relation is evident alternately in +this growth, parent and child, teacher and pupil, master and disciple, +madonna and messiah. At certain high moments, the other appears as the +Master himself; through his eyes the mysteries of the universe are seen.</p> + +<p>The three-ply love yearns to give, knowing that by giving all one gains +all. It yearns to protect, to mother, to love failings and make them +virtues. It loves the failings as well as the gifts, treasuring all the +little humanesses of the loved one, searching them out zealously. Never +are they foolish enough to expect perfection at first. Every fault is +told point-blank, at any cost of pain or injury to the other. For it +is the god-given privilege of each to bring suffering to the other, +because he loves that other more than life, more than self, more than +happiness, and it is understood that their mutual goal is the priceless +heritage, perfection. Nothing short of perfection remains. For this all +else, even life, is a paltry price. There is no hiding the truth. This +is the supreme test for great loves, great friendships. Both mates are +equal. <i>Equality</i>—the word comes to mean more than worship.</p> + +<p>This philosophy is justified by the law of sacrifice. That which we +love more than life is ours more wholly than ourselves, by the great +law. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>In fact, we cannot belong to ourselves; we must work upon +ourselves until we are big enough to cast body mind and soul in the +heart of another, without fear. Separateness—the pitiful sense of +self, has long been the prime illusion of the world, the cause of all +lust, wars and torments. Those who are not great enough lovers to +surrender all to their love find pain and disparity throughout. They +have yet to learn that all that belongs to the self-willed, only half +belongs, for it has not been given its freedom.</p> + +<p>In loves such as the New Age is bringing in, true creativeness is +touched. In worshipping both the soul of her child and that of her mate +more than her own, the mother is given for the moment a beam from the +divine shaft from the Creator. For that moment she has over-reached +herself. Just so is the new love constantly over-reaching itself in +the cause of the loved one, a divine madness the world has not begun +to dream of—to belong and to have, to be in and through and around +the loved one. Thus to over-reach is to create. The ordinary one must +become extraordinary when loved in this god-like manner. To over-reach +oneself—that is the cry of the New!... To think or act in any way +that will hurt the self becomes impossible then, for the self is truly +become the other lover.</p> + +<p>Blindness of passion is far from the nature of things in the new loves. +Or rather such passions have been washed and redeemed until they are +self-governing. There is all the difference <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>between them and the world +idea of passion, as between adoration and infatuation. Deep waters +and deep characters hold to their channels. Only shallow and frothy +currents are loud and turbulent.... Again it is the three in one. How +could one hold a mad destroying passion for one in whom the parent +child and master are equally dominant? Always the spirit of tenderness +is there like an unseen third. Thus passion has become compassion, and +the earth love is seen truly for the first time partaking of the nature +of the infinite love which holds the universe together. This is the +source of calm, of will-lessness.</p> + +<p>The elder generation, judging all things from the standpoint of the +self will, is dumbfounded. Such iron repression among children is +beyond its imagination. The elder generation goes on living sharkish +and predatory lives, experimenting with repression after too much +getting and taking and licentiousness. It concentrates terribly on +repression, throwing up about itself temporary breastworks, developing +cruel red rays of personal will which at best is but a defiant +pugnacity. Its eyes grow red and voice savage. For the time the +gargoyles of the ancient self are locked in the lower room, but they +are not mastered. All personal will is but a confession of inordination +within. Where there is inner order and beauty, it is not needed, +becomes indeed an affront to the most high.</p> + +<p>The beautiful will-lessness which marks the re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>lation of the sexes +of the New Order is the key to the freedom of the future. Tiger and +ape are transformed into white presences—the mutinous slaves of the +earth-self become cosmic servants.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_18" id="chapter_18"></a>18</h2> + +<p class="title center">SHUK</p> +</div> + +<p class="drop-cap">I was talking to a group of young artists in Chicago. There was a boy +there who seemed disturbed because the others dared to be natural in +my presence, and talk about themselves. I was quite at ease, enjoying +myself, and getting altogether as much respect as I deserved.... This +lad walked with me to the train. I wanted to take him home. I liked his +voice and his hand and his mind. I thought at first that he could not +mean all he said, but I was wrong about that. Reverence is sometimes +very hard to take, but the one who brings it has the pure surface of +receptivity. The boy said, as my train pulled out:</p> + +<p>"No, I can't come now. There's a month to be spent at home in Michigan, +and a season's playing with an orchestra up in the lake resorts, but +after that—say October, I'll come to Stonestudy."</p> + +<p>That was exactly what he did. He had it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>all planned months ahead. It's +Shuk's<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> way—a mathematical mind, a crystal mind. The theosophists +would say that he belonged to the intellectual ray.... We are always +better with Shuk in the room. He comes half way to meet our process +of lighting up, which is the devotional process; in fact, Shuk +incorporated himself in our ideals in exchange for a year or two of +living the life at Stonestudy.... These things never die.</p> + +<p>A raincoat, a black bag—these are Shuk's possessions, all weight and +measure minimised, even to the kind of white paper which wears best and +packs best. Shuk means order. A page of his "copy" is a rest to the +eye. There is a finished quality to his sentences. My tendency is to +rush into a mental clean-up when he enters the room. I'm not impressing +these details as his virtues. Shuk's virtues are cosmic. He will +presently be telling the big tales, and telling them fast.</p> + +<p>As a group, we are learning to come and go from each other. We have +learned well not to lean—rather to anticipate the Law and leave the +beloved when the tendency to cling becomes too keen.... There is a time +to come and a time to go. I always think of the Master Jesus, leaving +His disciples—saying that they would not find the Comforter within, if +He remained with them always.</p> + +<p>Shuk had much to do in bringing home to us <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>this valuable concept. +We had a way of thinking the world would come to us on the Lake Erie +bluff. It would. It did. But we were getting fat and baronial; a bit +fat of brain, perhaps.... Better than that, the gaunt, lean face +forever at the window-panes of civilisation.... Comrades are always +together. Big meetings, easy partings. One does not know how close +he is to another, until their thoughts spark warm over a lot of +mileage—the immortality of it all stealing in through the soft airs of +night, perhaps.</p> + +<p>I teach the young ones to stand alone at every chance. The idea is +to make them penetrate for themselves, as swiftly as possible, the +main tricks and illusions of matter; to make them see past any doubt +that to be worldly-minded is to be inferior. Still they must see this +for themselves. I formally renounced parentage in the case of the +Little Girl. I take all my authority from the younger boys at frequent +intervals—especially when they have been real mates:</p> + +<p>"Don't advise with me," I tell them. "Show what you know about +living.... Do it your way. If you begin to botch it, I'll come in and +be a regular parent again, but the idea is to set you loose."</p> + +<p>These matters come out naturally in relation to Shuk. He'll be +surprised to read this. None of the young ones ever adequately credit +the fact that I do a lot of sitting at their feet.... We <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>could see the +world as one piece better with Shuk in the room. His intense listening +pulled my eyes constantly. He wanted to know about stories—about +writing stories. His presence made us all better workmen because he +was so zealous to become one. I had long been absorbed in the romantic +side of world-politics, but Shuk decorated the subject with a new +romance.... The farther away a country is, the more we know about it +from a fiction standpoint. His mental forms are very strong. Shuk and +I have practically covered the same run of thoughts in a morning's +work—our machines a mile apart—no prearrangement. But this has worked +out so often as to cease to be a novelty. The Little Girl's letters +have often crossed with mine, carrying the same spiritual unfoldment—a +four days' journey distant....</p> + +<p>Another realisation related with Shuk's coming, is that I do not belong +as the master of a school in the economic sense. There was much detail +at Stonestudy, much householder's management required. I wouldn't have +given it up, if I had been unable to do that part, but it was a waste +of force—wretched economy for me to take charge of such affairs. We +plan to support ourselves, but I cannot run a school, apportion tasks, +or puzzle devotedly among the meshes of finance. This part of the work +in California will doubtless be taken care of by those who do it well +and profit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>ably. There have been moments when I wanted to go among all +the schools—happen in, stay an hour or a week—until the children and +teachers forgot me, so I could find my own among the many.... But again +it occurs to me that wiser plans than mine are behind it all. Those +who are ready, come; numbers will take care of themselves; all we need +to do is to make the most of the nearest, and keep up our song in such +accord as we can in the midst of the world's sacrificial madness—many +girls' voices now, for the war has plucked the boys....</p> + +<p>Some of the things of Shuk's which I chose for this book were about +the big war and are not profitable discussions now, but with his paper +included in an earlier chapter, and one or two small things here, his +quality can be seen. This is a letter to the Old Man:</p> + +<blockquote><p> ... I haven't ceased to follow the Wars. Big one inside. Tremendous +flights, dizzy careenings, impossible falls. Am tramping noisily +through the forbidden garden of Books. Am becoming more and more +vividly aware of Life, above actuality, beyond sorrow, interior to +joy. Vital and thrilling peace to all your endeavours.... Enclosed +a paragraph or two on tallying off the world-war within, with the +world-war without:</p> + +<p>Evil is stupid mixing of good things into in-harmony. Evil is simply +ignorance. Ignorance does not fade away, but must be worked out, worn +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>down. War is evil in this process. Man's higher nature is naturally +at war with ignorance, manifesting in his lower nature. If man had +always kept at this war against the domination of the lower self, he +would never have needed another war to jar and jog him along. But man +decided, in ignorance, that he had no cause for war with the lower +self. This was his first illusion. The next mistake was natural. Man +thought he would get rid of evil by killing off the lower selves of +other men. All due to his first error in looking outside instead of in.</p> + +<p>It's all wrong to think we must leave our own houses in order to fight +the greatest battles conceivable. If we do not accept the fight within +ourselves, we shall certainly have the same fight, once or twice +removed, forced upon us....</p></blockquote> + +<p>Whatever portion of humankind is chastened and quickened by this big +field-war and sea-war, is the first fruits of a nobler race. Man has +had countless and continuous opportunities of doing this purifying +process to himself in privacy and peace; instead, he has consistently, +with rarest exceptions, used his will to serve the lesser self, or deal +with the lesser selves of other men. Now, in these years, every man who +failed, will learn the lesson, because it will be forced upon him. If +our wisdom is not so great and old as we hope, if we have in the long +past thrown away our chances, then we shall surely go out and fare as +the others fare now—in exactly the right proportion.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span></p> + +<p>Killing another doesn't work as a means of self-correction. Hereafter, +I'm interested in correcting myself. There is very little outside work +left to do. This is a commonplace, of course, yet it reminds me that +the highest wisdom is something grandly simple and easy. Murder is an +aggravated waste of both time and opportunity.</p> + +<p>Yet I am at peace with nobody, not even myself. Peace ought to be more +intense than war, and until it is, we shall have to go through many +wars to arrive at any kind of peace. Many slaveries is the price of +freedom.</p> + +<p>One who fears will be brought up facing monster fears, until he learns +next time that his personal fears were too petty to mention. One who +has greed and envy will surely be made a pawn in a game of greed so +colossal that perhaps, in a future time, he will have no interest in +neighbourhood greeds, but will have learned to see and to desire the +whole world. His greed has been stretched into a passion for dominion; +and the most fascinating field for empire he will discover within +himself.</p> + +<p>So wherever we stand, we can't lose out. We can choose to do good, +better, best—but without choosing, nothing less than all right can +happen.</p> + +<p>The brighter facts are that all these warring energies, whether of +men or ordnance, are the force of one God, energies working out of +the muddles men made. Man has disturbed the balance. Man now makes a +sacrifice in order to restore equilibrium, to release the powers he +misused.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span></p> + +<p>The greatest conceivable struggle must sooner or later come between the +higher and lower nature of every living thing. Man is now preparing +himself, collectively and individually, for this final conquest. His +prime illusion seized him when he turned away from his own faults, to +correct the faults of his brother. The secondary illusion is that the +brother will not be able to care for his own faults. The third is that +we must help our brother correct himself. The fourth is that if he +won't do it himself, in the way we say, we will do it for him.</p> + +<p>The world (and this means me) is just learning the rudiments of +war, just finding out how much vitality man has, how much courage, +the stupidity of all fear, the size of the globe, the depth and +possibilities of the elements, including the human soul; is perceiving +more of life and accepting intenser vibrations than ever before on this +terra. All this knowledge will go into the True Peace some day. But in +these nearby years, men are prayerfully eager to get back "home," where +all these godly lessons may be forgotten.</p> + +<p>Real War will positively show man that he must remember what he is +taught. When he comes "home," he will enlist immediately in the +interior struggle with his lower self. His war with other men will +train him to fight with the greatest enemy on earth, his own ignorance.</p> + +<p>I have already enlisted in this big war. My first victory was in +seizing the fact that the world is me and I am the world and nothing to +the con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>trary. The universe rises and falls with me, subjectively. The +goal is to make it—objectively.</p> + +<p>I am locked with impatience these days.</p> + +<p>After that, comes fear.</p> + +<p>I may go to the red fields to learn the nonsense about fear. Of course +I can theorise it now perfectly, and practise it at periods. But I +want it steadily, the non-wobbling wisdom. Already I have conquered +some fatuousness in myself. Out of my jubilation I write to you.... +Of course, the Many is not a model to follow. The "Many" is a picture +in every man's mind, composed of the inferior things that all other +men do.... Inclusion—intensity—love—creativeness—these Stonestudy +precepts contain all the story. They are certainly the way out and up +and over into Life.</p> + +<p>Shuk has done a little sketch or two on the big Romance of the new +social order:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Humour, universality, the highest good will, he writes, are the symbols +that flame from the temple of the New Race.... Everywhere appear +children of the renovating, re-vitalising, more cosmic tribe. They are +easily recognised. The hope of a full and decent future is with them.</p> + +<p>They will do little according to their immediate predecessors, and +much by an inner light of their own. Being wise and simple and not +destructive, they will gratefully accept all that has proven true for +earlier peoples. But they will in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>stinctively have nothing at all to do +with the traditions based on three-score-and-ten, or any other of the +unfortunately solid viewpoints that frost the world to-day.</p> + +<p>They love the world, have come to claim it whole, to reclaim it from +deluded ancestors who were solemnly, from birth, bent upon deeding +and selling and stealing and fencing in bits of the planet's surface. +Forerunners of this happier race have shown themselves to be masters +of materials, true workmen in the solid stuffs; but by their sense of +humour they are saved from any impulse to seize and sit upon fragments +of earth.</p> + +<p>These new ones are born with an urge towards unity. Their task, to set +the world in order. Their means, not so much a rearrangement of objects +as a very intense activity along the roads of Beauty and Truth, in a +co-operation unstudied and normal with the rest of mankind and with the +Igniting Principle.</p> + +<p>It may be observed that Beauty and Truth are too vague to produce +effective action in a solid world. This is invariably a saying of the +material-minded, however virtuous they may be. It is they who loudly +demand a dull utility over and above Beauty, and apart from it. It is +they who have agglomerated the chaos that is in this hour threshing +about in dust and blood. Their sober iniquities are the fertiliser to +force the seed of the New Race.</p> + +<p>It is not a cosmic blunder that the great minds of the world are found +in art, including the su<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>preme art of mystic religion—and seldom in +the arena of statecraft. The world was never managed from a senate +chamber; the cosmos is not guided by a king. When rulers of the past +have become great figures, that greatness usually rested upon their +gift of poetry, their love of art or wisdom, or some religious quality.</p> + +<p>Poems of twenty words have outlived the might of forty wars. A great +book is a higher achievement than a sweeping political move. The +dullest changeling with an obsession may set his seal upon a war to +the death of ten million men, but in the few lines of a true poem are +stored the honey of millenniums of human life. A genuine work of art +is more potent and practical than any blood-bought wall of tribal +separation, more vital and immediate than the doings of armies. To +judge of this properly, one need only know both kings and poets.</p> + +<p>Of the early kings of Rome, it is Numa who is remembered—and he was +in harmony with Celestial Order. Of countless other Roman figures, the +average mind turns first to Cæsar, who was a literary man, and whose +passion to write outlasted every march of his legions. Greece had kings +and statesmen and great generals, yet it is her wise men who stand +foremost. The conquering Alexander is famed chiefly because he was the +unwitting distributor of Grecian beauty. In fact, Greek history began +with Homer, the poet, and American history with Columbus, the dreamer +who is still our creditor. The mystics of old <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>China reached for the +Torch of Light, and they might have attained a true dominion over the +planet, had not their fear-inspired kings built a Wall and gelded the +Empire once for all. Gautama Buddha gave up kingcraft in order to gain +a higher mastery. Mohammed lived on the Road. Jesus the Christ set free +an energy in the world that is only gaining its real momentum after two +thousand years—and he firmly refused a material crown.</p></blockquote> + +<p> ... A hopeful dream, the poem of an autumn afternoon, the building of a +sphinx or a pyramid—these are not subject to time or conditions. They +remain.</p> + +<p>So the Children who are the hope of the world are not dismayed at the +medley of illusions emanating from the so-called ruling class. Emperors +and premiers do not get very much done either way; they themselves +abandon their own works over night. They are deserving of profound +sympathy. They only spread out more manful chaos to be set straight by +the master craftsmen—the artists, humorists, vitalists, mystics.... +Beauty is the sun-bright flash of the Infinite.</p> + +<p>With duty raised to a joy, and pain forgot, the Singers come, the +Builders, the Quickeners of man. The Unforgettables of the so-called +past were of this stock. Their leisure is deep—of a sort that sustains +the finitudes.</p> + +<p>All the good goals of yesterday are to be counted as mile-posts. +Direction is more impor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>tant than any imaginable goal; unvarying +tendency is more direct and splendid than any creed; the white path of +the quester is more precious than a stationary heaven.</p> + +<p>The modern children cannot stop on this side of the horizon because +they are creators. Life is their religion. Their rites are broad and +deep as man, as ancient and reverent as time, as new as dawn.</p> + +<p>They do not reject the Vedas. They re-fashion the Upanishads in their +own hearts. They study the travels and hopes of Jesus, listen for +the divine songs of Orpheus, penetrate the glitter of numbers with +Pythagoras, find satisfaction in the Mohammedan thinkers who connected +Aristotle with Moses. These names do not belong to the past. The +many Buddhas are perpetually modern. Kabir lives to-day in Tagore. +Heracleitus and Plato are still living springs.</p> + +<p>In just the same sense, the children of the New Race are old as +the Pelasgian Zeus, though in point of time they are here for work +and play in 1920. But their vitality, reality, beauty, power and +achievement—these are affairs of all time.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_19" id="chapter_19"></a>19</h2> + +<p class="title center">IMAGINATION</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Many mystics have lost touch entirely with the deep sunken abutments of +the spiritual edifice—the footings in matter. They are deeply wise in +the mysteries and unfoldments of contemplation, but lose their way like +mindless lambs in the world. We idealise a practical mysticism which +dares to walk the earth in the heat of the day, dares to contemplate +the stars as outposts of the heavenly kingdom, launching the vision at +last, not only to the Holy City, but to the Throne of Itself....</p> + +<p>Talks with Shuk at Stonestudy had a tendency to make us see the big +Unseen politics and diplomacies and rulerships of the planet. Here are +a few paragraphs from one of his letters which show the quality:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p> ... Kings and presidents are the most hampered of men. Great generals +are silly without their armies. To remove externals from us, to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>rid +our minds of the illusive and the inessential, is simply to clear +us for action. Even a gunner, in taking aim, regards the object or +enemy as an abstraction, and focuses his whole attention upon his own +instrument, his sights. If he actually looks at the enemy, he will not +hit him. The billiardist first glances over the entire table, then, +to make a true shot, concentrates his full attention upon the tip +of his own cue. Perhaps the great leader of armies does not regard +individuals or see them as men, but as extensions of his own body, and +in time of stress, he has forgotten them completely save as abstract +power for his use, and that use he determines interiorly. Even the most +material-minded of men, in the crux of worldly and four-square events, +sinks into deep and effective cerebration. Can we, who realise this as +a conscious and direct principle, do any less?</p> + +<p>I think the Guardians are sitting together a little way off, watching +with grand interest, to see just how much of a mess mankind can make. +Man is always given lavish supplies with which to create works of art +that may prove equal in beauty and wonder to the universe itself. Man +does not yet see art in these materials.</p> + +<p>He must open his eyes before the Powers are able to help him. The +Guardians cannot operate against man's will, because their will and +his will, including yours and mine right now, are of one piece. The +will of the Guardians is better trained and cleaner, because more +experienced.... When men cease to shout for different things <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>from the +same Father, they stand a chance of getting the Father's attention.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>We have had many astonishing hours in Chapel talking about these +"Guardians," the arrangements above, as below, one Plan governing all. +We do not care to bandy about the name of God a great deal, for we +realise that He is most unseen when embodied in matter; that He is apt +to be far from the mind that makes familiar with Him in words. Yet all +stands for Him, all reveals Him. The farther we can see beyond mere +eyesight, the more we realise that He is <i>not</i> standing exactly in +person, just outside of the boundaries of matter.</p> + +<p>There are hierarchies, so to speak. There are messengers and couriers +and charioteers, saints, pilgrims, angels, courtiers, priests and +politicians, grades and authorities represented there, such as we find +in Matter and Romance here.... Shuk and Steve and I used to hypothecate +the existence of a White Council back of all the religious movements of +the world. By humour and analogy and romantic speculation, we arrived +at the point of view that the world religions are one at the top, and +that initiates, illuminati, masters are stationed at intervals to help +humanity up the slopes. We conceived the White Council as a centre of +wisdom love and power, holding up the cup continually for revelation, +guiding and guarding humanity's soul. We glimpsed the fact that the +leaders of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>White Council might be beyond embodiment—at least in +avoirdupois—the holy of all holy men. Only a most pure and potent +messenger, we thought, would be permitted to reach this Inner Temple, +this Shamballah, compared to which the Vatican is a salon open to the +public and the monasteries of Thibet a concourse for pilgrims.</p> + +<p>After religion, we realised that there must be an upper centre for +all that is represented here below so diversely in politics and +nationalism. It couldn't be God Himself back of the dumas and senates, +reichstags, diets and parliaments. One does not pass from elevator-boy +to editor in chief in a great commercial office. If there were a White +Council back of all the religious movements of the world, there must +be a Big Mill back of all world-politics—a gathering of directors, +venturing to judge the problems of men because they had risen above +them.... These men could want nothing material. We perceived them +behind armies and thrones, manipulating kings and diplomats and secret +centres, in ways that even the closest agents did not understand.</p> + +<p>We concluded there must be another centre made up of the +master-artists, bringing through into matter (as the world can stand +it and as the little human instruments reach up for them), the great +delivering beauties of song and story, paint and verse and tale. And +this we called the Shop Itself. Sometimes we fancied that it was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>all +too much, even to dream of going there sometime to see the forms, the +marbles, the canvases, the manuscripts—the Artists themselves.... And +then we realised that, just as all the arts and all the religions and +all the political movements were one at the top, that Politics and Art +and Religion were one at the next eminence; that the Inner Council and +the Big Mill and the Shop Itself were one at the top, just as Wisdom, +Love and Power are; as Goodness, Beauty and Truth are; as Father, Son +and Holy Spirit are—three in one at the Top, and that was Himself....</p> + +<p>And then we would rise from Chapel and go out and look at the +lake—Steve and Shuk and I.</p> + +<p>Finally one day we were told that we had done some right good +dreaming—that it was all true. We were advised that it was no affair +of ours if other people didn't get it right away; that they would get +it.... So we began to put these things in stories. They mean Romance +to us. Queerly enough the stories are coming through—one long one +especially, called <i>Archer</i>, that shows the downhere activities of the +Big Mill and the White Council and the Shop Itself.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>I have said it often in this book—that our culture consists of the +quantity of properties that we have tallied off—the within with the +without. The Kingdom is within, also the King; the Sky and the Nest are +one; one are the heavens <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>and the homing heart that finds its peace in +the deep vales where the adorable humanities come to be. The inmost and +the uppermost are one.</p> + +<p>We are where the torch of consciousness is.</p> + +<p>We are in the body, or in the mind, or in the soul; we are in time +or eternity, or we pass back and forth.... First we tally off the +far outposts of the kingdoms without and within; first we are mere +sentries learning to become clear-eyed and brave to stand alone—almost +outsiders, having scarcely heard of the Kingdom, dimly conscious, but +learning to become steady-eyed. Then we are called in a little—called +in to become couriers on foot, running to and from among the outer +provinces of the kingdom; then messengers to the Middle Countries; then +Charioteers to the gates of the City; then ministers to the court of +the King....</p> + +<p>The day comes at last when we have audience with Him—when we rule +with Him, when we become united with Him. From the throne Itself, then +we perceive the outsiders, the sentries, the couriers, messengers, +charioteers, the winged riders and the deep-down men of the +dungeons.... With the fine tranquillity of power, we measure forth to +all, reverence, justice and grace.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_20" id="chapter_20"></a>20</h2> + +<p class="title center">BOYS AND DOGS</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Children of the new social order love strange creatures; they are +passionate about the care and protection of animals, but until they are +made to suffer, they are apt to be sceptical about the infallibility +of their elders. They are usually forced into silence early. I have +noted that their ideas are intrinsically at variance with parental +ideas—about purity, sunlight, dancing, foods, religion, odours.... +It takes a good man to break a horse or a dog. In a sense <i>break</i> is +the word, although I would accomplish it with enchantment rather than +a gad.... This is invariable: "When the pupil is ready—the Master +appears——" an old occult saying, and another: "The first thing the +Master does, is to break the back of his disciple——"</p> + +<p>Stiffness of opinion, rigidity of holding to that which one has, +preconception, deep-rutted habits of mind—all these are fatal to that +swift and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>splendid growth of the disciple when he first finds his +teacher. For days the child is in a bewildering series of changes—made +over new each fortnight—reviewing lives of experience—razing the +old structures to the very footings for new temples of mind and soul. +The child must be ready to give himself—must give himself utterly. +The essential reverence is first required; the self is broken for all +births; one gives one's self to gain all. I would not try to quicken +a child who doubted what I was saying; and yet I have never sought to +make myself unerring or infallible. I like to have the young ones make +humour of my frailties, and at the same time believe there is something +priceless in our better moments together. There is no possibility of +front or acting.</p> + +<p>I seek to make them practise the presence of the Divine in themselves. +I tell them never to do anything alone that they would not do before +me. I take away all sense of sin from them. I sometimes congratulate +them on being especially close to us, because of mistakes. I seek to +set them free in all their ways, stripping the last attraction from +evil, jockeying them higher from a humorous and artistic point of view. +I show them the banality of many popular and obvious evils, the dulness +of paying the price for something <i>off</i> form and of questionable taste.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>There is a lot of humour and nobility about a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>good dog and a good boy +together. John has been sleeping for a few nights in a bit of a cabin +with an open door. He picked up a friend down on the beach somewhere, +the same that he described as "World Man Dog" in one of his letters. +I liked the tone of his voice as he talked with this old loafer named +Seaweed.... One evening I was sitting on the hill above the cabin, +so still that even a bird would have mistaken me for a part of the +landscape.</p> + +<p>World Man Dog came up the cabin grade. His head was down—thinking. His +tail was straight out behind him, as a dog's tail is when very much +engaged with his own thoughts. You could see that he was going to keep +an appointment; it was evident that he was afraid he might be late. He +did not see me, so completely was he engrossed in his own affairs. He +went right on up to John's door, entered, gave a look round the shack, +first eagerly, then to make sure. His face fell, his body sagged—down +he slumped in the middle of the floor—utterly dejected. As plain as +day:</p> + +<p>"Hell,—he ain't here!"</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>A real dog trainer is a wise man. I used to raise collies and was +around the benches some—watching the champions come and go. One old +trainer talked to me:</p> + +<p>"Styles change in dogs," he said, "but a good dog doesn't change. He +goes on and on. You <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>don't get the good collies here on the benches any +more. This year they want the collie so fine that we have to pinch the +brain out of his head and break his lung-room in two. Last year we bred +for hair, not for body and brain. Look at that one——"</p> + +<p>He pointed to an old sire that had three seasons of the bench and +blue, a sweeper of prizes. I remember the time when such a head would +have started a stealer anywhere. The old collie had not lost form, +but styles had changed. A most stupid dog with a straight, narrow +head had won—not the shepherd type at all, but the head of a Russian +wolf-hound—a bit of the monster left in it, a drugged look in the +small black eyes; hysteria there, and not fealty—madness and not soul.</p> + +<p>"We breed them for the cities now—for porches and parlours," the +trainer added. "Yes, those great collie strains that we have been +nurturing for centuries to all that is brave and hard and useful—we +are putting the hair of the lap-dog on them now—long silky stuff, not +for snow and sleet. The collie walks by himself these days. No, we +won't altogether ruin the strain. Many individuals are spoiled, but the +race had come too far and too long to be broken down by a few years of +fancyfying."</p> + +<p>Of course, I was thinking of the children at <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>every stage of the +talk—of city people and children. As a race, the city-bred have become +too fine. Life has worn them thin—given them the drugged look about +the eyes. The race will never get far in the art of living until it +comes home to the land and the restful distances and free flowing airs. +This is so true that it seems to risk wearing the eye and the mind—to +say it again....</p> + +<p>It's good to see them—a boy and a dog together in the hills or down +by the edges of the land. There was a piece of decent collie in a +dog named Jack back on the lake shore. He was long in strength and +courage, but a bit shy in obedience. As a work-dog, he was ruined by +a man who knew less than he did, frequently the case in bringing up +dogs and men—whipped at the wrong time, every forming endeavour in +the pup-brain broken by that. He is seven or eight years old now ... +a clean dog, a very wise and kind dog, with a sly and quiet humour +that seldom is cruel and never falls into horse play—a lover of many +children and confident of an open door in many homes.</p> + +<p>I remember the dignity and beauty of his first appearance over the +bank from the shore, almost timed to our arrival. We were tender to +the collie in general, having passed years with them. Jack moved from +one to another accepting embraces with a kindliness that mellowed +that cloudy day. There was joy about it all. I stood back waiting <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>my +turn with much self-control. He submitted to the welcome—to the last +detail, and a little later refused refreshments with perfect courtesy.</p> + +<p>When we came back the second summer, we found that a bullet had broken +Jack's right front leg. He had wintered out at times, had known much +pain. It was not that he did not have good friends who would have taken +him in, but I think Jack lost faith a bit in the pain and stress. There +was grey about his muzzle. One day he sat in the centre of the little +Chapel class.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to be as good a man as Jack is a dog," one of the boys said.</p> + +<p>"You'd be one more man," said another.</p> + +<p>The fact is Jack has filled his circle rather well. This thought came +to me presently with fuller meaning. I regarded him with knowledge of +three seasons. A clean dog, a gentleman, a master of himself, very +courageous and slow to anger, impossible for small children to anger—a +dog among dogs, but more than dog among men.</p> + +<p>"He <i>has</i> filled his circle," I said aloud. "What makes a man look less +in these very virtues that Jack has mastered, is that a man's circle +is larger, and he has not reached the time of fulfilment as Jack has. +If the dog's accomplishments were suddenly lifted from his circle +and placed in a larger one, we would not be conscious of the fine +integration of virtues that keep us interested now."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span></p> + +<p>Men, lost in the complications of cities, yearn for the simplicity of +their early days on the farms; and yet they could not go back. The +simplicity they yearn for is ahead. That of the old country days is but +a symbol of the cosmic simplicity in store for us. Tolstoi turned back +to the peasants, yet the simplicity he craved was not there.</p> + +<p>The peasants are merely potential of what the New Race will be; the +peasants themselves must suffer the transition—must have their circle +widened and feel their little laws and their little sense of order +suddenly diffused over broad, strange surfaces. Their cosmic simplicity +will appear when the larger dimension is put in order. That which is +lovely in any plane of being, is that which is in flower—when it +has about filled its present circle. We are not less, intrinsically, +because our values are placed in a larger vessel, though we have a +renovating sense of our own insignificance. There is an order of small +men, so obviously a part of their very narrowness, that it becomes +instantly repulsive to larger souls. Many of the latter have flashed +off to the end of their tether for the time, preferring chaos, to the +two by two neatness of small-templed men.</p> + +<p>A secret of growth lies in these observations. We fill a certain +circle, restoring a kind of order in the chaos; and then the circle is +suddenly widened and that which was our order and mas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>tery is loose and +diffused within the larger orbit. Herein are the pangs of transition. +We lose our way for the time in the vaster area, like a man who is +unfamiliar with an estate just purchased. There is but one thing to +do—to begin to work upon the new dimension. As we work, courage and +patience steal in. Presently comes the vision of the completed circle. +When this comes, our labour is pinned to a fresh ideal, and we are safe.</p> + +<p>In a hundred ways I have found it true that the vision comes in the +labouring hours. One may move for weeks about his new estate (or +manuscript), planning this and that, but the glimpse of the cohering +whole is denied him, until he has actually begun upon the nearest or +most pressing task. This is the miraculous benefit of action again. In +giving ourselves forth in action, the replenishment comes. The sense of +self ceases to clutter the faculties as we bend and toil.</p> + +<p>The days that are added to our experience each bring this story in a +different way: that the sense of self impedes reality on every hand; +that the loss of the sense of self in labour and service renders us +instantly quick to the animations of the spirit, without which at least +from time to time, a man belongs to the herd, and is lost, like all +gregarious creatures, in the will of his superiors.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_21" id="chapter_21"></a>21</h2> + +<p class="title center">THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">There is a man here who has found peace. I made a pilgrimage to his +house. A boy from the village went with me part of the way up the +mountain. The Pacific was presently visible upon the right hand, and a +spacious verdant valley on the left. I lingered a moment on the trail, +rejoicing in the quiet splendour, and then noticed a vine-clad hut +still farther up the slope.</p> + +<p>"That's Mr. Dreve's cabin," the boy said.</p> + +<p>I learned from him that this man Dreve was well-loved in the village +and in the big city beyond; that he was a very different man now +from the one who had come here a few years ago; that he was torn and +maddened then, cursing God, but too stubborn to kill himself.</p> + +<p>"What helped him?" said I, because the boy had paused.</p> + +<p>"Well, it wasn't the climate," he answered.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p> + +<p>I saw he was wondering if I were worth risking the truth upon.</p> + +<p>"Did he fight it out with himself?" I asked carelessly.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the boy, and I now met a fine straight pair of eyes....</p> + +<p>There was an old sharp wedge to the story. Dreve's sweetheart had +died—the loss twisting him to the point almost of insanity. He had +climbed this mountain, it was said, and remained for three days, until +the town began to search. The marshal had found him sitting up there, +where the shack is now. Dreve was quiet and normal, but confessed +himself hungry. He had returned to the mountain soon afterward, and +built his cabin. In six months, Dreve was all changed over. He seemed +to have a new body and new mind.</p> + +<p>"You said he's here four days a week," I suggested.</p> + +<p>"Yes, he goes to the city. He has a good business, but has mastered it +to the point that several younger men can run it. Dreve only gives two +or three days a week to business affairs, though he has been a great +worker——"</p> + +<p>"He's up there now?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Does he mind strangers?"</p> + +<p>"Not your kind."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span></p> + +<p>I thanked him, and added, "Tell me—he means a lot to you, doesn't he?"</p> + +<p>"All a man could," said the boy. "I'm going back now."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Dreve was middle-aged, clean-shaven, deep-eyed. Time had been driven +to truce in his case. His face showed many battles, but when he spoke, +a kind of new day dawned and you looked into the face of a boy. I +remained with him three days. We talked of the new magic in the +training of children. We talked of the New Age and the great song of +joy and peace that would break across the world when troops turned home.</p> + +<p>Dreve had <i>something</i>. He seemed to breathe something out of the air +that other men's lungs aren't trained for. He seemed to have <i>within</i> +everything necessary for a human being, including vision and humour and +a firm grasp of the world. He was at peace about God and the world; +at peace also about death. Slowly it dawned upon me that this man had +walked arm in arm with life to the last abyss, and that life had been +forced to confess that she had nothing worse to offer, whereupon the +two had become fast friends.</p> + +<p>When a man can sit tight and lose everything he formerly wanted in the +sense of world possessions; when he has winnowed the last shams out +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>of the things called <i>fame</i> and <i>convention</i> and <i>society</i>; when he +has lost the woman who means all the world to him, and still loves her +memory and her soul better than the living presence of any other woman; +when he has come to realise that death contains everything he wants, +yet is content to wait for it—the idea of hell becomes a boyish thing +to be put away, and Lucifer returns to his old place as a Son of the +Morning.</p> + +<p>We stood together in the noon sun. Dreve did not even wear a hat.</p> + +<p>"I came here in great shadow and could not bear the light," he said. +"But one day I found my heart lifting a little as the sun came out. +Then I found that it was really true—that sunlight helped me. The more +I thought about it, the more I needed it; the more I loved it, the more +its particular excellence for me unfolded. Take anything to the light, +and it ceases to be formidable. Sickness is a confession. The time +is at hand when schools will teach that. Sickness is a confession of +ignorance which is a lack of light. If one is weak he cannot stand the +light. Transplanted things must be protected from the light. St. Paul +on the road to Damascus did not have enough inner light to endure the +great flash from without. Light works upon evil like quicklime—that's +why sunlight hurts the sick ones. It is also hostile to the utterly +stupid idea of what clothing is for—clothing that thwarts and +stran<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>gles every circulatory process of the flesh. There's nothing the +matter with sunlight——"</p> + +<p>The sun had not only redeemed the physical shadows of Dreve's life, but +symbolised the spiritual light which had come to him with the calm and +power of the greater noon-day. He did not speak in exact statements of +the one who was gone, but that romance, too, was like light about his +head. I thought of the wonderful thing that Beatrice said which helped +to heal the forlorn heart of her great lover:</p> + +<p>"I will make you forever, with me, a citizen of that Rome whereof +Christ is a Roman——"</p> + +<p>And I thought of the Blessed Damosel leaning over the barrier of +heaven with sweet and immortal messages for him who waited below in +the very core of earth's agony. In passing, the great lovewomen bridge +the Unseen for their lovers, who in their turn give to the world the +mighty documents of the human heart. In passing, this woman had become +everything to Dreve, so that I, a stranger, felt that he was not alone +but twice-powered. All his life was a prayer to her. He brought to her +spirit now the greatest gift that man can bring to his mate—the love +of the world through her heart.</p> + +<p>We had walked down to the ocean. Many young people were bathing in the +surf or playing on the strand. It was the presence of Dreve perhaps, +but I confess that human beings never be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>fore looked so wonderful to +me—a fearlessness and candour and beauty about the moving groups that +was like a vision of the future. All smallness of self was smoothed +away in the grand harmony of sun and sand and sea.</p> + +<p>"It's a kind of challenge to a war-stricken world, isn't it?" he asked +quietly. "Aren't they splendid together—the big boys and girls of +California?... Don't misunderstand me. I know the world. I'm not lost +in dreams. I know well the darkness of the world. But there are great +ones among the boys and girls playing together here. All are on the +road, but the great ones of the Reconstruction are already here in the +world—playing.</p> + +<p>"Great ones play," he repeated. "First we are labourers, then artisans, +then artists, then workers—at last we learn to play. That means that +we dare to be ourselves, wherein lies our real value to others—when we +dare to become as little children.... Hear them laugh.... You wouldn't +think this was the saddest little planet in the universe.... Look at +that tall young pair of sunburnt giants! She's a Diana, conquesting +again. Look at the wonder in his eyes! Perhaps it is just dawning upon +him that the man who walks with this girl must walk to God.</p> + +<p>"... Oh, yes, I know," he added laughingly, "there is flippancy and a +touch of the uncouth here and there—but we have all played clumsily at +first."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p> + +<p>I continually marvelled at Dreve's remarkable health. His stride up the +mountain-side was actually buoyant.</p> + +<p>"Did you ever feel that you could live as long as you pleased?" he +asked.</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"I think one does not learn this until after one has wanted to die. +One must live above the body and not in it—in order to make it serve +indefinitely—quite the same as you would climb above a street to watch +a parade go by."</p> + +<p>I put that thought away for contemplation, knowing that it belonged to +a certain mystery of Dreve's regeneration.</p> + +<p>"You know," he added, "one has to get very tired to want to die. Those +young people down on the shore—they want to live. They are not tired. +They want to cross all the rivers. They mean to miss nothing down here. +They can't see through it all. It challenges them. But the time comes +when everything on earth seems to betray. Then you have to turn to the +Unseen for the big gamble. The world is learning it rapidly to-day. +Look——"</p> + +<p>We had reached his hill-cabin.</p> + +<p>He turned from the sea to the valley. Night was falling. There was a +big moss-rose plant that smelled like a harvest apple, and filled all +the slope with sweet dry fragrance. There was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>a constancy about it, +and the great sun-shot hill was blessed with the light and creativeness +of the long day. It was like the song of finished labour from a +peasant's heart.... One forgot the world, the war, forgot that the holy +heart of humanity was in intolerable travail.... The valley that Dreve +now pointed to was like an English pastorale. It had the look of age +and long sweet establishment in the dusk. My friend was quick to catch +the thought in my mind.</p> + +<p>"... It is like England," he said. "There was a development of +detail in English country-life as nowhere else. I think of cherries +and cattle, of strawberries with clotted cream, of sheep-dogs and +sheep-tended downs and lawns, of authoritative cookery, natural service +and Elizabethan inns.... Everything was regular and comfortable. One +forgot to-morrow and yesterday in England before the war. I heard a +dog-trainer, speaking of a pup, say, 'He's a fine indiwidual, but his +breeding isn't exactly reglar.' ... With a rush it came to me that +nothing in the world is regular now. England isn't a soothing pastorale +any more—everything changed, demoralised—but only for the present."</p> + +<p>The dusk was stealing down from the far ridges. Our eyes were lost +in the California valley which seemed to be growing deeper in the +thickness of night. Almost as Dreve spoke, I expected to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>hear vesper +bells from some Kentish village. His low voice finished the picture:</p> + +<p>"Country roads and sheep upon the lawns, vine-finished stone-work, +doves in the towers and under the eaves, evening bells and honest +goods.... I think of the ships going forth from England, boys from +the inland countries answering the call of the sea and finding their +fore-and-afters and men-of-war in Plymouth or Bristol.... You know +it is the things that make the romance of a country that endure? All +these will come again. All the good and perfect things of the spirit +of old England will come again.... Our hearts burn within to think of +the yearning in the world for a peaceful valley like this.... Think, if +I could take your hand now and watch the sun go down upon a peaceful +world ... hear the cattle coming home and sheep in the perfumed mist of +evening ... doves under the eaves and the sleepy voices of children.... +I think Europe would fall to screaming and tears, and then lose its +madness for strife—if the big picture of our valley at evening were +placed before the battle-lines as we see it now."</p> + +<p>Dreve stared a moment longer. I fancied I saw a bone-white line under +the tan, running from chin to jaw.</p> + +<p>"A woman was leaving her lover," he added. "It had to be so. Each knew +that. Just as she was going, the woman said, 'I forget—I forget <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>why I +have to go away.' ... It would be that way with the soldiers, if they +could look down upon their own valleys and farms. They would forget war +and hurry down, saying, 'I'm coming!'"</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>I wanted to get closer to Dreve's secret of peace and power. I wanted +to tell it. Apparently Dreve wanted me to. Now, there's a price to pay +for these big things, but many are willing to pay the price if the way +is clear. Dreve had suffered all he could; then something had turned +within him, and he found himself in Day again instead of Death.</p> + +<p>"It must be told differently," he began. "For instance, if I should +tell you that the way is to love your neighbour as yourself, you +wouldn't have anything. Whitman said, 'Happiness is the efflux of +soul,' which is exactly true, but it didn't help me until I had +experience. Happiness is the loss of the sense of self. You can see +that clearly. All pleasure-seeking is to forget self. We loosen +something inside that sets us free for a moment, and we say we've had a +good time.</p> + +<p>"There are great powers within. The greater the man, the more he uses +this fact. We thought of steam as a finished power until the big +straight-line force of electricity was released. We can't explain it, +but we have touched certain of the laws which it obeys. The materialist +is inclined, as <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>ever, to say that electricity is the last force to be +uncorked on the planet, just as he said that the kerosene lamp was the +last word in illumination. The occultist declares that there are still +higher and hotter forces, touching Light itself, and indulging in the +laughter of curves and decoration where the cold monster electricity +moves only in straight lines.</p> + +<p>"Men have died to tell the story that happiness is radiation, not +reflection—that we have it all inside, if we could only turn it +loose—that all pain and fear and anger and self-illusion disappear the +instant we enter the larger dimension of life, exactly as the moon goes +out of sight in the presence of the incandescent sun.</p> + +<p>"I was emptied of all that life meant in the world—but something new +flooded in. I saw that all was not lost, but that all was greater than +I could dream; that all was waiting for fuller and finer expression. +I saw that what I could do for you, or for any man or woman or child, +brought me a living force of the love I was dying for. It became clear +that I needed only to clear away the choking evil of self, in order to +feel that I was a part of the tender and mighty Plan,—to touch the +rhythm of the Source, from which all songs and heroisms and martyrdoms +come.</p> + +<p>"It has all been said again and again. There comes a moment usually +after much pain when the human mind realises that it is invincible when +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>working with the Plan; that it may even merge with a kind of Divine +Potency yet retain itself; that it can actually perform its actions +with the help of that mighty fluid energy in which the stars are swung +and the avatars are born.</p> + +<p>"A cold monster indeed is this electricity compared to the odic force, +the dynamo of which is the human will. But the magic of it all lies in +the reverse of the whole system of use. This force destroys when used +for self, but constructs when it is turned outward. Here we touch the +law again that happiness is in radiation—in the loss of the sense of +self—in incandescence—"</p> + +<p>Dreve smiled at me with sudden revealing charm. "I would say that it +was all in loving one's neighbour," he added, "except that it has been +said so much.... It is true. You seemed to know it to-day on the shore. +You seemed to see the great ones passing there. If the world could only +know the joy of seeing the sons of God in the eyes of passing men!"</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Night had come. We sat at the doorway of his cabin, a waver of +firelight within, stars clearing above the misty sea.</p> + +<p>"It's all play when one gets into the Plan—all pain while one resists +the Plan," Dreve added slowly. "I used to think that I had a strong +will; that I had good will-force, as men go. It was the will of an +invalid child. If men could only <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>know the force that is theirs to use +when they enter the Stream! One is asked to give up old habits and ways +and propensities—but only because they are harmful and impeding. All +which really belongs is merely obscured for the time. It returns to you +with fresh loveliness and power. One does not give up three-space to +understand four-space. The truth is he must rise above the former to +see it all.</p> + +<p>"It isn't you and I who matter," he said abruptly, after a pause. +"These things are for all. I know what comes afterward—to a man or to +a nation—when driven to the last ditch of pain. A new dimension of +power comes. That's what happens. That's what the New Age is all about. +That's what the war means. We shall learn our new chastity. We shall +emerge as a race into a more serene and splendid consciousness.... The +price—the dead.... I could tell you something about that. One must +have prayed for death to know about that. Don't think of that now—only +take it from me, or from your own soul, that the big Plan is all +right—that <i>They</i> haven't made any mistakes yet—that the loved one is +only away for a time—busy—quite right—about the Father's business. +Another time for that.</p> + +<p>"I can't forget them down on the Shore," Dreve finished. "That was +play. It was all a laugh down there. The big forces and the big people +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>are always a part of laughter. The laugh will take you to the throne. +The Gods laugh.... There's a laugh that ends pain. There's a laugh that +challenges power. There is the laugh of the aroused lover in the world. +We shall hear the laugh of the world itself, when the big revelation +breaks upon us all that the Plan is good—that the Plan is for joy."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_22" id="chapter_22"></a>22</h2> + +<p class="title center">A DITHYRAMB AND A LETTER</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">I think we come through at birth with certain sealed orders to be +opened at distant points of the journey.... Ten years ago, as I lay one +night, ready for sleep, hand lifted to put out the light—my eyes found +these lines:</p> + +<blockquote><p class="no-indent"> +<i>"Listen, I will be honest with you:<br /> +I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.<br /> +<br /> +These are the days that must happen to you:<br /> +You shall not heap up what is called riches;<br /> +<br /> +You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve;<br /> +<br /> +You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd—you hardly<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>settle yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by an<br /> +irresistible call to depart;<br /> +<br /> +You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who<br /> +remain behind you;<br /> +<br /> +What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with<br /> +passionate kisses of parting;<br /> +<br /> +You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd hands<br /> +toward you....<br /> +<br /> +'Allons! After the Great Companions, and to belong to them!'"</i><br /> +</p></blockquote> + +<p>The thing had come around by India—a quotation from Walt, in a +little Hindu book of love and death by Nivedeta. It spoiled my night. +I resisted. Some entity connected with the lines seemed to smile +patiently. Deep within, I knew they belonged to me; that I should +have to realise them, line by line, then live them; that here was +a page from the envelope of my sealed orders to be opened after +clearance—opened far out on the white water.</p> + +<p>They used to strike me as hard lines until the warm laugh came up out +of them.... Romance means <i>Not to stay</i>.... Bit by bit, the story +unfolds that the Plan is good—that the Plan is un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>utterably good, that +one needs only to rise into the spiritual drift to find that all are +God's countries. First the big physical drift, the drift around the +world, along the waterfronts, missing none until the laugh comes, until +the petty things of life, in <i>no</i> arrangements or combinations, can +hold your faculties or even long attract the eye. You know them all.</p> + +<p>One must learn the world first; one must not miss the world tricks. The +men who have lived most have laughed most. But don't stay too long in +the labyrinths. They are passages of pain so long as you give yourself +to them. Still you must solve the maze. After that, don't stay—don't +stay to pick up threads. There are other mazes, other drifts. I +assure you life is rich and brave, but there is nothing so healthy as +a laughing discussion of death in one's own mind—the next step of +the cosmic adventure ... and to travel light there—not to take our +mortgages, our material ambitions, our stone houses full of effects—by +no means to take our card-indexes and letter files—to travel light, +to pick up the brighter shells by the way—every glimpse ahead showing +higher light—a more spacious and splendid prospect.... Why carry +our furs and frost-proof igloos for this adventure in the deeper +tropics? ... To become as little children—to be open hearted and free +handed—to listen, to believe, to make pictures, to see across apparent +separate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>ness, to forget one's self in the daisy fields, to love the +light and the land, to fall into ecstatic speculations! You can't do +that if you carry the plumbing of your house in mind, and stop suddenly +to recall if you turned off the water in the laundry-tubs.</p> + +<p>Weigh up your external possessions—weigh them carefully—for their +amount is the exact measure of your infidelity to God....</p> + +<p>To become as a little child—to know that the forests are filled with +other than things to eat—to love the mysteries awake, to love the +fairies and the hidden flowers into strange unfoldings—to be fearless +and free forever!... The Little Girl writes of her love for it all as +it comes:</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p> ... I have a half a minute to send my love and strong pull for <i>High +Flight</i>. We wanted this to be the magic week of the Home Coming, but it +must be best to wait a little longer. Wait, wait—that is the old song +of Earth—young waiting—big waiting—holy waiting. <i>I love it.</i> I love +the suffering of it. One is great according to how well one can wait. I +am loving Earth terribly. It is close to me, with its strange music.</p> + +<p>Last night, the Valley Road one and Esther and I were together—touched +great white things—talked and laughed and loved until long after +three. Each in her way is a power wherever she touches. Each has +everything within. Each is pure and wonderfully sweet. We wait, +open<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>armed, for you. There are wonders in Muriel—and in others. I +dream constantly of the beauty to come. Nature's ecstasy will be +bursting forth in fulfilment when our Lovers come home. I'm so <i>glad</i> +this morning!</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The children learn it so easily. I like to stop in this book and +let them say it—the big story of the Seamless Robe, the story of +Democracy. The young men say it strongly; and tenderly the young +women,—the dream of the mate in their hearts becoming the dream of +the Master. They all say it so thrillingly for me in their words and +lives—the little boys coming in with their tales of prairie and the +deeps; literally it is here out of the mouths of babes.... Dreve found +it in a woman, another in science, another in music, another in the +open road. Every man is his own way, his own truth and life. It waits +for all.... We keep fanning day and night, many of us who work at +home—the fanners of the Hive! We cool and harden the great spiritual +concept into matter, as the cathedral spires of wax appear and harden +in flaky white under the masses of the bees....</p> + +<p>I laugh at my own intensity.... It is our one tale, told in essay and +story, in different terms for cults and schools, for soldiers and +clergy, in verse and prose, with dignity and in slang, but here it runs +best out of the mouths of babes ... helping the Big Democrat get his +story through.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>... The rest of the chapter is the Little Girl's:</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Soul Speaks.</span></p> + +<p>I walked through a field. The brown soil was upturned and all the +richness of man's labour was in it.... The morning sun was lifting a +grey veil of dew up to its heart; the earth was fresh and cool where +it had rested. My feet were bare and sank into the soft richness. The +field was wide and pure and fragrant and alive. It seemed to sing as +the sun grew warm upon it. Ecstatic birds flew close and balanced +themselves magically in the sparkling air.</p> + +<p>I happened to be just ready to receive the golden loveliness that the +old Mother is always eager to give, that morning. She helped me to feel +the goodness of all things—the power and beauty of all, and the great, +giving spirit.... Inside I felt keenly the presence of Soul—that was +the secret. Soul awakened and breathing, Soul waiting and eager, Soul, +the holy quickener.... The heart beat peacefully, the brain hushed all +unnecessary thought and listened. I lay down upon the sweet ground +there—the body relaxed and forgotten.</p> + +<p>Then, from the depths within, I heard the sound of the Soul's voice +speaking these words:</p> + +<p>"This is the appointed time. Long enough have I sat mute and silent in +the darkness. We have learned the lesson. The circle of separateness +is complete. We are ready to enter a new globe now, a globe much +larger than the one we <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>have known, much more wonderful. In it there +are greater tests than we ever had before. But the new tests, instead +of being painful, are joyous; not separateness is ahead, but union, +oneness in all things.... Long have you gone your way alone, down the +road of deafness and blind eyes and pain; and not the way I would +have led you, though perfectly right, for it was an education. The +blindness and darkness of it has taught us what <i>not</i> to do, therefore +we know the path.... Ours were not object lessons; always we have +learned through opposites.... To learn the great lesson of listening, +we talked much. We told others of the paths they should take long +before we thought of following our own. We hated all things, to learn +how to love; we took all to ourselves, to learn how to give. We did +the things of death, to learn life truly.... We have suffered great +pain to know the secret source of the everlasting joy. We feared, in +order that we may become fearless, and know the mystery of the dark. +We chose the road of separateness to feel the ecstasy of oneness and +completion at last. We entered the terrible sphere of time and space to +transcend both and be free. We took upon ourselves pounds of tiresome +flesh, to make of it a golden symbol of the great spiritual beauty and +freedom. We asked for everything at first, but through our desiring and +brooding, we learned the most wonderful lesson of all—wanting nothing +but to give.</p> + +<p>"All is for us. The Path gleams before our <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>eyes—the long, sunlit path +leading to the Father's house. I go home with my love by my side. By +crying out in agony, and by weeping bitterly we have learned how to +<i>laugh</i>. The world is needing us; we contain all things. From now on, +we live as one in Wisdom, Love and Power."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_23" id="chapter_23"></a>23</h2> + +<p class="title center">THE MATING MYSTERY</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">I thought a great deal about Dreve's love-story in relation to the +young people, in relation to the love of humanity, and in relation to +the mystical growth of a man denied the mate on earth. In the first +place, there must be many great love stories in the coming decades of +reconstruction, if for no other reason than that great children are +coming in. Such friends and brothers and comrades-of-all-the-earth can +only be born through the excellent and adequate love of man and woman. +In a recent novel, an old priest of the Gobi tells something of the +love story of the future to a young American who is greatly troubled in +his romance. I quote three or four paragraphs because this expression +in fiction is clearer than I could write it again. Rajananda says:</p> + +<blockquote><p>I have watched your devotion for the woman and it has been a holy +thing, my son. You love <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>well. She has become more than earth-woman to +you. She has become the way to God. This leads to true <i>yoga</i>. Where +there is love like yours, there is no lust. Without these trials you +could not have known so soon the love that will bring you in good time +to her breast. The ways of easily-wedded pairs sink into commonness +soon—the dull and dreamless death. It is those who are kept apart, +who overcome great obstacles, who learn the greatest thing of all—to +wait—who touch the upper reaches of splendour in the love of man and +woman, and thus prepare themselves for the greater union and the higher +questing which is the love of God together.</p> + +<p>The seer must know the hearts of men. Knowledge of love is the +knowledge of God. Love is the Wheel of Life; love is the Holy Breath +that turns the Wheel. The seer is far from ready for his work in the +world, who has forgotten from his breast the love of man and woman. And +then, my son, we are almost at the end of the night of the world. The +Builders are coming in to take the places of those who have torn down +with war and every other madness of self. These Builders must be born +of men and women—the New Race—but of men and women who have learned +what great love means.</p> + +<p> ... Listen, my son: in the elder days men put away their women to +worship God. The prophets, the seers, the holy men walked alone, and +left the younger-souls of the world to bring forth sons. The time was +not ripe for the race <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>of heroes, therefore the mere children of men +brought forth children. And all the masters spoke of the love of God +for man, and the love of man for man, and the love of woman for her +child, but no one spoke of the love of man and woman. All the sacred +writings passed lightly over that, even the lips of the avatars were +sealed. But now the Old is destroying itself in the outer world; the +last great night of matter and of self is close to breaking into light; +the time for heroes has come, my son, and heroes still must be born +of this sacred mystery—the love of man and woman. So all the priests +have this message now, all the teachers and leaders of men, even I, +old Rajananda who speaks to you, and who has never known the kiss of +woman—all are opening to the world the great story, unsealing the +greatness of the love of man and woman.... For the Builders are coming, +coming to lift the earth—the Saints are coming, my son—old Rajananda +hears them singing; the Heroes are coming with light about their heads +and their voices beautiful with the Story of God.... And now I must +sleep. I go to my daughter, who waits for you.... Once, before you +came, she rested my head and filled my bowl in the stone square at +Nadiram. Even now she waits for you in the hills of my country—not far +from this place, my son——</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>In the big expansions of life, in moments of great happiness, or +hard-driven by pain—most of us have realised that the higher we rise +in human <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>consciousness, the nearer we get to the All. Thousands of +people now living have risen, for short periods at least, above the +sense of separateness, in which they realised that the finest and most +exalted love a man may have is for "the great orphan, Humanity."</p> + +<p>The human heart is awakened through the love of one, to the more +spacious expression for the world. All life is a learning how to love. +The last love of the flesh and the rolling years, before man turns his +love from flesh to spirit, is the grand passion of man and woman, yet +man does not abandon the woman in turning to Humanity or to the Unseen. +Rather, hand in hand, the eyes of the man and woman are uplifted to one +star—the Apex of a Triangle perfected.... Yet one must not turn to the +Unseen until he has learned the full agony and ecstasy of the seen.</p> + +<p>"Love humanity by all means," I tell younger ones, "but learn what love +means first. Do not undertake to destroy passion until you have learned +its glory and madness. Rather lift passion to adoration, and use it, +full-powered, upon that which unfolds forever for your worship. It is +not well to kill out a personality until you get one."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Our youthful reconstructionists are apt to stir the community with +opinions or actions, which <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>have to do with their own heart stories +and the world's romance. They have a way of confounding the seasoned +authorities of pastorate and parish, with embarrassing questions in +regard to method and magic in the making of two souls into one. These +young people may not be modest according to Elizabethan ideals; in +fact, the young women are apt to go half-way in the choice of the man +who is to be the father of her children, but this is an essential of +innate beauty and fastidiousness. More and more the higher types of the +new social order are questers for that single and holy mating which +brings nearer the dream of the beautiful and heroic in children, and +which gives us a glimpse of a future to die for.</p> + +<p>The story of Romance cannot be written nor interpreted in life without +its hill-rock, named Liberty. There is no man-made law for love. The +first business of human beings is to find their own on earth. All +makeshifts part away; all short-range systems scurry past; all comets +and asteroids cease to be considered, when a pair of suns whip into +each other's attraction. And so it is with a true-mated pair. Those +who have dreamed long and kept themselves pure, realise here below for +a time the raptures of the elect. The new generation has a sense of +this; and while its eyes look hard and daringly for its own, its finer +examples preserve an integrity for the one until he is found.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span></p> + +<p>The New Race realises that promiscuity is only a lack of taste. To draw +the fulness and redolence from a book or a friend or a lover, from any +episode or fabric of life, one must search for the true, as well as the +beautiful, and the beautiful as well as the good.... Perhaps that tells +it best—it dares to love Beauty, this New Race. It means to bring +back the beauty of the body as well as to breathe forth the Soul. Its +devil and its danger is Paganism. It loves Nature so well that it is in +danger of forgetting that the old Mother is not complete in herself, +but a manifest of her Lord Sun....</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>As to the liberty of its loves—the New Race realises that one cannot +be held, except by vulgar hands, where that one does not want to stay. +A mated man and woman turn each other absolutely free, and the first +cry of their liberty is toward one immortal nest. Those firmly caught +in the pure dream are content to wait for each other. They do not +experiment. They realise the long road of romance—a road so long that +the three-score and ten is but a caravansary of the night. They build +above the flesh if for no other reason than to come into the greater +beauty of the flesh. Renouncing nothing, devoted to austerity only for +mystical union, carried away in no abandonment, they seek to achieve +that command of the body by the mind, and that command of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>body +and mind by the Soul, which reveals the ultimate truth—that the plan +is for Joy; that the best of all things is for men who have mastered +themselves; that chastity is the breath and inevitable answer to +self-conquest.</p> + +<p>The growth of Romance through an ideal mating becomes a fusion at last +of all the loves of earth. Connubial blessedness is therefore more +reverently to be promoted than procreation, for upon it depends the +loveliness of issue. The New Race acts upon the conviction that the +love between man and woman is the holiest of earth expressions, rather +than the love of mother and child. The first contains the second.</p> + +<p>Still no earth love is the end.... Built through austerity and +idolatry, through denial and abandon, through madness and martyrdom, +through pettiness and chivalry, through pain turning less and less +slowly through the years to power, through a little zone of peace at +last (the calm before the greater storm) the fervour of man and woman +becomes, in the fullness of time, too strong for earth, and in the +final and keenest pain, the administry of a higher force begins.... +I mean to tell this in a queer way through the next three or four +chapters. Straight statements will not contain it quite—for it is +<i>still</i> with dream, as yet. Rather I mean to weave the concept for +you—fold on fold—so that at the end you will have it, as they do who +have listened in Chapel many days.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p> + +<p>Flesh is not integrated finely enough to carry the higher ardours +of devotion. If the great saints who have learned to pour out their +souls in adoration to the Father should turn back to a mere physical +expression, they would blast themselves as well as the object of their +madness. The awakening of the higher forces of love lifts the eye of +the adorer from the breast to the brow of the beloved—from the brow to +the Initiatory Star risen at last to meridian.</p> + +<p>A new dimension of love is entered upon. All life tells the story. +Watch the big birds lift from the sand to the cushion of wings; watch +the airplane quicken its speed until it lifts from the monorail.... +Machinery of racking power in a falling house, is that great love which +has not yet learned to look above the body of the chosen one.</p> + +<p>This change is the last and highest pain of romance—the breaking +apart of the temporal, for the story of the long road. Man and woman +must go apart for the mastery of self, before they are ready for the +higher mating. The great love story invariably crosses the mountains +of separation. If we cling too long to the less, nature is outraged, +beauty is drained. Brief separations are dangerous, because the lovers +build recklessly with ideals and the rarest spiritual materials. +Meeting again too soon, they encounter an unmiraculous creature face +to face. If they had really completed the journey, finished the task +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>apart, they would have come into that tenderness which loves the human +frailties of each other, and which sees the manifest of three-score-ten +merely as a garment particularly made for a particular journey.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>There is always wrecking work, before a new and wider circle is entered +upon. The time will come when men and women shall learn that the +magic of going apart is equal to the magic of coming together. In all +birth-times, in all transitions, the consciousness of the bearer is +changed—often queerly.... One can endure the primitive and the child +in the other's mind; one might adore the great play of passion, and +all the art of it; one might never weary of fragrance of throat, or +magnetism of hand, the inimitable plays and child things—but the mind +is forever the slayer of the real....</p> + +<p>Remember, there is not a full union possible on the physical plane. +The body is the barrier that separates souls. Those who believe they +have all of each other in that which they see and hear and touch—have +far to come in the real love story. Have you ever asked yourself +what physical passion is? It is a frenzy to overcome separation. +This separation was necessary for the diffusion of life. It is the +outbreath, the going forth, the great generative plan.... Physical +passion does not satisfy the agony of the soul; often it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>only makes +the agony more keen. In the early phenomena of all great love stories, +there is encountered that blinding, bewildering need <i>to become the +other</i>—to lose identity, to fly somehow into the breast of the other +and be no more. This is keen pain of love but also an intimation of +greater union.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>There was a man who had found much of beauty and power, much of the +Burning Desert and certain wonderful touches of the peace of the Hill +Country—in his story with a certain woman. She loved him in a way more +real than he dreamed. Life had shown him much to scoff at. He had been +glad to make the most, merely, of an exquisite playwoman. One day she +was down town to meet him, but he left her for a business appointment. +That afternoon, about everything he had in a material way was swept +from him—much to which his ambition had tied itself for several +years. The man was badly rocked. He walked the streets—shocked almost +to laughter, to find all that he had held for, and held to, plucked +from under.... At length he thought of the woman who waited. The +laugh of mockery quickened, because he thought of losing her, too—a +worldly-heart who would go with the rest—goods that perish.</p> + +<p>He knocked at the door where she waited. It was opened swiftly. He +did not need to speak.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>... She seemed above and around him. There was +a great still sweetness he had never dreamed of as a man (and could +only remember dimly as a child to his mother), arms of tenderness +and healing.... He saw that instant in her eyes that nothing of the +world ever did nor ever could really separate them. The queerest thing +about it all was, that he used a word he never could use before—a +word, as he said, that had been so badly worked by the world that it +needed a lot of washing before it was fit for him. Yet it came to his +lips—<i>wife</i>—in a way that showed him also a new meaning to the word +<i>forever</i>.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>This subject of love and mating is only opened. There is much to say +in pages that follow, but now, apropos of nothing, if not this theme, +there is a chapter of letters. They somehow contain the spirit of many +things I have longed to express. Those to whom they appeal will find +the last pages of the book richer because of the insert.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_24" id="chapter_24"></a>24</h2> + +<p class="title center">CHAPTER OF LETTERS</p></div> + + +<p class="plabel">I</p> + +<p class="drop-cap">We come up through many slaveries into freedom. It is the end of a +considerable road to be able to stand against the morning sun, saying: +"I want nothing but to give——" ... To be able to say this without an +answering laugh of mockery in the heart, where old King Desire sits +with his dogs.</p> + +<p>To be free—that is to be irresistible. Do you want love? You only +spoil it when you stipulate what the return shall be—how the +proffering of the return shall be ordered and arranged. The great love +is giving; great love is incandescence. One must be radiant to be +happy. It is so literally. It is so, fold within fold....</p> + +<p>One sees gold, looking up from below, and its attraction becomes +eminent among all desires for the time. We pass it by and look down, as +the spirit of man should look down upon gold, and it becomes a mineral +merely. You can en<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>joy it as you enjoy other people's roses. It bestows +itself. Others seek to bestow it upon you.</p> + +<p>Hold to nothing in matter. It is slavery. Give yourself laughingly to +your work for daily bread without thought of result. Then, and not +until then, are you inimitable in your task. Order the performance of +your task with mere brain and attach it to your ambitions—you but do +what the many accomplish. Your product is multiple, not a perfect cube. +It cannot unfold into the Cross. It misses Resurrection. You must be +free, even to perform your work in the world. You must be free to be +irresistible.... Genius is approach to freedom. It finds its own paths; +it cuts itself free from the forms and vehicles of others.</p> + +<p>We have known the dark slavery of the opinions of others. Many of us +have cast off such bonds, who are still slaves to our own opinions. +We learn to stop lying to others before we learn to stop lying to +ourselves. Until we are free, we have no opinion that is fit to endure; +until we are free, our opinions are coloured and formed in the matrices +of personal self, which is subject to death.</p> + +<p>It's all so simple. We have to put down what is in our hands to help +others. We have to still our own thought to listen to another's saying. +We have to silence the self to hear the Master.</p> + +<p>This silencing goes on and on in all our work. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>Pain shows the way.... +We must traverse the deserts. We must cross all the rivers. We must see +one by one every material thing betray us. This is the Path—money, +opinions, ambitions, health, friends, desires, all betray so long as we +obstruct their approaches with our own conceptions and our own greeds. +We rise one by one above these illusions. The last and greatest is +that desire which is born in generation.... All the old reaches its +highest perfection in the human love story. All Nature binds one to the +loveliness of this tale. It is the way to the Way. Because it is not +the Way itself, it appears to end. The great intensities of agony now +begin. The soul realises that only the foothills of pain are passed; +that here are the mountains, here are the deep valleys that contain the +Gethsemanes and timbers for the Cross, and the plan by which the Cross +must be morticed and tenoned....</p> + +<p>The sea, the mountain, gold, the rose, the child, the peasant's +simplicity, the coming of the coolness of evening, the glory of the +clay and waterfall, mist and cloud and star, the deep healing winds +that come slowly with their heavy fruitage of power from the mountains, +the swift winds with the holy breath of the Sea—all these in the +breast of the mate.... When this dream is taken, one bleeds, laterally +and full-length. One wants to die; thus he overcomes death. He feels +the great burden in which all other burdens lose <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>themselves. When he +passes this highest series of inland peaks, the distances stretch clear +and shining ahead. This the test of faith because you deal with love +itself. Your soul, in its earliest advices, tells you that your love of +earth is pure.</p> + +<p>It is. It is good. It is the highest here.</p> + +<p>It is still to be perfected by the races, even by the new races, who +must be born bright with its untried magic.... But so long as it is +idolatry to that which is subject to change, it is hourly impregnating +the life itself with the seeds of pain....</p> + +<p>You are called to the love of Souls. Sooner or later you must go. It +is the Path. It is the steep path to the Master. You give up all to +go this way—and then you laugh to find it all returned in lovelier +dimensions. You take your idolatry from the plane of mutation—lift it +into the glorious and changeless plateaus of the spirit....</p> + +<p>You turn from the Seen to the Unseen.</p> + +<p>This is the passage. You are called to go alone a little way—to be +worthy of the great Meeting. You carry your gifts of the passage woven +into the Seamless Robe of your being. All that impedes day by day you +cast aside, as an army making a perilous retreat casts off day by day +its impedimenta—until at last you stand naked upon <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>the eminence, and +the Voice says, "Be not Ashamed—I am the Beloved...."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Out of slaveries.... We think at first that God is without—at last we +look for Him within. We come from the happiness of the Father's House +making our great journey, but our Soul's quest continually is for the +happiness again. Yet we must not look back. It is failure to go back. +That which we have left unfinished, is not behind, but awaiting ahead.</p> + +<p>We are slaves to our bodily health until we learn that the body is +superbly fitted for obedience to the Soul; that it comes into its +rhythm and beauty only when mastered. Indeed the very process of +mastery is to lead it to the Fountain of Youth.</p> + +<p>We learn that truly to be rich, we must give continually. We learn by +the quickenings of our spirit that white lines run from the brows of +all creatures to an apex which is God—that God is all. All is God.... +All is one. We are one. We are brothers. One house for all at the end +of the Road.... We find the King in our own Souls. We learn from that +that all men are Kings. We bow to all Souls. All souls are rays of God. +We come at last to see the sons of God in the eyes of passing men.</p> + +<p>Our passion now is outpoured. That is joy. We ask nothing but to give, +to heal,—to permit <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>the spirit of the Healing Masters to flow through +us, but first we clear away the obstructions of the self.</p> + +<p>Achieving our own chastity, we perceive the potential chastity in every +face. We are deluded no longer. The imbecile cannot hide our eyes from +the Flame. All purity must be found within. We have no fault with +others when we are cleansed. We see the heroes then, the giants, the +runners, the singers, the charioteers.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>We learn that we can give nothing real away—that all we do for others +is service for ourselves. We give pain for joy, time for eternity, the +human for the divine—give to receive, give to be radiant. We must be +Flame to be fed by the Flame Itself.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>We are prepared by every suffering, every humiliation, until the +personality bows at last.... Personality is good. It has brought us +where we are. Do not kill it out before its work is finished. We do not +realise its beauty until we see it mastered—until we see it with the +eyes of the Soul. All one story. We learn to love step by step. We love +ourselves, our possessions, our children, our friends, our mates, our +Masters, our God.... The higher we go, the more perfectly we contain +all the gradations.</p> + +<p>The last sufferings, the last tests, are so often through the human +love story, because all weak<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>nesses are easily shown through that—all +our pains so quickly received.... The bright sandals of the Master at +last are heard across the Hills. One laughs then, for He brings with +Him the beloved we have cried for so long.... Not in the love of desire +after that, but the love of giving, the love that casts out fear, that +passes understanding, that fulfils the law, the irresistible love of +the Christ.</p> + + +<p class="plabel">II</p> + +<p> ... A wonderful morning—a rare Monday—the highest hold yet—all is +ascending. All beings are so wonderful. I sit on a certain bench to +work one morning—the next morning cushions are there for me.... I +speak a sentence from a book with a word how much it means and how +worthy to love—and the sentence is brought to me illuminated on +vellum.... They bring the finest fruits—honey for tea, cream for +peeled figs, black bread perfectly toasted, the perfection of unsalted +butter.... I walk up the mountain to work—and the voice of the +gardener is a benediction from the Most High—and I stand for a moment +looking toward your sea over the city, and the birds say, "It is time."</p> + +<p>There is a pool of lilies at the top, an Alhambran villa, great rose +gardens.... I come to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>the pool—dip my feet in the still waters and I +know from that how chill the night has been. I look at the lilies—how +far they have opened—and know the time of day. I pray for a moment +under a priestly Pine ... and my heart goes out in the new joy we have +found—the joy of knowing that one may be the king of the world and the +confirmed Son of God—if he but learn the one lesson—to want nothing.</p> + +<p>Pool of lilies in the morning sun. (A little lizard is walking along +the arm of the bench. My bare feet are quiet, and he wonders what kind +of barkless trees they are. He is here and there. One sees his body +move, not the members. The sun puts him to sleep.) ... The pool is +still as the waters of sleep. The Sea—I think of her always as the +emotional body of the world—the old Sea Mother with diamond-tipped +emotions. And then I think of the Master Jesus walking upon the Sea +and saying "Peace be still" to the stormy waters.... Each Soul must +say that to his emotions. We learn to walk upright upon the earth, +then to still the waters, then to have dominion over the birds of the +air—and last to be seven times refined in the Fire.... Earth, water, +air, fire—the first quaternary.... Yes, we are learning to say "Peace +be still" to the stormy waters. We do not know how beautiful they are +until they obey.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span></p> + +<p> ... Out of the still waters in the pure blue starlight, the lily +blooms—the lotus on the still lagoons of the Soul.... Naked as a +serpent's head, the sealed bud rises from the water in the night.... +Out of the power that follows the peace upon the waters—for the blooms +of the spirit lift greatly in the tranquillity of the heart that +follows the storm—out of the power of peace upon the waters, the lotus +rises and waits like a bride in the dawn-dusk for her Lord Sun to brush +back the veils and find her heart.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>It is only the beginning of heaven we find here. We weary of the +world and turn back to the Father's House. We have plucked the fruits +of pain—we have thirsted and hungered again and again.... Out of +the darkness we have formed the thought, at last, that there must be +quenching waters, and somewhere bread to eat that does not perish.... +You can say it in a thousand ways. The Prodigal tells the story. He +arises and turns back. Evolution has ceased, involution begins again. +He is being folded back to the Father with all the treasures of Egypt. +He has ceased to diffuse himself in generation, through which he has +become an integral part of every fibre of the world, and begins now to +call in and synthesise all his spiritual possessions. The processes of +diffusion were in pain—the integration is joy again. Each day of the +up-slope his step quickens. The more he knows, the more he believes. +The more <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>he sees, the larger his faith—the more his treasures, the +more sumptuous his order. "Unto him who hath it shall be given."</p> + +<p>Again, it is merely lifting the consciousness from time to eternity, +from the cramp of space to the flow of the universe—from pain to +play—from desire to radiation.... One ascends and at each steps sees +farther. Day by day, the work of the installation of the higher powers +goes on. We give up nothing but that which impedes the inflow of +godly forces. That which we think we want to-day will look as absurd +to-morrow as the hopelessness of a child over a plaything broken.</p> + +<p>It's a way of loving every step. Thus we heal from the infinite tears +of the changes of matter and dissolution, and lift our love to the +Masters and the Immortal Gods. We dare love utterly only that which can +contain us. If the Masters loved us with all their power, we would fall +in the madness of too much light.... Always, they give us all the love +that we can endure.... We give our all to them and expand daily, until +we know the passion to break ourselves open in ecstasy, like the king +bee under the whirring wings of the queen.</p> + +<p>In the human body, the diaphragm is the surface of the waters. If +our consciousness is below that, we are in generation. To become +regenerated is to lift the balance of consciousness above—to +rise like the lotus from the face of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>stilled waters.... It is a +quickened vibration. Simultaneously, one lifts from cerebration to +intuition—from the time of matter to the spaciousness of Soul—from +the light of the camp-fire in the night, to the full day upon the +plain—from the son of man to the Son of God—from the pain of loving +with desire to the irresistible creativeness of wanting nothing but to +give.</p> + + +<p class="plabel">III</p> + +<p> ... I was watching the pool this morning—fish and frogs and eels +under the lily-pads—a slow cold life. They have colour and grace—but +eyes of glass. They move so softly down in the dim coppery light.... +I thought of the lakes and the seas, the simple cold of all life—the +coldest and most rudimentary in the great deeps.... Birds were playing +about in the rose gardens, darting in and out of the bamboo clumps and +yucca stalks. Humming-birds were continually fanning the trumpet and +honeysuckle vines.... I thought of the skylarks—throats that open +only as wings beat upward, and the infinite blue harbours where the +white gulls flash—the lonely lakes and tarns where the heron cross in +the evening and the loon cries at night—the cypress deeps where the +flamingoes commune in shaded glory, and the eagles that cross from peak +to peak, along the spine of the continents.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span></p> + +<p> ... And then, of course, it came to me—the old conquest—how we must +lift our consciousness above the face of the waters and put on our +wings.... Many have almost finished with the waters of generation—the +emotional body of man, the same as the planet.... In the beginning, it +was necessary to "go down into the water"—the terms of the baptismal +rite. Regeneration is "coming up out of the water." The struggle +between the two dimensions is dramatically expressed by the faith, and +the lapse of faith, of Peter when he obeyed the Lord, and arose to walk +upon his storm-tossed lower self. His supplication as he sank saved him +from perishing. Regenerated, he walked with the Lord upon the waters. +I remember, too, the saying, "You must be born again of water and of +spirit——," the story of regeneration told once more....</p> + +<p>It's a lifting from the cold, bloodless vibrations of the creatures of +the deep, to the winged passages of air and sun and starlight.... We +think that we give up joys of life—we plunge back again and again to +the dim cold waters—our eyes blinded at first by the light, our senses +frightened by the fragrance and the space.... As if the reflected +light of the lower cosmos could compare with the pure radiance above; +as if the love of desire could compare to the glory of the outpouring +heart—the heart filled with light—the fulness of spirit, the ecstasy +of wings.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span></p> +<p class="plabel">IV</p> + +<p> ... The time comes in the progress of spiritual aspiration when the +generative impulse begins to manifest within rather than without. +Firmly and gently the thoughts are turned to the Image within or above; +the tendencies for outward manifestation slowly but surely give way.... +This work sometimes goes on rapidly. A hundred times a day the thoughts +of earthy attraction are finished with a soul conception, where +formerly the mere physical presence sufficed.</p> + +<p>Nothing answers thought more swiftly, but in this passage of mastery, +if a single desire eludes from the aspirant, he must meet it later +in a tearing and cumulative call. Surely at length the mind rises to +rule. One's conception changes from the fear, the torment and the red +haze, to gentleness and calm, a readiness to know <i>all</i> the mysteries +of life—to care for and respect all functions as one only can who has +mastered himself.</p> + +<p>To cast them out in hatred is failure. That means the hardening. It +blights the beauty of the vales and all magic.</p> + +<p>When one begins to unfold the wonders of the kingdom within, as one is +called to do in the higher and contemplative spheres of the artistic +life, there is an increasing joy that makes it easy, more and more, to +lift the power of life from the torment and unrest of the generative +seas.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span></p> + +<p>One finds his dream of the beloved changed and infinitively endeared to +him. Patience, reverence, tenderness comes to the love that once knew +only the single passion of a male for the mammal. Even that, in memory, +becomes beautiful to eyes of wisdom and calm—all God's plan. One is +sensitive all through his breast for the unfathomable sweetness of life +and love. He sees the child and the immortal in the mate. He finds that +the body is truly sacred because he sees it with love and not with +desire. These are good tidings. They make one happy to write them.</p> + +<p>There are seven centres of ecstasy in the body. Through the mastery +of will and love and action, the life-force is lifted to dwell with +and awaken these centres. With each awakening, a new power comes—a +new joy—a new hill-range crossed toward the Father's House; with each +awakening, the beloved within is quickened in consciousness, and the +beloved without is held more dear. The wondrous story of regeneration +goes on and on, to the love that seeks to give itself utterly. To +love—that is all the Soul asks.</p> + +<p>Momentary passion swiftly passes in the increase of spiritual +aspiration. Its force is not killed, but used for awakening the higher +and immortal principles where real love abides. The hand of the loved +one becomes sacred unto tears, and the joy of life is to serve.</p> + +<p>The whole body is presently repolarised—the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>fire sparking upward—the +apex of the triangle turned upward—desire of soul instead of desire +of the body.... The mating of the mind and the soul is the larger, the +cosmic consciousness, awaited so long. This means that the Lord has +come into His Temple—the body made ready. It means that the mind and +soul are one, the house no longer divided against itself. The lover +is ready for the approach of his mate. Each has been cleansed at the +fountains apart....</p> + +<p>One must be utterly weary of the old. This repolarisation of the +generative force cannot come until one has heard with furious passion, +in the depths of pain, the call to the higher life, the new quest. Not +repression then, but transmutation. One changes gently, often under a +mystic administry, but always with growing love for the body and for +the world, using the life forces for healing and concentration and +the power to listen to the Lord within—the Voice of the Silence.... +Upon the illumination of the seven centres by the life force, another +mystery takes place. The levitation of the spiritual life overpowers +to a considerable extent the natural gravitation of the flesh—the +down-pull of years. The result, of course, is the restoration of health +to all tissues of the body—the Fountain of Youth starts singing +again.... To you.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_25" id="chapter_25"></a>25</h2> + +<p class="title center">ROMANCE</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Affairs like these can only colour and illumine the upper side of the +clouds, so far as American fiction is concerned. One might write a real +novel of Regeneration, but the field of the story is not now for this; +the arteries through which the public is reached by the publisher are +not yet friendly to such a novel. We learn at Stonestudy to write what +we please, but we are content with still small answers, at least for +a time. We have ceased trying to force people to see the thing as we +see it. For money to live by, to take our places comfortably in travel +or sequestration, we retain the handicraft to write for markets that +pay. We keep in touch with the world—that is practical mysticism. We +rejoice in the dense pressures and tortures of world traffic. This is +very calmly told, as it should be. My young associates learn it easily, +performing the actions thereof, but for me, many years were required.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></p> + +<p>Long ago I wrote a novel about a man and woman coming to a fervent +agreement to remain apart for a year before their mating, in order that +they array themselves in fuller glory for each other, so that each day +each would find the other more wonderful than yesterday. The novel +furnished much adventure in the intervening year, otherwise it would +have been still-born. What was the real theme to me apparently wasn't +noted at all. Yet separation is as essential as companionship for the +real Romance. A man who does life in a book must know this much, even +if he use his knowledge sparingly. It's all a laugh in the higher +workmanship. Romance—each has his idea of that. Each does his best by +that. Here's a document of the day from John which gives his idea very +well:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Since I was first with Steve and Fred and Irving and Shuk, I have +had the great sense of wanting to be out and away from the world—to +be with them <i>one at a time</i>. In the Rockies or in the misty isles +of the sea! All of them have a different meaning and sense. <i>One</i> +will mean the Rockies or the misty mountain, saddels, foamy bits and +lathering horses. Another will mean the tarry smell of the hold of a +ship, the flapping of sails in the moonlight, and the smell of black +coffee coming up from the galleys. Another will mean the sun betin +desert—camels, and men stooping over a fire. They are all my comrads.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span></p> + +<p>Fred is a young sea-writer. We are great pals. We yousto go down and +lie in the sand, read, talk and meditate; then a little later we would +take exercise and a long swim, then rub each other down. They were +wounderful days—those. I got right to the heart of Fred, and he did +to me. He yousto come over at night and sleep with me. Those were the +nights! I got so attached to him, but we had to go apart. He is in New +York now, going to college, and I am here in California. It does not +seem right for me to be in this God blest place in the Youneverse, and +he in the slums of the world, going to college. But it is the Plan, or +it would not be this way.</p> + +<p>The new race will stay high all through partings; then they cannot last +long—for there is nothing to stay away for. When pain leaves, then +all will be ready for the road and the great comrads, horses and the +road of greatness. It is all ahead. In the great future—all ahead—my +comrads—all comrads—the world will be all comrads!</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>All our days, as tellers of tales, we try to tell, not stories, so +much, as what Romance means to us. The very glory of life is that there +are no two pictures the same.... To me, Romance means <i>not to stay</i>! +It was hard to learn. Not to tarry in the senses, if for no other +reason than to know the full beauty of the senses. One must not miss +his train; one must not linger after <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>curfew has sounded. There is no +grey confronting of misery—like that of meeting one's own commonness +catching up.</p> + +<p>It's stiff grade work all the way, but there are heroic moments. We +learn to take a supernal, rather than a sensuous joy. The most rending +of lovers is the most passionate saint.... When Mohammed finally got +his morals in working order, the desert was said to be full of slain....</p> + +<p>There is something to do with <i>martyrdom</i> in my dream of Romance in +later years. All pain and fear has gone out of that word—a singing +about it. The name <i>Kuru t'ul Ayn</i> comes to my mind in thoughts of +Romance—"Consolation of the Eyes," martyred soon after the Forerunner +Bab had been shot in Tabriz. I cannot tell why exactly, save that she +had beauty that had turned to loveliness, and many men had looked +through the door of heaven in her eyes—some haunting mystery there of +beauty and bestowal—the blending perhaps of the love of man and God in +the same woman-heart, passion lifted remotely above the common rules of +life, transcending every man-made institution.</p> + +<p>One of the Little Girl's ideas of Romance is a hill cabin, an open door +to the dusk,—baby heads weaving under her hands—warm air coming up +from the valleys, but <i>his</i> step not coming that night.... Here is a +suggestion from one of her letters:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span></p> + +<blockquote><p>Have just been out in the garden planting little seeds that will grow +big and strong so that they can be put into shining pots and cooked for +the Stranger's dinner—tiny carrot seeds. They had to be rolled over +and over between the fingers before they could decide one by one to +fall into the rich warm earth. Planting little seeds at sunset! Does it +not awaken in you something of the old days we spent so close to the +soil? Radiant dusk? But you have to look <i>back</i> to see how sweet the +purity and simplicity of the peasant's life. The peasants themselves +do not know. To-day holy hot sunlight and lilac bloom—could there be +a more wonderful day than that? And Chapel so full of power, then a +planting of little seeds at sunset. Ah, Mary! I am happy as I dare to +be in a world that is choking in its own blood. At least we are open +and ready for any work if it is ours. We hold up our arms asking for +hard and painful tasks that will fill us with that singing conquest +that cries aloud: "None have more pain to hold than we!" ... We are all +working toward you, toward that height. You will be waiting for us with +open arms out there. We all send white love to you—our waiting Mary!</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Peasants and mill-girls, or the dim lacking faces of the +passers-by—always these join to the Little Girl's quests and dreams +of the spirit. Two brief additional cuttings suggestive of her idea of +Romance follow, from the twelve-year period:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span></p> + +<p>The first great vision of the quest must come to a soul over the +plough, in the peasant's body—dissatisfaction with self and +surroundings. This is the beginning of everything. The person who is +content with small things, small thoughts, does not move. His soul +stays asleep. With awakening comes hate and anger and much simple +blackness. It is just <i>that</i>, which gives him the power to stand up +against the ways he has known so long—to stand up for himself—to +push the new vague dreams through to life and light. It is all blind +at first, but great and brave, too. The call that would come to the +peasant would be to the Town—to many men and things, for that is just +the opposite from his life. In a simple way he would go to the depths +of the worst he could find—to the extreme.</p> + +<p>The thing that is holding so many from their own, is contentedness, +satisfaction. The longer one holds to this, the lower he sinks, until +he is buried in himself.... The questers who have come up into the +light, are brilliant, flashing, beautiful. But the souls of the "white +torrent" are rushing on through the dark night, a night that grows +darker and darker as it approaches the day. Their faces are tragic, +drawn, expectant; there is a sort of red-dark cloud that they are +tearing themselves through.... Only the poor fat ones! they fill you +with sadness because you can not help them and they are not trying to +help themselves. They seem to sink almost visibly, farther and farther +down, as they laugh and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>smile, and nod their heads to each other +(only to each other). The light around them is really not a light at +all—just a colour, a cold, grey-black colour that looks almost dead. +You could laugh if they had anything to do with you, any power over +you—you could laugh at them and tell them that you were laughing, but +their helplessness hurts you. <i>They</i> can only hurt themselves. There +is absolutely no humour in their faces nor in any of their movements. +They are all sober; they can not laugh inside. Always it is the sign +of flight from God to lose the sense of humour. For humour is a great +inner glowing—the power to overlook, to forget the meaner things in +people and in life. It is a power to forget one's self also, to laugh +at oneself.... I see the New Race as a line of Classic Ruffians—a +Troop of Mystic Warriors ... singing their glorious song of stern +compassion and deep love, filling all with their questing for power and +beauty.... I hear their laughter."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p class="no-indent">She paints the City Street a bit darker in this:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Dim faces, full of blank suffering and of living death. Dark and noisy +streets, crowded stores of trade.... Men—little men, following their +women, carrying the babies. The mother part of me goes out to those +little men. Down the ages, mothering imprints its pain upon our souls. +And their women now—with faces wanting, always wanting, everything in +them <i>wanting</i>! I have been carried away by these dim hungry faces. I +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>have seen them staring at me with blank surprise. But then they hurry +on, and the forgotten babies cry. Hushing them, the women pass—little +men following.</p></blockquote> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p> ... The pain of utter isolation—somehow this means Romance to me, in +a deeper fold of being. Isolation—the hate of an undivided people—a +man standing alone against his nation, yet loving it better than any of +the natives.... I remember in an early story of having the hero do his +big task under the fiery stimulus of the hate of London. All this has +something to do with the coming of Saviours.</p> + +<p>Time approaches for many when the little three score and ten fails +longer to hold the full story; one must look out of this sickly +warm room of the body; one longs for the mystic death, which is +<i>martyrdom</i>.... I tell all this from time to time in tales—but only +the children seem to understand....</p> + +<p>Romance—I have walked up and down streets and open highways for days +and found no man's work challenging, nothing to keep alive my interest. +I wanted absolutely nothing that any one else in the world had, nothing +that any one could gain. All worldly activities looked diminished and +pathetic to me—but under it all—the endless iteration of the Soul: +"Here is a <i>man</i>—as much me as myself!" A call in that—always a call +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>in that. One longs to die for that, once and for all.</p> + +<p>I crossed the Yellow Sea with a wound long ago. I had missed a battle +and was suffering, without the satisfaction of suffering with a bullet +wound.... I lay three deep in Chinese coolies in deck passage. I wanted +to see some one at home, or I should have dropped overside. In the fag +of pain, on the border of delirium, I lay with the deep down men of the +world, Chinese coolies in their filth and vomit. I looked into the eyes +of the nearest, and saw a brother, not a stranger.... It was ten years +afterward before I caught the big meaning of that moment—and that's +why I say so often that the time comes when we find the sons of God in +the eyes of passing men. That is <i>Romance</i>.</p> + +<p>There is more of death and less of days in my dream of Romance now.... +I can see a man giving up his woman because she is dearer than his +own life to him. I can see a man going to the scaffold for a country +that is taking his life and hers. (Always I see him loving his country +more dearly than the sober ones of regnancy and war.) ... I see him +taking his woman in his hands—half laughing, half crying, their faces +upturned—one creature in that moment of parting, as they had never +been in street or church, or state.... Romance in that.</p> + +<p class="no-indent">I have a line here from the Valley Road Girl:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span></p> + +<blockquote><p> ... Lastly, it came like a commandment to me—to +give all to the Coming Generation—to acknowledge the New Race +as one's God—remembering always that all Gods are jealous +Gods."</p></blockquote> + +<p>It's all in that, our dream of Romance—Democracy, the Planetary Hive.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>I am using a short story as the next chapter, because it brings nearer +to the centre of the picture certain ideals of romance, workmanship, +martyrdom, love and death, than many essays could do. A tale may be +a master-synthesis. Perhaps it is just the thing to show you what +we mean, as a group,—what we mean about many things. This is not a +marketable tale; in fact, it was done with the idea of making a place +for itself just here in this book.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_26" id="chapter_26"></a>26</h2> + +<p class="title center">THE COSMIC PEASANT</p> + +<p class="plabel"><span class="smcap">A Short Story</span></p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">When I was a lad I remember hearing some one say he had read a story +of love and war. I thought of it just now, as I lay panting a bit in +a queer nest for the night in the Galbraudin Foothills—in the midst +of an army that had no country yet—a tragic document unfolding in +my heart.... A story of love and war—yes, I had seen one. It was +written upon the cells of my brain, the deeper parts engraved upon the +heart—the old red war with a new dream hovering above it, and the old +true love, white as ever, yet a touch of the rose and gold of the new +race in its folds. It seems almost my story. Like Job's servant, only I +am spared to tell it. Such a little while ago, I thought the tales of +love and war all told.</p> + +<p>I saw Varsieff first at school, and went to him <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>at once. Literally, I +went to him. It was at recess, and I followed at his heels to his room +instead of my own. He was not surprised. I was always at my best beside +him. He accepted this gift from me. One who learns to give greatly as +Varsieff did, learns also to accept the best things with grace. I only +left his room long enough to get my bag. Gladly would I have slept at +his door, but he asked me in. We were to be mates. Often he assured me +that we were men, face to face; that I was not his Boswell, not his +disciple, but a man-to-man friend. Yet I knew that my power was not the +power of Varsieff, also that I was most powerful when I realised his +splendid superiority.</p> + +<p>I followed him during all the vacations. He loved the North +Country—snow on the mountains, cold night rains, the filled fields and +shrunken rivers of summer, the sound and natural things. He said he +would find his tropical island when his work was done, but that work +meant Russia to him. He was genius. Every one loved him. One vacation +time we undertook to walk together over the Torqueval Peaks. He +borrowed a guitar at a peasant house there in the mountains, and played +for an hour as I have never heard any one play. I had been with him for +almost three years and had not known he touched the instrument.</p> + +<p>In one of those days of our walking-tour in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>mountains an instance +occurred of Varsieff's immeasurable tenderness of heart. One golden +morning as we walked through a little village, past a vined wicker +fence—a huge yellow cat sprang forth from the leaves and caught a bird +on the wing. A kind of sob came from my friend at the swift little +tragedy enacted in the wonderful morning light. I turned—Varsieff's +face was back to its childhood—a depiction of childish horror—all +finished manhood erased.</p> + +<p>Many times in our talk his sentences formed a poem, which I would rush +away to put down. He learned to do this alone afterward. Once I went +to his room in Moscow after I had been away several months, and found +scattered among clothing, papers, books and tea-things, a set of recent +lyrical gems of his. These I gathered together in the little book, now +marching around the world.</p> + +<p>I smile to remember when I came to learn that Varsieff had other +friends as devoted as I. It hurt at first; I could not understand. His +big magic then was that he wanted nothing. He used to say that a man is +at his worst when he wants anything for himself. The fact is Varsieff +in wanting the <i>letter</i> of nothing, really wanted the spirit of all; +in wanting nothing for himself in those days, he wanted everything for +the world, a new heaven and a new earth, first and especially a new +Russia. Then the day came when he wanted a woman. This was altogether +unex<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>pected. I thought that Varsieff absolutely had given himself to +the revolution—that humanity was his bride.</p> + +<p>I was with him when he first saw Paula Mantone—that is but part of her +name. It was in Moscow. His voice, as he spoke to me, watching her, had +a different and deeper inflection than I ever heard before. She was +just a girl—poorly dressed, who had paused to speak laughingly to an +old flower-woman.</p> + +<p>"Wait, Lange," he said to me, and crossed to her.</p> + +<p>It was in the Spring of the year. The morning was very bright. She +turned from the tray of flowers and looked up at him. His hands went +out to her shoulders. He was searching her face with a queer and tense +smile—as one who finds a woman after a few months' separation in one +whom he has left a child. Of course, my thought was that he had known +her before. She, too, would have slept at his door....</p> + +<p>I heard their voices. He asked her name, where she lived, and how he +could reach her again. It all seemed trifling to me. Varsieff had never +been like this before. The rest of the day he was silent. We walked and +dined together, but his thoughts were not for me. For once, they were +not for Russia. There was a smile in his eyes, and often he turned back +the way we had come. Once he said:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I had to leave her. It was quite all I could stand. I do not think the +world is a place for two such people to be happy in. Possibly, we may +be allowed to meet from time to time——"</p> + +<p>I was inclined to call this nonsense. A little later he added strangely:</p> + +<p>"Yes, it would be dangerous to let go and become merely human in a case +like this."</p> + +<p>The next three years Varsieff and I were much apart. I do not profess +quite to understand the obstacles between him and Paula Mantone. +They had loved each other instantly and torrentially. They were much +together, yet there was some super-human torture about it. Even if I +have a glimpse of the mystery, I'm afraid few will understand. There is +something back of each one of us greater than our actions. We are all +greater than we seem. It was as if Varsieff and Paula Mantone were only +intended to meet here—to meet and quicken each other for a greater +giving to the world. I wonder if it is quite true, what he said toward +the last: That really splendid lovers may consecrate themselves to each +other, but they must also learn to give each other to the world.... In +the beginning they tried to lose themselves in each other, and they +encountered untellable pain.</p> + +<p>At length came the night when Varsieff returned to my lodgings, saying +that it was only a ques<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>tion of time when they should find peace. He +said he knew they would find peace, for he had already touched it +momentarily. I wondered if she were dead, and he caught my thought.</p> + +<p>"No, Lange," he said. "I am still to see her from time to time."</p> + +<p>Before that first meeting with Paula Mantone in the street, Varsieff +had loved Russia and the world, a friend and comrade to me and to many +others. All his love had suddenly been called in and directed upon the +woman. After the three years, he gave himself to all of us again—but +a quickened illuminated man. He had been brilliant to me before that, +but the brilliance of phosphorous compared to sunlight now. Varsieff +was making some strange spiritual initiation out of his love story. His +presence glorified me on the night of his coming—the summer before the +war.</p> + +<p>"There are four layers to Russia," I remember him saying. "The royalty +on top, then the dreamers, then the middlemen, then the peasants. Kings +and middlemen go together; dreamers and peasants go together.... Yes, +time will come when the dreamers and the peasants truly shall belong to +each other. They have been lovers a long time."</p> + +<p>I asked him about the other pair.</p> + +<p>"The kings and the middlemen will cancel each other," he answered.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span></p> + +<p>Varsieff was the most active man I ever knew, and yet he moved easily +as one in a sort of spiritual drift. He was an intellectualist with +those who used their heads, a devotionalist with those who used their +hearts, a mystic among dreamers, a child among children. Though never +known much publicly, he was to my mind the biggest occult force of the +new Russia. I doubt if there was another man, unless it was Christonal, +who gave more impulse and direction to the revolutionary movement.</p> + +<p>The heads of many departments drew inspiration from Varsieff. I +have seen him carry himself lightly through a day of decisions and +improvements and conceptions, which do not come to the ordinary master +of democracy in a year. I have seen him encounter, worked out by +others, suggestions and innovations which he himself had made—Varsieff +not realising that the thought was his own. He would innocently praise +his own work, as carried out by another. The last few months preceding +the revolution were the busiest I ever knew. We became new men. We did +not leave Petrograd, but prepared secretly for the big unburdening of +the soul of a people. The last few days, before the government changed +hands, were charged with a wrecking silence.</p> + +<p>Christonal's nerve broke. For twelve hours he was in and out of a +system of baths and manhandlings, and I was one who stood by. Varsieff +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>smiled it through, his voice calm, his eyes often looking away as he +spoke. The leaders of the younger party saw who was the real chief that +day, though Christonal is a strong leader.</p> + +<p>I was always a good desk man, and was trying to get some order in a +bundle of cipher messages in the heat of the night, when Varsieff came +and lifted me laughingly by the shoulders, thrusting the messages into +one of my deep inner pockets. I thought he was dragging me off to bed, +but when we were alone, he said:</p> + +<p>"<i>She</i> is near. I can't leave. Will you go to her for me?" ...</p> + +<p>He told me many things to say.</p> + +<p>I found Paula Mantone after many hours in one of the Registmonten +hospitals. She was frail and feverish from much labour, not regularly +attached to any nursing staff. The instant I saw her, I realised more +clearly what Varsieff had been doing—trying to kill himself with work +for the Cause. Clearly, she had lost interest in all but death and +service. I had been too much with Varsieff to notice his arrival at the +same point, but I saw their joint endeavour through her. It seemed to +me like a death-pact.</p> + +<p>A new mystery for me. Evidently they had realised they must wait for +release in death, but serve meanwhile. The marvel of Varsieff's sending +me when he might have come himself, gave me just an inkling of the +tremendous power and pa<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>tience which had come to him. Two years, or +even a year ago, he would have endangered new Russia for an hour with +Paula Mantone.</p> + +<p>I could not breathe this rare atmosphere. So far as I knew, there was +no woman for me in earth or heaven, but certainly I would not have been +able to look over a living woman's shoulder for her mystic counterpart, +and long for death to consummate the real mating. But war teaches +lovers many wonderful things.</p> + +<p>Paula Mantone was a kind of white silence. You had to listen keenly +for her step and give your attention to her voice. She was utterly +feminine—malleable like gold. Even to me, she was the meaning of +love. I had no thought of her being <i>my</i> woman, and yet she seemed +spiritually to contain some sister who would answer for me. Soldiers +worshipped her. I think each saw his own in her presence. It was the +finished magic of the Trojan Helen again—every man's desire, as gold +contains potentially all the metals, and the rose the essence of all +the flowers....</p> + +<p>She was the quietest woman I ever saw. She seemed formed of white +cloud—the sun on the other side. That was it—Varsieff was shining on +the other side. She answered him, light for light—gold for gold. For +the rest of us, she had that white, saintly lustre. And even in that, +we found much to make us brave and keep us pure.</p> + +<p>Deep within, there was some wonder about <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>Varsieff and Paula Mantone +which my brain could not interpret exactly. But the world had suddenly +become to me, in her presence, a place of divided hearts—millions of +divided lovers around the world. I had only known the shock and misery +of war before, and the thrilling roar of comrades, the crash of the +wreckers and the songs of the builders ever nearer. Now I heard the +still voices of lovers everywhere. In the pressures of air—callings, +cryings, yearnings made audible.</p> + +<p>It was a new door of the heart that she opened—her particular gift +to me. That moment, though I had loved and served Varsieff for years, +I knew more thrillingly than ever his greatness, because this woman +loved him. To me, to all soldiers, she gave a reflection of that superb +bounty. To him she gave its <i>incandescence</i>. Perhaps together they +found it too terrible a light for earth, or perhaps they were unwilling +to find their fulness of days in a world so charged with agony as these +years.</p> + +<p>She left me a moment, answering some voice which I had not heard, and +stood for several seconds beside the cot of a bearded soldier, her +fingers upon his grey-white brow. I did not realise until after she +moved, that she was there at the moment of his passing. I thought of it +again: She was the white silence. I think the soldier died, believing +that his woman was there.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span></p> + +<p>Twenty cots in the place—a low, cold room lit with a handful of +candles. The smell of blood and sickness and soiled clothing mingled +with the bitterness of iodoform as the chill draught swept through. The +peasant soldiers knew only the meagrest care. Their wounds were dressed +as often as possible, but there were five times too many cases for the +service, and the whole corps was impoverished.</p> + +<p>She stood still in the dim distance a moment longer, her fingers +touching the brow already cold. Then she seemed to remember that I was +waiting at the far door. I was not twenty feet away, and yet in the +few seconds required for her to reach me, a sort of vision filled my +mind—a vision of the peace that soon would come to the world—the song +of fruitful labour sung again, peaceful lands, soft dusks, lit cabins, +filled barns, peaceful flocks and up-reaching baby fingers—all with +such a queer shock to a male consciousness like mine. And when she +stood before me, I felt that the best part of Varsieff was also there. +I even fancied his look in her eyes, such as you see exchanged in an +old pair who have lived long together. I think that a great love always +seeks to make one of two—in different ways than we dream.</p> + +<p>"You came from him?" she whispered.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"How does he look?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"He looks like you," I said, for the moment <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>inspired. "He looks like a +sun-god, too. He looks <i>with your love</i> into the eyes of soldiers and +statesmen and revolutionists, and they find him irresistible."</p> + +<p>"Dear Lange," she said. "He loves you, too. You are changed. You have +come into the big magic of the revolution——"</p> + +<p>"I am Varsieff's friend, first and last—his comrade."</p> + +<p>"And mine," she whispered.</p> + +<p>"The magic comes from standing between, Mlle. Mantone."</p> + +<p>She smiled and bent toward me. She had been like a tall, white flower, +but now for a second as she bent closer, it seemed to me that I saw a +hint of Varsieff's gold flame on the other side—because we talked of +him.</p> + +<p>"What did he say?" she continued in a low whisper.</p> + +<p>"He said to tell you that he and all your friends were busy, day and +night, weaving and binding the Cause into one great fabric. He told me +to tell you this—that the work of the Weavers will be given to the +world in a day or two—possibly the day after to-morrow. I wish you +could have seen Varsieff's face as he spoke to me this last. I remember +his words exactly: 'Tell Paula all that I do is for her. That I read +and write and dream and breathe through her heart—that she has taught +me well to love <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>and wait—that I love the world through her heart.'"</p> + +<p>"Anything more?" she asked in a kind of agony.</p> + +<p>"He told me to say that only you knew his weaknesses, so far——"</p> + +<p>"I love them best," she answered. "A woman always holds a little +tighter to the sweet human things of her child.... But he is a teacher, +a leader. He must be clean and flawless.... If it were only for us—I +should have him, weaknesses and all.... But he is to lead the clean +peasants to their promised land——"</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Varsieff listened as a desert listens for rain. He caught me by the +shoulders when I ceased to speak—as if to shake something more from my +mind and heart.</p> + +<p>"A man must be half-divine to keep step with that woman," he said.</p> + +<p>Then he changed the subject by remarking that Christonal was not +half-divine—quite.</p> + +<p>"Christonal is ambitious," he added.</p> + +<p>"What has he done now?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"He has ordered me to take the field——"</p> + +<p>That turned on a red light in my brain. Varsieff was not a soldier. I +knew instantly that Christonal was not pure—that he wanted personal +power more than the good of the Cause. No one knew Varsieff's place +better than he did. My <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>friend could only have been ordered to the +field for the same reason that David sent the husband of Bathsheba.</p> + +<p>After the revolutionary signal went through, Varsieff and I found +ourselves in the Galbraudin Foothills with thirty thousand men, and +every man of them wanted to go home. Somehow the peasants thought +that if they changed leaders, they would march home at once. They +were willing to fight their way home; they had felt their own power. +Varsieff loved them with a white passion.</p> + +<p>"They won't miss, if <i>we</i> are true! They're clean. God love +them—they're clean!"</p> + +<p>He saw in the peasants the soil for the new earth and the soul of the +new heaven.</p> + +<p>Germans and Austrians were to the south of our nest in the Galbraudin +Foothills, while to the east and north were the big lines of Russian +troops as yet unawakened to the principles that moved our ranks. Our +weakness was that the peasants thought the war was over.... The cold +mountains were in the distance—winter still upon them—a late spring +in the Foothills.... In this dramatic lull, our men talked of their +ploughing, of their women.</p> + +<p>Some one said, "They're enlisting the women and girls——"</p> + +<p>It went through the lines like a taint of gas. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>The men were difficult +then even for Varsieff to hold.</p> + +<p>You must get the picture. We revolutionists were cut off from the +world. The Germans and Austrians sent us messages—some friendly, +some derisive. They thought us fools or gods, but waited to see what +we would do. The old line of Russian troops all about—just as clean +peasantry as our forces—but officered by the straight military class, +impervious so far as a body to any shaft of the propagandist.</p> + +<p>Varsieff whispered to me that those regular forces were honeycombed +with our comrades, but that they were being put to death under the +slightest suspicion—that two or three hundred were martyred each day.</p> + +<p>The strangeness and horror of it all dawned upon me—the sense of the +whole world against us, even America from whom we had drawn the spirit +of our courage—a kind of holding of our army for slaughter. Listen, +I have seen tens of thousands of troops go down to the pits of white +and red, seen their opened veins colour the snows, seen the spots of +red on the brown earth turn black. I have seen the boys lean over the +trenches and the pools from each throat widen and deepen from one man +to another. I have seen a man grab his mate as he fell and say some +absurd whimsical thing that the soldier next didn't understand until +<i>his</i> moment of death—a little <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>sentence that folded them, not in +extinction, but in a new life. All the horrors of death—quantity and +quality—yellow and red and white—pure white passings that made a man +think of the lilies—all manner of death I had seen, and still it had +all been impersonal compared to now.</p> + +<p>This was my own heart business. I shared leadership with Varsieff. +These lives were in my hands. I wanted to go down among the boys—one +by one and say that I was pure, that I loved them—that if they died +they were at least loved and not wasted.</p> + +<p>I always wondered what those young peasant souls thought about death. +Once in a lot of pain when I was just a boy, I wanted badly to die and +was deterred from taking my life, because of a counter-desire to get +home and see my mother. I think it must be like that with the peasants.</p> + +<p>Varsieff saw them in a strange mystic light. No man loved them as he +did. They looked like sons of God to him. That's what he saw when they +went down to death.</p> + +<p>"There are no dreams too fine for them to answer," he whispered. "They +are pure—they come from the North like all invaders—glacially pure! +We'll warm their hearts—lead them home to God—teach them how to live!"</p> + +<p>He was silent suddenly. I asked him to go on and then saw the queerest +look instead. Varsieff was torn by the thought, that now as a leader +of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>revolutionists he must teach his peasants how to <i>die</i> as well.... +A civilian, I repeat, does not realise this quite the same. In the +Capitol, we had worked for a Cause that meant the death of men, but now +we were the officers called upon to charge live troops to the fork and +the grill. I knew Varsieff to be more imaginative and tender than I, +yet I would not have mentioned my qualms, had I known how terribly he +was suffering. He caught my hands, whispering:</p> + +<p>"You have it, too?"</p> + +<p>It was the single hour of weakness that Varsieff had ever revealed to +me. I studied his face without speaking.</p> + +<p>"I brought them to this," he muttered. "I have always thought of the +spirit of things. I was always pure enough, following that dream.... +But, Lange, we're a little mad—we who dream.... I had to come here. +I had to see this fighting end. Perhaps Christonal knew what he was +doing."</p> + +<p>I put my arm around his shoulder. We Russians are allowed that.</p> + +<p>"I have always thought of the spirit of things," he added, "until I met +Paula Mantone. I would have forgotten everything for her beauty, but +she remembered our souls.... And now, because I would have forgotten +the bodies of these men Christonal sent me here to learn that. We are +spirits and bodies, too, Lange. It takes a crowned <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>head to hold to the +two ends at once—God, hear 'em sing——"</p> + +<p>The ruffians always hushed and choked us when they sang. Something new +about it this time, for Varsieff was seeing them across a red stream of +their own blood.</p> + +<p>"I can't drive 'em into the fire-pits," he muttered. "Why, I'd rather +wash and dress 'em. They've got the idea that I am to lead them home. +I can't betray that—not even for the Cause!... I never saw it before. +They are not herds, not groups—but monads—each a man——"</p> + +<p>"We've got to put through the big story," I said quietly. "Thirty +thousand is cheap—our little planting out here is cheap, if we +can give Russia the new heaven and the new earth—Russia—then +America—then the world——"</p> + +<p>I was giving him back his own words.</p> + +<p>"Thirty thousand lives," he repeated. "Yes, the price is cheap—thirty +thousand every day for awhile—your life and mine, Lange—a cheap price +to pay for the glory we see in the days to come. But I can't kill +these—I think Christonal knew it all the time——"</p> + +<p>"You aren't ready for work in the constructive end, if you falter here +among the wreckers——" I said.</p> + +<p>I knew that no Cause had ever uncovered a more valuable servant than +this same Varsieff, though badly out of hand just now. I wasn't <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>making +any effect upon him. He looked at me strangely.</p> + +<p>"That sounds true—exactly and unerringly true," he said wearily.</p> + +<p>There was no quarter possible now.</p> + +<p>"I remember your words in clubs and cabinets and in the ante-rooms of +the dumas.... You weren't afraid of blood there, Varsieff."</p> + +<p>He winced.</p> + +<p>"They called you the 'Fire-eater,'" I added, never knowing when to +stop. "It's just as straight to-day as it was when you talked there: +'The old civilisation must be washed clean with the blood of the +new——'"</p> + +<p>His hand came up piteously.</p> + +<p>"But their hearts are turned homeward, Lange," he said. "Their eyes +are building their homes all over again—eyes turned homeward over the +mountains——"</p> + +<p>"Turned to God," I said reverently.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but taking my word—the word of Varsieff—that God is there——"</p> + +<p>"He is there."</p> + +<p>"But will He come to them at the last, Lange?... Will He show His +face—so they will believe?... When they feel their death-wounds—the +blood sliding out, warm and silent—the cold coming in—will they hold +to what I said? Will He be there for them?"</p> + +<p>"You're shot up, old man, only a bit bewildered <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>to-day. No one knows +better than you how great emotional giving of one's self to Cause or +Country makes death easy—and quickens the Soul."</p> + +<p>Varsieff was ashen.</p> + +<p>"I've got to eat all my words! Even you, bring back my words to me. +I've talked too much.... Suppose I am a madman——?"</p> + +<p>"Then you have no responsibility for what you said," I smiled.</p> + +<p>He stared at the tent-wall.</p> + +<p>"Varsieff," I said at last.</p> + +<p>His hand came out.</p> + +<p>"You were pure in all you undertook."</p> + +<p>Silence.</p> + +<p>"You wanted nothing for yourself."</p> + +<p>"I wanted nothing for me—nothing but——"</p> + +<p>"But what?"</p> + +<p>"Paula Man——"</p> + +<p>"She's a part of you—now. You look like her!"</p> + +<p>"I think I'll have to die to see her—Oh, Lange—I'm sick—I'm +impoverished, cell by cell, with loneliness——" Varsieff laughed +unsteadily and added:</p> + +<p>"I remember asking you to say to her—that she alone knew my +weaknesses. Now you know them, too."</p> + +<p>"She said she loved them.... Varsieff, I have known you a long time," +I added after a moment. "I have shaped my manhood, such as it is, +after <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>you. I am proud of this—to the end. I, too, care more for +you, because of this day—for understanding. To understand—that is +everything. I who always listened before, tell you to-day: <i>The dream +does hold. The dream is good. Thirty thousand men—even our singing, +growling, big-footed, red-hearted thirty thousand—is a cheap price to +pay for the new Russia!</i>"</p> + +<p>"Do you think Paula would say that?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes," I answered, "from the mother-heart of her."</p> + +<p>I had spoken, and now I tried to make myself believe that she would +have ordered him on. I had to change him, at any cost. A rather +questionable way now appeared—to lift him out of himself.</p> + +<p>"Listen, Friend," I added. "You are lonely—but you have the heart of +a woman pulsing with yours—every beat.... You'd have to <i>be me</i> to +know what loneliness means. I'd take all the pain to have a woman like +that. There are times when you are half a man, because you are apart +from her, but there are other times, Varsieff, when you are twice a +man—double dynamics——"</p> + +<p>He caught me in his arms. I knew he was healed, but I felt the cad and +the cur for bringing his sympathy on myself.... He was looking back +toward the cold mountains when I left him, and the look of the woman +was in his eyes. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>That night I dreamed that Paula Mantone came to me +with a message for Varsieff, and that she told me some beautiful thing +about the child of a king—but I could not quite get it down to brain.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>Sedgwick, a brigadier, and technically in command of the thirty +thousand, was a straight militarist in training. He looked to Varsieff, +the political head, for orders. The day came when Varsieff had no one +to look to, for we were cut off from Christonal and Petrograd. We +were not long kept in doubt after that as to who were our immediate +enemies—not German, not Austrian, but the old line Russian troops hung +up to the east of us, the same that had recently occupied themselves +making martyrs of the revolutionists in their ranks—two or three +hundred a day.</p> + +<p>It was a red morning when two of our <i>fliers</i> blew down with the word +that our brothers were closing in—that it looked like extermination +for our thirty thousand, unless we strode out and crippled them with +the first shock. Ten miles to the west the Bundalino Marshes began. We +had the secret paths, but it was a wretched fugitive outlook to seek +shelter there. As I looked at it, it would never occur to leaders who +had brought Russia to the moment of parturition, to break up for a +miserable safety in the swamps of Bundalino.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span></p> + +<p>I recall the distant firing of that red morning. My eardrums had not +healed from recent months more or less in touch with the artillery. I +remember brushing the edge of the lines, as I crossed from Sedgwick's +headquarters back to the hut I shared with Varsieff and a servant or +two. The peasants were listening queerly and quietly to the far firing.</p> + +<p>I passed through the sprawl of pup-shelters, and certain ideas occurred +to me: first, that the arrangement of camp was abominable, a pitiful +lack of technique shown in this bit of military handling; second, the +slow cold conviction that we, as revolutionists, must have all the +virtues of the old-line troops to begin with, and to build our real +greatness on top of that; finally I drew from the queer attitudes of +the men toward me, an intuitional flash that to them the distant firing +meant a signal that they were about to fight their way home.</p> + +<p>Varsieff was sitting dejected upon a camp-chest when I rejoined him.</p> + +<p>"Sedgwick is ready when you are," I said. "He suggests that the men be +not kept waiting too long."</p> + +<p>Varsieff looked up. His face was livid. His soul had no chance that +morning. I thought of the old story of Arjuna standing between the +battle-lines, reluctant to join action against his own kindred.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It's the same here that it was in Petrograd," I announced finally. +"The dream holds——"</p> + +<p>He shook his head.... "They are just boys—white-haired boys. They want +to go home——"</p> + +<p>That instant I seemed to see the world laughing at this great man; +I saw the end of Varsieff politically.... Superb genius broken down +by an intrinsic weakness—as a man who, trying to lead the world, +falls for the lure of an actress maid.... I saw all his work of +early years—straight, clean, unerring, selfless labour of a man to +a Cause—the inspired labour of the past two years when he gave the +whole fruit of his quickened heart to the new Russia—the magic of +a man loved by a woman great enough to be his divine sculptor and +priestess.... It was the thought of Paula Mantone that helped me that +instant. Sedgwick was on the path outside. I hurried out and whispered:</p> + +<p>"Don't come now. Come back in ten minutes——"</p> + +<p>The General paused to let me hear the firing. "But the troops——" he +said.</p> + +<p>"Give me ten minutes more with Varsieff——"</p> + +<p>"The attack may be called——"</p> + +<p>"I know, but I need that time."</p> + +<p>The old soldier turned back, hating me....</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>"Varsieff," I said a moment later.</p> + +<p>"Yes——"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I've got to tell you something——"</p> + +<p>He turned quickly.</p> + +<p>"Paula Mantone is near——"</p> + +<p>"No!"</p> + +<p>"I saw her last night."</p> + +<p>"Will she see me?"</p> + +<p>I laughed at him. "Do you think she would want to see you now?... +You're a sick man, Varsieff—morally sick. Any decision is better +than your present incapacity.... I think she must have sensed your +weakness—that she came to bring you strength, for she is your +strength."</p> + +<p>"Does she love me?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"That's a slap in her face to ask that—a woman who gives you her +soul's strength—the love of her life. That's lack of faith, my +friend——"</p> + +<p>"I am whipped. The white-haired boys—they want to go home——"</p> + +<p>"You can't wash your hands. You can't say, 'Go home, boys.' They have +to fight their way home. First, they have to fight their way to the +east out of this valley—against old Russia!... It's the first great +battle of the Old and New—first time in the history of the world. We +hold the New for better or worse—this little Theban band. You would +let us fail and dribble away and slink into the Marshes—you, her +lover, whom she calls Boy and Strongheart——"</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>"What did she say?" he asked fiercely.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span></p> + +<p>"——that I need not speak of her coming unless you needed help. +She said you would not need help on account of your own lack of +courage—rather that it would be your great tenderness that might +defeat our Cause now. She said this was but a last ordeal, hardest of +all for Builders, who have ceased to kill...."</p> + +<p>"Where did you see her?"</p> + +<p>It was all a lie, of course, except I had dreamed of her coming. I +invented a place of meeting and added to his question that Sedgwick did +not know of her presence.</p> + +<p>"I agreed that we were not killers, but I told her that we dared to be +cruel to ourselves," I added.</p> + +<p>"What did she say to that?" Varsieff asked hoarsely. He had suddenly +become like a child—one who dared not go to her, who scarcely trusted +himself to speak.</p> + +<p>"She said <i>that</i> was the key to the whole matter—that we dare to +sacrifice ourselves—dare to inflict pain upon each other because one's +true love is the self—"</p> + +<p>I was startled and awed at my own words. The idea was unlike anything +of mine. It was exactly as if she had told me something of the kind in +the dream. Varsieff groaned:</p> + +<p>"The glory of her," he whispered. "Was there more?"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Only that you must not falter now ... and that she would be waiting +for you at the end of the day——"</p> + +<p>"'In the cool of the evening,' she would say," he muttered.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps that was it," I said.</p> + +<p>"Nothing more?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—but only if you needed it——"</p> + +<p>"I do."</p> + +<p>"That she never loved you so well as now—that you mean new Russia +to her—that she will come running to you in the cool of the +evening—either here or <i>on the other side</i>—and something about the +child of a king."</p> + +<p>His back stiffened. He arose. I saw him splendid again. I drew back in +the shadow, afraid that he would see the sweat that had broken out upon +me, though the place was cold.</p> + +<p>Of course the idea, as I saw it, was to give the old-line troops the +fight of their lives—to show the whole of Russia a martyrdom if +necessary, thus revealing the temper of the revolutionists. Varsieff +had been tempted to let them slip back into the Marshes to save their +lives.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>We were in the saddle side by side an hour later, and close to the +front—the two big lines moving slowly and craftily together. Varsieff +looked back at his precious boys, following willingly enough so far.</p> + +<p>"It's their white heads that kill me," he mut<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>tered. "They are like +children, and that I should——"</p> + +<p>"They are all our children," I answered, sweeping my hand in a circle +ahead where the troops of old Russia had filled in, waiting to deliver +us to death.</p> + +<p>"Dear old Lange," he muttered, "I'm glad you know her——"</p> + +<p>I wondered what that had to do with his peasant children. Her spirit +seemed a blend of his every thought and emotion.... We galloped along +the fronts, talking to the different commanders. Some were students, +in their teens, faces of boys who loved Varsieff with a love that +yearned to die for him immediately, without words, a readiness to leap +under his horse's feet.... In a kind of madness, all the mysteries of +life seemed to unfold for me that morning, the spirit of Paula Mantone +always near because I was so close to her lover.</p> + +<p>He talked to the different leaders quite careless if the peasant ranks +listened. He told them that the outer world was watching—that new +Russia, Poland, Finland, the new Europe, the new World—all depended +upon <i>them</i> now. He said they were chosen men—that he would never +leave the field except in victory—that he was brother and father and +lover to them—that the world would be better for this day. He talked +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>like a man at a bar, or standing among the river-boats, or a father to +his sons in the fields.</p> + +<p>We rode along the lines as they marched. Our horses lathered and dried +and lathered again in the morning sun. I saw my comrade, Varsieff, +giving up his soul to the peasants:</p> + +<p>"... I, too, have my farm that waits for me—my woman who waits for +me—my country, my dream!... I build with you. I stand or fall with +you!... We shall be better for this day, my children. This is a day for +living men and comrades——"</p> + +<p>He filled me with a kind of white flame.</p> + +<p>Then the crash. After that, was a moment of silence and gloom like a +cloud passing over the sun. Then our eyes began to reap.... A blizzard +of hot, stinking metal had broken in front of us—in the midst of our +marching and listening battalion. If you have ever felt the mockery +and cruelty of raging seas, you can know something of the shock +that twisted the core of me that instant. That which had been the +white-haired peasants with open laughing mouths and lifted hands, their +souls answering the leader who loved them, a song forming on their lips +... now it was as if a carcass had been moved—one that had lain long +in the sun, the devastation long continued underneath....</p> + +<p>These were my boys. Next to Varsieff and Paula Mantone, I loved them. +Now they were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>down, dismembered, shaking—the air a whir of white to +my tortured ears, like a shriek of bewildered ghosts. And here and +there, like Varsieff and myself—men standing unhurt in the midst of +human fragments, like maggots, shaking themselves to cover.</p> + +<p>I wonder if you can understand? It seemed that I still could see the +welter of our boys in the leader's face. Also I saw the death of my +good friend—the death-stroke of that superb mind—the face of a man, +whose soul had vanished.</p> + +<p>Both our horses were down, though we were unhurt so far.... A distance +of fifteen feet separated us. I called to him. I tried to tell him that +he had not failed. I thought I should die before I moved, before I +could get started toward him. The staring failure in his face paralysed +me. For the time, he was cut off even from the spirit of Paula Mantone.</p> + +<p>I had to look down and watch my steps as I made my way to him. I knew +some hideous fear that he would fall in that blackness—if I looked +away.... There were voices from the ground. None of the parts of men +could be still. Lips writhed before my eyes—and words were spoken like +little claps of force in thin air.... I caught his opened collar....</p> + +<p>"It's all right, Varsieff," I whispered.</p> + +<p>"You lie!" said he.</p> + +<p>It was like a blow from a man's mother. I <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>had to look into his face +before my brain accepted his words. Then I remembered <i>my</i> lie.... The +evil of it had not come to me until now, with him breaking down before +my eyes.... I saw the look again—that I had seen by the peasant's yard +long ago as we crossed the Torqueval Peaks—the look of a frightened +child in that face of finished manhood.</p> + +<p>I pulled him to me, and led him back toward Sedgwick's staff. I heard +myself talking and laughing, jockeying with words.... His head was +twisted to the side—his draggled remnant of a mind pulled back to the +scene of that havoc. And now, if you please, we were catching the real +thing. The old-line Russians were breaking upon us with machines and +shrapnel—the old combing and carding that seldom fails.... I saw the +cold mountains all about.</p> + +<p>Did you ever see a slaughter of drones? Perfect economy it is, from +the standpoint of the hive. The work of providing for the future is +accomplished—no mistake in the plan. The workers gather from all +sides. One by one the big clumsy drones are put to death—wrestling, +tugging, stinging, many workers giving themselves to death to carry out +the spirit of the hive.... The officers ahead who ordered our brother +Russians upon us, thought they were right—those great grey lines +ahead, honeycombed with our own precious comrades, all of whom were not +yet <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>martyred, as was proved. But they had not found their voice. It +looked like straight death they brought to us.</p> + +<p> ... Ages. I would turn from Varsieff's face to the cold mountains. +Something of the changelessness of the beyond and above came to me out +of the hideous fluctuation of the near and below. I could not keep +Varsieff back. He wouldn't resist so long as I held him, but the moment +my hands released, his body would rise like some automatic thing and +blindly stagger forward into the pale smoke-charged sunlight. The men +who saw him—many who knew what he had been and had heard him speak but +a few moments ago—lost their concentration on the battle. He became +everywhere the centre of a rotting line. Clearly they had been fighting +on his spirit—that, and the thought of going home....</p> + +<p>Sedgwick rode up and saw my struggle—beckoned me back, as one in +authority would bully a guard in a madhouse.... I obeyed, thinking of +the lie I had told. Here were human fragments; the air filled with the +shrieks of the fallen—the face of my friend beside me, the face of a +blasted mind—all because of that lie of mine.</p> + +<p>Then, as I trundled him to the rear, sometimes swinging him from one +elbow to the other, I saw a line, as one would draw a bloody finger +across his cheek. Then—it was like a monkey-bite in the bone and hair +of his eye-brow.... We were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>in a hail from the machines and the men +were falling back.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>I think we are half-mad in such moments, or else touched with a divine +sanity. In the midst of utter loss, the lines breaking back, the men +beginning to stampede—the plan flashed into my mind that I could only +save the first lie by a second. If the remnant fell back to starve in +the Marshes—Varsieff forever was put from me. Such was my thought. The +personal issue was greater than the Cause. I was beside myself—never +so little, never so formidable.</p> + +<p>My arm slipped from Varsieff who sank to his knees and flopped back +at the wheels of a four-inch <i>Sanguinary</i>, bursting hot. I ran back +to Sedgwick's staff, leaped into an empty saddle—then rode along the +cracking fronts.</p> + +<p>"Halt——" I yelled to the faces of the slipping lines.... "Halt—and +don't you see you're running from your own Comrades?... They're taking +over the Imperialists yonder. Our men have risen in the ranks of the +enemy!..."</p> + +<p>All along the lines, I yelled it—and it came forth like an inspired +message—lie that it was from my angle. For to me, death was better +than retreat, with the eyes of the world on our little nucleus of the +new order.... My shouts were checking them.</p> + +<p>"Our Comrades are coming to us—hold for <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>them!... Don't run away ... +they are coming! They are coming to join us, when they clean themselves +up over yonder—only a little clean-up first, my children. Hear the +noise?"</p> + +<p>I don't know how long I rode. I only knew that the fighting death was +victory—that there is no propaganda like martyrdom....</p> + +<p>They answered at first with a kind of half-hearted halt. I was struck +with the silence. A queer thing happened. I saw that I had spoken the +truth.... There was firing ahead, but it had no meaning of death to our +ranks. They were firing in the air, and some threw down their guns and +were running toward us. Presently we saw the tent-cloths hoisted in +truce. It was like seeing my mother again—shaking the table-cloth to +the birds.</p> + +<p>Then I saw their lines and ours running together—yes, Varsieff's +new heaven and new earth—saw them running together bare-headed, +white-haired peasant boys, hands outstretched, mouths open.... Freedom +was an aureola of different sunlight around their heads. On they came +like glorious ruffians, seizing their brothers in their arms—the lines +folding together like good mates before the Lord.</p> + +<p>Then it was like a blast—that Varsieff must see this! A cold blast +in the heart—that he must not miss this glory—that my eyes must not +dwell <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>upon this great consummation alone! Deep within, I knew my pain +was because his head was not lifted to the picture of his conquest. +Deep within, I knew that for some inexplicable reason of fate, he was +held back like the old Master on the other side of the Jordan—not +allowed to enter and witness the beauty of the promised land.</p> + +<p>In the midst of that radiant tumult, I ran back to the place that I +had left him. It was trampled; the mud was deeper, but Varsieff was +not there.... In the midst of the shouting and the glory, I searched +for him.... Hours passed, the fighting ceased ... we were a hundred +thousand strong, armed, provisioned, hearts turned homeward.... Scores +of us were looking for the Varsieff now.</p> + +<p>And then I heard my name called, and two young student-officers caught +me, one to each elbow and carried me forward, running to where the +woman stood ... Paula Mantone. She was standing in the midst of her own +people—the sun on her face. And I saw, too, the white look of one who +has conquered fear, but the weariness of her eyes was like the presence +of death....</p> + +<p>"Where is he?" she whispered.</p> + +<p>"Oh, God, I do not know——"</p> + +<p>"Poor dear Lange—all is well with us.... The boys of two armies +rushing together—yes, Lange, this is a good day for us——"</p> + +<p>She spoke rapidly, like lines committed—the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>same death-like weariness +in her tones.... She had taken my hand:</p> + +<p>"Come, we must find him ... take me to the place where you left +him—come quickly——"</p> + +<p>It was some distance. We walked at first in silence. It seemed as if +I could not live if I did not find out what she would have done this +morning in my place. Presently she said:</p> + +<p>"I thought he would fail when it came to ordering a charge. He was very +brave, they say."</p> + +<p>I loved the students who told her that, but I had known too much +torture to keep the perfect silence.</p> + +<p>"... It was hard for him.... He isn't a killer—he saw only the +white-haired boys——"</p> + +<p>"My beloved——" she whispered.</p> + +<p>"I told him that it was the same in Petrograd as here—that the dream +held here—that you would have told him to be strong at the death +part——"</p> + +<p>She was not listening. She did not answer.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>"It was just here. He was wounded a trifle. I left him to stop the +troops. They were breaking a bit," I explained.</p> + +<p>I had passed the place a dozen times. I remembered by the big +<i>Sanguinary</i>—hot when I had let go of Varsieff's arm. The dead had +been covered. The big gun was a wreck now—even the caisson with a +broken wheel.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span></p> + +<p>Then I realised it had been moved. There was a queer mound under the +wreckage. I reached down; my hand felt warmth in the mud. The woman was +with me.... I think we moved that mammoth caisson together.... There +was no white on him—a coating of mud but warm. We lifted him and the +woman's breast covered him from my eyes.... I heard him say her name. I +heard him speak of the tropical island they would go to together....</p> + +<p>I stood apart—I who had stood at his side so long.... There were +seconds when I heard her low passionate whispers—when I watched the +arch of her shoulder, the beauty of her bended brow.... I did not see +his face again. She held it fast to her and talked somehow out of the +world. Then I saw her raise her eyes as she had done that night in the +tent. For the first time I realised that he had only kept alive for her +coming.... But still I felt he must know the whole story. I did not go +closer, but called in half a whisper:</p> + +<p>"Tell him how the boys came together—arms out and laughing like +brothers. Don't let him go without knowing that—tell him how they +threw their guns away and then sat down on the ground together—singing +of home and the rivers and the ploughed lands and the women waiting for +us——"</p> + +<p>"I told him—I told him!" she answered. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>"You may come to him ... but +he—he only waited to see me.... Ah, Lange, you had him so much——"</p> + +<p>I looked away. Dusk was falling, the white peaks like spirits.... I had +not seen his face again, but it suddenly came to me how it had looked +when I saw it before—that which was the bravest and most beautiful +face that I knew in manhood—how it had been beaten and bruised under +the boots of running peasants—crushed into the mire by the feet of +the men he loved so well. For a moment, I was in the red world of rage +that this should be, but then the mighty drama of it came nearer, +the supreme laughing art of it all—that only the saviours call to +them. And I smiled, looking away to the dusk falling on the cold +mountains—and I knew that my friend's spirit was as close to us as the +body she held against her breast....</p> + +<p>Then back in the bivouacs a song began—the men of two armies roaring +out a song of the great white democracy of the future....</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span></p> +<div class="boxd"><h2><a name="chapter_27" id="chapter_27"></a>27</h2> + +<p class="title center">RÉSUMÉ</p></div> + + +<p class="drop-cap">The end of Varsieff is satisfying to us, and yet I wonder if I can +make this sort of romance clear. Martyrdom—they call it a short cut. +There is a saying that the soul of a man who dies for something, goes +marching on. The Irish become hopeless of their cause, if some one +dies for the opposition. All revolutionists have reckoned with this +subtlety—no propaganda like martyrdom; all the sacred writings refer +to it, our Bible several times, once in the sentence, "Greater love +hath no man——"</p> + +<p>A deluge of phenomena from "the other side" has come in during the +present war, all the old martyrs of nationalism said to be called to +the cause of their empires....</p> + +<p>What is the romantic haunt that lifts a man to such a pitch of +exaltation that he transcends pain, and goes singing down to die?</p> + +<p>These are matters much better known among the young dreamers and +workers of Russia and the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>Orient than of America.... Varsieff reveals +the child under the man of action; the lover above the intellectualist. +His love story unfolds certain passages which we are making a point of +in these chapters. The woman, Paula Mantone, represents a loved type +in our sort of story-making. She brings, vaguely, at least, into terms +the romantic ideal so calling to us in these days. She means more than +three-score and ten. Her love goes on and on. She becomes a priestess, +in a sense, and conducts her lover through the critical passage of +finding his own Soul. External battles then take his body, but she is +not altogether bereft. An intuitional woman does not always know what +she is doing in her heart story, even when she does greatly. If the +physical action had broken different, if the body of Varsieff had not +been required in martyrdom, for instance, he might have emerged from +the final stress of action in a state of spiritual exaltation, from +which, I can imagine Paula Mantone calling him back to the gardens of +the senses.... Martyr, priestess, revoltee, but always a woman. Every +year of devotion to the feminine in fiction, compels a more fluid, yet +more mystic handling.</p> + +<p>We have been very close to the young students and poets and players of +Russia. In the Fall of 1914 we published the following paragraph:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span></p> + +<p>There<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> are men in Russia who have heard the mighty music of +humanity. They will sing their dream and grave their message upon the +peasant soul.... Not the Russia of Nicholas Romanoff. His passing and +all the princes of his tainted blood will prove but an incident of the +Great War. Very low in the west among the red blinking points of the +falling constellation, is Nicholas and that Russia. In the east is the +Russian <i>novi</i> before the dawn, commanding the dark before the sun.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The young men of India, the young men of China, the young men of +Russia, the young men of America—I see them working together in the +wondrous story of life, as it reels off in the years to come—mating of +the East and West, the planet seen in one piece, the communal spirit of +the Hive around the globe.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p> ... I find myself getting up a rather serious intensity over what +<i>Romance</i> means, a signal to tame down.... <i>Not to stay</i>—to drain +nothing, to leave all cleaner, more orderly and richer for one's +tarrying, to glance but lightly, yet with a deep smile of understanding +at the torrent of detached and unmatched things which apparently makes +the world—to love it all better than those caught in detachment can +possibly love one an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>other—to belong to the many by remaining apart +from separate movements—at last to be the Spectator....</p> + +<p>One may deal lightly with crowds, but never with <i>man</i> or <i>woman</i>.... +One may say he has all that civilisation has for any human creature; he +may reasonably be bored by all departments of life, but there is enough +for an eternity of reverent study and adoration in the nearest human +face. The lovelier the human face, the more easily we can discern the +divine in it.... You get nowhere without loving something. This is the +hardest kind of material gospel.... We are all incognito—the greater +we are, the less perfectly disguised.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>First and last our dream of Romance means Motherhood—mysterious +enactments that the mere male can never know, no longer the motherhood +of the mammal, but the coming of the Guest, the Shining One—the +giving of body and mind and soul, no fear, no stipulation, no impeding +form of thought—more than that, it means a giving of the child to +the world.... The Valley Road Girl expresses it in this sharp, short +picture:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Once a woman lived in a dense forest, and had a man-child alone there. +As it grew, the woman impressed upon it the greatness of God and the +wonder of all things. Then one day, she led him <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>by the forest-paths to +the Highway, and left him there.</p></blockquote> + +<p>It means the Madonna who looks up, rather than down, at the head upon +her breast.</p> + +<p>The creative force is never wasted. Man and woman, in love or lust, are +never alone—rather startling, but sooner or later to be accepted. The +point of the triangle is either turned downward or upward. The creative +force feeds either the abominations of the underworld, or is used in +its designed order and loveliness as a point of inception for soul into +form.... The mother-nature of the New Race must be quickened by the +ideal of the coming of a World-teacher, of development a cycle ahead of +this race. Women must partake of this dream in their maternities. It +is the light of such an advent, shining upon the upturned face of the +mother, that touches the brow of the child with light.</p> + +<p>Absolutely the concept of the new Democracy demands the coming of a +great Unifier—a focal point for all world movements and interests +and aspirations. The story of a Master's coming is the ultimate +Romance—the finest story in the world—for that in itself is the story +of Regeneration.</p> + +<p>The work of this particular volume seems to be ended. Much that is +prepared need not be used. Right here is the breathing-space that +always comes in a life or a book.... <i>Not to stay</i>.... <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>Some of our +boys are off to the trenches; others may go. Part of the original +group has been unable yet to follow the centre to the West. Our good +Gobind<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> who belonged to the pith of things, arose from one breakfast +and went off to join the cavalry. There's a group in Chicago that we +see all too little of—a diffusion time truly, but only to make more +certain the time of integration again.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>There is one who came, changing all. We thought we knew much about the +world. We thought mainly that things were settled for us. It was not +words she brought, but a subtler quickening. I cannot tell it exactly. +There was a day in which I was bored, not satisfied, and another when I +was a child again—breathless, questing, listening for some one to tell +me stories of another and better country. All that I had done and been +and lived was diminished; more, all behind was utterly done, leaving +scarcely any criteria for that which was to be.... No inland lake would +do after that; we wanted a continental headland, the sweep of the earth +and sky—sidereal time, sidereal space. We could only tolerate the +quest of the Impossible after she came.</p> + +<p> ... She came and wrote her book through the summer days and then she +went away.... Somehow after that we knew what rains and sunlight +meant—what all nature was saying and do<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span>ing. At least, we knew +better.... <i>Not to stay.</i> We could not follow continually, but at last +out of loneliness, the big new laughing wonder of life came to us ... +and when we told her, she seemed to have known all the time....</p> + +<p>We teach by making pictures. She brought new pigments and freshened +all the oils. We loved the tints and half-tones before she came, but +she restored us to the virgin beauty of the primal rays. We liked the +blends before she came—the blend of rose and gold, but she brought us +length of vision and redemption of taste to know the meaning of the +Ultimate Red, the red of the Pomegranate, the red of the Inspired Mary, +to whose knees at the last all artists and little children find their +way—the passionate red of the Quest and the Cross and the Son. She was +not surprised when we told her what her gifts mean to us.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>An artist gives himself full-heartedly to the emotions. Keen and +poignant afterward, is the battle to straighten them out, to comb +them down. The mind holds the truth about it all, the spirit sings +all around, but the heart holds fast to its agonising play of passion +settings.</p> + +<p>Desire is like an old King, sitting in the midst of his dogs, a King +by the fire in his tower. The Shining Heir is born, but the old King +is slow to die. He sits thinking of his old hunts, his rides <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>to kill, +old wars and faces at the window.... He rode well; he thought he loved +very well; a great name, he was, in the hunts, and in all the games of +getting. He meditates now upon his one-time conquests, and forgets his +pain. It is his memories that hold him fast to life a little while. But +at last the head of old King Desire sinks to his breast, the fire fades +from his last memory. The door of the tower room opens, the Shining +Prince is standing there, and the criers run through the palace crying +aloud, "The King is dead. Long live the King!" Desire has ended; the +Bestower takes the throne.</p> + +<p>When we told her of this new breath of life which she had brought, +our Mary seemed to know all about that, too. She smiled and looked +away when we showed her this book (and the inscription to her), so +many pages of which she had read before—our dreams for the New Race +unfolded in letters to her.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The instant one perceives the inner meaning of <i>Equality</i>, glimpsing +the great Seamless Robe of humanity as one;—he realises that what +is best for him is best for all others—what is best for the many is +his own highest behest.... One must grasp this to know what Democracy +means, to know what is behind the word, a meaning which those who use +it most haven't dreamed of. You must grasp the spirit of the hive—that +winged <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>myriads of golden atoms never stray so far as to break the +spirit-cord that binds them into one—that the one knows all, contains +potentially all goodness and beauty and truth, that all action, art and +thought, come from the spirit of the one—that the fruits of these go +back. I love to tell it again and again. I saw it all afresh to-day.</p> + +<p>The sun plays tricks with the earth at high noon. One feels superbly +well—a kind of seething in the veins. It pulls him away from the great +quest for the Father's House, in gusts of Mother Nature's magic. All +the fragrance of fallow fields is in the hot light and blowing hay and +deathless azure and high noon. Glorious swarms of bees were breaking +out from the Spirit of the hive, all one in Spirit at the top—the +Spirit brooding at all times over all the workings of the hive.... +It was the same with the millions of men who walk the earth, one at +the top—all one, coming and going in the Spirit, replenished and +replenishing always, learning the fusions here in friends and lovers, +each finding his one, and then the new quest together for the Great +Companions.</p> + +<p>Then it came to me that we are only sick and blind and lame and +evil—in the sense of detachment. We must kill that out. Hate spoils +everything. Hate binds us to the object. We mustn't despise another's +coat. It may have been ours yesterday—may be ours to-morrow. We <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>must +kill out the sense of separateness from any creature, for we are +destined to become one spirit with him and all others. Something like a +cloud—all one, as a cloud is one.</p> + +<p>Every morning on the grass—on millions of blades of grass—a globe of +dew at the tip of each.... The Lord Sun arises. The dew warms a little +and slips down the track of the blade into the root. There it breaks +up into infinite fragments. The sun rising higher weaves his warm +magic over the fields; invisibly, like prayers ascending, the drops +of dew, all diffused into a thousand fragments each, thin as steam, +and carrying the perfumes of roses and lilacs and honeysuckles and +meadow lands and fallow lands and lake and ocean shores,—like prayers +ascending, the dewdrops of yesterday return as one to the cloud. Broken +into the farthest diffusion, but not an atom lost. All the richness of +earth in essence returning to the Spirit....</p> + +<p>The same with bee and dewdrop and man—the same with swarm and cloud +and tribe—each fragment and division lifting to a greater, unto +the Shining Source at last.... The point of it all is that man is +spiritually woven to his brother and to the race; giving himself and +his service to his brother and to the race he glorifies the texture and +stature of his own soul.</p> + +<p>Christmas, 1917.</p> + + +<hr class="tb" /> + + +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> + + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> H.A. Sturtzel.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Fred Jasperson.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> These appear in <i>Child and Country</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Universe.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The Abbot.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> The saddle horse.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Frying Pan.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Teapot.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Vibration.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Appointment.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Helen Cramp.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Child and Country.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Jane Levington Comfort.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>Child and Country.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> The saddle horse.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Help!</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Child and Country.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Herman S. Schuchert.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Fatherland.</i> George H. Doran Company, New York.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Ben Poteat.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="chap" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<div class="transnote"> +Transcriber's Note + +<p>The book contains many words spelt to reflect the accent of the +speaker. The spelling has not been changed.</p> + +<p>There are two instances of unmatched ending quotation marks. The +missing opening quotation marks were not added because their +locations were uncertain.</p> + +<p>The following changes to printing errors have been made.</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">ouselves is now ourselves</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">though is now through</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">unlifted is now uplifted</span><br /></div> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HIVE***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 44208-h.txt or 44208-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/4/4/2/0/44208">http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/2/0/44208</a></p> +<p> +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p> +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. 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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: The Hive + + +Author: Will Levington Comfort + + + +Release Date: November 17, 2013 [eBook #44208] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HIVE*** + + +E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Sue Fleming, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images +generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries +(https://archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + https://archive.org/details/hivewill00comfiala + + + + + +THE HIVE + + + * * * * * * + +BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT + + + THE HIVE + THE LAST DITCH + CHILD AND COUNTRY + LOT & COMPANY + RED FLEECE + MIDSTREAM + DOWN AMONG MEN + FATHERLAND + + + NEW YORK + + GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + + * * * * * * + + +THE HIVE + +by + +WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT + +Author of "Midstream," "Child and Country," +"The Last Ditch," "Down Among Men," etc. + + + + + + + +[Illustration] + +New York +George H. Doran Company + +Copyright, 1918, +By George H. Doran Company + +Printed in the United States of America + + + + + TO MARY + + + ... soft gold and deep + fragrance and pomegranate red. + + + + +FOREWORD + + +There is much to say. Many have a part in this story of our days. +Their work is on the table. Yet no manuscript, no chapter, is a real +beginning. One must start a book this way--with a fresh sheet in the +machine and tell what he is going to tell about.... First of all, it +has to do with the unfolding of the child mind; all the Stonestudy work +has been for that, but the brimming wonder of it all is that we have +chiefly been employed unfolding ourselves. + +No one can begin upon the sweet and sacred story of life to a child +without taking a stride nearer into the centre of things, and living +it. That's what all telling is about--presently to stop talking and to +catch up on conduct. The fairest culture of all is to become artists in +life.... Thinking of this, thinking much upon this one thing, we have +been lured out of the heaviness of work into the dimension of Play. We +tell here about this particular passage. + +Also something about the story of Man and Woman, hinting at what is +contained in pages of the Book of Life not opened heretofore for the +eyes of the many, but preparing now for the eyes of the children of +the New Race--a beautiful story, be sure of that, but one that requires +art in the telling. No one could bring this story to the lovers and the +children of the New Race who had not found out that Beauty belongs to +the divine trinity with Goodness and Truth. + +Many seers have not held that well in mind, many sages have forgotten +it, many saints have not learned it adequately at all. We have to build +our own heavens here before we can have them anywhere else. The more of +an artist a man is, the more reverent he becomes about perfecting his +thought-forms. Just a mention now--that we rejoice to make much of the +Beauty side of things in this book; that a thing cannot be beautiful +and bad; that Beauty is the next quest of the many, as they escape one +by one from the bondage of Gold. + +We try to express the Soul of things rather than to delineate +boundaries of matter, but a very strong point is made upon the fact +that one cannot deal in the spirit until he has mastered to a good +degree the coarser stuff that bodies and worlds are made of. We do not +care how the young minds aspire mystically, so long as their abutments +hold fast in the bottom-lands. A man must not drag his anchor as he +climbs the hill; he must unfold line all the way--a line made of +strands of himself, woven of his own wisdom, love and power. + +Much is made in this book of the fact that we are given _pounds_ for a +purpose--that all here below is symbol and intimation of a globe and +perfection elsewhere--that we cannot look upon the archetype of gold +until we have mastered the imitation in clay.... We come even closer +to this precious subject: For instance, we know that it is only from +the soul of things that one can see materials--that no one can get a +glimpse of the meaning of materials so long as he is lost in the ruck +of them. At the same time we do not believe that we have access, even +to the lesser grades of mysticism, until we have all the power and +force of the material-minded. We believe we must do well that which the +world is doing, even the tasks of the average man, that nothing can be +missed. + +We do not encourage that mystic or poet who requires endowment. If we +are to be artists, we believe in supporting our own groups; we have a +suspicion that we are not through with conditions, any conditions no +matter how hateful, so long as they have us whipped. + +We aspire to be writers and politicians and painters and heroes; we +aspire to be masters in all the superb productions of life, but we are +content to begin with the ground. We are content with poverty, yet we +believe that very early as workmen, we are entitled to a fastidious +poverty, which is expensive. No possessions--but all possessions. As +writers we are convinced that it is necessary to do--and inimitably +well--the things that the public wants and pays ten cents the word for, +quite as well as to reveal the deeper folds of our growth for which we +have to finance publication. We are not sure yet which is the worthier +achievement. + +Perhaps we speak much of Soul in this book, but we mean nothing more +formidable than the better part of every man. This is the Big Fellow +who takes us over when we do that which is worth while--in billiards +or diplomacy, in art or love or trade. I think it is the Big Comrade +which we are really unfolding--the Workman and Player. Much of Soul, we +write, because it is the point of our educational drive--to set It free +in the child or the young workman, to make It speak or write or play, +and not mere brain and hand. + +We speak much of love--not as an emotion, not as a sentiment, but as a +cosmic force. You will see much more what we mean by this as you turn +the pages. It is the most challenging thing in the world. It is the +inner white-hot core of the Fatherland that is to be--the great white +Democracy of the future.... + +_Democracy_--that's the point of inception of it all; that word is +the seed. The more you dwell upon it--you know what the Seamless Robe +of the Christ means--the more you realise that the Master Jesus was +the first Big Democrat.... We have them speak the word softly and +thoughtfully here each day--we like to hear the young ones say it. They +are apt to know as much about it as you do--for the word doesn't mean +exactly what they mean, who have used it most heretofore. It isn't +the name of a political party--yet.... It is government of the people +by the people, but only to those who see the sons of God in the eyes +of passing men. We only ask its magic, not its presence upon these +pages.... They're fighting for it gloriously--every hour. The boys here +thrill with the boys there. We hold our hands high to them. Some of our +boys are there. They are all our boys! Some are waiting the call to +go--but there or here, we are pulling together for the real Fatherland, +for the adequite fraternity, under the endless and thrilling magic of +the word _Equality_. + +... I can say no more splendid word to you than My Equal: I know of +no greater adventure than to become one of the Many. It is true that +you and I--the best of us, the Immortal within us each, are of one +house--that this is but a far outpost of the journey, Egypt if you +like, the husks if you like--but that we have arisen and are on our way +home to the Father's House. + + + Canyon, Santa Monica, California. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + NORTH AMERICANS 17 + + QUICKENINGS 24 + + CONQUEST OF FEARS 36 + + THE STUFF OF COMRADES 45 + + JOHN'S THINGS 56 + + VALUES OF LETTER WRITING 70 + + THE NEW DANCING 79 + + OLD PICTURES IN RED 91 + + STEVE 101 + + HEJIRA 111 + + THE SPECTATOR 118 + + TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL 129 + + THE ABBOT 139 + + THE ARTIST UNLEASHED 155 + + WORK IN SHORT STORIES 164 + + VALLEY ROAD GIRL 172 + + BEAUTY 183 + + SHUK 192 + + IMAGINATION 205 + + BOYS AND DOGS 211 + + THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE 219 + + THE MATING MYSTERY 241 + + CHAPTER OF LETTERS 252 + + ROMANCE 267 + + THE COSMIC PEASANT 277 + + RESUME 315 + + + + + THE HIVE + + + + +1 + +NORTH AMERICANS + + +The thing called the New Race--the passion of poets, the phantom +running ahead and forever calling the dreamer and revolutionist +and occultist, is far from a reality as yet among the commonplaces +of the world. It is the spirit of everything worth while, but that +means nothing to one who has not a breath of it in his own body.... A +story went forth from this shop recently in which certain ideals and +presences of the new social order were carried through to a cheerful +ending. The publisher wrote, "Yes, but what is the New Race?" + +It's a fair question, but remember one cannot adequately describe a +spiritual thing in terms of matter. It is only possible of portrayal +where it has broken through into terms of three-space. First you are +apt to get the nearest and most striking picture of the New Race at +your own supper-table--the presence of one of your own children, +especially if the young one is hard to understand. + +Parents and children of all times have found confusion and alarm in +each other's ways. But there are rare periods of human history when +the difference between two generations has been not a normal and +superficial crack, but an abyss. It is so now. The Old has reached +its climacteric point of destructivity. All self-passions destroy +themselves in time. Fear, greed, sensuality--all are self-destructive. +Great human numbers and decadent principles have been recently +broken down in the world with a swiftness and abandonment heretofore +unrecorded, except in the traditions of planetary flood and flame.... + +You may watch closely the child under seven who plays in the Unseen, +whose companions are not in the room for older eyes; watch the one of +fancies and fairies and fragrances which others cannot quite discern. +Many a child has been driven with a soul-wound into corroding silence +by parents who thought they were punishing falsehood, when they were in +reality repressing the imagination--the faculty which master-artists +denote as the first and loveliest possession of the creative mind. Too +coarse and unlit to see what the child saw, the parents again and again +have looked gravely at each other, saying: + +"This is a crisis. Our child has begun to lie. We must forget her own +feelings and punish her----" + +So often it is _her_--but not always. The boys who are to do the +great tasks of song and prophecy and architecture--they, too, dream +dreams and see visions and have the rapt eyes of Joan in the forests +of Domremy; they, too, are severely questioned by the pharisees; none +escape this scourging; they, too, in many cases shall be put to death. + +The new ideals of the parenthood, education, romance, are now being +introduced and promulgated by pioneers long since emerged from the old +litter and humus. Education will mean first of all a turning for power +to the Unseen. The quest of the Swan and the Star and the Beloved, are +never carried along on the levels and inequalities of the earth--always +the uplifted face for the saint and the sage and the seer. Great +parents kneel beside their children and beg to be delivered from the +heaviness which holds them to the dim shadows, where the child sees +face to face. Education will mean finding his intrinsic task for the +child--the intensive cultivation of the human spirit from the Soul +outward, not alone from the brain inward. + +The quest of the passing age was for Gold. The real meaning and +symbol and glory of gold, as the highest, smoothest and most finished +of minerals, has been lost in the bulkier products and possessions +it meant to measure and signify. More and more has gold itself hid +away from vulgar hands and been represented by objects intrinsically +inferior. We now behold a civilisation destroying itself for +commodities and destroying the commodities for which the destruction +began. + +Gold itself will serve Beauty in the coming age; commerce will serve +aesthetics. The lovers of Beauty begin with the sand, with the clay. +They love nature from the ground up; they are fervent for light and +air, for sun and sky and water, for fruits and grains and bees, for +stars and rains and romances. They say such things are holy. Words are +inadequate for their loves and appreciations. They find the ways to +love God infinite. They see Him in stone and stream; they see Him in +the eyes of the deep down men; they see Him risen and inevitable in the +eyes of their lovers.... + +Straight goodness will not do for the New Race, nor straight +intellectuality. Artists, singers, painters and idealists will be the +heroes of the generations to come, for they will add the quest of +Beauty to the unwashed goodness of the saints and pilgrims. + +These are but flaring points; one is embarrassed in short space because +of a myriad things to say. Free verse is a sign of the New, also the +dream of a free world and the planetary patriotism. The immanence of +the _spirit_ of all things, is a sign; the sense of the underlying +oneness of humanity; not alone the Fatherland, but the Kinterland, +where new Fountains are established and sages and masters come for +inspiration--all these, like a passing train of wonder, a glimpse of +many cars.... + +I think I can bring the picture in closer by using a few pages of work +from one of the young men with me. His name is Steve. I called him The +Dakotan,[1] in the book, _Child and Country_. We've romped and ridden +together for three years, and I've known Steve better every day--still +far from the end. The rest of the chapter is Steve's writing: + + [1] H.A. Sturtzel. + + +NORTH AMERICANS + +Out of the centuries of moil and mix and fuse of Europe, the orient and +the north countries, a gleaming archetype has emerged here which may +be called the real North Americans. They are scattered here and there +among the younger generation--young people new in name only; in soul +they are as old as Zeus. Often they are strangers in their father's +house. They blend the mind of the occidental with the soul of the east; +splendid firstlings of an untried future. They betray themselves by +their genius. Heredity is the first fetich overthrown by them. + +From the first they are a law unto themselves. They cast off churches, +codes, creeds, schools and parents as preliminary steps in their +teens. In the twenties they are prodigies, leaders in the arts or the +revolutions. It is their aim to over-reach themselves, not to further a +type. Very early they conjourn together in secret and obscure places, +revolting against life as it is lived, like a handful of white dwellers +in a foreign city. + +There is always an alien, intangible something about these people. One +senses the double life they lead, their own, and others. Conditions +are not yet adjusted for them. They are super-nationalists, the first +mark of the new. They are dreamers who make their dreams come true in +matter, and first among their dreams is of the planet in one piece. +They are naturally intolerant of barriers and partitions. They see +ahead a new social order vast and shining as a devachanic vision--the +real democracy of the future. They see that the new has come in not to +kill, but to build. Theirs will be the spiritual heroics. Yet all this, +of the greater patriotism, must not yet be spoken. It only alienates +them the more from those they must live with. Their arch enemy is +Ignorance, personified so often in their elders. + +It is noticeable that these young people are healthier, stronger, +swifter, sharper, tougher, bolder and at the same time lighter and +finer than the passing generation. They have the _new healthiness_. +They belong to the open and are practically immune to disease. +Theirs is the health of sun and wind and spirit--vitality instead of +constitution, something the old can never understand. Constitution +is weight, solid, ungiving. Vitality is volatile, springy, electric, +constantly being given, constantly being acquired, self-refining. +Constitution does not change; it accumulates all it can, then begins to +die.... + +The young women of this new Race are open, strong, eye-to-eye, free +spoken. They are capable of friendships; they are not adverse to being +wholly understood by males. They are not popular with ordinary women, +who surmise their superiority but comprehend it not. Deceit, jealousy +and such common disturbances evident in the sex are unknown to them. +They have character and are lovely rather than beautiful. They are apt +to go half way in their love-making, for who should know better when +the chosen father of their children arrives. + +All of these people are bringers of true love. Love is their philosophy +and religion. They listen to the heart as well as the brain. Others +think them cruel in their discrimination in mating. They take all or +nothing--prodigious riskers, great sufferers, throwing even love's +dream on the board to be played for, and laughing as they play. The +slightest blight on the loved one is deepest agony. + +Perhaps the surest way of discovering these young giants is to search +about for the most sorely harassed children. Invariably they are put +to it, to break into this day and generation. They fight their way up +through all the banked-up ignorance and antagonism of unlit humanity. +Often they are solitaires, coming and going with the secrecy of kings +and eagles. + + * * * * * + + + + +2 + +QUICKENINGS + + +A few pages of drift first of all with the younger boys.... There +is a lane of Lombardy poplars from the Lake to the interurban +car-line--a half mile. It is a lifting walk at any time, but summer +evenings are wonderful with all the sounds and scents of a true +pastorale--lake-breath and meadow-lands, the whole sky to look at, and +the murmuring dissonance of the poplars. Often we walk to the car with +passing guests. One evening a guest went away whom we loved very much. +A lad of seven, named John, and I walked back from the car alone. + +He was ignited. I felt this at last through his hand. I had been +thinking about my own things all too long, missing the beginnings of +his talk.... He hurried forward in the dusk, speaking in a hushed rapt +voice. Because I had missed the first part, I said: "John, I want you +to write that--either to-night or to-morrow." + +And this is what came in: + + +THE MAGIC LANE: + +It was at dusk. Two people left their tracks in Nature's dust road. + +Love is found on that road. It is the road of the mystics. + +They leave their love in it; Nature kisses their feet. + +Many horses' feet have been kissed on that mystic road. + +That mystic road will last forever. + +I long to walk upon that road of love. + +Love on that road will last forever. + +It is all true love. + +Our friends have been met on that road of love. + +It leads to the Hills of God. + +Certain spelling matters have been corrected. We pay little attention +to spelling in the work here. The young ones learn by reading and get +the proper look of a word altogether too soon in many cases. There was +another high moment from John at the same time. The following three +lines have stood out from the period with memorable magic: + + +WONDER + +The soft breath of the Mother came in through the window of vines. + +The stars were shining like the face of the New Generation. + +My spirit was away in the Hills. A noise at the door brought me back---- + +John then fell into a psychological tangle which we found little +profit in following. By the "Mother" he referred to Nature.... The +verse period has passed for the time. Around the age of seven, boys +change. Often, as in this case, they are not so interesting for a while +afterward. John is coming nine now and is writing "action" stories with +all the worn and regulation props and settings. The early tendency will +return with a dimension added. All transitions are times of disorder, +but they are followed by larger areas and truer fulfilments of order. A +cloud falls upon the sanctuary, but when it is dispelled, one perceives +a lifted dome, bright with its new cloth of gold. + +I am struck every day in dealing with young boys how wisdom and beauty +and truth can be inculcated in their lives, without pain and strain to +them, and with great profit to the teacher. The young mind is quick to +change. It has not grown its pharisaical ivory.... + +The sanction of a boy must be won on a physical basis. A man must know +what the boy knows and go him one better. The man must understand boy +points of view, but never expect the boy to be puerile. Parents of the +past generations have had the steady effrontery to expect very little +from children. "Why, they are only children!" has done more to make +for vacuousness and drivel than any other visionless point of view, +none of which has been missed. There is a difference in ages, to be +sure. The child's mind has not massed for use the external impacts +of twenty or thirty years of life in the world, but there is also an +Immortal within--a singer, hero, builder, or a teacher possibly, eager +to manifest through the child's fresh mind, fervid to bring the mind of +the child to its subjection, for the expression of its own revelations. +Indeed, the parents themselves are enjoined to become as little +children. In arriving at this wisdom and humility, they may suddenly +find masters in their own children. + +There is also a lad here of seven named Tom. Yesterday I found him +beside me on the sand, down by the water's edge. I began to tell him +about the Inner Light that we all carry. You can talk over a child's +head, if your words are choked with mental complications (which is apt +to be second-rate talk, anyway), but you seldom are out of reach of a +fine child's grasp when you speak of spiritual things. He was sitting +cross-legged, folded hands between his knees--a little six pointed +star--head and shoulders the three upper points, knees with folded +hands between, the three lower. He was bare from the waist up and +thighs down, and brown as the honey of buckwheat.... I told him that +the seventh and perfect point of his star was within; that if he shut +his eyes and kept very still, putting away for the present all his +thoughts about himself, his feelings, his wants and his rights--looking +into himself as one would look ahead for a lamp in the night, listening +deep within, as one would listen for the voice of a loved friend,--I +promised that at last he would see what the three wise men saw--the +Star in the East. He need only follow that Star and be true to its +guidance to come at last to the Cave and the Solar Babe.... After that +I hinted that I would come to _his_ feet and listen. + +Tom felt that it was worth trying for at once--shut his eyes, turning +all thoughts and gaze within. He held the posture long.... I have +marvelled again and again at the quickness with which the child-mind +attains to concentration so essential for all original production. +The little ones have no mad emotional lists to sort out and subdue; +their wants are simple "yes" and "no" in so many cases. Indeed, they +are spared the struggle of becoming as little children.... Tom held +the posture, until I was actually tense from the strain of waiting and +keeping my thoughts from calling his. + +It was a picture--sun-whitened hair, long yellow lashes, brown body +with a bit of babe's softness left to it, and glorious sunlight. He +opened his eyes at last saying that he had the door, where the light +was, almost opened, when a fly bit him. + +I thought of the perfection of the instance of the mind's +waywardness--the coming of the Master spoiled by a fly bite.... Tom +will search for his Star every day. It is strange that he is closer +to the hill-pastures around Bethlehem, under seven, than for years +afterward. + +To learn concentration in mid-life after the world "has been put +through a man," is an ordeal at best; and yet we are by no means +masters of ourselves, nor capable of significant achievement until the +brain can be stilled at will of its petty affairs (the first aim of +concentration) and becomes the glad servant of the "giant" within. + +A little later I saw Tom on the back of a huge black walk-trot +saddle-horse of show quality--passing up the Lane at a fast clip, his +feet half way to the stirrups, holding on to the saddle with one hand, +the bridle-rein in the other. A year or two ago I should have been +afraid to permit that, but we manage now to relieve the young ones of +a large part of our fears for their welfare. Children have enough to +overcome from their parents. Frequently the New Age young people have +to master their heredity before they begin upon themselves. + +Life is a big horse to ride, so often a black horse. It is well to +start children free and unafraid. We do not let them dwell in thought +of pain. We do not permit tears. We inform them early that to be sick +is a confession of uncleanness, that lying is for the use of cowards +only, and that to be cruel marks the idiot. + +We are occasionally serious over repeated failures, but we laugh over +things done well. Tennis has unfolded marvellous possibilities in the +training of will force. Children are shown that there is a mystic +quality to all the perfect games--that the great billiardists and +tennis and baseball players perform feats in higher space, whether they +know it or not. There is the essential ideal first in the making of the +athlete as in the making of the poet. The great moments of play require +faculties swifter and more unerring than the human eye or hand or mind. +Ask the master of any game if he had time to think in pulling off the +stroke that won. It is inspiration that he uses quite the same as the +poet in his high moments. + +Education is the preparation of the mind to receive and answer to +inspiration from a plane above. The more you develop merely the brain +of a child, the more he is detached from the great principles of being, +the more also is he closed to the real, and subjected to the danger of +actual lesion and sickness. The more you develop the spirit of a child, +or rather give the significant One within an opportunity to come forth +and _be_ the child, the more you make for beauty, health, goodness and +glory of bodily life.... A lucky day when you start really to associate +with your children, luckier still when you undertake the work of +teaching them incidental to your own work. Then and there, you begin to +realise that children are close to a source of things that you cannot +touch. Presently you realise that they are teaching you.... + +Day after day I have studied and practised the development of the +child from within outward. I have seen the capacity to synthesise and +assimilate mere mental matters developed in a year, by training the +mind from the centre of origins outward, that mental training alone +could never accomplish. The mind itself becomes vigorous and avid and +capacious and majestically swift. It is trained to express its true +self. That is power--that is king-play. This sentence covers the whole +matter: + +_The perfect way to develop the mind of the child is to teach him to +sit and listen at the feet of his own master, the Soul._ + +The right to live and to bring the laughter of power to the days must +be won afresh each morning. No two days alike. We make ourselves +impossible to children of the New Age by trying to confine them in the +laws and rules of yesterday. The young people whom I serve live in +a different intensity. Their interest flags if I repeat, if I fall +into familiar rhythms. Continually they spur me on. I think, after +all, great teaching is the capacity to feel what the younger minds are +thinking. If we are too coarse to catch the first warning of their +resistance, they slip farther and farther from our grasp. + +It would not seem possible to hold American young people with spiritual +affairs; yet this is done daily. We call the Unseen--the great gamble. +I have shown how all else betrays--how all matter is a mockery at the +last--that even love and friendship fail for those who are called to +weep and worship wholly at the tomb of the body.... The truth is out: +The beginnings of real teaching is in making the Unseen interesting and +dramatic. + +We dwell upon the mystic white lines which connect all things--the +sources of daring and beauty and creativeness. I ask my young people +where they were--when they did any rare and improved bit of work, when +they felt like great comrades, met some magnanimous impulse, arose to +superb instants of play, or when in Chapel the big animation touched +us all and set us free. They always answer that they were _out of +themselves_. + +That's a secret of the new teaching again--to lift the students out +of themselves. Men take to drink or drugs for this same reason: men +and women set out on the great adventures, pleasures and quests for +this. We hunger and toil for this freedom; we suffer and adore--to get +out of ourselves. Mental teachings tie us in more firmly. The teaching +here--and no two days alike--is to startle and encourage the young +minds to arise and live and breathe in that lovelier and more spacious +dimension which at least borders upon the Unseen. The doors open and +shut so softly. One does not know he has been out--until he is back +with strange light in his eyes and in his hands a gift from the gods. + +The essential spirituality of the new teaching must not be confused +with religious affairs as they are known and exploited in the world. +You cannot teach the New Age religion of the world's kind. It has +its own. No dry as dust sage will do. A snort will answer your +sanctimoniousness; flexible science will reply to the abysses of your +logic.... You must be the consummate artist if never before in your +life, to teach the beauty of the soul to youth. The young workers of +the new social order will never bring forth their great harvests from +your _reflected_ light. You must be spontaneous--you must flood them +with pure solar gold; you must show them by your life and your work, +how you come and go into the Unseen. + +There is no rest.... One commands his disciples to go forth at last. +The teacher strides forward faster when they cling. He tells them +one day they must race the gamut to follow him; and the next day he +puts another in his place and begs to be allowed a cushion in the +midst of the children.... We hold them by setting them free--the first +law of love. All unions of the future--in trade and friendship and +matrimony--will be founded upon the principle of freedom; and this is +the essence of the new teaching--to liberate the children into their +larger and God-quickened selves. + +No rest and no two days alike. + +A Bob White called me this morning across the uncut hayfields at the +edge of the lake-bluff.... His two smooth and patient notes seemed +to contain the secret of putting off all fret and fear and unrest. +He seemed to ask if I had not done this already--had not yet put all +boyish and merely temporal things away? "Not yet?... Not yet?" he +called the question. + +I answered that I would try again, and I set out straightway to be +honest once more with the world, with the soil and with myself. I would +begin with the clay again to be clean--to rise and think and dwell in +cleanliness, to think no thought, to perform no action second-rate--to +begin with the Laugh again--the warm laugh of conquest that always +opens some inner door to fresh powers--to arise afresh in the glory +and gamble of the Unseen.... I returned and saw the young ones one by +one--from Tom and John up to the men and women--doing their work. I set +about mine with a laugh and called the day good. The teacher knows best +who is taught. + + + + +3 + +CONQUEST OF FEARS + + +An interesting boy of ten and I have been much together in the open +weather. We have learned many things, but nothing more important than +what a sham Fear is. I do not mean that we take chances or that it is +wise to risk life or limb. Fine discrimination is back of all training +in the arts of life; still we certainly have found that Fear is a +waster and diminisher of beauty and power--and that it can be mastered. + +About the most fascinating thing that life has shown me is the way in +which fine examples of the younger generation learn the deeper matters +of life--matters of self-mastery which make the very presence of a +lad significant to a stranger, and which formerly were supposed to be +secrets for the sons of kings alone. + +"Do you fear anything?" I ask. "Look deep. Listen deep--do you fear +anything?... It's like the pain that tells you of a weakness or +disease. Fear is an unerring reminder of a task of conquest ahead for +you. That which you fear most is the thing to conquer first." + +There had been much of this talk of Fear before a laughable personal +experience showed me how much I asked. + +I crossed a mesa and came to an abrupt drop-off--two hundred feet +sheer. It astonished me. I hadn't experienced anything like this quiver +of horror for years. All members and muscles bolted at the thought of +advancing closer to the edge. I sat down to think it out. It never had +occurred before that I _wasn't_ my nervous system, and must not let it +get me down. + +The more I thought, the more I perceived that I must do the thing I +dreaded so. In fact, I had told trusting young people that they were +not their bodies, not their emotions, not even their minds--that these +must be made to obey. Here I had a chance to prove if I were less in +action than talk. I forced my fluttering young self to the edge.... +Dizziness--wobbly limbs, fancied shoves from behind, the call of the +huge shadowed space below, a queer sense of parting in mid-air, the +body thumping down, another and liberated self gladly spurning the +ground--all these symptoms of panic followed swiftly. + +I held until calm came, and I then could study this little coil of +forgotten fears--a civilised mess.... The weakness was absurdly easy to +overcome after the will was once aroused. There's no end or limitation +to will force when awakened. The greater the man, the more awe he has +for this subject. There's a glow that follows conquest of any kind; the +mere call of the will to action brings a sense of power in the heart. +There is no way more speedily to dispel pain, anger, passion, fear, or +any of these tentacles of personality--than to summon the power of will +to instant action. The particular matter of this precipice showed me a +trick about calling up the force--priceless to me afterward in bigger +tests, and for opening the way of self-conquest to boys. + +One must decide what one wants to do--then carry it out to the death. +Discrimination, art, all culture and knowledge may be brought to bear +in making the decision--but after that, it must be carried out--just +that. + +Fears belong to the abdomen. You can feel them there. They are quicker +than thought. Perhaps you had a twinge of nerves over some sight or +sound or odour, before your mind could tell you what you were afraid +of.... I have often told the young ones here--listening a bit to my own +voice--that there isn't anything living or dead, phantom, shell, or +living soul, that has got the authority to make the spirit of man quail. + +Courage is spirit. + +Most people don't care to try to deal with it; they let it have its +way.... Do you recall the fears of the dark room as a child--fear +always stealing behind--upstairs alone, the rush to the light, almost +screaming tension?... I heard a patter of steps the other evening and +knew the whole story--a boy of seven. He had been sent upstairs without +a light. I sent him back, told him to stay there until he got himself +in hand--to stay in the dark and think the bogie down. He was well +afterward. + +I have known some under-fire work. A man soon gets himself in hand +to look straight at a white-fringed trench. Fear of sharks furnished +another test. From a child the deep-sea devourers had an exquisite +fascination for me--to be cut in two under brine, white belly, +backward mouth, black-rimmed, hairy pig eyes, the double-rows of +teeth.... Pacific Islanders swim in the same harbour with fourteen-foot +scavengers, careless of whole schools of monsters, yet scurry to their +boats at the sight of one solitary, _different_ fin. I had seen the +so-called, man-eating brutes, "grey nurses," dim grey horrors with dull +black spots. A well-fed imagination also came into play. + +I went swimming in the surf with a splendid Australian chap--a doctor +home from the trenches.... He left me back in the surf lines and +started out to sea. I finished my swim decently in toward North +America, and lay on the strand. From time to time off in the sunset I +saw my friend's head.... I was glad to grab the beach-comber when he +came in. + +"It's all perfectly sane and splendid," I said, "and I'm glad to have +you back for supper with us, and the billows out yonder are doubtless +all that you say, for an afternoon's lie-up, only I venture to +ask--what if a grey nurse should happen in from the lower islands?" + +"You don't think about them," he said. + +That's about all there is to the fear subject. You don't let it get +you. There is nothing worth fearing in or above or under the plane of +manifestation.... So I tried that out in deep water. The old horrors +succumbed like the fear of the precipice, but not so readily, quite. +One can imagine keenly in the dim deep; the touch of sea-weed quickens +all the monsters of the mind.... + +There's nothing fit to be afraid of, unless it is the _self_. When we +get the ape and the tiger, the peacock and the porpoise, the lizard +and the shark and the carcajou of our own natures mastered, there +isn't anything left to do but to tally them off outside, a friendly +finish with them all. No menagerie is complete as man's, and each of us +favours some species from time to time. + +I have thought much about fear. In another place I told how we have +overcome inertia; how we developed senses through the hard administry +of fear and hunger, anger and the rest. Now, however, these must be +overcome.... One of the last physical fears to let go in my case is +that for the hangman's rope. I think Roger Casement really wanted the +axe in preference to the hemp. Steadily facing a repulsion, it surely +vanishes. + +The point of it all is that you can teach self-command to the +children.... I took a girl of fourteen to my precipice--left her there +standing on the very edge. After a few minutes I called. Her face was +calm as if she had gazed from a porch.... + +"Did you feel any fear?" I asked. + +"Only yours for me," she answered. + +It was very true. I had the thing whipped for myself, but it had been +hard to leave her there. + +Finally I took the smaller boys out for a test. They didn't know I was +testing them. Children haven't the fear of height such as we put on. I +recalled a score of episodes of my own boy-days, in which I startled +the elders by Sam Patch imitations. Also I have put the young ones +through some deep water affairs.... + +You may not be able to get it quite--but all fear is illusion. Every +inner beast mastered makes us stronger. These animals within are our +cosmos to rule. We do not know how beautiful they are until we lose +our fear for them. Boys and girls here are learning these things and +putting them in action. + +The kingdom of heaven is also within. Fear, passion, anger, poverty, +and the like--all represent areas of our own kingdom not yet brought +under perfect cultivation.... After the emotional and physical +conquests come the psychic ones--hard matters of mastery pertaining to +the heart and mind--to know, to do, to dare, to keep silent--then the +finding of the hidden treasures of the subconscious, mystic fleets that +sail those dim seas, as yet uncharted for most of us.... After that, +the Soul. At last we must be potent enough to stand eye to eye in the +presence of the King Himself. + +From looking steadily over an escarpment of two or three hundred feet +drop, to gazing at the world from the forward cockpit of an airplane +at two or three thousand feet, isn't such a long step as you would +imagine. The fact is, I was in no way terrified in my first flight, and +fear certainly crawled me full length as I stood that time at the edge +of the mesa. Our young people have the call to test the new dimension +of wings. This zeal corresponds in a unique way with the new education. +Intellect stays upon the ground. Intuition is the lifting of the wings +of the mind. + +I had already begun to make friendly visits to an aerodrome at the edge +of the Pacific when the following letter came from the Abbot,[2] who +is now seventeen and in New York: + +... Perhaps Steve told you that I had a ride in an airplane about three +weeks ago. Man! 'Tis the place for me! Next summer, soon as school +dissipates, I attach my name to the Royal Flying Corps. The psychic +effect of a flight is wonderful--like travelling over a very tall +bridge. The Atlantic coast for many miles lay in profile as a map, the +roads stretched as thin mathematical lines; forests as darker shadows +of the earth; New York as a blotch of smoke and curious patchwork. +For twenty minutes we sailed around and around, just as you've seen a +gull pinion, then we came to earth; waited until it got dark, then up +again.... Lights of the aerodrome lay like jewels upon the earth, but +up, up we went, faster and higher, the roar of the propeller providing +a steady nervous outlet. I could shout my lungs out--I had to relieve +myself of the excess thrill. + +Then what should happen? Red, a tiny rim, like the disc of a golden +dollar, the sun began to lift up from the horizon again. The higher +we went, the higher it lifted, until there it hung, as a golden bulb, +a swollen orange off in the mighty stretches,--pure, golden,--while +below twinkled the town's lights. 'Twas the fullest, richest, most +brimming moment I've ever had. The awe of the cosmos overtakes the +heart and lays down its stupendous laws. The distance between sun and +'plane seemed a golden pathway that ever could absorb your flight. I +was aware only of worshipping God, and that roar of the machine made +one think of the roar of the planets, comets, meteors, all the suns, +roa-oa-ring. What a romance! Finding the sun! + +... No discussion of the fear element whatsoever in the letter.... + + [2] Fred Jasperson. + +The old thrills won't do for the new race. I took a pair of +screen-trained young ones to a circus recently and became absorbed at +their mild boredom. Alcohol is too slow and coarse for the wastrel +tendencies of the modern hour. The sad ones of the new generation +use high potency drugs to forget the drag of time and space. A new +dimension is required in all things. The young men of the new race make +light of our old dreads and are learning winged ways to heaven and to +hell. + + + + +4 + +THE STUFF OF COMRADES + + +I wonder if I can make clearer, by turning a few different facets in +this chapter, what we mean by friends, comrades, the spirit of things, +and love not as an emotion but as a cosmic force. Many days I have +faced a Chapel, as I face this day's work, longing to bring in closer +the dream of the new social order, yet dismayed by the limitations +of words and my own mind, trained so long in the life of the old.... +I would begin to talk, drawing the young minds to mine through an +intimate revelation of the heart, then presently lose the sense of +effort, even the sense of thought--and an hour would pass in the joy of +communal blessedness, because we were one. + +Man is not getting larger, though he is continually holding more. +The human brain, after it reaches a certain age and size, may gain +thereafter a conception of the universe without altering the size of +the hat-band. There is a continual condensation at work within us +mentally and physically. We take the cream of the thing, and throw the +rest away. The wiser and the more inclusive we become, the more we take +just the spirit of a thing, and leave the bulk and weight behind. + +This is true in our every refinement, in the clothes we wear, the food +we eat, the books we read and the friends we gather together. We become +harder and harder to suit, because bulk and weight are common, but the +spiritual extract of anything is slow to appear for us. The wiser the +man, the more fastidious he is, and this does not mean that he is a +crank. The excellence of fastidiousness is not in eccentricity but in +inclusiveness. In the spirit of the thing, he sees all. From the spirit +of the thing, he expresses in his own way any part. He can array whole +hierarchies of facts from the spirit of the whole, but mainly he leaves +the facts in reference-libraries, where they belong and are quickly +available, and stores away in his working faculties just a drop of the +_oil_ of a subject or a breath from its essence. + +There are those who believe that the soul of man is made up of essences +of experiences of thousands of lives--yet the refinement of the soul +is so spiritualised that the best surgeon cannot find the little +organ. He knows the brain, which is made up of the stored experiences +of but one life, but because the soul is so small or so diffused, +the surgeon is very apt to say that there is no such organ. And yet, +we all know there is knowledge and power behind us, which drives us, +in our greater moments, to utterances and action entirely without the +scope of the brain. We may call this the soul, or the nth power, or the +fourth dimension--the name doesn't matter.... Listen, if I write well +to-day--I mean well for me--if I rise to the opportunity at all, it +will be because I am writing things which my brain doesn't know. + +I yearn to make this still clearer.... The rose, which is the highest +evolved of flowers, includes all the evolution of plant-life of its +line beneath; the same with gold among the minerals. The fact that each +is the highest necessitates that. In the same way, man includes Nature +and the lower creatures, in that he is the highest. This is easily +proven to you when you recall that a child in the womb passes through +all states of creature evolution. That period is, in a wonderful way, a +review of the evolution of the world. + +The mere fact that the higher one climbs, the farther one can see, +proves it again. This is a law. The scent of a rose is the sublimate +of all plant odours; and the spirit of man is the refinement of all +knowledge and experience beneath. + +The higher man ascends, the more inclusive. To heal another, the +physician must be able to include the other. Evolution is continual +refinement--the drawing unto ourselves of the spirit of bulks of +matter. I stood upon a bluff overlooking the ocean recently, and a +breath of the south wind awakened in my mind the story of one whole +summer; others have listened to forest trees or the humming roar of +a distant city, or the rush of a great river, and found in them the +aggregate of all Nature's sounds in one tone. This is the magic of the +spirit of things. + +In all philosophy, there is no difference of opinion as to one fact, +that man is unfolding a microcosm within himself, including in his +consciousness more and more the Idea of the Universe. The cosmic +consciousness, which a few have attained, is the actual perception of +the externals of the Plan. + +The cream of anything includes all the parts. The cosmic mind must +include the essence of all arts and experiences and facts. Just as the +rose and the man and the grain of dust are potential with all beneath, +the highest man, the cosmic intelligence, is potentially the cosmos in +containing the Idea of it. + +This idea may be contained in and expressed outwardly by some great +single, all-including, all-mastering emotion--such as love. And now we +are in a region where there can be no difference of opinion; at least +I have never heard disputed what is the greatest thing in the world. + +There are all kinds of love. The simple man loves simply--himself, +his woman, his children and his animals. The love of the cosmic +consciousness breaks forth in a deluge upon the race, because it +comprehends and includes all beneath. This great outpouring is formed +of earth, air, water, fire, sunlight and all winds, all facts, all +experiences, all arts, light of the moon and stars and all glowing +things under the sun, all sounds and scents and pictures, all ardours, +and sympathies and tolerances. Its outpouring is action, and is of +itself creative. This is the _OM_. Such a love leavens and impregnates +all things, because it understands and includes all things. It unifies +all separateness; it enfolds all intelligence with intuition; it unites +all parts. + +This brings us to that ancient and unassailable premise of all +religions--that God includes every part of the universe in being the +spirit of it; that His idea of creativeness is expressed in one great +single, all-mastering and including emotion,--which is love. We hear +the little children saying it, "God is love." + + * * * * * + +... We awaken the Ideal in ourselves first by imitating the virtues of +others. In the earlier days when to me courage meant physical action, +men passed in different fields, leaving an imperishable remembrance. +I have often seen the expressions of those I loved and idealised as a +boy, live again in the faces of my own children. John T. McCutcheon in +Luzon, filling a reel of films, under a volley of fire at Binan, on his +knees, working the camera with a whole brigade sprawled behind--gave +me one of the finest early building blocks for the courage among men. +He also gave me an ideal of cleanliness: One evening, after a vicious +day's march, and we were all ravenous, John T. left camp to find a +river. There he bathed with government bouquet,--made himself right +with himself, even to shaving, before meat and drink. His constraint +looked like mastery to me then. Grant Wallace was a big star of that +service--ideal in performance of friendship.... Young men at hand now +are different. Not one of them lack in grip and grit. They reveal the +new thing in courage, the courage that begins where the courage of +the soldier ends. These have gone far into the mystery of their own +kingdoms--rapidly becoming kings of themselves. + +The world doesn't understand them. The Abbot[3] is a sensation in +literary matters at Columbia, but unplaced. The Dakotan[3] was said +to be unfit for a soldier because he was twenty pounds under weight +for his height. He can leap five feet six, run or hike indefinitely, +exhaust a cement-mixer, say "stick" in all tongues and "quit" in none. +He has the will and wisdom to make himself a new man over night--and +yet his Government wants him served up just so, in pounds. There isn't +any one loves America more than the Dakotan, whom we now call Steve. +Even the young military surgeons will know before long that endurance +is a matter of spiritual culture, that courage is spirit--that a man +is well because of cleanliness of body and thought and organised +will; that he doesn't fail in a pinch because he is evolved; that all +the higher forms of life call for speed rather than strength, the +levitating force of spirit rather than the gravitating force of flesh, +for brain rather than brute.... Comrade stuff is the stuff of souls.... +I've studied them long and devotedly. I build my days upon the things +these boys show me. Less and less are we different from those who call +to our hearts. + + [3] These appear in _Child and Country_. + +These young men do not think themselves out; they are not troubled by +misses or personal discrepancies. They simply are themselves. I have +perceived that men of dreams and genius and action are in the larger +sense free from themselves. The main part of their day's performance +is a lifting out of the tangle of emotion and desire, into a large, +unrestricted area full of calm daylight, where events and movements +are seen in their relation to one another, not in separateness and +one at a time, an area also where inspiration is momentarily expected +to strike. They do not analyse themselves. They do not hear their own +voices. They are not dismayed if they falter or drop from the key. The +things that most men do with care, and that occupy so much of the days +these young men perform automatically. + +My own path was upward through an intense self-consciousness--the +American, not the oriental way. I lived with myself all the route. I +observed outward conditions and events, domestic, civic and cosmic; but +at the same time observed their effects upon myself. I did not know +until I was adult that there is a big receptivity of consciousness +above this--where intuitions play and weave causes and effects +together--where the mind is more like a child's than a man's, or more +like a giant's, perhaps--where the big faith comes, and the warm laugh +comes, and man surpasses himself, but does not know until afterward, if +at all. + +Warmth flooded into me as I touched this larger consciousness. It +became clear as daylight--that a man is at his best only when out of +himself. I saw much of my misery and depression was the result of +self-analysis. I was a better man when I let myself go utterly. And +this was exactly the thing that happened in moments of danger, moments +of romance and friendship, moments of the self hurling itself outward. +Capacity for these moments makes the Comrade, and indicates that love +which is not a sentiment, but a cosmic force. + +Again, you cannot describe a spiritual thing with these little tools +and materials in black and white--just intimations.... If we are +sweet enough inside, something of the song will come to us.... Two +words suggest it best. The first is _Comrade_, which has become a +silliness in a military sense, yet has a high and holy meaning to +all reconstructionists.... I remember when the word first came to me +with a thrill, as a young lad going off to Cuban wars. It was burned +out of me a few days afterward in a Sibley tent full of regular army +soldiers.... I remember the scorn with which I used the word all the +years--or avoided using it--until slowly, smilingly, its new dimension +opened, hard as a diamond, and as clear--its meaning in work and world +and women, its new meaning to Russia and India and China and America. + +It seems to say _Equality_. It's a kind of deep drink of spirit +together, a word spoken at the last moment between men--an +inner-shrine word, spoken with a smile, and a glimpse into the eternal +indestructibility of the human heart. It expresses the love of the +world, not as it is felt in the brain, but in the breast of the soul. +The New Race has already washed it clean. It goes with a Cause fit to +die for. It belongs to men and women who can look at each other with a +kind of prayer in their eyes and face death alone and laugh at it. + +There's a fury, too, in the word--fury against the world, against +things as they are. It stands against the world-darkness now, and for +the day that is to be. It means love for the poor, a love for the +peasants, a passion to serve and be tender to them, not to drive them +into the pits of death--a readiness to die for them without _cant_, a +readiness also to dare to live for them. + +_Comrade_--there's vision in it to strip off the masks of decadent +nations, to open wide the sepulchres where the priests are still +plotting to crucify the King; its strong magic will uncover the +monotonous crimes of commerce.... It signifies the spirit of the young +men and women who have already begun with gladness and fire to clear +the debris for the building of the New Age. + +They will begin with the soil; they will know and love their own hard +part. They will begin with the grass, with the rice, with the millet +and the wheat, the clean things, the simple and holy things that the +peasants love, with the songs that the peasants sing, the songs of the +soil and the rivers and snows--to build upon them the new heaven and +the new earth.... Above all, there's a laugh in the word--the laugh of +youth and power. + +The other word is _Democracy_. + + * * * * * + + + + +5 + +JOHN'S THINGS + + +Here are some of John's things, mainly letters to the Old Man. +California called hard for the recent winter, and I went out a few +weeks ahead of the Stonestudy outfit. John intended to follow within +three weeks, but overturned a kettle of boiling water in his lap, and +was unable to leave his quarters for three times that period. We all +learned better the hard lesson--to wait. The quoted word "Play" in his +first letter refers to a little slip of paper which I had pasted upon +my typewriter. There has been a big tendency in recent months, in my +case, to let down all tension in relation to literary production--the +idea being that when one has learned all the laws he is capable of, the +time is at hand when it is well to forget them. I have written several +times throughout this book of an ideal emergence of Workman into +Player. We learn many laws, to learn at last that there are none. We +come up through many slaveries to freedom.... I have not corrected all +the spelling in John's documents. The point most interesting is how the +real voice breaks through the mind of a child of nine from time to time. + + DEAR YOUNERVERS[4] PAL: + + We got your letter but it was not like you for it was not + type-written. Your old machine here is going grand. I am using it + now. It seems that I am with you all the time. _Comrad_ has meant a + lot the last four days to me. Comrad is everything in the New Race. + Masters will be comrads with every one. + + That "Play" has it all, on your machine. "Play" is in all + somewhere. It is all like a big page and everything is woven on it. + There is a time when Comrads hafto go apart for a little while, but + not long. Their thoughts never go apart. They are always pulling + together, always weaving in thoughts and things that are the same. + It is wounderful--a parting. No sadness over it. It is the best + that could come, or it would not. We are held together. The pull of + the world is nothing to us. + + It is hard to keep high, but we will. Fred[5] and I take a swim + every day. I go a hundred and fifty feet. Then we come up and rub + each other. + + True Comrads have it all. Love from Comrad to Comrad. + + [4] Universe. + + [5] The Abbot. + + + + PAL: + + I woke up this morning kind of blurred, and got Irving and Steve to + come out and clean up the barn. They came and we worked there all + morning, and then went in for a swim. It was wounderful, the feel I + had when I got some clean clothes on and had the old dog[6] feeling + good. He is meditating over what a wounderful world it is now. The + stall smells sweet as a hay-stack. + + Fred just got here and is working at your desk. + + How was your morning? I never had a better one, and its the weary + old Sabbath, too. + + Send for me soon now. It seems that it was a year since we have + been together. We can not do without each other. Send for me + _Soon_. I hold my hand high to you. + + [6] The saddle horse. + + + DEAR OLD MAGIC FATH: + + I am at Steve's desk in the guest room. It is the first time that + I have touched the keys of a type writer since the night I was + berned. It sure does feel good. + + It has been much more wonderful to hafto have Patience for the + Meeting. It will be twice as great for both. I have needed you so + since I have been in bed. In pane and sicknes there is nothing that + you need so much as your Comrad. + + I felt palms up to everything. It is all good. We love it all. It + all was something for us to get. It puts us higher after something + comes to us like that. + + I have all the pores poring out love to you. We are always together. + + YOUR SIDE KIKER. + + + DEAR OLD PAL: + + Fred and I slept again in the Study. It looked like a storm last + night, but it did not come. Fred is a real Comrad. I got to his + heart last night. I do not know how. The roses have been wounderful + the last few days. + + How is wounderful Mary? We are all sending Thoughts to you. We have + had wounderful full days lately, all heat. The town is howling + for rain now; they are never satisfied. We are always ready for + anything. It is the best. Our wounderful old mailtrain just crossed + the magic lane. I love trains more and more. They have a pull to my + heart. We love everything. + + I do not feel on erth. I feel in space. Out of the draw of the + erth--_Free_. + + Love always in my heart for you. I hold hard for the time that + Comrads pull together again for the road, us two. Jane is at my + hump all the time--so I will quit. + + + DEAR OLD COMRAD: + + We are close this morning. I can feel your warm wounderful hand in + mine this morning. We are one. There is the holy breath--such a + great pull of thoughts and work to California. It seems as if all + the Comrads were calling me there. Then I hafto think of the one + thing--_Patience_. When you have mastered Patience, you are free. + All well here. My sores are getting better fast. I have wanted to + work lots lately, since I was in bed, but I could not. I lost so + many ideas in bed. Beds are a curse. I love you, Comrad. We need to + be together. + + YOUR OLD PAL. + + + SUNLIGHT PAL: + + A wounderful sun. A little late in getting up. The sun was out + full--a wounderful breakfast and a wounderful bowl of roses. + + Every morning gets greater. The coming together again gets closer. + Separation is a great thing! You find that when it comes. It will + be so big and wounderful to come together on the shores of the sea. + The trains on the Pere Marquette line have a draw to my heart; the + whistle is so wounderful.... To have a bath in the salt water and + not in old Lake Erie.... It was another wounderful night with + Fred. He has done so much for me this time that we have been away + from each other. + + He is so wounderful if you can get to him. I think I have got right + to him to the heart. I am awful lonesome for you and the sea. + + I walked to the train track with Fred this morning. It was like the + day you were going away. I felt it was nearing the last walk up the + old Lane. Fred has the same feel. It swept over us--a free feel; it + was almost too much. + + How is your Sisity-list coming? Mine is great. It is hard to get + along without you here. Old Abe was drafted, and we don't know when + we will see him. The sea and sunlight sweeping in the open door of + your work room! We will sure have some grand times. We will get + horses and have some more of them Moonlight rides. It will be great + to hit the old _Tie path_ Itself--with the[7] Welcome Mulligan + and the[8] Onerbel Chas. Lipton under our arms. The smell of the + burning bark and a caben in the Rockies! Oh, the open road. Life is + Life on the old Road. + + That canyon must be a wounder, and the sea and the misty mountains + and the brown hills. You have it all. Oh man, that is the country + for everything. + + I keep high for our meeting, Comrad of the Road. + + [7] Frying Pan. + + [8] Teapot. + + +PROSE SETTINGS + + +I + +THE RED SUNSET. + +The red sunset Died away like the close of a forest fire. + +The Dusk ran through the mountains like a scarf of blue. + +The Moon and old Jupiter took the Open Road together. + +The others came out of the everlasting Blue Deeps. + + +II + +THE DESERT NIGHT. + +The man at the camel corral was fixing the camels for the desert. Other +men were waiting at the front of the Temple. Another came forward with +four camels, a pack-beast and two riders. Then all were off over the +Sun Betin Sand. + +Nothing but Sand and Harizen. Only the Arab who was ahead on the Old +Camel knew the way. + +They went on and on over the Everlasting Sand, the Sun Betin Sand. + + +III + +PINES. + +The great wood is the Pines. The very whiff of them gives you the +breath of Nature, the great Mother of the planet, the mother of Love. +Her breath is the breath of life and love, and the Mouziek of the world. + + +TREAS (_California_) + +Treas are grate. They are so wild and wounderful. There is so many +kinds here. The trea I love best of them all, is the U.K. Liptes. It is +fragran; it has the sun and the erth all flowers and the swaying beauty +of its great youth. I loved it from the first. It is beauty that stays. + +I went up to a grove the other day and along a little lone path--the +mist and odor of them lingering in deep shadows. My feet broke the deep +silences and a Voice came and spoke soft to me: "If you listen long +enough you can hear----" I think it was my Master speaking, for a glow +came around me, after He had spoke. + + +THE SONG OF THE SPERIT + +Life is not any good until you forget your boddy; then you get all the +power of living, but you can't do anything that you feel like doing. + + +LETHER: + +All lether has a mystery in it. It is the animal's mystery. The misteks +of the other world know it, and try to tell us. I have been told but +my mind has not received it. I will hafto wait until it does. I think +I will know it all in a fue years. I will tell the rest of the world, +if I hear it first. I would like to be the first to hear it. + + +STONES: + +The whole erth was of stone. + +God thought that he would make it something good. He sent the Old +Mother Nature down and she spent years and years, but she did not know +what to put on it. She went up to God and He took her to a room, and +showed her the things that He had to put on the Erth. + +They were sperits, so she got them one at a time and brought them down. + +In the mean time she was making other things. They were seeds and she +planted these and they came up. It was wheat and barley and other +things like that. The sperits became people and took them for food, and +the old Mother is still putting things and bringing her sperits on the +Erth. This world is just about filled. + + +THE SPERIT + +At night the Sperit goes to see God. It gets fresh to make the boddy +fresh every morning. This is what keeps you clean. If you were all +clean, you would not die. You go thru a hard life and what is not +clean is burned off, and then you are pure to go to heaven. You rest +then until you are ready to come and be a saint. + + +ALONE + +The sun beat hard upon the rocks. + +I was alone in the Power of the rocks. Nothing was moving. + +I was Alone. My Sperit was alone. + +It was the loneliest place in the world. + +No animal of any kind, not a bird or a snake--alone. + +Nature did not even have cells of thought. + +The power of the rocks was holden me there. + +A thought came over me that I had never known Home. + +All of a sudden Nature spoke, and I was free from everything. + +I came back to the Father. + + +EQUALS + +There is a greatness in a man that treats his horse like his brother. +A man is a beast when he beats his horse. He is of a lower Brivahen[9] +than the horse. The man who says to his horse that he is his equal, is +a great man, a master of animals. + + [9] Vibration. + + +BEAUTY + +When the New Race comes, there will be beauty--real beauty. Down thru +the ages people have talked of beauty, but they have not seen it +really, yet. It will come with the New Race--beauty in everything--in +the body, in writing, in talk, in love. Not love one, but all. The +younerverse Lovers will not only love each other, but they will love +all. This war is the great clean up of the world. After it is all over, +and the troops come all home together, there will be the great New Race +waiting for them with open arms--then all will be real beauty. + + +THE HOLD UP AND THE GET AWAY + +... It was the first time Denver Bill had come in without a cigarette +in his mouth. They wanted to know why he wasn't smoking, but they +didn't ask. + +He ordered the same drink and took it fast.... He chucked the chair +over, grabbed the tellfon off the table and gave "Hlo." + +He said, "Horse up here in five minutes." + +It was there. + +He was out of town in a minute more. + +Denver Bill stopped at a cabin where he had made ponmets[10] to rob a +train at 7:45, and it was now 6:10. His friend was there. They jumped +on their horses and rode a quarter of a mile. The train whistled around +the curve. + + [10] Appointment. + +There was a shout. Denver called: "Stop that engine!" + +It stopped slow.... Bill murdered the engineer, and then flew thru the +train of cars. He grabbed the fifty pound gold box and jumped thru the +window. A shot rang out. + +Bill was pincked. + +The man that he had come with played dirt on him because he went off +with the gold. Bill crawled across the field and laid in the hay stack. + +He rolled the first cigarette of the day. + + * * * * * + + +LETTER TO THE ABBOT (from California) + + DEAR OLD WIFE: + + How are you coming? I was just up over the hill behind us, getting + two wounderful qwortz of golden honey. How is your type mill + pumping these days? I got a new story in my bean:--Have an old + fisherman that takes those forks and goes after crabs--have him + find a pot of pearls instead of crabs.--Think if it is done right + it would make a wounder. + + When will you be out here? We will lead a pack trane over the + mountains! Oh, that is the old open road! Pack mules, they mean + it to me--a line of mules in the mountains and a couple of saddel + horses! That's the life. + + I hope you have changed your mind about them airaplanes. I do not + like the Idea. But, old man, it is for the best, and nothing is a + mistake. Take it as it comes. Write soon, and make the pages fly + like dust to me. I need all that I can get. + + Last night was our first bit of rain. Slept in an open window where + my face was sprayed all night with the wounderful cold drops of + spring. When I got up, I was feeling better than I ever did before. + I was all relaxed. I lay a long time just in the wounder of the + wounderful free air and rain. I got up and went down and washed + in more of the soft rain, and ate and went outside to come down + to my work shop. I stood in the wind. Everything around me was so + wounderful. All the trees and flowers were brighter. The hills were + a little damp. The birds were playing and drinking in the rain. The + ray of sun was just coming over the hill. I could almost hear the + breathing of the grass and erth. It was like a song, the great song + of spring and breathing of the world. + + That is the way that the new generation will come in after the + world is washed and all countries are _one_. A Boy, young and + clean, will come in, whistling and breathing a Song of the New + Race. + + YOUR COMRAD. + + * * * * * + + +ANOTHER + + WELL, WIFE: + + Here I am pumping a little more of my vocabulary at you. I think + that I will go into the ocean and have a swim. It's dulce on + my wounds. What I want to tell you is about an old sea loafer + here--a big, black dog. He isn't any kind of a dog--nothing but a + world-man-dog, he is. He is a lover of the sea and sand. He goes + down with us every day. He is a pal for the road. He can't follow + the saddel like Jack, but he can shore be a frend. I have lerned + him and he has lerned me. We stick close. + + Well, pal of the sea and saddel, I am getting awful lonesome, but + I am with you all the time. I need your old paw. I shore keep high + for the Spring Coming. We will have a shack back in the hills all + alone, and drink tea and talk. Don't it sound good? I won't forget + it either, not until we have it. We have planned it for many ages, + and we will hafto have it--old pal of the moonlight rides. + + I am close and always your Comrad. + + + + +6 + +VALUES OF LETTER WRITING + + +Stonestudy particularly is a shop for writers. A man is at his best in +writing to the one who pulls the most from him. The thing is to pour +out. The pursuit of happiness is a learning how to radiate. Happiness +itself is radiation--incandescence. + +You say you write to the world. A composite? An abstraction? These +will not draw forth your best and greatest.... You pass a thousand +faces in the town, and are suddenly torn by one? Do you think that +the unmanifested, upon which the thousand faces sleep so far as you +are concerned, is capable of bringing out your wisest or tenderest +expression, as is this one face pressed against the very window of your +habitation? + +As a workman, as an artist, as a player, one must give his best, one +by one, to individuals first, before he arouses the force to set +the table for the world.... It is important for the young writer +to answer exactly certain listening attitudes. I think, in a story +mood, of the shepherd fires--the endless droning tales of Persia and +Palestine--camel bells, bearded men in white hoods, occasional weary +movements of women in the tent openings as the evening passes to dead +of night. The tale-teller is making his listeners see more or less +dimly something _he_ sees--something he has heard and visualised, +better yet, something he has lived. The finer his telling the more +completely he has lived it. The more listeners pull from him, the more +excellent his animation, his art. A speaker, accustomed to give himself +spontaneously to an audience, said: "If I don't give you what you +want--if I am not at my best to-day--remember it's apt not to be _all_ +my fault." + +Soil and seed in all things. + +We prepare ourselves with much misery and massed experience to tell +our story of life. How strange that we should not have reckoned with +the fact that all this preparation is only half.... Really, it is as +important to think to whom one is writing as what to write about. I've +been afield with many young men, soldiers and the like. Their best and +highest moments afield were spent in writing home, or possibly to the +girl they left under the beeches or sycamores. We should write a myriad +or two love letters, before we are ready to write for the world.... By +writing and dreaming and travelling and living toward the one, we learn +how to focalise our forces. Having done that, we are ready to diffuse, +to radiate. Sooner or later the _one_ point will be taken away. + +Don't be distressed; it is only for the time. But the love we have +learned with one must be turned upon the many. It's all a love story. +The whole universe is that. The stillness of the sun in relation to the +planets tells the first story of radiation--love a cosmic force, not +a sentiment--all one big, brave tale.... The real priest is trained +to draw out, to furnish understanding,--inclusion. One can talk well +to one who includes him. As professional essayists and story-tellers, +we are only beginning to learn that we must talk or write to some one +greater than ourselves, to set ourselves free. + +The wonderful power of letters begins and ends just here.... Write your +story or your essay to one who contains you--to one who draws your +best, to one who sets you free. You can ascertain your relation to +another by your mood as you prepare to write. The more you practise the +art, the more sensitive you are, the more you realise that no two moods +of yours are the same, as you write to different people. One draws +humour, one irony, one a tendency to exaggerate, another deeply to be +serious and reformative. This should reveal the whole secret. Choose +your complement for the portrayal of a mood. + +The thing we call our style is merely the evidence of that which +we have chosen to work toward, plus our particular personality. We +should work to that which sets us free. Certainly one cannot be free +in another's form. There are fixed vehicles for expression--novel, +essay, poem, infinite departments of each, but the fact remains that no +workman or artist or player can be utterly himself, who remains in the +forms laid down by those who went before, or in forms prescribed by the +generation he undertakes to express himself through. + +No good workman ever accepts things as they are. To be the workman +unashamed, he must be considerably beyond his generation in culture and +acumen. He therefore finds the beaten paths--which are the easy paths +for the many--the most irksome paths for himself. He grinds long and +hideously against the things that are, and thus becomes formidable, +since grinding makes the edge. The dullest part of the axe is held the +longest against the wheel. + +Bit by bit, as the consciousness of the chosen workman expands under +years and ordeals, he casts off all the shackles, forms and prescribed +nonsense of the trivial and material-minded. He breathes deeper with +each unbinding, until he reaches the fair eminence upon which lies the +priceless secret of all expression: + +_That there is no law for the pure in heart._ + +He reaches this point through many slaveries, and yet a child can +be taught the secret. The child must also be taught, at the same +time however, that the world is wrong and inferior in all its views; +otherwise the child will not have stamina enough to stand against the +opinions of all elders of all times, much less those who sit at the +same breakfast table. Verily, the thing that Rodin and Balzac and +Carpenter and Hugo and Chavannes and Nietzsche and Whitman gave their +prodigious vitalities to learn, before their real work began,--can +be taught to the child, but the child must find his faith in his own +spirit and some true teacher to set him free. + +In the later aspirations beyond professional workmanship for the world, +the Players achieve that master freedom which detaches itself entirely +from causes and effects in materials. They work as do those who are +ambitious, yet refuse to tie themselves in the least way to results. +They work to their Masters, to the Unseen.... All of which is pure and +perfect liberation, but requires one trained in building with spiritual +causes and effects. We seek to furnish this training for a few who are +ready. It is the way to the inmost and the uppermost in all art and +mysticism. We are set free here as expressionists of various kinds by +writing or painting or playing to those we hold dearer than ourselves. +We wouldn't be writing if we could be with them in the flesh--how clear +that is! The fundamental processes of our picture-making are quickened +by our yearning. Here we touch an old and curious law, that you must +have separation for the true romance. + +We learn to mass life into pictures or tones or tales.... All that we +do well shortens the grade for those who receive. If they are quite +ready, they won't have to make the mistakes we did--mistakes painful at +the time, but out of which we make humour now. + +A man brings a gift when he brings forth a good tale. He has done +something with the worn-out tools of incident and experience which +hasn't been done before. To do it well his telling is dependent +upon his audience. His telling will be different for each listening +group. The greater the artist, the less alike will be his methods of +approaching different friends or comrades. Each will bring from him a +different tone, a different look to his eyes, a different grip of hand, +and different order of unfolding his genius.... + +The most perfect bits of writing we have from the group of our greatest +novelists--is either in the form of letters or parts of work inspired +by the influence of a woman's heart--some romantic and one-pointed +outbreathing of their souls to one.... The great creative producers +rarely found steady human companionship in one woman. No flesh was +starry enough to endure their idealisation; the break of their picture +was often the shattering of life itself. Experience forces us all at +last to take our idolatry from that which changes--to continue our +lessons of love toward the Unseen. Lovers of the New Race seem to have +learned the agony of trying to find all in each other, of trying to +find the universe eye to eye. They realise at once that man and woman +are but the two earth points of a triangle; that they safely may rear +their passions and their transfigurations only to the pure point of +union above.... + + * * * * * + +A man has found something when he cries "Eureka!" He loves something, +when he pours out his heart to it. The first great struggle of the real +workman is to find a form that contains him--a form of expression that +will not maim his dream. It is never the form that has held another, +that has sufficed for another artist. A letter is one way to freedom. A +writer's style should set him free. + +The enduring aphorisms and tablets and discourses of the Masters have +been spoken to their beloved few. A man's sealed orders in the world, +his occult transcriptions from above the world, come in the form of +personal messages. Great documents of the future shall be written this +way. We write many personal letters. One of my young comrades has the +idea to gather together names of a score of mill-girls in New York or +somewhere, and write her heart to them--less to try to help them, than +to ease her own heart, to tell her love for them. Radiation--that is +happiness. Mill-girls have been a dream of hers. She is full of force +to pour out. + +Incandescence is happiness. All expression is happiness. Happiness is +creative. To work, to express, that is to radiate. The object is as +important as the thing that aches to go forth. Choose the form that +sets you free. To each his form. + +A tireless woman asked how she might serve. Her lover was lost in +Flanders. We told her to write to the soldiers--to write her heart +out in letters to soldiers--that she would save lives and start great +dreams and bring the gold back to many grey mists--to be Mary the +Mother, the saint, the dream of the film-eyed fighting men--to love +them through the heart of her beloved. That is what focalisation leads +to--to draw forth the great energies from our souls, to set us free, +first to one, then to the world. + +We learn to love the one--in order to give this love to the world. We +learn to love in matter for the moment, in order to become consummate +artists and players in the soul stuff that cannot die. Again and again, +through possessions and personalities--missing, destroyed or moved +away--we learn to take the force of our outpouring from the mutative to +the changeless--making a divine bestowal at last of a clinging human +need--lifting from the idolatry of the flesh, which encloses all pain, +to the love of souls which sets us free. + + + + +7 + +THE NEW DANCING + + +I have found true North Americans. A woman of twenty-seven, a mother +(with a mysterious man somewhere) and a girl-child with the calm and +power of Joan come again.... I needed a change, was tired of my house +and my voice--close to the end of all human interest that morning as I +set out for a walk up the edge of the Lake. On and on walking, until I +came to the little girl on the shore. She was making a frowning man in +clay. She asked me if I were the Crusader, but answered herself while +I was hoping to fit the dimension of that fascinating title. She had +decided that I wasn't. + +_North Americans_--I think of them so again and again--something great +and calm and deep and beautiful, something arrived, at last, from all +the fusion--en rapport with nature, children of the light, living and +abiding constantly in the essences of sunlight--with the humour and +certainty of Mother Earth about their ways--the cleanliness of earth +and the sweetness of golden light in their house and mind.... + +Mind you, I had walked forth as one would wade out to sea in the path +of the moon--actually yearning for a better land than this.... There on +the shore, after hours, was the child--her eyes turned to mine, putting +me into the enchantment of the wise--stilling hate and ennui. We had +words together, the great awe of life stealing over me again after +many days. Her hand stretched forth to take me to her mother (this day +called the Lonely Queen, for they live in an enchanted story-book). +A climb to the top of the bluff and into the most fragrant and godly +lane, a low house in the distance in the shelter of beeches--solitary +and isolate beeches sheltering a human house, built for sunshine long +ago. Many pages would not tell of the lane and the house, the lawn and +the hives.... I want to touch the core of this inimitable pair that +took me in--poor but dining upon the perfect foods, so poor that they +make and dye the lovely things they wear--a kind of holy handiwork +everywhere--perfume of summer in the house and in the heart of it a +deepdelved peace where broods a sort of lustrous dream. + +The child is but seven--that is, her body and brain are but seven. +Her talk with her mother is the talk of a pair of immortals.... Wheat +bread and butter for supper, peaches of the mother's canning--a last +jar, she said, with comb-honey for sweetening and golden cream on +top. It was a repast for the mountain-top where demi-gods stray--all +miracles about us, Apollo just putting his steeds away, Vulcan smoking +sombre and wrathful in the distance. + +Can you see me sitting down to supper in a true handmade house, at the +head of a God-made portal to the lake (the lane is nothing less) in a +grove of white beeches--lingering gold on the vines at the window, the +murmur of hives in the air, and these two mystic presences subduing +their radiance to sit with me?... There's a little can of tea that +is opened the last thing after the table is spread; the brass kettle +begins to sing, and the mother hovers over--a kind of sacred rite, all +this--then the dancing water is poured over the leaves and the room +softly fills with the air of far archipelagoes. Roses of Ireland and +France are in the room. Tearoses--some daughter of poetry must have +named them. + +... Still I am telling you about _things_--not about _them_. I thought +I should write you what they are, yet the longer I sit here, the more +testaments of their adorable lives appear, but their spirits draw +farther apart.... There is never a drone of talk where they are ... +sentences and silences, the myriad voices of evening stealing into the +hushes between.... I must get down to earth again. I must begin with +the grass and the shore and the magic which began when the child turned +up to me from the frowning clay.... + +I should like to report them moment by moment--to make you see, but +there is a fixed purpose in this chapter. Sitting apart from them that +first night, I contemplated the North America of the future--a kind of +dream that nestles within a dream--the Great Companions, superb men and +women, the vastness of leisure, the structural verity of joy, a new +dimension in the human mind, a new colour and redolence in the light +that plays upon the teeming world. Not for years had I been so near to +the dithyrambic.... I went out into the dusk and smoked a machine-made +cigarette--not for worlds would I desecrate that room. I returned +drowsy--opened the casement windows wide to the stars. As I put out the +lights, the sense came to me that the little room was as fragrant and +sweet as a new-woven basket. + +... I awoke to low singing. The room was grey and seemed to lift +with me, and the walls to widen. It was as if I had caught the old +house just waking from a sleep of its own. The phenomenon of the +singing lived in my mind. I don't know the song--a rapid bird-like +improvisation possibly--two voices hushed, but a vibration of clear +liquid joy. I went to the window. The earth was still asleep--a +pearl-grey world of dripping trees in a kind of listening ecstasy--two +beings below on the lawn--a lawn that was grey with dew. It was like +looking down upon a cloud from the Matterhorn. These two beings--one +in a veil of rose, one in a veil of gold--were dancing upon the cloud, +dancing bare-armed and limbed, their voices interpreting some soft +harmony that seemed to come from the break of day upon the sphere. + +It was not for me--yet I could not draw back from the vines. I brought +only thankfulness to it--sharing the joy in the dim of a room, in the +dim of a mere man's heart. Yet all I could contain came to me from +the mother and child. They knelt in the grass, the song more hushed, +bringing up to their faces and shoulders hands that dripped with the +holy distillations of the night--a wash in dew and day, their song a +prayer, their dance a sacred rite.... I should have thought it the gift +of dreams, but there was a starry track of deep green across the lawn, +where their bare feet had broken the sheen of dew. + +... I dwelt with souls--that was the truth. I sat at breakfast with +souls, dew-washed, speaking to each other and to me from that long road +of life which we lose for a squalid by-way when we put on the garments +of the world.... They talked again about what the birds hear in the +morning. They said that what the birds sing is their interpretation +of the great song of daybreak--that the earth does not meet her Lord +Sun in silence.... And then I knew that the song I heard was their +interpretation--think of it--a child of seven eating buttered toast. + +And I knew that power is a song--that the singing of the kettle is the +song of steam, that the inimitable _t'sing_ of an electric burner when +the current first charges through, is the awakening song of steel and +carbon to their native capacity and direction. The same is in the heart +of a boy when he finds his task--the same is in the order of a master +and in the making of his poem.... These two hear it--the song of Mother +Earth as the floods of light pour out and over her from the East. + +Here was a mother who knew how to play. She had launched somehow +into a sphere of her own making--doubtless having found life of the +world insupportable. I had thought much about bringing up children, +about unfolding the child, and here it was being worked out with +brimming joy.... It was all too natural to be called education. It +was nature--it was liberation, rather--a new and higher meaning of +naturalness. + +I was almost afraid to speak. The life here seemed so delicate +and delightful that comments would bruise the fine form of it.... +They played together--that was the point. Play is a liberation of +force--great play is ecstasy. In it one rises to the _stillness_ +of production, wherein one bathes in mystery and potency and all +commonness is cleansed away. Those who reach this stillness are the +great beings of the world. + + * * * * * + +When we finally open ourselves to any subject, we find intimations of +it everywhere. I found presently that all the voices of the New Age +had designated the magic of the dance. It seems almost dull to declare +that I do not refer now to the dance as it is taught and used and +exploited as a social accomplishment, but that in which the personality +is subdued and quiescent, quite as absolutely as it is in all great +moments of production. One must give oneself. Music carries the +sensitive soul into its own mystic region. A rhythm within answers to +the external rhythm--the two meet and mate--the fusion is bewildering +beauty. + +As in all creativeness, the first law is spontaneity. + +The great dancers of the future will _hear_ their own music--possibly +give voice to it as they give their body to the rhythm. There shall be +no exact interpretation of song or sonata--at least, not until absolute +genius interprets the exact figure of each tone-set. This is impossible +in a world of mutation. Accordingly, one who establishes a series of +movements to accompany a certain harmony, misses the meaning of the +divine improvisations which is the essential beauty of the New Age +dances. One should dance as freely as one called upon to speak. And one +will neither speak nor dance greatly by prearrangement or following any +arbitrary form. + +The very tone of the voice is different and deeper when one is caught +in the spirit of spontaneity. The prime object of the new education, +which includes dancing, is to set the soul free. Music is one of the +master-lures to call forth the sleeping giant. + + * * * * * + +One night a stranger[11] came to Stonestudy. She said she was called by +the way we were doing things, and that she hoped she had something to +bring to us.... The next morning at daybreak, down on the shore, I saw +stars and circles of young women and girls folding and bending together +in exquisite tones of colour and song. Her gift was the new dancing. +Over night she had captured the young people, bringing them a new joy +in the world. For two or three months she remained with us and has +since established classes east and west--life given to the message of +beauty. With us her expression and magic has endured. + + [11] Helen Cramp. + +There is no way more swift to merge in the universal, than by the +response to music through movement. Not dancing, which is a response to +time in music more than to rhythm, but the actual blotting out of self, +a spiritual exaltation which many religionists have sought and few +attained. + +The means is very simple; nothing strange or peculiar. It is the +dropping of the human will so that the music may flow through. One +does not move to the music then; one is moved by it. The objective +mind ceases to operate and through the larger consciousness absolute +Beauty streams. The response to the music may be totally different +with several pupils, but where the dancer is really lost to the +objective world, the movement is always true and satisfying to those +who watch. This is easy for those who are close to Nature and God, but +it is fraught with difficulties for those who are over-mental or who +have been terribly repressed. In many ways the will is man's highest +asset and it requires a supreme effort of the will itself to drop the +objective consciousness. + +There is a technique of the dance to be sure, but it is designed only +to free the body so that it may be a purer channel for the music, and +to facilitate the effacement of self. Physical strength, agility, +beauty as mere beauty, are never sought, but only the revelation of +eternal harmony. + +There is rhythm throughout Nature. Man often moves less gracefully +than the higher mammals. He has opposed his will to the law of the +universe, for centuries abusing his ancient right, but through music he +may realise again the harmony of all. The dancer is radiant with the +splendour of the infinite and there comes an ecstasy into the spirit, +of those who witness the transfiguration--the hush that one feels only +before the highest art and purest religion. + +It is reasonable to suppose that those who dance must bring back with +them into every-day living something of the beauty of those exalted +moments when they touch "the white radiance of eternity." Here is +natural education, natural religion--a practical mysticism, the merging +of self in the Infinite with a consequent fitness for daily living. + +So the dancing of the New Age is but a different form of contemplation +and production, by which the Soul becomes the creature--for the period +achieving that blessedness which is above time and space, and dwelling +in that dimension, where goodness, beauty and truth are one. + + * * * * * + +The new dancing is "in the air." Like vers libre and all New Age +realisations and creations, its first essential is freedom. This is the +meaning of the word Democracy--equality, liberation. The very spirit +of all that is new demands freedom. The deeper one penetrates, the +lovelier the folds of this marvellous conception. There is no title for +friend or comrade, for child or lover--comparable to the assumption of +equality. + +Equality--its power sings. It dances. When the last is said and done, +we all want the same thing, if we really knew,--goodness, beauty +and truth, one at the top. There is joy in the fine new conception +appearing now in all the arts--freedom first and last, even to +lawlessness at first, but that will right itself more swiftly than +smugness, which has had its age-long and hideous trial.... To me, the +house in the beeches slowly unfolds it all--the mystery of the cosmic +peasantry of the future--that fastidious poverty, that delicate plenty +which is perfection. These two, mother and child, mean the new dancing +to me, and the New Race beside. I have not dared to go again, because +I build incorrigible dreams, and this one especially is dear.... Yet I +often recall their loveliness together. + +The mother's beauty had turned to loveliness. It had more than the +mystic chiselling of sorrow--it had passion, it had humour.... I feel +the need of telling you from time to time that I am not rhapsodising, +the need of reminding you, how weathered and drab my mind was, when +I went up the shore that day. She made me think of grapes and olives +and laurel-boughs; she seemed the sister to the child. All about the +two were subtle, pervasive, ever-changing tests of the power of the +soul. The country people around did not think her extraordinary, much +less beautiful. How much is revealed in that? Loveliness requires +certain vision, an interpretative spirit, and thus it is protected +from the vulgar gaze. These good country people carry upon their faces +and hands and persons picture-writing of secret sins and dreamless +stolidity, and yet they are scandalised by this woman. You cannot +imagine how sweetly it came to me that she had utterly lost the sense +that she was outcast. + +A lamp burns at her door every evening. I don't suppose it is seen +three times a month--yet the lamp burns.... There's a big wooden Cross +in the room where they sleep--the child led me to it--a mat of grass +before it, _kusa_ grass, who knows?... A great Cross, a much-worshipped +Cross, with spike-holes, the broken edges worn smooth.... The child +whispered to me that _she_ had been brought (when she was too small to +know) and placed on the mat at the foot of the Cross for her mother to +find; also that she came when the white clover bloomed. + + * * * * * + +... It is only this way, bit by bit, that I can make the picture. I +have never before been so disturbed by the sense of inadequacy. The +light about their heads is all diffused like morning upon a cloud. + + * * * * * + + + + +8 + +OLD PICTURES IN RED + + +There was a period between the second and third year of the war, when +it seemed that the guiding, shielding spirits of the planet were slowly +being withdrawn--leaving only the mockery of goods, the chaos of +multiplied things. But at the blackest, in the very hush of desolation, +the new breath stole in upon us, a breath of lilacs on the chill, dank, +wintry air. Many now stand arisen, waiting the flash that changes the +world.... Five men were gathered in Stonestudy one evening; we talked +of our parts, the best we could do in the clean-up. It was hard to look +over the barriers at first; hard for an American to accept the fact +that he dare not say what he thought, nor write what he thought. It was +hard to realise that we were prevented from expressing what we thought, +by the very forces that had drawn us into this deep trouble. We who are +the distant generation of a party of pilgrims and voyagers who came to +America to find a free country, were strange and intolerant at first, +when we felt the yoke of Europe settle upon ancient scar-tissue. + +We discussed. + +A country is superb when one is unconscious of it, we said. One's +country should be like one's health, part of the song of life. Suddenly +to find the freedom of the past unremembered, the freedom of the +future unglimpsed, to hear the loathly low beat of talk from groups +of frock-coated Appetites, with heavy half-dead legs and heads like +pitching-quoits, settling our sacred future on the basis of steel +and coal and margin and murder market; to feel ourselves clutched +and borne forward with stub-nailed fingers in the stench of big +business; black-garbed shopmen pointing the way to the ports, urging +and shouldering other people's children to the ports of the gunboats, +advising the efficacy of "Nearer My God to Thee," as a song for sinking +ships,--we forgot at first in our own pain that this was merely the +body of the Old strained to a cracking point by the resistless growth +of the New. + +Presently we grew kinder.... In a way, the Old was the grim stepmother +in whose house we learned how _not_ to do most things; in whose kitchen +we learned cleanliness, because of the vile example of her organic +sloth; in whose walled garden we learned the peril and the passion of +Quest, because we loathed her long snoring of afternoons; from the +death of whose sects and schism-shops we set forth to find the unity of +life; from the obscenity of whose loves we came into the first great +cleansing hatred of ourselves.... + +No hatred now. Hatred is part of the Old. It has no part to unsteady +the hands of the reconstructionists. This New Race has come up in +strong soil. The Old nourished and fertilised all its vitalities. The +new green beneath the litter of dead leaves cries out under the decay, +"You are stifling me!" but the plan of it all is wiser, for there is +warmth still in the humus of the old to protect the new and the frosts +may not be finished. + +More and more as the sense of big cleansing and chastening came home +to us, the everlasting principles of reason and order and beauty also +appeared out of the chaos and the pain.... They were saying in Europe +that this war was a war without morale. We believed it would be a war +with morale before the destruction was finished. One of the cleanest +dreams we had was that America would bring, with its guns and knives +and instruments of flagellation, something of the almighty spirit of +the human heart to light the blackness where the Pale Horse has passed. +That's all morale is, and war without morale hasn't any cause or effect +on the constructive side, and will continue to destroy itself against +itself as all such forces do in their madness. + +If any one concludes that we were a group of religionists gathered in +Stonestudy that night it will be well to point out that this planet +will be a whole lot more religious before war ends, and no one will be +louder about it than the trade-mind everywhere. + +War brings death, and death enforces the faith of the human heart, +and faith is one of a trinity (as we learned in Sabbath School and +variously since) that inclines the heart of man to God. You take a +loved object from the Seen and place it in the Unseen (thousands each +day the soldiers pass) and faith is born of the agony of separation. +The human heart forces a bridge across the abyss from the Seen to the +Unseen. It's the old story of the bereaved turning to God. Saints are +thus made--thus tenderness and purity come to be. + +Within the next ten years there will be heroisms before our +eyes--heroisms such as seers and saints and sages have dreamed of as +the consummation of the human heart. And those who have lost most and +mourned most will read the eternal joy of the Plan from the Book of +God's Remembrance. + + * * * * * + +When you see the remnant of a race of people crying out that there +is no God--then you begin to know what war means. When a country has +given its tithe of human blood, _or one in five is gone_--then you +begin to know what an Austrian woman meant, when she spoke of the +"horrible grinding of war and the answer of the women to man's cries +of pain afield." ... When peace brings a worship of materials and a +dulness that cannot look beyond existing institutions--the end is war, +and after that a sitting in black upon the ground. + +We didn't know what death meant before this war--but many have learned. +The very word death has the sweetest sound of all uttered names to many +a lonely heart to-day. We didn't know enough about death. We had the +habit of thinking this was all. The end of such thinking is war, and +after that, a sitting in black upon the ground. + +When your heart is cleft in twain and one part stays on this side, and +the other over the dim borderland--there's a straining of eyes into the +Unseen, a picture making out of the creative materials of human spirit. +Life of the soul begins again--out of pain--always out of pain. + +We have not yet learned to accept life from the higher masters, Joy and +Beauty. We still learn through Pain. We forget the meaning of death, +even as we gather our things of death about us, and war comes along to +remind us again. Always those who answer to Master Pain must look to +death to find their relation to God. The faith that comes with peace +at last to the human heart, is energised by a love that crosses the +abyss of life and death.... A grand old teacher, Master Pain. When we +know all his lessons, and take his hand from our shoulder, and touch it +to our lips (for we shall know well his wonderful work when the time +comes for us to part with him), then we shall find that he is not a +black man at all--but a Sunburnt God.... + + * * * * * + +Four at a supper table--a little child, its young mother, and the old +father and mother of a grown son, who has just died for France. The old +man's eyes roved from the child to its mother, back to the old woman, +and lingered there, something rough and deep and wise in his look. The +child suffered vaguely. There was much suffering in the house.... The +young mother asked coldly if they could feel _him_ in the room. Then +just as coldly she asked if there were a God. Then she ran from the +room with a cry like a night animal. The silent child began to weep. +The old man and the old woman stared at each other and wondered what +their daughter-in-law meant about _him_ being in the room. + +A picture of the chastened world. + +The child turned from the strange, sad human beings to the fairies +that played upon the peasant hearth. The child's mother had rushed +forth into the twilight to find a vision or a memory or a breath of +God. The old man and the old woman looked so long at each other in the +darkness--that the soul of the son of their flesh stood for one healing +instant between them. Thus the enduring figures of the Unseen reveal +themselves to those who have suffered to the end. + +The nations are but names to fight for. These battle-lines are for +humanity's soul. If America is fighting for humanity, let it be with +surgical calm and healing in her hands. Hate spoils everything. + + * * * * * + +The babe knows a room; the child knows a house and looks out into a +street; the youth learns the street and then the city; the young man +learns his country, but the man should learn the world. You can never +be the great lover of America by hating the rest of the world; no +human mind can see what is best, what is even good for America, when +the interests of other countries are forgotten. No man's country ever +suffered because he turned his love and service to the feet of humanity. + + * * * * * + +The few who brought the real American impartiality to the European +war in the first months, found themselves in the midst of the most +challenging chaos that ever reared its head to the light. Profound and +tragic impressions followed each other. It became icy clear that the +greater nations, as well as the pawns of the Balkans and the Levant, +were puppets alike, churned together in a great planetary cleansing. +Every partisan path was found to be increasingly crooked the farther +one advanced--and a sheer descent at the last. Any national point of +view used to dupe the people into greater destructive energy, proved +in itself, no matter how sincerely offered, as short-sighted and +ill-founded as the hatred of two soldiers who meet between trenches and +discover, as they gore each other to death, that their only basis for +hostility is a different colour of coat. + +Studying Europe in those dark days, the unprejudiced eye was in danger +of having some truths torn down with the host of illusions. It was +hard to hold fast to the fact that there was anything magic or holy +about nations at war. Indeed, they seemed entities formed of groups of +greedy men who wanted their way--in the main, groups of leaders devoid +of vision and the spirit of fraternity, and careless of the welfare of +the people, quite the same as many great commercial organisations.... +The real enemies of any people are groups of men who want things for +themselves. The real issue of the war has nothing to do with entities +of this kind, nor with alliances of such entities, but with the painful +groping consciousness of the peasant mind--its slow and torturous +awakening to the fact that royalty in its utmost pomp and glow does not +enfold God. + +The people must learn before they can be free. Hitherto they have +been duped by the nations; and the nations are now being duped by each +other; but there is a greater plan at work--using men and nations +alike,--a plan to do away with boundaries and hatred and preying, +to strike the spear from the hand of man and leave it free to help +his neighbour, to establish democracy in the place of imperialism, +and fraternity upon the solid footings of the earth in the place of +separateness and strife.... The new volume of human spirit already +has been opened. We felt it that night in Stonestudy before lights +out,--the first beauty as of a song across still waters. + + * * * * * + +An American correspondent going home from the field in Europe "the +long way around," met an old Persian Master on the road to Damascus. +With the sage was his nearest disciple, also a Persian; in fact, the +young man was so loved that he had been changed from discipleship into +sonship. This young Persian became very devoted to the American. They +stood together for a moment in silence, when the time for parting came. +The old Master drew near and said: + +"It is good to see you place your hands together. To me it is a symbol +of the marriage of the East and West, for the East and West must mate. +Long ago the East went up to God and the West went down to men. The +East has learned Vision and the West has learned Action. These two +must meet and mate again for the glory of God and the splendour of +earth. The East has lifted its soul to the hills and held fast to +its memory of the Father's house. The West has descended into the +folds of the valley, and won from agony and isolation its efficacy in +material things. And now the mystic is looking down and the materialist +is looking up. Soon their hands shall join--like your two hands in +mine--and there shall be great joy in the Father's House." + + * * * * * + + + + +9 + +STEVE + + +Steve and I were camping together for a few weeks on the Southern +California strand. One morning he looked up from the pages of a book in +his hands and remarked: + +"This fellow is one of us." + +The book was _Youth_, by Joseph Conrad. + +"I haven't read a book for a long time," Steve added. "There are three +stories in this. I've read only one--_Heart of Darkness_--in fact, I +haven't finished that.... You have to fall into this Conrad and be +his--to get him. You let your mind open into a cup, and presently after +six or seven pages, you find it brimming. If you fall into him deep +enough, you get almost what he sees--not quite though. No reader ever +does. But you get something intense, fascinating, a restlessness, a +terror. You find that all your somnolence and inertia has caught fire." + +There had been a ten minutes' rain at dawn. The smell of the tropics +moved over the sterile sand. It was cool, but there was no wind. The +day promised heat. We had been up in Canada for the winter, and it was +hard to believe that hot sunlight was free. A broad quilt of gulls and +plover sat together on the shore waiting for the drying light or for +the mist to rise, or the tide to ebb.... + +Steve resumed: + +"He tells about a boy who loved maps--who used to look for hours at the +continents--thrillingly attracted to the darkest places, the patches +still unprotected. There was one heart of darkness with a river winding +through. He doesn't tell you the continent or the river, but there were +elephants there. He should have called the story _Ivory_.... Years +afterward, the man, worn to the bone from the world's lies, sets out to +penetrate this deepest black of the planet. He reaches the river and +follows it for endless days, but the world has arrived. Some nation is +there colonising for Ivory--you don't know which. The story is told +like that--unplaced in time and space. Really it doesn't matter what +particular imperialistic tendency is at work. The fact is, he climbed +the river into the ghastliest chaos.... + +"You get the deep green of the heart of the continent, the mournful +brooding leafiness--the natives herded and distracted, more afraid of +the blast of a river-steamer's whistle than of any kind of violent +death. Death was familiar to them. They were chained to labour, +cast loose to die. Vultures swept the sky waiting for their limbs +to fall still. There was the salty pester of fever in the air--men +foolish with fever and heat--a haze of flies--white men burning out +inside--oxidisation of human souls--a steady and hideous beat of +death--devils of hate and violence and acquisitiveness--clerks making +entries of Ivory--a nation's young men running through the jungles +for Ivory--carloads of bright glass beads and painted calico for +Ivory--all standards of life and career-building set upon Ivory--murder +for that--lives lost, tribes shattered--the leafy heart of a fresh +continent seared with the civil flame of greed--commodities dumped +in river beds--mails that men would die for torn open by vandal +hands--waste, perversity, nothing clean-cut even of crime, the horrible +non-initiative of the middlemen.... All this told with patient +exactitude, but with indescribable intensity; told by a master-hand +that trembles; with the control that one can only know who is sensitive +enough to tremble. You feel a big man bending forward to make you see +something that all but killed him to find out. You feel him scarred +and sick, his heart leaking, because he found it all so hideously and +stupidly rotten. It's a little picture of a trade war--that's the +point--the war of middlemen--middlemen turning to rend each other.... +Heart of darkness--after that the light comes." + +Steve opened and shut his fingers in the sunlight. The warmth was +sweeter every minute. + +"This fellow sees it all," he went on. "He's done a big job for me--for +anybody who gives himself to the book. There's something immortal about +being a workman like that--about any workman. That's why one wants to +cast a weep after the passing hordes of middlemen. They can't do work. +They don't even see the fog of human agony they've painted the world +with. They are _it_. It is the old against the old. It's all about +Ivory. They crucify for fossil." + +Steve was lighting up. + +"This Conrad brought back to me to-day a bigger love for the workman. +The starved and scorned inventor gets the best of it, after all--not +in Ivory--but he builds something in himself. He quickens something in +himself that goes on in freed consciousness when the body falls. No, I +don't insist that anything goes on in any particular way, but the deep +moments of work somehow show a man that the best of him here is but a +nexus between a savage past and a splendid future.... It's wonderful to +be alive to-day. I believe there are secret agencies at work behind all +the governments--that they are one at the top. I don't mean detectives, +not intelligence or espionage bureaus. Potent, mystic, infallible +forces. It doesn't matter. _Some person or some group is holding the +plan of the New Age._ + +"We're learning life as never before--plucking the deeper fruits and +mysteries of pain. But one must go apart from the crowd to see. One +must cease to be a partisan. The real seer sees the whole, not the +part. All the war-lands are in pain. One sees only the part, when one +is in pain. Not one man out of a million sees it all. A few Russians +see it all--a few in China--a few in India. Romain Rolland sees it all. +This fellow, Conrad, sees it all.... It's a pity if America doesn't +soon get the full picture. It's worth seeing----" + +Ocean and sunlight and mountains. The world was a brimming cup. If a +man could take all the beauty there was for him, he could never die.... +We went over to the post-office of the little town. The business men of +the place were coming in. The first mail had just been distributed.... +Grocers, butchers, the hardware man, the real estate men, the man +who ran the newspaper, fishermen, barbers, lawyers--mainly fat and +pleasant--children on the way to school. + +They were short-breathed and short-armed. They dressed in wool and wore +heavy dark hats. I had never noticed before how short-armed the race +of tradespeople are. Labourers and peasants are not so; painters and +musicians have a tendency to be long-armed. I mentioned this to Steve. + +"The middlemen," said he. "They are tightened throughout--ligaments +contracted--contraction taking place in the deeper weaves of +mind, a drying up of the deeper sources of life. Contraction, +self-centering--that's what madness is. A man must sing, or weave, or +build or make bricks. The ways of competitive life are paltry ways. +They hide their ways from one another, and afterward from themselves. +They pluck no fruits; they contrive no short cuts; they do not become +intimate even with the commodities of the earth--the very things +they worship and pare margins from. They eat infamously, filch from +each other.... It's all here--all that Conrad pictured in the heart +of darkness. These are the sick, the maimed, the blind of the earth. +They live in the realm of fear, pain, anger, desire. These are the +war-makers.... Their arms are twisting and shortening in to their +navels----" + +Sunlight streamed in through the open doors of the post-office. Motors +going by drowned the soft rustling from the sea. The hell of the +outer world trickled in through bits of conversation. Everybody had +read the morning paper at the same time. No one thought of telling +anything that his neighbour did not know.... Europe was starving--the +President was ill--railroads in strike, coal famine, prohibitive cost +of staples--France cracking with the dry-rot of exhaustion--England ... +a voice--Germany choking in her own blood. + +The tradespeople of the little town by the sea gathered in their bills +and orders and advertisements and hurried back to their shops. Nothing +astonished any more. There were no words for the world's woe--no ears +for lamentations--no mind but to buy cheap at the right time and sell +dear all the time. We walked back to the shore. + + * * * * * + +"I once saw a little town on a hill-side," Steve said. "A grand +boot-maker was there, and a man who made clocks with such tools as he +had--big noble clocks that ran unvaryingly eight full days. Another +man made furniture--perfect woods from the forest drying in his kilns +and sheds. There was a sweet smell about his shop. There was a weaver +and a potter there. The days were long and singing, full of labour and +peace. No one multiplied by mechanical means. Every artisan had his +apprentices. The age of the apprentices will come back--with a new +dimension added----" + +"Switzerland or dream?" said I. + +Steve smiled. "They are starting communities all along this coast," he +said. "Many are on the quest of the town I saw." + +We sat down upon the sand again. The sun was higher. White clouds +brooded in heaven's own daylight; white wings moved upon the sea, I +was thinking about Steve and all he had said. What Conrad pictured in +the dark continent existed here in one of the cleanest small towns +of America--an earlier stage of the same malignant disease. From the +broad and beautiful vantage points of democracy and fraternity--every +shop here was a lair, the products, exposed and secreted, a spectacle +of moral decay and insensate devouring; every schoolhouse a place of +dismal enchantment where competition was not only taught but enforced. +Steve knew deeply well when he spoke, that the creative artist, the +producer of every real and true and beautiful thing, comes into the +power to express himself, in spite of such education, not because of +them. + +One can laugh at all mediocre men occupying seats of the mighty and +calling their dead gods to witness that they are right--but one +who knows that the intrinsic gift of each child is the one thing +in sunlight to be promoted, turns away a bit dismally from the +spectacle of the standardisation of the child mind--from the wholesale +manufacture of middlemen by school system. + +Steve loves America. I know of no one who loves America more. He +doesn't rise and cheer when the orchestra plays a questionable bit +of verse and tune in a movie-hall where imagination is being put to +death--_but he believes in the vision of the Founders of America_. He +believes in the spaciousness and splendour of the American spirit; that +the dream of a few mystics will triumph at the last, and that the many +will follow the dream of the few. He does not believe that the voice of +the middlemen is the voice of God. + +It's hard to credit, but this young man does not hate one country to +love another. He loves America because the dream of a new heaven and a +new earth has a quicker chance for breaking through into matter here +than elsewhere. He perceives the tissues of the senile and the obscene +breaking down in America, under intense civil and martial and moral +processes. He believes that this breaking down is essential before the +building begins. He believes that the future will be built upon the +thoughts of men who are great enough to stand apart from the dumas, +from the cabinets and the senates, just now. As Steve sees it, all +partisans have to do with the parts, and the parts of the partisans +have to do with the Old, which is destroying itself--sense against +substance, limb against limb, organ against organ. + +The young men of the New Race are born of a mating of the East and +West. They are naturally intolerant of partitions. Steve is one of +these. He isn't a spirit alone. He is a body and brain. He has stayed +awake through the full night and day. He sees the planet in one piece. +He has crossed all the rivers. He knows the young men of America. He +is one of them. He loves America because he knows the rest of the +world. He has friends among the Chinese young men--among the young +men of Russia and India. He says that all three have greater obstacles +to overcome in getting the dream through, than we of America--that +everybody will be singing it after the wreckage is cleared away. + +"America, Russia, India, China--they are lands, not pavements," Steve +declared. + +He was looking across and to the south. The sun was a glory about +us--all the background a tentative, swiftly passing thing, all but +forgotten now, stilled by the rustle of the long, low white lines of +the sea. + +"The New Age will redeem all the broad lands," he said, with a trace of +a smile--"lands for meadows and fields and gardens--meadows for milk, +fields for wheat, gardens for honey--the New Race is particular for the +perfect foods--foods for the giant and the child--broad lands for the +toilers--the great sea coasts for the dreamers.... It's all a matter of +taste," he added. + + * * * * * + + + + +10 + +HEJIRA + + +We found we were a bit tied in the Middle West, caught somewhat whether +we liked it or not, in the meshes of possession. Steve and I had liked +it much out on the Southern California strand.... When one reads in the +earlier book,[12] the stress that we put on building that big stone +house on Lake Erie; this felicitous hejira may disconcert. + + [12] _Child and Country._ + +The fact is, we wearied of possession. We found ourselves yearning +for that beauty which is unconfined. We were athirst for new things, +a different break of seasons and taxes.... The world was so full of +people who could build and buy and own and insure, that we decided we +should be doing the things that the others could not. We were glad to +have built the house for the other fellow. We had to do it. We learned +how to run it well, in and out--but it was a stone house. When a man +builds a stone house with walls eighteen inches thick, he must leave a +hole to get out; also he must be sure that he isn't building on his own +chest.... In true Hive spirit, we renounced at the highest moment of +possession. + +The crowd cannot be seen by one who stands in the crowd. On the same +basis a man cannot see the relation of his house to the road or garden +from the inside of the house. The world must be regarded from outside +to be seen as a whole. The New Race is determined to see it so. This +_outside_ is none other than the mystical viewpoint of all world +artists and builders. + +One does not know what friends are, until one discovers that the secret +of friendship is not in getting but in giving. No one knows what love +is until he reverses all the laws that the many follow now. I do not +mean lawlessness. I mean the higher law that is found at last by the +quester after goodness, beauty and truth. We have to finish with the +world as it is before we set out in quest of a better country.... We +found that we had to become active servants of a finer ideal than +householding at its highest. We determined to do more than to dream +this ideal; we set about to make a better country. At worst, we work +for our children. + +It came to us many times before we moved that we were forever +done with things as they are; that we had come to the end of show +and property-measure and hoarding; to the end of the love of self +which destroys the vision for friendship; to the end of domesticity +which holds one's neighbour as prey or rival; to the end of civic +identification, or relation with any federated commonwealth, which +fancies its existence threatened by the prosperity of other political +bodies. No heat about it. + +We came to the edge of the Lake in vanloads; we went away with bags.... +I turned from the eastern distance on the bluff, on one of the last +days, and looked at the vined study and the big stone house, the elms +so strong and green about it. I remembered the early picture of all +this. It began from Stevenson's _Treasure of Franchard_, many years +ago,--how old Dr. Duprez went out in the morning and tried grapes and +plums with the dew on them, sniffing the perfumes of his own yard, +dwelling in his own orchards. + +I remember one day before building that the man came to us about the +young trees. He had pictures of them in books--blooms and fruits of +such colours that nature would never be guilty of--all the fruits I +heard of as a boy--white grapes that never grow in this country, purple +ones that grow whether you care or not.... + +The trees were coming on now, many with ripening fruit. The grove of +elms was a matter of collateral, as the bank would say. The break-water +had caught up thousands of yards of sand. It worked--the old struggle +of wasting banks forgotten until a greater storm. The honeysuckles that +were planned to climb the bars of the study windows, had to be trimmed +now for any light at all. The wistaria trailed admirably and imposed +upon the front the sense of years. + +... We had planned to have all the fruits; some of the finest were now +in flower. We came with many clothes, underwear and outerwear, wool and +dark things. We left with a few light effects in our hands--to find a +place where white garments might be worn in peace. We came with a great +idea of food--game and fishes, meats, poultry, many cans and vegetables +and desserts. We went away with a taste for graham bread and butter--a +spread of honey, a glass of milk. We came with a fear of disease for +the children, fear of colds, fear of losing something, or having +something taken away, doubtless having the fear of death and accident. +We went away with a clear idea of what death is and the advantage of +it, children and adults alike. + +Young children rode the horse that had a reputation for being +wild-spirited and very much a man's mount. We had seen the deep places +of the Lake fill with sunshine. We came with parasols and awnings and +protections against the sun. Most of us would like to have worn nothing +but a breech-clout had the town permitted; and the only time we had +found the world hard to bear, was the long grey Spring days of rain. + +Sunlight--it is closer to God and happiness and manhood and every +delight than words can suggest. The more you know of it, the more you +need; the more you love it, the more its mysterious excellence unfolds. +I know what sunstroke is, and what the sickness from heat is. It's a +vile state of the body, or vile clothing that stifles the body. When +one is well and has learned to come back to the Father of Lights--there +is no fear in his heart. I used to wear a helmet and dark glasses, but +no more--eyes stronger than ever. I look for the sun in the morning and +stare up from the sand into his face at high noon. There is nothing the +matter with sunlight. The sadness and the sickness is with those who +bring their quilts and cloaks to hide it from their flesh.... + +It's all in synthesis. The end of bulk possession is pain.... We +started in with many flowers. We ended with roses. It's all in the +tea-rose.... By careful selection of thoughts over a little period, we +can come into the joy of flowers in other people's gardens. There are +brave men who allow you to walk in their orchards; and there are many +who work hard to raise fruits for a price. There is much joy, if you +really look at it, in building a house for another fellow. + +We start with the brute materials--beginning with the clay itself. +Our cultivations become more intensive through the years. All life is +so. We take the extract of a thing at last--a shelf of books where +formerly we wanted a roomful--somebody's else little rented bungalow, +where formerly we wanted an estate. We realise, at last, that there is +an essence to be obtained from the extract, an oil from the essence--a +spirit at last from the oil. The whole story is in that--synthesis. +Slowly, at last, we begin to set ourselves free. We descend into +matter; learn its lessons and laws, rise like a plant through the +darkness to the light, integrating force to meet and cope with the new +and lighter element. I held up seven little books in one hand--weighing +no more than a new novel. + +"It's all in these," I said to the Chapel. "One could put these in his +bag and have it all." + +... And then at last, I went down alone and empty-handed to the shore, +meditated on God with sun and sand and flowing airs.... All matter +is scaffolding which falls away. A man thinks he builds a house for +himself, but no sooner has he put on the last tile than death or the +open road calls. He chooses his climate and grows out of it. He thinks +he must possess, that he must hoard against a rainy day, and he gathers +the stuff of death about him. If he cannot rise, death covers him +for the time. Dr. Duprez didn't speak of the care of his orchard, or +his garden. It was all _story_ to me. Dear R.L.S. He didn't dream +of the work of the hand necessary to keep up an orchard, and have a +connoisseur's joy for a few summer days of the year. He didn't tell +of the parasites, the sprinklings, the arsenates and pumps, nor of +the little winged migrators that sit on the hills, waiting for the +potatoes to come up. The call comes to possess nothing. It had better +be answered. + + + + +11 + +THE SPECTATOR + + +Some of us here have swiftly reviewed certain old slaveries, that we +may set free the children of to-day.... They do not have to make the +same mistakes we did. I, at thirty-nine, say to those ten and twenty +and thirty years younger: + +"Start where I leave off. I do not relieve you of pain or error or +shortsightedness, of passion or pleasure, or anything that arouses +or wears down body and soul. Only this I ask you--don't make the +same mistakes I did. Let me give you the answer to a few petty and +pestiferous lures. I can put you right on them. Begin now to learn +your lessons by doing things wrong at first, a holy way to get +somewhere, but be a pioneer in your evils; be daring and fastidious +and full-powered and discriminating in your faults! Above all, be +impersonal in them as soon as possible. Let the winds of the world +breeze through. It's all a Laugh." + +Every process of the world to-day is designed to take away that +adorable love and listening of the child to its own soul. Streets, +schools, trade, neighbours, houses in rows, priests, pastors, +charlatans, all standardise. A thousand teachers in technic for one +in the spirit of things; ten thousand teachers of the health of the +body (and every one wrong) for one who shows the way to the single and +sacred fountain of youth; innumerable voices lifted in fly-dronings +of instruction, how to fill the bin and the brain, the bank and the +bourse--how to have and to hold and to die holding, and to bury oneself +in the midst of--for one who laughs and plays and dares to watch the +world go by.... At last to be the Spectator! + +I tell you now from much living that there is nothing here in the world +that is worth fighting for, but the glad tolerance of events, sheer, +laughing joy in the Plan.... Every time you adjust your life to the +standard of the world, you are doing something that is beneath your +soul, and you will suffer for it, and be forced to retrace. Dress for +the world, and the world will find its flaws in you. Work for the world +according to its specification, and it will defile you. Enter into any +of the competitions of the world and your face and your hands and task +will be constricted by visible and invisible impediments and barriers, +less than the real of you in every detail. Search for health according +to the laws of flesh alone, and it will elude you at every point, +showing you all vanities and pits and pains. Search for beauty of face +and body, and it will be the first thing taken. There is nothing in the +world but to make the human divine--that is the job we are here for. + +To cease to hold is the beginning of invincible attraction; want +nothing and the treasures of the world are yours. You cannot have +health until you are ready to give up life here. Cease to cling, +and that which was a body held apart from you, is suddenly a winged +creature returning.... There is nothing here but the love story, and +the power of that must be spiritual. The madonna of the future will +look up, not down at the head upon her breast. Man must overcome +mammon; Woman must overcome the mammal. The lovers of the future will +look a little time in each other's eyes and much above to a Third who +will come nearer and nearer for their adoration.... The friends of the +future will sing in their Partings; they shall know the spirit and the +breath of _camaraderie_ which knows no death. + + * * * * * + +There is a tendency on the part of our young associates to be +extravagant in their speech. Much that they see is beyond their +capacity decently to express. A group of us was looking down from a +high balustrade. Flowery vines were woven intricately against the face +of the stucco below. We became conscious of an incredible whirring, so +low that it was difficult to hear, and yet so intense as to give the +thought of a distant seismic disorder. It was the invisible wings of a +humming-bird, flashing from cup to cup in the vines below. The child +standing next to me said: + +"The sound has texture." + +It expressed something very real to me; yet there is not power in words +to portray the exact feeling. All the objects of nature have their +spiritual dimensions also for those who dwell much in the Unseen. These +unusual children see the material object merely as an outpost for a +challenging mystery; while, to the material mind, the outpost is all, +and the lavish adjectives and expressions of the former are deplored as +gush or affectation. As a matter of splendid truth, the most marked and +potent of all adjectives and expressions are pitifully inadequate to +express the lustre and radiance which begins at the point where three +dimensions end. + +The Valley Road Girl came into the Study one day, saying that this +chapel book should be called _The Hive_. We all thought it a wonderful +name to work toward, yet the unfolding of possibilities has been +steadily interesting since that day. + +The inner sanctuaries of occult literature commend the students to look +to the bees. The pattern of much that man has still to unfold from his +own soul, for his personal and communal uplift, is already expressed +in the hive. There is a period of larva, and a period of wings to each +cycle. Such matters call to those of spiritual discernment. One feels +on the verge of great revelations for humanity, beyond the thing called +death, as he studies this miniature model of a great democracy. + +The most fascinating love episode I ever read was the Nuptial Flight in +Maeterlinck's _Life of the Bee_. The majesty of winging to the sun, the +falling back of the weaker-winged suitors, the commanding isolation of +sun and sky, fusion under the mighty beat of the wings of the queen, +the broken body of the male, the mother's return to the shadow and the +labour of the generative wheel--magically, it all opened a vista to +the great renunciations, the great passions and aspirations ahead for +the human soul, great fusions of the future, marriages truly made in +heaven, the inevitable trinity of all matings--the drama of love and +death. + +For her one high noon flight in June, the queen toils through years. +She brings back from that superb instant the swarming cities of the +future. On and on, she unfolds her fecundity in the dark, a prodigious +and Herculean labour; from the human standpoint a task of intolerable +pain and monotony. The queen's labour is scarcely more difficult than +the tasks assigned to the hosts of workers, which appear to be denied +any separate episode of emancipation. Yet, equally with the queen, +they share the communal spirit; and no one who has stood among the +hives at the end of a long summer day, and heard the song of bounty and +deep-hearted content, can deny the peace that dwells among the myriad +of skilled artisans, each with his perfectly appointed task. + +Bees appear to remember the light, while working at the opposite side +of the wheel. Men, as yet, are detached, lost in the heresies of self +and strife. Only a few visionaries have peered beyond the petty reach +of the optic nerve, to perceive that this, which we make so much of, is +but the hell-portion; that this appearance of ours in pounds is a mere +dressing up in materials of earth to endure the dark and low vibration +of the wheel's most downward sweep. These few visionaries, always +singing the joy of the other arcs of the cycle, somehow keep the dream +alive,--the dream that appears already to be the essential blessedness +and magic of life in the hive. + +All mysticism seeks to teach us this single point which the bees seem +to have learned so well--to transcend time and space in labour; to put +off the sense of separation and strife, to hearken to the soul's own +song of equality and sufficing days. We must be pushed to the last +reaches of pain before we learn this secret. We have to penetrate the +darkness before we earn this flash which swings wide the portals of joy. + +Joy is the most potent thing in the universe. The bee-queen mother +weaves race after race of progeny out of the incredible dynamics of an +instant's joy. Each cell that she fills with life is a living fragment +of her nuptial feast. Fusion is ecstasy, parturition is pain. The many +become one; that is heaven. The one becomes many again; that is earth +and hell. Integration and diffusion--the same story told in the hives +and ant-hills, in the strolling winds and swinging seas, in the hearts +and marts of men, in matings everywhere. + + * * * * * + +The original idea was to use the title, _The Hive_, in relation to the +happy intensity of Stonestudy days, but our ideal grew to adapt to the +name, because of its revelations in regard to the new social order; the +pure and instant abnegation of the self to the community; the active +acceptance of the precept: _That which is good for the one is good for +the many, and that which is good for the many is good for the one_. + +We cannot lose ourselves long in our own misery when we realise the +glory of yesterday, and the more spacious solar adventure of to-morrow. +We cannot continue to feel our own isolation when we perceive a brother +in the eye of a stranger, when we perceive the sons of God in the +eyes of passing men. At length appears the task ahead--the great +Fatherland, the Planetary Hive. + +I have taken the hint from the new race children, that to transcend +pain we must make joy of it. Given the hint, one realises that the +masters of all ages have told the same story--how to make light of +human shadow, how to make lustrous our own darkness. No matter what +science says to the contrary, the quest for the Absolute means the same +thing; this is the marriage at Cana, the turning of water into wine; +this is the passion of the ancient alchemists, to transmute base metals +into gold; this is healing; this is regeneration. + +To make joy out of pain is still more: it is power for world's work; +it is the light that one carries among men; it is the fire that makes +man remembered by his fellows, that makes man significant in any +task. It is loss of the sense of self; the death of the lower for the +birth of the higher life; the subjugation of three-score-and-ten for +immortality; an _adios_ to the hands that cling, for the stride and +rhythm of the Great Companions on the long road. It is not for the +saint any more than for the soldier, not for the sage any more than +for the politician, not for the poet any more than for the parent. It +is not piety, it is power. One learns it best from the children. One +becomes as a little child in learning it well. + +We are learning rapidly these days. These are the days of humanity's +passion and pilgrimage. The soul of humanity is passing along the dusty +roads of Palestine, for the healing of its own weaknesses, the casting +out of its own demons. One who is not carrying a part of the world +burdens now, as well as his personal pack, seems forgotten of the gods. +It has come to many of us that we dare not take more than a glimpse of +our own allotted happiness--that we may not have more than a touch of +the beloved's hand in these days of parturition everywhere. + +But personally and nationally we shall come to that significant +crossing where nothing else can be taken from us, where death seems the +highest boon, and Master Pain has driven home his most pointed shaft. + +That is the moment of laughter. Driven to the last ditch we turn and +laugh. That is the moment of our expansion for a new kind of heroism. +One builds from that deep hour. + +The ultimate secret is not to identify oneself with that which changes. +When these objects shift or break down, or some one takes them away, we +suffer the old savage rent. The day comes when we disentangle from the +final mesh of possession--cease the idolatry of things; then, and only +then, are we rich--possessing the spirit and essence of all things, +tallying the universe within according to its objective arrangements +with the universe without. + +Finally, to master the world, one must learn actually to enjoy the +mutation of material things, as one of an audience watches the +movements on the stage. No longer torn here and there in the small +fury of detached affairs, one laughs richly at the progress of the +Play. Possessing the spirit of all things within, he realises that +nothing he has can really be taken away. No longer identifying himself +with material objects, he is at last in touch with the perfect and +changeless archetypes. This dispassion, so difficult to reach, at last +extends over all world-forms. One ceases to love bodies; one loves +souls. The son at the front, the daughter taken to a different house, +the empty seat at the table, crash of finance or romance--all but +a passing of symbols--Godspeed and a smile. Bit by bit the valiant +reaches that profound and almost divine indifference to the external, +having bound himself to the real, the enduring, the inner cosmos. + +First passion, then dispassion, then compassion--conquest of pairs of +opposites until night and day are seen as separate sides of the same +globe. So with pain and pleasure and all fluctuations. Day by day, +while learning this great secret, the aspirant is forced to die to +the thing he loves most. Day by day the thing that he hates and fears +most--for that he must live. At last, loves and hates merge together. +One is no longer focalised upon a point, but upon a universe. He +arrives at the great silence in himself, the static momentum. He no +longer moves with the world--the passing show goes by. He transmutes +pain into joy--not lying to the self, but because pain of the body is +joy of the soul--joy of union, joy of birth that comes from pain. + +At last to be the Spectator! To possess the world, to realise the +divinity of others, the ineffable equality of Souls. To have all,--the +mothering winds of the hills and the holy breath of the sea; to move +and laugh and die with all the world. + + + + +12 + +TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL + + +The younger boy with us--Tom, now seven, does not find it easy to +express himself through writing. He draws well, but that is a talent +which I would not recognise so quickly as the expression through words. +I mean to send him away to an artist for a time. Tom's imagination is +fertile and expansive. He dictates well--wonderful play of colours +through his mind. He talked the following to an amanuensis, a year or +more ago as he conned over a handful of coloured stones: + +"There's a wonderful mystery about stones.... One like a mountain that +the fire comes up out of--with white on top ... another like a cap of +honey.... Another: this is like a great big mountain, and this is a +dog full of food, and he's standing on a dragon, one of those devilish +dragons; his tail is curved under him, and a spot on him near his neck. +He looks down and he sees the sky, floating. He wonders if he should +leap down and get some. There's a great big lake under him. He thinks +he has more power than anything in the world--he's looking for more +power. He's wondering where it is. See him thinking. + +... Here's a volcano at night--see the force, and then the rain beating +down behind it--even see fairies dashing by there. Here's a man with +his jaw knocked in. Mystery here--a forest at night. This is like a +coloured man that's been in a prize-fight, and he's gritting his teeth +because he didn't win; he's got a mug-nose too. There's a fried-cake. +Another: Here's 'Agra Falls and fairies dashing, and sparkling stones +at night. That's in Japan--that's true, look at all the lanterns up +there. There's some India--water dashing over a cliff, another like a +smooth cliff, nothing to hurt it, just fairies to fly around it--and a +door-knob, and there's a hole where owls live...." + + * * * * * + +Many interesting things appear in these dictations provided Tom's +helper effaces himself sufficiently to permit the boy to forget +externals. The remaining pages of this chapter is a sketch of Tom's +case written by the Little Girl[13] who furnishes an interesting +surface of understanding for the complications of this lad. +Incidentally her own development is one of the big winnings of +Stonestudy work. The Little Girl is now fourteen and this essay will +show something of her awakening: + + [13] Jane Levington Comfort. + + +TOM + +He is seven, restless as the sea, and just as full of mysteries. Many +times I have felt a strong spirit in the body, a healer, a great lover, +a dear and compassionate comrade. For a time Tom meant India to me. +I could see the blue hills and the wide dusty roads, the cows coming +home through the dusk, and the little Indian mothers bringing food and +their babies to the feet of a withered, white old man in a big Sannysin +robe. Always I seemed one of the mothers, and Tom the master. I used +to sit at his feet when he was very small, and listen carefully to his +wandering, yet deep and wise words. He seemed to unfold many things to +me about myself, and in that way helped me as a teacher would, though +he did not know. + +For a while Tom's quest was in healing--his small hands were always +laid upon our hurts, serious eyes staring upwards. It seemed to awaken +the past in his soul. Gradually his bent turned to other things. When +we went to the country to live, he saw Nature for the first time. Tom +was very much at home with the old Mother. He loved the living things +that most children fear; the bees and beetles, the blind little beings +that live in the earth and the small, red-tongued garter-snakes. He +often spoke of a life he had lived with the snakes--of the big ones +that used to love him and curl around his neck. I never could help +shuddering a little at the thought, but Tom would explain, "They won't +hurt you if you love them. Then they will love you too. Snakes feel +just what you feel--if you're afraid of them, they get mad." + +Again I would think of India--the great cobras that sit before a pure +master, opening their hoods to listen to his chanting. Tom knew what +purity meant, a deep-down purity like the earth itself. Why should +anything hurt him?... He used to hold the bees in his hands and walk +through a cloud of double-winged beetles with utmost carelessness. Many +times he has led me through a cloud of them, murmuring, "They won't +hurt you." Once he disturbed a honeybee in the late afternoon, drunken +and senseless on the fragrant flowers. It stung him. He shook it off +his hand and said in a disgusted voice, "That wasn't my bee!" + +A little later Tom discovered the Unseen of Nature. I mean that it +ceased to be the unseen to him. The fairies opened their mysterious +arms, and we saw little of him for a time, so lost was he in their +wonder. There was a small rock in the front yard that he used to sit +on when he was looking for them. The busy brown gnomes appeared to +him first--often rolling pebbles down the cliff, or gathering leaves +in their little aprons. Then the tree-nymphs would come to him; so +green and fresh and sweet--with bright eyes and coaxing hands. He +would follow laughingly what they said and did, always explaining to +us later what they _meant_. And he saw the spirits of the water, far +out over the lake, mingled with the sunlight. They gave him much, he +said, but he would like to have gone out to them. He said that burning +wood unlocked the fire fairies--let them out into freedom and light. +He loved to build fires on the beach, watching carefully the leaping +and spreading of the flames. The salamanders were responsible for the +spreading, he thought, and used to watch their little red hands at +work. His eyes seemed to melt as they stared so far and deeply into +things--way past the _seen_ into that which is nothingness to most of +us. And he would come back slowly as though it were hard to detach +himself from the enchantment. Always we kept very still at such a time, +for fear we hurry him. + +Out of the magic and mystery of that summer, out of the warm nights +full of stars and peace, and the days of sunlight spent with the +beckoning fairies, Tom's soul unfolded another big quest. The fairies +were only the start of the Unseen, though we thought at the time that +he saw all that a human being could. At last the Master's voice reached +his open ears. He answered immediately. + +It began with old Indian philosophy. He heard certain reading in the +Study one day, and later asked for the book. It was a little book, +written in words of one syllable by a Hindu boy, telling how to reach +the Feet of the Master. The next morning I found him on his knees +before it in the sunlight. At that time Tom was just learning to read. +It was hard for him, but he wanted to be alone with the spirit of it. +He handed me the book saying, "Please read this page aloud to me." + +The young Master was speaking of Discrimination and Onepointedness. +Tom's face filled with the wonder of one who has found the thing he +has been wanting for a very long time--for ages perhaps. He said, "If +you asked me to go and get you a book, and I went, but instead of +bringing the book back to you, I took it to the shore and commenced +to read, forgetting that you wanted it, that would be the opposite of +onepointedness, wouldn't it?" A little later, he said: + +"The Master watches you from the hills, all the way up. He knows all +that you do. When you do small things, you are taking Him away from +yourself; you are not being the _Soul_. Each time you do something +great and brave, the Master comes a step nearer. When you become your +soul, the Master comes all the way down the hill and tells your brain +which way to go--tells you the path, the way home. _Then_ you have +earned it. You have got to earn everything, everything that comes to +you.... I think that the Master comes and takes you away at night, +shows you many things--tries to help you. But pain has to teach the +brain, and pain is the lack of soul. It hurts your soul to have you +suffer. It hurts the Master too, but they both know that you are +learning to be their comrade through your pain." + +Tom paused. In his eyes there was that wonderful melting again, and a +joy so deep and pure that it made my heart sing. + +"It is all meant," he added. "All is meant, but men do not know that +the Master is watching. For ages and ages the Master waits so patiently +for his _friend_ to come." + +"His friend?" I asked. + +"Yes. Souls are always comrades. The Master is greater than you are +only because he has been longer on the path. He started before you did. +He has come up through all that we have. Just think how long my Master +has been waiting for me, and I have not even found Him yet." + +I looked at the little body of him, at the innocence of the eyes and +mouth, all untouched by the world--so pure and yet crying out in pain +because he had taken so long on the quest.... His eighth year brought +Tom into regular boyhood. The young brain, always before silently +giving way to intuition, began to speak for itself. This stage is as +important perhaps, but not so beautiful as when the hushedness and +glowing of the Unseen touches a child. Here we turned from Tom, and the +things that creep into the heart of almost every boy of the same age, +crept into Tom's heart. He forgot the fairies--they ceased to call. He +forgot the wide roads of peace and purity. He seemed to forget that the +Master was still waiting so patiently on the hill for him to open and +receive. But we knew better than that. + +The development of the brain always robs a child of the inner glowing +for a time, but it all comes back again with a great dimension added; +the instrument is then keen and direct--a power in itself. We turned +from Tom--a young brain standing alone, very conscious of itself, +is anything but interesting. At the time we were in the turmoil of +departure, each of us thinking in different ways about the long journey +just ahead, and the wonder of being at last in California. Tom was more +or less his own director those days. + +He fell into crime, looted the house of a friend, denied everything. He +was sent to his quarters to stay until he found himself again. It took +a week exactly, but he found a deep happiness in being alone in the +little room before he left it. It did him as much good as the long days +in the sunlight ever could; he came out pale and wide eyed, and the +breath of a soul was in the room when he entered. + +One day out of his long week, I went to him. The sun had gone down +behind a nest of grey clouds. Dusk had almost deepened into darkness, +but there was no light in his room. He sat there, his eyes staring +ahead of him, his hands folded tightly in his lap. I walked in quietly +and sat down beside him. I was not even noticed; he was lost in his +thought. At last I asked, + +"Tom, what did you find so interesting in that cheap business?" + +"I haven't found out yet," he said grimly. + +"Have you been thinking about it?" + +"Sure have. Been thinking all day." + +"Has nothing come?" + +"No, but it's coming soon. It can't take long if I stay here like this, +wishing and pulling every minute." + +"Of course it can't." + +He continued to stare into the darkness ahead. + +"What does it feel like, Tom?" I asked. + +"Your soul leaves you.... Your soul won't stay if you are going back." + +"Going back?" + +"Yes. I mean if you have been big and listened to its voice, and then +stop. If you are _less_ than yourself after you've been _more_, your +soul won't stay." + +"What do you do when your soul leaves you?" + +"You walk the Black Path." + +He looked a child seraph. + +"That path is not interesting, is it?" + +"No. You have got to know what it is, got to walk up it a little ways, +so that you are not afraid of it any more. When you know a thing, you +are not afraid of it any longer. Before you know, it looks all dark to +you. Nothing can hurt you when you are not afraid.... It's just the +same as with the animals. All the black things that come into you are +animals. If they find nothing but love and whiteness inside, they will +go away and not even look at you again; but if fear and darkness are +there, they get mad and bite." + +Leaning forward with a laugh, he added, "You can't cut across from the +black path to the white. You've got to go all the way back and start +over." + + * * * * * + + + + +13 + +THE ABBOT + + +The Abbot is now seventeen. He is doing well at Columbia. Classes and +routine there are mere externals. The Abbot is living a life far more +real than appears--a life that few men in America have learned how to +live. He has actually arrived at the conviction of the unfathomable +riches that lie within. Many occultists and a few great artists have +a working knowledge of this kind. We hoped the Abbot could remain at +Stonestudy, but his parents wanted some letters after his family name +as well as before. Our young man was enjoined to make the best of it. +As a matter of fact, he is putting on a lot of brain things that work +admirably with the inner activity which we made much of in our work +together. + +In another book,[14] I told of the Abbot's awakening--how we called +him from mysterious regions of silence and mystification, to a more +or less adequate expression of material facts. Here was a boy almost +overshadowed by his own soul at times, inclined to be half out of the +body and not altogether present in the mind, when moving among the +sordid affairs of the world--a lad who knew the arrangement of planets +and the flow of meteoric matter better than the geography of our own +continent; who swung very readily back into memories of other lives, +mainly monastic, rather than into the episodes of his own kid-days. + + [14] _Child and Country._ + +I forget just how it was that we first sensed the giant in this boy. +In any case, we struck one. The ordinary training that I would give an +American youth to breathe the soul of him, was not at all necessary +with the Abbot. Rather, pressure was exerted from the first to make him +come down into our world, to make him be one of us, to make him see +streets and alleys, doorsteps and servant-stairs. They have succeeded +better at Columbia in this regard than we were able to do, but the +wonder and satisfaction of it all is, that the aroused mystic, the +aroused artist, has not receded--but dominates his days and work. I +understand that he is considered a sensation in a literary way. + +He is not different from his fellows. It is part of our ethics to +belong where we happen to be; to do the things that others do, better, +if possible, than the customary performance; to begin after that to be +our inimitable selves. It is our ideal to move about the world, not +to attract attention, to be quiet and calm and efficacious, to be +helpful and humorous and wise, to furnish the swift, unerring word or +hand or lift in the midst of affairs; to deny ourselves to no one; to +hold ourselves superior to no one; to strive laughingly toward the big +workmanship, to become Players after the essential apprenticeship, to +win the Laugh at last, and that perfect consummation which only comes +with utter and instant detachment when the task is accomplished. + + * * * * * + +The Abbot was sprawled in a Study shadow one summer afternoon, when I +suddenly saw him in relation to big sea-tales. Usually we tale-tellers +carry our packs. I saw the Abbot with a sea-chest that day. His was +not the way of the Arabian fires and the Assyrian camel paths--the +word-spinner's usual evolutionary line. He came overseas with his +narratives.... I saw him in the next few years making a circle around +all the capes, touching all the ports of Asiatic and insular water +fronts--a bit of Conrad, a bit of Melville, a bit of Stevenson ... a +most sumptuous sea-chest full of shells, corals, coins and trinkets +from all the Islands; feather of a woman's fan perhaps, here and there, +silks hazy from sea water, crooked knives from Malay Isles, whale-bone +and shark's teeth, pearl of the mollusk, a bit of ambergris--just a top +tray of the Chest! Deep mystic parchments farther within, a corner for +the sacred writings of all the world, a small type mill, a great wad of +white paper, the rest mainly traces of a long glide across the ocean +floors. + +I have learned to go very slow in building a matrix of my own thought +about any young man's mind, yet I told the Abbot that day what I saw +for him--how he was bound to do the big sea-tales, how we were sick of +steam, sick already of the big hydroplanes, sick of all that hurries, +all that explodes, all that has the taint of gas; that the world +presently would be so sick of noise and explosions and show and speed, +that professional soothers would be in great demand, like the Japanese +masseurs who wait upon the sleepless; that the sick world would want +to read of long, loose, lazy days under canvas, of the few ports left +where they haven't set up recruiting offices;--that the world would be +in desperate need of sunlight and surf and wide swinging seas--that he +must be one of those to usher in the old romance of the sailing craft +again. + +I told about his sea-chest better than I have told it here, but the +Abbot's eyes didn't bulge. Presently, however, he began to grow that +way.... His Saturdays and Sabbaths now are spent, not in Morningside +Heights, but down among the shipping and across the harbour, where the +big world tramps hang out. You will see these things in his letters. I +have several of his yarns here, but I am not going to run any of them +in this book. They are good yarns, but too intrinsically big yet for +the handling of a boy of seventeen. He has too much calibre for his +brain so far to carry ten thousand words to superb consummation. I want +to spring a big tale presently. I have a lapful of his random letters +from days spent down on the water front, and nights under the study +lamp: + + DEAR OLD WASP: + + Morning mists over the lake, the _Pelee_ coming up out of them. + Just had a night with John and a corking good run of work. We've + been watching the sun go down from Lynster's[15] back lately, and + breathing the planetary heave under the stars, with the milky + way dipping to the lake before us. This inland place is heavy + to take. The weight of agriculture is like a blanket over all. + It takes three or four pages to bore up through the cuticle. Me + for a get-away to the world soon--to feed up on the hum of feet + and voices and cars.... Blackbirds are beginning to blacken the + mornings and nights again; touch of Fall and Pine-smoke this + morning. Real itchings in the ankles--to you! A wonderful synthesis + for us all when we meet up again.... I'd like to roam the world + with John. He is a grand pal. Could joke over an oven made out of + a tomato-can, as well as eat from a banquet table.... + + [15] The saddle horse. + +A day or two later: + + ... Black forces strong around Stonestudy last night.... About + eight-thirty I rode over on Lynt, to sleep with John. Decided to + have a debauch with tea. While I worked on, he gathered the cups + and tea and electric tea-kettle together and got things going. + He called for me to come and make the tea. He was seated in the + big chair with a tableleaf in front of him, and on that was the + tea-kettle, boiling.... One leg slipped, and the whole boiling + collection went in his lap.... A prince, the way he stood it. The + bunch was just coming back from town. Penel' rushed over, and the + next was a turmoil right, cries, olive oil, lint, rags, confusion + of voices and footsteps--too many people and the little guy sort + o' lost his control--but it all came back again. Almost any minute + I am looking for the laugh from him. All night I was with him. + Penelope, the finished heroine as always. One could see the shades + of pain pass over John's face time and again. His nerves jump--but + his mouth and eyes are certainly getting a grand hue of steel.... + Yours right along. + +Another: + + Hazy summer about. Blue over the lake with shadows deepening in the + distance. Crops drying beneath the sun. Leave it at its height--am + headed back for Columbia--where I'll let time shape the winds for + farther "going." + + School is not harmful to one who _is_ himself. I'll take + philosophy, and then be over to tell you who stole your + washboard.... It is no struggle, no test, for one to be lit among + his own as we are. One's depth of listening is best tested in + crowds. We've got to separate--go out and change the continents + into tablelands of democracy. + + War seems settling on the world for years longer, but there is a + bigger order coming out of the incredible chaos. Each must see God + and worship through his work to shape the master beauty. Every + one's art breaks new roads which lead to one place. + + Stories are coming freer every day--I've gotten across. Don't + know whether it's the best thing for me. But I've done it, and + that's what I wanted to know. It is all preparation. Results are + beginnings. I look back now on the summer of '14. It _was_ heaven. + It _was_ peace. To look at the cottage lights and hear the voices + of rowers through the dusk was a breath from God. It was peace, it + was relaxation, a deep resting of tissue for turmoil. Depth and + mastery to you. + +THIS TO JOHN: + + The thought of your scarred legs has been with me on the borderland + of sleep for many nights, also our hours together on the pine + needles. To-night, with the sun falling sadly over the iron mills, + I walked along the Heights and cast an eye down into brilliant + Harlem. The voices of the bargemen, the wheeze of tugs, the low + growl of outpassing vessels, an occasional curse from a freighted + barge, came up with the hum of the city. There seemed to be + some goddess entwined with sea-weed standing over the ocean of + structures. She held a finger to her lips for silence, and pointed + to the Lord knows where--well, where I felt a tumult to go, to + satisfy some hot quest.... I was lost to the multitude of faces + that sent up a passionate and incomprehensible hum ... savour of + youth singing in the veins. + + Presently a drizzle drove me back to the room.... I reached up and + flicked out the lights.... In an apartment across the street lives + an old man who always comes to his window at dark and gazes up and + down the streets. His head is grey--his eyes are deep and old. The + light from his shaded reading lamp falls in a pool of dim yellow + about his carpet. Sometimes he turns out the lamp, and leaves the + fire-place alone. Sometimes his head falls forward on his chest, + and he dreams--I suppose, of boundless seas, for he was once a + sea-captain. + + His wandering days are over--no more quest. The houses rise to his + eyes like one long, bleak, uncrested wave from the Arctic Sea.... + He means old days, but we--we must never grow old; we must live + and ever be full of creation as the cloud is full of lightning. We + must, old pal, ride the deserts, drift over seas; we must spill our + work as we go, as night spills its stars from a casket. Fill me + up with the Pacific in your letters--the big sunlight--the colour + of the mountains where they dip and rise to clouds. I have a dry + palate for it all. Fill me--eye and ear and soul. + + Yours deep in those scars---- + + * * * * * + + DEAR OLD MAN: + + The Hudson is very still this morning; a few battleships have swung + out with the tide; gulls seem to be forever passing up and down the + river in white eddies; smoke from the factories rises straight and + white. The morning sun strikes like a sledge upon the Palisades. + How grand that old river is, and how untiring in its endless ebb + and flood--almost like a solar system in the serene way it deals + with human traffic. + + A great new sense of words has come over me lately. At the very + birth of language lies a chest of rich obsolete words--quite like a + Spanish treasure chest, with its doubloons, bezoar stones and "pots + of Arica bronze." The artists go treasure hunting in language, and + a few do startle the world with their wealth. The live-long day + seems to me now like a shuttle driving back and forth, weaving from + soul to matter, a golden fabric. + + This word-chest means much to me because it deals with the sea. + Lift up the lid, and tucked away in those little drawers lies the + seaman's religion in bits of turquoise, in coils of fish line + and hooks, in pink sea-shells, perhaps in an old violin, or in a + few stray books of Carlyle, Goethe, Dante and Melville's _Moby + Dick_. The point is we all bungle along through our world-term + somehow; we have our work and religion and pleasures and tales in + a camphor-wood chest with a brass band around it. Sometimes we + bring out the violin and make God-awful discords, calling it music + of the sea; we brighten people's eyes with our bits of turquoise; + terrorise them with the philosophy that Carlyle and Goethe and Moby + Dick have given us; we make them feel that endless _wroom, wroom, + wroom_ of the ocean that is washing in our souls. + + Yes, we must first learn the futility of life before we can live. + The war teaches this lesson well, but won't it be great when + everybody is singing over his golden shuttle and laughing? Won't + it be great when the chastened New Race springs up, like green + shoots at the passing of winter? Won't it be great when the world + has grown serene and wise enough to sit down beside a blazing + bark fire, with the shadows of pine trees about, or near the dim + breakers, and consider it profitable to talk about the stars? + + ... There are times when one feels he must be alone--when he wants + to be connected with nothing--when he wants to go to a distant and + high altitude, and there boil his pot of alchemy--there, where the + air is dust free, and the incense of one's devotion goes straight + up. He must listen and listen, until he believes that he hears the + stars humming in their courses; then the sun drawing like a magnet, + then a crescendo of song up to a deafening roar,--that all things, + all stars, are headed towards one point of balance among that whole + mass of sapphires we see above. + + Man, but the joy of telling tales, of recording the warmth of human + hearts, of loving men and their ways--to fill out a morning with + that golden shuttle! One has but to sit and the sun on the walls + and the shadows in the corners, or if at night, the flame on the + stones of the hearth turn to words!... The old sea is full of that. + The heart within her breast sounds the footfalls of quest; the + ecstasy of life tears in her storm and in still hours she sits in + her glitter.... + + Some day we shall be together on the blessed Pacific coast. We + shall have bookshelves and packages of dates, bottles of cream and + combs of honey. We shall work with that rugged lunge of mountains + in our products; and that endless and insistent _wroom, wroom, + wroom_ of the ocean in all. Listen, here is a day as we shall have + it: + + The sun lifting up the depth of Canyon shall awake us. After + we have cooked and eaten of crisp toast and honey and coffee, + we shall go to our desks and bring out a most rigid problem in + mathematics,[16] and dwell perhaps for an hour in drawing all + forces of thinking into play--awaking the mind--shaking off that + inertia of body. After that we shall penetrate the thing which + we wish to work upon that particular morning. We shall see its + functions and logical action, then begin the shuttle and weave back + and forth with that pliancy that sees the deepest of metaphysics in + an old man lighting a pipe or loitering over a pork-pie. To top the + morning, we'll have a meal of milk and dates. The afternoon shall + mean an isolation with the books--perhaps on the sand with the sun + tanning our backs. Both healthfully and mentally an efflux of soul. + At about five in the afternoon comes the humming calm--the poise + of mind and soul and body. Another meal of the simple foods and + once more, production, as the sun goes into the sea--giving one's + soul the might and expanse that the planets use in weaving their + ways. Perhaps, at ten or eleven we shall reach up, switch out the + electric bulb and open the door. That shall be a day mastered. Side + by side, we'll walk over to the cliff at whose base mumbles the + mighty Pacific. We shall pass no words--the earth'll be good to + feel and smell. We'll honour the still night of stars. + + [16] Help! + + That day is a privilege to earn--our bodies must suffer and become + scarred and jostled by the currents of people, and cursed upon + by foul mouths. All pleasant presently. We must know the heart + of a bartender as we would want to know the heart of the Christ. + Do you know that Masefield was a bartender? The secret of the + real artist is sanity. One must grow hair the medium length--keep + a well muscled and full lunged body--and if chronic fishermen + should happen in on us for a meal we must be able to argue that a + hickory pole is better for a pound-net than pine; or if a devout + pastor--that we would much rather praise God's work outside on the + beach.... + + * * * * * + +TO JANE: + + Your letter this morning after a long, wonderful run of work. This + is really the highest day I've had--real rugged work--bronze moving + pictures before me--faces--open shirts on sunburnt breasts--and, + of course, the eternal sea. Your letter came like a sudden bag + of sunlight emptied into a mist. The water became blue and the + promontories sharp like ink lines. + + And about Steve. I understand all. The draft explains his not + writing. And this war--it's like a maelstrom rising higher and + higher. Next summer for certain, possibly this Christmas, it + means I go. But rather than go as a private I'm going to enlist + voluntarily in the aviation corps. Flying only would have as much + thrill as doing the climax of a story. That's like the sea. And I'm + not panicky or worried about it. I feel in some unconscious way + that the balance of the cosmos demands it. God, nobody should drag + now! It's just like a marshfire that grows and grows to let the new + green shoots come under in spring. It's like a big song. I would + not go to fight Germany, or France or England or America. I'd go + because it's a cleanser. One must play with the song of many feet + and express with the original song. One must flash pictures to the + many eyes of their own being. Oh--it's a song, the whole thing! And + I'm looking forward to it. + + Only the ones such as John and Tom shall escape. Don't you see the + joy, the peace, the grandeur in owning a scar, in being bled white? + The first year of the war, England was black with mourning. Now, + she is white.... The work is on me with talons. + + I am looking only at the impossible heights--of a portrayal of + life--the rugged life in endless volumes. I have made an oath + silently with myself that in three years I shall do a book.... The + work comes now just as if I were to sit down before a fire-place + with shadows and light around stones, and were to grow interested, + with stars low on the horizon like live sparks. + + And friends? A foolish question! I mean that I must be alone in + the formative thrall of work. I _did_ want your letter. But forget + pity. That is a thing that stifles soul. I do not ask, by all the + stars, I do not ask for anything. The highest of all things to you + all. + + And Steve? He has too much of the Song to be trodden or be lost or + be ground in mud. You are all friends--but I must be alone now. The + work is rising.... + + * * * * * + +TO JOHN: + + There ain't no sun beatin' in my doorway, and there ain't none of + your sacred seas and canyons around; but there is a socialist's + riot in the street below--kerosene torches a-going--one shaggy + haired enthusiast is standing on a soap box and is wagging his + jaw in an athletic way.... How's the fire burning under your + type-mill? What's the brand of smoke it gives up--poetry, action, + lumps of granite or ladles of ocean? I'm all lit up in this place + here--because things are moving--real issues are gathering--and + the pulse of living is so close that I can almost feel it + occasionally. Last Saturday, went to a place called Rockaway--and + oh man--rocks--rugged grey and eroded--surf bitten--gnarled, + twisted--and they tossed the sea's white jaws about like bits + of cotton. Real sea coast it was--with a little smack in the + purple way, her sails bellied, her mouth lapping the brine--an + old fisherman browsing around the shores for clams while his wife + hauled up the nets, basketed the cod and upturned their boat. + + Put an extra stick under the machine and line a few of your + aphorisms. + + * * * * * + + + + +14 + +THE ARTIST UNLEASHED + + +The young workmen here do essays well, earlier than short stories. +Longer training is required for fiction. The reason is obvious. Fiction +work takes brain. The Stonestudy idea is to set free the greater Artist +within. Essays and ethical works are the natural fruits of the inner +life of the ages; story-production requires facility and development +of the every-day working consciousness. Straight brain is needed to +arrange settings, keen development of actual tissue to note and arrange +and remember. Also a big working surface of self-criticism must be +prepared. + +There is a quality of fiction that seems to set free a larger +consciousness and to bring with it settings and atmospheres of another +age. This sort of phenomenon encourages the idea of the continuity of +consciousness--before and after the three-score-and-ten. It may be +that the greater the Artist, the more of these veins of syntheticated +experience are open to his every-day working mind. That may really +be what sumptuous artistic equipment is--the capacity to open up the +old loves and scenes and adventures of the long road. Intuition is +explained as the use of the result of massed experiences, intellect the +coping with one at a time; intuition, a light that flashes from peak to +peak, intellect as a running fire up and down from height and vale. + +Certainly intellect alone will never make a great drama of life and +love, yet action and romance of the present hour draw hard upon one's +present life training and the faculties and tastes of his immediate +culture--actual brain possession and the ordering thereof. A child can +portray superbly well some ancient imprint upon the Soul, even the +passages of his own initiations through earth, water, air and fire, +his brain not conscious of the real nature of what is coming forth; +yet, the same child cannot put the cohering line through a series of +episodes occurring under his own notice. Something of this mental +grasp is necessary to make the artful effect required in a short +tale. The child's mind, in the first place, is trained to listen and +interpret the experiences of the larger consciousness; in the second +set of conditions, he is forced to rely upon actual brain tissue which +requires the training and culture of the years. + +Art is composition. The farther you go, the finer the tools. It is +difficult to train the fingers to intricate tricks of weaving, or +the brain to sort and place the facts and colours and surprises of +a present-day narrative or tale, but the soul may be called upon to +express through the narrow temples of an awakened child its cosmic +understanding, its ordered firmament. + +Decades of observation and reporting; firm and verified actuality of +knowledge and opinion; to these, added experience and the excellence +of order--such is the training of the intellectual artist who times +his production to his own generations. He pays the price in pain and +subjection to the things that are; he knows well the meaning of labour; +often, though he may still laugh as an artist, he has forgotten how to +laugh as a man. + +My desk here is covered with papers and poems of a beauty this +intellectual artist cannot reach, of a freedom he can never know, until +he lifts the torch of his consciousness out of and above the brain, +making that serve quite as his knees bend and serve. Thinking of these +things to-day, the door of the Study opened and the Little Girl gave +me her work. She writes things of the larger consciousness without +effort, but finds it hard and wearing to narrate the immediate matters +of life. To her, the fine short story of the present hour is the great +accomplishment, the ideal she is working toward. + +With another she goes often to the cities--rambling among the +rooming-houses, cheaper restaurants and mills. She means to work in +the mills soon--to forget herself and forget us for a time, to be +with the harder-lucked girls whom she loves with thrilling passion. +She has brought home from these little adventures wonderful stories +of the patience and the laughter and the heroism crowding like hidden +sacred presences about the duller lives. She brings a humour to the +telling of the divine secrets of the poor--the clutching pang for food, +the soldier going, his baby coming, the tortured spine, the stunted, +the darkened, the wasted--an irresistible divinity about it all--pain +impermanent, joy enduring. Back of the lacking eyes and leaking lives, +she sees wonders that Zola never saw, that none can see with mere +intelligence, that none can dream, who sees only the here and now, +who has not learned to laugh at the so-called injustices of men, who +cannot see the greater order to come because the present chaos is so +devastating. + +One may report minutiae of torments, mass the items of degradation and +bring forth a great document of the underworld--but these are mere +foundations. The Builders bring the dream, they live the hope, they +open the long-road consciousness, they substantiate their visions of +better days, bring order and coherence to all the splendid toil of the +intellectualist; they raise their edifice upon _all_ that is done.... +Here is the Little Girl's work of to-day's writing: + + +MEDITATION + +In the night the Master came down to a woman who lay sad and sleepless +in a dark house. He came so near that she felt his holy radiance. Her +soul breathed; her body ceased to tremble; she felt within his sacred +circle. The Master smiled and said: + +"Why do you not sleep?" + +The woman answered, "I am carried away by thoughts that will not hush. +Night after night I lie here so bitterly close to old dreams. I realise +that they are not worthy, but my brain is full of them." + +The Master smiled again. "There is a way to compel the silence of the +brain." + +"I have not found it," said the woman. + +"Learn to be the soul," the Master said. He suggested a way to +begin--then was gone. + +The rest of that night the woman thought of his words. Deeper and +deeper his words sank into her heart. When morning came, a happiness +brooded within; she dressed quickly and went out.... Back of her +little house rose the golden brown hills. She climbed, and at the top +of the nearest, sat down. The peace and purity and fragrance of the +sun-steeped hills filled her soul. For a long time she thought in +silence, then slipping off her loose white sandals, said: "I begin with +the grass. Yes, I begin with my _feet_.... How wonderful you are--so +ready to obey, to give your service at any time! What would happen +if you carried me other than my will? Supposing some day I should be +walking fast to the house of my beloved, when you suddenly took me the +other way!" + +She laughed, and added: "You stay with me all my life, and little by +little are carrying me up the shining path to the Father's house. And +yet--how strange! I am not you.... And my knees, how wonderful and +willing--all limber and full of life--helping me in all ways to do all +things--bending gently when I bow in holy communion, expressing joy +through free, easy movements, mute, yet strong before pain! There is +nothing more wonderful in the world than you. Yet--I am not my knees. + +"And you, old heart," she added. "You have endured the keenest pain; +you have loved and given yourself, have hated and become black only +through pain to whiten again--old heart of many rendings--until +all life was tragedy, and you almost ceased to beat. Little heart, +sanctuary of the soul--room for _his_ rest.... Yet I am not the heart! + +"And the white throat in which the lotus unfolds its mystic petals of +light--I am not the throat!... And the mind, stream for the soul's +fulfilment--listener, runner, interpreter of light--mate of the soul in +all things, ever ready, sparkling with the inner fire,--I am _not_ the +mind. You can hurt me no longer. I am _free_!" + +The woman sitting alone upon the hilltop, paused again. "What am I?" +she almost cried. + +It was as though the hills, the air and the rising sun joined her in +the answer--"_I Am_, ... Longer than the living flame leaps within, _I +Am_. Longer than sun and planets radiate light, _I Am_. Longer than +worlds give birth to form, _I Am_. I am one with the rocks and the sea, +one with the warmth and light, one with the earth, one with Humanity. + +"I am Humanity. _I Am._" + + * * * * * + +It is only when the Little Girl brings in a bit of fiction that we +remember her years. The brain that even now can polish a detached +incident, or clip into firing-form a bit of humour of the street, +cannot as yet order the narrative to a culminating effect. She is in +her brain, which is only fourteen, struggling with the matters of time +and space, wherein only lie pain and bewilderment. + +Art is long. The training of the hand and intellect requires the +years--but not the labour, not the agony, not the mad strain supposed +to prepare one for an artistic career by those who believe mental +equipment to be all.... The key to this whole discussion is the fact +that the brain can be developed more in a year through inner awakening +than in a decade by the usual methods of external impacts alone.... The +ideal education is the balancing of the without with the within--the +tallying of the world without with the world within--the same old +story of the kingdom without clearing its correspondences with the +kingdom within. + +The Little Girl's ideal is to do great stories. They challenge her by +their very difficulty. When I see where she stands now, and think of +the far ways we elders went to learn the game; when I see what the +twenty-year-olds are doing now, how they command their mysticism--a +harder task for me than the accomplishment of physical results; when I +see the inner bloom and co-ordination and the inimitable surfaces which +come to all the arts by the development of the soul life first, the +listening for the Master within--I want to get my hands on them all, +upon all the young builders of the New Race. I want at once to awaken +within them the Spectator--the One who cannot be swung back and forth +in the pairs of opposites, who cannot give himself to the partisans, +who has glimpsed the Plan and offers it full adoration, who says +accordingly that the best possible thing that can happen is the thing +that happens next. These are the young Players who will reveal life by +living it--portray life as naturally as breathing, whose equipment is +not possessions, not even brain possessions, but spiritual _en rapport_ +with all, oneness with all life. + +I remember struggling for effects. These young people breathe +effects. I remember style as a studied attainment. These young people +acknowledge but one style--that is being one's self.... I want to set +many of them free from within outward. In their gladness at the finding +of themselves, they will go forth to include the world; they will bring +to it the compassion which enfolds all, reveals all.... Love the world +well and you will understand it. Love the world well, and you will +write well to it. Give it yourself, and the world is yours. + + * * * * * + + + + +15 + +WORK IN SHORT STORIES + + +The Little Girl sketched this impression of an Indian Summer Dusk: + + * * * * * + +... Just now the great blue dusk, after an Indian summer day. It +deepens and seems to laugh, then all is night. Huge black clouds roll +up, promising a storm. Against them, tall, selfish, unafraid, stand +the poplar trees. The great Mother of the dusk is singing, the God in +Nature is singing, and Nature's belongings, all of them, sing in this +magical moment. One feels it all in one's self, feels the glory, the +romance, the very core-life of the Universe. The matings too, taking +place in the grass and air; the matings of the two streams, the two +grains of sand; the matings of butterflies, birds and bees. It all +flows through one's body like music and honey and sunshine.... + +Nothing but space is around me. I feel all hollow inside. Power and +beauty and all things else flow through ... and out, like a sieve. +My body is far below me, yet it will be taken care of. It does not +stumble, nor make any clumsy, unnecessary movement. Finding it alone +and forgotten, Rhythm catches it in her gentle arms. Slowly, softly, +gently, Rhythm carries it along, the same that carries the deer so +swiftly in the forest, the mountain sheep from ledge to ledge and over +valleys, and that which waves the trees' long arms so gracefully.... +The night moves on its way, the threat of storm is passed. I am back +again--an untellable freshness has sweetened hair and clothing. I am +all glowing inside. + + * * * * * + +This was done two years ago. There was a kind of dream story which she +recently finished, gratifying the artistic sense entirely, but in a way +that ruined it for the general reader. It was all new to her that there +could possibly be two ways to regard a bit of workmanship. Five or +six story-writers were present for the reading, and out of the fruits +of that evening, we surely saw the lesser beauty give way before a +greater. We forecasted the readers of the future, who would prefer the +more spiritual, more challenging story texture and denouement. + +There has always been The Few--glad to discover the real, answering +to interior order and clarity, "straight grain,"--but the fact for +enthusiasm now is that the world is being peopled with the awakened. +These young moderns are recognising each other from day to day, pulling +together for better social order, utilising the wisdom of the East, +and the drive of the West--labouring in new paths, daring new leaps, +working out philosophies as fresh and ancient as the dawn and, what +is straighter to the point, demanding modern books, written out of an +integrity to match their own.... + +Short story writing in America is less a trade and more of an art +since Edward J. O'Brien, the poet, took his chair in the flow of the +output and began to say which was which. There are a number of people +in America who know a good short story when they see one; this is +true among those who buy short stories, but editors cannot always buy +what they want. A deal of mechanism in a magazine has to be oiled and +energised by different kinds of minds from those who paint the pictures +and write the tales. O'Brien knew both ends--also he knew that big, +unobtrusive part of the market that looks long and pointedly for the +real tale. + +He is a queer boy--from the bleak fishing grounds north of Boston. +He is in no hurry. You couldn't tell if he really wants anything. He +doesn't seem to want much--for O'Brien.... After he had his main line +and most of the ramifications of his idea laid, he told the editors to +send on the stories. Most of them did. O'Brien did a lot of work in a +few weeks, did it startlingly well. He started something.... Now, if a +writer sits down, suddenly struck with a fine idea for a tale, and this +fine idea precludes the possibility of selling it for a high price--the +writer dares go ahead and finish the task, because he knows O'Brien +will get to the thing in due time, and that if it is really what it +seems and the performance of the idea adequate, then the work will not +be utterly lost. + +As a matter of fact, this is a bit of self-placation, since no work is +lost; no one gets the value of a big thing to anything like the degree +of the man who does it; no big thing is lost from the world, not even +if dropped in a sewer, if it is really important for the world to +have it. We are all a bit too heavily handicapped with our own idea +of what the world should have from our own shops--at the same time, +when we are young, we pant for the quicker return, the answering hail +within reason--at least, within time and space. Now O'Brien has come, +strangely arrived, his proper phylacteries in place, the touch of +tinted haze about his head, the right man. + +Back of all, however, is the workman's own spine. That's the best +thing to lean on; and when the going is heavy, to learn to do without. +We often remind each other in Chapel of the modern artist Cezanne, +who moved about his painting for many years, painting _the thing_, +satisfying his soul, and leaving his canvasses around in the fields for +the peasants to laugh at or mull over.... They have long since been +brought in out of the rain--those canvasses. I forget the incredible +thousands his littlest sketch brings now.... But Cezanne got the films +out of himself--tallied them off--the landscapes within and without, +when it did him most good. It never fails. What was good for the artist +is good for the rest of us afterward. + +Meanwhile much is still to do in the story world. The big smash of +the moving pictures hasn't cleared from our game yet. It will be the +cause of greater tales before the end is seen, for you can't portray +the realities of romance upon a flat screen. For a time the many +thought it was no longer necessary to learn to read, because there was +such a torrent of pictures everywhere, but it was only through the +pictures that the few has finally managed to realize how marvelously +pictorial mere words are, and how few words are required when they are +imaginatively driven. One day in Stonestudy we discussed these story +and screen affairs, looking ahead somewhat to better times than these. +One of our young men, whose story is told in a later chapter, put down +the things we talked about. This is Shuk's writing: + + * * * * * + +A fresh and different vitality is manifest to-day in American +literature. At various points around us, dealing with words, colours +and the subtler tools, are active young workmen who for the first +time, in the fullest sense, may be termed "North American." The first +characteristic of this new element, these young flexible and vigorous +minds, is that they are workmen--not labourers, not professionals, not +primarily artists in anything unless it be life--but workers first, and +after that novelists, poets, musicians, painters or politicians. They +are not competitors. They have not forgotten the warm side of justice, +but they know well the stern face of compassion--they know that it +takes Christ and anti-Christ to make a world. They are neither modest +nor egotistical, being for the most part busy and intensely alive. This +implies their joy. + +The great love story has not been written. The few great love stories +of the world have to be pieced out by the imagination. We find that +we have been told that certain are great love stories, but they do +not stand examination. The classic form will not do for the New Age. +There is to be a new language--for literary handling. It may be called +American, to distinguish it from English in the accepted form. It is to +be brisk, brief, brave and ebullient--to meet the modification all must +reckon with--the screen-trained mind. + +American-mindedness of itself, cannot yet accept a great love-story. It +would be called "sentimental" if not lascivious. The average American +is an impossible lover, making it incident to business. The real and +the sham are equally above him. He would not know when to be exalted +or when to be ashamed. He thinks his own passion is evil, and thus +makes it so. The great love-story can only be written with creative +dynamics, and can only be accepted as yet by the few of corresponding +receptivity. There is nothing soft about true romance. Some passionate +singer of the New Age will likely appear right soon, his story to have +the full redolence and lustre of the heart, his emotions thoroughbred, +his literary quality at the same time crystalline with reality. + +The big adventure-story has not been done so far. The day of guns, +horses and redskins is over. Photoplays have developed these fiction +resources to the limit, proving to those writers born to be modern +that their full tales can never be shown on a flat surface. There +will be undercurrents, overtones, invisible movements, tensions upon +the reader, not only from between the lines, but between words. +The story-teller of the New Age may handle his theme in words of +one syllable, but his tale will have an intensity scarcely to be +explained--only responded to by minds which cannot be satisfied by +two-plane production--minds which demand more of life than the camera +sees. + +The real war-story of to-day, even for to-morrow, ought to arrive soon. +This is an age for an epic. Some keen and comprehensive mind will +arise--a literary genius who will include the patriot, the anarchist, +the poet, dramatist, humanitarian, theosophist, dreamer, judge and +statesman, even the iciest aces of the air--and tell the story of +War, a tale of trenches, kings and arms; blood, heroism and monstrous +greed; vast far-reaching causes and the slow, inevitable hell of +effects--told from a viewpoint so inclusive that thrones are merely +pawns in a Planetary Game. + +Inclusion is the first business of the writer who is truly allied with +the modern element. Propagandists do not fill the picture. Yesterday +the wreckers and agnostics--to-day the specialists and onesided +enthusiasts--to-morrow, the embodiers, the includers. + + * * * * * + + + + +16 + +VALLEY ROAD GIRL + + +The Valley Road Girl, who gave us the title, and helped us to see how +the New Race will become in due time the planetary hive, asked not to +appear in this book. A letter this morning asks it again. She is in +the stress and heat of a series of ordeals, learning what it means +suddenly to be parted from friends and the centre of her work. A wise +and sensitive young woman--I rather thrill over her sufferings. We +don't commiserate; we congratulate, when one is called to a stretch +of particularly stiff and solitary going. We know that one must be +passionately worthy to take the big-calibred ordeals. There is pain +to all births--pain, the precursor of greater joys. Pain is not the +expansion of the flower to the sun; that is joy, that comes afterward. +Pain is the necessary rupturing of the bud-sheaths before the final +unfolding into the new dimension. Pain is within, inarticulate--merely +finds a correspondence in some outer cause. + +Part of the Valley Road Girl's letter follows: + +... It hurt to let that last Lamentation go to you. I thought of the +times when I had put up a braver fight, bolstered only with pride. +But pride is low now, and still dwindling in the glass. Even the gods +withdraw from the pathetic. They love us more when we challenge with +doubt than when we implore. The many are God-fearing. They must have +some divine power to shift their responsibility upon. They can ask the +Flame to cleanse them, but quail at working out their own salvation. I +have done some crying out to God, but I am finished. The one good path +I have is Work--self-expression every day. + +I made another mistake--in looking back. Regret identifies us with +the past and impedes progress. Youth is smileless, inclined to regard +to-day's struggles as ultimate evil, but gradually we learn that +all things pass. To consider everything as in transition, we place +ourselves in the very current of growth.... For rapid journeying, we +must travel light. We can only carry along the spirit of things--the +essence of our joys and lessons. That's what I have from Chapel days. + +I blush for many hours since. Sometimes I have felt as if I were on +a vast plain and there was no God nor earth nor the quality of love +anywhere, but only I--deathless--in long, hideous travail, all life to +be tested against this Me!... + + * * * * * + +How I want to write! Every day more awe enfolds the dream. Days +bring me closer to the Town. The war has deepened the hearts of all +the young people here, especially the women. Young women are very +wonderful to me. They have a certain loveliness of body that comes of +girl-whiteness within--thoughtful tenderness about them, and something +else, a lightness that may be just youth. It attracts me because I have +never felt it. + +I do not care if the gods laugh at my ambitions to write. By the very +sign that we are victims of matter now, we shall become victors. I +want the bottom--down among the deeps of pain, where all the sorrow of +the world is my sorrow; all tears, my tears.... I am not ready for the +Hive. No compromise. To accept less in one's work than the dream--that +is failure. + + * * * * * + +The Valley Road Girl is eighteen. She has hardly been away from the +little town by the lake shore. She is held to it queerly still. I +expect her to make the place long-lived in the memory of many novel +readers. I see the big book of the country-side about her--a gallery +of quaint and curious faces--done with her stern, sweet power. I have +seen this big book building about her, as I see the top trays of The +Abbot's Sea Chest. These are the days of her sketching and tearing +down. Deep draughts of life call to her, deeps of religion, deeps of +cosmic memory--and all about is the little town. The meaning has come +to her at last. Already she has turned to love the nearest; loving the +nearest will unfold the big book and set her free. Six hundred pages +I call for--the leisurely vibration, terrible intensity of romantic +moments, passion of the fields, the hideous mockery of narrow, brittle +lives, the country-wife worn glassy with routine and insane monotony, +and the young of the country-side--quick bloom, pure youth falling into +coarseness before its form is finished, the real and immortal behind it +all. These are her properties. Hundreds of pages have been written and +prayerfully destroyed. Thus is she setting herself free. + +I have a paper of hers on the spiritual adventures of a smileless +child--which I liked much when it came in, more than two years ago. The +Valley Road Girl is close to us in all our preparing and building; so +that these chapters would be strange without her voice: + + ... Fire was always terrible, so my first aspirations were caused + by fear of hell _below_. Before that, I had wanted to laugh when + told to pray. As I grew, I thought much of the heavenly state, but + could find only vague pictures. Recently I asked a country minister + his idea of heaven, and he seemed uncertain. He could only assure + me that it was a desirable place. Yet children always wonder about + their destination, questioning as they journey. + + I started early to pray--a grim affair; at first crying out through + fear or hurt. God was too awful for such intimacies so I took the + Christ figure of the Trinity into my confidence. Just here came + a strange transition. It didn't seem sufficient for me to think + those prayers: I felt I must state them clearly or my wish might + be ambiguous. Even to-day, I find that only expressing a thing + simplifies it for me. + + If there were acquaintances whose lives were touched with beauty + or romance, I prayed for them, but mostly named _my_ wants. I made + the discovery that the intensity put forth in holding the image of + a desire brings it into the world. Man may call the answer _God_, + but that seems his own power. I have sometimes thought of Will with + its divine kindred, Wisdom and Love, as the Three Who stood first + before His Face. + + To-day we dream, and to-morrow our hands are filled. I remember + the early Chapel days when the Old Man would say, "Be careful what + you want--you are apt to get it,"--with a great laugh and mystery + playing about his words. How truly one comes to realise that. + When I started at Stonestudy, the town-people used to ask how we + were taught,--if our English and story-structure were principally + considered as in the schools. I could only tell them, "Oh, no, not + like school!" Then I tried to explain Chapel and they wondered how + that manner of education could make us writers. Yet our writing + improved with the days. Work, a few weeks old, embarrassed us with + its defects. + + Then I actually tried to discover just how we were being helped. + To a young aspirant, there is awe about an artist; we had come to + listen. The same thoughts expressed in homely words wouldn't have + quickened us. The Old Man's sentences were rich with figures that + clarified everything. We began to _see_ Stonestudy. About this time + at home I used to start anything that interested me, "I've got a + picture----" Chapel had helped me, as only one can help another, by + quickening the imagination. + +That was what drew me to the Little Girl--her vivid impression of +things. She could make _her_ listener see also. Speaking of children +whom school had overwhelmed, she used to tell us of their "lacking +eyes" and the world that had crushed them, as the "solid world." ... +I think that was the secret of her faith in fairies and Nature's most +elusive agencies. I listened doubtfully at first, for school had +tampered with my once-ready belief. One had first to trust her words, +"If you believe, you will see." And I recalled my early religious +experiences, based on "According to your faith, be it unto you." + +This is the "really" religion--faith in the hidden world. We conceive +its light gradually as the seed pushes its way upward through the soil. +All religion that does not make the workshop a Chapel--the place for +picturing heaven, is less than we know. I seem to confuse religion with +the stimulating of the imagination. It is because they are one to me. + +The Valley Road Girl has a beautiful sister who was rather reluctant to +come to Stonestudy. She did not think she could ever belong; had no +thought ever of writing or taking part in our things, yet none of the +young people ever brought us more than Esther. I found the following +pages about these two sisters together among the writings of the Little +Girl: + + ... On the floor below lived two girls who came often to visit + their beloved friends in the attic. One was a year or so older than + the other, and most serious and sober, constantly hunting for her + own philosophy and making her own religion, praying for power and + vision, fearing lest she fail at the appointed task, suffering over + conditions, revolting at times, loving her work and her sister with + an everlasting passion. That was the one whom we call the Valley + Road Girl. + + The other was a perfect giver, born with the thought of her own + smallness, unwilling to accept a different point of view on the + subject from another. A spirit--wide eyes, frail body, living her + life calmly, objecting to nothing, obeying others, loving all, + frightening her parents with her absolute goodness. And that was + Esther. + + When she came at last to Stonestudy, her cushion with the others + round the fire had been waiting for many months. For we all knew + her; through the Valley Road Girl we knew Esther belonged to us. + One Chapel day later, when she remained at home, we wondered how + we'd ever manage without her.... Occasionally Esther brought a + paper with her and laid it under the black stone--a bit of verse, + perhaps a dream, or something deep and mysterious from her soul. + One day it was a picture of the Desert, I remember.... Noonday, the + white heat of the sun reflected by the sand, the brown of a camel's + eyes, the long road to travel--caravans--then night--the sound of + low music, women dancing, the red of fires on black oily bodies of + slaves.... Esther made us see it all. + + There were long days in the woods--spring quickening life in all + things. We'd gather moss and violets and talk endlessly, Esther + always so free these memorable days, and happy. It was the dance + that set her free--her expression through the dance--a dancer's + body and soul, her wonderful quality of forgetfulness of self, made + her perfect. Literally she could surrender herself to the music, + trust it, and be carried in perfect grace and rhythm. We watched + her unfold, the beauty of her deepening in every way. Her joy in + life grew. She became like a nymph in the pure light of summer.... + + * * * * * + +As was set down in the other book,[17] it was the Little Girl who +started these educational proceedings. Less than four years ago I +suggested that she remain home from school, and take a stroll with me +down the Shore. I was a bit bored at the time, doubtless heavy with +the sense of parental care. To my best knowledge, the Little Girl was +in no way extraordinary. She does not seem so now. It seemed natural +for her to turn in the chapter on "Tom" in this book. I did not think +of it as a brimming thing for a child to perform. Incidentally Steve +brought in an essay last night on the young lovers and beauty lovers of +the New Race, covering matters which I planned as necessary for me to +do in this book. _Weaving_, that's really what a book from the group +amounts to--weaving, more and more. From time to time in years to come, +I hope to take a few weeks and spin a book. + + [17] Child and Country. + + * * * * * + +It is only in matters having to do with actual world-facts that the +Little Girl ever reminds us that she is only finishing her second +period of sevens. There is no one to whom I go more often for wisdom or +consolation. Her comradeship is complete. Others forget the matter of +age in relation to her. Her big friendship with the Valley Road Girl +overrides four years of growth most formidable in the usual attachment. +The soul is out of time and space. The same thing is more emphatically +shown in the case of John and The Abbot--nine and seventeen. + +The Little Girl reads very little--not nearly so much as I do. She +carries no weights. The slightest tendency toward precocity would +sicken me of the whole business. This growth and development which +I speak of is not intellectual in the acquisitive sense. I take the +young minds away from long division examples. One of those a day is +plenty. Excessive use of the young brain is dangerous. One should +handle brain-tissue with delicacy. One should learn well how to think, +so as to escape lesion and avoid rupture of those most delicate fibres. +Any strain sounds a warning. The use and development of the brain from +outside is only safe so long as the process is joyous. The development +of the brain from within is natural and continually felicitous. No two +processes are alike--for the Soul perfects the instrument to serve +Itself. In due time the brain, thus trained, will bring forth the +one perfect and inimitable product. Trained by the world solely from +without, its product is a mere standard at best. + +I have met absolutely no ill results, not even from the gentle +encouragement of the practice of concentration among children. This is +stiff brainwork for a time--stiff because the brain must be mastered. +But the brain that has learned to listen for the voice of the Master +within, is already using the fruits of concentration, and as I have +written before, the children master the distractions more easily than +developed personalities. One must learn how to think obediently before +one can silence the thoughts. One must silence the brain to hear the +Soul, but one must _be_ the Soul to silence the brain. + +Intellectual children have been brought to me several times. They +lack the essential reverence. They wish to show me what they know; +their parents goad them into this showing. These are not the new race +type that thrills us.... I cannot help you out of a predicament if my +hands are full of bundles. I cannot bring to you the one spontaneous +utterance that you long for, if my brain is crowded with the things of +to-day and yesterday. I place upon the ground my bundles, and give you +a hand. I clear my mind of all its recent and immediate acquisitions, +and by the very force and matrix of your need (if I am the valuable +teacher) I supply, from the infinite reservoir of massed experiences, +an intuitional answer that will not leave you as you were. + +... God pity the good little brain-pans so heavily piled in public +schools, and the brave little memories so cruelly taxed. I want to +brush all junk away from them, let their souls breathe, let them +become as little children, show them how the greatest workmen and the +master-thinkers are great and masterful, simply because they have +learned how to become as little children. + + * * * * * + + + + +17 + +BEAUTY + + +We develop through expression. I find these paragraphs among many of +the Little Girl's for which there is no place here: + + * * * * * + + ... Everything in pouring out one's dreams and thoughts, one's + very soul into words! It is relief, fulfilment; it completes + all thoughts and dreams; it gives them strength. They are + only half-powers if left unexpressed. In the moments of great + outpouring, order forms--the inner order that is lasting and + divine, the order that every man must have running rhythmically + through him, before his great task can be given him by the Master. + If man lives in truth, he lives in order. There is no truth without + order--no order without truth. They are one at the top. There are + no mistakes in all the Holy Universe. + + * * * * * + +We speak much of the Master. As every artist becomes significant, I +think he is more and more conscious, deep within, of the presence of +one whose word is absolute. The great artist isolates himself from +criticism--that is, he may listen to the observations of a child or the +youngest critic and find values, yet his life is passed in doing things +others cannot do, and for which there are no criteria. He loses the +sense of all laws at the last, in the great ebullition of his soul--to +get its records down. He is not ignited with expression as formerly, +because he _is_ expression. His establishment in flesh is for that, and +no other reason. His Master nears. I think of Tolstoi so intimately and +Carlyle in these things.... We are close, in our best moments, to the +Shop Itself. Kipling touched this mystic arrangement in his inimitable +_L'envoi_, "When earth's last picture is painted----" + +More and more life teaches us the treachery of matter, as it teaches +us how to love. One by one the things we turn to, vanish, leaving us +rent and crying out. Thus we learn to turn to the Unseen. We long at +last for our particular archetype who embodies potentially the ideal +of parent and teacher and beloved. The last tearing torrential love +of the flesh is for the mate, the first of our more purely spiritual +aspirations for the Master.... The good days of apprenticeship give us +the basic ideal of him--the pure workmanship, the love of truth, need +for utter comprehension with few words--the love of one another, yet +the absolute essential so hard to learn, to cling to nothing in the +realm of change--all these are incentives to the quest of the Master. +More and more we succeed in turning our love to what we still call the +Unseen from old habit. The very love that you turn to the Master builds +the path by which he comes to you. He can only appear in your own +thought-form.... + +It comes to us so often that we make our own heavens. So many forget +that we require beauty as well as goodness and truth. Not sages alone, +not saints alone--but artists, workmen and players in beauty, as +well as in love and wisdom. The Master will come to you in your own +thought-form; your heaven will fill your own conception. Saints of the +elder bigotries will have angels with feathers and peasant feet. Those +who have clung so hard to their bodies, must galvanise them again with +rheumatism and senility and mortgage-ridden minds. + +I tell them here to be careful what they dream--to take all the loves, +the safe things, love of child and mother and mate, love of comrades, +the passion for dying for another ... to take Nature's perfect +things,--the grains, the fruits, bees, stars, devas, poems--majesty +of mountain, strength of the field, holy breath of sea--the highest +moments of song and thought and meetings ... to take all that is +consummate for the thought-form--to build the coming of the Master +in that--light from the Unseen--to build for eternity.... The Master +can only show you that much of Himself as your own highest picture +contains.... This is the practice of his presence, so liberating to the +minds of dreamers and workmen and mothers. + + * * * * * + +Steve has done some thinking on the quest of beauty in relation to the +young lovers of the New Race. The rest of the chapter is his writing: + + Beauty is the lustre shining from within, because of the sheer + intensity of being. It is proof of spiritual battles won, a gift + earned by ages of renunciation, martyrdom, and self-sacrifice. It + is manifest balance, order and serenity gained from isolation and + self-conquest. The glow seen about the heads of saints is really + there. It is a splendour not of earth, the same ray from which + beauty is drawn. + + A certain tragic joy and a terrible serenity, that is mistaken for + melancholy, often goes with beauty. It is the result of turning + back voluntarily for work in the world, renouncing possible bliss + for the service of humanity. Chief among the spiritual victories + mentioned, is this turning back, facing the stream of evolution + again, and all its cold metal, for new work. So its light is a + light from behind--a reflection to the world of the wonders ahead. + + Beauty is an indication of the weave of one's higher life, + of developed discrimination, material proof of the perfecting + ordination of the life, will and emotions. All that is beautiful + is good, all that is good must be beautiful. Ugliness is false and + fleeting, a confession of sickness and turmoil within. There can + absolutely be no great love without a sheer worship of beauty, not + for itself, not from the aesthetic standpoint--no temperamental + moth-man ethics--but the calm mastery of its inner meaning, which + is mastery of life itself. + + This does not mean that we must love things merely because they are + beautiful, but because of the truth we know to be in them, manifest + in their beauty. Also it means that we must never accept a thing + merely because it is demonstrated, or seek truth for truth's sake. + Beauty is the one lasting criterion. + + As soon as we truly see these things, we know the secret of real + love, which is beauty's expression. The lover is no longer lover + only, but love-master--all domination of the sexes then becomes a + slavery of the past. The lover is parent, mate and child in one. + Each is also the other's teacher. + + At the beginning these lovers give each other complete freedom, + knowing that nothing can be maintained that is held; that joyous + freedom is its own wise bondage. The finding of the lover is never + the end of the quest as in the world. Rather, it is the beginning. + Never is there a lying back in satisfaction or inconsequence. That + would be failure for themselves as well as their children. Growth + is the goal. Growth goes on after the mating at a rate never before + approached, for each has been opened, liberated. Every relation is + evident alternately in this growth, parent and child, teacher and + pupil, master and disciple, madonna and messiah. At certain high + moments, the other appears as the Master himself; through his eyes + the mysteries of the universe are seen. + + The three-ply love yearns to give, knowing that by giving all one + gains all. It yearns to protect, to mother, to love failings and + make them virtues. It loves the failings as well as the gifts, + treasuring all the little humanesses of the loved one, searching + them out zealously. Never are they foolish enough to expect + perfection at first. Every fault is told point-blank, at any cost + of pain or injury to the other. For it is the god-given privilege + of each to bring suffering to the other, because he loves that + other more than life, more than self, more than happiness, and it + is understood that their mutual goal is the priceless heritage, + perfection. Nothing short of perfection remains. For this all else, + even life, is a paltry price. There is no hiding the truth. This is + the supreme test for great loves, great friendships. Both mates are + equal. _Equality_--the word comes to mean more than worship. + + This philosophy is justified by the law of sacrifice. That which + we love more than life is ours more wholly than ourselves, by + the great law. In fact, we cannot belong to ourselves; we must + work upon ourselves until we are big enough to cast body mind and + soul in the heart of another, without fear. Separateness--the + pitiful sense of self, has long been the prime illusion of the + world, the cause of all lust, wars and torments. Those who are not + great enough lovers to surrender all to their love find pain and + disparity throughout. They have yet to learn that all that belongs + to the self-willed, only half belongs, for it has not been given + its freedom. + + In loves such as the New Age is bringing in, true creativeness is + touched. In worshipping both the soul of her child and that of + her mate more than her own, the mother is given for the moment + a beam from the divine shaft from the Creator. For that moment + she has over-reached herself. Just so is the new love constantly + over-reaching itself in the cause of the loved one, a divine + madness the world has not begun to dream of--to belong and to have, + to be in and through and around the loved one. Thus to over-reach + is to create. The ordinary one must become extraordinary when loved + in this god-like manner. To over-reach oneself--that is the cry + of the New!... To think or act in any way that will hurt the self + becomes impossible then, for the self is truly become the other + lover. + + Blindness of passion is far from the nature of things in the new + loves. Or rather such passions have been washed and redeemed + until they are self-governing. There is all the difference + between them and the world idea of passion, as between adoration + and infatuation. Deep waters and deep characters hold to + their channels. Only shallow and frothy currents are loud and + turbulent.... Again it is the three in one. How could one hold a + mad destroying passion for one in whom the parent child and master + are equally dominant? Always the spirit of tenderness is there like + an unseen third. Thus passion has become compassion, and the earth + love is seen truly for the first time partaking of the nature of + the infinite love which holds the universe together. This is the + source of calm, of will-lessness. + + The elder generation, judging all things from the standpoint of + the self will, is dumbfounded. Such iron repression among children + is beyond its imagination. The elder generation goes on living + sharkish and predatory lives, experimenting with repression after + too much getting and taking and licentiousness. It concentrates + terribly on repression, throwing up about itself temporary + breastworks, developing cruel red rays of personal will which + at best is but a defiant pugnacity. Its eyes grow red and voice + savage. For the time the gargoyles of the ancient self are locked + in the lower room, but they are not mastered. All personal will is + but a confession of inordination within. Where there is inner order + and beauty, it is not needed, becomes indeed an affront to the most + high. + + The beautiful will-lessness which marks the relation of the sexes + of the New Order is the key to the freedom of the future. Tiger and + ape are transformed into white presences--the mutinous slaves of + the earth-self become cosmic servants. + + * * * * * + + + + +18 + +SHUK + + +I was talking to a group of young artists in Chicago. There was a boy +there who seemed disturbed because the others dared to be natural in +my presence, and talk about themselves. I was quite at ease, enjoying +myself, and getting altogether as much respect as I deserved.... This +lad walked with me to the train. I wanted to take him home. I liked his +voice and his hand and his mind. I thought at first that he could not +mean all he said, but I was wrong about that. Reverence is sometimes +very hard to take, but the one who brings it has the pure surface of +receptivity. The boy said, as my train pulled out: + +"No, I can't come now. There's a month to be spent at home in Michigan, +and a season's playing with an orchestra up in the lake resorts, but +after that--say October, I'll come to Stonestudy." + +That was exactly what he did. He had it all planned months ahead. It's +Shuk's[18] way--a mathematical mind, a crystal mind. The theosophists +would say that he belonged to the intellectual ray.... We are always +better with Shuk in the room. He comes half way to meet our process +of lighting up, which is the devotional process; in fact, Shuk +incorporated himself in our ideals in exchange for a year or two of +living the life at Stonestudy.... These things never die. + + [18] Herman S. Schuchert. + +A raincoat, a black bag--these are Shuk's possessions, all weight and +measure minimised, even to the kind of white paper which wears best and +packs best. Shuk means order. A page of his "copy" is a rest to the +eye. There is a finished quality to his sentences. My tendency is to +rush into a mental clean-up when he enters the room. I'm not impressing +these details as his virtues. Shuk's virtues are cosmic. He will +presently be telling the big tales, and telling them fast. + +As a group, we are learning to come and go from each other. We have +learned well not to lean--rather to anticipate the Law and leave the +beloved when the tendency to cling becomes too keen.... There is a time +to come and a time to go. I always think of the Master Jesus, leaving +His disciples--saying that they would not find the Comforter within, if +He remained with them always. + +Shuk had much to do in bringing home to us this valuable concept. +We had a way of thinking the world would come to us on the Lake Erie +bluff. It would. It did. But we were getting fat and baronial; a bit +fat of brain, perhaps.... Better than that, the gaunt, lean face +forever at the window-panes of civilisation.... Comrades are always +together. Big meetings, easy partings. One does not know how close +he is to another, until their thoughts spark warm over a lot of +mileage--the immortality of it all stealing in through the soft airs of +night, perhaps. + +I teach the young ones to stand alone at every chance. The idea is +to make them penetrate for themselves, as swiftly as possible, the +main tricks and illusions of matter; to make them see past any doubt +that to be worldly-minded is to be inferior. Still they must see this +for themselves. I formally renounced parentage in the case of the +Little Girl. I take all my authority from the younger boys at frequent +intervals--especially when they have been real mates: + +"Don't advise with me," I tell them. "Show what you know about +living.... Do it your way. If you begin to botch it, I'll come in and +be a regular parent again, but the idea is to set you loose." + +These matters come out naturally in relation to Shuk. He'll be +surprised to read this. None of the young ones ever adequately credit +the fact that I do a lot of sitting at their feet.... We could see the +world as one piece better with Shuk in the room. His intense listening +pulled my eyes constantly. He wanted to know about stories--about +writing stories. His presence made us all better workmen because he +was so zealous to become one. I had long been absorbed in the romantic +side of world-politics, but Shuk decorated the subject with a new +romance.... The farther away a country is, the more we know about it +from a fiction standpoint. His mental forms are very strong. Shuk and +I have practically covered the same run of thoughts in a morning's +work--our machines a mile apart--no prearrangement. But this has worked +out so often as to cease to be a novelty. The Little Girl's letters +have often crossed with mine, carrying the same spiritual unfoldment--a +four days' journey distant.... + +Another realisation related with Shuk's coming, is that I do not belong +as the master of a school in the economic sense. There was much detail +at Stonestudy, much householder's management required. I wouldn't have +given it up, if I had been unable to do that part, but it was a waste +of force--wretched economy for me to take charge of such affairs. We +plan to support ourselves, but I cannot run a school, apportion tasks, +or puzzle devotedly among the meshes of finance. This part of the work +in California will doubtless be taken care of by those who do it well +and profitably. There have been moments when I wanted to go among all +the schools--happen in, stay an hour or a week--until the children and +teachers forgot me, so I could find my own among the many.... But again +it occurs to me that wiser plans than mine are behind it all. Those +who are ready, come; numbers will take care of themselves; all we need +to do is to make the most of the nearest, and keep up our song in such +accord as we can in the midst of the world's sacrificial madness--many +girls' voices now, for the war has plucked the boys.... + +Some of the things of Shuk's which I chose for this book were about +the big war and are not profitable discussions now, but with his paper +included in an earlier chapter, and one or two small things here, his +quality can be seen. This is a letter to the Old Man: + + ... I haven't ceased to follow the Wars. Big one inside. Tremendous + flights, dizzy careenings, impossible falls. Am tramping noisily + through the forbidden garden of Books. Am becoming more and more + vividly aware of Life, above actuality, beyond sorrow, interior to + joy. Vital and thrilling peace to all your endeavours.... Enclosed + a paragraph or two on tallying off the world-war within, with the + world-war without: + + Evil is stupid mixing of good things into in-harmony. Evil is + simply ignorance. Ignorance does not fade away, but must be worked + out, worn down. War is evil in this process. Man's higher nature + is naturally at war with ignorance, manifesting in his lower + nature. If man had always kept at this war against the domination + of the lower self, he would never have needed another war to jar + and jog him along. But man decided, in ignorance, that he had no + cause for war with the lower self. This was his first illusion. + The next mistake was natural. Man thought he would get rid of evil + by killing off the lower selves of other men. All due to his first + error in looking outside instead of in. + + It's all wrong to think we must leave our own houses in order to + fight the greatest battles conceivable. If we do not accept the + fight within ourselves, we shall certainly have the same fight, + once or twice removed, forced upon us.... + +Whatever portion of humankind is chastened and quickened by this big +field-war and sea-war, is the first fruits of a nobler race. Man has +had countless and continuous opportunities of doing this purifying +process to himself in privacy and peace; instead, he has consistently, +with rarest exceptions, used his will to serve the lesser self, or deal +with the lesser selves of other men. Now, in these years, every man who +failed, will learn the lesson, because it will be forced upon him. If +our wisdom is not so great and old as we hope, if we have in the long +past thrown away our chances, then we shall surely go out and fare as +the others fare now--in exactly the right proportion. + +Killing another doesn't work as a means of self-correction. Hereafter, +I'm interested in correcting myself. There is very little outside work +left to do. This is a commonplace, of course, yet it reminds me that +the highest wisdom is something grandly simple and easy. Murder is an +aggravated waste of both time and opportunity. + +Yet I am at peace with nobody, not even myself. Peace ought to be more +intense than war, and until it is, we shall have to go through many +wars to arrive at any kind of peace. Many slaveries is the price of +freedom. + +One who fears will be brought up facing monster fears, until he learns +next time that his personal fears were too petty to mention. One who +has greed and envy will surely be made a pawn in a game of greed so +colossal that perhaps, in a future time, he will have no interest in +neighbourhood greeds, but will have learned to see and to desire the +whole world. His greed has been stretched into a passion for dominion; +and the most fascinating field for empire he will discover within +himself. + +So wherever we stand, we can't lose out. We can choose to do good, +better, best--but without choosing, nothing less than all right can +happen. + +The brighter facts are that all these warring energies, whether of +men or ordnance, are the force of one God, energies working out of +the muddles men made. Man has disturbed the balance. Man now makes a +sacrifice in order to restore equilibrium, to release the powers he +misused. + +The greatest conceivable struggle must sooner or later come between the +higher and lower nature of every living thing. Man is now preparing +himself, collectively and individually, for this final conquest. His +prime illusion seized him when he turned away from his own faults, to +correct the faults of his brother. The secondary illusion is that the +brother will not be able to care for his own faults. The third is that +we must help our brother correct himself. The fourth is that if he +won't do it himself, in the way we say, we will do it for him. + +The world (and this means me) is just learning the rudiments of +war, just finding out how much vitality man has, how much courage, +the stupidity of all fear, the size of the globe, the depth and +possibilities of the elements, including the human soul; is perceiving +more of life and accepting intenser vibrations than ever before on this +terra. All this knowledge will go into the True Peace some day. But in +these nearby years, men are prayerfully eager to get back "home," where +all these godly lessons may be forgotten. + +Real War will positively show man that he must remember what he is +taught. When he comes "home," he will enlist immediately in the +interior struggle with his lower self. His war with other men will +train him to fight with the greatest enemy on earth, his own ignorance. + +I have already enlisted in this big war. My first victory was in +seizing the fact that the world is me and I am the world and nothing to +the contrary. The universe rises and falls with me, subjectively. The +goal is to make it--objectively. + +I am locked with impatience these days. + +After that, comes fear. + +I may go to the red fields to learn the nonsense about fear. Of course +I can theorise it now perfectly, and practise it at periods. But I +want it steadily, the non-wobbling wisdom. Already I have conquered +some fatuousness in myself. Out of my jubilation I write to you.... +Of course, the Many is not a model to follow. The "Many" is a picture +in every man's mind, composed of the inferior things that all other +men do.... Inclusion--intensity--love--creativeness--these Stonestudy +precepts contain all the story. They are certainly the way out and up +and over into Life. + + * * * * * + +Shuk has done a little sketch or two on the big Romance of the new +social order: + + Humour, universality, the highest good will, he writes, are the + symbols that flame from the temple of the New Race.... Everywhere + appear children of the renovating, re-vitalising, more cosmic + tribe. They are easily recognised. The hope of a full and decent + future is with them. + + They will do little according to their immediate predecessors, and + much by an inner light of their own. Being wise and simple and not + destructive, they will gratefully accept all that has proven true + for earlier peoples. But they will instinctively have nothing at + all to do with the traditions based on three-score-and-ten, or any + other of the unfortunately solid viewpoints that frost the world + to-day. + + They love the world, have come to claim it whole, to reclaim + it from deluded ancestors who were solemnly, from birth, bent + upon deeding and selling and stealing and fencing in bits of the + planet's surface. Forerunners of this happier race have shown + themselves to be masters of materials, true workmen in the solid + stuffs; but by their sense of humour they are saved from any + impulse to seize and sit upon fragments of earth. + + These new ones are born with an urge towards unity. Their task, to + set the world in order. Their means, not so much a rearrangement + of objects as a very intense activity along the roads of Beauty + and Truth, in a co-operation unstudied and normal with the rest of + mankind and with the Igniting Principle. + + It may be observed that Beauty and Truth are too vague to produce + effective action in a solid world. This is invariably a saying of + the material-minded, however virtuous they may be. It is they who + loudly demand a dull utility over and above Beauty, and apart from + it. It is they who have agglomerated the chaos that is in this hour + threshing about in dust and blood. Their sober iniquities are the + fertiliser to force the seed of the New Race. + + It is not a cosmic blunder that the great minds of the world are + found in art, including the supreme art of mystic religion--and + seldom in the arena of statecraft. The world was never managed from + a senate chamber; the cosmos is not guided by a king. When rulers + of the past have become great figures, that greatness usually + rested upon their gift of poetry, their love of art or wisdom, or + some religious quality. + + Poems of twenty words have outlived the might of forty wars. A + great book is a higher achievement than a sweeping political move. + The dullest changeling with an obsession may set his seal upon a + war to the death of ten million men, but in the few lines of a true + poem are stored the honey of millenniums of human life. A genuine + work of art is more potent and practical than any blood-bought wall + of tribal separation, more vital and immediate than the doings of + armies. To judge of this properly, one need only know both kings + and poets. + + Of the early kings of Rome, it is Numa who is remembered--and he + was in harmony with Celestial Order. Of countless other Roman + figures, the average mind turns first to Caesar, who was a literary + man, and whose passion to write outlasted every march of his + legions. Greece had kings and statesmen and great generals, yet + it is her wise men who stand foremost. The conquering Alexander + is famed chiefly because he was the unwitting distributor of + Grecian beauty. In fact, Greek history began with Homer, the poet, + and American history with Columbus, the dreamer who is still our + creditor. The mystics of old China reached for the Torch of Light, + and they might have attained a true dominion over the planet, had + not their fear-inspired kings built a Wall and gelded the Empire + once for all. Gautama Buddha gave up kingcraft in order to gain a + higher mastery. Mohammed lived on the Road. Jesus the Christ set + free an energy in the world that is only gaining its real momentum + after two thousand years--and he firmly refused a material crown. + +... A hopeful dream, the poem of an autumn afternoon, the building of a +sphinx or a pyramid--these are not subject to time or conditions. They +remain. + +So the Children who are the hope of the world are not dismayed at the +medley of illusions emanating from the so-called ruling class. Emperors +and premiers do not get very much done either way; they themselves +abandon their own works over night. They are deserving of profound +sympathy. They only spread out more manful chaos to be set straight by +the master craftsmen--the artists, humorists, vitalists, mystics.... +Beauty is the sun-bright flash of the Infinite. + +With duty raised to a joy, and pain forgot, the Singers come, the +Builders, the Quickeners of man. The Unforgettables of the so-called +past were of this stock. Their leisure is deep--of a sort that sustains +the finitudes. + +All the good goals of yesterday are to be counted as mile-posts. +Direction is more important than any imaginable goal; unvarying +tendency is more direct and splendid than any creed; the white path of +the quester is more precious than a stationary heaven. + +The modern children cannot stop on this side of the horizon because +they are creators. Life is their religion. Their rites are broad and +deep as man, as ancient and reverent as time, as new as dawn. + +They do not reject the Vedas. They re-fashion the Upanishads in their +own hearts. They study the travels and hopes of Jesus, listen for +the divine songs of Orpheus, penetrate the glitter of numbers with +Pythagoras, find satisfaction in the Mohammedan thinkers who connected +Aristotle with Moses. These names do not belong to the past. The +many Buddhas are perpetually modern. Kabir lives to-day in Tagore. +Heracleitus and Plato are still living springs. + +In just the same sense, the children of the New Race are old as +the Pelasgian Zeus, though in point of time they are here for work +and play in 1920. But their vitality, reality, beauty, power and +achievement--these are affairs of all time. + + * * * * * + + + + +19 + +IMAGINATION + + +Many mystics have lost touch entirely with the deep sunken abutments of +the spiritual edifice--the footings in matter. They are deeply wise in +the mysteries and unfoldments of contemplation, but lose their way like +mindless lambs in the world. We idealise a practical mysticism which +dares to walk the earth in the heat of the day, dares to contemplate +the stars as outposts of the heavenly kingdom, launching the vision at +last, not only to the Holy City, but to the Throne of Itself.... + +Talks with Shuk at Stonestudy had a tendency to make us see the big +Unseen politics and diplomacies and rulerships of the planet. Here are +a few paragraphs from one of his letters which show the quality: + + ... Kings and presidents are the most hampered of men. Great + generals are silly without their armies. To remove externals + from us, to rid our minds of the illusive and the inessential, + is simply to clear us for action. Even a gunner, in taking aim, + regards the object or enemy as an abstraction, and focuses his + whole attention upon his own instrument, his sights. If he + actually looks at the enemy, he will not hit him. The billiardist + first glances over the entire table, then, to make a true shot, + concentrates his full attention upon the tip of his own cue. + Perhaps the great leader of armies does not regard individuals or + see them as men, but as extensions of his own body, and in time of + stress, he has forgotten them completely save as abstract power + for his use, and that use he determines interiorly. Even the most + material-minded of men, in the crux of worldly and four-square + events, sinks into deep and effective cerebration. Can we, who + realise this as a conscious and direct principle, do any less? + + I think the Guardians are sitting together a little way off, + watching with grand interest, to see just how much of a mess + mankind can make. Man is always given lavish supplies with which to + create works of art that may prove equal in beauty and wonder to + the universe itself. Man does not yet see art in these materials. + + He must open his eyes before the Powers are able to help him. The + Guardians cannot operate against man's will, because their will and + his will, including yours and mine right now, are of one piece. + The will of the Guardians is better trained and cleaner, because + more experienced.... When men cease to shout for different things + from the same Father, they stand a chance of getting the Father's + attention. + + * * * * * + +We have had many astonishing hours in Chapel talking about these +"Guardians," the arrangements above, as below, one Plan governing all. +We do not care to bandy about the name of God a great deal, for we +realise that He is most unseen when embodied in matter; that He is apt +to be far from the mind that makes familiar with Him in words. Yet all +stands for Him, all reveals Him. The farther we can see beyond mere +eyesight, the more we realise that He is _not_ standing exactly in +person, just outside of the boundaries of matter. + +There are hierarchies, so to speak. There are messengers and couriers +and charioteers, saints, pilgrims, angels, courtiers, priests and +politicians, grades and authorities represented there, such as we find +in Matter and Romance here.... Shuk and Steve and I used to hypothecate +the existence of a White Council back of all the religious movements of +the world. By humour and analogy and romantic speculation, we arrived +at the point of view that the world religions are one at the top, and +that initiates, illuminati, masters are stationed at intervals to help +humanity up the slopes. We conceived the White Council as a centre of +wisdom love and power, holding up the cup continually for revelation, +guiding and guarding humanity's soul. We glimpsed the fact that the +leaders of the White Council might be beyond embodiment--at least in +avoirdupois--the holy of all holy men. Only a most pure and potent +messenger, we thought, would be permitted to reach this Inner Temple, +this Shamballah, compared to which the Vatican is a salon open to the +public and the monasteries of Thibet a concourse for pilgrims. + +After religion, we realised that there must be an upper centre for +all that is represented here below so diversely in politics and +nationalism. It couldn't be God Himself back of the dumas and senates, +reichstags, diets and parliaments. One does not pass from elevator-boy +to editor in chief in a great commercial office. If there were a White +Council back of all the religious movements of the world, there must +be a Big Mill back of all world-politics--a gathering of directors, +venturing to judge the problems of men because they had risen above +them.... These men could want nothing material. We perceived them +behind armies and thrones, manipulating kings and diplomats and secret +centres, in ways that even the closest agents did not understand. + +We concluded there must be another centre made up of the +master-artists, bringing through into matter (as the world can stand +it and as the little human instruments reach up for them), the great +delivering beauties of song and story, paint and verse and tale. And +this we called the Shop Itself. Sometimes we fancied that it was all +too much, even to dream of going there sometime to see the forms, the +marbles, the canvases, the manuscripts--the Artists themselves.... And +then we realised that, just as all the arts and all the religions and +all the political movements were one at the top, that Politics and Art +and Religion were one at the next eminence; that the Inner Council and +the Big Mill and the Shop Itself were one at the top, just as Wisdom, +Love and Power are; as Goodness, Beauty and Truth are; as Father, Son +and Holy Spirit are--three in one at the Top, and that was Himself.... + +And then we would rise from Chapel and go out and look at the +lake--Steve and Shuk and I. + +Finally one day we were told that we had done some right good +dreaming--that it was all true. We were advised that it was no affair +of ours if other people didn't get it right away; that they would get +it.... So we began to put these things in stories. They mean Romance +to us. Queerly enough the stories are coming through--one long one +especially, called _Archer_, that shows the downhere activities of the +Big Mill and the White Council and the Shop Itself. + + * * * * * + +I have said it often in this book--that our culture consists of the +quantity of properties that we have tallied off--the within with the +without. The Kingdom is within, also the King; the Sky and the Nest are +one; one are the heavens and the homing heart that finds its peace in +the deep vales where the adorable humanities come to be. The inmost and +the uppermost are one. + +We are where the torch of consciousness is. + +We are in the body, or in the mind, or in the soul; we are in time +or eternity, or we pass back and forth.... First we tally off the +far outposts of the kingdoms without and within; first we are mere +sentries learning to become clear-eyed and brave to stand alone--almost +outsiders, having scarcely heard of the Kingdom, dimly conscious, but +learning to become steady-eyed. Then we are called in a little--called +in to become couriers on foot, running to and from among the outer +provinces of the kingdom; then messengers to the Middle Countries; then +Charioteers to the gates of the City; then ministers to the court of +the King.... + +The day comes at last when we have audience with Him--when we rule +with Him, when we become united with Him. From the throne Itself, then +we perceive the outsiders, the sentries, the couriers, messengers, +charioteers, the winged riders and the deep-down men of the +dungeons.... With the fine tranquillity of power, we measure forth to +all, reverence, justice and grace. + + * * * * * + + + + +20 + +BOYS AND DOGS + + +Children of the new social order love strange creatures; they are +passionate about the care and protection of animals, but until they are +made to suffer, they are apt to be sceptical about the infallibility +of their elders. They are usually forced into silence early. I have +noted that their ideas are intrinsically at variance with parental +ideas--about purity, sunlight, dancing, foods, religion, odours.... +It takes a good man to break a horse or a dog. In a sense _break_ is +the word, although I would accomplish it with enchantment rather than +a gad.... This is invariable: "When the pupil is ready--the Master +appears----" an old occult saying, and another: "The first thing the +Master does, is to break the back of his disciple----" + +Stiffness of opinion, rigidity of holding to that which one has, +preconception, deep-rutted habits of mind--all these are fatal to that +swift and splendid growth of the disciple when he first finds his +teacher. For days the child is in a bewildering series of changes--made +over new each fortnight--reviewing lives of experience--razing the +old structures to the very footings for new temples of mind and soul. +The child must be ready to give himself--must give himself utterly. +The essential reverence is first required; the self is broken for all +births; one gives one's self to gain all. I would not try to quicken +a child who doubted what I was saying; and yet I have never sought to +make myself unerring or infallible. I like to have the young ones make +humour of my frailties, and at the same time believe there is something +priceless in our better moments together. There is no possibility of +front or acting. + +I seek to make them practise the presence of the Divine in themselves. +I tell them never to do anything alone that they would not do before +me. I take away all sense of sin from them. I sometimes congratulate +them on being especially close to us, because of mistakes. I seek to +set them free in all their ways, stripping the last attraction from +evil, jockeying them higher from a humorous and artistic point of view. +I show them the banality of many popular and obvious evils, the dulness +of paying the price for something _off_ form and of questionable taste. + + * * * * * + +There is a lot of humour and nobility about a good dog and a good boy +together. John has been sleeping for a few nights in a bit of a cabin +with an open door. He picked up a friend down on the beach somewhere, +the same that he described as "World Man Dog" in one of his letters. +I liked the tone of his voice as he talked with this old loafer named +Seaweed.... One evening I was sitting on the hill above the cabin, +so still that even a bird would have mistaken me for a part of the +landscape. + +World Man Dog came up the cabin grade. His head was down--thinking. His +tail was straight out behind him, as a dog's tail is when very much +engaged with his own thoughts. You could see that he was going to keep +an appointment; it was evident that he was afraid he might be late. He +did not see me, so completely was he engrossed in his own affairs. He +went right on up to John's door, entered, gave a look round the shack, +first eagerly, then to make sure. His face fell, his body sagged--down +he slumped in the middle of the floor--utterly dejected. As plain as +day: + +"Hell,--he ain't here!" + + * * * * * + +A real dog trainer is a wise man. I used to raise collies and was +around the benches some--watching the champions come and go. One old +trainer talked to me: + +"Styles change in dogs," he said, "but a good dog doesn't change. He +goes on and on. You don't get the good collies here on the benches any +more. This year they want the collie so fine that we have to pinch the +brain out of his head and break his lung-room in two. Last year we bred +for hair, not for body and brain. Look at that one----" + +He pointed to an old sire that had three seasons of the bench and +blue, a sweeper of prizes. I remember the time when such a head would +have started a stealer anywhere. The old collie had not lost form, +but styles had changed. A most stupid dog with a straight, narrow +head had won--not the shepherd type at all, but the head of a Russian +wolf-hound--a bit of the monster left in it, a drugged look in the +small black eyes; hysteria there, and not fealty--madness and not soul. + +"We breed them for the cities now--for porches and parlours," the +trainer added. "Yes, those great collie strains that we have been +nurturing for centuries to all that is brave and hard and useful--we +are putting the hair of the lap-dog on them now--long silky stuff, not +for snow and sleet. The collie walks by himself these days. No, we +won't altogether ruin the strain. Many individuals are spoiled, but the +race had come too far and too long to be broken down by a few years of +fancyfying." + +Of course, I was thinking of the children at every stage of the +talk--of city people and children. As a race, the city-bred have become +too fine. Life has worn them thin--given them the drugged look about +the eyes. The race will never get far in the art of living until it +comes home to the land and the restful distances and free flowing airs. +This is so true that it seems to risk wearing the eye and the mind--to +say it again.... + +It's good to see them--a boy and a dog together in the hills or down +by the edges of the land. There was a piece of decent collie in a +dog named Jack back on the lake shore. He was long in strength and +courage, but a bit shy in obedience. As a work-dog, he was ruined by +a man who knew less than he did, frequently the case in bringing up +dogs and men--whipped at the wrong time, every forming endeavour in +the pup-brain broken by that. He is seven or eight years old now ... +a clean dog, a very wise and kind dog, with a sly and quiet humour +that seldom is cruel and never falls into horse play--a lover of many +children and confident of an open door in many homes. + +I remember the dignity and beauty of his first appearance over the +bank from the shore, almost timed to our arrival. We were tender to +the collie in general, having passed years with them. Jack moved from +one to another accepting embraces with a kindliness that mellowed +that cloudy day. There was joy about it all. I stood back waiting my +turn with much self-control. He submitted to the welcome--to the last +detail, and a little later refused refreshments with perfect courtesy. + +When we came back the second summer, we found that a bullet had broken +Jack's right front leg. He had wintered out at times, had known much +pain. It was not that he did not have good friends who would have taken +him in, but I think Jack lost faith a bit in the pain and stress. There +was grey about his muzzle. One day he sat in the centre of the little +Chapel class. + +"I'd like to be as good a man as Jack is a dog," one of the boys said. + +"You'd be one more man," said another. + +The fact is Jack has filled his circle rather well. This thought came +to me presently with fuller meaning. I regarded him with knowledge of +three seasons. A clean dog, a gentleman, a master of himself, very +courageous and slow to anger, impossible for small children to anger--a +dog among dogs, but more than dog among men. + +"He _has_ filled his circle," I said aloud. "What makes a man look less +in these very virtues that Jack has mastered, is that a man's circle +is larger, and he has not reached the time of fulfilment as Jack has. +If the dog's accomplishments were suddenly lifted from his circle +and placed in a larger one, we would not be conscious of the fine +integration of virtues that keep us interested now." + +Men, lost in the complications of cities, yearn for the simplicity of +their early days on the farms; and yet they could not go back. The +simplicity they yearn for is ahead. That of the old country days is but +a symbol of the cosmic simplicity in store for us. Tolstoi turned back +to the peasants, yet the simplicity he craved was not there. + +The peasants are merely potential of what the New Race will be; the +peasants themselves must suffer the transition--must have their circle +widened and feel their little laws and their little sense of order +suddenly diffused over broad, strange surfaces. Their cosmic simplicity +will appear when the larger dimension is put in order. That which is +lovely in any plane of being, is that which is in flower--when it +has about filled its present circle. We are not less, intrinsically, +because our values are placed in a larger vessel, though we have a +renovating sense of our own insignificance. There is an order of small +men, so obviously a part of their very narrowness, that it becomes +instantly repulsive to larger souls. Many of the latter have flashed +off to the end of their tether for the time, preferring chaos, to the +two by two neatness of small-templed men. + +A secret of growth lies in these observations. We fill a certain +circle, restoring a kind of order in the chaos; and then the circle is +suddenly widened and that which was our order and mastery is loose and +diffused within the larger orbit. Herein are the pangs of transition. +We lose our way for the time in the vaster area, like a man who is +unfamiliar with an estate just purchased. There is but one thing to +do--to begin to work upon the new dimension. As we work, courage and +patience steal in. Presently comes the vision of the completed circle. +When this comes, our labour is pinned to a fresh ideal, and we are safe. + +In a hundred ways I have found it true that the vision comes in the +labouring hours. One may move for weeks about his new estate (or +manuscript), planning this and that, but the glimpse of the cohering +whole is denied him, until he has actually begun upon the nearest or +most pressing task. This is the miraculous benefit of action again. In +giving ourselves forth in action, the replenishment comes. The sense of +self ceases to clutter the faculties as we bend and toil. + +The days that are added to our experience each bring this story in a +different way: that the sense of self impedes reality on every hand; +that the loss of the sense of self in labour and service renders us +instantly quick to the animations of the spirit, without which at least +from time to time, a man belongs to the herd, and is lost, like all +gregarious creatures, in the will of his superiors. + + * * * * * + + + + +21 + +THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE + + +There is a man here who has found peace. I made a pilgrimage to his +house. A boy from the village went with me part of the way up the +mountain. The Pacific was presently visible upon the right hand, and a +spacious verdant valley on the left. I lingered a moment on the trail, +rejoicing in the quiet splendour, and then noticed a vine-clad hut +still farther up the slope. + +"That's Mr. Dreve's cabin," the boy said. + +I learned from him that this man Dreve was well-loved in the village +and in the big city beyond; that he was a very different man now +from the one who had come here a few years ago; that he was torn and +maddened then, cursing God, but too stubborn to kill himself. + +"What helped him?" said I, because the boy had paused. + +"Well, it wasn't the climate," he answered. + +I saw he was wondering if I were worth risking the truth upon. + +"Did he fight it out with himself?" I asked carelessly. + +"Yes," said the boy, and I now met a fine straight pair of eyes.... + +There was an old sharp wedge to the story. Dreve's sweetheart had +died--the loss twisting him to the point almost of insanity. He had +climbed this mountain, it was said, and remained for three days, until +the town began to search. The marshal had found him sitting up there, +where the shack is now. Dreve was quiet and normal, but confessed +himself hungry. He had returned to the mountain soon afterward, and +built his cabin. In six months, Dreve was all changed over. He seemed +to have a new body and new mind. + +"You said he's here four days a week," I suggested. + +"Yes, he goes to the city. He has a good business, but has mastered it +to the point that several younger men can run it. Dreve only gives two +or three days a week to business affairs, though he has been a great +worker----" + +"He's up there now?" I asked. + +"Yes." + +"Does he mind strangers?" + +"Not your kind." + +I thanked him, and added, "Tell me--he means a lot to you, doesn't he?" + +"All a man could," said the boy. "I'm going back now." + + * * * * * + +Dreve was middle-aged, clean-shaven, deep-eyed. Time had been driven +to truce in his case. His face showed many battles, but when he spoke, +a kind of new day dawned and you looked into the face of a boy. I +remained with him three days. We talked of the new magic in the +training of children. We talked of the New Age and the great song of +joy and peace that would break across the world when troops turned home. + +Dreve had _something_. He seemed to breathe something out of the air +that other men's lungs aren't trained for. He seemed to have _within_ +everything necessary for a human being, including vision and humour and +a firm grasp of the world. He was at peace about God and the world; +at peace also about death. Slowly it dawned upon me that this man had +walked arm in arm with life to the last abyss, and that life had been +forced to confess that she had nothing worse to offer, whereupon the +two had become fast friends. + +When a man can sit tight and lose everything he formerly wanted in the +sense of world possessions; when he has winnowed the last shams out +of the things called _fame_ and _convention_ and _society_; when he +has lost the woman who means all the world to him, and still loves her +memory and her soul better than the living presence of any other woman; +when he has come to realise that death contains everything he wants, +yet is content to wait for it--the idea of hell becomes a boyish thing +to be put away, and Lucifer returns to his old place as a Son of the +Morning. + +We stood together in the noon sun. Dreve did not even wear a hat. + +"I came here in great shadow and could not bear the light," he said. +"But one day I found my heart lifting a little as the sun came out. +Then I found that it was really true--that sunlight helped me. The more +I thought about it, the more I needed it; the more I loved it, the more +its particular excellence for me unfolded. Take anything to the light, +and it ceases to be formidable. Sickness is a confession. The time +is at hand when schools will teach that. Sickness is a confession of +ignorance which is a lack of light. If one is weak he cannot stand the +light. Transplanted things must be protected from the light. St. Paul +on the road to Damascus did not have enough inner light to endure the +great flash from without. Light works upon evil like quicklime--that's +why sunlight hurts the sick ones. It is also hostile to the utterly +stupid idea of what clothing is for--clothing that thwarts and +strangles every circulatory process of the flesh. There's nothing the +matter with sunlight----" + +The sun had not only redeemed the physical shadows of Dreve's life, but +symbolised the spiritual light which had come to him with the calm and +power of the greater noon-day. He did not speak in exact statements of +the one who was gone, but that romance, too, was like light about his +head. I thought of the wonderful thing that Beatrice said which helped +to heal the forlorn heart of her great lover: + +"I will make you forever, with me, a citizen of that Rome whereof +Christ is a Roman----" + +And I thought of the Blessed Damosel leaning over the barrier of +heaven with sweet and immortal messages for him who waited below in +the very core of earth's agony. In passing, the great lovewomen bridge +the Unseen for their lovers, who in their turn give to the world the +mighty documents of the human heart. In passing, this woman had become +everything to Dreve, so that I, a stranger, felt that he was not alone +but twice-powered. All his life was a prayer to her. He brought to her +spirit now the greatest gift that man can bring to his mate--the love +of the world through her heart. + +We had walked down to the ocean. Many young people were bathing in the +surf or playing on the strand. It was the presence of Dreve perhaps, +but I confess that human beings never before looked so wonderful to +me--a fearlessness and candour and beauty about the moving groups that +was like a vision of the future. All smallness of self was smoothed +away in the grand harmony of sun and sand and sea. + +"It's a kind of challenge to a war-stricken world, isn't it?" he asked +quietly. "Aren't they splendid together--the big boys and girls of +California?... Don't misunderstand me. I know the world. I'm not lost +in dreams. I know well the darkness of the world. But there are great +ones among the boys and girls playing together here. All are on the +road, but the great ones of the Reconstruction are already here in the +world--playing. + +"Great ones play," he repeated. "First we are labourers, then artisans, +then artists, then workers--at last we learn to play. That means that +we dare to be ourselves, wherein lies our real value to others--when we +dare to become as little children.... Hear them laugh.... You wouldn't +think this was the saddest little planet in the universe.... Look at +that tall young pair of sunburnt giants! She's a Diana, conquesting +again. Look at the wonder in his eyes! Perhaps it is just dawning upon +him that the man who walks with this girl must walk to God. + +"... Oh, yes, I know," he added laughingly, "there is flippancy and a +touch of the uncouth here and there--but we have all played clumsily at +first." + +I continually marvelled at Dreve's remarkable health. His stride up the +mountain-side was actually buoyant. + +"Did you ever feel that you could live as long as you pleased?" he +asked. + +"No." + +"I think one does not learn this until after one has wanted to die. +One must live above the body and not in it--in order to make it serve +indefinitely--quite the same as you would climb above a street to watch +a parade go by." + +I put that thought away for contemplation, knowing that it belonged to +a certain mystery of Dreve's regeneration. + +"You know," he added, "one has to get very tired to want to die. Those +young people down on the shore--they want to live. They are not tired. +They want to cross all the rivers. They mean to miss nothing down here. +They can't see through it all. It challenges them. But the time comes +when everything on earth seems to betray. Then you have to turn to the +Unseen for the big gamble. The world is learning it rapidly to-day. +Look----" + +We had reached his hill-cabin. + +He turned from the sea to the valley. Night was falling. There was a +big moss-rose plant that smelled like a harvest apple, and filled all +the slope with sweet dry fragrance. There was a constancy about it, +and the great sun-shot hill was blessed with the light and creativeness +of the long day. It was like the song of finished labour from a +peasant's heart.... One forgot the world, the war, forgot that the holy +heart of humanity was in intolerable travail.... The valley that Dreve +now pointed to was like an English pastorale. It had the look of age +and long sweet establishment in the dusk. My friend was quick to catch +the thought in my mind. + +"... It is like England," he said. "There was a development of +detail in English country-life as nowhere else. I think of cherries +and cattle, of strawberries with clotted cream, of sheep-dogs and +sheep-tended downs and lawns, of authoritative cookery, natural service +and Elizabethan inns.... Everything was regular and comfortable. One +forgot to-morrow and yesterday in England before the war. I heard a +dog-trainer, speaking of a pup, say, 'He's a fine indiwidual, but his +breeding isn't exactly reglar.' ... With a rush it came to me that +nothing in the world is regular now. England isn't a soothing pastorale +any more--everything changed, demoralised--but only for the present." + +The dusk was stealing down from the far ridges. Our eyes were lost +in the California valley which seemed to be growing deeper in the +thickness of night. Almost as Dreve spoke, I expected to hear vesper +bells from some Kentish village. His low voice finished the picture: + +"Country roads and sheep upon the lawns, vine-finished stone-work, +doves in the towers and under the eaves, evening bells and honest +goods.... I think of the ships going forth from England, boys from +the inland countries answering the call of the sea and finding their +fore-and-afters and men-of-war in Plymouth or Bristol.... You know +it is the things that make the romance of a country that endure? All +these will come again. All the good and perfect things of the spirit +of old England will come again.... Our hearts burn within to think of +the yearning in the world for a peaceful valley like this.... Think, if +I could take your hand now and watch the sun go down upon a peaceful +world ... hear the cattle coming home and sheep in the perfumed mist of +evening ... doves under the eaves and the sleepy voices of children.... +I think Europe would fall to screaming and tears, and then lose its +madness for strife--if the big picture of our valley at evening were +placed before the battle-lines as we see it now." + +Dreve stared a moment longer. I fancied I saw a bone-white line under +the tan, running from chin to jaw. + +"A woman was leaving her lover," he added. "It had to be so. Each knew +that. Just as she was going, the woman said, 'I forget--I forget why I +have to go away.' ... It would be that way with the soldiers, if they +could look down upon their own valleys and farms. They would forget war +and hurry down, saying, 'I'm coming!'" + + * * * * * + +I wanted to get closer to Dreve's secret of peace and power. I wanted +to tell it. Apparently Dreve wanted me to. Now, there's a price to pay +for these big things, but many are willing to pay the price if the way +is clear. Dreve had suffered all he could; then something had turned +within him, and he found himself in Day again instead of Death. + +"It must be told differently," he began. "For instance, if I should +tell you that the way is to love your neighbour as yourself, you +wouldn't have anything. Whitman said, 'Happiness is the efflux of +soul,' which is exactly true, but it didn't help me until I had +experience. Happiness is the loss of the sense of self. You can see +that clearly. All pleasure-seeking is to forget self. We loosen +something inside that sets us free for a moment, and we say we've had a +good time. + +"There are great powers within. The greater the man, the more he uses +this fact. We thought of steam as a finished power until the big +straight-line force of electricity was released. We can't explain it, +but we have touched certain of the laws which it obeys. The materialist +is inclined, as ever, to say that electricity is the last force to be +uncorked on the planet, just as he said that the kerosene lamp was the +last word in illumination. The occultist declares that there are still +higher and hotter forces, touching Light itself, and indulging in the +laughter of curves and decoration where the cold monster electricity +moves only in straight lines. + +"Men have died to tell the story that happiness is radiation, not +reflection--that we have it all inside, if we could only turn it +loose--that all pain and fear and anger and self-illusion disappear the +instant we enter the larger dimension of life, exactly as the moon goes +out of sight in the presence of the incandescent sun. + +"I was emptied of all that life meant in the world--but something new +flooded in. I saw that all was not lost, but that all was greater than +I could dream; that all was waiting for fuller and finer expression. +I saw that what I could do for you, or for any man or woman or child, +brought me a living force of the love I was dying for. It became clear +that I needed only to clear away the choking evil of self, in order to +feel that I was a part of the tender and mighty Plan,--to touch the +rhythm of the Source, from which all songs and heroisms and martyrdoms +come. + +"It has all been said again and again. There comes a moment usually +after much pain when the human mind realises that it is invincible when +working with the Plan; that it may even merge with a kind of Divine +Potency yet retain itself; that it can actually perform its actions +with the help of that mighty fluid energy in which the stars are swung +and the avatars are born. + +"A cold monster indeed is this electricity compared to the odic force, +the dynamo of which is the human will. But the magic of it all lies in +the reverse of the whole system of use. This force destroys when used +for self, but constructs when it is turned outward. Here we touch the +law again that happiness is in radiation--in the loss of the sense of +self--in incandescence--" + +Dreve smiled at me with sudden revealing charm. "I would say that it +was all in loving one's neighbour," he added, "except that it has been +said so much.... It is true. You seemed to know it to-day on the shore. +You seemed to see the great ones passing there. If the world could only +know the joy of seeing the sons of God in the eyes of passing men!" + + * * * * * + +Night had come. We sat at the doorway of his cabin, a waver of +firelight within, stars clearing above the misty sea. + +"It's all play when one gets into the Plan--all pain while one resists +the Plan," Dreve added slowly. "I used to think that I had a strong +will; that I had good will-force, as men go. It was the will of an +invalid child. If men could only know the force that is theirs to use +when they enter the Stream! One is asked to give up old habits and ways +and propensities--but only because they are harmful and impeding. All +which really belongs is merely obscured for the time. It returns to you +with fresh loveliness and power. One does not give up three-space to +understand four-space. The truth is he must rise above the former to +see it all. + +"It isn't you and I who matter," he said abruptly, after a pause. +"These things are for all. I know what comes afterward--to a man or to +a nation--when driven to the last ditch of pain. A new dimension of +power comes. That's what happens. That's what the New Age is all about. +That's what the war means. We shall learn our new chastity. We shall +emerge as a race into a more serene and splendid consciousness.... The +price--the dead.... I could tell you something about that. One must +have prayed for death to know about that. Don't think of that now--only +take it from me, or from your own soul, that the big Plan is all +right--that _They_ haven't made any mistakes yet--that the loved one is +only away for a time--busy--quite right--about the Father's business. +Another time for that. + +"I can't forget them down on the Shore," Dreve finished. "That was +play. It was all a laugh down there. The big forces and the big people +are always a part of laughter. The laugh will take you to the throne. +The Gods laugh.... There's a laugh that ends pain. There's a laugh that +challenges power. There is the laugh of the aroused lover in the world. +We shall hear the laugh of the world itself, when the big revelation +breaks upon us all that the Plan is good--that the Plan is for joy." + + + + +22 + +A DITHYRAMB AND A LETTER + + +I think we come through at birth with certain sealed orders to be +opened at distant points of the journey.... Ten years ago, as I lay one +night, ready for sleep, hand lifted to put out the light--my eyes found +these lines: + + _"Listen, I will be honest with you: + I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes. + + These are the days that must happen to you: + You shall not heap up what is called riches; + + You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve; + + You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd--you hardly + settle yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by an + irresistible call to depart; + + You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who + remain behind you; + + What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with + passionate kisses of parting; + + You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd hands + toward you.... + + 'Allons! After the Great Companions, and to belong to them!'"_ + +The thing had come around by India--a quotation from Walt, in a +little Hindu book of love and death by Nivedeta. It spoiled my night. +I resisted. Some entity connected with the lines seemed to smile +patiently. Deep within, I knew they belonged to me; that I should +have to realise them, line by line, then live them; that here was +a page from the envelope of my sealed orders to be opened after +clearance--opened far out on the white water. + +They used to strike me as hard lines until the warm laugh came up out +of them.... Romance means _Not to stay_.... Bit by bit, the story +unfolds that the Plan is good--that the Plan is unutterably good, that +one needs only to rise into the spiritual drift to find that all are +God's countries. First the big physical drift, the drift around the +world, along the waterfronts, missing none until the laugh comes, until +the petty things of life, in _no_ arrangements or combinations, can +hold your faculties or even long attract the eye. You know them all. + +One must learn the world first; one must not miss the world tricks. The +men who have lived most have laughed most. But don't stay too long in +the labyrinths. They are passages of pain so long as you give yourself +to them. Still you must solve the maze. After that, don't stay--don't +stay to pick up threads. There are other mazes, other drifts. I +assure you life is rich and brave, but there is nothing so healthy as +a laughing discussion of death in one's own mind--the next step of +the cosmic adventure ... and to travel light there--not to take our +mortgages, our material ambitions, our stone houses full of effects--by +no means to take our card-indexes and letter files--to travel light, +to pick up the brighter shells by the way--every glimpse ahead showing +higher light--a more spacious and splendid prospect.... Why carry +our furs and frost-proof igloos for this adventure in the deeper +tropics?... To become as little children--to be open hearted and free +handed--to listen, to believe, to make pictures, to see across apparent +separateness, to forget one's self in the daisy fields, to love the +light and the land, to fall into ecstatic speculations! You can't do +that if you carry the plumbing of your house in mind, and stop suddenly +to recall if you turned off the water in the laundry-tubs. + +Weigh up your external possessions--weigh them carefully--for their +amount is the exact measure of your infidelity to God.... + +To become as a little child--to know that the forests are filled with +other than things to eat--to love the mysteries awake, to love the +fairies and the hidden flowers into strange unfoldings--to be fearless +and free forever!... The Little Girl writes of her love for it all as +it comes: + + * * * * * + +... I have a half a minute to send my love and strong pull for _High +Flight_. We wanted this to be the magic week of the Home Coming, but it +must be best to wait a little longer. Wait, wait--that is the old song +of Earth--young waiting--big waiting--holy waiting. _I love it._ I love +the suffering of it. One is great according to how well one can wait. I +am loving Earth terribly. It is close to me, with its strange music. + +Last night, the Valley Road one and Esther and I were together--touched +great white things--talked and laughed and loved until long after +three. Each in her way is a power wherever she touches. Each has +everything within. Each is pure and wonderfully sweet. We wait, +openarmed, for you. There are wonders in Muriel--and in others. I +dream constantly of the beauty to come. Nature's ecstasy will be +bursting forth in fulfilment when our Lovers come home. I'm so _glad_ +this morning! + + * * * * * + +The children learn it so easily. I like to stop in this book and +let them say it--the big story of the Seamless Robe, the story of +Democracy. The young men say it strongly; and tenderly the young +women,--the dream of the mate in their hearts becoming the dream of +the Master. They all say it so thrillingly for me in their words and +lives--the little boys coming in with their tales of prairie and the +deeps; literally it is here out of the mouths of babes.... Dreve found +it in a woman, another in science, another in music, another in the +open road. Every man is his own way, his own truth and life. It waits +for all.... We keep fanning day and night, many of us who work at +home--the fanners of the Hive! We cool and harden the great spiritual +concept into matter, as the cathedral spires of wax appear and harden +in flaky white under the masses of the bees.... + +I laugh at my own intensity.... It is our one tale, told in essay and +story, in different terms for cults and schools, for soldiers and +clergy, in verse and prose, with dignity and in slang, but here it runs +best out of the mouths of babes ... helping the Big Democrat get his +story through.... The rest of the chapter is the Little Girl's: + + +THE SOUL SPEAKS. + +I walked through a field. The brown soil was upturned and all the +richness of man's labour was in it.... The morning sun was lifting a +grey veil of dew up to its heart; the earth was fresh and cool where +it had rested. My feet were bare and sank into the soft richness. The +field was wide and pure and fragrant and alive. It seemed to sing as +the sun grew warm upon it. Ecstatic birds flew close and balanced +themselves magically in the sparkling air. + +I happened to be just ready to receive the golden loveliness that the +old Mother is always eager to give, that morning. She helped me to feel +the goodness of all things--the power and beauty of all, and the great, +giving spirit.... Inside I felt keenly the presence of Soul--that was +the secret. Soul awakened and breathing, Soul waiting and eager, Soul, +the holy quickener.... The heart beat peacefully, the brain hushed all +unnecessary thought and listened. I lay down upon the sweet ground +there--the body relaxed and forgotten. + +Then, from the depths within, I heard the sound of the Soul's voice +speaking these words: + +"This is the appointed time. Long enough have I sat mute and silent in +the darkness. We have learned the lesson. The circle of separateness +is complete. We are ready to enter a new globe now, a globe much +larger than the one we have known, much more wonderful. In it there +are greater tests than we ever had before. But the new tests, instead +of being painful, are joyous; not separateness is ahead, but union, +oneness in all things.... Long have you gone your way alone, down the +road of deafness and blind eyes and pain; and not the way I would +have led you, though perfectly right, for it was an education. The +blindness and darkness of it has taught us what _not_ to do, therefore +we know the path.... Ours were not object lessons; always we have +learned through opposites.... To learn the great lesson of listening, +we talked much. We told others of the paths they should take long +before we thought of following our own. We hated all things, to learn +how to love; we took all to ourselves, to learn how to give. We did +the things of death, to learn life truly.... We have suffered great +pain to know the secret source of the everlasting joy. We feared, in +order that we may become fearless, and know the mystery of the dark. +We chose the road of separateness to feel the ecstasy of oneness and +completion at last. We entered the terrible sphere of time and space to +transcend both and be free. We took upon ourselves pounds of tiresome +flesh, to make of it a golden symbol of the great spiritual beauty and +freedom. We asked for everything at first, but through our desiring and +brooding, we learned the most wonderful lesson of all--wanting nothing +but to give. + +"All is for us. The Path gleams before our eyes--the long, sunlit path +leading to the Father's house. I go home with my love by my side. By +crying out in agony, and by weeping bitterly we have learned how to +_laugh_. The world is needing us; we contain all things. From now on, +we live as one in Wisdom, Love and Power." + + * * * * * + + + + +23 + +THE MATING MYSTERY + +I thought a great deal about Dreve's love-story in relation to the +young people, in relation to the love of humanity, and in relation to +the mystical growth of a man denied the mate on earth. In the first +place, there must be many great love stories in the coming decades of +reconstruction, if for no other reason than that great children are +coming in. Such friends and brothers and comrades-of-all-the-earth can +only be born through the excellent and adequate love of man and woman. +In a recent novel, an old priest of the Gobi tells something of the +love story of the future to a young American who is greatly troubled in +his romance. I quote three or four paragraphs because this expression +in fiction is clearer than I could write it again. Rajananda says: + + I have watched your devotion for the woman and it has been a holy + thing, my son. You love well. She has become more than earth-woman + to you. She has become the way to God. This leads to true _yoga_. + Where there is love like yours, there is no lust. Without these + trials you could not have known so soon the love that will bring + you in good time to her breast. The ways of easily-wedded pairs + sink into commonness soon--the dull and dreamless death. It is + those who are kept apart, who overcome great obstacles, who learn + the greatest thing of all--to wait--who touch the upper reaches of + splendour in the love of man and woman, and thus prepare themselves + for the greater union and the higher questing which is the love of + God together. + + The seer must know the hearts of men. Knowledge of love is the + knowledge of God. Love is the Wheel of Life; love is the Holy + Breath that turns the Wheel. The seer is far from ready for his + work in the world, who has forgotten from his breast the love of + man and woman. And then, my son, we are almost at the end of the + night of the world. The Builders are coming in to take the places + of those who have torn down with war and every other madness + of self. These Builders must be born of men and women--the New + Race--but of men and women who have learned what great love means. + + ... Listen, my son: in the elder days men put away their women to + worship God. The prophets, the seers, the holy men walked alone, + and left the younger-souls of the world to bring forth sons. The + time was not ripe for the race of heroes, therefore the mere + children of men brought forth children. And all the masters spoke + of the love of God for man, and the love of man for man, and the + love of woman for her child, but no one spoke of the love of man + and woman. All the sacred writings passed lightly over that, even + the lips of the avatars were sealed. But now the Old is destroying + itself in the outer world; the last great night of matter and of + self is close to breaking into light; the time for heroes has come, + my son, and heroes still must be born of this sacred mystery--the + love of man and woman. So all the priests have this message now, + all the teachers and leaders of men, even I, old Rajananda who + speaks to you, and who has never known the kiss of woman--all are + opening to the world the great story, unsealing the greatness of + the love of man and woman.... For the Builders are coming, coming + to lift the earth--the Saints are coming, my son--old Rajananda + hears them singing; the Heroes are coming with light about their + heads and their voices beautiful with the Story of God.... And now + I must sleep. I go to my daughter, who waits for you.... Once, + before you came, she rested my head and filled my bowl in the stone + square at Nadiram. Even now she waits for you in the hills of my + country--not far from this place, my son---- + + * * * * * + +In the big expansions of life, in moments of great happiness, or +hard-driven by pain--most of us have realised that the higher we rise +in human consciousness, the nearer we get to the All. Thousands of +people now living have risen, for short periods at least, above the +sense of separateness, in which they realised that the finest and most +exalted love a man may have is for "the great orphan, Humanity." + +The human heart is awakened through the love of one, to the more +spacious expression for the world. All life is a learning how to love. +The last love of the flesh and the rolling years, before man turns his +love from flesh to spirit, is the grand passion of man and woman, yet +man does not abandon the woman in turning to Humanity or to the Unseen. +Rather, hand in hand, the eyes of the man and woman are uplifted to one +star--the Apex of a Triangle perfected.... Yet one must not turn to the +Unseen until he has learned the full agony and ecstasy of the seen. + +"Love humanity by all means," I tell younger ones, "but learn what love +means first. Do not undertake to destroy passion until you have learned +its glory and madness. Rather lift passion to adoration, and use it, +full-powered, upon that which unfolds forever for your worship. It is +not well to kill out a personality until you get one." + + * * * * * + +Our youthful reconstructionists are apt to stir the community with +opinions or actions, which have to do with their own heart stories +and the world's romance. They have a way of confounding the seasoned +authorities of pastorate and parish, with embarrassing questions in +regard to method and magic in the making of two souls into one. These +young people may not be modest according to Elizabethan ideals; in +fact, the young women are apt to go half-way in the choice of the man +who is to be the father of her children, but this is an essential of +innate beauty and fastidiousness. More and more the higher types of the +new social order are questers for that single and holy mating which +brings nearer the dream of the beautiful and heroic in children, and +which gives us a glimpse of a future to die for. + +The story of Romance cannot be written nor interpreted in life without +its hill-rock, named Liberty. There is no man-made law for love. The +first business of human beings is to find their own on earth. All +makeshifts part away; all short-range systems scurry past; all comets +and asteroids cease to be considered, when a pair of suns whip into +each other's attraction. And so it is with a true-mated pair. Those +who have dreamed long and kept themselves pure, realise here below for +a time the raptures of the elect. The new generation has a sense of +this; and while its eyes look hard and daringly for its own, its finer +examples preserve an integrity for the one until he is found. + +The New Race realises that promiscuity is only a lack of taste. To draw +the fulness and redolence from a book or a friend or a lover, from any +episode or fabric of life, one must search for the true, as well as the +beautiful, and the beautiful as well as the good.... Perhaps that tells +it best--it dares to love Beauty, this New Race. It means to bring +back the beauty of the body as well as to breathe forth the Soul. Its +devil and its danger is Paganism. It loves Nature so well that it is in +danger of forgetting that the old Mother is not complete in herself, +but a manifest of her Lord Sun.... + + * * * * * + +As to the liberty of its loves--the New Race realises that one cannot +be held, except by vulgar hands, where that one does not want to stay. +A mated man and woman turn each other absolutely free, and the first +cry of their liberty is toward one immortal nest. Those firmly caught +in the pure dream are content to wait for each other. They do not +experiment. They realise the long road of romance--a road so long that +the three-score and ten is but a caravansary of the night. They build +above the flesh if for no other reason than to come into the greater +beauty of the flesh. Renouncing nothing, devoted to austerity only for +mystical union, carried away in no abandonment, they seek to achieve +that command of the body by the mind, and that command of the body +and mind by the Soul, which reveals the ultimate truth--that the plan +is for Joy; that the best of all things is for men who have mastered +themselves; that chastity is the breath and inevitable answer to +self-conquest. + +The growth of Romance through an ideal mating becomes a fusion at last +of all the loves of earth. Connubial blessedness is therefore more +reverently to be promoted than procreation, for upon it depends the +loveliness of issue. The New Race acts upon the conviction that the +love between man and woman is the holiest of earth expressions, rather +than the love of mother and child. The first contains the second. + +Still no earth love is the end.... Built through austerity and +idolatry, through denial and abandon, through madness and martyrdom, +through pettiness and chivalry, through pain turning less and less +slowly through the years to power, through a little zone of peace at +last (the calm before the greater storm) the fervour of man and woman +becomes, in the fullness of time, too strong for earth, and in the +final and keenest pain, the administry of a higher force begins.... +I mean to tell this in a queer way through the next three or four +chapters. Straight statements will not contain it quite--for it is +_still_ with dream, as yet. Rather I mean to weave the concept for +you--fold on fold--so that at the end you will have it, as they do who +have listened in Chapel many days. + +Flesh is not integrated finely enough to carry the higher ardours +of devotion. If the great saints who have learned to pour out their +souls in adoration to the Father should turn back to a mere physical +expression, they would blast themselves as well as the object of their +madness. The awakening of the higher forces of love lifts the eye of +the adorer from the breast to the brow of the beloved--from the brow to +the Initiatory Star risen at last to meridian. + +A new dimension of love is entered upon. All life tells the story. +Watch the big birds lift from the sand to the cushion of wings; watch +the airplane quicken its speed until it lifts from the monorail.... +Machinery of racking power in a falling house, is that great love which +has not yet learned to look above the body of the chosen one. + +This change is the last and highest pain of romance--the breaking +apart of the temporal, for the story of the long road. Man and woman +must go apart for the mastery of self, before they are ready for the +higher mating. The great love story invariably crosses the mountains +of separation. If we cling too long to the less, nature is outraged, +beauty is drained. Brief separations are dangerous, because the lovers +build recklessly with ideals and the rarest spiritual materials. +Meeting again too soon, they encounter an unmiraculous creature face +to face. If they had really completed the journey, finished the task +apart, they would have come into that tenderness which loves the human +frailties of each other, and which sees the manifest of three-score-ten +merely as a garment particularly made for a particular journey. + + * * * * * + +There is always wrecking work, before a new and wider circle is entered +upon. The time will come when men and women shall learn that the +magic of going apart is equal to the magic of coming together. In all +birth-times, in all transitions, the consciousness of the bearer is +changed--often queerly.... One can endure the primitive and the child +in the other's mind; one might adore the great play of passion, and +all the art of it; one might never weary of fragrance of throat, or +magnetism of hand, the inimitable plays and child things--but the mind +is forever the slayer of the real.... + +Remember, there is not a full union possible on the physical plane. +The body is the barrier that separates souls. Those who believe they +have all of each other in that which they see and hear and touch--have +far to come in the real love story. Have you ever asked yourself +what physical passion is? It is a frenzy to overcome separation. +This separation was necessary for the diffusion of life. It is the +outbreath, the going forth, the great generative plan.... Physical +passion does not satisfy the agony of the soul; often it only makes +the agony more keen. In the early phenomena of all great love stories, +there is encountered that blinding, bewildering need _to become the +other_--to lose identity, to fly somehow into the breast of the other +and be no more. This is keen pain of love but also an intimation of +greater union. + + * * * * * + +There was a man who had found much of beauty and power, much of the +Burning Desert and certain wonderful touches of the peace of the Hill +Country--in his story with a certain woman. She loved him in a way more +real than he dreamed. Life had shown him much to scoff at. He had been +glad to make the most, merely, of an exquisite playwoman. One day she +was down town to meet him, but he left her for a business appointment. +That afternoon, about everything he had in a material way was swept +from him--much to which his ambition had tied itself for several +years. The man was badly rocked. He walked the streets--shocked almost +to laughter, to find all that he had held for, and held to, plucked +from under.... At length he thought of the woman who waited. The +laugh of mockery quickened, because he thought of losing her, too--a +worldly-heart who would go with the rest--goods that perish. + +He knocked at the door where she waited. It was opened swiftly. He +did not need to speak.... She seemed above and around him. There was +a great still sweetness he had never dreamed of as a man (and could +only remember dimly as a child to his mother), arms of tenderness +and healing.... He saw that instant in her eyes that nothing of the +world ever did nor ever could really separate them. The queerest thing +about it all was, that he used a word he never could use before--a +word, as he said, that had been so badly worked by the world that it +needed a lot of washing before it was fit for him. Yet it came to his +lips--_wife_--in a way that showed him also a new meaning to the word +_forever_. + + * * * * * + +This subject of love and mating is only opened. There is much to say +in pages that follow, but now, apropos of nothing, if not this theme, +there is a chapter of letters. They somehow contain the spirit of many +things I have longed to express. Those to whom they appeal will find +the last pages of the book richer because of the insert. + + * * * * * + + + + +24 + +CHAPTER OF LETTERS + +I + + +We come up through many slaveries into freedom. It is the end of a +considerable road to be able to stand against the morning sun, saying: +"I want nothing but to give----" ... To be able to say this without an +answering laugh of mockery in the heart, where old King Desire sits +with his dogs. + +To be free--that is to be irresistible. Do you want love? You only +spoil it when you stipulate what the return shall be--how the +proffering of the return shall be ordered and arranged. The great love +is giving; great love is incandescence. One must be radiant to be +happy. It is so literally. It is so, fold within fold.... + +One sees gold, looking up from below, and its attraction becomes +eminent among all desires for the time. We pass it by and look down, as +the spirit of man should look down upon gold, and it becomes a mineral +merely. You can enjoy it as you enjoy other people's roses. It bestows +itself. Others seek to bestow it upon you. + +Hold to nothing in matter. It is slavery. Give yourself laughingly to +your work for daily bread without thought of result. Then, and not +until then, are you inimitable in your task. Order the performance of +your task with mere brain and attach it to your ambitions--you but do +what the many accomplish. Your product is multiple, not a perfect cube. +It cannot unfold into the Cross. It misses Resurrection. You must be +free, even to perform your work in the world. You must be free to be +irresistible.... Genius is approach to freedom. It finds its own paths; +it cuts itself free from the forms and vehicles of others. + +We have known the dark slavery of the opinions of others. Many of us +have cast off such bonds, who are still slaves to our own opinions. +We learn to stop lying to others before we learn to stop lying to +ourselves. Until we are free, we have no opinion that is fit to endure; +until we are free, our opinions are coloured and formed in the matrices +of personal self, which is subject to death. + +It's all so simple. We have to put down what is in our hands to help +others. We have to still our own thought to listen to another's saying. +We have to silence the self to hear the Master. + +This silencing goes on and on in all our work. Pain shows the way.... +We must traverse the deserts. We must cross all the rivers. We must see +one by one every material thing betray us. This is the Path--money, +opinions, ambitions, health, friends, desires, all betray so long as we +obstruct their approaches with our own conceptions and our own greeds. +We rise one by one above these illusions. The last and greatest is +that desire which is born in generation.... All the old reaches its +highest perfection in the human love story. All Nature binds one to the +loveliness of this tale. It is the way to the Way. Because it is not +the Way itself, it appears to end. The great intensities of agony now +begin. The soul realises that only the foothills of pain are passed; +that here are the mountains, here are the deep valleys that contain the +Gethsemanes and timbers for the Cross, and the plan by which the Cross +must be morticed and tenoned.... + +The sea, the mountain, gold, the rose, the child, the peasant's +simplicity, the coming of the coolness of evening, the glory of the +clay and waterfall, mist and cloud and star, the deep healing winds +that come slowly with their heavy fruitage of power from the mountains, +the swift winds with the holy breath of the Sea--all these in the +breast of the mate.... When this dream is taken, one bleeds, laterally +and full-length. One wants to die; thus he overcomes death. He feels +the great burden in which all other burdens lose themselves. When he +passes this highest series of inland peaks, the distances stretch clear +and shining ahead. This the test of faith because you deal with love +itself. Your soul, in its earliest advices, tells you that your love of +earth is pure. + +It is. It is good. It is the highest here. + +It is still to be perfected by the races, even by the new races, who +must be born bright with its untried magic.... But so long as it is +idolatry to that which is subject to change, it is hourly impregnating +the life itself with the seeds of pain.... + +You are called to the love of Souls. Sooner or later you must go. It +is the Path. It is the steep path to the Master. You give up all to +go this way--and then you laugh to find it all returned in lovelier +dimensions. You take your idolatry from the plane of mutation--lift it +into the glorious and changeless plateaus of the spirit.... + +You turn from the Seen to the Unseen. + +This is the passage. You are called to go alone a little way--to be +worthy of the great Meeting. You carry your gifts of the passage woven +into the Seamless Robe of your being. All that impedes day by day you +cast aside, as an army making a perilous retreat casts off day by day +its impedimenta--until at last you stand naked upon the eminence, and +the Voice says, "Be not Ashamed--I am the Beloved...." + + * * * * * + +Out of slaveries.... We think at first that God is without--at last we +look for Him within. We come from the happiness of the Father's House +making our great journey, but our Soul's quest continually is for the +happiness again. Yet we must not look back. It is failure to go back. +That which we have left unfinished, is not behind, but awaiting ahead. + +We are slaves to our bodily health until we learn that the body is +superbly fitted for obedience to the Soul; that it comes into its +rhythm and beauty only when mastered. Indeed the very process of +mastery is to lead it to the Fountain of Youth. + +We learn that truly to be rich, we must give continually. We learn by +the quickenings of our spirit that white lines run from the brows of +all creatures to an apex which is God--that God is all. All is God.... +All is one. We are one. We are brothers. One house for all at the end +of the Road.... We find the King in our own Souls. We learn from that +that all men are Kings. We bow to all Souls. All souls are rays of God. +We come at last to see the sons of God in the eyes of passing men. + +Our passion now is outpoured. That is joy. We ask nothing but to give, +to heal,--to permit the spirit of the Healing Masters to flow through +us, but first we clear away the obstructions of the self. + +Achieving our own chastity, we perceive the potential chastity in every +face. We are deluded no longer. The imbecile cannot hide our eyes from +the Flame. All purity must be found within. We have no fault with +others when we are cleansed. We see the heroes then, the giants, the +runners, the singers, the charioteers. + + * * * * * + +We learn that we can give nothing real away--that all we do for others +is service for ourselves. We give pain for joy, time for eternity, the +human for the divine--give to receive, give to be radiant. We must be +Flame to be fed by the Flame Itself. + + * * * * * + +We are prepared by every suffering, every humiliation, until the +personality bows at last.... Personality is good. It has brought us +where we are. Do not kill it out before its work is finished. We do not +realise its beauty until we see it mastered--until we see it with the +eyes of the Soul. All one story. We learn to love step by step. We love +ourselves, our possessions, our children, our friends, our mates, our +Masters, our God.... The higher we go, the more perfectly we contain +all the gradations. + +The last sufferings, the last tests, are so often through the human +love story, because all weaknesses are easily shown through that--all +our pains so quickly received.... The bright sandals of the Master at +last are heard across the Hills. One laughs then, for He brings with +Him the beloved we have cried for so long.... Not in the love of desire +after that, but the love of giving, the love that casts out fear, that +passes understanding, that fulfils the law, the irresistible love of +the Christ. + + +II + +... A wonderful morning--a rare Monday--the highest hold yet--all is +ascending. All beings are so wonderful. I sit on a certain bench to +work one morning--the next morning cushions are there for me.... I +speak a sentence from a book with a word how much it means and how +worthy to love--and the sentence is brought to me illuminated on +vellum.... They bring the finest fruits--honey for tea, cream for +peeled figs, black bread perfectly toasted, the perfection of unsalted +butter.... I walk up the mountain to work--and the voice of the +gardener is a benediction from the Most High--and I stand for a moment +looking toward your sea over the city, and the birds say, "It is time." + +There is a pool of lilies at the top, an Alhambran villa, great rose +gardens.... I come to the pool--dip my feet in the still waters and I +know from that how chill the night has been. I look at the lilies--how +far they have opened--and know the time of day. I pray for a moment +under a priestly Pine ... and my heart goes out in the new joy we have +found--the joy of knowing that one may be the king of the world and the +confirmed Son of God--if he but learn the one lesson--to want nothing. + +Pool of lilies in the morning sun. (A little lizard is walking along +the arm of the bench. My bare feet are quiet, and he wonders what kind +of barkless trees they are. He is here and there. One sees his body +move, not the members. The sun puts him to sleep.) ... The pool is +still as the waters of sleep. The Sea--I think of her always as the +emotional body of the world--the old Sea Mother with diamond-tipped +emotions. And then I think of the Master Jesus walking upon the Sea +and saying "Peace be still" to the stormy waters.... Each Soul must +say that to his emotions. We learn to walk upright upon the earth, +then to still the waters, then to have dominion over the birds of the +air--and last to be seven times refined in the Fire.... Earth, water, +air, fire--the first quaternary.... Yes, we are learning to say "Peace +be still" to the stormy waters. We do not know how beautiful they are +until they obey. + +... Out of the still waters in the pure blue starlight, the lily +blooms--the lotus on the still lagoons of the Soul.... Naked as a +serpent's head, the sealed bud rises from the water in the night.... +Out of the power that follows the peace upon the waters--for the blooms +of the spirit lift greatly in the tranquillity of the heart that +follows the storm--out of the power of peace upon the waters, the lotus +rises and waits like a bride in the dawn-dusk for her Lord Sun to brush +back the veils and find her heart. + + * * * * * + +It is only the beginning of heaven we find here. We weary of the +world and turn back to the Father's House. We have plucked the fruits +of pain--we have thirsted and hungered again and again.... Out of +the darkness we have formed the thought, at last, that there must be +quenching waters, and somewhere bread to eat that does not perish.... +You can say it in a thousand ways. The Prodigal tells the story. He +arises and turns back. Evolution has ceased, involution begins again. +He is being folded back to the Father with all the treasures of Egypt. +He has ceased to diffuse himself in generation, through which he has +become an integral part of every fibre of the world, and begins now to +call in and synthesise all his spiritual possessions. The processes of +diffusion were in pain--the integration is joy again. Each day of the +up-slope his step quickens. The more he knows, the more he believes. +The more he sees, the larger his faith--the more his treasures, the +more sumptuous his order. "Unto him who hath it shall be given." + +Again, it is merely lifting the consciousness from time to eternity, +from the cramp of space to the flow of the universe--from pain to +play--from desire to radiation.... One ascends and at each steps sees +farther. Day by day, the work of the installation of the higher powers +goes on. We give up nothing but that which impedes the inflow of +godly forces. That which we think we want to-day will look as absurd +to-morrow as the hopelessness of a child over a plaything broken. + +It's a way of loving every step. Thus we heal from the infinite tears +of the changes of matter and dissolution, and lift our love to the +Masters and the Immortal Gods. We dare love utterly only that which can +contain us. If the Masters loved us with all their power, we would fall +in the madness of too much light.... Always, they give us all the love +that we can endure.... We give our all to them and expand daily, until +we know the passion to break ourselves open in ecstasy, like the king +bee under the whirring wings of the queen. + +In the human body, the diaphragm is the surface of the waters. If +our consciousness is below that, we are in generation. To become +regenerated is to lift the balance of consciousness above--to +rise like the lotus from the face of stilled waters.... It is a +quickened vibration. Simultaneously, one lifts from cerebration to +intuition--from the time of matter to the spaciousness of Soul--from +the light of the camp-fire in the night, to the full day upon the +plain--from the son of man to the Son of God--from the pain of loving +with desire to the irresistible creativeness of wanting nothing but to +give. + + +III + +... I was watching the pool this morning--fish and frogs and eels +under the lily-pads--a slow cold life. They have colour and grace--but +eyes of glass. They move so softly down in the dim coppery light.... +I thought of the lakes and the seas, the simple cold of all life--the +coldest and most rudimentary in the great deeps.... Birds were playing +about in the rose gardens, darting in and out of the bamboo clumps and +yucca stalks. Humming-birds were continually fanning the trumpet and +honeysuckle vines.... I thought of the skylarks--throats that open +only as wings beat upward, and the infinite blue harbours where the +white gulls flash--the lonely lakes and tarns where the heron cross in +the evening and the loon cries at night--the cypress deeps where the +flamingoes commune in shaded glory, and the eagles that cross from peak +to peak, along the spine of the continents. + +... And then, of course, it came to me--the old conquest--how we must +lift our consciousness above the face of the waters and put on our +wings.... Many have almost finished with the waters of generation--the +emotional body of man, the same as the planet.... In the beginning, it +was necessary to "go down into the water"--the terms of the baptismal +rite. Regeneration is "coming up out of the water." The struggle +between the two dimensions is dramatically expressed by the faith, and +the lapse of faith, of Peter when he obeyed the Lord, and arose to walk +upon his storm-tossed lower self. His supplication as he sank saved him +from perishing. Regenerated, he walked with the Lord upon the waters. +I remember, too, the saying, "You must be born again of water and of +spirit----," the story of regeneration told once more.... + +It's a lifting from the cold, bloodless vibrations of the creatures of +the deep, to the winged passages of air and sun and starlight.... We +think that we give up joys of life--we plunge back again and again to +the dim cold waters--our eyes blinded at first by the light, our senses +frightened by the fragrance and the space.... As if the reflected +light of the lower cosmos could compare with the pure radiance above; +as if the love of desire could compare to the glory of the outpouring +heart--the heart filled with light--the fulness of spirit, the ecstasy +of wings. + + * * * * * + + +IV + +... The time comes in the progress of spiritual aspiration when the +generative impulse begins to manifest within rather than without. +Firmly and gently the thoughts are turned to the Image within or above; +the tendencies for outward manifestation slowly but surely give way.... +This work sometimes goes on rapidly. A hundred times a day the thoughts +of earthy attraction are finished with a soul conception, where +formerly the mere physical presence sufficed. + +Nothing answers thought more swiftly, but in this passage of mastery, +if a single desire eludes from the aspirant, he must meet it later +in a tearing and cumulative call. Surely at length the mind rises to +rule. One's conception changes from the fear, the torment and the red +haze, to gentleness and calm, a readiness to know _all_ the mysteries +of life--to care for and respect all functions as one only can who has +mastered himself. + +To cast them out in hatred is failure. That means the hardening. It +blights the beauty of the vales and all magic. + +When one begins to unfold the wonders of the kingdom within, as one is +called to do in the higher and contemplative spheres of the artistic +life, there is an increasing joy that makes it easy, more and more, to +lift the power of life from the torment and unrest of the generative +seas. + +One finds his dream of the beloved changed and infinitively endeared to +him. Patience, reverence, tenderness comes to the love that once knew +only the single passion of a male for the mammal. Even that, in memory, +becomes beautiful to eyes of wisdom and calm--all God's plan. One is +sensitive all through his breast for the unfathomable sweetness of life +and love. He sees the child and the immortal in the mate. He finds that +the body is truly sacred because he sees it with love and not with +desire. These are good tidings. They make one happy to write them. + +There are seven centres of ecstasy in the body. Through the mastery +of will and love and action, the life-force is lifted to dwell with +and awaken these centres. With each awakening, a new power comes--a +new joy--a new hill-range crossed toward the Father's House; with each +awakening, the beloved within is quickened in consciousness, and the +beloved without is held more dear. The wondrous story of regeneration +goes on and on, to the love that seeks to give itself utterly. To +love--that is all the Soul asks. + +Momentary passion swiftly passes in the increase of spiritual +aspiration. Its force is not killed, but used for awakening the higher +and immortal principles where real love abides. The hand of the loved +one becomes sacred unto tears, and the joy of life is to serve. + +The whole body is presently repolarised--the fire sparking upward--the +apex of the triangle turned upward--desire of soul instead of desire +of the body.... The mating of the mind and the soul is the larger, the +cosmic consciousness, awaited so long. This means that the Lord has +come into His Temple--the body made ready. It means that the mind and +soul are one, the house no longer divided against itself. The lover +is ready for the approach of his mate. Each has been cleansed at the +fountains apart.... + +One must be utterly weary of the old. This repolarisation of the +generative force cannot come until one has heard with furious passion, +in the depths of pain, the call to the higher life, the new quest. Not +repression then, but transmutation. One changes gently, often under a +mystic administry, but always with growing love for the body and for +the world, using the life forces for healing and concentration and +the power to listen to the Lord within--the Voice of the Silence.... +Upon the illumination of the seven centres by the life force, another +mystery takes place. The levitation of the spiritual life overpowers +to a considerable extent the natural gravitation of the flesh--the +down-pull of years. The result, of course, is the restoration of health +to all tissues of the body--the Fountain of Youth starts singing +again.... To you. + + * * * * * + + + + +25 + +ROMANCE + + +Affairs like these can only colour and illumine the upper side of the +clouds, so far as American fiction is concerned. One might write a real +novel of Regeneration, but the field of the story is not now for this; +the arteries through which the public is reached by the publisher are +not yet friendly to such a novel. We learn at Stonestudy to write what +we please, but we are content with still small answers, at least for +a time. We have ceased trying to force people to see the thing as we +see it. For money to live by, to take our places comfortably in travel +or sequestration, we retain the handicraft to write for markets that +pay. We keep in touch with the world--that is practical mysticism. We +rejoice in the dense pressures and tortures of world traffic. This is +very calmly told, as it should be. My young associates learn it easily, +performing the actions thereof, but for me, many years were required. + +Long ago I wrote a novel about a man and woman coming to a fervent +agreement to remain apart for a year before their mating, in order that +they array themselves in fuller glory for each other, so that each day +each would find the other more wonderful than yesterday. The novel +furnished much adventure in the intervening year, otherwise it would +have been still-born. What was the real theme to me apparently wasn't +noted at all. Yet separation is as essential as companionship for the +real Romance. A man who does life in a book must know this much, even +if he use his knowledge sparingly. It's all a laugh in the higher +workmanship. Romance--each has his idea of that. Each does his best by +that. Here's a document of the day from John which gives his idea very +well: + + Since I was first with Steve and Fred and Irving and Shuk, I + have had the great sense of wanting to be out and away from the + world--to be with them _one at a time_. In the Rockies or in the + misty isles of the sea! All of them have a different meaning and + sense. _One_ will mean the Rockies or the misty mountain, saddels, + foamy bits and lathering horses. Another will mean the tarry smell + of the hold of a ship, the flapping of sails in the moonlight, and + the smell of black coffee coming up from the galleys. Another will + mean the sun betin desert--camels, and men stooping over a fire. + They are all my comrads. + + Fred is a young sea-writer. We are great pals. We yousto go down + and lie in the sand, read, talk and meditate; then a little later + we would take exercise and a long swim, then rub each other down. + They were wounderful days--those. I got right to the heart of Fred, + and he did to me. He yousto come over at night and sleep with me. + Those were the nights! I got so attached to him, but we had to go + apart. He is in New York now, going to college, and I am here in + California. It does not seem right for me to be in this God blest + place in the Youneverse, and he in the slums of the world, going to + college. But it is the Plan, or it would not be this way. + + The new race will stay high all through partings; then they cannot + last long--for there is nothing to stay away for. When pain + leaves, then all will be ready for the road and the great comrads, + horses and the road of greatness. It is all ahead. In the great + future--all ahead--my comrads--all comrads--the world will be all + comrads! + + * * * * * + +All our days, as tellers of tales, we try to tell, not stories, so +much, as what Romance means to us. The very glory of life is that there +are no two pictures the same.... To me, Romance means _not to stay_! +It was hard to learn. Not to tarry in the senses, if for no other +reason than to know the full beauty of the senses. One must not miss +his train; one must not linger after curfew has sounded. There is no +grey confronting of misery--like that of meeting one's own commonness +catching up. + +It's stiff grade work all the way, but there are heroic moments. We +learn to take a supernal, rather than a sensuous joy. The most rending +of lovers is the most passionate saint.... When Mohammed finally got +his morals in working order, the desert was said to be full of slain.... + +There is something to do with _martyrdom_ in my dream of Romance in +later years. All pain and fear has gone out of that word--a singing +about it. The name _Kuru t'ul Ayn_ comes to my mind in thoughts of +Romance--"Consolation of the Eyes," martyred soon after the Forerunner +Bab had been shot in Tabriz. I cannot tell why exactly, save that she +had beauty that had turned to loveliness, and many men had looked +through the door of heaven in her eyes--some haunting mystery there of +beauty and bestowal--the blending perhaps of the love of man and God in +the same woman-heart, passion lifted remotely above the common rules of +life, transcending every man-made institution. + +One of the Little Girl's ideas of Romance is a hill cabin, an open door +to the dusk,--baby heads weaving under her hands--warm air coming up +from the valleys, but _his_ step not coming that night.... Here is a +suggestion from one of her letters: + +Have just been out in the garden planting little seeds that will grow +big and strong so that they can be put into shining pots and cooked for +the Stranger's dinner--tiny carrot seeds. They had to be rolled over +and over between the fingers before they could decide one by one to +fall into the rich warm earth. Planting little seeds at sunset! Does it +not awaken in you something of the old days we spent so close to the +soil? Radiant dusk? But you have to look _back_ to see how sweet the +purity and simplicity of the peasant's life. The peasants themselves +do not know. To-day holy hot sunlight and lilac bloom--could there be +a more wonderful day than that? And Chapel so full of power, then a +planting of little seeds at sunset. Ah, Mary! I am happy as I dare to +be in a world that is choking in its own blood. At least we are open +and ready for any work if it is ours. We hold up our arms asking for +hard and painful tasks that will fill us with that singing conquest +that cries aloud: "None have more pain to hold than we!" ... We are all +working toward you, toward that height. You will be waiting for us with +open arms out there. We all send white love to you--our waiting Mary! + + * * * * * + +Peasants and mill-girls, or the dim lacking faces of the +passers-by--always these join to the Little Girl's quests and dreams +of the spirit. Two brief additional cuttings suggestive of her idea of +Romance follow, from the twelve-year period: + + The first great vision of the quest must come to a soul over the + plough, in the peasant's body--dissatisfaction with self and + surroundings. This is the beginning of everything. The person who + is content with small things, small thoughts, does not move. His + soul stays asleep. With awakening comes hate and anger and much + simple blackness. It is just _that_, which gives him the power to + stand up against the ways he has known so long--to stand up for + himself--to push the new vague dreams through to life and light. + It is all blind at first, but great and brave, too. The call that + would come to the peasant would be to the Town--to many men and + things, for that is just the opposite from his life. In a simple + way he would go to the depths of the worst he could find--to the + extreme. + + The thing that is holding so many from their own, is contentedness, + satisfaction. The longer one holds to this, the lower he sinks, + until he is buried in himself.... The questers who have come up + into the light, are brilliant, flashing, beautiful. But the souls + of the "white torrent" are rushing on through the dark night, a + night that grows darker and darker as it approaches the day. Their + faces are tragic, drawn, expectant; there is a sort of red-dark + cloud that they are tearing themselves through.... Only the poor + fat ones! they fill you with sadness because you can not help them + and they are not trying to help themselves. They seem to sink + almost visibly, farther and farther down, as they laugh and smile, + and nod their heads to each other (only to each other). The light + around them is really not a light at all--just a colour, a cold, + grey-black colour that looks almost dead. You could laugh if they + had anything to do with you, any power over you--you could laugh at + them and tell them that you were laughing, but their helplessness + hurts you. _They_ can only hurt themselves. There is absolutely + no humour in their faces nor in any of their movements. They are + all sober; they can not laugh inside. Always it is the sign of + flight from God to lose the sense of humour. For humour is a great + inner glowing--the power to overlook, to forget the meaner things + in people and in life. It is a power to forget one's self also, + to laugh at oneself.... I see the New Race as a line of Classic + Ruffians--a Troop of Mystic Warriors ... singing their glorious + song of stern compassion and deep love, filling all with their + questing for power and beauty.... I hear their laughter." + + * * * * * + +She paints the City Street a bit darker in this: + + * * * * * + + Dim faces, full of blank suffering and of living death. Dark + and noisy streets, crowded stores of trade.... Men--little men, + following their women, carrying the babies. The mother part of me + goes out to those little men. Down the ages, mothering imprints + its pain upon our souls. And their women now--with faces wanting, + always wanting, everything in them _wanting_! I have been carried + away by these dim hungry faces. I have seen them staring at me + with blank surprise. But then they hurry on, and the forgotten + babies cry. Hushing them, the women pass--little men following. + + * * * * * + +... The pain of utter isolation--somehow this means Romance to me, in +a deeper fold of being. Isolation--the hate of an undivided people--a +man standing alone against his nation, yet loving it better than any of +the natives.... I remember in an early story of having the hero do his +big task under the fiery stimulus of the hate of London. All this has +something to do with the coming of Saviours. + +Time approaches for many when the little three score and ten fails +longer to hold the full story; one must look out of this sickly +warm room of the body; one longs for the mystic death, which is +_martyrdom_.... I tell all this from time to time in tales--but only +the children seem to understand.... + +Romance--I have walked up and down streets and open highways for days +and found no man's work challenging, nothing to keep alive my interest. +I wanted absolutely nothing that any one else in the world had, nothing +that any one could gain. All worldly activities looked diminished and +pathetic to me--but under it all--the endless iteration of the Soul: +"Here is a _man_--as much me as myself!" A call in that--always a call +in that. One longs to die for that, once and for all. + +I crossed the Yellow Sea with a wound long ago. I had missed a battle +and was suffering, without the satisfaction of suffering with a bullet +wound.... I lay three deep in Chinese coolies in deck passage. I wanted +to see some one at home, or I should have dropped overside. In the fag +of pain, on the border of delirium, I lay with the deep down men of the +world, Chinese coolies in their filth and vomit. I looked into the eyes +of the nearest, and saw a brother, not a stranger.... It was ten years +afterward before I caught the big meaning of that moment--and that's +why I say so often that the time comes when we find the sons of God in +the eyes of passing men. That is _Romance_. + +There is more of death and less of days in my dream of Romance now.... +I can see a man giving up his woman because she is dearer than his +own life to him. I can see a man going to the scaffold for a country +that is taking his life and hers. (Always I see him loving his country +more dearly than the sober ones of regnancy and war.) ... I see him +taking his woman in his hands--half laughing, half crying, their faces +upturned--one creature in that moment of parting, as they had never +been in street or church, or state.... Romance in that. + +I have a line here from the Valley Road Girl: + + ... Lastly, it came like a commandment to me--to give all to + the Coming Generation--to acknowledge the New Race as one's + God--remembering always that all Gods are jealous Gods." + +It's all in that, our dream of Romance--Democracy, the Planetary Hive. + + * * * * * + +I am using a short story as the next chapter, because it brings nearer +to the centre of the picture certain ideals of romance, workmanship, +martyrdom, love and death, than many essays could do. A tale may be +a master-synthesis. Perhaps it is just the thing to show you what +we mean, as a group,--what we mean about many things. This is not a +marketable tale; in fact, it was done with the idea of making a place +for itself just here in this book. + + * * * * * + + + + +26 + +THE COSMIC PEASANT + +A SHORT STORY + + +When I was a lad I remember hearing some one say he had read a story +of love and war. I thought of it just now, as I lay panting a bit in +a queer nest for the night in the Galbraudin Foothills--in the midst +of an army that had no country yet--a tragic document unfolding in +my heart.... A story of love and war--yes, I had seen one. It was +written upon the cells of my brain, the deeper parts engraved upon the +heart--the old red war with a new dream hovering above it, and the old +true love, white as ever, yet a touch of the rose and gold of the new +race in its folds. It seems almost my story. Like Job's servant, only I +am spared to tell it. Such a little while ago, I thought the tales of +love and war all told. + +I saw Varsieff first at school, and went to him at once. Literally, I +went to him. It was at recess, and I followed at his heels to his room +instead of my own. He was not surprised. I was always at my best beside +him. He accepted this gift from me. One who learns to give greatly as +Varsieff did, learns also to accept the best things with grace. I only +left his room long enough to get my bag. Gladly would I have slept at +his door, but he asked me in. We were to be mates. Often he assured me +that we were men, face to face; that I was not his Boswell, not his +disciple, but a man-to-man friend. Yet I knew that my power was not the +power of Varsieff, also that I was most powerful when I realised his +splendid superiority. + +I followed him during all the vacations. He loved the North +Country--snow on the mountains, cold night rains, the filled fields and +shrunken rivers of summer, the sound and natural things. He said he +would find his tropical island when his work was done, but that work +meant Russia to him. He was genius. Every one loved him. One vacation +time we undertook to walk together over the Torqueval Peaks. He +borrowed a guitar at a peasant house there in the mountains, and played +for an hour as I have never heard any one play. I had been with him for +almost three years and had not known he touched the instrument. + +In one of those days of our walking-tour in the mountains an instance +occurred of Varsieff's immeasurable tenderness of heart. One golden +morning as we walked through a little village, past a vined wicker +fence--a huge yellow cat sprang forth from the leaves and caught a bird +on the wing. A kind of sob came from my friend at the swift little +tragedy enacted in the wonderful morning light. I turned--Varsieff's +face was back to its childhood--a depiction of childish horror--all +finished manhood erased. + +Many times in our talk his sentences formed a poem, which I would rush +away to put down. He learned to do this alone afterward. Once I went +to his room in Moscow after I had been away several months, and found +scattered among clothing, papers, books and tea-things, a set of recent +lyrical gems of his. These I gathered together in the little book, now +marching around the world. + +I smile to remember when I came to learn that Varsieff had other +friends as devoted as I. It hurt at first; I could not understand. His +big magic then was that he wanted nothing. He used to say that a man is +at his worst when he wants anything for himself. The fact is Varsieff +in wanting the _letter_ of nothing, really wanted the spirit of all; +in wanting nothing for himself in those days, he wanted everything for +the world, a new heaven and a new earth, first and especially a new +Russia. Then the day came when he wanted a woman. This was altogether +unexpected. I thought that Varsieff absolutely had given himself to +the revolution--that humanity was his bride. + +I was with him when he first saw Paula Mantone--that is but part of her +name. It was in Moscow. His voice, as he spoke to me, watching her, had +a different and deeper inflection than I ever heard before. She was +just a girl--poorly dressed, who had paused to speak laughingly to an +old flower-woman. + +"Wait, Lange," he said to me, and crossed to her. + +It was in the Spring of the year. The morning was very bright. She +turned from the tray of flowers and looked up at him. His hands went +out to her shoulders. He was searching her face with a queer and tense +smile--as one who finds a woman after a few months' separation in one +whom he has left a child. Of course, my thought was that he had known +her before. She, too, would have slept at his door.... + +I heard their voices. He asked her name, where she lived, and how he +could reach her again. It all seemed trifling to me. Varsieff had never +been like this before. The rest of the day he was silent. We walked and +dined together, but his thoughts were not for me. For once, they were +not for Russia. There was a smile in his eyes, and often he turned back +the way we had come. Once he said: + +"I had to leave her. It was quite all I could stand. I do not think the +world is a place for two such people to be happy in. Possibly, we may +be allowed to meet from time to time----" + +I was inclined to call this nonsense. A little later he added strangely: + +"Yes, it would be dangerous to let go and become merely human in a case +like this." + +The next three years Varsieff and I were much apart. I do not profess +quite to understand the obstacles between him and Paula Mantone. +They had loved each other instantly and torrentially. They were much +together, yet there was some super-human torture about it. Even if I +have a glimpse of the mystery, I'm afraid few will understand. There is +something back of each one of us greater than our actions. We are all +greater than we seem. It was as if Varsieff and Paula Mantone were only +intended to meet here--to meet and quicken each other for a greater +giving to the world. I wonder if it is quite true, what he said toward +the last: That really splendid lovers may consecrate themselves to each +other, but they must also learn to give each other to the world.... In +the beginning they tried to lose themselves in each other, and they +encountered untellable pain. + +At length came the night when Varsieff returned to my lodgings, saying +that it was only a question of time when they should find peace. He +said he knew they would find peace, for he had already touched it +momentarily. I wondered if she were dead, and he caught my thought. + +"No, Lange," he said. "I am still to see her from time to time." + +Before that first meeting with Paula Mantone in the street, Varsieff +had loved Russia and the world, a friend and comrade to me and to many +others. All his love had suddenly been called in and directed upon the +woman. After the three years, he gave himself to all of us again--but +a quickened illuminated man. He had been brilliant to me before that, +but the brilliance of phosphorous compared to sunlight now. Varsieff +was making some strange spiritual initiation out of his love story. His +presence glorified me on the night of his coming--the summer before the +war. + +"There are four layers to Russia," I remember him saying. "The royalty +on top, then the dreamers, then the middlemen, then the peasants. Kings +and middlemen go together; dreamers and peasants go together.... Yes, +time will come when the dreamers and the peasants truly shall belong to +each other. They have been lovers a long time." + +I asked him about the other pair. + +"The kings and the middlemen will cancel each other," he answered. + +Varsieff was the most active man I ever knew, and yet he moved easily +as one in a sort of spiritual drift. He was an intellectualist with +those who used their heads, a devotionalist with those who used their +hearts, a mystic among dreamers, a child among children. Though never +known much publicly, he was to my mind the biggest occult force of the +new Russia. I doubt if there was another man, unless it was Christonal, +who gave more impulse and direction to the revolutionary movement. + +The heads of many departments drew inspiration from Varsieff. I +have seen him carry himself lightly through a day of decisions and +improvements and conceptions, which do not come to the ordinary master +of democracy in a year. I have seen him encounter, worked out by +others, suggestions and innovations which he himself had made--Varsieff +not realising that the thought was his own. He would innocently praise +his own work, as carried out by another. The last few months preceding +the revolution were the busiest I ever knew. We became new men. We did +not leave Petrograd, but prepared secretly for the big unburdening of +the soul of a people. The last few days, before the government changed +hands, were charged with a wrecking silence. + +Christonal's nerve broke. For twelve hours he was in and out of a +system of baths and manhandlings, and I was one who stood by. Varsieff +smiled it through, his voice calm, his eyes often looking away as he +spoke. The leaders of the younger party saw who was the real chief that +day, though Christonal is a strong leader. + +I was always a good desk man, and was trying to get some order in a +bundle of cipher messages in the heat of the night, when Varsieff came +and lifted me laughingly by the shoulders, thrusting the messages into +one of my deep inner pockets. I thought he was dragging me off to bed, +but when we were alone, he said: + +"_She_ is near. I can't leave. Will you go to her for me?" ... + +He told me many things to say. + +I found Paula Mantone after many hours in one of the Registmonten +hospitals. She was frail and feverish from much labour, not regularly +attached to any nursing staff. The instant I saw her, I realised more +clearly what Varsieff had been doing--trying to kill himself with work +for the Cause. Clearly, she had lost interest in all but death and +service. I had been too much with Varsieff to notice his arrival at the +same point, but I saw their joint endeavour through her. It seemed to +me like a death-pact. + +A new mystery for me. Evidently they had realised they must wait for +release in death, but serve meanwhile. The marvel of Varsieff's sending +me when he might have come himself, gave me just an inkling of the +tremendous power and patience which had come to him. Two years, or +even a year ago, he would have endangered new Russia for an hour with +Paula Mantone. + +I could not breathe this rare atmosphere. So far as I knew, there was +no woman for me in earth or heaven, but certainly I would not have been +able to look over a living woman's shoulder for her mystic counterpart, +and long for death to consummate the real mating. But war teaches +lovers many wonderful things. + +Paula Mantone was a kind of white silence. You had to listen keenly +for her step and give your attention to her voice. She was utterly +feminine--malleable like gold. Even to me, she was the meaning of +love. I had no thought of her being _my_ woman, and yet she seemed +spiritually to contain some sister who would answer for me. Soldiers +worshipped her. I think each saw his own in her presence. It was the +finished magic of the Trojan Helen again--every man's desire, as gold +contains potentially all the metals, and the rose the essence of all +the flowers.... + +She was the quietest woman I ever saw. She seemed formed of white +cloud--the sun on the other side. That was it--Varsieff was shining on +the other side. She answered him, light for light--gold for gold. For +the rest of us, she had that white, saintly lustre. And even in that, +we found much to make us brave and keep us pure. + +Deep within, there was some wonder about Varsieff and Paula Mantone +which my brain could not interpret exactly. But the world had suddenly +become to me, in her presence, a place of divided hearts--millions of +divided lovers around the world. I had only known the shock and misery +of war before, and the thrilling roar of comrades, the crash of the +wreckers and the songs of the builders ever nearer. Now I heard the +still voices of lovers everywhere. In the pressures of air--callings, +cryings, yearnings made audible. + +It was a new door of the heart that she opened--her particular gift +to me. That moment, though I had loved and served Varsieff for years, +I knew more thrillingly than ever his greatness, because this woman +loved him. To me, to all soldiers, she gave a reflection of that superb +bounty. To him she gave its _incandescence_. Perhaps together they +found it too terrible a light for earth, or perhaps they were unwilling +to find their fulness of days in a world so charged with agony as these +years. + +She left me a moment, answering some voice which I had not heard, and +stood for several seconds beside the cot of a bearded soldier, her +fingers upon his grey-white brow. I did not realise until after she +moved, that she was there at the moment of his passing. I thought of it +again: She was the white silence. I think the soldier died, believing +that his woman was there. + +Twenty cots in the place--a low, cold room lit with a handful of +candles. The smell of blood and sickness and soiled clothing mingled +with the bitterness of iodoform as the chill draught swept through. The +peasant soldiers knew only the meagrest care. Their wounds were dressed +as often as possible, but there were five times too many cases for the +service, and the whole corps was impoverished. + +She stood still in the dim distance a moment longer, her fingers +touching the brow already cold. Then she seemed to remember that I was +waiting at the far door. I was not twenty feet away, and yet in the +few seconds required for her to reach me, a sort of vision filled my +mind--a vision of the peace that soon would come to the world--the song +of fruitful labour sung again, peaceful lands, soft dusks, lit cabins, +filled barns, peaceful flocks and up-reaching baby fingers--all with +such a queer shock to a male consciousness like mine. And when she +stood before me, I felt that the best part of Varsieff was also there. +I even fancied his look in her eyes, such as you see exchanged in an +old pair who have lived long together. I think that a great love always +seeks to make one of two--in different ways than we dream. + +"You came from him?" she whispered. + +"Yes." + +"How does he look?" she asked. + +"He looks like you," I said, for the moment inspired. "He looks like a +sun-god, too. He looks _with your love_ into the eyes of soldiers and +statesmen and revolutionists, and they find him irresistible." + +"Dear Lange," she said. "He loves you, too. You are changed. You have +come into the big magic of the revolution----" + +"I am Varsieff's friend, first and last--his comrade." + +"And mine," she whispered. + +"The magic comes from standing between, Mlle. Mantone." + +She smiled and bent toward me. She had been like a tall, white flower, +but now for a second as she bent closer, it seemed to me that I saw a +hint of Varsieff's gold flame on the other side--because we talked of +him. + +"What did he say?" she continued in a low whisper. + +"He said to tell you that he and all your friends were busy, day and +night, weaving and binding the Cause into one great fabric. He told me +to tell you this--that the work of the Weavers will be given to the +world in a day or two--possibly the day after to-morrow. I wish you +could have seen Varsieff's face as he spoke to me this last. I remember +his words exactly: 'Tell Paula all that I do is for her. That I read +and write and dream and breathe through her heart--that she has taught +me well to love and wait--that I love the world through her heart.'" + +"Anything more?" she asked in a kind of agony. + +"He told me to say that only you knew his weaknesses, so far----" + +"I love them best," she answered. "A woman always holds a little +tighter to the sweet human things of her child.... But he is a teacher, +a leader. He must be clean and flawless.... If it were only for us--I +should have him, weaknesses and all.... But he is to lead the clean +peasants to their promised land----" + + * * * * * + +Varsieff listened as a desert listens for rain. He caught me by the +shoulders when I ceased to speak--as if to shake something more from my +mind and heart. + +"A man must be half-divine to keep step with that woman," he said. + +Then he changed the subject by remarking that Christonal was not +half-divine--quite. + +"Christonal is ambitious," he added. + +"What has he done now?" I asked. + +"He has ordered me to take the field----" + +That turned on a red light in my brain. Varsieff was not a soldier. I +knew instantly that Christonal was not pure--that he wanted personal +power more than the good of the Cause. No one knew Varsieff's place +better than he did. My friend could only have been ordered to the +field for the same reason that David sent the husband of Bathsheba. + +After the revolutionary signal went through, Varsieff and I found +ourselves in the Galbraudin Foothills with thirty thousand men, and +every man of them wanted to go home. Somehow the peasants thought +that if they changed leaders, they would march home at once. They +were willing to fight their way home; they had felt their own power. +Varsieff loved them with a white passion. + +"They won't miss, if _we_ are true! They're clean. God love +them--they're clean!" + +He saw in the peasants the soil for the new earth and the soul of the +new heaven. + +Germans and Austrians were to the south of our nest in the Galbraudin +Foothills, while to the east and north were the big lines of Russian +troops as yet unawakened to the principles that moved our ranks. Our +weakness was that the peasants thought the war was over.... The cold +mountains were in the distance--winter still upon them--a late spring +in the Foothills.... In this dramatic lull, our men talked of their +ploughing, of their women. + +Some one said, "They're enlisting the women and girls----" + +It went through the lines like a taint of gas. The men were difficult +then even for Varsieff to hold. + +You must get the picture. We revolutionists were cut off from the +world. The Germans and Austrians sent us messages--some friendly, +some derisive. They thought us fools or gods, but waited to see what +we would do. The old line of Russian troops all about--just as clean +peasantry as our forces--but officered by the straight military class, +impervious so far as a body to any shaft of the propagandist. + +Varsieff whispered to me that those regular forces were honeycombed +with our comrades, but that they were being put to death under the +slightest suspicion--that two or three hundred were martyred each day. + +The strangeness and horror of it all dawned upon me--the sense of the +whole world against us, even America from whom we had drawn the spirit +of our courage--a kind of holding of our army for slaughter. Listen, +I have seen tens of thousands of troops go down to the pits of white +and red, seen their opened veins colour the snows, seen the spots of +red on the brown earth turn black. I have seen the boys lean over the +trenches and the pools from each throat widen and deepen from one man +to another. I have seen a man grab his mate as he fell and say some +absurd whimsical thing that the soldier next didn't understand until +_his_ moment of death--a little sentence that folded them, not in +extinction, but in a new life. All the horrors of death--quantity and +quality--yellow and red and white--pure white passings that made a man +think of the lilies--all manner of death I had seen, and still it had +all been impersonal compared to now. + +This was my own heart business. I shared leadership with Varsieff. +These lives were in my hands. I wanted to go down among the boys--one +by one and say that I was pure, that I loved them--that if they died +they were at least loved and not wasted. + +I always wondered what those young peasant souls thought about death. +Once in a lot of pain when I was just a boy, I wanted badly to die and +was deterred from taking my life, because of a counter-desire to get +home and see my mother. I think it must be like that with the peasants. + +Varsieff saw them in a strange mystic light. No man loved them as he +did. They looked like sons of God to him. That's what he saw when they +went down to death. + +"There are no dreams too fine for them to answer," he whispered. "They +are pure--they come from the North like all invaders--glacially pure! +We'll warm their hearts--lead them home to God--teach them how to live!" + +He was silent suddenly. I asked him to go on and then saw the queerest +look instead. Varsieff was torn by the thought, that now as a leader +of revolutionists he must teach his peasants how to _die_ as well.... +A civilian, I repeat, does not realise this quite the same. In the +Capitol, we had worked for a Cause that meant the death of men, but now +we were the officers called upon to charge live troops to the fork and +the grill. I knew Varsieff to be more imaginative and tender than I, +yet I would not have mentioned my qualms, had I known how terribly he +was suffering. He caught my hands, whispering: + +"You have it, too?" + +It was the single hour of weakness that Varsieff had ever revealed to +me. I studied his face without speaking. + +"I brought them to this," he muttered. "I have always thought of the +spirit of things. I was always pure enough, following that dream.... +But, Lange, we're a little mad--we who dream.... I had to come here. +I had to see this fighting end. Perhaps Christonal knew what he was +doing." + +I put my arm around his shoulder. We Russians are allowed that. + +"I have always thought of the spirit of things," he added, "until I met +Paula Mantone. I would have forgotten everything for her beauty, but +she remembered our souls.... And now, because I would have forgotten +the bodies of these men Christonal sent me here to learn that. We are +spirits and bodies, too, Lange. It takes a crowned head to hold to the +two ends at once--God, hear 'em sing----" + +The ruffians always hushed and choked us when they sang. Something new +about it this time, for Varsieff was seeing them across a red stream of +their own blood. + +"I can't drive 'em into the fire-pits," he muttered. "Why, I'd rather +wash and dress 'em. They've got the idea that I am to lead them home. +I can't betray that--not even for the Cause!... I never saw it before. +They are not herds, not groups--but monads--each a man----" + +"We've got to put through the big story," I said quietly. "Thirty +thousand is cheap--our little planting out here is cheap, if we +can give Russia the new heaven and the new earth--Russia--then +America--then the world----" + +I was giving him back his own words. + +"Thirty thousand lives," he repeated. "Yes, the price is cheap--thirty +thousand every day for awhile--your life and mine, Lange--a cheap price +to pay for the glory we see in the days to come. But I can't kill +these--I think Christonal knew it all the time----" + +"You aren't ready for work in the constructive end, if you falter here +among the wreckers----" I said. + +I knew that no Cause had ever uncovered a more valuable servant than +this same Varsieff, though badly out of hand just now. I wasn't making +any effect upon him. He looked at me strangely. + +"That sounds true--exactly and unerringly true," he said wearily. + +There was no quarter possible now. + +"I remember your words in clubs and cabinets and in the ante-rooms of +the dumas.... You weren't afraid of blood there, Varsieff." + +He winced. + +"They called you the 'Fire-eater,'" I added, never knowing when to +stop. "It's just as straight to-day as it was when you talked there: +'The old civilisation must be washed clean with the blood of the +new----'" + +His hand came up piteously. + +"But their hearts are turned homeward, Lange," he said. "Their eyes +are building their homes all over again--eyes turned homeward over the +mountains----" + +"Turned to God," I said reverently. + +"Yes, but taking my word--the word of Varsieff--that God is there----" + +"He is there." + +"But will He come to them at the last, Lange?... Will He show His +face--so they will believe?... When they feel their death-wounds--the +blood sliding out, warm and silent--the cold coming in--will they hold +to what I said? Will He be there for them?" + +"You're shot up, old man, only a bit bewildered to-day. No one knows +better than you how great emotional giving of one's self to Cause or +Country makes death easy--and quickens the Soul." + +Varsieff was ashen. + +"I've got to eat all my words! Even you, bring back my words to me. +I've talked too much.... Suppose I am a madman----?" + +"Then you have no responsibility for what you said," I smiled. + +He stared at the tent-wall. + +"Varsieff," I said at last. + +His hand came out. + +"You were pure in all you undertook." + +Silence. + +"You wanted nothing for yourself." + +"I wanted nothing for me--nothing but----" + +"But what?" + +"Paula Man----" + +"She's a part of you--now. You look like her!" + +"I think I'll have to die to see her--Oh, Lange--I'm sick--I'm +impoverished, cell by cell, with loneliness----" Varsieff laughed +unsteadily and added: + +"I remember asking you to say to her--that she alone knew my +weaknesses. Now you know them, too." + +"She said she loved them.... Varsieff, I have known you a long time," +I added after a moment. "I have shaped my manhood, such as it is, +after you. I am proud of this--to the end. I, too, care more for +you, because of this day--for understanding. To understand--that is +everything. I who always listened before, tell you to-day: _The dream +does hold. The dream is good. Thirty thousand men--even our singing, +growling, big-footed, red-hearted thirty thousand--is a cheap price to +pay for the new Russia!_" + +"Do you think Paula would say that?" he asked. + +"Yes," I answered, "from the mother-heart of her." + +I had spoken, and now I tried to make myself believe that she would +have ordered him on. I had to change him, at any cost. A rather +questionable way now appeared--to lift him out of himself. + +"Listen, Friend," I added. "You are lonely--but you have the heart of +a woman pulsing with yours--every beat.... You'd have to _be me_ to +know what loneliness means. I'd take all the pain to have a woman like +that. There are times when you are half a man, because you are apart +from her, but there are other times, Varsieff, when you are twice a +man--double dynamics----" + +He caught me in his arms. I knew he was healed, but I felt the cad and +the cur for bringing his sympathy on myself.... He was looking back +toward the cold mountains when I left him, and the look of the woman +was in his eyes. That night I dreamed that Paula Mantone came to me +with a message for Varsieff, and that she told me some beautiful thing +about the child of a king--but I could not quite get it down to brain. + + * * * * * + +Sedgwick, a brigadier, and technically in command of the thirty +thousand, was a straight militarist in training. He looked to Varsieff, +the political head, for orders. The day came when Varsieff had no one +to look to, for we were cut off from Christonal and Petrograd. We +were not long kept in doubt after that as to who were our immediate +enemies--not German, not Austrian, but the old line Russian troops hung +up to the east of us, the same that had recently occupied themselves +making martyrs of the revolutionists in their ranks--two or three +hundred a day. + +It was a red morning when two of our _fliers_ blew down with the word +that our brothers were closing in--that it looked like extermination +for our thirty thousand, unless we strode out and crippled them with +the first shock. Ten miles to the west the Bundalino Marshes began. We +had the secret paths, but it was a wretched fugitive outlook to seek +shelter there. As I looked at it, it would never occur to leaders who +had brought Russia to the moment of parturition, to break up for a +miserable safety in the swamps of Bundalino. + +I recall the distant firing of that red morning. My eardrums had not +healed from recent months more or less in touch with the artillery. I +remember brushing the edge of the lines, as I crossed from Sedgwick's +headquarters back to the hut I shared with Varsieff and a servant or +two. The peasants were listening queerly and quietly to the far firing. + +I passed through the sprawl of pup-shelters, and certain ideas occurred +to me: first, that the arrangement of camp was abominable, a pitiful +lack of technique shown in this bit of military handling; second, the +slow cold conviction that we, as revolutionists, must have all the +virtues of the old-line troops to begin with, and to build our real +greatness on top of that; finally I drew from the queer attitudes of +the men toward me, an intuitional flash that to them the distant firing +meant a signal that they were about to fight their way home. + +Varsieff was sitting dejected upon a camp-chest when I rejoined him. + +"Sedgwick is ready when you are," I said. "He suggests that the men be +not kept waiting too long." + +Varsieff looked up. His face was livid. His soul had no chance that +morning. I thought of the old story of Arjuna standing between the +battle-lines, reluctant to join action against his own kindred. + +"It's the same here that it was in Petrograd," I announced finally. +"The dream holds----" + +He shook his head.... "They are just boys--white-haired boys. They want +to go home----" + +That instant I seemed to see the world laughing at this great man; +I saw the end of Varsieff politically.... Superb genius broken down +by an intrinsic weakness--as a man who, trying to lead the world, +falls for the lure of an actress maid.... I saw all his work of +early years--straight, clean, unerring, selfless labour of a man to +a Cause--the inspired labour of the past two years when he gave the +whole fruit of his quickened heart to the new Russia--the magic of +a man loved by a woman great enough to be his divine sculptor and +priestess.... It was the thought of Paula Mantone that helped me that +instant. Sedgwick was on the path outside. I hurried out and whispered: + +"Don't come now. Come back in ten minutes----" + +The General paused to let me hear the firing. "But the troops----" he +said. + +"Give me ten minutes more with Varsieff----" + +"The attack may be called----" + +"I know, but I need that time." + +The old soldier turned back, hating me.... + + * * * * * + +"Varsieff," I said a moment later. + +"Yes----" + +"I've got to tell you something----" + +He turned quickly. + +"Paula Mantone is near----" + +"No!" + +"I saw her last night." + +"Will she see me?" + +I laughed at him. "Do you think she would want to see you now?... +You're a sick man, Varsieff--morally sick. Any decision is better +than your present incapacity.... I think she must have sensed your +weakness--that she came to bring you strength, for she is your +strength." + +"Does she love me?" he asked. + +"That's a slap in her face to ask that--a woman who gives you her +soul's strength--the love of her life. That's lack of faith, my +friend----" + +"I am whipped. The white-haired boys--they want to go home----" + +"You can't wash your hands. You can't say, 'Go home, boys.' They have +to fight their way home. First, they have to fight their way to the +east out of this valley--against old Russia!... It's the first great +battle of the Old and New--first time in the history of the world. We +hold the New for better or worse--this little Theban band. You would +let us fail and dribble away and slink into the Marshes--you, her +lover, whom she calls Boy and Strongheart----" + + * * * * * + +"What did she say?" he asked fiercely. + +"----that I need not speak of her coming unless you needed help. +She said you would not need help on account of your own lack of +courage--rather that it would be your great tenderness that might +defeat our Cause now. She said this was but a last ordeal, hardest of +all for Builders, who have ceased to kill...." + +"Where did you see her?" + +It was all a lie, of course, except I had dreamed of her coming. I +invented a place of meeting and added to his question that Sedgwick did +not know of her presence. + +"I agreed that we were not killers, but I told her that we dared to be +cruel to ourselves," I added. + +"What did she say to that?" Varsieff asked hoarsely. He had suddenly +become like a child--one who dared not go to her, who scarcely trusted +himself to speak. + +"She said _that_ was the key to the whole matter--that we dare to +sacrifice ourselves--dare to inflict pain upon each other because one's +true love is the self--" + +I was startled and awed at my own words. The idea was unlike anything +of mine. It was exactly as if she had told me something of the kind in +the dream. Varsieff groaned: + +"The glory of her," he whispered. "Was there more?" + +"Only that you must not falter now ... and that she would be waiting +for you at the end of the day----" + +"'In the cool of the evening,' she would say," he muttered. + +"Perhaps that was it," I said. + +"Nothing more?" + +"Yes--but only if you needed it----" + +"I do." + +"That she never loved you so well as now--that you mean new Russia +to her--that she will come running to you in the cool of the +evening--either here or _on the other side_--and something about the +child of a king." + +His back stiffened. He arose. I saw him splendid again. I drew back in +the shadow, afraid that he would see the sweat that had broken out upon +me, though the place was cold. + +Of course the idea, as I saw it, was to give the old-line troops the +fight of their lives--to show the whole of Russia a martyrdom if +necessary, thus revealing the temper of the revolutionists. Varsieff +had been tempted to let them slip back into the Marshes to save their +lives. + + * * * * * + +We were in the saddle side by side an hour later, and close to the +front--the two big lines moving slowly and craftily together. Varsieff +looked back at his precious boys, following willingly enough so far. + +"It's their white heads that kill me," he muttered. "They are like +children, and that I should----" + +"They are all our children," I answered, sweeping my hand in a circle +ahead where the troops of old Russia had filled in, waiting to deliver +us to death. + +"Dear old Lange," he muttered, "I'm glad you know her----" + +I wondered what that had to do with his peasant children. Her spirit +seemed a blend of his every thought and emotion.... We galloped along +the fronts, talking to the different commanders. Some were students, +in their teens, faces of boys who loved Varsieff with a love that +yearned to die for him immediately, without words, a readiness to leap +under his horse's feet.... In a kind of madness, all the mysteries of +life seemed to unfold for me that morning, the spirit of Paula Mantone +always near because I was so close to her lover. + +He talked to the different leaders quite careless if the peasant ranks +listened. He told them that the outer world was watching--that new +Russia, Poland, Finland, the new Europe, the new World--all depended +upon _them_ now. He said they were chosen men--that he would never +leave the field except in victory--that he was brother and father and +lover to them--that the world would be better for this day. He talked +like a man at a bar, or standing among the river-boats, or a father to +his sons in the fields. + +We rode along the lines as they marched. Our horses lathered and dried +and lathered again in the morning sun. I saw my comrade, Varsieff, +giving up his soul to the peasants: + +"... I, too, have my farm that waits for me--my woman who waits for +me--my country, my dream!... I build with you. I stand or fall with +you!... We shall be better for this day, my children. This is a day for +living men and comrades----" + +He filled me with a kind of white flame. + +Then the crash. After that, was a moment of silence and gloom like a +cloud passing over the sun. Then our eyes began to reap.... A blizzard +of hot, stinking metal had broken in front of us--in the midst of our +marching and listening battalion. If you have ever felt the mockery +and cruelty of raging seas, you can know something of the shock +that twisted the core of me that instant. That which had been the +white-haired peasants with open laughing mouths and lifted hands, their +souls answering the leader who loved them, a song forming on their lips +... now it was as if a carcass had been moved--one that had lain long +in the sun, the devastation long continued underneath.... + +These were my boys. Next to Varsieff and Paula Mantone, I loved them. +Now they were down, dismembered, shaking--the air a whir of white to +my tortured ears, like a shriek of bewildered ghosts. And here and +there, like Varsieff and myself--men standing unhurt in the midst of +human fragments, like maggots, shaking themselves to cover. + +I wonder if you can understand? It seemed that I still could see the +welter of our boys in the leader's face. Also I saw the death of my +good friend--the death-stroke of that superb mind--the face of a man, +whose soul had vanished. + +Both our horses were down, though we were unhurt so far.... A distance +of fifteen feet separated us. I called to him. I tried to tell him that +he had not failed. I thought I should die before I moved, before I +could get started toward him. The staring failure in his face paralysed +me. For the time, he was cut off even from the spirit of Paula Mantone. + +I had to look down and watch my steps as I made my way to him. I knew +some hideous fear that he would fall in that blackness--if I looked +away.... There were voices from the ground. None of the parts of men +could be still. Lips writhed before my eyes--and words were spoken like +little claps of force in thin air.... I caught his opened collar.... + +"It's all right, Varsieff," I whispered. + +"You lie!" said he. + +It was like a blow from a man's mother. I had to look into his face +before my brain accepted his words. Then I remembered _my_ lie.... The +evil of it had not come to me until now, with him breaking down before +my eyes.... I saw the look again--that I had seen by the peasant's yard +long ago as we crossed the Torqueval Peaks--the look of a frightened +child in that face of finished manhood. + +I pulled him to me, and led him back toward Sedgwick's staff. I heard +myself talking and laughing, jockeying with words.... His head was +twisted to the side--his draggled remnant of a mind pulled back to the +scene of that havoc. And now, if you please, we were catching the real +thing. The old-line Russians were breaking upon us with machines and +shrapnel--the old combing and carding that seldom fails.... I saw the +cold mountains all about. + +Did you ever see a slaughter of drones? Perfect economy it is, from +the standpoint of the hive. The work of providing for the future is +accomplished--no mistake in the plan. The workers gather from all +sides. One by one the big clumsy drones are put to death--wrestling, +tugging, stinging, many workers giving themselves to death to carry out +the spirit of the hive.... The officers ahead who ordered our brother +Russians upon us, thought they were right--those great grey lines +ahead, honeycombed with our own precious comrades, all of whom were not +yet martyred, as was proved. But they had not found their voice. It +looked like straight death they brought to us. + +... Ages. I would turn from Varsieff's face to the cold mountains. +Something of the changelessness of the beyond and above came to me out +of the hideous fluctuation of the near and below. I could not keep +Varsieff back. He wouldn't resist so long as I held him, but the moment +my hands released, his body would rise like some automatic thing and +blindly stagger forward into the pale smoke-charged sunlight. The men +who saw him--many who knew what he had been and had heard him speak but +a few moments ago--lost their concentration on the battle. He became +everywhere the centre of a rotting line. Clearly they had been fighting +on his spirit--that, and the thought of going home.... + +Sedgwick rode up and saw my struggle--beckoned me back, as one in +authority would bully a guard in a madhouse.... I obeyed, thinking of +the lie I had told. Here were human fragments; the air filled with the +shrieks of the fallen--the face of my friend beside me, the face of a +blasted mind--all because of that lie of mine. + +Then, as I trundled him to the rear, sometimes swinging him from one +elbow to the other, I saw a line, as one would draw a bloody finger +across his cheek. Then--it was like a monkey-bite in the bone and hair +of his eye-brow.... We were in a hail from the machines and the men +were falling back. + + * * * * * + +I think we are half-mad in such moments, or else touched with a divine +sanity. In the midst of utter loss, the lines breaking back, the men +beginning to stampede--the plan flashed into my mind that I could only +save the first lie by a second. If the remnant fell back to starve in +the Marshes--Varsieff forever was put from me. Such was my thought. The +personal issue was greater than the Cause. I was beside myself--never +so little, never so formidable. + +My arm slipped from Varsieff who sank to his knees and flopped back +at the wheels of a four-inch _Sanguinary_, bursting hot. I ran back +to Sedgwick's staff, leaped into an empty saddle--then rode along the +cracking fronts. + +"Halt----" I yelled to the faces of the slipping lines.... "Halt--and +don't you see you're running from your own Comrades?... They're taking +over the Imperialists yonder. Our men have risen in the ranks of the +enemy!..." + +All along the lines, I yelled it--and it came forth like an inspired +message--lie that it was from my angle. For to me, death was better +than retreat, with the eyes of the world on our little nucleus of the +new order.... My shouts were checking them. + +"Our Comrades are coming to us--hold for them!... Don't run away ... +they are coming! They are coming to join us, when they clean themselves +up over yonder--only a little clean-up first, my children. Hear the +noise?" + +I don't know how long I rode. I only knew that the fighting death was +victory--that there is no propaganda like martyrdom.... + +They answered at first with a kind of half-hearted halt. I was struck +with the silence. A queer thing happened. I saw that I had spoken the +truth.... There was firing ahead, but it had no meaning of death to our +ranks. They were firing in the air, and some threw down their guns and +were running toward us. Presently we saw the tent-cloths hoisted in +truce. It was like seeing my mother again--shaking the table-cloth to +the birds. + +Then I saw their lines and ours running together--yes, Varsieff's +new heaven and new earth--saw them running together bare-headed, +white-haired peasant boys, hands outstretched, mouths open.... Freedom +was an aureola of different sunlight around their heads. On they came +like glorious ruffians, seizing their brothers in their arms--the lines +folding together like good mates before the Lord. + +Then it was like a blast--that Varsieff must see this! A cold blast +in the heart--that he must not miss this glory--that my eyes must not +dwell upon this great consummation alone! Deep within, I knew my pain +was because his head was not lifted to the picture of his conquest. +Deep within, I knew that for some inexplicable reason of fate, he was +held back like the old Master on the other side of the Jordan--not +allowed to enter and witness the beauty of the promised land. + +In the midst of that radiant tumult, I ran back to the place that I +had left him. It was trampled; the mud was deeper, but Varsieff was +not there.... In the midst of the shouting and the glory, I searched +for him.... Hours passed, the fighting ceased ... we were a hundred +thousand strong, armed, provisioned, hearts turned homeward.... Scores +of us were looking for the Varsieff now. + +And then I heard my name called, and two young student-officers caught +me, one to each elbow and carried me forward, running to where the +woman stood ... Paula Mantone. She was standing in the midst of her own +people--the sun on her face. And I saw, too, the white look of one who +has conquered fear, but the weariness of her eyes was like the presence +of death.... + +"Where is he?" she whispered. + +"Oh, God, I do not know----" + +"Poor dear Lange--all is well with us.... The boys of two armies +rushing together--yes, Lange, this is a good day for us----" + +She spoke rapidly, like lines committed--the same death-like weariness +in her tones.... She had taken my hand: + +"Come, we must find him ... take me to the place where you left +him--come quickly----" + +It was some distance. We walked at first in silence. It seemed as if +I could not live if I did not find out what she would have done this +morning in my place. Presently she said: + +"I thought he would fail when it came to ordering a charge. He was very +brave, they say." + +I loved the students who told her that, but I had known too much +torture to keep the perfect silence. + +"... It was hard for him.... He isn't a killer--he saw only the +white-haired boys----" + +"My beloved----" she whispered. + +"I told him that it was the same in Petrograd as here--that the dream +held here--that you would have told him to be strong at the death +part----" + +She was not listening. She did not answer. + + * * * * * + +"It was just here. He was wounded a trifle. I left him to stop the +troops. They were breaking a bit," I explained. + +I had passed the place a dozen times. I remembered by the big +_Sanguinary_--hot when I had let go of Varsieff's arm. The dead had +been covered. The big gun was a wreck now--even the caisson with a +broken wheel. + +Then I realised it had been moved. There was a queer mound under the +wreckage. I reached down; my hand felt warmth in the mud. The woman was +with me.... I think we moved that mammoth caisson together.... There +was no white on him--a coating of mud but warm. We lifted him and the +woman's breast covered him from my eyes.... I heard him say her name. I +heard him speak of the tropical island they would go to together.... + +I stood apart--I who had stood at his side so long.... There were +seconds when I heard her low passionate whispers--when I watched the +arch of her shoulder, the beauty of her bended brow.... I did not see +his face again. She held it fast to her and talked somehow out of the +world. Then I saw her raise her eyes as she had done that night in the +tent. For the first time I realised that he had only kept alive for her +coming.... But still I felt he must know the whole story. I did not go +closer, but called in half a whisper: + +"Tell him how the boys came together--arms out and laughing like +brothers. Don't let him go without knowing that--tell him how they +threw their guns away and then sat down on the ground together--singing +of home and the rivers and the ploughed lands and the women waiting for +us----" + +"I told him--I told him!" she answered. "You may come to him ... but +he--he only waited to see me.... Ah, Lange, you had him so much----" + +I looked away. Dusk was falling, the white peaks like spirits.... I had +not seen his face again, but it suddenly came to me how it had looked +when I saw it before--that which was the bravest and most beautiful +face that I knew in manhood--how it had been beaten and bruised under +the boots of running peasants--crushed into the mire by the feet of +the men he loved so well. For a moment, I was in the red world of rage +that this should be, but then the mighty drama of it came nearer, +the supreme laughing art of it all--that only the saviours call to +them. And I smiled, looking away to the dusk falling on the cold +mountains--and I knew that my friend's spirit was as close to us as the +body she held against her breast.... + +Then back in the bivouacs a song began--the men of two armies roaring +out a song of the great white democracy of the future.... + + * * * * * + + + + +27 + +RESUME + + +The end of Varsieff is satisfying to us, and yet I wonder if I can +make this sort of romance clear. Martyrdom--they call it a short cut. +There is a saying that the soul of a man who dies for something, goes +marching on. The Irish become hopeless of their cause, if some one +dies for the opposition. All revolutionists have reckoned with this +subtlety--no propaganda like martyrdom; all the sacred writings refer +to it, our Bible several times, once in the sentence, "Greater love +hath no man----" + +A deluge of phenomena from "the other side" has come in during the +present war, all the old martyrs of nationalism said to be called to +the cause of their empires.... + +What is the romantic haunt that lifts a man to such a pitch of +exaltation that he transcends pain, and goes singing down to die? + +These are matters much better known among the young dreamers and +workers of Russia and the Orient than of America.... Varsieff reveals +the child under the man of action; the lover above the intellectualist. +His love story unfolds certain passages which we are making a point of +in these chapters. The woman, Paula Mantone, represents a loved type +in our sort of story-making. She brings, vaguely, at least, into terms +the romantic ideal so calling to us in these days. She means more than +three-score and ten. Her love goes on and on. She becomes a priestess, +in a sense, and conducts her lover through the critical passage of +finding his own Soul. External battles then take his body, but she is +not altogether bereft. An intuitional woman does not always know what +she is doing in her heart story, even when she does greatly. If the +physical action had broken different, if the body of Varsieff had not +been required in martyrdom, for instance, he might have emerged from +the final stress of action in a state of spiritual exaltation, from +which, I can imagine Paula Mantone calling him back to the gardens of +the senses.... Martyr, priestess, revoltee, but always a woman. Every +year of devotion to the feminine in fiction, compels a more fluid, yet +more mystic handling. + +We have been very close to the young students and poets and players of +Russia. In the Fall of 1914 we published the following paragraph: + +There[19] are men in Russia who have heard the mighty music of +humanity. They will sing their dream and grave their message upon the +peasant soul.... Not the Russia of Nicholas Romanoff. His passing and +all the princes of his tainted blood will prove but an incident of the +Great War. Very low in the west among the red blinking points of the +falling constellation, is Nicholas and that Russia. In the east is the +Russian _novi_ before the dawn, commanding the dark before the sun. + + [19] _Fatherland._ George H. Doran Company, New York. + + * * * * * + +The young men of India, the young men of China, the young men of +Russia, the young men of America--I see them working together in the +wondrous story of life, as it reels off in the years to come--mating of +the East and West, the planet seen in one piece, the communal spirit of +the Hive around the globe. + + * * * * * + +... I find myself getting up a rather serious intensity over what +_Romance_ means, a signal to tame down.... _Not to stay_--to drain +nothing, to leave all cleaner, more orderly and richer for one's +tarrying, to glance but lightly, yet with a deep smile of understanding +at the torrent of detached and unmatched things which apparently makes +the world--to love it all better than those caught in detachment can +possibly love one another--to belong to the many by remaining apart +from separate movements--at last to be the Spectator.... + +One may deal lightly with crowds, but never with _man_ or _woman_.... +One may say he has all that civilisation has for any human creature; he +may reasonably be bored by all departments of life, but there is enough +for an eternity of reverent study and adoration in the nearest human +face. The lovelier the human face, the more easily we can discern the +divine in it.... You get nowhere without loving something. This is the +hardest kind of material gospel.... We are all incognito--the greater +we are, the less perfectly disguised. + + * * * * * + +First and last our dream of Romance means Motherhood--mysterious +enactments that the mere male can never know, no longer the motherhood +of the mammal, but the coming of the Guest, the Shining One--the +giving of body and mind and soul, no fear, no stipulation, no impeding +form of thought--more than that, it means a giving of the child to +the world.... The Valley Road Girl expresses it in this sharp, short +picture: + + Once a woman lived in a dense forest, and had a man-child alone + there. As it grew, the woman impressed upon it the greatness of God + and the wonder of all things. Then one day, she led him by the + forest-paths to the Highway, and left him there. + +It means the Madonna who looks up, rather than down, at the head upon +her breast. + +The creative force is never wasted. Man and woman, in love or lust, are +never alone--rather startling, but sooner or later to be accepted. The +point of the triangle is either turned downward or upward. The creative +force feeds either the abominations of the underworld, or is used in +its designed order and loveliness as a point of inception for soul into +form.... The mother-nature of the New Race must be quickened by the +ideal of the coming of a World-teacher, of development a cycle ahead of +this race. Women must partake of this dream in their maternities. It +is the light of such an advent, shining upon the upturned face of the +mother, that touches the brow of the child with light. + +Absolutely the concept of the new Democracy demands the coming of a +great Unifier--a focal point for all world movements and interests +and aspirations. The story of a Master's coming is the ultimate +Romance--the finest story in the world--for that in itself is the story +of Regeneration. + +The work of this particular volume seems to be ended. Much that is +prepared need not be used. Right here is the breathing-space that +always comes in a life or a book.... _Not to stay_.... Some of our +boys are off to the trenches; others may go. Part of the original +group has been unable yet to follow the centre to the West. Our good +Gobind[20] who belonged to the pith of things, arose from one breakfast +and went off to join the cavalry. There's a group in Chicago that we +see all too little of--a diffusion time truly, but only to make more +certain the time of integration again. + + [20] Ben Poteat. + + * * * * * + +There is one who came, changing all. We thought we knew much about the +world. We thought mainly that things were settled for us. It was not +words she brought, but a subtler quickening. I cannot tell it exactly. +There was a day in which I was bored, not satisfied, and another when I +was a child again--breathless, questing, listening for some one to tell +me stories of another and better country. All that I had done and been +and lived was diminished; more, all behind was utterly done, leaving +scarcely any criteria for that which was to be.... No inland lake would +do after that; we wanted a continental headland, the sweep of the earth +and sky--sidereal time, sidereal space. We could only tolerate the +quest of the Impossible after she came. + +... She came and wrote her book through the summer days and then she +went away.... Somehow after that we knew what rains and sunlight +meant--what all nature was saying and doing. At least, we knew +better.... _Not to stay._ We could not follow continually, but at last +out of loneliness, the big new laughing wonder of life came to us ... +and when we told her, she seemed to have known all the time.... + +We teach by making pictures. She brought new pigments and freshened +all the oils. We loved the tints and half-tones before she came, but +she restored us to the virgin beauty of the primal rays. We liked the +blends before she came--the blend of rose and gold, but she brought us +length of vision and redemption of taste to know the meaning of the +Ultimate Red, the red of the Pomegranate, the red of the Inspired Mary, +to whose knees at the last all artists and little children find their +way--the passionate red of the Quest and the Cross and the Son. She was +not surprised when we told her what her gifts mean to us. + + * * * * * + +An artist gives himself full-heartedly to the emotions. Keen and +poignant afterward, is the battle to straighten them out, to comb +them down. The mind holds the truth about it all, the spirit sings +all around, but the heart holds fast to its agonising play of passion +settings. + +Desire is like an old King, sitting in the midst of his dogs, a King +by the fire in his tower. The Shining Heir is born, but the old King +is slow to die. He sits thinking of his old hunts, his rides to kill, +old wars and faces at the window.... He rode well; he thought he loved +very well; a great name, he was, in the hunts, and in all the games of +getting. He meditates now upon his one-time conquests, and forgets his +pain. It is his memories that hold him fast to life a little while. But +at last the head of old King Desire sinks to his breast, the fire fades +from his last memory. The door of the tower room opens, the Shining +Prince is standing there, and the criers run through the palace crying +aloud, "The King is dead. Long live the King!" Desire has ended; the +Bestower takes the throne. + +When we told her of this new breath of life which she had brought, +our Mary seemed to know all about that, too. She smiled and looked +away when we showed her this book (and the inscription to her), so +many pages of which she had read before--our dreams for the New Race +unfolded in letters to her. + + * * * * * + +The instant one perceives the inner meaning of _Equality_, glimpsing +the great Seamless Robe of humanity as one;--he realises that what +is best for him is best for all others--what is best for the many is +his own highest behest.... One must grasp this to know what Democracy +means, to know what is behind the word, a meaning which those who use +it most haven't dreamed of. You must grasp the spirit of the hive--that +winged myriads of golden atoms never stray so far as to break the +spirit-cord that binds them into one--that the one knows all, contains +potentially all goodness and beauty and truth, that all action, art and +thought, come from the spirit of the one--that the fruits of these go +back. I love to tell it again and again. I saw it all afresh to-day. + +The sun plays tricks with the earth at high noon. One feels superbly +well--a kind of seething in the veins. It pulls him away from the great +quest for the Father's House, in gusts of Mother Nature's magic. All +the fragrance of fallow fields is in the hot light and blowing hay and +deathless azure and high noon. Glorious swarms of bees were breaking +out from the Spirit of the hive, all one in Spirit at the top--the +Spirit brooding at all times over all the workings of the hive.... +It was the same with the millions of men who walk the earth, one at +the top--all one, coming and going in the Spirit, replenished and +replenishing always, learning the fusions here in friends and lovers, +each finding his one, and then the new quest together for the Great +Companions. + +Then it came to me that we are only sick and blind and lame and +evil--in the sense of detachment. We must kill that out. Hate spoils +everything. Hate binds us to the object. We mustn't despise another's +coat. It may have been ours yesterday--may be ours to-morrow. We must +kill out the sense of separateness from any creature, for we are +destined to become one spirit with him and all others. Something like a +cloud--all one, as a cloud is one. + +Every morning on the grass--on millions of blades of grass--a globe of +dew at the tip of each.... The Lord Sun arises. The dew warms a little +and slips down the track of the blade into the root. There it breaks +up into infinite fragments. The sun rising higher weaves his warm +magic over the fields; invisibly, like prayers ascending, the drops +of dew, all diffused into a thousand fragments each, thin as steam, +and carrying the perfumes of roses and lilacs and honeysuckles and +meadow lands and fallow lands and lake and ocean shores,--like prayers +ascending, the dewdrops of yesterday return as one to the cloud. Broken +into the farthest diffusion, but not an atom lost. All the richness of +earth in essence returning to the Spirit.... + +The same with bee and dewdrop and man--the same with swarm and cloud +and tribe--each fragment and division lifting to a greater, unto +the Shining Source at last.... The point of it all is that man is +spiritually woven to his brother and to the race; giving himself and +his service to his brother and to the race he glorifies the texture and +stature of his own soul. + +Christmas, 1917. + + + + + * * * * * * + + + + +Transcriber's note: + +The book contains many words spelt to reflect the accent of the +speaker. The spelling has not been changed. + +There are two instances of unmatched ending quotation marks. 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