Eleventh Meeting
I read Virginia’s paper of two weeks ago:
DISCUSSION ON ART
“Anything to be really beautiful must be complete. The reason for this is that it gives us that idea of completeness which the universe possesses. A picture in which every detail is painted may be pretty, but it is not beautiful. When you look at a person you look at his face and the expression of it. In anything on which you set your eyes, you see only the part that interests you. Therefore a good picture or a book should only have that part brought forth, and the rest and unimportant parts should be kept in the background. In fact, they should only be there to make the important thing more interesting; to make it stand out.”
Then I read Henry’s paper:
“At our last meeting we reviewed all that we had said about art. We spoke of the three kinds of life, the artistic, philosophic and scientific, and agreed that the artistic life is the one we care for. We made a list of those things which are necessary in art, so that we can refer to them, and apply them in judging life.
“Good art
1. is a symbol of completeness in a definite form.
2. is self-expression and self-fulfilment.
3. must leave out unimportant detail.
4. must have variety and many-sidedness.
5. must not be partisan, and must be sympathetic.
6. gives the impression of truth.
7. ——”
The last law, the idea of aloofness, of being above as well as within life, of being actor and spectator at once, they do not understand, and I made no further effort to explain. Henry said he left it out—for that reason—when writing his paper.
I said Henry had mentioned we did prefer and choose the artistic life. But why? I suspected, from something they said, that they did not grasp the reasons.
Virginia said she didn’t care what the reasons were, she knew she liked it best. The reasons, at any rate, had not impressed them. So I repeated what I had said, of the artistic life including the other two, of how the artist must know science and love goodness before he can create beauty.
“Then,” said Florence, “the great artists were philosophers?”
“Always,” I answered. “Take the ancient religious writings, such as the Vedas and the Bible. They were always poems, the work of artists who were also philosophers and scientists.”
“Scientists?” asked Marian incredulously.
“Surely,” I answered, “men such as Moses, who gave laws on sanitation and daily life, were the scientists of their time.”
“An artist must understand science,” said Virginia, “natural science, if he wants to paint. And he must know physiology, too. I am beginning to realize that at school.”
Some one mentioned Franklin. “Was he more scientist, or philosopher, or artist in his life?”
“I think he was a philosopher,” said Virginia.
“No,” Marian answered, “he just gathered a lot of bromidic proverbs, that were as old as the world, and said them over in an impressive way.”
“But they were philosophical,” Virginia protested.
“No,” said Marian, “I don’t think so. They were scientific, for they dealt with little disjointed parts of life.”
I told them I wanted to paraphrase a certain verse in the Bible, the verse:
“Faith, Hope and Charity, but the greatest of these is Charity.”
“How?” asked Ruth, much interested.
“I would say,” I went on, “‘Truth, Goodness and Beauty, but the greatest of these is Beauty’—because it includes the other two.”
Now I changed the first law into terms of life:
“Life is a symbol of the complete Self, in a definite shape.”
Life must express that Self in definite and individual lines, that is, in beauty.
I spoke again of small and great genius, of art expressing a lesser or a greater completeness, of “Jenny Kissed Me” and “Faust,” Florence’s examples. “With people you must have noticed the same thing. Some people whose lives seem very limited, who understand and know little, still have such harmonious natures that in their spheres they seem complete. But with still other people you feel that their lives are much larger, that they grasp more of life and possess more, because they understand more. The more we understand, sympathize and love, the larger is our life.”
Marian looked puzzled.
“What is it, Marian?” I asked.
“Why,” she said, “should some people be larger and more complete than others?”
“How do you mean, Marian?”
“Why is it so? Why aren’t we all alike?”
“If we were,” said Henry, “it would be very monotonous.”
“Oh, I know that,” said Marian. “But why is it so, anyway?”
“Marian always asks the unanswerable,” I said. “And still—if we believe in progress, in the evolution of self, don’t you see?—some selves are more developed than others.”
“If we believed in transmigration,” said Marian, “it would be easy to understand.”
“You know,” I answered, “what I think of transmigration. But whether there be transmigration in the usual sense, or not, I think we all believe that in some way we have lived until now, that we are not created in one moment, that we evolve throughout all time.”
And now I made a mistake, tried an experiment that was not successful. I have had misgivings, now and then—unfounded ones, I believe to-day—as to the value, to young people, of a philosophy of life which does not at once directly and concretely affect their manner of living, but does so indirectly and slowly through affecting their tastes, opinions and desires.
One of the girls happened to speak of the relation of parents and children. I had realized for a long time that this was among the pressing problems of youth—especially of some of these particular young people—and instead of keeping to my prepared work, I took advantage of the remark, and launched off into that bottomless subject—without a pilot.
I said: “I think it is one of the gravest—perhaps the only grave problem—of your lives, and we might as well try to solve it now, if we can. What shall we do with our parents?”
There came a flood of ideas and confessions. I made so personal a call upon each one, and intimated that I already knew so much of their lives, that they were frank and open with me, and said to me, without thinking, much more, I am sure, than they would willingly and deliberately have said to each other. They spoke as if to me alone, even mentioned personal circumstances of which I alone had knowledge. Naturally, I will not write down that conversation.
I told them the difficulty arose from a change for the better in the relation between children and parents, and that neither one nor the other had fully realized the change. The old relation of fearing reverence had been changed to that of love and companionship. I said, mock-seriously:
“Of course, we do know more than our parents can possibly know, and we are quite able to judge everything for ourselves, and so we resent being told to do things——”
Marian interrupted me with a solemn: “Oh, no!” and it was a moment before they all realized that I was joking.
“But, truly,” I went on, “we are so used to having, and fond of having, our own way, that we do chafe and even feel contradictory the moment we are ordered to do anything. Don’t you, Alfred?”
“No,” said Alfred; “only I don’t like to stop if I have anything else to do.”
“I hate,” Marian said, “to be told to do anything which I don’t want to do, and for which I see no reason: going to see people whom I dislike, and who bore me, for instance.”
“There,” I answered, “the reason is clear. I remember feeling so myself, and I am not glad that I was given my own way. Young people must know and see and tolerate all sorts of folks, even pokey old relations, so that they may learn to know people and be able to choose for themselves as they grow older. To know many is to find some.”
With that they agreed.
“But,” I went on, “the trouble is not so much with what you want or don’t want to do, as with irritability and impudence.”
“You mean ‘sassing’ your parents?” asked Virginia.
“Yes.”
“I ‘sass’ mine,” she said, “when I think they will like it. I wheedle my parents, and so I get what I want without being disagreeable.”
“Oh, you don’t count, Virginia,” I went on, “but what I mean is answering back, being unkind and contradictory when we would rather not, doing all sorts of regrettable things because we are in a temper, and then afterward feeling mean, sore and despicable, and knowing that we were wrong. That sort of ugliness and irritation, if it’s not stopped, makes mean, ugly, irritable characters.”
“I know just what you mean,” said Marian, “and I know exactly what I think of other people who are like that.”
“It is ugly,” I said. “I dislike it, because it is not beautiful. How can any one live a beautiful, harmonious life who begins by being out of harmony in his relation with the person whom he loves? For that is the truth. Children often love dearly the parent with whom they are always disagreeing. How shall we get understanding and unity and sympathy in life if we cannot get it with those nearest us, those we love?”
“Of course,” said Henry, “our idea of life, of complete sympathy, is against all that kind of thing.”
“It is much easier,” said Marian, “to know what is right than to do it.”
We all agreed.
“But why,” I said, “should we suffer regrets, and do ugly things, when there must be some way to stop it?”
“What way?” asked Marian.
“Well, first, what is our feeling toward older people?”
“Pity,” said Virginia.
“How?” we all asked rather indignantly.
“Well,” she went on, “you get up for an old woman in the car, because you are sorry for her, so that she shouldn’t flop all over your shins.”
“Pity for the other people!” said Florence.
(We are always undecided in the club whether to put Virginia out of the room or whether to hug her. So, in our indecision, we leave her alone.)
I said: “We used to be told to reverence the old. I say to you, reverence every one. If you think of self as a symbol of the complete Self, as the holy thing, then you will reverence the self in every human being, in every creature.”
“I don’t think,” said Virginia, “that we have much sympathy with the self in animals we kill to eat.”
“That,” I answered, “is another question. It has nothing to do with what we are saying now.”
“I think it has,” she protested.
“Then,” I said, “if you reverence self, and understand and respect the self in every person, how could you quarrel with any one?”
“You expect us to know an awful lot,” said Virginia, “to know every one.”
“Certainly,” I answered. “Is not that our idea, to reach what we desire through understanding and sympathy with every one?”
They said they couldn’t respect every one. Some people they couldn’t help, as Henry said, pitying.
I objected strenuously to that word. All but Henry agreed with me. It is always a word of scorn.
They spoke of “feeling sorry for” people who had suffered some loss, feeling sorry, but not pitying.
“Then,” said Marian, “one ought not to say ‘sorry for’ but ‘sorry with.’”
Virginia said if a girl’s mother had died, and one had not known the mother, one might be sorry for her, but not sorry with her. They had a little argument, and to stop it I said one might be both sorry for and sorry with, but certainly one would have the “with” feeling.
Ruth objected that when there was an argument I always made both sides right.
“Why not?” I asked. “By the light of complete vision we do see most things as true which first seemed contradictory. Our idea of completeness is to include many truths, and show them to be the same truth.”
She admitted that.
Marian spoke of people she liked, but could not respect.
“If you knew them from the inside,” I said, “as they know themselves, you might feel otherwise.”
“Yes,” said Virginia, “I have always thought that if anybody knew all about me, knew me just as I know myself, they could not help liking me.”
I said: “It seems not much to expect of us, to understand our parents, who are so anxious for an understanding, and whom we love. After all, we do owe them something—when you consider that but for them we would not be here; and we are most of us rather glad that we are here.”
“Yes,” said Marian, “I would like to stay a while longer.”
Now we spoke of many things, many personal things, of quarrels and how to avoid them. Virginia amused us by saying people often quarreled with her, but she never quarreled with them.
Marian said: “If there’s one thing which makes people feel mean, angry, self-reproachful and small, it is to try to quarrel with some one who won’t be made angry.”
“Naturally,” I said, “they can’t help comparing themselves with the other person.”
“Yes,” said Florence, “I am always sorry and angry at myself when the other person keeps cool or is hurt. But when the other person gets angry, too, I feel as if I were right.”
“It’s an ugly thing to be angry,” I said; “it makes us so small, shuts us in.”
“How do you mean?” asked Marian.
“It cuts us off from that other person, makes it impossible to understand at least him, and so keeps us from completeness and harmony, actually robs us of part of ourself.”
Was it all the children’s fault, they asked, when children and parents failed to understand each other?
“As it takes two to make a quarrel,” I answered, “so it takes two to make a misunderstanding. But one can stop it. Remember that older people have often gone through trials in life that have shaken their nerves and made them sensitive and irritable to little annoyances.”
Marian asked: “Do you mean fussy?”
“Yes,” I said, “and it is easy to understand. But the fact that in many families some of the children get along well with the parents, and others do not, proves that at least some of the responsibility rests with the children.”
We spoke of self-control, of standing, as it were, outside and above ourselves—the idea of aloofness—and not working like a machine for the impulse of the moment. I said I had known people who had this trouble in youth, and stopped it with a strong resolution, because they saw it was a bad, an ugly and a controllable thing. Henry spoke of the old plan of counting a hundred before saying anything. We none of us liked the idea, possibly because we were tired of it; I said, for one, that I did not see how counting a hundred could make me change my mind, whereas thinking might. I said the best plan was to put one’s self at once, as it were, inside the other person, and then one could not possibly say the disagreeable thing. Henry, it seems, has only one difficulty, that of wanting to express or keep his own opinion at the expense of contradicting his elders. I said one had always the right to express one’s opinion, but one might also do it as an opinion, say “I think,” or “I believe”; that one might always consider how the thing said would impress the person listening. Marian spoke of people who irritate you by their presence, whom you dislike and who grate on you, no matter what they may do or say. Then I told them of the saving sense of humor; how, if we resolve to be amused by people in a pleasant, genial way, to see the humor in human life, we may avoid being hurt by them or hurting them in return.
Virginia especially agreed with me, cited incidents of being amused by the disagreeable, and spoke of Dickens as one who could be amused by all sorts of people, even the most “bromidic” or disagreeable. Marian said Dickens was amused by every one but his heroes and heroines. They almost always seemed a hardship to him and to others.
I said we must use every one for our good. That word to “use people” had been employed in a bad sense, but I meant it in a good sense.
“Whenever you are with any one you don’t like, think at once what you can get out of that meeting. Every human being has something for you, and you for him. Self always wants to find self.”
Marian and Ruth immediately thought of people from whom they could get nothing. Virginia, who does get something from everything, remarked that some people seemed to have very little self.
“To be a human being at all,” I answered, “how much of self one must have, compared with the animals!”
“I suppose,” said she; “that is why some people, who have not much, remind me of animals.”
I said I was sorry we had digressed so far, and feared we had not arrived anywhere, after all. Florence said she liked to confess her sins. And Marian answered her that it was a bad habit.
“It is all,” said Marian, “what I have heard before, and know to be true, and don’t do, anyway.”
“Nothing new?” I asked. “Not even the plan of trying to feel at once just what the other person is feeling?”
“Oh, yes, that, perhaps,” she said.
Marian seemed to think I had given her a great many dreadful “slams”; but I could not see it so. “I am sure I did not,” I said. “Oh, no,” she answered quite sarcastically, “not at all.” But she seemed to bear me no ill-will. Virginia said I wanted them to be good and virtuous. No, I said, I had not thought of that.
“Perhaps,” she suggested, “good but not virtuous, or virtuous but not good?”
I answered: “All I want you to do is to satisfy yourselves.”
“Is that all!” exclaimed Marian. “After you told us how we could never be wholly satisfied, how we should always want something more!”
“The beautiful life must be harmonious,” I said. “Disjointed beauty is not beautiful. You remember, we spoke of the city, how a beautiful house might be made to look not at all beautiful by being placed next to a high wall, or in any position where it did not fit; how the city could not be beautiful until all the people combined to build a harmonious city.”
“By itself the house would be beautiful, anyway,” they said.
“Yes,” I answered, “but in ugly surroundings its beauty would be half lost.”
Virginia said: “If I saw a very beautiful little girl between two ugly monkeys, I think the little girl would look all the more beautiful.”
Marian answered: “I would immediately imagine her petting or fondling the two monkeys, and then it would look beautiful.”
It turned out, however, that Virginia’s monkeys were figurative, and that she meant ugly children. This was disconcerting to Ruth, Marian and Florence, and caused prolonged giggles.
I said that would simply be contrast, not discord, that contrast might please and make even the ugly look beautiful, but discord, two beautiful houses so placed together that neither looked well, two colors that “killed” each other, these were ugly. Beauty had to find for itself or make for itself the right surroundings, in order to be truly beautiful.
Florence said: “I think it is a shame people should be liked just for their looks. I know girls who are liked just because they are pretty, when there’s nothing to them, and others who are homely, but much nicer, who are liked less. I try never to let it influence me.”
Henry said he never did let it; that he always liked people for what they really were, and not for looks.
“I can’t help it,” said Virginia. “I know a girl who is horrid in every way, and when she is away I can’t bear her; but the minute I see her I forgive her, because she is so beautiful.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “if you knew her from the inside, as she knows herself, you might think that no one could help liking her.”
“No,” said Virginia; “she’s one of the people who, I feel sure, cannot think that of herself.”
Marian agreed with Virginia. She said when she met people she was interested in the good-looking ones, and always judged them by their faces.
“That is different,” I said, “to judge people by the character written in their faces, as we judge them by all things. But though all beauty is good, the beauty of the personality, of life itself, is surely best.”