Twelfth Meeting
Through inevitable circumstances the club had been discontinued for six weeks. But I was in personal touch with all the members during this interval.
“We have not met for so long,” I said, “I wonder whether you have forgotten anything of what we had done?”
They all assured me that it was clear in their minds. Henry said: “It has had time to sink in.”
“I am glad,” I went on, “that we happened to stop at the end of a part; that now we begin anew at a new thing. But I am a little afraid to go on. For now we are going to speak of morals, of goodness.”
“Why are you afraid?” asked Marian.
“Because I am so afraid we are going to moralize, to become petty.”
“Don’t be afraid of that,” said Marian; “I have had too much experience to be likely to do it.”
“Well, then,” I said, “first of all we must find out what we consider good, what we mean by the good—that misused word—and to distinguish between the true and the artificial good. Have you any ideas about it?”
None of them had any definite idea of what they meant by the good, or of the distinction between the goody-goodiness which repelled them, and the goodness which they loved. They thought immediately of “good” people who are unlovable or stupid. Virginia and Marian exchanged remarks about a girl they had met that morning at Sunday-school; and all through the meeting, until I found effective means to stop them, they referred to her as an example.
“Now,” I said, “I will tell you of the true good, and by the light of it you will clearly distinguish the artificial. You remember the first law of art.”
Henry had the paper with him. It was: “Art is a symbol of completeness in a definite shape.”
“So the good, too, is a symbol of completeness in a definite shape,” I said. “Goodness is always of relation. It means the right relation, sympathy and unity of those who know each other. And the good man is the man who makes a complete world, a symbol of the perfect awakened universe, out of those few people whom he knows—that is, of whose existence he is aware—and of all that he knows in the universe, which is a small part of the whole. He makes it complete and perfect, by making all his relations with life complete, and understanding and beautiful. You realize that a Robinson Crusoe, alone on his desert island, if he never expected to see human beings again, could not be either good or bad.”
“Yes, he could,” said Virginia, “in the way he treated the animals.”
“That is right,” I answered. “If you include the animals as selves, he could still be good or bad in his relation with them. But you see that goodness is of relation. It is having our relations right, good and sympathetic, as far as they reach.
“That, then, is the law, the only law. All moralities and systems were made to uphold and fulfil that law, and they all change with the needs of man and his circumstances, but that one law is always the same, is always true, is the spirit which makes all actions either good or bad. For I believe there is no action in itself either good or bad, but all must be tested by this law. ‘Is it good?’ means: Does it make for true and understanding relations between men? Do you agree with me?”
“Yes,” they said.
“Take the laws of Moses, or any system of laws,” I went on, “and you will see that they were made by men, who realized in themselves the one supreme law, the law of progress toward the human whole. These systems of laws, if followed by people incapable of seeing the broad way for themselves, would lead toward that end. But the lesser laws change with circumstance, as a path changes with the landscape. Take the Mosaic laws. The first laws, ‘Thou shalt have no other God,’ ‘Thou shalt not take his name in vain,’ and ‘Thou shalt keep the Sabbath,’ seem to us now much less important than some later laws, such as ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and so on. But if you stop to think, you will see that these first were most necessary; for the people’s idea of God, so much more limited than ours, was still, like ours, the reason for their morality, the law of laws, the ‘I Am’ that gave meaning to goodness. In their condition, if they had not reverenced and feared God, they would not have kept the laws of Moses. The actions or ways of life we often hear called good, but which arouse in us a feeling of contempt, as if it were goody-goodiness, or self-righteousness, are actions according to petty laws of goodness, by people who do not know the spirit, the great law above all laws. Sometimes they are actions no longer good at all, acted according to petty laws that we have passed. Do you see what I mean?”
“Give me an example of what you mean,” Marian said.
“Many conventions are an example,” said Henry.
“Yes, they may be,” I answered.
“Conventions,” said Virginia, “are neither right nor wrong.”
“No,” I answered, “they are usually a matter of convenience. But some people do make the mistake of calling them right or wrong. Then again you will hear people argue whether or not it is right to tell the truth, under all circumstances.”
“You mean,” Henry said, “that they argue whether or not it is good to tell the truth as truth, not whether the truth will help us toward better relation.”
“Exactly.”
“I think,” said Virginia, “to tell the truth to hurt people’s feelings is wicked.”
Now they were just going to have an argument as to truth-telling, when I reminded them that this was what we did not want to do.
Marian spoke of school laws, and said that these were often without force or reason, and that she saw no great harm in breaking them. When I remembered the folly of laws in many schools, I could not disagree with her. “Of course,” she said, “one gets out of sympathy with that class of mortals called teachers.”
“Hardly,” said I, “if one is honest at all times. And perhaps the meanest, most cowardly lie is the lie of evasion and shirking of punishment in such a case.”
Henry said: “Teachers ought not to ask boys and girls, ‘did you do this or that?’”
“You are right,” I answered; “but, again, no boy or girl of spirit, courage and character would hesitate to answer truthfully.
“Self-sacrifice,” I said, “is a good example of the sort of action that is called good in itself, when it is not at all so, but has only a definite and limited purpose in the scheme. I wish to explain it to you. But first I want to be sure that you understand this idea of good. Is it new to you?”
“Yes,” said Marian, “I never thought of it in that way before.”
“You all have said so little,” I went on, “I am afraid you may not fully understand.”
“There is nothing to say,” answered Marian, “for it grows so naturally out of everything we have done.”
“Our whole thought is like a chain,” said Virginia, “link within link.”
“Alfred,” I said, “you are so silent, you don’t give us a chance to see how bright you are. Now, tell me, what is the good? What do I mean? I want to be sure you understand.”
He hesitated. “The good is completeness, harmony.”
“Yes,” I said, “but I want it more definitely. The good is a sign of that completeness. To the truly good man, as much as he knows of the world, or dreams of it, is his whole self. And he wants that whole self to be right. The good man cannot be wholly good until every one else is so. The world must be perfect to satisfy his desire for good.”
Ruth said: “It is what you told us before, that we cannot be perfect unless the universe is perfect. But it seems to me that a man may be just as good, though others are bad.”
“Yes,” I said, “he can do his best to fill out the gaps and make his relations right, but his goodness will not wholly satisfy him. On the other hand, the self-righteous man, who lives according to precepts and rules, is easily satisfied with himself. Goodness is beauty. The good is always the beautiful action. But goodness, according to laws and precepts which are outworn, which we have left behind us, is no longer beautiful for us.”
Virginia pointed out that in this, then, goodness differed from art, for the objects of art remained beautiful through hundreds of years.
“Six hundred years ago,” she said, “men painted pictures which probably cannot be equalled to-day.”
“But,” I answered, “a man trying to paint like Raphael now, would not paint beautifully.”
“No,” said she; “but if he tried to paint like Franz Hals or Rembrandt he might.”
“Not at all,” I answered.
“Of course,” she admitted, “he would have to paint like himself, to be himself.”
“Surely,” said I, “and so with goodness. Each man has his own particular goodness, according to his circumstances and nature. But, just as a beautiful picture is eternally beautiful, so goodness in the past, though it no longer seems good to us for practice, is always delightful to think of, though it would be horrible to imitate. For instance, the self-imposed poverty of St. Francis of Assisi.”
We spoke of asceticism and the ideals of self-sacrifice, and then of self-sacrifice itself, as preached in our own lives.
“In the first place,” I said, “we must get clear in our minds the meaning of happiness. People will say to you again and again that the aim of life is happiness. But if each one of us were to speak of happiness, and use the same word, we would each mean something different. Now, what is happiness?”
“It is having fun,” said Virginia.
“Yes,” I said, “that is all right. But that’s only repeating the same thing. What is it that makes us happy?”
Florence answered: “Having what you like.”
“Yes,” I said, “but more than that. It is having what you want most. If you liked pie, but you liked ice cream better, then pie wouldn’t satisfy you, would it?”
“No.”
“What would?”
“Ice cream and pie both,” said Florence.
We decided, however, after some thought, that we would give up pie for ice cream. “And this,” I said, “is the meaning of self-sacrifice. It is giving up what we want for something we want still more. And as the thing we want most of all, and for which we would give up everything else, is complete harmony, sympathy and understanding, you see that in all our self-sacrifices we are giving up what we want for what we want still more. We are giving up our smaller for our larger self.”
“That is just what Booker T. Washington said at the lecture this morning,” Virginia went on. “He said he had never made a single sacrifice, but he had always done the thing he loved to do most. It is fun to do good. It makes us feel so virtuous. And we do it because we like most to see other people happy.”
“That is what I mean, Virginia.”
“I don’t think it is so, always,” said Ruth. “I think often people are just forced to give up things and sacrifice themselves, when they don’t like it at all.”
“That’s different,” I said, “if it is enforced. I meant voluntary self-sacrifice.”
“Even so,” she went on, “suppose you are going out somewhere, and you have to stay at home with some person who is ill, just because you are asked to do it. You don’t like it, but you do it, anyway.”
“Probably,” I answered, “you love that person and that person’s pleasure far more than you do, say, the theatre.”
“No,” said Ruth, “perhaps you don’t love the person at all.”
“But you love to feel virtuous,” Virginia said, “and all the time you stay at home you are saying bad things, mentally, about that person.”
“But you stay from choice, you please your bigger self and its demands for beauty,” I went on; “you give up what you want for what you want more.”
“Yes,” Virginia said, “for you would be uncomfortable and unhappy if you went.”
“You see how silly and childish it is,” I continued, “to give up anything for nothing, to deny yourself pleasures, to make sacrifices for their own sake. That is one of the false virtues which make people self-righteous, ‘goody-goody’ and ridiculous. I know a girl who gave up eating butter during Lent because she liked butter, and she thought it noble to deny herself.”
“Yes,” said Virginia, “and I know girls who won’t take sundaes during Lent, but drink sodas instead, because they like sundaes better.”
I read aloud to them a Ruskin quotation that Ruth had brought some time ago:
“Recollect that ‘mors’ means death, and delaying; and ‘vita’ means life, and growing; and try always, not to mortify yourself, but to vivify yourself.”
“You see,” I said, “I believe in being selfish, in the very largest sense. I believe the whole world, all that I know and love, to be my whole self, and I want to make that as good, as true, as harmonious as I can. What people usually call selfishness is only self-limitation, cutting yourself off.”
“Yes; it is making yourself little.”
“Exactly. Take selfish people, and you will find that they are not only making others unhappy, but making their own lives very small and narrow.”
“They are unhappy themselves,” said Florence.
I told them a story of three apple seedlings. The first said: “I will not grow; there is so little room; I will not help crowd out the others.” He died, a weakling. The second said: “I will not bear apples, because the effort might spoil the glossy appearance and fulness of my foliage.” He was good to look at, but—useless. The third one said: “Apple-trees were made to bear apples. I like to do it, I want to do it, and I will.” And he did, and so served himself and many beside.
“I never could understand the morality,” I said, “that tells us to live only for others.”
“It would be impossible,” said Henry; “one has to live first for one’s self.”
“And last for one’s self,” I went on, “for that biggest self which is our own life in relation with all that we know. If we lived only for others, others would still live for others, and so on, with no end and no sense. It is like that idea of living for future generations.”
“What of it?” asked Marian. “I am particularly interested.”
“That we shall live for future generations, and the future generations shall live also for future generations, and so on forever and ever!”
“Unless it were all for the last generation,” said Henry.
“But that will never come,” I answered, “or, if it does, it will surely not be worth while. I believe that whoever lives the best life for himself, and does the thing he is most impelled to do, for his whole big self, is also best for all others. He must be, since they are a part of him.”
“It seems to me,” said Marian, who had been dreaming, “that there is no absolute truth. When people claim that they have found the whole truth, and try to explain it to me, I never feel convinced.”
“Does our idea strike you so, Marian?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” she said, “not at all. You never make positive statements.”
“No,” I answered, “I am willing to grant that what seems true to me now may one day be included in a larger truth.”
We spoke a few words, here, of envy. They agreed at once that artistic envy, the envying of capabilities and talents, was impossible to one who felt that others were doing things for him, that what he lacked in himself he would find in others, for his satisfaction.
“But,” said Florence, “there are so many other kinds of envy, where other people having the thing does you no good.”
“That’s true,” I said; “a beggar, for instance, envying the rich people in a restaurant for their food, will not lose his hunger through seeing them eat.”
I told them of the danger and difficulty of our philosophy of right and wrong, how I hesitated to tell it to them for fear they might misuse it, and how much harder it was to guide one’s self by so big a standard than by an unbeautiful, ready-made morality of little laws and precepts. He must take the straight and narrow path, who cannot guide himself across the prairies by the path of stars and planets.
Virginia insisted on my repeating some facts I had told her lately. A young French girl of good education, made desperate by poverty and lack of work, slashed a picture in the Louvre, in order to be arrested, get shelter and food, and attract attention to the injustice of her lot. We discussed such cases, and decided that where society did so great a wrong, the lesser wrong might be part of the cure.
“I cannot judge people,” I said, “when circumstances drive them to do wrong in self-defence.”
We came near forgiving every one, when I reminded them of the sternness of our standard. It made us lenient with others, who did not—and perhaps could not—know that they might master circumstance, and that the whole world was their whole self. But with ourselves it made us terribly exacting.
“Some people are like animals,” said Virginia. “I can’t understand them, and cannot sympathize with them.”
“That,” I said, “is your loss, you superior animal. Ruskin says somewhere, and quite truly, that who cannot sympathize with the lower cannot sympathize with the higher.”
Now Virginia plunged off into a stream of delightful nonsense, told us how she sometimes loved and sometimes hated herself, how, if she was very happy, she had to pay the penalty of reaction, and how interesting she was, altogether. As a punishment we made her keep still for five minutes by the watch. I hoped Alfred would talk instead. Suppose we punished him by making him talk for five minutes!
Florence said: “What I like most of all is to be liked. I often envy people their lovableness.”
“Naturally,” said I, “that is what we all like most, isn’t it?
“And the truly good person, in our sense of good, is also the lovable, beloved person.”
Marian and Virginia exchanged glances. They were thinking again of that girl in Sunday-school, who, they said, was thoroughly good, but not at all lovable.
“The good person,” I said, “is also the intelligent, sympathetic person. Sympathy, understanding love, is the great virtue. I have made a list of seven virtues. Would you like to hear them? First, Love.”
That, they said, included all the others.
Yes, I answered, it was the chief. Second, Courage. Courage, they said, to do as we believed. Third, Trustworthiness. They all agreed. Fourth, love of knowledge. Fifth, love of beauty. Sixth, insight. Seventh, a sense of humor!
During this time Virginia and Marian were fitting each virtue to that girl, and found her lacking only in the latter ones, but no more lovable or interesting than before.
“Ruth,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure they are not speaking of you or me?”
“I don’t know,” she answered; “perhaps.”
They protested.
“Do you know the girl, Ruth?” I asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“Well,” I said, “please bring her to the next meeting. She interests me.”
Ruth promised, despite the protestations and explanations of Marian and Virginia. “You would know, then, of whom we had been talking,” they said.
“Very well,” I answered, “she shall stay away on one condition.”
“What is that?”
“That you don’t mention her again. I always feel,” I went on, “that when any one is badly spoken of, I am being criticized behind my back. Just as when a race, such as the negroes, for instance, is unjustly spoken of, I feel like fighting for my rights; for I take it as a mere matter of chance that I didn’t happen to be one of them.
“Florence,” I continued, “is quite right in wanting to be loved. It is the best thing in the world.”
“Except loving,” said Virginia.
“Of course,” I answered; “but to want to be loved by those we love for what we really are, and truly to wish to be what they can truly love, that is the whole of goodness, I believe. The only difference between vanity and true worth is that the vain person wishes to appear to be what is lovable—which is very unsafe—and the truly good person wishes to be it.”
“You mean,” said Henry, “that vanity is company manners?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know,” Florence said. “I have liked people who used ‘company manners’ for some company, and not for others.”
“I have known people,” said Marian, “who were always agreeable and sweet, and appeared to want every one to like them, and yet were not a bit lovable.”
“Naturally,” I said, “the person who wishes to be loved for what he is, is also willing to be hated for it, if he must, by those who think otherwise.” I said there was a man of whom we had heard much during the last days (because of his centenary) who seemed to be exactly what we meant by good. This was Abraham Lincoln. We spent some time speaking of him, the man who, it seems to me, might have inspired a new American religion.
“We always sympathize most with those,” said Henry, “who sympathize with us.”
“We love them most,” I said, “but the man of large heart will often sympathize with people who understand him no better than they understand the sunshine: with the bad man, for instance.”
“That is true.”
“In the drama of life,” I said, “he who loves beauty and his whole self will live so as to make that whole beautiful, and for this joy and beauty will gladly give up his petty satisfactions. For remember that the good life is the beautiful life, and the influential life. Indeed, every life in this drama has immense influence.”
“For good or bad,” said Henry.
“Yes, surely.”
“I thought not,” answered Florence; “each one has a very, very small influence.”
“In the universe, perhaps, but we know nothing, and can know nothing, of that. We cannot make comparisons with infinity. But with those we love, who know us, in our own family, our own circle of friends, the influence of each one is immense. Think of any family you know, of your own family, and see how much difference each one makes in the whole, how each one changes the whole. Each one influences all the others, and makes the tone and color of life, whether he will or not.”
“I suppose,” said Henry, “that even those who have no influence, who do nothing, could have an influence.”
“They can’t help having it, for good or bad. And people can know they have this influence, and use it consciously, to make life about them as they wish it to be. As a woman who comes into a house, if she loves beauty and order, will set it in order at once and make it beautiful, so that it will be all changed because of her, and for her pleasure, so in life we can set all things in order and change them to our wish, by our presence and character.”
“I don’t think,” Ruth said, “that the good is always beautiful. Often the thing we have to do is disagreeable.”
“For instance, what?” I asked.
“In school work, for example. We have to study subjects that are hard and disagreeable, simply to pass.”
“You mean that you have to do disagreeable things to get what you want. Naturally. That is self-sacrifice. And you cannot always do things as you would like to do them. The woman in the house might find ugly wallpaper, and not be able to change that. But she would find other means of making things look better. People can have conscious influence; and the difference between those who make life good and beautiful, and those who attract attention to themselves, is the difference between the play in which all the actors are good, and combine to make a beautiful play, and the one where there is a star who wants a poor cast to set off her charms, and produces an inartistic and uneven play.”
“I don’t see how one could have conscious influence,” said Marian; “it seems to me one lives unconsciously all the time. I like to dream. I am not fond of acting. I don’t believe I would ever have any conscious influence.”
“To dream and dream and keep on dreaming, and not act, is impossible,” I said.
“But,” asked Florence, “isn’t it just the dreamers who do all the great things?”
“Surely,” I answered, “one cannot help influencing people, even by one’s dreams. But you, Florence, you must realize how much difference each member of a family makes.”
“Yes, I do.”
“And Virginia, I believe, has often made conscious effort toward cheerful influence, and knows what I mean. You, too, Ruth; I am certain you know exactly what I mean, and I hope you and Marian will talk it over; for it is an interesting subject.”
“Yes, I know well what you mean.”
As we left I asked Alfred to write a paper for me. “For,” I said, “they will begin to think you stupid if you show no sign of intelligence. And even I would like a tangible proof of what I really know, that you do grasp exactly the spirit of what we say.”