Thirteenth Meeting
Marian was absent. I read aloud Henry’s paper:
“Last Sunday we met for the first time in almost two months. We had finished talking about art, and we started on a new course in which we shall apply our standard of beauty.
“Our topic last Sunday was Goodness. Good is a much-abused word. We often speak disdainfully of a person, as being a goody-goody, but usually this person, though not necessarily bad, is not good according to the standard of to-day. In the last generation, and even in some places to-day, the good child is the one which does its work conscientiously, and spends all its spare time at sewing or doing odd jobs around the house. The ‘good man’ does his work faithfully, never swears or lies under any circumstances, and follows his religion, as it is set down for him by others, absolutely to the letter.
“In speaking of bad, one kind we mentioned was that which was once good, but which we have left behind us in our progress. This is true of that old standard. We have said that what we want is complete sympathy. That which is beautiful is the symbol of completeness, and the good is beautiful; and therefore the man with a warm, sympathetic heart is the good man. A splendid type of this sort of man is Abraham Lincoln, a man who suffered with the sufferer, and rejoiced with the happy; a man with charity for all and enmity toward none.
“We condemn the selfish man, but the man who does so much for others that he does nothing for himself, is to be criticized just as much. Hillel says: ‘If I am not for myself, who will be for me?’
“There is really no such thing as self-sacrifice, for if you voluntarily give up one thing for another, it is because you like it better.”
I said that this paper proved to me, what I had already suspected, that in the last meeting I had dwelt too much on one side of our subject, and not enough on the other.
“Perhaps,” said Henry, “I spent too much time describing the man who isn’t truly good?”
“No,” I answered, “I don’t mind that. But you say ‘the man with a warm and sympathetic heart is the good man.’ To be the truly good and great man, one must have more than a warm and sympathetic heart, more, even, than a feeling of kindliness and sympathy for one’s fellows.
“You speak of Lincoln as a man ‘with charity for all and enmity toward none.’ But Lincoln was much more than that. This alone would not have made him great and splendid. What did?”
Henry said: “He was a man of determination,” and, before I could answer, Alfred went on: “He was a man of large sympathies.”
“Yes,” I said, “it is the combination of the two; it is more than both. I mean that the great and good man is the man whose final far-off aim is the unity and completeness of man, who shapes his life and his work toward that aim, who works for it, lives for it, sacrifices himself and all things to it; and such a man was Lincoln. He made mistakes—he used them for his cause. His morality, his law, was the union—that symbol of the larger union—and for this immense self-fulfilment he worked with his might, and died for it.”
“Yes,” said Henry, “and the great man must make mistakes, and go beyond them. Roosevelt, for instance, is always making mistakes, and then acknowledging them, and going forward once more.”
“Surely. And so Lincoln worked for the union, in sympathy with all men.”
“In one speech,” said Henry, “he asked Davis, his opponent in the House, to ‘help him save the union.’”
“Now, Henry,” I said, “there is another thing in your paper—if you don’t mind my saying it?”
“Not at all.”
“I mean that when you quoted Hillel you should have finished the quotation: ‘If I am not for myself, who will be for me?’ and ‘but if I am for myself alone, what am I then?’ You did not bring out the idea of the large and small self, of sacrificing the small self to the large, because you love the large self above all else, not because you like it better. This morning I heard a lecture by Professor Royce, of Harvard, and it is curious that he used exactly the same words we used in speaking of self-sacrifice. He said we sacrifice the small to the large self.”
At this point Ruth came in, and brought Marian’s paper. I read it at once:
“Our meeting of the Seekers of February 14th was very interesting. We talked about goodness. First we tried to define good, and finally reached the conclusion that goodness means being in a harmonious relation with all our fellow-beings. We should try to make our life like some beautiful picture or other work of art, making it a complete and harmonious whole. All our friends and acquaintances, everything we see, hear, do or know, help to make this picture; and if we try, we can consciously make it what we want. We are masters of our lives, and if we remember this, it will influence all our thoughts and deeds. We also spoke of happiness, and decided that each one has a different kind of happiness, depending on what he wants most. We also spoke of self-sacrifice. There is really no such thing as self-sacrifice, because when we give up one thing it is always because we think another finer, and because we want the other more. We cannot have every detail in our picture as clear as the main idea, and we must give up something to bring out this idea.”
We all thought this paper excellent. I told Ruth briefly what we had said before she came; and then we spoke at length of the importance of living our belief, of working for the cause, of giving ourselves to the large self.
I said: “Every great man has always done just that, whether he was writer, philosopher, artist, statesman or scientist; he has always devoted himself to a work which aimed toward the great union.”
Florence said: “You mean not like the philosophers, simply to dream of the good, but like the artist, to work it out? Didn’t you say that, when we spoke of choosing the artistic life?”
“No,” I answered, “not quite. The philosopher and dreamer also work for the supreme good, by showing what it is like, and pointing the way which men afterward go.”
“That is what I always thought,” said Florence.
“Yes,” I answered, “the philosopher is the teacher of teachers. But I chose the artistic way of viewing life, because it combines the philosophic and the scientific way, the vision and the work.”
Virginia now said: “But sometimes men who work for completeness, and whose motives are all good, do harm, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jesus, for instance,” she said. “He has done so much harm throughout the ages, which he never meant to do.”
“It was not he who did the harm,” I answered; “it was the people who misunderstood him and misused his words. No great man ever does all that he sets out to do. He cannot, since his aim is no less than perfection.”
“I hate perfect people,” said Virginia, “or to think of any great man as perfect, because it is so inhuman. I read a book for children, lately, about Jesus, which made him out a perfect child. It was full of contradictions, for it said first that he was a wonder, who walked, talked and thought earlier than other children, and then it said that he was human, and understood all human weaknesses. I think that to know men a man must have human weaknesses and imperfections.”
“Yes,” I said; “and I never thought of Jesus as unhumanly perfect. He, too, had his temptation and weakness to fight and overcome. Indeed, only the petty man could be perfect.”
“But he would not be perfect,” said Henry.
“No,” I answered; “but according to his standard, he might think himself so. The great man, the Jesus, the Lincoln, could never be perfect, for his perfection could only come with the completeness and beauty and goodness of the whole world. You said of Jesus that he did harm, because the doctrine made from his words did harm. But you must see that until all men are great men, every man must suffer so. Take Lincoln, for instance. If he had lived, and kept control of the Government, surely the evils of the reconstruction period would have been avoided. You might say, then, that Lincoln did harm, because his work led to all that wrong and unhappiness.”
“But it has all come right now,” said Henry.
“Hardly,” I answered; “it is not nearly right, even to-day.”
“And I suppose,” Virginia said, “that finally the work of Jesus and of every great man will come right.”
“And Lincoln’s work,” said Florence, “will come right sooner, because it is not so large as the work of Jesus.”
Now I said I wanted to go on to a subject which seemed to me especially interesting, the question of the making of laws and regulations. Was it not a curious thing that men’s minds, outrunning their other powers, should see clearly the great good for which they strove, and should make regulations for themselves, which they were even unable to keep?
Henry and Ruth did not think it at all curious that people should make regulations for themselves, but it did seem strange that they were unable to keep them.
“To me,” I said, “it seems a wonderful thing that the sense of beauty and fitness should be so strong in the mind of man, should so far outrun his impulses and his body, that he creates for himself laws and regulations which he then tries to follow, as one sets up a ladder which he afterward tries to climb. Of course, we no longer believe in revelation, in the old Biblical sense, but to us it means revelation from within. We do not believe that God dictated his laws to Moses, but that Moses created his laws from his own sense of love and beauty. Man made his own laws. And his laws outrun him.”
“Some people,” said Ruth, “make laws for the other people, who are not up to them.”
“No,” Henry said; “isn’t it really all the people making laws for themselves?”
“Yes,” I answered, “for finally it is the few making laws for all, for themselves, too. It is humanity making laws for humanity. Every time a man does wrong and knows he is doing wrong, he is breaking one of his self-made or self-chosen laws. His mind outruns his powers. When Coleridge wanted to break himself of the opium-eating habit, he used to hire men to stand in front of the drug-stores and prevent his going in. He tried to overcome himself with himself.”
“I like Coleridge,” said Virginia. “I like people with weaknesses, who try to overcome them.”
I said I liked them, too, that there was no sight so stimulating as that of fights and conquests, as seeing the very thing we longed for, the opposition beaten, the difficulties overcome.
“But even the weak people who fail to win,” said Virginia; “I like them, too.”
“So do I,” I answered; “the fight itself, even the failure, the human longing, is worth while.
“But I want you to see clearly one thing about all laws and regulations, and that is that they are substitutes. They are substitutes for understanding love, or, rather, they are the forerunners of understanding love, the path of beauty and fitness which the mind makes for itself before all our desires are strong and harmonious enough to fulfil the supreme desire. Laws are the framework on which the house of love shall be built. But when the house is finished, the framework shall no more be seen; nor is it of value in itself, but only as that which upholds the house. I would like to talk with you of certain special laws of this kind. And the first is justice.”
“I was just going to say that,” said Ruth; “it was on my lips.”
“I was thinking of it, too,” said Henry.
“I am sorry,” I answered, “that I did not give you the chance.”
We talked of this subject, and agreed that although justice, the sense of equity, was a great and necessary virtue and a serviceable tool, it was but the tool of love, and less than love, and that if our understanding, our sympathy and possession of life were complete, we would no longer think of justice, nor praise it; that the rigid laws of justice, which must oftentimes change, were forever at the service of love, which made changes and overcame laws.
“Some people are not so far advanced as others,” said Virginia, “and the others lift them up with laws. Some people are undeveloped, like animals.”
We could not help laughing at Virginia, with her eternal animals.
“You remember,” I said, “I spoke to you of past virtues that were good in their time, because the time was ripe only for them, and that in their own setting interest and delight us, and remain forever beautiful, like old pictures, but which would now be ugly, bad and out-of-place. Revenge is an example. How the old stories of revenge stir and even uplift us, and yet how hateful is the idea of revenge in modern life! You remember being thrilled and stirred by the heroism of some old duel, whereas you could find no beauty or heroism in any duel at the present time.”
“I think,” said Ruth, “it is often the language in which the thing is put that stirs us.”
“It is the spirit of the time and place,” I said. “No language could make a duel in New York, among educated people, inspiring or heroic. With war it is the same. Old wars and wars among savages may inspire us, because of the heroism and comradeship of the fighters. But among modern nations even the justified war must be somewhat disgusting, because now far more heroism is required in other works, and comradeship can mean no less than all mankind.
“Now,” said I, “can any of you think of another virtue, like justice, which is a substitute for understanding love?”
“Yes,” said Florence; “I think that pity is.”
“Pity?” I said. “Yes—perhaps. Still, that is somewhat different. Pity was good once, because it was feeling, and feeling is the root of all understanding and sympathy. But self-torturing pity seems to me a weakness. Sympathy is quite a different, a stronger, a braver thing. Who agrees with me?”
First, they said, would I explain exactly what I meant?
“Sympathy seems to me understanding and love, such as you have for yourself. You are willing to suffer, since it is a part of life and a part of the way. You want to suffer for the cause, if necessary; not otherwise. But you don’t pity yourself. You would be ashamed to make so much of your pain. So you do not pity others. You love them, you feel with them, you help them bravely. You can bear their pain without making a fuss over them, as you would bear your own. You consider them as strong and brave as yourself.”
They all agreed with me, save Virginia. She said: “If I step by accident on the foot of a little dog, and he cries out, then that hurts me. And I think it is good, because then I know how I would feel if I were a little dog, and I try not to do it again. Isn’t that pity?”
“Perhaps,” I said; “we are apt to pity lower creatures. But there is no good in the mere feeling of physical pain that goes with such things, of the pain and thrill up and down your spine when you hurt any creature accidentally, and hear it cry out.”
“Don’t you think,” asked Alfred, “it is only because they cry out that we feel it?”
“Maybe,” I said, “for the cry makes us know of the pain. At one time, however, a virtue was made of the mere suffering with others; and I suppose in its good time this was necessary, because it developed the feeling which makes sympathy possible.”
“I think it is good,” said Virginia, “for when my sister was ill, I did not know how she felt, or understood her, and so I couldn’t sympathize with her; but later I understood, and then I wished I had felt with her as she did. It would have been better.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “for it would have taught you to feel. To know how others feel is the best thing in the world. But to let that feeling overcome and crush you, to pity them, is weakness. I think it is a weakness we have all felt, and longed to overcome, when we suffered so much with others that we were unable to act.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Ruth.
“To be strong to help and strong to do, not overcome with world-sorrow,” I said, “to face suffering in ourselves and others as something to be overcome and used!”
Virginia spoke of a curious calmness in herself that made her not act excitedly when anything happened, but always wait first to see the outcome. “If a child falls in the street,” she said, “I don’t go rushing toward it as some people do, but wait to see if it will pick itself up.”
“But if it fell out of a window,” said Ruth, “I suppose you would rush forward.”
“No,” she answered, “not unless it were necessary. I would wait to see what happened. When my hat blows off, I never go rushing after it till I see where it is going to stop.”
The juxtaposition of a falling child and a falling hat was disconcerting.
“I know how Virginia feels,” I said; “it is the artist in her always looking on at all that happens. It is a good way, too. Now what other virtues are there, like justice, that are really substitutes for right feeling?”
They could not think of the others. So I mentioned honesty, which is much like justice—even a form of it; steered clear of a reef of arguments on truth-telling, showed them how honesty would not even be mentioned where there was perfect love, and went on to the next and most important, namely, duty. They had not thought of it in this way before. They all disliked the word duty.
I spoke again of the girl who stays home from the theatre with some one she does not love, because she feels it to be her duty. Why does she do it?
“Because she chooses,” said Alfred; “she wants to do it most.”
“But why?” I asked.
“She may think,” said Ruth, “that the other person would do the same for her.”
“But she may not think so,” I said, “and still she would stay.”
“Because,” said Virginia, “she would feel good afterward.”
“Yes,” I said, “in a sense it is that. It would give her satisfaction.”
“I would do it,” said Ruth, “but I don’t think I would feel any particular satisfaction afterward.”
“But,” I said, “if you didn’t do it, you would feel dissatisfied with yourself. And therein lies the explanation of duty. Duty is a substitute for love. It is the substitute the mind imposes on us when our feelings will not fulfil the scheme of beauty and order which is our strongest desire. To do your duty is to fulfil your strongest desire—lacking the great love. Love shall overcome duty. Duty means only debt. It is limited, small. It is the ugly framework that love must make before it can build its beautiful dwelling-place. The strong man always does his duty, because he flinches at nothing that is on the path, but more and more he loses duty in love.”
Virginia said: “I think it is fun sometimes to hate things, such as hating to go to school.”
“Why?”
“Because to do a thing you hate to do makes you feel good sometimes. I like it.”
“We have come to love the hard thing,” I said, “because it is the growing thing. We get to fancy that when we do something hard we must be getting ahead, because generally it is true.”
Virginia said: “I like the poem by Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm:
‘When joy and duty clash,
Let duty go to smash.’”
“I wish joy and duty were the same,” I said, “and that is just what they are when love conquers. You have to do your duty when love fails, and so it often seems an unpleasant job.”
I spoke now of promises, and of how unnecessary they would be were it not for our failures in love. Then we went on to speak of obedience. We said that where love was perfect one would not think of obedience or disobedience. Obedience is a substitute for understanding. He who understands does not obey. He acts. We spoke of necessary obedience, the substitute, and then of the family where parents and children were so much at one that obedience was never mentioned.
“A person out of such a home,” said Virginia, “would not have enough to struggle against. I don’t like people who are just perfect, and have nothing to overcome.”
“We will never reach perfection,” they said; and they all, save Henry, agreed with me that the greatest joy in life was working for, rather than achieving our desires.
“But when we reach perfection,” he said, “we won’t wish for it any more.”
I refused to argue that problematic point.
I said: “Be sure the strong and good man will always find something still to fight and overcome.”
We spoke now of how disobedience might be a virtue, of the rebels in wars for freedom, and the child who would refuse to obey his parents, if they ordered him to do what he thought bad; the thief’s child, for example.
I said: “The framework is for the house—not for itself—and if it doesn’t suit the house, it must be pulled down.”
Now we had an amusing talk on conventions, in which Henry objected to full-dress suits, bouillon cups and polite lies. But I showed them how good and necessary were conventions properly used, since they saved us weighty discussions on trivial matters. I said it was a good thing we didn’t have to waste time and energy deciding what we would eat for breakfast each day.
“But,” said Henry, “if some day I don’t care to eat oatmeal for breakfast, I don’t want to feel obliged.”
“No,” I said; “don’t be a slave to convention.”
I went on: “If all things were right, then conformity would be good—though uninteresting—but in this growing world we need reformers who smash and reform things, whenever conformity becomes deformity.”
You notice that Alfred spoke more at this meeting. I had told him that if he did not help us along, and show what he meant and thought, he was not living up to our idea of completeness and work in unison.