Eve's diary


Translated from the Original



SATURDAY.--I am almost a whole day old, now.  I arrived yesterday.
That is as it seems to me.  And it must be so, for if there was
a day-before-yesterday I was not there when it happened, or I
should remember it.  It could be, of course, that it did happen,
and that I was not noticing.  Very well; I will be very watchful now,
and if any day-before-yesterdays happen I will make a note of it.
It will be best to start right and not let the record get confused,
for some instinct tells me that these details are going to be
important to the historian some day.  For I feel like an experiment,
I feel exactly like an experiment; it would be impossible for a person
to feel more like an experiment than I do, and so I am coming to feel
convinced that that is what I AM--an experiment; just an experiment,
and nothing more.

Then if I am an experiment, am I the whole of it?  No, I think not;
I think the rest of it is part of it.  I am the main part of it,
but I think the rest of it has its share in the matter.  Is my
position assured, or do I have to watch it and take care of it?
The latter, perhaps.  Some instinct tells me that eternal vigilance
is the price of supremacy.  [That is a good phrase, I think, for one
so young.]

Everything looks better today than it did yesterday.  In the rush of
finishing up yesterday, the mountains were left in a ragged condition,
and some of the plains were so cluttered with rubbish and remnants
that the aspects were quite distressing.  Noble and beautiful works
of art should not be subjected to haste; and this majestic new world
is indeed a most noble and beautiful work.  And certainly marvelously
near to being perfect, notwithstanding the shortness of the time.
There are too many stars in some places and not enough in others,
but that can be remedied presently, no doubt.  The moon got
loose last night, and slid down and fell out of the scheme
--a very great loss; it breaks my heart to think of it.  There isn't
another thing among the ornaments and decorations that is comparable
to it for beauty and finish.  It should have been fastened better.
If we can only get it back again--
But of course there is no telling where it went to.  And besides,
whoever gets it will hide it; I know it because I would do it myself.
I believe I can be honest in all other matters, but I already
begin to realize that the core and center of my nature is love
of the beautiful, a passion for the beautiful, and that it would
not be safe to trust me with a moon that belonged to another person
and that person didn't know I had it.  I could give up a moon that I
found in the daytime, because I should be afraid some one was looking;
but if I found it in the dark, I am sure I should find some kind
of an excuse for not saying anything about it.  For I do love moons,
they are so pretty and so romantic.  I wish we had five or six;
I would never go to bed; I should never get tired lying on the moss-bank
and looking up at them.

Stars are good, too.  I wish I could get some to put in my hair.
But I suppose I never can.  You would be surprised to find how far
off they are, for they do not look it.  When they first showed,
last night, I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn't reach,
which astonished me; then I tried clods till I was all tired out,
but I never got one.  It was because I am left-handed and cannot
throw good.  Even when I aimed at the one I wasn't after I
couldn't hit the other one, though I did make some close shots,
for I saw the black blot of the clod sail right into the midst of
the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them,
and if I could have held out a little longer maybe I could have
got one.

So I cried a little, which was natural, I suppose, for one of my age,
and after I was rested I got a basket and started for a place on the
extreme rim of the circle, where the stars were close to the ground
and I could get them with my hands, which would be better, anyway,
because I could gather them tenderly then, and not break them.
But it was farther than I thought, and at last I had go give it up;
I was so tired I couldn't drag my feet another step; and besides,
they were sore and hurt me very much.

I couldn't get back home; it was too far and turning cold;
but I found some tigers and nestled in among them and was most
adorably comfortable, and their breath was sweet and pleasant,
because they live on strawberries.  I had never seen a tiger before,
but I knew them in a minute by the stripes.  If I could have one
of those skins, it would make a lovely gown.

Today I am getting better ideas about distances.  I was so eager
to get hold of every pretty thing that I giddily grabbed for it,
sometimes when it was too far off, and sometimes when it was but
six inches away but seemed a foot--alas, with thorns between!
I learned a lesson; also I made an axiom, all out of my own head
--my very first one; THE SCRATCHED EXPERIMENT SHUNS THE THORN.
I think it is a very good one for one so young.

I followed the other Experiment around, yesterday afternoon,
at a distance, to see what it might be for, if I could.  But I was
not able to make out.  I think it is a man.  I had never seen a man,
but it looked like one, and I feel sure that that is what it is.
I realize that I feel more curiosity about it than about any
of the other reptiles.  If it is a reptile, and I suppose it is;
for it has frowzy hair and blue eyes, and looks like a reptile.
It has no hips; it tapers like a carrot; when it stands, it spreads
itself apart like a derrick; so I think it is a reptile, though it may
be architecture.

I was afraid of it at first, and started to run every time it
turned around, for I thought it was going to chase me; but by
and by I found it was only trying to get away, so after that I
was not timid any more, but tracked it along, several hours,
about twenty yards behind, which made it nervous and unhappy.
At last it was a good deal worried, and climbed a tree.  I waited
a good while, then gave it up and went home.

Today the same thing over.  I've got it up the tree again.

SUNDAY.--It is up there yet.  Resting, apparently.  But that is
a subterfuge:  Sunday isn't the day of rest; Saturday is appointed
for that.  It looks to me like a creature that is more interested
in resting than it anything else.  It would tire me to rest so much.
It tires me just to sit around and watch the tree.  I do wonder
what it is for; I never see it do anything.

They returned the moon last night, and I was SO happy!  I think
it is very honest of them.  It slid down and fell off again,
but I was not distressed; there is no need to worry when one has
that kind of neighbors; they will fetch it back.  I wish I could
do something to show my appreciation.  I would like to send them
some stars, for we have more than we can use.  I mean I, not we,
for I can see that the reptile cares nothing for such things.

It has low tastes, and is not kind.  When I went there yesterday
evening in the gloaming it had crept down and was trying to catch
the little speckled fishes that play in the pool, and I had
to clod it to make it go up the tree again and let them alone.
I wonder if THAT is what it is for?  Hasn't it any heart?
Hasn't it any compassion for those little creature?  Can it be
that it was designed and manufactured for such ungentle work?
It has the look of it.  One of the clods took it back of the ear,
and it used language.  It gave me a thrill, for it was the first time I
had ever heard speech, except my own.  I did not understand the words,
but they seemed expressive.

When I found it could talk I felt a new interest in it, for I
love to talk; I talk, all day, and in my sleep, too, and I am
very interesting, but if I had another to talk to I could be twice
as interesting, and would never stop, if desired.

If this reptile is a man, it isn't an IT, is it?  That wouldn't
be grammatical, would it?  I think it would be HE.  I think so.
In that case one would parse it thus:  nominative, HE; dative, HIM;
possessive, HIS'N.  Well, I will consider it a man and call it he
until it turns out to be something else.  This will be handier
than having so many uncertainties.

NEXT WEEK SUNDAY.--All the week I tagged around after him and tried
to get acquainted.  I had to do the talking, because he was shy,
but I didn't mind it.  He seemed pleased to have me around, and I
used the sociable "we" a good deal, because it seemed to flatter him
to be included.

WEDNESDAY.--We are getting along very well indeed, now, and getting
better and better acquainted.  He does not try to avoid me any more,
which is a good sign, and shows that he likes to have me with him.
That pleases me, and I study to be useful to him in every way I can,
so as to increase his regard.  During the last day or two I
have taken all the work of naming things off his hands, and this
has been a great relief to him, for he has no gift in that line,
and is evidently very grateful.  He can't think of a rational name
to save him, but I do not let him see that I am aware of his defect.
Whenever a new creature comes along I name it before he has time
to expose himself by an awkward silence.  In this way I have
saved him many embarrassments.  I have no defect like this.
The minute I set eyes on an animal I know what it is.  I don't
have to reflect a moment; the right name comes out instantly,
just as if it were an inspiration, as no doubt it is, for I am
sure it wasn't in me half a minute before.  I seem to know just
by the shape of the creature and the way it acts what animal
it is.

When the dodo came along he thought it was a wildcat--I saw it
in his eye.  But I saved him.  And I was careful not to do it
in a way that could hurt his pride.  I just spoke up in a quite
natural way of pleasing surprise, and not as if I was dreaming
of conveying information, and said, "Well, I do declare, if there
isn't the dodo!"  I explained--without seeming to be explaining
--how I know it for a dodo, and although I thought maybe he was
a little piqued that I knew the creature when he didn't, it was
quite evident that he admired me.  That was very agreeable, and I
thought of it more than once with gratification before I slept.
How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have
earned it!

THURSDAY.--my first sorrow.  Yesterday he avoided me and seemed
to wish I would not talk to him.  I could not believe it,
and thought there was some mistake, for I loved to be with him,
and loved to hear him talk, and so how could it be that he could
feel unkind toward me when I had not done anything?  But at last it
seemed true, so I went away and sat lonely in the place where I first
saw him the morning that we were made and I did not know what he
was and was indifferent about him; but now it was a mournful place,
and every little think spoke of him, and my heart was very sore.
I did not know why very clearly, for it was a new feeling; I had
not experienced it before, and it was all a mystery, and I could
not make it out.

But when night came I could not bear the lonesomeness, and went
to the new shelter which he has built, to ask him what I had done
that was wrong and how I could mend it and get back his kindness again;
but he put me out in the rain, and it was my first sorrow.

SUNDAY.--It is pleasant again, now, and I am happy; but those were
heavy days; I do not think of them when I can help it.

I tried to get him some of those apples, but I cannot learn to
throw straight.  I failed, but I think the good intention pleased him.
They are forbidden, and he says I shall come to harm; but so I
come to harm through pleasing him, why shall I care for that harm?

MONDAY.--This morning I told him my name, hoping it would interest him.
But he did not care for it.  It is strange.  If he should tell me
his name, I would care.  I think it would be pleasanter in my ears
than any other sound.

He talks very little.  Perhaps it is because he is not bright,
and is sensitive about it and wishes to conceal it.  It is
such a pity that he should feel so, for brightness is nothing;
it is in the heart that the values lie.  I wish I could make him
understand that a loving good heart is riches, and riches enough,
and that without it intellect is poverty.

Although he talks so little, he has quite a considerable
vocabulary.  This morning he used a surprisingly good word.
He evidently recognized, himself, that it was a good one, for he
worked in in twice afterward, casually.  It was good casual art,
still it showed that he possesses a certain quality of perception.
Without a doubt that seed can be made to grow, if cultivated.

Where did he get that word?  I do not think I have ever used it.

No, he took no interest in my name.  I tried to hide my disappointment,
but I suppose I did not succeed.  I went away and sat on the
moss-bank with my feet in the water.  It is where I go when I hunger
for companionship, some one to look at, some one to talk to.
It is not enough--that lovely white body painted there in the pool
--but it is something, and something is better than utter loneliness.
It talks when I talk; it is sad when I am sad; it comforts me with
its sympathy; it says, "Do not be downhearted, you poor friendless girl;
I will be your friend."  It IS a good friend to me, and my only one;
it is my sister.

That first time that she forsook me! ah, I shall never forget that
--never, never.  My heart was lead in my body!  I said, "She was all
I had, and now she is gone!"  In my despair I said, "Break, my heart;
I cannot bear my life any more!" and hid my face in my hands,
and there was no solace for me.  And when I took them away,
after a little, there she was again, white and shining and beautiful,
and I sprang into her arms!

That was perfect happiness; I had known happiness before, but it was
not like this, which was ecstasy.  I never doubted her afterward.
Sometimes she stayed away--maybe an hour, maybe almost the
whole day, but I waited and did not doubt; I said, "She is busy,
or she is gone on a journey, but she will come."  And it was so:
she always did.  At night she would not come if it was dark, for she
was a timid little thing; but if there was a moon she would come.
I am not afraid of the dark, but she is younger than I am; she was
born after I was.  Many and many are the visits I have paid her;
she is my comfort and my refuge when my life is hard--and it is
mainly that.

TUESDAY.--All the morning I was at work improving the estate;
and I purposely kept away from him in the hope that he would get
lonely and come.  But he did not.

At noon I stopped for the day and took my recreation by flitting all
about with the bees and the butterflies and reveling in the flowers,
those beautiful creatures that catch the smile of God out of the
sky and preserve it!  I gathered them, and made them into wreaths
and garlands and clothed myself in them while I ate my luncheon
--apples, of course; then I sat in the shade and wished and waited.
But he did not come.

But no matter.  Nothing would have come of it, for he does not
care for flowers.  He called them rubbish, and cannot tell one
from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that.  He does
not care for me, he does not care for flowers, he does not care
for the painted sky at eventide--is there anything he does care for,
except building shacks to coop himself up in from the good clean rain,
and thumping the melons, and sampling the grapes, and fingering
the fruit on the trees, to see how those properties are coming along?

I laid a dry stick on the ground and tried to bore a hole in it
with another one, in order to carry out a scheme that I had,
and soon I got an awful fright.  A thin, transparent bluish film
rose out of the hole, and I dropped everything and ran!  I thought
it was a spirit, and I WAS so frightened!  But I looked back, and it
was not coming; so I leaned against a rock and rested and panted,
and let my limps go on trembling until they got steady again;
then I crept warily back, alert, watching, and ready to fly if there
was occasion; and when I was come near, I parted the branches
of a rose-bush and peeped through--wishing the man was about,
I was looking so cunning and pretty--but the sprite was gone.
I went there, and there was a pinch of delicate pink dust in the hole.
I put my finger in, to feel it, and said OUCH! and took it
out again.  It was a cruel pain.  I put my finger in my mouth;
and by standing first on one foot and then the other, and grunting,
I presently eased my misery; then I was full of interest, and began
to examine.

I was curious to know what the pink dust was.  Suddenly the name of it
occurred to me, though I had never heard of it before.  It was FIRE!
I was as certain of it as a person could be of anything in the world.
So without hesitation I named it that--fire.

I had created something that didn't exist before; I had added
a new thing to the world's uncountable properties; I realized this,
and was proud of my achievement, and was going to run and find him
and tell him about it, thinking to raise myself in his esteem
--but I reflected, and did not do it.  No--he would not care for it.
He would ask what it was good for, and what could I answer? for if it
was not GOOD for something, but only beautiful, merely beautiful--
So I sighed, and did not go.  For it wasn't good for anything;
it could not build a shack, it could not improve melons, it could
not hurry a fruit crop; it was useless, it was a foolishness
and a vanity; he would despise it and say cutting words.
But to me it was not despicable; I said, "Oh, you fire, I love you,
you dainty pink creature, for you are BEAUTIFUL--and that is enough!"
and was going to gather it to my breast.  But refrained.
Then I made another maxim out of my head, though it was so nearly
like the first one that I was afraid it was only a plagiarism:
"THE BURNT EXPERIMENT SHUNS THE FIRE."

I wrought again; and when I had made a good deal of fire-dust I emptied
it into a handful of dry brown grass, intending to carry it home
and keep it always and play with it; but the wind struck it and it
sprayed up and spat out at me fiercely, and I dropped it and ran.
When I looked back the blue spirit was towering up and stretching
and rolling away like a cloud, and instantly I thought of the name
of it--SMOKE!--though, upon my word, I had never heard of smoke before.

Soon brilliant yellow and red flares shot up through the smoke,
and I named them in an instant--FLAMES--and I was right, too,
though these were the very first flames that had ever been
in the world.  They climbed the trees, then flashed splendidly
in and out of the vast and increasing volume of tumbling smoke,
and I had to clap my hands and laugh and dance in my rapture,
it was so new and strange and so wonderful and so beautiful!

He came running, and stopped and gazed, and said not a word for
many minutes.  Then he asked what it was.  Ah, it was too bad that he
should ask such a direct question.  I had to answer it, of course,
and I did.  I said it was fire.  If it annoyed him that I should know
and he must ask; that was not my fault; I had no desire to annoy him.
After a pause he asked:

"How did it come?"

Another direct question, and it also had to have a direct answer.

"I made it."

The fire was traveling farther and farther off.  He went to the edge
of the burned place and stood looking down, and said:

"What are these?"

"Fire-coals."

He picked up one to examine it, but changed his mind and put it
down again.  Then he went away.  NOTHING interests him.

But I was interested.  There were ashes, gray and soft and delicate
and pretty--I knew what they were at once.  And the embers;
I knew the embers, too.  I found my apples, and raked them out,
and was glad; for I am very young and my appetite is active.
But I was disappointed; they were all burst open and spoiled.
Spoiled apparently; but it was not so; they were better than raw ones.
Fire is beautiful; some day it will be useful, I think.

FRIDAY.--I saw him again, for a moment, last Monday at nightfall,
but only for a moment.  I was hoping he would praise me for trying
to improve the estate, for I had meant well and had worked hard.
But he was not pleased, and turned away and left me.  He was also
displeased on another account:  I tried once more to persuade him
to stop going over the Falls.  That was because the fire had revealed
to me a new passion--quite new, and distinctly different from love,
grief, and those others which I had already discovered--FEAR.  And it
is horrible!--I wish I had never discovered it; it gives me dark moments,
it spoils my happiness, it makes me shiver and tremble and shudder.
But I could not persuade him, for he has not discovered fear yet,
and so he could not understand me.


Extract from Adam's Diary


Perhaps I ought to remember that she is very young, a mere girl and
make allowances.  She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world
is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for
delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it
and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it.
And she is color-mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage,
blue sky; the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadows on the mountains,
the golden islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon
sailing through the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering
in the wastes of space--none of them is of any practical value,
so far as I can see, but because they have color and majesty,
that is enough for her, and she loses her mind over them.
If she could quiet down and keep still a couple minutes at a time,
it would be a reposeful spectacle.  In that case I think I could
enjoy looking at her; indeed I am sure I could, for I am coming
to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely creature
--lithe, slender, trim, rounded, shapely, nimble, graceful; and once
when she was standing marble-white and sun-drenched on a boulder,
with her young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes,
watching the flight of a bird in the sky, I recognized that she
was beautiful.

MONDAY NOON.--If there is anything on the planet that she is not
interested in it is not in my list.  There are animals that I am
indifferent to, but it is not so with her.  She has no discrimination,
she takes to all of them, she thinks they are all treasures,
every new one is welcome.

When the mighty brontosaurus came striding into camp, she regarded
it as an acquisition, I considered it a calamity; that is a good
sample of the lack of harmony that prevails in our views of things.
She wanted to domesticate it, I wanted to make it a present of the
homestead and move out.  She believed it could be tamed by kind
treatment and would be a good pet; I said a pet twenty-one feet
high and eighty-four feet long would be no proper thing to have
about the place, because, even with the best intentions and without
meaning any harm, it could sit down on the house and mash it,
for any one could see by the look of its eye that it was absent-minded.

Still, her heart was set upon having that monster, and she
couldn't give it up.  She thought we could start a dairy with it,
and wanted me to help milk it; but I wouldn't; it was too risky.
The sex wasn't right, and we hadn't any ladder anyway.  Then she
wanted to ride it, and look at the scenery.  Thirty or forty feet
of its tail was lying on the ground, like a fallen tree, and she
thought she could climb it, but she was mistaken; when she got
to the steep place it was too slick and down she came, and would
have hurt herself but for me.

Was she satisfied now?  No. Nothing ever satisfies her but demonstration;
untested theories are not in her line, and she won't have them.
It is the right spirit, I concede it; it attracts me; I feel the
influence of it; if I were with her more I think I should take it
up myself.  Well, she had one theory remaining about this colossus:
she thought that if we could tame it and make him friendly we could
stand in the river and use him for a bridge.  It turned out that he
was already plenty tame enough--at least as far as she was concerned
--so she tried her theory, but it failed:  every time she got him
properly placed in the river and went ashore to cross over him,
he came out and followed her around like a pet mountain.  Like the
other animals.  They all do that.


FRIDAY.--Tuesday--Wednesday--Thursday--and today:  all without
seeing him.  It is a long time to be alone; still, it is better
to be alone than unwelcome.

I HAD to have company--I was made for it, I think--so I made
friends with the animals.  They are just charming, and they have
the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour,
they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you
and wag their tail, if they've got one, and they are always ready
for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose.
I think they are perfect gentlemen.  All these days we have had such
good times, and it hasn't been lonesome for me, ever.  Lonesome!  No,
I should say not.  Why, there's always a swarm of them around
--sometimes as much as four or five acres--you can't count them;
and when you stand on a rock in the midst and look out over the
furry expanse it is so mottled and splashed and gay with color
and frisking sheen and sun-flash, and so rippled with stripes,
that you might think it was a lake, only you know it isn't;
and there's storms of sociable birds, and hurricanes of whirring wings;
and when the sun strikes all that feathery commotion, you have a blazing
up of all the colors you can think of, enough to put your eyes out.

We have made long excursions, and I have seen a great deal of the world;
almost all of it, I think; and so I am the first traveler,
and the only one.  When we are on the march, it is an imposing sight
--there's nothing like it anywhere.  For comfort I ride a tiger
or a leopard, because it is soft and has a round back that fits me,
and because they are such pretty animals; but for long distance
or for scenery I ride the elephant.  He hoists me up with his trunk,
but I can get off myself; when we are ready to camp, he sits and I
slide down the back way.

The birds and animals are all friendly to each other, and there
are no disputes about anything.  They all talk, and they all talk
to me, but it must be a foreign language, for I cannot make out
a word they say; yet they often understand me when I talk back,
particularly the dog and the elephant.  It makes me ashamed.
It shows that they are brighter than I am, for I want to be the
principal Experiment myself--and I intend to be, too.

I have learned a number of things, and am educated, now, but I
wasn't at first.  I was ignorant at first.  At first it used to vex
me because, with all my watching, I was never smart enough to be
around when the water was running uphill; but now I do not mind it.
I have experimented and experimented until now I know it never
does run uphill, except in the dark.  I know it does in the dark,
because the pool never goes dry, which it would, of course,
if the water didn't come back in the night.  It is best to prove
things by actual experiment; then you KNOW; whereas if you depend
on guessing and supposing and conjecturing, you never get educated.

Some things you CAN'T find out; but you will never know you can't
by guessing and supposing:  no, you have to be patient and go on
experimenting until you find out that you can't find out.  And it is
delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting.
If there wasn't anything to find out, it would be dull.  Even trying
to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying
to find out and finding out, and I don't know but more so.
The secret of the water was a treasure until I GOT it; then the
excitement all went away, and I recognized a sense of loss.

By experiment I know that wood swims, and dry leaves, and feathers,
and plenty of other things; therefore by all that cumulative evidence
you know that a rock will swim; but you have to put up with simply
knowing it, for there isn't any way to prove it--up to now.
But I shall find a way--then THAT excitement will go.  Such things
make me sad; because by and by when I have found out everything
there won't be any more excitements, and I do love excitements so!
The other night I couldn't sleep for thinking about it.

At first I couldn't make out what I was made for, but now I think it
was to search out the secrets of this wonderful world and be happy
and thank the Giver of it all for devising it.  I think there are many
things to learn yet--I hope so; and by economizing and not hurrying
too fast I think they will last weeks and weeks.  I hope so.  When you
cast up a feather it sails away on the air and goes out of sight;
then you throw up a clod and it doesn't. It comes down, every time.
I have tried it and tried it, and it is always so.  I wonder why
it is?  Of course it DOESN'T come down, but why should it SEEM to?
I suppose it is an optical illusion.  I mean, one of them is.
I don't know which one.  It may be the feather, it may be the clod;
I can't prove which it is, I can only demonstrate that one or the other
is a fake, and let a person take his choice.

By watching, I know that the stars are not going to last.
I have seen some of the best ones melt and run down the sky.
Since one can melt, they can all melt; since they can all melt,
they can all melt the same night.  That sorrow will come--I know it.
I mean to sit up every night and look at them as long as I can
keep awake; and I will impress those sparkling fields on my memory,
so that by and by when they are taken away I can by my fancy restore
those lovely myriads to the black sky and make them sparkle again,
and double them by the blur of my tears.


After the Fall


When I look back, the Garden is a dream to me.  It was beautiful,
surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now it is lost,
and I shall not see it any more.

The Garden is lost, but I have found HIM, and am content.
He loves me as well as he can; I love him with all the strength
of my passionate nature, and this, I think, is proper to my youth
and sex.  If I ask myself why I love him, I find I do not know,
and do not really much care to know; so I suppose that this kind
of love is not a product of reasoning and statistics, like one's
love for other reptiles and animals.  I think that this must be so.
I love certain birds because of their song; but I do not love Adam
on account of his singing--no, it is not that; the more he sings
the more I do not get reconciled to it.  Yet I ask him to sing,
because I wish to learn to like everything he is interested in.
I am sure I can learn, because at first I could not stand it,
but now I can.  It sours the milk, but it doesn't matter; I can get
used to that kind of milk.

It is not on account of his brightness that I love him--no, it is
not that.  He is not to blame for his brightness, such as it is,
for he did not make it himself; he is as God make him, and that
is sufficient.  There was a wise purpose in it, THAT I know.
In time it will develop, though I think it will not be sudden;
and besides, there is no hurry; he is well enough just as he is.

It is not on account of his gracious and considerate ways and
his delicacy that I love him.  No, he has lacks in this regard,
but he is well enough just so, and is improving.

It is not on account of his industry that I love him--no, it is
not that.  I think he has it in him, and I do not know why he
conceals it from me.  It is my only pain.  Otherwise he is frank
and open with me, now.  I am sure he keeps nothing from me but this.
It grieves me that he should have a secret from me, and sometimes it
spoils my sleep, thinking of it, but I will put it out of my mind;
it shall not trouble my happiness, which is otherwise full
to overflowing.

It is not on account of his education that I love him--no, it is
not that.  He is self-educated, and does really know a multitude
of things, but they are not so.

It is not on account of his chivalry that I love him--no, it is not that.
He told on me, but I do not blame him; it is a peculiarity of sex,
I think, and he did not make his sex.  Of course I would not have
told on him, I would have perished first; but that is a peculiarity
of sex, too, and I do not take credit for it, for I did not make
my sex.

Then why is it that I love him?  MERELY BECAUSE HE IS MASCULINE,
I think.

At bottom he is good, and I love him for that, but I could love
him without it.  If he should beat me and abuse me, I should go
on loving him.  I know it.  It is a matter of sex, I think.

He is strong and handsome, and I love him for that, and I admire him
and am proud of him, but I could love him without those qualities.
He he were plain, I should love him; if he were a wreck, I should
love him; and I would work for him, and slave over him, and pray
for him, and watch by his bedside until I died.

Yes, I think I love him merely because he is MINE and is MASCULINE.
There is no other reason, I suppose.  And so I think it is as I
first said:  that this kind of love is not a product of reasonings
and statistics.  It just COMES--none knows whence--and cannot
explain itself.  And doesn't need to.

It is what I think.  But I am only a girl, the first that has
examined this matter, and it may turn out that in my ignorance
and inexperience I have not got it right.


Forty Years Later


It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this
life together--a longing which shall never perish from the earth,
but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves,
until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name.

But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I;
for he is strong, I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is
to me--life without him would not be life; now could I endure it?
This prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up
while my race continues.  I am the first wife; and in the last wife I
shall be repeated.


At Eve's Grave

ADAM:  Wheresoever she was, THERE was Eden.

(Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910)


What is man ?

I

a. Man the Machine.  b.  Personal Merit

[The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing.  The Old Man had
asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more.  The
Young Man objected, and asked him to go into particulars and furnish his
reasons for his position.]

Old Man.  What are the materials of which a steam-engine is made?

Young Man.  Iron, steel, brass, white-metal, and so on.

O.M.  Where are these found?

Y.M.  In the rocks.

O.M.  In a pure state?

Y.M.  No--in ores.

O.M.  Are the metals suddenly deposited in the ores?

Y.M.  No--it is the patient work of countless ages.

O.M.  You could make the engine out of the rocks themselves?

Y.M.  Yes, a brittle one and not valuable.

O.M.  You would not require much, of such an engine as that?

Y.M.  No--substantially nothing.

O.M.  To make a fine and capable engine, how would you proceed?

Y.M.  Drive tunnels and shafts into the hills; blast out the iron ore;
crush it, smelt it, reduce it to pig-iron; put some of it through the
Bessemer process and make steel of it.  Mine and treat and combine
several metals of which brass is made.

O.M.  Then?

Y.M.  Out of the perfected result, build the fine engine.

O.M.  You would require much of this one?

Y.M.  Oh, indeed yes.

O.M.  It could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches, polishers, in a
word all the cunning machines of a great factory?

Y.M.  It could.

O.M.  What could the stone engine do?

Y.M.  Drive a sewing-machine, possibly--nothing more, perhaps.

O.M.  Men would admire the other engine and rapturously praise it?

Y.M.  Yes.

O.M.  But not the stone one?

Y.M.  No.

O.M.  The merits of the metal machine would be far above those of the
stone one?

Y.M.  Of course.

O.M.  Personal merits?

Y.M.  PERSONAL merits?  How do you mean?

O.M.  It would be personally entitled to the credit of its own
performance?

Y.M.  The engine?  Certainly not.

O.M.  Why not?

Y.M.  Because its performance is not personal.  It is the result of the
law of construction.  It is not a MERIT that it does the things which it
is set to do--it can't HELP doing them.

O.M.  And it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine that it does
so little?

Y.M.  Certainly not.  It does no more and no less than the law of its
make permits and compels it to do.  There is nothing PERSONAL about it;
it cannot choose.  In this process of "working up to the matter" is it
your idea to work up to the proposition that man and a machine are about
the same thing, and that there is no personal merit in the performance of
either?

O.M.  Yes--but do not be offended; I am meaning no offense. What makes
the grand difference between the stone engine and the steel one?  Shall
we call it training, education?  Shall we call the stone engine a savage
and the steel one a civilized man?  The original rock contained the stuff
of which the steel one was built--but along with a lot of sulphur and
stone and other obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from the old
geologic ages--prejudices, let us call them.  Prejudices which nothing
within the rock itself had either POWER to remove or any DESIRE to
remove.  Will you take note of that phrase?

Y.M.  Yes.  I have written it down; "Prejudices which nothing within the
rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove."  Go on.

O.M.  Prejudices must be removed by OUTSIDE INFLUENCES or not at all.
Put that down.

Y.M.  Very well; "Must be removed by outside influences or not at all."
Go on.

O.M.  The iron's prejudice against ridding itself of the cumbering rock.
To make it more exact, the iron's absolute INDIFFERENCE as to whether the
rock be removed or not.  Then comes the OUTSIDE INFLUENCE and grinds the
rock to powder and sets the ore free.  The IRON in the ore is still
captive.  An OUTSIDE INFLUENCE smelts it free of the clogging ore.  The
iron is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent to further progress. An
OUTSIDE INFLUENCE beguiles it into the Bessemer furnace and refines it
into steel of the first quality.  It is educated, now--its training is
complete.  And it has reached its limit.  By no possible process can it
be educated into GOLD.  Will you set that down?

Y.M.  Yes.  "Everything has its limit--iron ore cannot be educated into
gold."

O.M.  There are gold men, and tin men, and copper men, and leaden mean,
and steel men, and so on--and each has the limitations of his nature, his
heredities, his training, and his environment.  You can build engines out
of each of these metals, and they will all perform, but you must not
require the weak ones to do equal work with the strong ones.  In each
case, to get the best results, you must free the metal from its
obstructing prejudicial ones by education--smelting, refining, and so
forth.

Y.M.  You have arrived at man, now?

O.M.  Yes.  Man the machine--man the impersonal engine. Whatsoever a man
is, is due to his MAKE, and to the INFLUENCES brought to bear upon it by
his heredities, his habitat, his associations.  He is moved, directed,
COMMANDED, by EXTERIOR influences--SOLELY.  He ORIGINATES nothing, not
even a thought.

Y.M.  Oh, come!  Where did I get my opinion that this which you are
talking is all foolishness?

O.M.  It is a quite natural opinion--indeed an inevitable opinion--but
YOU did not create the materials out of which it is formed.  They are
odds and ends of thoughts, impressions, feelings, gathered unconsciously
from a thousand books, a thousand conversations, and from streams of
thought and feeling which have flowed down into your heart and brain out
of the hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors.  PERSONALLY you did
not create even the smallest microscopic fragment of the materials out of
which your opinion is made; and personally you cannot claim even the
slender merit of PUTTING THE BORROWED MATERIALS TOGETHER.  That was done
AUTOMATICALLY--by your mental machinery, in strict accordance with the
law of that machinery's construction.  And you not only did not make that
machinery yourself, but you have NOT EVEN ANY COMMAND OVER IT.

Y.M.  This is too much.  You think I could have formed no opinion but
that one?

O.M.  Spontaneously?  No.  And YOU DID NOT FORM THAT ONE; your machinery
did it for you--automatically and instantly, without reflection or the
need of it.

Y.M.  Suppose I had reflected?  How then?

O.M.  Suppose you try?

Y.M.  (AFTER A QUARTER OF AN HOUR.)  I have reflected.

O.M.  You mean you have tried to change your opinion--as an experiment?

Y.M.  Yes.

O.M.  With success?

Y.M.  No.  It remains the same; it is impossible to change it.

O.M.  I am sorry, but you see, yourself, that your mind is merely a
machine, nothing more.  You have no command over it, it has no command
over itself--it is worked SOLELY FROM THE OUTSIDE. That is the law of its
make; it is the law of all machines.

Y.M.  Can't I EVER change one of these automatic opinions?

O.M.  No.  You can't yourself, but EXTERIOR INFLUENCES can do it.

Y.M.  And exterior ones ONLY?

O.M.  Yes--exterior ones only.

Y.M.  That position is untenable--I may say ludicrously untenable.

O.M.  What makes you think so?

Y.M.  I don't merely think it, I know it.  Suppose I resolve to enter
upon a course of thought, and study, and reading, with the deliberate
purpose of changing that opinion; and suppose I succeed.  THAT is not the
work of an exterior impulse, the whole of it is mine and personal; for I
originated the project.

O.M.  Not a shred of it.  IT GREW OUT OF THIS TALK WITH ME. But for that
it would not have occurred to you.  No man ever originates anything.  All
his thoughts, all his impulses, come FROM THE OUTSIDE.

Y.M.  It's an exasperating subject.  The FIRST man had original thoughts,
anyway; there was nobody to draw from.

O.M.  It is a mistake.  Adam's thoughts came to him from the outside.
YOU have a fear of death.  You did not invent that--you got it from
outside, from talking and teaching.  Adam had no fear of death--none in
the world.

Y.M.  Yes, he had.

O.M.  When he was created?

Y.M.  No.

O.M.  When, then?

Y.M.  When he was threatened with it.

O.M.  Then it came from OUTSIDE.  Adam is quite big enough; let us not
try to make a god of him.  NONE BUT GODS HAVE EVER HAD A THOUGHT WHICH
DID NOT COME FROM THE OUTSIDE.  Adam probably had a good head, but it was
of no sort of use to him until it was filled up FROM THE OUTSIDE.  He was
not able to invent the triflingest little thing with it.  He had not a
shadow of a notion of the difference between good and evil--he had to get
the idea FROM THE OUTSIDE.  Neither he nor Eve was able to originate the
idea that it was immodest to go naked; the knowledge came in with the
apple FROM THE OUTSIDE.  A man's brain is so constructed that IT CAN
ORIGINATE NOTHING WHATSOEVER.  It can only use material obtained OUTSIDE.
It is merely a machine; and it works automatically, not by will-power.
IT HAS NO COMMAND OVER ITSELF, ITS OWNER HAS NO COMMAND OVER IT.

Y.M.  Well, never mind Adam: but certainly Shakespeare's creations--

O.M.  No, you mean Shakespeare's IMITATIONS.  Shakespeare created
nothing.  He correctly observed, and he marvelously painted.  He exactly
portrayed people whom GOD had created; but he created none himself.  Let
us spare him the slander of charging him with trying.  Shakespeare could
not create.  HE WAS A MACHINE, AND MACHINES DO NOT CREATE.

Y.M.  Where WAS his excellence, then?

O.M.  In this.  He was not a sewing-machine, like you and me; he was a
Gobelin loom.  The threads and the colors came into him FROM THE OUTSIDE;
outside influences, suggestions, EXPERIENCES (reading, seeing plays,
playing plays, borrowing ideas, and so on), framed the patterns in his
mind and started up his complex and admirable machinery, and IT
AUTOMATICALLY turned out that pictured and gorgeous fabric which still
compels the astonishment of the world.  If Shakespeare had been born and
bred on a barren and unvisited rock in the ocean his mighty intellect
would have had no OUTSIDE MATERIAL to work with, and could have invented
none; and NO OUTSIDE INFLUENCES, teachings, moldings, persuasions,
inspirations, of a valuable sort, and could have invented none; and so
Shakespeare would have produced nothing. In Turkey he would have produced
something--something up to the highest limit of Turkish influences,
associations, and training. In France he would have produced something
better--something up to the highest limit of the French influences and
training.  In England he rose to the highest limit attainable through the
OUTSIDE HELPS AFFORDED BY THAT LAND'S IDEALS, INFLUENCES, AND TRAINING.
You and I are but sewing-machines.  We must turn out what we can; we must
do our endeavor and care nothing at all when the unthinking reproach us
for not turning out Gobelins.

Y.M.  And so we are mere machines!  And machines may not boast, nor feel
proud of their performance, nor claim personal merit for it, nor applause
and praise.  It is an infamous doctrine.

O.M.  It isn't a doctrine, it is merely a fact.

Y.M.  I suppose, then, there is no more merit in being brave than in
being a coward?

O.M.  PERSONAL merit?  No.  A brave man does not CREATE his bravery.  He
is entitled to no personal credit for possessing it. It is born to him.
A baby born with a billion dollars--where is the personal merit in that?
A baby born with nothing--where is the personal demerit in that?  The one
is fawned upon, admired, worshiped, by sycophants, the other is neglected
and despised--where is the sense in it?

Y.M.  Sometimes a timid man sets himself the task of conquering his
cowardice and becoming brave--and succeeds.  What do you say to that?

O.M.  That it shows the value of TRAINING IN RIGHT DIRECTIONS OVER
TRAINING IN WRONG ONES.  Inestimably valuable is training, influence,
education, in right directions--TRAINING ONE'S SELF-APPROBATION TO
ELEVATE ITS IDEALS.

Y.M.  But as to merit--the personal merit of the victorious coward's
project and achievement?

O.M.  There isn't any.  In the world's view he is a worthier man than he
was before, but HE didn't achieve the change--the merit of it is not his.

Y.M.  Whose, then?

O.M.  His MAKE, and the influences which wrought upon it from the
outside.

Y.M.  His make?

O.M.  To start with, he was NOT utterly and completely a coward, or the
influences would have had nothing to work upon. He was not afraid of a
cow, though perhaps of a bull: not afraid of a woman, but afraid of a
man.  There was something to build upon.  There was a SEED.  No seed, no
plant.  Did he make that seed himself, or was it born in him?  It was no
merit of HIS that the seed was there.

Y.M.  Well, anyway, the idea of CULTIVATING it, the resolution to
cultivate it, was meritorious, and he originated that.

O.M.  He did nothing of the kind.  It came whence ALL impulses, good or
bad, come--from OUTSIDE.  If that timid man had lived all his life in a
community of human rabbits, had never read of brave deeds, had never
heard speak of them, had never heard any one praise them nor express envy
of the heroes that had done them, he would have had no more idea of
bravery than Adam had of modesty, and it could never by any possibility
have occurred to him to RESOLVE to become brave.  He COULD NOT ORIGINATE
THE IDEA--it had to come to him from the OUTSIDE.  And so, when he heard
bravery extolled and cowardice derided, it woke him up.  He was ashamed.
Perhaps his sweetheart turned up her nose and said, "I am told that you
are a coward!"  It was not HE that turned over the new leaf--she did it
for him.  HE must not strut around in the merit of it--it is not his.

Y.M.  But, anyway, he reared the plant after she watered the seed.

O.M.  No.  OUTSIDE INFLUENCES reared it.  At the command--and
trembling--he marched out into the field--with other soldiers and in the
daytime, not alone and in the dark.  He had the INFLUENCE OF EXAMPLE, he
drew courage from his comrades' courage; he was afraid, and wanted to
run, but he did not dare; he was AFRAID to run, with all those soldiers
looking on.  He was progressing, you see--the moral fear of shame had
risen superior to the physical fear of harm.  By the end of the campaign
experience will have taught him that not ALL who go into battle get
hurt--an outside influence which will be helpful to him; and he will also
have learned how sweet it is to be praised for courage and be huzza'd at
with tear-choked voices as the war-worn regiment marches past the
worshiping multitude with flags flying and the drums beating.  After that
he will be as securely brave as any veteran in the army--and there will
not be a shade nor suggestion of PERSONAL MERIT in it anywhere; it will
all have come from the OUTSIDE.  The Victoria Cross breeds more heroes
than--

Y.M.  Hang it, where is the sense in his becoming brave if he is to get
no credit for it?

O.M.  Your question will answer itself presently.  It involves an
important detail of man's make which we have not yet touched upon.

Y.M.  What detail is that?

O.M.  The impulse which moves a person to do things--the only impulse
that ever moves a person to do a thing.

Y.M.  The ONLY one!  Is there but one?

O.M.  That is all.  There is only one.

Y.M.  Well, certainly that is a strange enough doctrine. What is the sole
impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing?

O.M.  The impulse to CONTENT HIS OWN SPIRIT--the NECESSITY of contenting
his own spirit and WINNING ITS APPROVAL.

Y.M.  Oh, come, that won't do!

O.M.  Why won't it?

Y.M.  Because it puts him in the attitude of always looking out for his
own comfort and advantage; whereas an unselfish man often does a thing
solely for another person's good when it is a positive disadvantage to
himself.

O.M.  It is a mistake.  The act must do HIM good, FIRST; otherwise he
will not do it.  He may THINK he is doing it solely for the other
person's sake, but it is not so; he is contenting his own spirit
first--the other's person's benefit has to always take SECOND place.

Y.M.  What a fantastic idea!  What becomes of self-sacrifice?  Please
answer me that.

O.M.  What is self-sacrifice?

Y.M.  The doing good to another person where no shadow nor suggestion of
benefit to one's self can result from it.

II

Man's Sole Impulse--the Securing of His Own Approval

Old Man.  There have been instances of it--you think?

Young Man.  INSTANCES?  Millions of them!

O.M.  You have not jumped to conclusions?  You have examined
them--critically?

Y.M.  They don't need it: the acts themselves reveal the golden impulse
back of them.

O.M.  For instance?

Y.M.  Well, then, for instance.  Take the case in the book here.  The man
lives three miles up-town.  It is bitter cold, snowing hard, midnight.
He is about to enter the horse-car when a gray and ragged old woman, a
touching picture of misery, puts out her lean hand and begs for rescue
from hunger and death.  The man finds that he has a quarter in his
pocket, but he does not hesitate: he gives it her and trudges home
through the storm. There--it is noble, it is beautiful; its grace is
marred by no fleck or blemish or suggestion of self-interest.

O.M.  What makes you think that?

Y.M.  Pray what else could I think?  Do you imagine that there is some
other way of looking at it?

O.M.  Can you put yourself in the man's place and tell me what he felt
and what he thought?

Y.M.  Easily.  The sight of that suffering old face pierced his generous
heart with a sharp pain.  He could not bear it.  He could endure the
three-mile walk in the storm, but he could not endure the tortures his
conscience would suffer if he turned his back and left that poor old
creature to perish.  He would not have been able to sleep, for thinking
of it.

O.M.  What was his state of mind on his way home?

Y.M.  It was a state of joy which only the self-sacrificer knows.  His
heart sang, he was unconscious of the storm.

O.M.  He felt well?

Y.M.  One cannot doubt it.

O.M.  Very well.  Now let us add up the details and see how much he got
for his twenty-five cents.  Let us try to find out the REAL why of his
making the investment.  In the first place HE couldn't bear the pain
which the old suffering face gave him.  So he was thinking of HIS
pain--this good man.  He must buy a salve for it.  If he did not succor
the old woman HIS conscience would torture him all the way home.
Thinking of HIS pain again.  He must buy relief for that.  If he didn't
relieve the old woman HE would not get any sleep.  He must buy some
sleep--still thinking of HIMSELF, you see.  Thus, to sum up, he bought
himself free of a sharp pain in his heart, he bought himself free of the
tortures of a waiting conscience, he bought a whole night's sleep--all
for twenty-five cents!  It should make Wall Street ashamed of itself. On
his way home his heart was joyful, and it sang--profit on top of profit!
The impulse which moved the man to succor the old woman was--FIRST--to
CONTENT HIS OWN SPIRIT; secondly to relieve HER sufferings.  Is it your
opinion that men's acts proceed from one central and unchanging and
inalterable impulse, or from a variety of impulses?

Y.M.  From a variety, of course--some high and fine and noble, others
not.  What is your opinion?

O.M.  Then there is but ONE law, one source.

Y.M.  That both the noblest impulses and the basest proceed from that one
source?

O.M.  Yes.

Y.M.  Will you put that law into words?

O.M.  Yes.  This is the law, keep it in your mind.  FROM HIS CRADLE TO
HIS GRAVE A MAN NEVER DOES A SINGLE THING WHICH HAS ANY FIRST AND
FOREMOST OBJECT BUT ONE--TO SECURE PEACE OF MIND, SPIRITUAL COMFORT, FOR
HIMSELF.

Y.M.  Come!  He never does anything for any one else's comfort, spiritual
or physical?

O.M.  No.  EXCEPT ON THOSE DISTINCT TERMS--that it shall FIRST secure HIS
OWN spiritual comfort.  Otherwise he will not do it.

Y.M.  It will be easy to expose the falsity of that proposition.

O.M.  For instance?

Y.M.  Take that noble passion, love of country, patriotism. A man who
loves peace and dreads pain, leaves his pleasant home and his weeping
family and marches out to manfully expose himself to hunger, cold,
wounds, and death.  Is that seeking spiritual comfort?

O.M.  He loves peace and dreads pain?

Y.M.  Yes.

O.M.  Then perhaps there is something that he loves MORE than he loves
peace--THE APPROVAL OF HIS NEIGHBORS AND THE PUBLIC.  And perhaps there
is something which he dreads more than he dreads pain--the DISAPPROVAL of
his neighbors and the public. If he is sensitive to shame he will go to
the field--not because his spirit will be ENTIRELY comfortable there, but
because it will be more comfortable there than it would be if he remained
at home.  He will always do the thing which will bring him the MOST
mental comfort--for that is THE SOLE LAW OF HIS LIFE.  He leaves the
weeping family behind; he is sorry to make them uncomfortable, but not
sorry enough to sacrifice his OWN comfort to secure theirs.

Y.M.  Do you really believe that mere public opinion could force a timid
and peaceful man to--

O.M.  Go to war?  Yes--public opinion can force some men to do ANYTHING.

Y.M.  ANYTHING?

O.M.  Yes--anything.

Y.M.  I don't believe that.  Can it force a right-principled man to do a
wrong thing?

O.M.  Yes.

Y.M.  Can it force a kind man to do a cruel thing?

O.M.  Yes.

Y.M.  Give an instance.

O.M.  Alexander Hamilton was a conspicuously high-principled man.  He
regarded dueling as wrong, and as opposed to the teachings of
religion--but in deference to PUBLIC OPINION he fought a duel.  He deeply
loved his family, but to buy public approval he treacherously deserted
them and threw his life away, ungenerously leaving them to lifelong
sorrow in order that he might stand well with a foolish world.  In the
then condition of the public standards of honor he could not have been
comfortable with the stigma upon him of having refused to fight.  The
teachings of religion, his devotion to his family, his kindness of heart,
his high principles, all went for nothing when they stood in the way of
his spiritual comfort.  A man will do ANYTHING, no matter what it is, TO
SECURE HIS SPIRITUAL COMFORT; and he can neither be forced nor persuaded
to any act which has not that goal for its object.  Hamilton's act was
compelled by the inborn necessity of contenting his own spirit; in this
it was like all the other acts of his life, and like all the acts of all
men's lives.  Do you see where the kernel of the matter lies? A man
cannot be comfortable without HIS OWN approval.  He will secure the
largest share possible of that, at all costs, all sacrifices.

Y.M.  A minute ago you said Hamilton fought that duel to get PUBLIC
approval.

O.M.  I did.  By refusing to fight the duel he would have secured his
family's approval and a large share of his own; but the public approval
was more valuable in his eyes than all other approvals put together--in
the earth or above it; to secure that would furnish him the MOST comfort
of mind, the most SELF-approval; so he sacrificed all other values to get
it.

Y.M.  Some noble souls have refused to fight duels, and have manfully
braved the public contempt.

O.M.  They acted ACCORDING TO THEIR MAKE.  They valued their principles
and the approval of their families ABOVE the public approval.  They took
the thing they valued MOST and let the rest go.  They took what would
give them the LARGEST share of PERSONAL CONTENTMENT AND APPROVAL--a man
ALWAYS does.  Public opinion cannot force that kind of men to go to the
wars.  When they go it is for other reasons.  Other spirit-contenting
reasons.

Y.M.  Always spirit-contenting reasons?

O.M.  There are no others.

Y.M.  When a man sacrifices his life to save a little child from a
burning building, what do you call that?

O.M.  When he does it, it is the law of HIS make.  HE can't bear to see
the child in that peril (a man of a different make COULD), and so he
tries to save the child, and loses his life. But he has got what he was
after--HIS OWN APPROVAL.

Y.M.  What do you call Love, Hate, Charity, Revenge, Humanity,
Magnanimity, Forgiveness?

O.M.  Different results of the one Master Impulse: the necessity of
securing one's self approval.  They wear diverse clothes and are subject
to diverse moods, but in whatsoever ways they masquerade they are the
SAME PERSON all the time.  To change the figure, the COMPULSION that
moves a man--and there is but the one--is the necessity of securing the
contentment of his own spirit.  When it stops, the man is dead.

Y.M.  That is foolishness.  Love--

O.M.  Why, love is that impulse, that law, in its most uncompromising
form.  It will squander life and everything else on its object.  Not
PRIMARILY for the object's sake, but for ITS OWN.  When its object is
happy IT is happy--and that is what it is unconsciously after.

Y.M.  You do not even except the lofty and gracious passion of
mother-love?

O.M.  No, IT is the absolute slave of that law.  The mother will go naked
to clothe her child; she will starve that it may have food; suffer
torture to save it from pain; die that it may live.  She takes a living
PLEASURE in making these sacrifices. SHE DOES IT FOR THAT REWARD--that
self-approval, that contentment, that peace, that comfort.  SHE WOULD DO
IT FOR YOUR CHILD IF SHE COULD GET THE SAME PAY.

Y.M.  This is an infernal philosophy of yours.

O.M.  It isn't a philosophy, it is a fact.

Y.M.  Of course you must admit that there are some acts which--

O.M.  No.  There is NO act, large or small, fine or mean, which springs
from any motive but the one--the necessity of appeasing and contenting
one's own spirit.

Y.M.  The world's philanthropists--

O.M.  I honor them, I uncover my head to them--from habit and training;
and THEY could not know comfort or happiness or self-approval if they did
not work and spend for the unfortunate. It makes THEM happy to see others
happy; and so with money and labor they buy what they are
after--HAPPINESS, SELF-APPROVAL. Why don't miners do the same thing?
Because they can get a thousandfold more happiness by NOT doing it.
There is no other reason.  They follow the law of their make.

Y.M.  What do you say of duty for duty's sake?

O.M.  That IS DOES NOT EXIST.  Duties are not performed for duty's SAKE,
but because their NEGLECT would make the man UNCOMFORTABLE.  A man
performs but ONE duty--the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of
making himself agreeable to himself.  If he can most satisfyingly perform
this sole and only duty by HELPING his neighbor, he will do it; if he can
most satisfyingly perform it by SWINDLING his neighbor, he will do it.
But he always looks out for Number One--FIRST; the effects upon others
are a SECONDARY matter.  Men pretend to self-sacrifices, but this is a
thing which, in the ordinary value of the phrase, DOES NOT EXIST AND HAS
NOT EXISTED.  A man often honestly THINKS he is sacrificing himself
merely and solely for some one else, but he is deceived; his bottom
impulse is to content a requirement of his nature and training, and thus
acquire peace for his soul.

Y.M.  Apparently, then, all men, both good and bad ones, devote their
lives to contenting their consciences.

O.M.  Yes.  That is a good enough name for it: Conscience--that
independent Sovereign, that insolent absolute Monarch inside of a man who
is the man's Master.  There are all kinds of consciences, because there
are all kinds of men.  You satisfy an assassin's conscience in one way, a
philanthropist's in another, a miser's in another, a burglar's in still
another.  As a GUIDE or INCENTIVE to any authoritatively prescribed line
of morals or conduct (leaving TRAINING out of the account), a man's
conscience is totally valueless.  I know a kind-hearted Kentuckian whose
self-approval was lacking--whose conscience was troubling him, to phrase
it with exactness--BECAUSE HE HAD NEGLECTED TO KILL A CERTAIN MAN--a man
whom he had never seen.  The stranger had killed this man's friend in a
fight, this man's Kentucky training made it a duty to kill the stranger
for it.  He neglected his duty--kept dodging it, shirking it, putting it
off, and his unrelenting conscience kept persecuting him for this
conduct.  At last, to get ease of mind, comfort, self-approval, he hunted
up the stranger and took his life.  It was an immense act of
SELF-SACRIFICE (as per the usual definition), for he did not want to do
it, and he never would have done it if he could have bought a contented
spirit and an unworried mind at smaller cost.  But we are so made that we
will pay ANYTHING for that contentment--even another man's life.

Y.M.  You spoke a moment ago of TRAINED consciences.  You mean that we
are not BORN with consciences competent to guide us aright?

O.M.  If we were, children and savages would know right from wrong, and
not have to be taught it.

Y.M.  But consciences can be TRAINED?

O.M.  Yes.

Y.M.  Of course by parents, teachers, the pulpit, and books.

O.M.  Yes--they do their share; they do what they can.

Y.M.  And the rest is done by--

O.M.  Oh, a million unnoticed influences--for good or bad: influences
which work without rest during every waking moment of a man's life, from
cradle to grave.

Y.M.  You have tabulated these?

O.M.  Many of them--yes.

Y.M.  Will you read me the result?

O.M.  Another time, yes.  It would take an hour.

Y.M.  A conscience can be trained to shun evil and prefer good?

O.M.  Yes.

Y.M.  But will it for spirit-contenting reasons only?

O.M.  It CAN'T be trained to do a thing for any OTHER reason. The thing
is impossible.

Y.M.  There MUST be a genuinely and utterly self-sacrificing act recorded
in human history somewhere.

O.M.  You are young.  You have many years before you. Search one out.

Y.M.  It does seem to me that when a man sees a fellow-being struggling
in the water and jumps in at the risk of his life to save him--

O.M.  Wait.  Describe the MAN.  Describe the FELLOW-BEING. State if there
is an AUDIENCE present; or if they are ALONE.

Y.M.  What have these things to do with the splendid act?

O.M.  Very much.  Shall we suppose, as a beginning, that the two are
alone, in a solitary place, at midnight?

Y.M.  If you choose.

O.M.  And that the fellow-being is the man's daughter?

Y.M.  Well, n-no--make it someone else.

O.M.  A filthy, drunken ruffian, then?

Y.M.  I see.  Circumstances alter cases.  I suppose that if there was no
audience to observe the act, the man wouldn't perform it.

O.M.  But there is here and there a man who WOULD.  People, for instance,
like the man who lost his life trying to save the child from the fire;
and the man who gave the needy old woman his twenty-five cents and walked
home in the storm--there are here and there men like that who would do
it.  And why?  Because they couldn't BEAR to see a fellow-being
struggling in the water and not jump in and help.  It would give THEM
pain.  They would save the fellow-being on that account.  THEY WOULDN'T
DO IT OTHERWISE. They strictly obey the law which I have been insisting
upon.  You must remember and always distinguish the people who CAN'T BEAR
things from people who CAN.  It will throw light upon a number of
apparently "self-sacrificing" cases.

Y.M.  Oh, dear, it's all so disgusting.

O.M.  Yes.  And so true.

Y.M.  Come--take the good boy who does things he doesn't want to do, in
order to gratify his mother.

O.M.  He does seven-tenths of the act because it gratifies HIM to gratify
his mother.  Throw the bulk of advantage the other way and the good boy
would not do the act.  He MUST obey the iron law.  None can escape it.

Y.M.  Well, take the case of a bad boy who--

O.M.  You needn't mention it, it is a waste of time.  It is no matter
about the bad boy's act.  Whatever it was, he had a spirit-contenting
reason for it.  Otherwise you have been misinformed, and he didn't do it.

Y.M.  It is very exasperating.  A while ago you said that man's
conscience is not a born judge of morals and conduct, but has to be
taught and trained.  Now I think a conscience can get drowsy and lazy,
but I don't think it can go wrong; if you wake it up--

A Little Story

O.M.  I will tell you a little story:

Once upon a time an Infidel was guest in the house of a Christian widow
whose little boy was ill and near to death.  The Infidel often watched by
the bedside and entertained the boy with talk, and he used these
opportunities to satisfy a strong longing in his nature--that desire
which is in us all to better other people's condition by having them
think as we think.  He was successful.  But the dying boy, in his last
moments, reproached him and said:

"I BELIEVED, AND WAS HAPPY IN IT; YOU HAVE TAKEN MY BELIEF AWAY, AND MY
COMFORT.  NOW I HAVE NOTHING LEFT, AND I DIE MISERABLE; FOR THE THINGS
WHICH YOU HAVE TOLD ME DO NOT TAKE THE PLACE OF THAT WHICH I HAVE LOST."

And the mother, also, reproached the Infidel, and said:

"MY CHILD IS FOREVER LOST, AND MY HEART IS BROKEN.  HOW COULD YOU DO THIS
CRUEL THING?  WE HAVE DONE YOU NO HARM, BUT ONLY KINDNESS; WE MADE OUR
HOUSE YOUR HOME, YOU WERE WELCOME TO ALL WE HAD, AND THIS IS OUR REWARD."

The heart of the Infidel was filled with remorse for what he had done,
and he said:

"IT WAS WRONG--I SEE IT NOW; BUT I WAS ONLY TRYING TO DO HIM GOOD.  IN MY
VIEW HE WAS IN ERROR; IT SEEMED MY DUTY TO TEACH HIM THE TRUTH."

Then the mother said:

"I HAD TAUGHT HIM, ALL HIS LITTLE LIFE, WHAT I BELIEVED TO BE THE TRUTH,
AND IN HIS BELIEVING FAITH BOTH OF US WERE HAPPY. NOW HE IS DEAD,--AND
LOST; AND I AM MISERABLE.  OUR FAITH CAME DOWN TO US THROUGH CENTURIES OF
BELIEVING ANCESTORS; WHAT RIGHT HAD YOU, OR ANY ONE, TO DISTURB IT?
WHERE WAS YOUR HONOR, WHERE WAS YOUR SHAME?"

Y.M.  He was a miscreant, and deserved death!

O.M.  He thought so himself, and said so.

Y.M.  Ah--you see, HIS CONSCIENCE WAS AWAKENED!

O.M.  Yes, his Self-Disapproval was.  It PAINED him to see the mother
suffer.  He was sorry he had done a thing which brought HIM pain.  It did
not occur to him to think of the mother when he was misteaching the boy,
for he was absorbed in providing PLEASURE for himself, then.  Providing
it by satisfying what he believed to be a call of duty.

Y.M.  Call it what you please, it is to me a case of AWAKENED CONSCIENCE.
That awakened conscience could never get itself into that species of
trouble again.  A cure like that is a PERMANENT cure.

O.M.  Pardon--I had not finished the story.  We are creatures of OUTSIDE
INFLUENCES--we originate NOTHING within. Whenever we take a new line of
thought and drift into a new line of belief and action, the impulse is
ALWAYS suggested from the OUTSIDE.  Remorse so preyed upon the Infidel
that it dissolved his harshness toward the boy's religion and made him
come to regard it with tolerance, next with kindness, for the boy's sake
and the mother's.  Finally he found himself examining it.  From that
moment his progress in his new trend was steady and rapid. He became a
believing Christian.  And now his remorse for having robbed the dying boy
of his faith and his salvation was bitterer than ever.  It gave him no
rest, no peace.  He MUST have rest and peace--it is the law of nature.
There seemed but one way to get it; he must devote himself to saving
imperiled souls.  He became a missionary.  He landed in a pagan country
ill and helpless.  A native widow took him into her humble home and
nursed him back to convalescence.  Then her young boy was taken
hopelessly ill, and the grateful missionary helped her tend him.  Here
was his first opportunity to repair a part of the wrong done to the other
boy by doing a precious service for this one by undermining his foolish
faith in his false gods.  He was successful.  But the dying boy in his
last moments reproached him and said:

"I BELIEVED, AND WAS HAPPY IN IT; YOU HAVE TAKEN MY BELIEF AWAY, AND MY
COMFORT.  NOW I HAVE NOTHING LEFT, AND I DIE MISERABLE; FOR THE THINGS
WHICH YOU HAVE TOLD ME DO NOT TAKE THE PLACE OF THAT WHICH I HAVE LOST."

And the mother, also, reproached the missionary, and said:

"MY CHILD IS FOREVER LOST, AND MY HEART IS BROKEN.  HOW COULD YOU DO THIS
CRUEL THING?  WE HAD DONE YOU NO HARM, BUT ONLY KINDNESS; WE MADE OUR
HOUSE YOUR HOME, YOU WERE WELCOME TO ALL WE HAD, AND THIS IS OUR REWARD."

The heart of the missionary was filled with remorse for what he had done,
and he said:

"IT WAS WRONG--I SEE IT NOW; BUT I WAS ONLY TRYING TO DO HIM GOOD.  IN MY
VIEW HE WAS IN ERROR; IT SEEMED MY DUTY TO TEACH HIM THE TRUTH."

Then the mother said:

"I HAD TAUGHT HIM, ALL HIS LITTLE LIFE, WHAT I BELIEVED TO BE THE TRUTH,
AND IN HIS BELIEVING FAITH BOTH OF US WERE HAPPY. NOW HE IS DEAD--AND
LOST; AND I AM MISERABLE.  OUR FAITH CAME DOWN TO US THROUGH CENTURIES OF
BELIEVING ANCESTORS; WHAT RIGHT HAD YOU, OR ANY ONE, TO DISTURB IT?
WHERE WAS YOUR HONOR, WHERE WAS YOUR SHAME?"

The missionary's anguish of remorse and sense of treachery were as bitter
and persecuting and unappeasable, now, as they had been in the former
case.  The story is finished.  What is your comment?

Y.M.  The man's conscience is a fool!  It was morbid.  It didn't know
right from wrong.

O.M.  I am not sorry to hear you say that.  If you grant that ONE man's
conscience doesn't know right from wrong, it is an admission that there
are others like it.  This single admission pulls down the whole doctrine
of infallibility of judgment in consciences.  Meantime there is one thing
which I ask you to notice.

Y.M.  What is that?

O.M.  That in both cases the man's ACT gave him no spiritual discomfort,
and that he was quite satisfied with it and got pleasure out of it.  But
afterward when it resulted in PAIN to HIM, he was sorry.  Sorry it had
inflicted pain upon the others, BUT FOR NO REASON UNDER THE SUN EXCEPT
THAT THEIR PAIN GAVE HIM PAIN.  Our consciences take NO notice of pain
inflicted upon others until it reaches a point where it gives pain to US.
In ALL cases without exception we are absolutely indifferent to another
person's pain until his sufferings make us uncomfortable. Many an infidel
would not have been troubled by that Christian mother's distress.  Don't
you believe that?

Y.M.  Yes.  You might almost say it of the AVERAGE infidel, I think.

O.M.  And many a missionary,  sternly fortified by his sense of duty,
would not have been troubled by the pagan mother's distress--Jesuit
missionaries in Canada in the early French times, for instance; see
episodes quoted by Parkman.

Y.M.  Well, let us adjourn.  Where have we arrived?

O.M.  At this.  That we (mankind) have ticketed ourselves with a number
of qualities to which we have given misleading names.  Love, Hate,
Charity, Compassion, Avarice, Benevolence, and so on.  I mean we attach
misleading MEANINGS to the names. They are all forms of self-contentment,
self-gratification, but the names so disguise them that they distract our
attention from the fact.  Also we have smuggled a word into the
dictionary which ought not to be there at all--Self-Sacrifice.  It
describes a thing which does not exist.  But worst of all, we ignore and
never mention the Sole Impulse which dictates and compels a man's every
act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every
emergency and at all costs.  To it we owe all that we are.  It is our
breath, our heart, our blood.  It is our only spur, our whip, our goad,
our only impelling power; we have no other.  Without it we should be mere
inert images, corpses; no one would do anything, there would be no
progress, the world would stand still.  We ought to stand reverently
uncovered when the name of that stupendous power is uttered.

Y.M.  I am not convinced.

O.M.  You will be when you think.

III

Instances in Point

Old Man.  Have you given thought to the Gospel of Self-Approval since we
talked?

Young Man.  I have.

O.M.  It was I that moved you to it.  That is to say an OUTSIDE INFLUENCE
moved you to it--not one that originated in your head.  Will you try to
keep that in mind and not forget it?

Y.M.  Yes.  Why?

O.M.  Because by and by in one of our talks, I wish to further impress
upon you that neither you, nor I, nor any man ever originates a thought
in his own head.  THE UTTERER OF A THOUGHT ALWAYS UTTERS A SECOND-HAND
ONE.

Y.M.  Oh, now--

O.M.  Wait.  Reserve your remark till we get to that part of our
discussion--tomorrow or next day, say.  Now, then, have you been
considering the proposition that no act is ever born of any but a
self-contenting impulse--(primarily).  You have sought. What have you
found?

Y.M.  I have not been very fortunate.  I have examined many fine and
apparently self-sacrificing deeds in romances and biographies, but--

O.M.  Under searching analysis the ostensible self-sacrifice disappeared?
It naturally would.

Y.M.  But here in this novel is one which seems to promise. In the
Adirondack woods is a wage-earner and lay preacher in the lumber-camps
who is of noble character and deeply religious.  An earnest and practical
laborer in the New York slums comes up there on vacation--he is leader of
a section of the University Settlement.  Holme, the lumberman, is fired
with a desire to throw away his excellent worldly prospects and go down
and save souls on the East Side.  He counts it happiness to make this
sacrifice for the glory of God and for the cause of Christ.  He resigns
his place, makes the sacrifice cheerfully, and goes to the East Side and
preaches Christ and Him crucified every day and every night to little
groups of half-civilized foreign paupers who scoff at him.  But he
rejoices in the scoffings, since he is suffering them in the great cause
of Christ.  You have so filled my mind with suspicions that I was
constantly expecting to find a hidden questionable impulse back of all
this, but I am thankful to say I have failed.  This man saw his duty, and
for DUTY'S SAKE he sacrificed self and assumed the burden it imposed.

O.M.  Is that as far as you have read?

Y.M.  Yes.

O.M.  Let us read further, presently.  Meantime, in sacrificing
himself--NOT for the glory of God, PRIMARILY, as HE imagined, but FIRST
to content that exacting and inflexible master within him--DID HE
SACRIFICE ANYBODY ELSE?

Y.M.  How do you mean?

O.M.  He relinquished a lucrative post and got mere food and lodging in
place of it.  Had he dependents?

Y.M.  Well--yes.

O.M.  In what way and to what extend did his self-sacrifice affect THEM?

Y.M.  He was the support of a superannuated father.  He had a young
sister with a remarkable voice--he was giving her a musical education, so
that her longing to be self-supporting might be gratified.  He was
furnishing the money to put a young brother through a polytechnic school
and satisfy his desire to become a civil engineer.

O.M.  The old father's comforts were now curtailed?

Y.M.  Quite seriously.  Yes.

O.M.  The sister's music-lessens had to stop?

Y.M.  Yes.

O.M.  The young brother's education--well, an extinguishing blight fell
upon that happy dream, and he had to go to sawing wood to support the old
father, or something like that?

Y.M.  It is about what happened.  Yes.

O.M.  What a handsome job of self-sacrificing he did do!  It seems to me
that he sacrificed everybody EXCEPT himself.  Haven't I told you that no
man EVER sacrifices himself; that there is no instance of it upon record
anywhere; and that when a man's Interior Monarch requires a thing of its
slave for either its MOMENTARY or its PERMANENT contentment, that thing
must and will be furnished and that command obeyed, no matter who may
stand in the way and suffer disaster by it?  That man RUINED HIS FAMILY
to please and content his Interior Monarch--

Y.M.  And help Christ's cause.

O.M.  Yes--SECONDLY.  Not firstly.  HE thought it was firstly.

Y.M.  Very well, have it so, if you will.  But it could be that he argued
that if he saved a hundred souls in New York--

O.M.  The sacrifice of the FAMILY would be justified by that great profit
upon the--the--what shall we call it?

Y.M.  Investment?

O.M.  Hardly.  How would SPECULATION do?  How would GAMBLE do?  Not a
solitary soul-capture was sure.  He played for a possible
thirty-three-hundred-per-cent profit.  It was GAMBLING--with his family
for "chips."  However let us see how the game came out.  Maybe we can get
on the track of the secret original impulse, the REAL impulse, that moved
him to so nobly self-sacrifice his family in the Savior's cause under the
superstition that he was sacrificing himself.  I will read a chapter or
so. . . . Here we have it!  It was bound to expose itself sooner or
later.  He preached to the East-Side rabble a season, then went back to
his old dull, obscure life in the lumber-camps "HURT TO THE HEART, HIS
PRIDE HUMBLED."  Why?  Were not his efforts acceptable to the Savior, for
Whom alone they were made?  Dear me, that detail is LOST SIGHT OF, is not
even referred to, the fact that it started out as a motive is entirely
forgotten!  Then what is the trouble?  The authoress quite innocently and
unconsciously gives the whole business away.  The trouble was this: this
man merely PREACHED to the poor; that is not the University Settlement's
way; it deals in larger and better things than that, and it did not
enthuse over that crude Salvation-Army eloquence.  It was courteous to
Holme--but cool.  It did not pet him, did not take him to its bosom.
"PERISHED WERE ALL HIS DREAMS OF DISTINCTION, THE PRAISE AND GRATEFUL
APPROVAL--"  Of whom?  The Savior?  No; the Savior is not mentioned.  Of
whom, then?  Of "His FELLOW-WORKERS."  Why did he want that?  Because the
Master inside of him wanted it, and would not be content without it.
That emphasized sentence quoted above, reveals the secret we have been
seeking, the original impulse, the REAL impulse, which moved the obscure
and unappreciated Adirondack lumberman to sacrifice his family and go on
that crusade to the East Side--which said original impulse was this, to
wit: without knowing it HE WENT THERE TO SHOW A NEGLECTED WORLD THE LARGE
TALENT THAT WAS IN HIM, AND RISE TO DISTINCTION.  As I have warned you
before, NO act springs from any but the one law, the one motive.  But I
pray you, do not accept this law upon my say-so; but diligently examine
for yourself.  Whenever you read of a self-sacrificing act or hear of
one, or of a duty done for DUTY'S SAKE, take it to pieces and look for
the REAL motive.  It is always there.

Y.M.  I do it every day.  I cannot help it, now that I have gotten
started upon the degrading and exasperating quest.  For it is hatefully
interesting!--in fact, fascinating is the word.  As soon as I come across
a golden deed in a book I have to stop and take it apart and examine it,
I cannot help myself.

O.M.  Have you ever found one that defeated the rule?

Y.M.  No--at least, not yet.  But take the case of servant-tipping in
Europe.  You pay the HOTEL for service; you owe the servants NOTHING, yet
you pay them besides.  Doesn't that defeat it?

O.M.  In what way?

Y.M.  You are not OBLIGED to do it, therefore its source is compassion
for their ill-paid condition, and--

O.M.  Has that custom ever vexed you, annoyed you, irritated you?

Y.M.  Well, yes.

O.M.  Still you succumbed to it?

Y.M.  Of course.

O.M.  Why of course?

Y.M.  Well, custom is law, in a way, and laws must be submitted
to--everybody recognizes it as a DUTY.

O.M.  Then you pay for the irritating tax for DUTY'S sake?

Y.M.  I suppose it amounts to that.

O.M.  Then the impulse which moves you to submit to the tax is not ALL
compassion, charity, benevolence?

Y.M.  Well--perhaps not.

O.M.  Is ANY of it?

Y.M.  I--perhaps I was too hasty in locating its source.

O.M.  Perhaps so.  In case you ignored the custom would you get prompt
and effective service from the servants?

Y.M.  Oh, hear yourself talk!  Those European servants? Why, you wouldn't
get any of all, to speak of.

O.M.  Couldn't THAT work as an impulse to move you to pay the tax?

Y.M.  I am not denying it.

O.M.  Apparently, then, it is a case of for-duty's-sake with a little
self-interest added?

Y.M.  Yes, it has the look of it.  But here is a point: we pay that tax
knowing it to be unjust and an extortion; yet we go away with a pain at
the heart if we think we have been stingy with the poor fellows; and we
heartily wish we were back again, so that we could do the right thing,
and MORE than the right thing, the GENEROUS thing.  I think it will be
difficult for you to find any thought of self in that impulse.

O.M.  I wonder why you should think so.  When you find service charged in
the HOTEL bill does it annoy you?

Y.M.  No.

O.M.  Do you ever complain of the amount of it?

Y.M.  No, it would not occur to me.

O.M.  The EXPENSE, then, is not the annoying detail.  It is a fixed
charge, and you pay it cheerfully, you pay it without a murmur.  When you
came to pay the servants, how would you like it if each of the men and
maids had a fixed charge?

Y.M.  Like it?  I should rejoice!

O.M.  Even if the fixed tax were a shade MORE than you had been in the
habit of paying in the form of tips?

Y.M.  Indeed, yes!

O.M.  Very well, then.  As I understand it, it isn't really compassion
nor yet duty that moves you to pay the tax, and it isn't the AMOUNT of
the tax that annoys you.  Yet SOMETHING annoys you.  What is it?

Y.M.  Well, the trouble is, you never know WHAT to pay, the tax varies
so, all over Europe.

O.M.  So you have to guess?

Y.M.  There is no other way.  So you go on thinking and thinking, and
calculating and guessing, and consulting with other people and getting
their views; and it spoils your sleep nights, and makes you distraught in
the daytime, and while you are pretending to look at the sights you are
only guessing and guessing and guessing all the time, and being worried
and miserable.

O.M.  And all about a debt which you don't owe and don't have to pay
unless you want to!  Strange.  What is the purpose of the guessing?

Y.M.  To guess out what is right to give them, and not be unfair to any
of them.

O.M.  It has quite a noble look--taking so much pains and using up so
much valuable time in order to be just and fair to a poor servant to whom
you owe nothing, but who needs money and is ill paid.

Y.M.  I think, myself, that if there is any ungracious motive back of it
it will be hard to find.

O.M.  How do you know when you have not paid a servant fairly?

Y.M.  Why, he is silent; does not thank you.  Sometimes he gives you a
look that makes you ashamed.  You are too proud to rectify your mistake
there, with people looking, but afterward you keep on wishing and wishing
you HAD done it.  My, the shame and the pain of it!  Sometimes you see,
by the signs, that you have it JUST RIGHT, and you go away mightily
satisfied. Sometimes the man is so effusively thankful that you know you
have given him a good deal MORE than was necessary.

O.M.  NECESSARY?  Necessary for what?

Y.M.  To content him.

O.M.  How do you feel THEN?

Y.M.  Repentant.

O.M.  It is my belief that you have NOT been concerning yourself in
guessing out his just dues, but only in ciphering out what would CONTENT
him.  And I think you have a self-deluding reason for that.

Y.M.  What was it?

O.M.  If you fell short of what he was expecting and wanting, you would
get a look which would SHAME YOU BEFORE FOLK. That would give you PAIN.
YOU--for you are only working for yourself, not HIM.  If you gave him too
much you would be ASHAMED OF YOURSELF for it, and that would give YOU
pain--another case of thinking of YOURSELF, protecting yourself, SAVING
YOURSELF FROM DISCOMFORT.  You never think of the servant once--except to
guess out how to get HIS APPROVAL.  If you get that, you get your OWN
approval, and that is the sole and only thing you are after.  The Master
inside of you is then satisfied, contented, comfortable; there was NO
OTHER thing at stake, as a matter of FIRST interest, anywhere in the
transaction.



Further Instances

Y.M.  Well, to think of it; Self-Sacrifice for others, the grandest thing
in man, ruled out! non-existent!

O.M.  Are you accusing me of saying that?

Y.M.  Why, certainly.

O.M.  I haven't said it.

Y.M.  What did you say, then?

O.M.  That no man has ever sacrificed himself in the common meaning of
that phrase--which is, self-sacrifice for another ALONE.  Men make daily
sacrifices for others, but it is for their own sake FIRST.  The act must
content their own spirit FIRST. The other beneficiaries come second.

Y.M.  And the same with duty for duty's sake?

O.M.  Yes.  No man performs a duty for mere duty's sake; the act must
content his spirit FIRST.  He must feel better for DOING the duty than he
would for shirking it.  Otherwise he will not do it.

Y.M.  Take the case of the BERKELEY CASTLE.

O.M.  It was a noble duty, greatly performed.  Take it to pieces and
examine it, if you like.

Y.M.  A British troop-ship crowded with soldiers and their wives and
children.  She struck a rock and began to sink.  There was room in the
boats for the women and children only.  The colonel lined up his regiment
on the deck and said "it is our duty to die, that they may be saved."
There was no murmur, no protest.  The boats carried away the women and
children.  When the death-moment was come, the colonel and his officers
took their several posts, the men stood at shoulder-arms, and so, as on
dress-parade, with their flag flying and the drums beating, they went
down, a sacrifice to duty for duty's sake.  Can you view it as other than
that?

O.M.  It was something as fine as that, as exalted as that. Could you
have remained in those ranks and gone down to your death in that
unflinching way?

Y.M.  Could I?  No, I could not.

O.M.  Think.  Imagine yourself there, with that watery doom creeping
higher and higher around you.

Y.M.  I can imagine it.  I feel all the horror of it.  I could not have
endured it, I could not have remained in my place. I know it.

O.M.  Why?

Y.M.  There is no why about it: I know myself, and I know I couldn't DO
it.

O.M.  But it would be your DUTY to do it.

Y.M.  Yes, I know--but I couldn't.

O.M.  It was more than thousand men, yet not one of them flinched.  Some
of them must have been born with your temperament; if they could do that
great duty for duty's SAKE, why not you?  Don't you know that you could
go out and gather together a thousand clerks and mechanics and put them
on that deck and ask them to die for duty's sake, and not two dozen of
them would stay in the ranks to the end?

Y.M.  Yes, I know that.

O.M.  But you TRAIN them, and put them through a campaign or two; then
they would be soldiers; soldiers, with a soldier's pride, a soldier's
self-respect, a soldier's ideals.  They would have to content a SOLDIER'S
spirit then, not a clerk's, not a mechanic's.  They could not content
that spirit by shirking a soldier's duty, could they?

Y.M.  I suppose not.

O.M.  Then they would do the duty not for the DUTY'S sake, but for their
OWN sake--primarily.  The DUTY was JUST THE SAME, and just as imperative,
when they were clerks, mechanics, raw recruits, but they wouldn't perform
it for that.  As clerks and mechanics they had other ideals, another
spirit to satisfy, and they satisfied it.  They HAD to; it is the law.
TRAINING is potent.  Training toward higher and higher, and ever higher
ideals is worth any man's thought and labor and diligence.

Y.M.  Consider the man who stands by his duty and goes to the stake
rather than be recreant to it.


O.M.  It is his make and his training.  He has to content the spirit that
is in him, though it cost him his life.  Another man, just as sincerely
religious, but of different temperament, will fail of that duty, though
recognizing it as a duty, and grieving to be unequal to it: but he must
content the spirit that is in him--he cannot help it.  He could not
perform that duty for duty's SAKE, for that would not content his spirit,
and the contenting of his spirit must be looked to FIRST.  It takes
precedence of all other duties.

Y.M.  Take the case of a clergyman of stainless private morals who votes
for a thief for public office, on his own party's ticket, and against an
honest man on the other ticket.

O.M.  He has to content his spirit.  He has no public morals; he has no
private ones, where his party's prosperity is at stake.  He will always
be true to his make and training.

IV

Training

Young Man.  You keep using that word--training.  By it do you
particularly mean--

Old Man.  Study, instruction, lectures, sermons?  That is a part of
it--but not a large part.  I mean ALL the outside influences.  There are
a million of them.  From the cradle to the grave, during all his waking
hours, the human being is under training.  In the very first rank of his
trainers stands ASSOCIATION.  It is his human environment which
influences his mind and his feelings, furnishes him his ideals, and sets
him on his road and keeps him in it.  If he leave that road he will find
himself shunned by the people whom he most loves and esteems, and whose
approval he most values.  He is a chameleon; by the law of his nature he
takes the color of his place of resort.  The influences about him create
his preferences, his aversions, his politics, his tastes, his morals, his
religion.  He creates none of these things for himself.  He THINKS he
does, but that is because he has not examined into the matter.  You have
seen Presbyterians?

Y.M.  Many.

O.M.  How did they happen to be Presbyterians and not Congregationalists?
And why were the Congregationalists not Baptists, and the Baptists Roman
Catholics, and the Roman Catholics Buddhists, and the Buddhists Quakers,
and the Quakers Episcopalians, and the Episcopalians Millerites and the
Millerites Hindus, and the Hindus Atheists, and the Atheists
Spiritualists, and the Spiritualists Agnostics, and the Agnostics
Methodists, and the Methodists Confucians, and the Confucians Unitarians,
and the Unitarians Mohammedans, and the Mohammedans Salvation Warriors,
and the Salvation Warriors Zoroastrians, and the Zoroastrians Christian
Scientists, and the Christian Scientists Mormons--and so on?

Y.M.  You may answer your question yourself.

O.M.  That list of sects is not a record of STUDIES, searchings, seekings
after light; it mainly (and sarcastically) indicates what ASSOCIATION can
do.  If you know a man's nationality you can come within a split hair of
guessing the complexion of his religion: English--Protestant; American
--ditto; Spaniard, Frenchman, Irishman, Italian, South American--Roman
Catholic; Russian--Greek Catholic; Turk--Mohammedan; and so on.  And when
you know the man's religious complexion, you know what sort of religious
books he reads when he wants some more light, and what sort of books he
avoids, lest by accident he get more light than he wants.  In America if
you know which party-collar a voter wears, you know what his associations
are, and how he came by his politics, and which breed of newspaper he
reads to get light, and which breed he diligently avoids, and which breed
of mass-meetings he attends in order to broaden his political knowledge,
and which breed of mass-meetings he doesn't attend, except to refute its
doctrines with brickbats.  We are always hearing of people who are around
SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.  I have never seen a (permanent) specimen.  I think
he had never lived. But I have seen several entirely sincere people who
THOUGHT they were (permanent) Seekers after Truth.  They sought
diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect
honesty and nicely adjusted judgment--until they believed that without
doubt or question they had found the Truth.  THAT WAS THE END OF THE
SEARCH.  The man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith
to protect his Truth from the weather.  If he was seeking after political
Truth he found it in one or another of the hundred political gospels
which govern men in the earth; if he was seeking after the Only True
Religion he found it in one or another of the three thousand that are on
the market.  In any case, when he found the Truth HE SOUGHT NO FURTHER;
but from that day forth, with his soldering-iron in one hand and his
bludgeon in the other he tinkered its leaks and reasoned with objectors.
There have been innumerable Temporary Seekers of Truth--have you ever
heard of a permanent one?  In the very nature of man such a person is
impossible.  However, to drop back to the text--training: all training
is one from or another of OUTSIDE INFLUENCE, and ASSOCIATION is the
largest part of it.  A man is never anything but what his outside
influences have made him. They train him downward or they train him
upward--but they TRAIN him; they are at work upon him all the time.

Y.M.  Then if he happen by the accidents of life to be evilly placed
there is no help for him, according to your notions--he must train
downward.

O.M.  No help for him?  No help for this chameleon?  It is a mistake.  It
is in his chameleonship that his greatest good fortune lies.  He has only
to change his habitat--his ASSOCIATIONS.  But the impulse to do it must
come from the OUTSIDE--he cannot originate it himself, with that purpose
in view.  Sometimes a very small and accidental thing can furnish him the
initiatory impulse and start him on a new road, with a new idea.  The
chance remark of a sweetheart, "I hear that you are a coward," may water
a seed that shall sprout and bloom and flourish, and ended in producing a
surprising fruitage--in the fields of war.  The history of man is full of
such accidents. The accident of a broken leg brought a profane and ribald
soldier under religious influences and furnished him a new ideal.  From
that accident sprang the Order of the Jesuits, and it has been shaking
thrones, changing policies, and doing other tremendous work for two
hundred years--and will go on.  The chance reading of a book or of a
paragraph in a newspaper can start a man on a new track and make him
renounce his old associations and seek new ones that are IN SYMPATHY WITH
HIS NEW IDEAL: and the result, for that man, can be an entire change of
his way of life.

Y.M.  Are you hinting at a scheme of procedure?

O.M.  Not a new one--an old one.  Old as mankind.

Y.M.  What is it?

O.M.  Merely the laying of traps for people.  Traps baited with
INITIATORY IMPULSES TOWARD HIGH IDEALS.  It is what the tract-distributor
does.  It is what the missionary does.  It is what governments ought to
do.

Y.M.  Don't they?

O.M.  In one way they do, in another they don't.  They separate the
smallpox patients from the healthy people, but in dealing with crime they
put the healthy into the pest-house along with the sick.  That is to say,
they put the beginners in with the confirmed criminals.  This would be
well if man were naturally inclined to good, but he isn't, and so
ASSOCIATION makes the beginners worse than they were when they went into
captivity.  It is putting a very severe punishment upon the comparatively
innocent at times.  They hang a man--which is a trifling punishment; this
breaks the hearts of his family--which is a heavy one.  They comfortably
jail and feed a wife-beater, and leave his innocent wife and family to
starve.

Y.M.  Do you believe in the doctrine that man is equipped with an
intuitive perception of good and evil?

O.M.  Adam hadn't it.

Y.M.  But has man acquired it since?

O.M.  No.  I think he has no intuitions of any kind.  He gets ALL his
ideas, all his impressions, from the outside.  I keep repeating this, in
the hope that I may impress it upon you that you will be interested to
observe and examine for yourself and see whether it is true or false.

Y.M.  Where did you get your own aggravating notions?

O.M.  From the OUTSIDE.  I did not invent them.  They are gathered from a
thousand unknown sources.  Mainly UNCONSCIOUSLY gathered.

Y.M.  Don't you believe that God could make an inherently honest man?

O.M.  Yes, I know He could.  I also know that He never did make one.

Y.M.  A wiser observer than you has recorded the fact that "an honest
man's the noblest work of God."

O.M.  He didn't record a fact, he recorded a falsity.  It is windy, and
sounds well, but it is not true.  God makes a man with honest and
dishonest POSSIBILITIES in him and stops there.  The man's ASSOCIATIONS
develop the possibilities--the one set or the other. The result is
accordingly an honest man or a dishonest one.

Y.M.  And the honest one is not entitled to--

O.M.  Praise?  No.  How often must I tell you that?  HE is not the
architect of his honesty.

Y.M.  Now then, I will ask you where there is any sense in training
people to lead virtuous lives.  What is gained by it?

O.M.  The man himself gets large advantages out of it, and that is the
main thing--to HIM.  He is not a peril to his neighbors, he is not a
damage to them--and so THEY get an advantage out of his virtues.  That is
the main thing to THEM. It can make this life comparatively comfortable
to the parties concerned; the NEGLECT of this training can make this life
a constant peril and distress to the parties concerned.

Y.M.  You have said that training is everything; that training is the man
HIMSELF, for it makes him what he is.

O.M.  I said training and ANOTHER thing.  Let that other thing pass, for
the moment.  What were you going to say?

Y.M.  We have an old servant.  She has been with us twenty-two years.
Her service used to be faultless, but now she has become very forgetful.
We are all fond of her; we all recognize that she cannot help the
infirmity which age has brought her; the rest of the family do not scold
her for her remissnesses, but at times I do--I can't seem to control
myself.  Don't I try?  I do try.  Now, then, when I was ready to dress,
this morning, no clean clothes had been put out.  I lost my temper; I
lose it easiest and quickest in the early morning.  I rang; and
immediately began to warn myself not to show temper, and to be careful
and speak gently.  I safe-guarded myself most carefully. I even chose the
very word I would use: "You've forgotten the clean clothes, Jane."  When
she appeared in the door I opened my mouth to say that phrase--and out of
it, moved by an instant surge of passion which I was not expecting and
hadn't time to put under control, came the hot rebuke, "You've forgotten
them again!"  You say a man always does the thing which will best please
his Interior Master.  Whence came the impulse to make careful preparation
to save the girl the humiliation of a rebuke? Did that come from the
Master, who is always primarily concerned about HIMSELF?

O.M.  Unquestionably.  There is no other source for any impulse.
SECONDARILY you made preparation to save the girl, but PRIMARILY its
object was to save yourself, by contenting the Master.

Y.M.  How do you mean?

O.M.  Has any member of the family ever implored you to watch your temper
and not fly out at the girl?

Y.M.  Yes.  My mother.

O.M.  You love her?

Y.M.  Oh, more than that!

O.M.  You would always do anything in your power to please her?

Y.M.  It is a delight to me to do anything to please her!

O.M.  Why?  YOU WOULD DO IT FOR PAY, SOLELY--for PROFIT. What profit
would you expect and certainly receive from the investment?

Y.M.  Personally?  None.  To please HER is enough.

O.M.  It appears, then, that your object, primarily, WASN'T to save the
girl a humiliation, but to PLEASE YOUR MOTHER.  It also appears that to
please your mother gives YOU a strong pleasure.  Is not that the profit
which you get out of the investment?  Isn't that the REAL profits and
FIRST profit?

Y.M.  Oh, well?  Go on.

O.M.  In ALL transactions, the Interior Master looks to it that YOU GET
THE FIRST PROFIT.  Otherwise there is no transaction.

Y.M.  Well, then, if I was so anxious to get that profit and so intent
upon it, why did I threw it away by losing my temper?

O.M.  In order to get ANOTHER profit which suddenly superseded it in
value.

Y.M.  Where was it?

O.M.  Ambushed behind your born temperament, and waiting for a chance.
Your native warm temper suddenly jumped to the front, and FOR THE MOMENT
its influence was more powerful than your mother's, and abolished it.  In
that instance you were eager to flash out a hot rebuke and enjoy it.  You
did enjoy it, didn't you?

Y.M.  For--for a quarter of a second.  Yes--I did.

O.M.  Very well, it is as I have said: the thing which will give you the
MOST pleasure, the most satisfaction, in any moment or FRACTION of a
moment, is the thing you will always do.  You must content the Master's
LATEST whim, whatever it may be.

Y.M.  But when the tears came into the old servant's eyes I could have
cut my hand off for what I had done.

O.M.  Right.  You had humiliated YOURSELF, you see, you had given
yourself PAIN.  Nothing is of FIRST importance to a man except results
which damage HIM or profit him--all the rest is SECONDARY.  Your Master
was displeased with you, although you had obeyed him.  He required a
prompt REPENTANCE; you obeyed again; you HAD to--there is never any
escape from his commands.  He is a hard master and fickle; he changes his
mind in the fraction of a second, but you must be ready to obey, and you
will obey, ALWAYS. If he requires repentance, you content him, you will
always furnish it.  He must be nursed, petted, coddled, and kept
contented, let the terms be what they may.

Y.M.  Training!  Oh, what's the use of it?  Didn't I, and didn't my
mother try to train me up to where I would no longer fly out at that
girl?

O.M.  Have you never managed to keep back a scolding?

Y.M.  Oh, certainly--many times.

O.M.  More times this year than last?

Y.M.  Yes, a good many more.

O.M.  More times last year than the year before?

Y.M.  Yes.

O.M.  There is a large improvement, then, in the two years?

Y.M.  Yes, undoubtedly.

O.M.  Then your question is answered.  You see there IS use in training.
Keep on.  Keeping faithfully on.  You are doing well.

Y.M.  Will my reform reach perfection?

O.M.  It will.  UP to YOUR limit.

Y.M.  My limit?  What do you mean by that?

O.M.  You remember that you said that I said training was EVERYTHING.  I
corrected you, and said "training and ANOTHER thing."  That other thing
is TEMPERAMENT--that is, the disposition you were born with.  YOU CAN'T
ERADICATE YOUR DISPOSITION NOR ANY RAG OF IT--you can only put a pressure
on it and keep it down and quiet.  You have a warm temper?

Y.M.  Yes.

O.M.  You will never get rid of it; but by watching it you can keep it
down nearly all the time.  ITS PRESENCE IS YOUR LIMIT.  Your reform will
never quite reach perfection, for your temper will beat you now and then,
but you come near enough.  You have made valuable progress and can make
more.  There IS use in training.  Immense use.  Presently you will reach
a new stage of development, then your progress will be easier; will
proceed on a simpler basis, anyway.

Y.M.  Explain.

O.M.  You keep back your scoldings now, to please YOURSELF by pleasing
your MOTHER; presently the mere triumphing over your temper will delight
your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and satisfaction upon
you than even the approbation of your MOTHER confers upon you now.  You
will then labor for yourself directly and at FIRST HAND, not by the
roundabout way through your mother.  It simplifies the matter, and it
also strengthens the impulse.

Y.M.  Ah, dear!  But I sha'n't ever reach the point where I will spare
the girl for HER sake PRIMARILY, not mine?

O.M.  Why--yes.  In heaven.

Y.M.  (AFTER A REFLECTIVE PAUSE)  Temperament.  Well, I see one must
allow for temperament.  It is a large factor, sure enough.  My mother is
thoughtful, and not hot-tempered.  When I was dressed I went to her room;
she was not there; I called, she answered from the bathroom.  I heard the
water running.  I inquired.  She answered, without temper, that Jane had
forgotten her bath, and she was preparing it herself.  I offered to ring,
but she said, "No, don't do that; it would only distress her to be
confronted with her lapse, and would be a rebuke; she doesn't deserve
that--she is not to blame for the tricks her memory serves her."  I
say--has my mother an Interior Master?--and where was he?

O.M.  He was there.  There, and looking out for his own peace and
pleasure and contentment.  The girl's distress would have pained YOUR
MOTHER.  Otherwise the girl would have been rung up, distress and all.  I
know women who would have gotten a No. 1 PLEASURE out of ringing Jane
up--and so they would infallibly have pushed the button and obeyed the
law of their make and training, which are the servants of their Interior
Masters.  It is quite likely that a part of your mother's forbearance
came from training.  The GOOD kind of training--whose best and highest
function is to see to it that every time it confers a satisfaction upon
its pupil a benefit shall fall at second hand upon others.

Y.M.  If you were going to condense into an admonition your plan for the
general betterment of the race's condition, how would you word it?



Admonition

O.M.  Diligently train your ideals UPWARD and STILL UPWARD toward a
summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which, while
contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor and
the community.

Y.M.  Is that a new gospel?

O.M.  No.

Y.M.  It has been taught before?

O.M.  For ten thousand years.

Y.M.  By whom?

O.M.  All the great religions--all the great gospels.

Y.M.  Then there is nothing new about it?

O.M.  Oh yes, there is.  It is candidly stated, this time. That has not
been done before.

Y.M.  How do you mean?

O.M.  Haven't I put YOU FIRST, and your neighbor and the community
AFTERWARD?

Y.M.  Well, yes, that is a difference, it is true.

O.M.  The difference between straight speaking and crooked; the
difference between frankness and shuffling.

Y.M.  Explain.

O.M.  The others offer your a hundred bribes to be good, thus conceding
that the Master inside of you must be conciliated and contented first,
and that you will do nothing at FIRST HAND but for his sake; then they
turn square around and require you to do good for OTHER'S sake CHIEFLY;
and to do your duty for duty's SAKE, chiefly; and to do acts of
SELF-SACRIFICE.  Thus at the outset we all stand upon the same
ground--recognition of the supreme and absolute Monarch that resides in
man, and we all grovel before him and appeal to him; then those others
dodge and shuffle, and face around and unfrankly and inconsistently and
illogically change the form of their appeal and direct its persuasions to
man's SECOND-PLACE powers and to powers which have NO EXISTENCE in him,
thus advancing them to FIRST place; whereas in my Admonition I stick
logically and consistently to the original position: I place the Interior
Master's requirements FIRST, and keep them there.

Y.M.  If we grant, for the sake of argument, that your scheme and the
other schemes aim at and produce the same result--RIGHT LIVING--has
yours an advantage over the others?

O.M.  One, yes--a large one.  It has no concealments, no deceptions.
When a man leads a right and valuable life under it he is not deceived as
to the REAL chief motive which impels him to it--in those other cases he
is.

Y.M.  Is that an advantage?  Is it an advantage to live a lofty life for
a mean reason?  In the other cases he lives the lofty life under the
IMPRESSION that he is living for a lofty reason.  Is not that an
advantage?

O.M.  Perhaps so.  The same advantage he might get out of thinking
himself a duke, and living a duke's life and parading in ducal fuss and
feathers, when he wasn't a duke at all, and could find it out if he would
only examine the herald's records.

Y.M.  But anyway, he is obliged to do a duke's part; he puts his hand in
his pocket and does his benevolences on as big a scale as he can stand,
and that benefits the community.

O.M.  He could do that without being a duke.

Y.M.  But would he?

O.M.  Don't you see where you are arriving?

Y.M.  Where?

O.M.  At the standpoint of the other schemes: That it is good morals to
let an ignorant duke do showy benevolences for his pride's sake, a pretty
low motive, and go on doing them unwarned, lest if he were made
acquainted with the actual motive which prompted them he might shut up
his purse and cease to be good?

Y.M.  But isn't it best to leave him in ignorance, as long as he THINKS
he is doing good for others' sake?

O.M.  Perhaps so.  It is the position of the other schemes. They think
humbug is good enough morals when the dividend on it is good deeds and
handsome conduct.

Y.M.  It is my opinion that under your scheme of a man's doing a good
deed for his OWN sake first-off, instead of first for the GOOD DEED'S
sake, no man would ever do one.

O.M.  Have you committed a benevolence lately?

Y.M.  Yes.  This morning.

O.M.  Give the particulars.

Y.M.  The cabin of the old negro woman who used to nurse me when I was a
child and who saved my life once at the risk of her own, was burned last
night, and she came mourning this morning, and pleading for money to
build another one.

O.M.  You furnished it?

Y.M.  Certainly.

O.M.  You were glad you had the money?

Y.M.  Money?  I hadn't.  I sold my horse.

O.M.  You were glad you had the horse?

Y.M.  Of course I was; for if I hadn't had the horse I should have been
incapable, and my MOTHER would have captured the chance to set old Sally
up.

O.M.  You were cordially glad you were not caught out and incapable?

Y.M.  Oh, I just was!

O.M.  Now, then--

Y.M.  Stop where you are!  I know your whole catalog of questions, and I
could answer every one of them without your wasting the time to ask them;
but I will summarize the whole thing in a single remark: I did the
charity knowing it was because the act would give ME a splendid pleasure,
and because old Sally's moving gratitude and delight would give ME
another one; and because the reflection that she would be happy now and
out of her trouble would fill ME full of happiness.  I did the whole
thing with my eyes open and recognizing and realizing that I was looking
out for MY share of the profits FIRST.  Now then, I have confessed.  Go
on.

O.M.  I haven't anything to offer; you have covered the whole ground.
Can you have been any MORE strongly moved to help Sally out of her
trouble--could you have done the deed any more eagerly--if you had been
under the delusion that you were doing it for HER sake and profit only?

Y.M.  No!  Nothing in the world could have made the impulse which moved
me more powerful, more masterful, more thoroughly irresistible.  I played
the limit!

O.M.  Very well.  You begin to suspect--and I claim to KNOW--that when a
man is a shade MORE STRONGLY MOVED to do ONE of two things or of two
dozen things than he is to do any one of the OTHERS, he will infallibly
do that ONE thing, be it good or be it evil; and if it be good, not all
the beguilements of all the casuistries can increase the strength of the
impulse by a single shade or add a shade to the comfort and contentment
he will get out of the act.

Y.M.  Then you believe that such tendency toward doing good as is in
men's hearts would not be diminished by the removal of the delusion that
good deeds are done primarily for the sake of No. 2 instead of for the
sake of No. 1?

O.M.  That is what I fully believe.

Y.M.  Doesn't it somehow seem to take from the dignity of the deed?

O.M.  If there is dignity in falsity, it does.  It removes that.

Y.M.  What is left for the moralists to do?

O.M.  Teach unreservedly what he already teaches with one side of his
mouth and takes back with the other: Do right FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, and be
happy in knowing that your NEIGHBOR will certainly share in the benefits
resulting.

Y.M.  Repeat your Admonition.

O.M.  DILIGENTLY TRAIN YOUR IDEALS UPWARD AND STILL UPWARD TOWARD A
SUMMIT WHERE YOU WILL FIND YOUR CHIEFEST PLEASURE IN CONDUCT WHICH, WHILE
CONTENTING YOU, WILL BE SURE TO CONFER BENEFITS UPON YOUR NEIGHBOR AND
THE COMMUNITY.

Y.M.  One's EVERY act proceeds from EXTERIOR INFLUENCES, you think?

O.M.  Yes.

Y.M.  If I conclude to rob a person, I am not the ORIGINATOR of the idea,
but it comes in from the OUTSIDE?  I see him handling money--for
instance--and THAT moves me to the crime?

O.M.  That, by itself?  Oh, certainly not.  It is merely the LATEST
outside influence of a procession of preparatory influences stretching
back over a period of years.  No SINGLE outside influence can make a man
do a thing which is at war with his training.  The most it can do is to
start his mind on a new tract and open it to the reception of NEW
influences--as in the case of Ignatius Loyola.  In time these influences
can train him to a point where it will be consonant with his new
character to yield to the FINAL influence and do that thing.  I will put
the case in a form which will make my theory clear to you, I think. Here
are two ingots of virgin gold.  They shall represent a couple of
characters which have been refined and perfected in the virtues by years
of diligent right training.  Suppose you wanted to break down these
strong and well-compacted characters--what influence would you bring to
bear upon the ingots?

Y.M.  Work it out yourself.  Proceed.

O.M.  Suppose I turn upon one of them a steam-jet during a long
succession of hours.  Will there be a result?

Y.M.  None that I know of.

O.M.  Why?

Y.M.  A steam-jet cannot break down such a substance.

O.M.  Very well.  The steam is an OUTSIDE INFLUENCE, but it is
ineffective because the gold TAKES NO INTEREST IN IT.  The ingot remains
as it was.  Suppose we add to the steam some quicksilver in a vaporized
condition, and turn the jet upon the ingot, will there be an
instantaneous result?

Y.M.  No.

O.M.  The QUICKSILVER is an outside influence which gold (by its peculiar
nature--say TEMPERAMENT, DISPOSITION) CANNOT BE INDIFFERENT TO.  It stirs
up the interest of the gold, although we do not perceive it; but a SINGLE
application of the influence works no damage.  Let us continue the
application in a steady stream, and call each minute a year.  By the end
of ten or twenty minutes--ten or twenty years--the little ingot is sodden
with quicksilver, its virtues are gone, its character is degraded.  At
last it is ready to yield to a temptation which it would have taken no
notice of, ten or twenty years ago.  We will apply that temptation in the
form of a pressure of my finger.  You note the result?

Y.M.  Yes; the ingot has crumbled to sand.  I understand, now.  It is not
the SINGLE outside influence that does the work, but only the LAST one of
a long and disintegrating accumulation of them.  I see, now, how my
SINGLE impulse to rob the man is not the one that makes me do it, but
only the LAST one of a preparatory series.  You might illustrate with a
parable.



A Parable

O.M.  I will.  There was once a pair of New England boys--twins. They
were alike in good dispositions, feckless morals, and personal
appearance.  They were the models of the Sunday-school.  At fifteen
George had the opportunity to go as cabin-boy in a whale-ship, and sailed
away for the Pacific.  Henry remained at home in the village. At eighteen
George was a sailor before the mast, and Henry was teacher of the
advanced Bible class.  At twenty-two George, through fighting-habits and
drinking-habits acquired at sea and in the sailor boarding-houses of the
European and Oriental ports, was a common rough in Hong-Kong, and out of
a job; and Henry was superintendent of the Sunday-school.  At twenty-six
George was a wanderer, a tramp, and Henry was pastor of the village
church.  Then George came home, and was Henry's guest.  One evening a man
passed by and turned down the lane, and Henry said, with a pathetic
smile, "Without intending me a discomfort, that man is always keeping me
reminded of my pinching poverty, for he carries heaps of money about him,
and goes by here every evening of his life."  That OUTSIDE
INFLUENCE--that remark--was enough for George, but IT was not the one
that made him ambush the man and rob him, it merely represented the
eleven years' accumulation of such influences, and gave birth to the act
for which their long gestation had made preparation.  It had never
entered the head of Henry to rob the man--his ingot had been subjected to
clean steam only; but George's had been subjected to vaporized
quicksilver.

V

More About the Machine

Note.--When Mrs. W. asks how can a millionaire give a single dollar to
colleges and museums while one human being is destitute of bread, she has
answered her question herself.  Her feeling for the poor shows that she
has a standard of benevolence; there she has conceded the millionaire's
privilege of having a standard; since she evidently requires him to adopt
her standard, she is by that act requiring herself to adopt his.  The
human being always looks down when he is examining another person's
standard; he never find one that he has to examine by looking up.



The Man-Machine Again

Young Man.  You really think man is a mere machine?

Old Man.  I do.

Y.M.  And that his mind works automatically and is independent of his
control--carries on thought on its own hook?

O.M.  Yes.  It is diligently at work, unceasingly at work, during every
waking moment.  Have you never tossed about all night, imploring,
beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to
sleep?--you who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must
obey your orders, think what you tell it to think, and stop when you tell
it to stop.  When it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it still
for an instant.  The brightest man would not be able to supply it with
subjects if he had to hunt them up.  If it needed the man's help it would
wait for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning.

Y.M.  Maybe it does.

O.M.  No, it begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to
give it a suggestion.  He may go to sleep saying, "The moment I wake I
will think upon such and such a subject," but he will fail.  His mind
will be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough awake
to be half conscious, he will find that it is already at work upon
another subject.  Make the experiment and see.

Y.M.  At any rate, he can make it stick to a subject if he wants to.

O.M.  Not if it find another that suits it better.  As a rule it will
listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all
persuasion.  The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle
dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes
chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk.  You cannot
keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you.



After an Interval of Days

O.M.  Now, dreams--but we will examine that later. Meantime, did you try
commanding your mind to wait for orders from you, and not do any thinking
on its own hook?

Y.M.  Yes, I commanded it to stand ready to take orders when I should
wake in the morning.

O.M.  Did it obey?

Y.M.  No.  It went to thinking of something of its own initiation,
without waiting for me.  Also--as you suggested--at night I appointed a
theme for it to begin on in the morning, and commanded it to begin on
that one and no other.

O.M.  Did it obey?

Y.M.  No.

O.M.  How many times did you try the experiment?

Y.M.  Ten.

O.M.  How many successes did you score?

Y.M.  Not one.

O.M.  It is as I have said: the mind is independent of the man.  He has
no control over it; it does as it pleases.  It will take up a subject in
spite of him; it will stick to it in spite of him; it will throw it aside
in spite of him.  It is entirely independent of him.

Y.M.  Go on.  Illustrate.

O.M.  Do you know chess?

Y.M.  I learned it a week ago.

O.M.  Did your mind go on playing the game all night that first night?

Y.M.  Don't mention it!

O.M.  It was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in the
combinations; you implored it to drop the game and let you get some
sleep?

Y.M.  Yes.  It wouldn't listen; it played right along.  It wore me out
and I got up haggard and wretched in the morning.

O.M.  At some time or other you have been captivated by a ridiculous
rhyme-jingle?

Y.M.  Indeed, yes!

"I saw Esau kissing Kate, And she saw I saw Esau; I saw Esau, he saw
Kate, And she saw--"

And so on.  My mind went mad with joy over it.  It repeated it all day
and all night for a week in spite of all I could do to stop it, and it
seemed to me that I must surely go crazy.

O.M.  And the new popular song?

Y.M.  Oh yes! "In the Swee-eet By and By"; etc.  Yes, the new popular
song with the taking melody sings through one's head day and night,
asleep and awake, till one is a wreck.  There is no getting the mind to
let it alone.

O.M.  Yes, asleep as well as awake.  The mind is quite independent.  It
is master.  You have nothing to do with it.  It is so apart from you that
it can conduct its affairs, sing its songs, play its chess, weave its
complex and ingeniously constructed dreams, while you sleep.  It has no
use for your help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either,
whether you be asleep or awake.  You have imagined that you could
originate a thought in your mind, and you have sincerely believed you
could do it.

Y.M.  Yes, I have had that idea.

O.M.  Yet you can't originate a dream-thought for it to work out, and get
it accepted?

Y.M.  No.

O.M.  And you can't dictate its procedure after it has originated a
dream-thought for itself?

Y.M.  No.  No one can do it.  Do you think the waking mind and the dream
mind are the same machine?

O.M.  There is argument for it.  We have wild and fantastic day-thoughts?
Things that are dream-like?

Y.M.  Yes--like Mr. Wells's man who invented a drug that made him
invisible; and like the Arabian tales of the Thousand Nights.

O.M.  And there are dreams that are rational, simple, consistent, and
unfantastic?

Y.M.  Yes.  I have dreams that are like that.  Dreams that are just like
real life; dreams in which there are several persons with distinctly
differentiated characters--inventions of my mind and yet strangers to me:
a vulgar person; a refined one; a wise person; a fool; a cruel person; a
kind and compassionate one; a quarrelsome person; a peacemaker; old
persons and young; beautiful girls and homely ones.  They talk in
character, each preserves his own characteristics.  There are vivid
fights, vivid and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there are
tragedies and comedies, there are griefs that go to one's heart, there
are sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole thing is
exactly like real life.

O.M.  Your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently and
artistically develops it, and carries the little drama creditably
through--all without help or suggestion from you?

Y.M.  Yes.

O.M.  It is argument that it could do the like awake without help or
suggestion from you--and I think it does.  It is argument that it is the
same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help. I think the mind
is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent machine, an automatic
machine.  Have you tried the other experiment which I suggested to you?

Y.M.  Which one?

O.M.  The one which was to determine how much influence you have over
your mind--if any.

Y.M.  Yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it.  I did as you
ordered: I placed two texts before my eyes--one a dull one and barren of
interest, the other one full of interest, inflamed with it, white-hot
with it.  I commanded my mind to busy itself solely with the dull one.

O.M.  Did it obey?

Y.M.  Well, no, it didn't.  It busied itself with the other one.

O.M.  Did you try hard to make it obey?

Y.M.  Yes, I did my honest best.

O.M.  What was the text which it refused to be interested in or think
about?

Y.M.  It was this question: If A owes B a dollar and a half, and B owes C
two and three-quarter, and C owes A thirty-five cents, and D and A
together owe E and B three-sixteenths of--of--I don't remember the rest,
now, but anyway it was wholly uninteresting, and I could not force my
mind to stick to it even half a minute at a time; it kept flying off to
the other text.

O.M.  What was the other text?

Y.M.  It is no matter about that.

O.M.  But what was it?

Y.M.  A photograph.

O.M.  Your own?

Y.M.  No.  It was hers.

O.M.  You really made an honest good test.  Did you make a second trial?

Y.M.  Yes.  I commanded my mind to interest itself in the morning paper's
report of the pork-market, and at the same time I reminded it of an
experience of mine of sixteen years ago.  It refused to consider the pork
and gave its whole blazing interest to that ancient incident.

O.M.  What was the incident?

Y.M.  An armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of twenty
spectators.  It makes me wild and murderous every time I think of it.

O.M.  Good tests, both; very good tests.  Did you try my other
suggestion?

Y.M.  The one which was to prove to me that if I would leave my mind to
its own devices it would find things to think about without any of my
help, and thus convince me that it was a machine, an automatic machine,
set in motion by exterior influences, and as independent of me as it
could be if it were in some one else's skull.  Is that the one?

O.M.  Yes.

Y.M.  I tried it.  I was shaving.  I had slept well, and my mind was very
lively, even gay and frisky.  It was reveling in a fantastic and joyful
episode of my remote boyhood which had suddenly flashed up in my
memory--moved to this by the spectacle of a yellow cat picking its way
carefully along the top of the garden wall.  The color of this cat
brought the bygone cat before me, and I saw her walking along the
side-step of the pulpit; saw her walk on to a large sheet of sticky
fly-paper and get all her feet involved; saw her struggle and fall down,
helpless and dissatisfied, more and more urgent, more and more
unreconciled, more and more mutely profane; saw the silent congregation
quivering like jelly, and the tears running down their faces.  I saw it
all.  The sight of the tears whisked my mind to a far distant and a
sadder scene--in Terra del Fuego--and with Darwin's eyes I saw a naked
great savage hurl his little boy against the rocks for a trifling fault;
saw the poor mother gather up her dying child and hug it to her breast
and weep, uttering no word. Did my mind stop to mourn with that nude
black sister of mine? No--it was far away from that scene in an instant,
and was busying itself with an ever-recurring and disagreeable dream of
mine.  In this dream I always find myself, stripped to my shirt, cringing
and dodging about in the midst of a great drawing-room throng of finely
dressed ladies and gentlemen, and wondering how I got there.  And so on
and so on, picture after picture, incident after incident, a drifting
panorama of ever-changing, ever-dissolving views manufactured by my mind
without any help from me--why, it would take me two hours to merely name
the multitude of things my mind tallied off and photographed in fifteen
minutes, let alone describe them to you.

O.M.  A man's mind, left free, has no use for his help.  But there is one
way whereby he can get its help when he desires it.

Y.M.  What is that way?

O.M.  When your mind is racing along from subject to subject and strikes
an inspiring one, open your mouth and begin talking upon that
matter--or--take your pen and use that.  It will interest your mind and
concentrate it, and it will pursue the subject with satisfaction.  It
will take full charge, and furnish the words itself.

Y.M.  But don't I tell it what to say?

O.M.  There are certainly occasions when you haven't time. The words leap
out before you know what is coming.

Y.M.  For instance?

O.M.  Well, take a "flash of wit"--repartee.  Flash is the right word.
It is out instantly.  There is no time to arrange the words.  There is no
thinking, no reflecting.  Where there is a wit-mechanism it is automatic
in its action and needs no help. Where the wit-mechanism is lacking, no
amount of study and reflection can manufacture the product.

Y.M.  You really think a man originates nothing, creates nothing.



The Thinking-Process

O.M.  I do.  Men perceive, and their brain-machines automatically combine
the things perceived.  That is all.

Y.M.  The steam-engine?

O.M.  It takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it.  One meaning of
invent is discover.  I use the word in that sense. Little by little they
discover and apply the multitude of details that go to make the perfect
engine.  Watt noticed that confined steam was strong enough to lift the
lid of the teapot.  He didn't create the idea, he merely discovered the
fact; the cat had noticed it a hundred times.  From the teapot he evolved
the cylinder--from the displaced lid he evolved the piston-rod.  To
attach something to the piston-rod to be moved by it, was a simple
matter--crank and wheel.  And so there was a working engine. [1]

One by one, improvements were discovered by men who used their eyes, not
their creating powers--for they hadn't any--and now, after a hundred
years the patient contributions of fifty or a hundred observers stand
compacted in the wonderful machine which drives the ocean liner.

Y.M.  A Shakespearean play?

O.M.  The process is the same.  The first actor was a savage.  He
reproduced in his theatrical war-dances, scalp-dances, and so on,
incidents which he had seen in real life.  A more advanced civilization
produced more incidents, more episodes; the actor and the story-teller
borrowed them.  And so the drama grew, little by little, stage by stage.
It is made up of the facts of life, not creations.  It took centuries to
develop the Greek drama.  It borrowed from preceding ages; it lent to the
ages that came after.  Men observe and combine, that is all.  So does a
rat.

Y.M.  How?

O.M.  He observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and finds.  The
astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and that to the
this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an invisible planet,
seeks it and finds it.  The rat gets into a trap; gets out with trouble;
infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles with that trap no
more.  The astronomer is very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud
of his.  Yet both are machines; they have done machine work, they have
originated nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit
belongs to their Maker.  They are entitled to no honors, no praises, no
monuments when they die, no remembrance.  One is a complex and elaborate
machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but they are alike in
principle, function, and process, and neither of them works otherwise
than automatically, and neither of them may righteously claim a PERSONAL
superiority or a personal dignity above the other.

Y.M.  In earned personal dignity, then, and in personal merit for what he
does, it follows of necessity that he is on the same level as a rat?

O.M.  His brother the rat; yes, that is how it seems to me. Neither of
them being entitled to any personal merit for what he does, it follows of
necessity that neither of them has a right to arrogate to himself
(personally created) superiorities over his brother.

Y.M.  Are you determined to go on believing in these insanities?  Would
you go on believing in them in the face of able arguments backed by
collated facts and instances?

O.M.  I have been a humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker.

Y.M.  Very well?

O.M.  The humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker is always convertible
by such means.

Y.M.  I am thankful to God to hear you say this, for now I know that your
conversion--

O.M.  Wait.  You misunderstand.  I said I have BEEN a Truth-Seeker.

Y.M.  Well?

O.M.  I am not that now.  Have your forgotten?  I told you that there are
none but temporary Truth-Seekers; that a permanent one is a human
impossibility; that as soon as the Seeker finds what he is thoroughly
convinced is the Truth, he seeks no further, but gives the rest of his
days to hunting junk to patch it and caulk it and prop it with, and make
it weather-proof and keep it from caving in on him.  Hence the
Presbyterian remains a Presbyterian, the Mohammedan a Mohammedan, the
Spiritualist a Spiritualist, the Democrat a Democrat, the Republican a
Republican, the Monarchist a Monarchist; and if a humble, earnest, and
sincere Seeker after Truth should find it in the proposition that the
moon is made of green cheese nothing could ever budge him from that
position; for he is nothing but an automatic machine, and must obey the
laws of his construction.

Y.M.  After so--

O.M.  Having found the Truth; perceiving that beyond question man has but
one moving impulse--the contenting of his own spirit--and is merely a
machine and entitled to no personal merit for anything he does, it is not
humanly possible for me to seek further. The rest of my days will be
spent in patching and painting and puttying and caulking my priceless
possession and in looking the other way when an imploring argument or a
damaging fact approaches.

----- 1.  The Marquess of Worcester had done all of this more than a
century earlier.

VI

Instinct and Thought

Young Man.  It is odious.  Those drunken theories of yours, advanced a
while ago--concerning the rat and all that--strip Man bare of all his
dignities, grandeurs, sublimities.

Old Man.  He hasn't any to strip--they are shams, stolen clothes.  He
claims credits which belong solely to his Maker.

Y.M.  But you have no right to put him on a level with a rat.

O.M.  I don't--morally.  That would not be fair to the rat. The rat is
well above him, there.

Y.M.  Are you joking?

O.M.  No, I am not.

Y.M.  Then what do you mean?

O.M.  That comes under the head of the Moral Sense.  It is a large
question.  Let us finish with what we are about now, before we take it
up.

Y.M.  Very well.  You have seemed to concede that you place Man and the
rat on A level.  What is it?  The intellectual?

O.M.  In form--not a degree.

Y.M.  Explain.

O.M.  I think that the rat's mind and the man's mind are the same
machine, but of unequal capacities--like yours and Edison's; like the
African pygmy's and Homer's; like the Bushman's and Bismarck's.

Y.M.  How are you going to make that out, when the lower animals have no
mental quality but instinct, while man possesses reason?

O.M.  What is instinct?

Y.M.  It is merely unthinking and mechanical exercise of inherited habit.

O.M.  What originated the habit?

Y.M.  The first animal started it, its descendants have inherited it.

O.M.  How did the first one come to start it?

Y.M.  I don't know; but it didn't THINK it out.

O.M.  How do you know it didn't?

Y.M.  Well--I have a right to suppose it didn't, anyway.

O.M.  I don't believe you have.  What is thought?

Y.M.  I know what you call it: the mechanical and automatic putting
together of impressions received from outside, and drawing an inference
from them.

O.M.  Very good.  Now my idea of the meaningless term "instinct" is, that
it is merely PETRIFIED THOUGHT; solidified and made inanimate by habit;
thought which was once alive and awake, but it become unconscious--walks
in its sleep, so to speak.

Y.M.  Illustrate it.

O.M.  Take a herd of cows, feeding in a pasture.  Their heads are all
turned in one direction.  They do that instinctively; they gain nothing
by it, they have no reason for it, they don't know why they do it.  It is
an inherited habit which was originally thought--that is to say,
observation of an exterior fact, and a valuable inference drawn from that
observation and confirmed by experience.  The original wild ox noticed
that with the wind in his favor he could smell his enemy in time to
escape; then he inferred that it was worth while to keep his nose to the
wind.  That is the process which man calls reasoning.  Man's
thought-machine works just like the other animals', but it is a better
one and more Edisonian.  Man, in the ox's place, would go further, reason
wider: he would face part of the herd the other way and protect both
front and rear.

Y.M.  Did you stay the term instinct is meaningless?

O.M.  I think it is a bastard word.  I think it confuses us; for as a
rule it applies itself to habits and impulses which had a far-off origin
in thought, and now and then breaks the rule and applies itself to habits
which can hardly claim a thought-origin.

Y.M.  Give an instance.

O.M.  Well, in putting on trousers a man always inserts the same old leg
first--never the other one.  There is no advantage in that, and no sense
in it.  All men do it, yet no man thought it out and adopted it of set
purpose, I imagine.  But it is a habit which is transmitted, no doubt,
and will continue to be transmitted.

Y.M.  Can you prove that the habit exists?

O.M.  You can prove it, if you doubt.  If you will take a man to a
clothing-store and watch him try on a dozen pairs of trousers, you will
see.

Y.M.  The cow illustration is not--

O.M.  Sufficient to show that a dumb animal's mental machine is just the
same as a man's and its reasoning processes the same? I will illustrate
further.  If you should hand Mr. Edison a box which you caused to fly
open by some concealed device he would infer a spring, and would hunt for
it and find it.  Now an uncle of mine had an old horse who used to get
into the closed lot where the corn-crib was and dishonestly take the
corn.  I got the punishment myself, as it was supposed that I had
heedlessly failed to insert the wooden pin which kept the gate closed.
These persistent punishments fatigued me; they also caused me to infer
the existence of a culprit, somewhere; so I hid myself and watched the
gate.  Presently the horse came and pulled the pin out with his teeth and
went in.  Nobody taught him that; he had observed--then thought it out
for himself.  His process did not differ from Edison's; he put this and
that together and drew an inference--and the peg, too; but I made him
sweat for it.

Y.M.  It has something of the seeming of thought about it. Still it is
not very elaborate.  Enlarge.

O.M.  Suppose Mr. Edison has been enjoying some one's hospitalities.  He
comes again by and by, and the house is vacant.  He infers that his host
has moved.  A while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter a
house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire.
Here, now, is the experience of a gull, as related by a naturalist.  The
scene is a Scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated.
This particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was
fed again; came into the house, next time, and ate with the family; kept
on doing this almost daily, thereafter.  But, once the gull was away on a
journey for a few days, and when it returned the house was vacant.  Its
friends had removed to a village three miles distant.  Several months
later it saw the head of the family on the street there, followed him
home, entered the house without excuse or apology, and became a daily
guest again.  Gulls do not rank high mentally, but this one had memory
and the reasoning faculty, you see, and applied them Edisonially.

Y.M.  Yet it was not an Edison and couldn't be developed into one.

O.M.  Perhaps not.  Could you?

Y.M.  That is neither here nor there.  Go on.

O.M.  If Edison were in trouble and a stranger helped him out of it and
next day he got into the same difficulty again, he would infer the wise
thing to do in case he knew the stranger's address.  Here is a case of a
bird and a stranger as related by a naturalist.  An Englishman saw a bird
flying around about his dog's head, down in the grounds, and uttering
cries of distress. He went there to see about it.  The dog had a young
bird in his mouth--unhurt.  The gentleman rescued it and put it on a bush
and brought the dog away.  Early the next morning the mother bird came
for the gentleman, who was sitting on his veranda, and by its maneuvers
persuaded him to follow it to a distant part of the grounds--flying a
little way in front of him and waiting for him to catch up, and so on;
and keeping to the winding path, too, instead of flying the near way
across lots.  The distance covered was four hundred yards.  The same dog
was the culprit; he had the young bird again, and once more he had to
give it up.  Now the mother bird had reasoned it all out: since the
stranger had helped her once, she inferred that he would do it again; she
knew where to find him, and she went upon her errand with confidence. Her
mental processes were what Edison's would have been.  She put this and
that together--and that is all that thought IS--and out of them built her
logical arrangement of inferences.  Edison couldn't have done it any
better himself.

Y.M.  Do you believe that many of the dumb animals can think?

O.M.  Yes--the elephant, the monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot, the
macaw, the mocking-bird, and many others.  The elephant whose mate fell
into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom was
raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped with
the reasoning quality. I conceive that all animals that can learn things
through teaching and drilling have to know how to observe, and put this
and that together and draw an inference--the process of thinking. Could
you teach an idiot of manuals of arms, and to advance, retreat, and go
through complex field maneuvers at the word of command?

Y.M.  Not if he were a thorough idiot.

O.M.  Well, canary-birds can learn all that; dogs and elephants learn all
sorts of wonderful things.  They must surely be able to notice, and to
put things together, and say to themselves, "I get the idea, now: when I
do so and so, as per order, I am praised and fed; when I do differently I
am punished." Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.

Y.M.  Granting, then, that dumb animals are able to think upon a low
plane, is there any that can think upon a high one? Is there one that is
well up toward man?

O.M.  Yes.  As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage
race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the
superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental
qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!

Y.M.  Oh, come! you are abolishing the intellectual frontier which
separates man and beast.

O.M.  I beg your pardon.  One cannot abolish what does not exist.

Y.M.  You are not in earnest, I hope.  You cannot mean to seriously say
there is no such frontier.

O.M.  I do say it seriously. The instances of the horse, the gull, the
mother bird, and the elephant show that those creatures put their this's
and thats together just as Edison would have done it and drew the same
inferences that he would have drawn. Their mental machinery was just like
his, also its manner of working.  Their equipment was as inferior to the
Strasburg clock, but that is the only difference--there is no frontier.

Y.M.  It looks exasperatingly true; and is distinctly offensive.  It
elevates the dumb beasts to--to--

O.M.  Let us drop that lying phrase, and call them the Unrevealed
Creatures; so far as we can know, there is no such thing as a dumb beast.

Y.M.  On what grounds do you make that assertion?

O.M.  On quite simple ones.  "Dumb" beast suggests an animal that has no
thought-machinery, no understanding, no speech, no way of communicating
what is in its mind.  We know that a hen HAS speech.  We cannot
understand everything she says, but we easily learn two or three of her
phrases.  We know when she is saying, "I have laid an egg"; we know when
she is saying to the chicks, "Run here, dears, I've found a worm"; we
know what she is saying when she voices a warning: "Quick! hurry! gather
yourselves under mamma, there's a hawk coming!"  We understand the cat
when she stretches herself out, purring with affection and contentment
and lifts up a soft voice and says, "Come, kitties, supper's ready"; we
understand her when she goes mourning about and says, "Where can they be?
They are lost.  Won't you help me hunt for them?" and we understand the
disreputable Tom when he challenges at midnight from his shed, "You come
over here, you product of immoral commerce, and I'll make your fur fly!"
We understand a few of a dog's phrases and we learn to understand a few
of the remarks and gestures of any bird or other animal that we
domesticate and observe.  The clearness and exactness of the few of the
hen's speeches which we understand is argument that she can communicate
to her kind a hundred things which we cannot comprehend--in a word, that
she can converse.  And this argument is also applicable in the case of
others of the great army of the Unrevealed.  It is just like man's vanity
and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull
perceptions. Now as to the ant--

Y.M.  Yes, go back to the ant, the creature that--as you seem to
think--sweeps away the last vestige of an intellectual frontier between
man and the Unrevealed.

O.M.  That is what she surely does.  In all his history the aboriginal
Australian never thought out a house for himself and built it.  The ant
is an amazing architect.  She is a wee little creature, but she builds a
strong and enduring house eight feet high--a house which is as large in
proportion to her size as is the largest capitol or cathedral in the
world compared to man's size.  No savage race has produced architects who
could approach the air in genius or culture.  No civilized race has
produced architects who could plan a house better for the uses proposed
than can hers.  Her house contains a throne-room; nurseries for her
young; granaries; apartments for her soldiers, her workers, etc.; and
they and the multifarious halls and corridors which communicate with them
are arranged and distributed with an educated and experienced eye for
convenience and adaptability.

Y.M.  That could be mere instinct.

O.M.  It would elevate the savage if he had it.  But let us look further
before we decide.  The ant has soldiers--battalions, regiments, armies;
and they have their appointed captains and generals, who lead them to
battle.

Y.M.  That could be instinct, too.

O.M.  We will look still further.  The ant has a system of government; it
is well planned, elaborate, and is well carried on.

Y.M.  Instinct again.

O.M.  She has crowds of slaves, and is a hard and unjust employer of
forced labor.

Y.M.  Instinct.

O.M.  She has cows, and milks them.

Y.M.  Instinct, of course.

O.M.  In Texas she lays out a farm twelve feet square, plants it, weeds
it, cultivates it, gathers the crop and stores it away.

Y.M.  Instinct, all the same.

O.M.  The ant discriminates between friend and stranger. Sir John Lubbock
took ants from two different nests, made them drunk with whiskey and laid
them, unconscious, by one of the nests, near some water.  Ants from the
nest came and examined and discussed these disgraced creatures, then
carried their friends home and threw the strangers overboard.  Sir John
repeated the experiment a number of times.  For a time the sober ants did
as they had done at first--carried their friends home and threw the
strangers overboard.  But finally they lost patience, seeing that their
reformatory efforts went for nothing, and threw both friends and
strangers overboard.  Come--is this instinct, or is it thoughtful and
intelligent discussion of a thing new--absolutely new--to their
experience; with a verdict arrived at, sentence passed, and judgment
executed?  Is it instinct?--thought petrified by ages of habit--or isn't
it brand-new thought, inspired by the new occasion, the new
circumstances?

Y.M.  I have to concede it.  It was not a result of habit; it has all the
look of reflection, thought, putting this and that together, as you
phrase it.  I believe it was thought.

O.M.  I will give you another instance of thought.  Franklin had a cup of
sugar on a table in his room.  The ants got at it. He tried several
preventives; and ants rose superior to them. Finally he contrived one
which shut off access--probably set the table's legs in pans of water, or
drew a circle of tar around the cup, I don't remember.  At any rate, he
watched to see what they would do.  They tried various schemes--failures,
every one.  The ants were badly puzzled.  Finally they held a
consultation, discussed the problem, arrived at a decision--and this time
they beat that great philosopher.  They formed in procession, cross the
floor, climbed the wall, marched across the ceiling to a point just over
the cup, then one by one they let go and fell down into it!  Was that
instinct--thought petrified by ages of inherited habit?

Y.M.  No, I don't believe it was.  I believe it was a newly reasoned
scheme to meet a new emergency.

O.M.  Very well.  You have conceded the reasoning power in two instances.
I come now to a mental detail wherein the ant is a long way the superior
of any human being.  Sir John Lubbock proved by many experiments that an
ant knows a stranger ant of her own species in a moment, even when the
stranger is disguised--with paint.  Also he proved that an ant knows
every individual in her hive of five hundred thousand souls.  Also, after
a year's absence one of the five hundred thousand she will straightway
recognize the returned absentee and grace the recognition with a
affectionate welcome.  How are these recognitions made?  Not by color,
for painted ants were recognized.  Not by smell, for ants that had been
dipped in chloroform were recognized.  Not by speech and not by antennae
signs nor contacts, for the drunken and motionless ants were recognized
and the friend discriminated from the stranger.  The ants were all of the
same species, therefore the friends had to be recognized by form and
feature--friends who formed part of a hive of five hundred thousand! Has
any man a memory for form and feature approaching that?

Y.M.  Certainly not.

O.M.  Franklin's ants and Lubbuck's ants show fine capacities of putting
this and that together in new and untried emergencies and deducting smart
conclusions from the combinations--a man's mental process exactly.  With
memory to help, man preserves his observations and reasonings, reflects
upon them, adds to them, recombines, and so proceeds, stage by stage, to
far results--from the teakettle to the ocean greyhound's complex engine;
from personal labor to slave labor; from wigwam to palace; from the
capricious chase to agriculture and stored food; from nomadic life to
stable government and concentrated authority; from incoherent hordes to
massed armies. The ant has observation, the reasoning faculty, and the
preserving adjunct of a prodigious memory; she has duplicated man's
development and the essential features of his civilization, and you call
it all instinct!

Y.M.  Perhaps I lacked the reasoning faculty myself.

O.M.  Well, don't tell anybody, and don't do it again.

Y.M.  We have come a good way.  As a result--as I understand it--I am
required to concede that there is absolutely no intellectual frontier
separating Man and the Unrevealed Creatures?

O.M.  That is what you are required to concede.  There is no such
frontier--there is no way to get around that.  Man has a finer and more
capable machine in him than those others, but it is the same machine and
works in the same way.  And neither he nor those others can command the
machine--it is strictly automatic, independent of control, works when it
pleases, and when it doesn't please, it can't be forced.

Y.M.  Then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental
machinery, and there isn't any difference of any stupendous magnitude
between them, except in quality, not in kind.

O.M.  That is about the state of it--intellectuality.  There are
pronounced limitations on both sides.  We can't learn to understand much
of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand a
very great deal of ours.  To that extent they are our superiors.  On the
other hand, they can't learn reading, writing, etc., nor any of our fine
and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them.

Y.M.  Very well, let them have what they've got, and welcome; there is
still a wall, and a lofty one.  They haven't got the Moral Sense; we have
it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them.

O.M.  What makes you think that?

Y.M.  Now look here--let's call a halt.  I have stood the other infamies
and insanities and that is enough; I am not going to have man and the
other animals put on the same level morally.

O.M.  I wasn't going to hoist man up to that.

Y.M.  This is too much!  I think it is not right to jest about such
things.

O.M.  I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple
truth--and without uncharitableness.  The fact that man knows right from
wrong proves his INTELLECTUAL superiority to the other creatures; but the
fact that he can DO wrong proves his MORAL inferiority to any creature
that CANNOT.  It is my belief that this position is not assailable.



Free Will

Y.M.  What is your opinion regarding Free Will?

O.M.  That there is no such thing.  Did the man possess it who gave the
old woman his last shilling and trudged home in the storm?

Y.M.  He had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her
to suffer.  Isn't it so?

O.M.  Yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the
one hand and the comfort of the spirit on the other.  The body made a
strong appeal, of course--the body would be quite sure to do that; the
spirit made a counter appeal.  A choice had to be made between the two
appeals, and was made.  Who or what determined that choice?

Y.M.  Any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in
doing it he exercised Free Will.

O.M.  We are constantly assured that every man is endowed with Free Will,
and that he can and must exercise it where he is offered a choice between
good conduct and less-good conduct.  Yet we clearly saw that in that
man's case he really had no Free Will: his temperament, his training, and
the daily influences which had molded him and made him what he was,
COMPELLED him to rescue the old woman and thus save HIMSELF--save himself
from spiritual pain, from unendurable wretchedness.  He did not make the
choice, it was made FOR him by forces which he could not control.  Free
Will has always existed in WORDS, but it stops there, I think--stops
short of FACT.  I would not use those words--Free Will--but others.

Y.M.  What others?

O.M.  Free Choice.

Y.M.  What is the difference?

O.M.  The one implies untrammeled power to ACT as you please, the other
implies nothing beyond a mere MENTAL PROCESS: the critical ability to
determine which of two things is nearest right and just.

Y.M.  Make the difference clear, please.

O.M.  The mind can freely SELECT, CHOOSE, POINT OUT the right and just
one--its function stops there.  It can go no further in the matter.  It
has no authority to say that the right one shall be acted upon and the
wrong one discarded. That authority is in other hands.

Y.M.  The man's?

O.M.  In the machine which stands for him.  In his born disposition and
the character which has been built around it by training and environment.

Y.M.  It will act upon the right one of the two?

O.M.  It will do as it pleases in the matter.  George Washington's
machine would act upon the right one; Pizarro would act upon the wrong
one.

Y.M.  Then as I understand it a bad man's mental machinery calmly and
judicially points out which of two things is right and just--

O.M.  Yes, and his MORAL machinery will freely act upon the other or the
other, according to its make, and be quite indifferent to the MIND'S
feeling concerning the matter--that is, WOULD be, if the mind had any
feelings; which it hasn't. It is merely a thermometer: it registers the
heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing about either.

Y.M.  Then we must not claim that if a man KNOWS which of two things is
right he is absolutely BOUND to do that thing?

O.M.  His temperament and training will decide what he shall do, and he
will do it; he cannot help himself, he has no authority over the mater.
Wasn't it right for David to go out and slay Goliath?

Y.M.  Yes.

O.M.  Then it would have been equally RIGHT for any one else to do it?

Y.M.  Certainly.

O.M.  Then it would have been RIGHT for a born coward to attempt it?

Y.M.  It would--yes.

O.M.  You know that no born coward ever would have attempted it, don't
you?

Y.M.  Yes.

O.M.  You know that a born coward's make and temperament would be an
absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying such a thing, don't
you?

Y.M.  Yes, I know it.

O.M.  He clearly perceives that it would be RIGHT to try it?

Y.M.  Yes.

O.M.  His mind has Free Choice in determining that it would be RIGHT to
try it?

Y.M.  Yes.

O.M.  Then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply can NOT essay
it, what becomes of his Free Will?  Where is his Free Will?  Why claim
that he has Free Will when the plain facts show that he hasn't?  Why
content that because he and David SEE the right alike, both must ACT
alike?  Why impose the same laws upon goat and lion?

Y.M.  There is really no such thing as Free Will?

O.M.  It is what I think.  There is WILL.  But it has nothing to do with
INTELLECTUAL PERCEPTIONS OF RIGHT AND WRONG, and is not under their
command.  David's temperament and training had Will, and it was a
compulsory force; David had to obey its decrees, he had no choice.  The
coward's temperament and training possess Will, and IT is compulsory; it
commands him to avoid danger, and he obeys, he has no choice.  But
neither the Davids nor the cowards possess Free Will--will that may do
the right or do the wrong, as their MENTAL verdict shall decide.



Not Two Values, But Only One

Y.M.  There is one thing which bothers me: I can't tell where you draw
the line between MATERIAL covetousness and SPIRITUAL covetousness.

O.M.  I don't draw any.

Y.M.  How do you mean?

O.M.  There is no such thing as MATERIAL covetousness. All covetousness
is spiritual

Y.M.  ALL longings, desires, ambitions SPIRITUAL, never material?

O.M.  Yes.  The Master in you requires that in ALL cases you shall
content his SPIRIT--that alone.  He never requires anything else, he
never interests himself in any other matter.

Y.M.  Ah, come!  When he covets somebody's money--isn't that rather
distinctly material and gross?

O.M.  No.  The money is merely a symbol--it represents in visible and
concrete form a SPIRITUAL DESIRE.  Any so-called material thing that you
want is merely a symbol: you want it not for ITSELF, but because it will
content your spirit for the moment.

Y.M.  Please particularize.

O.M.  Very well.  Maybe the thing longed for is a new hat. You get it and
your vanity is pleased, your spirit contented. Suppose your friends
deride the hat, make fun of it: at once it loses its value; you are
ashamed of it, you put it out of your sight, you never want to see it
again.

Y.M.  I think I see.  Go on.

O.M.  It is the same hat, isn't it?  It is in no way altered.  But it
wasn't the HAT you wanted, but only what it stood for--a something to
please and content your SPIRIT.  When it failed of that, the whole of its
value was gone.  There are no MATERIAL values; there are only spiritual
ones.  You will hunt in vain for a material value that is ACTUAL,
REAL--there is no such thing.  The only value it possesses, for even a
moment, is the spiritual value back of it: remove that end and it is at
once worthless--like the hat.

Y.M.  Can you extend that to money?

O.M.  Yes.  It is merely a symbol, it has no MATERIAL value; you think
you desire it for its own sake, but it is not so.  You desire it for the
spiritual content it will bring; if it fail of that, you discover that
its value is gone.  There is that pathetic tale of the man who labored
like a slave, unresting, unsatisfied, until he had accumulated a fortune,
and was happy over it, jubilant about it; then in a single week a
pestilence swept away all whom he held dear and left him desolate.  His
money's value was gone.  He realized that his joy in it came not from the
money itself, but from the spiritual contentment he got out of his
family's enjoyment of the pleasures and delights it lavished upon them.
Money has no MATERIAL value; if you remove its spiritual value nothing is
left but dross.  It is so with all things, little or big, majestic or
trivial--there are no exceptions.  Crowns, scepters, pennies, paste
jewels, village notoriety, world-wide fame--they are all the same, they
have no MATERIAL value: while they content the SPIRIT they are precious,
when this fails they are worthless.



A Difficult Question

Y.M.  You keep me confused and perplexed all the time by your elusive
terminology.  Sometimes you divide a man up into two or three separate
personalities, each with authorities, jurisdictions, and responsibilities
of its own, and when he is in that condition I can't grasp it.  Now when
_I_ speak of a man, he is THE WHOLE THING IN ONE, and easy to hold and
contemplate.

O.M.  That is pleasant and convenient, if true.  When you speak of "my
body" who is the "my"?

Y.M.  It is the "me."

O.M.  The body is a property then, and the Me owns it. Who is the Me?

Y.M.  The Me is THE WHOLE THING; it is a common property; an undivided
ownership, vested in the whole entity.

O.M.  If the Me admires a rainbow, is it the whole Me that admires it,
including the hair, hands, heels, and all?

Y.M.  Certainly not.  It is my MIND that admires it.

O.M.  So YOU divide the Me yourself.  Everybody does; everybody must.
What, then, definitely, is the Me?

Y.M.  I think it must consist of just those two parts--the body and the
mind.

O.M.  You think so?  If you say "I believe the world is round," who is
the "I" that is speaking?

Y.M.  The mind.

O.M.  If you say "I grieve for the loss of my father," who is the "I"?

Y.M.  The mind.

O.M.  Is the mind exercising an intellectual function when it examines
and accepts the evidence that the world is round?

Y.M.  Yes.

O.M.  Is it exercising an intellectual function when it grieves for the
loss of your father?

Y.M.  That is not cerebration, brain-work, it is a matter of FEELING.

O.M.  Then its source is not in your mind, but in your MORAL territory?

Y.M.  I have to grant it.

O.M.  Is your mind a part of your PHYSICAL equipment?

Y.M.  No.  It is independent of it; it is spiritual.

O.M.  Being spiritual, it cannot be affected by physical influences?

Y.M.  No.

O.M.  Does the mind remain sober with the body is drunk?

Y.M.  Well--no.

O.M.  There IS a physical effect present, then?

Y.M.  It looks like it.

O.M.  A cracked skull has resulted in a crazy mind.  Why should it happen
if the mind is spiritual, and INDEPENDENT of physical influences?

Y.M.  Well--I don't know.

O.M.  When you have a pain in your foot, how do you know it?

Y.M.  I feel it.

O.M.  But you do not feel it until a nerve reports the hurt to the brain.
Yet the brain is the seat of the mind, is it not?

Y.M.  I think so.

O.M.  But isn't spiritual enough to learn what is happening in the
outskirts without the help of the PHYSICAL messenger?  You perceive that
the question of who or what the Me is, is not a simple one at all.  You
say "I admire the rainbow," and "I believe the world is round," and in
these cases we find that the Me is not speaking, but only the MENTAL
part.  You say, "I grieve," and again the Me is not all speaking, but
only the MORAL part.  You say the mind is wholly spiritual; then you say
"I have a pain" and find that this time the Me is mental AND spiritual
combined.  We all use the "I" in this indeterminate fashion, there is no
help for it.  We imagine a Master and King over what you call The Whole
Thing, and we speak of him as "I," but when we try to define him we find
we cannot do it.  The intellect and the feelings can act quite
INDEPENDENTLY of each other; we recognize that, and we look around for a
Ruler who is master over both, and can serve as a DEFINITE AND
INDISPUTABLE "I," and enable us to know what we mean and who or what we
are talking about when we use that pronoun, but we have to give it up and
confess that we cannot find him.  To me, Man is a machine, made up of
many mechanisms, the moral and mental ones acting automatically in
accordance with the impulses of an interior Master who is built out of
born-temperament and an accumulation of multitudinous outside influences
and trainings; a machine whose ONE function is to secure the spiritual
contentment of the Master, be his desires good or be they evil; a machine
whose Will is absolute and must be obeyed, and always IS obeyed.

Y.M.  Maybe the Me is the Soul?

O.M.  Maybe it is.  What is the Soul?

Y.M.  I don't know.

O.M.  Neither does any one else.



The Master Passion

Y.M.  What is the Master?--or, in common speech, the Conscience?
Explain it.

O.M.  It is that mysterious autocrat, lodged in a man, which compels the
man to content its desires.  It may be called the Master Passion--the
hunger for Self-Approval.

Y.M.  Where is its seat?

O.M.  In man's moral constitution.

Y.M.  Are its commands for the man's good?

O.M.  It is indifferent to the man's good; it never concerns itself about
anything but the satisfying of its own desires.  It can be TRAINED to
prefer things which will be for the man's good, but it will prefer them
only because they will content IT better than other things would.

Y.M.  Then even when it is trained to high ideals it is still looking out
for its own contentment, and not for the man's good.

O.M.  True.  Trained or untrained, it cares nothing for the man's good,
and never concerns itself about it.

Y.M.  It seems to be an IMMORAL force seated in the man's moral
constitution.

O.M.  It is a COLORLESS force seated in the man's moral constitution. Let
us call it an instinct--a blind, unreasoning instinct, which cannot and
does not distinguish between good morals and bad ones, and cares nothing
for results to the man provided its own contentment be secured; and it
will ALWAYS secure that.

Y.M.  It seeks money, and it probably considers that that is an advantage
for the man?

O.M.  It is not always seeking money, it is not always seeking power, nor
office, nor any other MATERIAL advantage.  In ALL cases it seeks a
SPIRITUAL contentment, let the MEANS be what they may.  Its desires are
determined by the man's temperament--and it is lord over that.
Temperament, Conscience, Susceptibility, Spiritual Appetite, are, in
fact, the same thing. Have you ever heard of a person who cared nothing
for money?

Y.M.  Yes.  A scholar who would not leave his garret and his books to
take a place in a business house at a large salary.

O.M.  He had to satisfy his master--that is to say, his temperament, his
Spiritual Appetite--and it preferred books to money.  Are there other
cases?

Y.M.  Yes, the hermit.

O.M.  It is a good instance.  The hermit endures solitude, hunger, cold,
and manifold perils, to content his autocrat, who prefers these things,
and prayer and contemplation, to money or to any show or luxury that
money can buy.  Are there others?

Y.M.  Yes.  The artist, the poet, the scientist.

O.M.  Their autocrat prefers the deep pleasures of these occupations,
either well paid or ill paid, to any others in the market, at any price.
You REALIZE that the Master Passion--the contentment of the
spirit--concerns itself with many things besides so-called material
advantage, material prosperity, cash, and all that?

Y.M.  I think I must concede it.

O.M.  I believe you must.  There are perhaps as many Temperaments that
would refuse the burdens and vexations and distinctions of public office
as there are that hunger after them.  The one set of Temperaments seek
the contentment of the spirit, and that alone; and this is exactly the
case with the other set.  Neither set seeks anything BUT the contentment
of the spirit.  If the one is sordid, both are sordid; and equally so,
since the end in view is precisely the same in both cases.  And in both
cases Temperament decides the preference--and Temperament is BORN, not
made.



Conclusion

O.M.  You have been taking a holiday?

Y.M.  Yes; a mountain tramp covering a week.  Are you ready to talk?

O.M.  Quite ready.  What shall we begin with?

Y.M.  Well, lying abed resting up, two days and nights, I have thought
over all these talks, and passed them carefully in review.  With this
result: that . . . that . . . are you intending to publish your notions
about Man some day?

O.M.  Now and then, in these past twenty years, the Master inside of me
has half-intended to order me to set them to paper and publish them.  Do
I have to tell you why the order has remained unissued, or can you
explain so simply a thing without my help?

Y.M.  By your doctrine, it is simplicity itself: outside influences moved
your interior Master to give the order; stronger outside influences
deterred him.  Without the outside influences, neither of these impulses
could ever have been born, since a person's brain is incapable or
originating an idea within itself.

O.M.  Correct.  Go on.

Y.M.  The matter of publishing or withholding is still in your Master's
hands.  If some day an outside influence shall determine him to publish,
he will give the order, and it will be obeyed.

O.M.  That is correct.  Well?

Y.M.  Upon reflection I have arrived at the conviction that the
publication of your doctrines would be harmful. Do you pardon me?

O.M.  Pardon YOU?  You have done nothing.  You are an instrument--a
speaking-trumpet.  Speaking-trumpets are not responsible for what is said
through them.  Outside influences--in the form of lifelong teachings,
trainings, notions, prejudices, and other second-hand importations--have
persuaded the Master within you that the publication of these doctrines
would be harmful.  Very well, this is quite natural, and was to be
expected; in fact, was inevitable.  Go on; for the sake of ease and
convenience, stick to habit: speak in the first person, and tell me what
your Master thinks about it.

Y.M.  Well, to begin: it is a desolating doctrine; it is not inspiring,
enthusing, uplifting.  It takes the glory out of man, it takes the pride
out of him, it takes the heroism out of him, it denies him all personal
credit, all applause; it not only degrades him to a machine, but allows
him no control over the machine; makes a mere coffee-mill of him, and
neither permits him to supply the coffee nor turn the crank, his sole and
piteously humble function being to grind coarse or fine, according to his
make, outside impulses doing the rest.

O.M.  It is correctly stated.  Tell me--what do men admire most in each
other?

Y.M.  Intellect, courage, majesty of build, beauty of countenance,
charity, benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness, heroism, and--and--

O.M.  I would not go any further.  These are ELEMENTALS. Virtue,
fortitude, holiness, truthfulness, loyalty, high ideals--these, and all
the related qualities that are named in the dictionary, are MADE OF THE
ELEMENTALS, by blendings, combinations, and shadings of the elementals,
just as one makes green by blending blue and yellow, and makes several
shades and tints of red by modifying the elemental red.  There are
several elemental colors; they are all in the rainbow; out of them we
manufacture and name fifty shades of them.  You have named the elementals
of the human rainbow, and also one BLEND--heroism, which is made out of
courage and magnanimity.  Very well, then; which of these elements does
the possessor of it manufacture for himself?  Is it intellect?

Y.M.  No.

O.M.  Why?

Y.M.  He is born with it.

O.M.  Is it courage?

Y.M.  No.  He is born with it.

O.M.  Is it majesty of build, beauty of countenance?

Y.M.  No.  They are birthrights.

O.M.  Take those others--the elemental moral qualities--charity,
benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness; fruitful seeds, out of which
spring, through cultivation by outside influences, all the manifold
blends and combinations of virtues named in the dictionaries: does man
manufacture any of those seeds, or are they all born in him?

Y.M.  Born in him.

O.M.  Who manufactures them, then?

Y.M.  God.

O.M.  Where does the credit of it belong?

Y.M.  To God.

O.M.  And the glory of which you spoke, and the applause?

Y.M.  To God.

O.M.  Then it is YOU who degrade man.  You make him claim glory, praise,
flattery, for every valuable thing he possesses--BORROWED finery, the
whole of it; no rag of it earned by himself, not a detail of it produced
by his own labor.  YOU make man a humbug; have I done worse by him?

Y.M.  You have made a machine of him.

O.M.  Who devised that cunning and beautiful mechanism, a man's hand?

Y.M.  God.

O.M.  Who devised the law by which it automatically hammers out of a
piano an elaborate piece of music, without error, while the man is
thinking about something else, or talking to a friend?

Y.M.  God.

O.M.  Who devised the blood?  Who devised the wonderful machinery which
automatically drives its renewing and refreshing streams through the
body, day and night, without assistance or advice from the man?  Who
devised the man's mind, whose machinery works automatically, interests
itself in what it pleases, regardless of its will or desire, labors all
night when it likes, deaf to his appeals for mercy?  God devised all
these things. _I_ have not made man a machine, God made him a machine.  I
am merely calling attention to the fact, nothing more.  Is it wrong to
call attention to the fact?  Is it a crime?

Y.M.  I think it is wrong to EXPOSE a fact when harm can come of it.

O.M.  Go on.

Y.M.  Look at the matter as it stands now.  Man has been taught that he
is the supreme marvel of the Creation; he believes it; in all the ages he
has never doubted it, whether he was a naked savage, or clothed in purple
and fine linen, and civilized. This has made his heart buoyant, his life
cheery.  His pride in himself, his sincere admiration of himself, his joy
in what he supposed were his own and unassisted achievements, and his
exultation over the praise and applause which they evoked--these have
exalted him, enthused him, ambitioned him to higher and higher flights;
in a word, made his life worth the living.  But by your scheme, all this
is abolished; he is degraded to a machine, he is a nobody, his noble
prides wither to mere vanities; let him strive as he may, he can never be
any better than his humblest and stupidest neighbor; he would never be
cheerful again, his life would not be worth the living.

O.M.  You really think that?

Y.M.  I certainly do.

O.M.  Have you ever seen me uncheerful, unhappy.

Y.M.  No.

O.M.  Well, _I_ believe these things.  Why have they not made me unhappy?

Y.M.  Oh, well--temperament, of course!  You never let THAT escape from
your scheme.

O.M.  That is correct.  If a man is born with an unhappy temperament,
nothing can make him happy; if he is born with a happy temperament,
nothing can make him unhappy.

Y.M.  What--not even a degrading and heart-chilling system of beliefs?

O.M.  Beliefs?  Mere beliefs?  Mere convictions?  They are powerless.
They strive in vain against inborn temperament.

Y.M.  I can't believe that, and I don't.

O.M.  Now you are speaking hastily.  It shows that you have not
studiously examined the facts.  Of all your intimates, which one is the
happiest?  Isn't it Burgess?

Y.M.  Easily.

O.M.  And which one is the unhappiest?  Henry Adams?

Y.M.  Without a question!

O.M.  I know them well.  They are extremes, abnormals; their temperaments
are as opposite as the poles.  Their life-histories are about alike--but
look at the results!  Their ages are about the same--about around fifty.
Burgess had always been buoyant, hopeful, happy; Adams has always been
cheerless, hopeless, despondent.  As young fellows both tried country
journalism--and failed.  Burgess didn't seem to mind it; Adams couldn't
smile, he could only mourn and groan over what had happened and torture
himself with vain regrets for not having done so and so instead of so and
so--THEN he would have succeeded.  They tried the law--and failed.
Burgess remained happy--because he couldn't help it. Adams was
wretched--because he couldn't help it.  From that day to this, those two
men have gone on trying things and failing: Burgess has come out happy
and cheerful every time; Adams the reverse.  And we do absolutely know
that these men's inborn temperaments have remained unchanged through all
the vicissitudes of their material affairs.  Let us see how it is with
their immaterials.  Both have been zealous Democrats; both have been
zealous Republicans; both have been zealous Mugwumps.  Burgess has always
found happiness and Adams unhappiness in these several political beliefs
and in their migrations out of them.  Both of these men have been
Presbyterians, Universalists, Methodists, Catholics--then Presbyterians
again, then Methodists again. Burgess has always found rest in these
excursions, and Adams unrest.  They are trying Christian Science, now,
with the customary result, the inevitable result.  No political or
religious belief can make Burgess unhappy or the other man happy. I
assure you it is purely a matter of temperament.  Beliefs are
ACQUIREMENTS, temperaments are BORN; beliefs are subject to change,
nothing whatever can change temperament.

Y.M.  You have instanced extreme temperaments.

O.M.  Yes, the half-dozen others are modifications of the extremes.  But
the law is the same.  Where the temperament is two-thirds happy, or
two-thirds unhappy, no political or religious beliefs can change the
proportions.  The vast majority of temperaments are pretty equally
balanced; the intensities are absent, and this enables a nation to learn
to accommodate itself to its political and religious circumstances and
like them, be satisfied with them, at last prefer them.  Nations do not
THINK, they only FEEL. They get their feelings at second hand through
their temperaments, not their brains.  A nation can be brought--by force
of circumstances, not argument--to reconcile itself to ANY KIND OF
GOVERNMENT OR RELIGION THAT CAN BE DEVISED; in time it will fit itself to
the required conditions; later, it will prefer them and will fiercely
fight for them.  As instances, you have all history: the Greeks, the
Romans, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Russians, the Germans, the
French, the English, the Spaniards, the Americans, the South Americans,
the Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Turks--a thousand wild and
tame religions, every kind of government that can be thought of, from
tiger to house-cat, each nation KNOWING it has the only true religion and
the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each
an ass and not suspecting it, each proud of its fancied supremacy, each
perfectly sure it is the pet of God, each without undoubting confidence
summoning Him to take command in time of war, each surprised when He goes
over to the enemy, but by habit able to excuse it and resume
compliments--in a word, the whole human race content, always content,
persistently content, indestructibly content, happy, thankful, proud, NO
MATTER WHAT ITS RELIGION IS, NOR WHETHER ITS MASTER BE TIGER OR
HOUSE-CAT.  Am I stating facts?  You know I am.  Is the human race
cheerful?  You know it is.  Considering what it can stand, and be happy,
you do me too much honor when you think that _I_ can place before it a
system of plain cold facts that can take the cheerfulness out of it.
Nothing can do that.  Everything has been tried.  Without success.  I beg
you not to be troubled.

The death of Jean


The death of Jean Clemens occurred early in the morning of December 24,
1909.  Mr. Clemens was in great stress of mind when I first saw him, but
a few hours later I found him writing steadily.

"I am setting it down," he said, "everything.  It is a relief to me to
write it.  It furnishes me an excuse for thinking."  At intervals during
that day and the next I looked in, and usually found him writing.  Then
on the evening of the 26th, when he knew that Jean had been laid to rest
in Elmira, he came to my room with the manuscript in his hand.

"I have finished it," he said; "read it.  I can form no opinion of it
myself.  If you think it worthy, some day--at the proper time--it can end
my autobiography.  It is the final chapter."


Four months later--almost to the day--(April 21st) he was with Jean.

Albert Bigelow Paine.





Stormfield, Christmas Eve, 11 A.M., 1909.

JEAN IS DEAD!

Has any one ever tried to put upon paper all the little happenings
connected with a dear one--happenings of the twenty-four hours preceding
the sudden and unexpected death of that dear one?  Would a book contain
them?  Would two books contain them? I think not.  They pour into the
mind in a flood.  They are little things that have been always happening
every day, and were always so unimportant and easily forgettable
before--but now! Now, how different! how precious they are, now dear, how
unforgettable, how pathetic, how sacred, how clothed with dignity!

Last night Jean, all flushed with splendid health, and I the same, from
the wholesome effects of my Bermuda holiday, strolled hand in hand from
the dinner-table and sat down in the library and chatted, and planned,
and discussed, cheerily and happily (and how unsuspectingly!)--until
nine--which is late for us--then went upstairs, Jean's friendly German
dog following.  At my door Jean said, "I can't kiss you good night,
father: I have a cold, and you could catch it."  I bent and kissed her
hand.  She was moved--I saw it in her eyes--and she impulsively kissed my
hand in return.  Then with the usual gay "Sleep well, dear!" from both,
we parted.

At half past seven this morning I woke, and heard voices outside my door.
I said to myself, "Jean is starting on her usual horseback flight to the
station for the mail."  Then Katy [1] entered, stood quaking and gasping
at my bedside a moment, then found her tongue:

"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!"

Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through
his heart.

In her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon
the floor and covered with a sheet.  And looking so placid, so natural,
and as if asleep.  We knew what had happened.  She was an epileptic: she
had been seized with a convulsion and heart failure in her bath.  The
doctor had to come several miles.  His efforts, like our previous ones,
failed to bring her back to life.

It is noon, now.  How lovable she looks, how sweet and how tranquil!  It
is a noble face, and full of dignity; and that was a good heart that lies
there so still.

In England, thirteen years ago, my wife and I were stabbed to the heart
with a cablegram which said, "Susy was mercifully released today."  I had
to send a like shot to Clara, in Berlin, this morning.  With the
peremptory addition, "You must not come home."  Clara and her husband
sailed from here on the 11th of this month.  How will Clara bear it?
Jean, from her babyhood, was a worshiper of Clara.

Four days ago I came back from a month's holiday in Bermuda in perfected
health; but by some accident the reporters failed to perceive this.  Day
before yesterday, letters and telegrams began to arrive from friends and
strangers which indicated that I was supposed to be dangerously ill.
Yesterday Jean begged me to explain my case through the Associated Press.
I said it was not important enough; but she was distressed and said I
must think of Clara.  Clara would see the report in the German papers,
and as she had been nursing her husband day and night for four months [2]
and was worn out and feeble, the shock might be disastrous. There was
reason in that; so I sent a humorous paragraph by telephone to the
Associated Press denying the "charge" that I was "dying," and saying "I
would not do such a thing at my time of life."

Jean was a little troubled, and did not like to see me treat the matter
so lightly; but I said it was best to treat it so, for there was nothing
serious about it.  This morning I sent the sorrowful facts of this day's
irremediable disaster to the Associated Press.  Will both appear in this
evening's papers?--the one so blithe, the other so tragic?

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother--her incomparable
mother!--five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in
Europe; and now I have lost Jean.  How poor I am, who was once so rich!
Seven months ago Mr. Roger died--one of the best friends I ever had, and
the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, I have yet met among my race;
within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and Laffan--old, old
friends of mine.  Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under
our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night--and it was
forever, we never suspecting it.  She lies there, and I sit
here--writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How
dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around!  It is like a
mockery.

Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days ago.  Seventy-four years old
yesterday.  Who can estimate my age today?

I have looked upon her again.  I wonder I can bear it.  She looks just as
her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long ago.
The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep.

I saw her mother buried.  I said I would never endure that horror again;
that I would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me.  I
have kept to that.  They will take Jean from this house tomorrow, and
bear her to Elmira, New York, where lie those of us that have been
released, but I shall not follow.

Jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago.  She was
at the door, beaming a welcome, when I reached this house the next
evening.  We played cards, and she tried to teach me a new game called
"Mark Twain."  We sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, and
she wouldn't let me look into the loggia, where she was making Christmas
preparations.  She said she would finish them in the morning, and then
her little French friend would arrive from New York--the surprise would
follow; the surprise she had been working over for days.  While she was
out for a moment I disloyally stole a look.  The loggia floor was clothed
with rugs and furnished with chairs and sofas; and the uncompleted
surprise was there: in the form of a Christmas tree that was drenched
with silver film in a most wonderful way; and on a table was prodigal
profusion of bright things which she was going to hang upon it today.
What desecrating hand will ever banish that eloquent unfinished surprise
from that place?  Not mine, surely.  All these little matters have
happened in the last four days.  "Little."  Yes--THEN.  But not now.
Nothing she said or thought or did is little now.  And all the lavish
humor!--what is become of it?  It is pathos, now.  Pathos, and the
thought of it brings tears.

All these little things happened such a few hours ago--and now she lies
yonder.  Lies yonder, and cares for nothing any more.
Strange--marvelous--incredible!  I have had this experience before; but
it would still be incredible if I had had it a thousand times.

"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!"

That is what Katy said.  When I heard the door open behind the bed's head
without a preliminary knock, I supposed it was Jean coming to kiss me
good morning, she being the only person who was used to entering without
formalities.

And so--

I have been to Jean's parlor.  Such a turmoil of Christmas presents for
servants and friends!  They are everywhere; tables, chairs, sofas, the
floor--everything is occupied, and over-occupied.  It is many and many a
year since I have seen the like. In that ancient day Mrs. Clemens and I
used to slip softly into the nursery at midnight on Christmas Eve and
look the array of presents over.  The children were little then.  And now
here is Jean's parlor looking just as that nursery used to look.  The
presents are not labeled--the hands are forever idle that would have
labeled them today.  Jean's mother always worked herself down with her
Christmas preparations.  Jean did the same yesterday and the preceding
days, and the fatigue has cost her her life.  The fatigue caused the
convulsion that attacked her this morning.  She had had no attack for
months.

Jean was so full of life and energy that she was constantly is danger of
overtaxing her strength.  Every morning she was in the saddle by half
past seven, and off to the station for her mail.  She examined the
letters and I distributed them: some to her, some to Mr. Paine, the
others to the stenographer and myself.  She dispatched her share and then
mounted her horse again and went around superintending her farm and her
poultry the rest of the day.  Sometimes she played billiards with me
after dinner, but she was usually too tired to play, and went early to
bed.

Yesterday afternoon I told her about some plans I had been devising while
absent in Bermuda, to lighten her burdens.  We would get a housekeeper;
also we would put her share of the secretary-work into Mr. Paine's hands.

No--she wasn't willing.  She had been making plans herself. The matter
ended in a compromise, I submitted.  I always did. She wouldn't audit the
bills and let Paine fill out the checks--she would continue to attend to
that herself.  Also, she would continue to be housekeeper, and let Katy
assist.  Also, she would continue to answer the letters of personal
friends for me.  Such was the compromise.  Both of us called it by that
name, though I was not able to see where my formidable change had been
made.

However, Jean was pleased, and that was sufficient for me. She was proud
of being my secretary, and I was never able to persuade her to give up
any part of her share in that unlovely work.

In the talk last night I said I found everything going so smoothly that
if she were willing I would go back to Bermuda in February and get
blessedly out of the clash and turmoil again for another month.  She was
urgent that I should do it, and said that if I would put off the trip
until March she would take Katy and go with me.  We struck hands upon
that, and said it was settled. I had a mind to write to Bermuda by
tomorrow's ship and secure a furnished house and servants.  I meant to
write the letter this morning.  But it will never be written, now.

For she lies yonder, and before her is another journey than that.

Night is closing down; the rim of the sun barely shows above the sky-line
of the hills.

I have been looking at that face again that was growing dearer and dearer
to me every day.  I was getting acquainted with Jean in these last nine
months.  She had been long an exile from home when she came to us
three-quarters of a year ago.  She had been shut up in sanitariums, many
miles from us.  How eloquent glad and grateful she was to cross her
father's threshold again!

Would I bring her back to life if I could do it?  I would not. If a word
would do it, I would beg for strength to withhold the word.  And I would
have the strength; I am sure of it.  In her loss I am almost bankrupt,
and my life is a bitterness, but I am content: for she has been enriched
with the most precious of all gifts--that gift which makes all other
gifts mean and poor--death.  I have never wanted any released friend of
mine restored to life since I reached manhood.  I felt in this way when
Susy passed away; and later my wife, and later Mr. Rogers.  When Clara
met me at the station in New York and told me Mr. Rogers had died
suddenly that morning, my thought was, Oh, favorite of fortune
--fortunate all his long and lovely life--fortunate to his latest moment!
The reporters said there were tears of sorrow in my eyes.  True--but they
were for ME, not for him.  He had suffered no loss.  All the fortunes he
had ever made before were poverty compared with this one.

Why did I build this house, two years ago?  To shelter this vast
emptiness?  How foolish I was!  But I shall stay in it.  The spirits of
the dead hallow a house, for me.  It was not so with other members of the
family.  Susy died in the house we built in Hartford.  Mrs. Clemens would
never enter it again.  But it made the house dearer to me.  I have
entered it once since, when it was tenantless and silent and forlorn, but
to me it was a holy place and beautiful.  It seemed to me that the
spirits of the dead were all about me, and would speak to me and welcome
me if they could: Livy, and Susy, and George, and Henry Robinson, and
Charles Dudley Warner.  How good and kind they were, and how lovable
their lives!  In fancy I could see them all again, I could call the
children back and hear them romp again with George--that peerless black
ex-slave and children's idol who came one day--a flitting stranger--to
wash windows, and stayed eighteen years.  Until he died.  Clara and Jean
would never enter again the New York hotel which their mother had
frequented in earlier days.  They could not bear it.  But I shall stay in
this house.  It is dearer to me tonight than ever it was before. Jean's
spirit will make it beautiful for me always.  Her lonely and tragic
death--but I will not think of that now.

Jean's mother always devoted two or three weeks to Christmas shopping,
and was always physically exhausted when Christmas Eve came.  Jean was
her very own child--she wore herself out present-hunting in New York
these latter days.  Paine has just found on her desk a long list of
names--fifty, he thinks--people to whom she sent presents last night.
Apparently she forgot no one.  And Katy found there a roll of bank-notes,
for the servants.

Her dog has been wandering about the grounds today, comradeless and
forlorn.  I have seen him from the windows.  She got him from Germany.
He has tall ears and looks exactly like a wolf.  He was educated in
Germany, and knows no language but the German.  Jean gave him no orders
save in that tongue.  And so when the burglar-alarm made a fierce clamor
at midnight a fortnight ago, the butler, who is French and knows no
German, tried in vain to interest the dog in the supposed burglar.  Jean
wrote me, to Bermuda, about the incident.  It was the last letter I was
ever to receive from her bright head and her competent hand. The dog will
not be neglected.

There was never a kinder heart than Jean's.  From her childhood up she
always spent the most of her allowance on charities of one kind or
another.  After she became secretary and had her income doubled she spent
her money upon these things with a free hand.  Mine too, I am glad and
grateful to say.

She was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all, birds,
beasts, and everything--even snakes--an inheritance from me.  She knew
all the birds; she was high up in that lore. She became a member of
various humane societies when she was still a little girl--both here and
abroad--and she remained an active member to the last.  She founded two
or three societies for the protection of animals, here and in Europe.

She was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my correspondence out
of the waste-basket and answered the letters. She thought all letters
deserved the courtesy of an answer. Her mother brought her up in that
kindly error.

She could write a good letter, and was swift with her pen. She had but an
indifferent ear music, but her tongue took to languages with an easy
facility.  She never allowed her Italian, French, and German to get rusty
through neglect.

The telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far and wide, now, just as
they did in Italy five years and a half ago, when this child's mother
laid down her blameless life.  They cannot heal the hurt, but they take
away some of the pain.  When Jean and I kissed hands and parted at my
door last, how little did we imagine that in twenty-two hours the
telegraph would be bringing words like these:

"From the bottom of our hearts we send out sympathy, dearest of friends."

For many and many a day to come, wherever I go in this house,
remembrancers of Jean will mutely speak to me of her.  Who can count the
number of them?

She was in exile two years with the hope of healing her malady--epilepsy.
There are no words to express how grateful I am that she did not meet her
fate in the hands of strangers, but in the loving shelter of her own
home.

"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!"

It is true.  Jean is dead.

A month ago I was writing bubbling and hilarious articles for magazines
yet to appear, and now I am writing--this.

CHRISTMAS DAY.  NOON.--Last night I went to Jean's room at intervals,
and turned back the sheet and looked at the peaceful face, and kissed the
cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in Florence so long
ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when I crept downstairs so
many times, and turned back a sheet and looked at a face just like this
one--Jean's mother's face--and kissed a brow that was just like this one.
And last night I saw again what I had seen then--that strange and lovely
miracle--the sweet, soft contours of early maidenhood restored by the
gracious hand of death!  When Jean's mother lay dead, all trace of care,
and trouble, and suffering, and the corroding years had vanished out of
the face, and I was looking again upon it as I had known and worshipped
it in its young bloom and beauty a whole generation before.

About three in the morning, while wandering about the house in the deep
silences, as one does in times like these, when there is a dumb sense
that something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must be
sought, if only for the employment the useless seeking gives, I came upon
Jean's dog in the hall downstairs, and noted that he did not spring to
greet me, according to his hospitable habit, but came slow and
sorrowfully; also I remembered that he had not visited Jean's apartment
since the tragedy.  Poor fellow, did he know?  I think so.  Always when
Jean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when she was in the
house he was with her, in the night as well as in the day. Her parlor was
his bedroom.  Whenever I happened upon him on the ground floor he always
followed me about, and when I went upstairs he went too--in a tumultuous
gallop.  But now it was different: after patting him a little I went to
the library--he remained behind; when I went upstairs he did not follow
me, save with his wistful eyes.  He has wonderful eyes--big, and kind,
and eloquent.  He can talk with them.  He is a beautiful creature, and is
of the breed of the New York police-dogs.  I do not like dogs, because
they bark when there is no occasion for it; but I have liked this one
from the beginning, because he belonged to Jean, and because he never
barks except when there is occasion--which is not oftener than twice a
week.

In my wanderings I visited Jean's parlor.  On a shelf I found a pile of
my books, and I knew what it meant.  She was waiting for me to come home
from Bermuda and autograph them, then she would send them away.  If I
only knew whom she intended them for!  But I shall never know.  I will
keep them.  Her hand has touched them--it is an accolade--they are noble,
now.

And in a closet she had hidden a surprise for me--a thing I have often
wished I owned: a noble big globe.  I couldn't see it for the tears.  She
will never know the pride I take in it, and the pleasure.  Today the
mails are full of loving remembrances for her: full of those old, old
kind words she loved so well, "Merry Christmas to Jean!"  If she could
only have lived one day longer!

At last she ran out of money, and would not use mine.  So she sent to one
of those New York homes for poor girls all the clothes she could
spare--and more, most likely.

CHRISTMAS NIGHT.--This afternoon they took her away from her room.  As
soon as I might, I went down to the library, and there she lay, in her
coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes she wore when she stood at
the other end of the same room on the 6th of October last, as Clara's
chief bridesmaid.  Her face was radiant with happy excitement then; it
was the same face now, with the dignity of death and the peace of God
upon it.

They told me the first mourner to come was the dog.  He came uninvited,
and stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore paws upon the trestle,
and took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him, then went
his way as silently as he had come. HE KNOWS.

At mid-afternoon it began to snow.  The pity of it--that Jean could not
see it!  She so loved the snow.

The snow continued to fall.  At six o'clock the hearse drew up to the
door to bear away its pathetic burden.  As they lifted the casket, Paine
began playing on the orchestrelle Schubert's "Impromptu," which was
Jean's favorite.  Then he played the Intermezzo; that was for Susy; then
he played the Largo; that was for their mother.  He did this at my
request.  Elsewhere in my Autobiography I have told how the Intermezzo
and the Largo came to be associated in my heart with Susy and Livy in
their last hours in this life.

From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road
and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and presently
disappear.  Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back any
more.  Jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were babies
together--he and her beloved old Katy--were conducting her to her distant
childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's side once more, in the
company of Susy and Langdon.

DECEMBER 26TH.  The dog came to see me at eight o'clock this morning.
He was very affectionate, poor orphan!  My room will be his quarters
hereafter.

The storm raged all night.  It has raged all the morning. The snow drives
across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime--and Jean not here
to see.

2:30 P.M.--It is the time appointed.  The funeral has begun. Four
hundred miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there.  The
scene is the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean's coffin stands where
her mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where
Susy's coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother's stood five
years and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time.

FIVE O'CLOCK.--It is all over.

When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe, it was hard, but I
could bear it, for I had Jean left.  I said WE would be a family.  We
said we would be close comrades and happy--just we two.  That fair dream
was in my mind when Jean met me at the steamer last Monday; it was in my
mind when she received me at the door last Tuesday evening.  We were
together; WE WERE A FAMILY! the dream had come true--oh, precisely true,
contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days.

And now?  Now Jean is in her grave!

In the grave--if I can believe it.  God rest her sweet spirit!

----- 1.  Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens family
for twenty-nine years.

2.  Mr. Gabrilowitsch had been operated on for appendicitis.

The turning - point of my life

I

If I understand the idea, the BAZAR invites several of us to write upon
the above text.  It means the change in my life's course which introduced
what must be regarded by me as the most IMPORTANT condition of my career.
But it also implies--without intention, perhaps--that that turning-point
ITSELF was the creator of the new condition.  This gives it too much
distinction, too much prominence, too much credit.  It is only the LAST
link in a very long chain of turning-points commissioned to produce the
cardinal result; it is not any more important than the humblest of its
ten thousand predecessors.  Each of the ten thousand did its appointed
share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all
necessary; to have left out any one of them would have defeated the
scheme and brought about SOME OTHER result.  It know we have a fashion of
saying "such and such an event was the turning-point in my life," but we
shouldn't say it.  We should merely grant that its place as LAST link in
the chain makes it the most CONSPICUOUS link; in real importance it has
no advantage over any one of its predecessors.

Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the
crossing of the Rubicon.  Suetonius says:

Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a
while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on
the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, "We may still
retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to
fight it out in arms."

This was a stupendously important moment.  And all the incidents, big
and little, of Caesar's previous life had been leading up to it, stage by
stage, link by link.  This was the LAST link--merely the last one, and no
bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the inflating
mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of Neptune.

You, the reader, have a PERSONAL interest in that link, and so have I; so
has the rest of the human race.  It was one of the links in your
life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. We may wait, now, with
bated breath, while Caesar reflects. Your fate and mine are involved in
his decision.

While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred.  A person
remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand,
sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a
number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters
among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with
it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other
side.  Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: "Let us go whither the omens of the
gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. THE DIE IS CAST."

So he crossed--and changed the future of the whole human race, for all
time.  But that stranger was a link in Caesar's life-chain, too; and a
necessary one.  We don't know his name, we never hear of him again; he
was very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he was
there by compulsion of HIS life-chain, to blow the electrifying blast
that was to make up Caesar's mind for him, and thence go piping down the
aisles of history forever.

If the stranger hadn't been there!  But he WAS.  And Caesar crossed.
With such results!  Such vast events--each a link in the HUMAN RACE'S
life-chain; each event producing the next one, and that one the next one,
and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the empire;
the breaking up of the empire; the rise of Christianity upon its ruins;
the spread of the religion to other lands--and so on; link by link took
its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of America being
one of them; our Revolution another; the inflow of English and other
immigrants another; their drift westward (my ancestors among them)
another; the settlement of certain of them in Missouri, which resulted in
ME.  For I was one of the unavoidable results of the crossing of the
Rubicon.  If the stranger, with his trumpet blast, had stayed away (which
he COULDN'T, for he was the appointed link) Caesar would not have
crossed.  What would have happened, in that case, we can never guess.  We
only know that the things that did happen would not have happened.  They
might have been replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but
their nature and results are beyond our guessing.  But the matter that
interests me personally is that I would not be HERE now, but somewhere
else; and probably black--there is no telling. Very well, I am glad he
crossed.  And very really and thankfully glad, too, though I never cared
anything about it before.

II

To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature.  I
have been professionally literary something more than forty years.  There
have been many turning-points in my life, but the one that was the link
in the chain appointed to conduct me to the literary guild is the most
CONSPICUOUS link in that chain. BECAUSE it was the last one.  It was not
any more important than its predecessors.  All the other links have an
inconspicuous look, except the crossing of the Rubicon; but as factors in
making me literary they are all of the one size, the crossing of the
Rubicon included.

I know how I came to be literary, and I will tell the steps that lead up
to it and brought it about.

The crossing of the Rubicon was not the first one, it was hardly even a
recent one; I should have to go back ages before Caesar's day to find the
first one.  To save space I will go back only a couple of generations and
start with an incident of my boyhood.  When I was twelve and a half years
old, my father died. It was in the spring.  The summer came, and brought
with it an epidemic of measles.  For a time a child died almost every
day. The village was paralyzed with fright, distress, despair. Children
that were not smitten with the disease were imprisoned in their homes to
save them from the infection.  In the homes there were no cheerful faces,
there was no music, there was no singing but of solemn hymns, no voice
but of prayer, no romping was allowed, no noise, no laughter, the family
moved spectrally about on tiptoe, in a ghostly hush.  I was a prisoner.
My soul was steeped in this awful dreariness--and in fear.  At some time
or other every day and every night a sudden shiver shook me to the
marrow, and I said to myself, "There, I've got it! and I shall die."
Life on these miserable terms was not worth living, and at last I made up
my mind to get the disease and have it over, one way or the other.  I
escaped from the house and went to the house of a neighbor where a
playmate of mine was very ill with the malady.  When the chance offered I
crept into his room and got into bed with him.  I was discovered by his
mother and sent back into captivity.  But I had the disease; they could
not take that from me.  I came near to dying.  The whole village was
interested, and anxious, and sent for news of me every day; and not only
once a day, but several times.  Everybody believed I would die; but on
the fourteenth day a change came for the worse and they were
disappointed.

This was a turning-point of my life.  (Link number one.) For when I got
well my mother closed my school career and apprenticed me to a printer.
She was tired of trying to keep me out of mischief, and the adventure of
the measles decided her to put me into more masterful hands than hers.

I became a printer, and began to add one link after another to the chain
which was to lead me into the literary profession. A long road, but I
could not know that; and as I did not know what its goal was, or even
that it had one, I was indifferent. Also contented.

A young printer wanders around a good deal, seeking and finding work; and
seeking again, when necessity commands.  N. B. Necessity is a
CIRCUMSTANCE; Circumstance is man's master--and when Circumstance
commands, he must obey; he may argue the matter--that is his privilege,
just as it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with the
attraction of gravitation--but it won't do any good, he must OBEY.  I
wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of
Circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of Iowa, where I worked
several months.  Among the books that interested me in those days was one
about the Amazon.  The traveler told an alluring tale of his long voyage
up the great river from Para to the sources of the Madeira, through the
heart of an enchanted land, a land wastefully rich in tropical wonders, a
romantic land where all the birds and flowers and animals were of the
museum varieties, and where the alligator and the crocodile and the
monkey seemed as much at home as if they were in the Zoo.  Also, he told
an astonishing tale about COCA, a vegetable product of miraculous powers,
asserting that it was so nourishing and so strength-giving that the
native of the mountains of the Madeira region would tramp up hill and
down all day on a pinch of powdered coca and require no other sustenance.

I was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon.  Also with a longing to
open up a trade in coca with all the world.  During months I dreamed that
dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to Para and spring that splendid
enterprise upon an unsuspecting planet.  But all in vain.  A person may
PLAN as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come
of it until the magician CIRCUMSTANCE steps in and takes the matter off
his hands.  At last Circumstance came to my help.  It was in this way.
Circumstance, to help or hurt another man, made him lose a fifty-dollar
bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me find it.  I
advertised the find, and left for the Amazon the same day.  This was
another turning-point, another link.

Could Circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to the
Amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fifty-dollar basis and been
obeyed?  No, I was the only one.  There were other fools there--shoals
and shoals of them--but they were not of my kind.  I was the only one of
my kind.

Circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a
partner.  Its partner is man's TEMPERAMENT--his natural disposition.  His
temperament is not his invention, it is BORN in him, and he has no
authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts.  He cannot
change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify it--except
temporarily.  But it won't stay modified.  It is permanent, like the
color of the man's eyes and the shape of his ears.  Blue eyes are gray in
certain unusual lights; but they resume their natural color when that
stress is removed.

A Circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man of
a different temperament.  If Circumstance had thrown the bank-note in
Caesar's way, his temperament would not have made him start for the
Amazon.  His temperament would have compelled him to do something with
the money, but not that.  It might have made him advertise the note--and
WAIT.  We can't tell. Also, it might have made him go to New York and buy
into the Government, with results that would leave Tweed nothing to learn
when it came his turn.

Very well, Circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told me
what to do with it.  Sometimes a temperament is an ass.  When that is the
case of the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one.
Training, experience, association, can temporarily so polish him, improve
him, exalt him that people will think he is a mule, but they will be
mistaken.  Artificially he IS a mule, for the time being, but at bottom
he is an ass yet, and will remain one.

By temperament I was the kind of person that DOES things. Does them, and
reflects afterward.  So I started for the Amazon without reflecting and
without asking any questions.  That was more than fifty years ago.  In
all that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade.  I have
been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things and
reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to me; I
still do the thing commanded by Circumstance and Temperament, and reflect
afterward.  Always violently.  When I am reflecting, on these occasions,
even deaf persons can hear me think.

I went by the way of Cincinnati, and down the Ohio and Mississippi.  My
idea was to take ship, at New Orleans, for Para. In New Orleans I
inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for Para.  Also, that there
never had BEEN one leaving for Para. I reflected.  A policeman came and
asked me what I was doing, and I told him.  He made me move on, and said
if he caught me reflecting in the public street again he would run me in.

After a few days I was out of money.  Then Circumstance arrived, with
another turning-point of my life--a new link.  On my way down, I had made
the acquaintance of a pilot.  I begged him to teach me the river, and he
consented.  I became a pilot.


By and by Circumstance came again--introducing the Civil War, this time,
in order to push me ahead another stage or two toward the literary
profession.  The boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone.

Circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point and a fresh
link.  My brother was appointed secretary to the new Territory of Nevada,
and he invited me to go with him and help him in his office.  I accepted.

In Nevada, Circumstance furnished me the silver fever and I went into the
mines to make a fortune, as I supposed; but that was not the idea.  The
idea was to advance me another step toward literature.  For amusement I
scribbled things for the Virginia City ENTERPRISE.  One isn't a printer
ten years without setting up acres of good and bad literature, and
learning--unconsciously at first, consciously later--to discriminate
between the two, within his mental limitations; and meantime he is
unconsciously acquiring what is called a "style."  One of my efforts
attracted attention, and the ENTERPRISE sent for me and put me on its
staff.

And so I became a journalist--another link.  By and by Circumstance and
the Sacramento UNION sent me to the Sandwich Islands for five or six
months, to write up sugar.  I did it; and threw in a good deal of
extraneous matter that hadn't anything to do with sugar. But it was this
extraneous matter that helped me to another link.

It made me notorious, and San Francisco invited me to lecture. Which I
did.  And profitably.  I had long had a desire to travel and see the
world, and now Circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me
upon the platform and furnished me the means. So I joined the "Quaker
City Excursion."

When I returned to America, Circumstance was waiting on the pier--with
the LAST link--the conspicuous, the consummating, the victorious link: I
was asked to WRITE A BOOK, and I did it, and called it THE INNOCENTS
ABROAD.  Thus I became at last a member of the literary guild.  That was
forty-two years ago, and I have been a member ever since.  Leaving the
Rubicon incident away back where it belongs, I can say with truth that
the reason I am in the literary profession is because I had the measles
when I was twelve years old.