THE BLEAKEST HOUR
It is a thankless job to raise a voice in the din of things as they are, a voice saying things are wrong. One may do this for years without penetrating the din, so long as he does not become specific. Or one may become a specialist in a certain wrong, gain recognition as a gentle fanatic on a certain subject, do much good with his passion, find certain friends and sterling enemies--and either lose or win, ultimately, according to change in the styles of his time.
Or, with one-pointed desire to change the spirit of things, one may reach the gloomy eminence from which it is perceived that all things are wrong, because the present underlying motive of the whole is wrong. He sees one body of men scrubbing one spot on the carpet, another sewing earnestly at a certain frayed selvage, another trying to bring out the dead colour from a patch that wear and weather have irrevocably changed.
He blesses them all, but his soul cries out for a new carpet--at least, a wholesome and vigorous tubbing of the entire carpet, and a turning over of the whole afterward.
Unless our life here is a sort of spontaneous ebullition out of the bosom of nature, without significance to us before and after, we are moving about our business of house and country and world in a most stupid, cruel and short-sighted fashion. I realise, and this is the wine of life, that the hearts of men are tender and lovable, naturally open and subject by nature to beauty and faith; that the hearts of men, indeed, yearn for that purity of condition in which truth may be the only utterance, and the atmosphere of untruth as revolting as bad air to the nostrils.
But with this realisation appears the facts that the activities in the world of men have little to do with this purity and heart-giving--but with an evil covering, the integument of which is the lie born of self-desire, and the true skin of which is the predatory instinct which has not remotely to do with an erect spine.
Higher days are coming for the expression of the human spirit. There is no doubt about that. But still the men who do the most to hurry them along, find a fight on each ledge of the cliff. Philosophically, it may be said that wars have brought great benefits to the race; that materialism has taught us our place here below as no other passion could; that trade has wrought its incomparable good to the races of men; that Fear has been the veritable mother of our evolution, its dark shadow forever inciting us, breaking our Inertia, bringing swiftness and strength first to the body, then to brain. Even desire for self, on the long road behind, has been the good angel of our passage, for we had to become splendid beasts before the dimension of man could be builded....
All good; mistakes nowhere in the plan.
But the trouble is, the passage of the many from grade to grade is intolerably slow. We had thought the many had finished with war. The few already are many grades ahead of that; the few have seen the virtues die out of patriotism and trade; they have watched the desire for self turn reptile, and hearkened to this truth which is beginning to reverberate around the world: _What is good for beasts is not of necessity good for men_.... One recent caller here, male, middle-aged, smilingly discussed all things from the philosophical point of view. I was saying:
"From the nursery to world-clutched retirement from public affairs, a man nowadays is taught more and more to keep his heart-principle locked----"
He smiled: "We have all the time there is. It will all come out right.
You fellows excite yourselves and try to change things overnight. Others of us think them over quietly by our fires. That is the whole difference. Scratch off the veneer, and we are all the same kind of God-yearning animal underneath."
Few sayings ever have hit me harder.
I studied the years' offerings from this man--to his house, to his acquaintances, to the world in general. An irony filled the room, and so intense was it that it seemed to have a colour, a kind of green and yellow vapour. It emanated from the centre of his face. I think the point that animated me especially was that he was in the habit of talking to young men. He had no children of his own. I changed the subject and opened the door--not to hasten his departure but because the air was close.
By every law which makes us hold fast to the memory of saviours and great men, the finest fabric of any race is its pioneers. We are living and putting into action now the dreams of brave spirits who have gone before. Philosophically, even they may have found that the plan is good, but that did not prevent them from giving their lives to lift the soddenness and accelerate the Inertia of the crowds. They took their joy in the great goodness of the plan--only after they had done their best to bring the race more swiftly into its higher destiny. A man does not sit back and allow his children to spend years in learning that which he can explain in a moment from his own experience.... I did not answer the philosopher, but many things that occurred from that little talk were brought out in Chapel during the days which followed--matters that had to do with America and literary workmanship in particular. Certain of the matters we discussed have been written down for expression here:
If some one announced that there lived in the Quattuor Islands a man who knew the exact way to bring into the world, not only the spirit, but the action of _brotherhood_ and _fatherland_, there would be some call for maps and steamship passages. If the Quattuor Islands were not already on the maps, they would presently appear, but not before the first pilgrims had set out. And if some one should add that all expression of the arts so far in the world is addled and unsightly compared to that which is about to be, if a certain formula is followed, and that this man in the Quattuor group has the formula--many more would start on the quest, or send their most trusted secretaries.
And yet the truth and the way is all here, and has been uttered again and again by every voice that has lifted itself above the common din.
The wise men carried gifts. You would expect to give something for the secret. You might expect to be called upon to sell all you have and give to the poor. You would not be surprised even if the magnetic Islander said:
"It is not your frankincense and myrrh that I want, though I thank you.
That which I have is for you. I am more anxious for you to know and live it, than you can be to have and hold it. But the mystery is that it will not come to abide with you, while you are passionate for possession. The passion to give to others must be established within you before you can adequately receive----"
You are beginning to see how ancient is the gospel. It _is_ old, older than that. It belongs to the foundations. Personally and nationally, the law works the same way. That which is true, is true in all its parts.
There is an adjustment by which that which is good for the whole is good for the part; but each, whole and part, nation and man, must have for the first thought, not self-good, but the general good. One nation, so established in this conviction that its actions are automatically founded upon the welfare of the world, could bring about the true world-fatherland in a generation; and one human heart so established begins to touch from the first moment the profound significances of life.
Personally and nationally, this plain but tremendous concept is beginning to manifest itself here in America. I do not write as a patriot. It is not _my country_ that is of interest, but humankind.
America's political interests, her trade, all her localisations as a separate and bounded people, are inimical to the new enthusiasm. The new social order cannot concern itself as a country apart. American predatory instincts, her self-worship, her attempt at neutrality while supplying explosives for the European slaughter arenas, her deepening confinement in matter during the past fifty years, have prepared her for the outright demoralisation of war, just as surely as Europe is meeting to-day the red harvest from such instincts and activities. For action invariably follows the thought.
Yet the hearts of men in America are changing. I do not write as a religionist, but as one very much of the world. For the hearts of men do change, and it is only through such changes that the material stagnation of a people can be relieved without deluges of blood.
The high hope is upon us. In being apart from war, America has been enabled to see. One must always remove himself from the ruck to see its movement. Within these western shores, the voices of true inspiration have recently been heard. From a literary standpoint alone, this is the most significant fact since Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau and Lanier took pen in hand, forgetting themselves a little while each day. There is a peculiar strength upon American production of all kinds as a result of the very act of getting out from under European influence.
England and France and Germany have fallen into mere national voices.
The voice of the partisan is but a weak treble, against the basic rumble of war. War in this century is a confession, as suicide is a confession, as every act of blood and rage is a confession, of the triumph of the animal in the human mind.... If you received letters from friends in England or Germany or France during the war--friends whom formerly you admired for their culture and acumen--you were struck by the dulness and misery of the communications, the uncentred points of view, the incapacity of human vision in the midst of the heaviness and blackness of life there; if, indeed, you read the newspapers and periodicals of those countries, you required no further proof of the fact--that a nation at war is an obscene nation, its consciousness all driven down into the physical, its voice tonally imperfect from hate and fear, its eyes open to red illusion and not to truth.
Even in America the voice of the nationalist is a part of the old and the unclean. The new social order does not recognise the rights and desires of any isolated people. Humankind is basically _one_ in meaning, in aim and in destiny. The differences of nations in relation to the sun's rays and in character of country, environment, race, colour and structure of mind--these are primal values, the very values that will sum up into the essential grandeur of the whole. Personally and nationally there are no duplicates in the social scheme. The instruments of this magnificent orchestra are of infinite diversity, but the harmony is one.
The spiritual source of all human achievement is already a harmonic whole. That globe is complete. It is our business as men to make a pattern of it in matter--to make the dream come true in flesh, each man and each nation bringing his labour.
If a certain plant, bird, insect, beast, man or nation, rises by intrinsic force and predation to dangerous increase, a devouring parasite, or formidable rival, is invariably fostered within its shadow.
In good time there is war to the death.
In a doctor's office in Canada, I saw the picture of a bull-dog standing large against the background of the accepted flag, and beneath was this line:
"What we have, we'll hold."
I found that the picture had a national popularity. Yet a child stopping to think would have seen breakers ahead for a nation so lost in material things, as thus to challenge the Fates.... There is a fairy-tale of a man building a great boat for the air. It looked to win, and in the effrontery of achievement, he set forth to conquer God. Just then a hornet stung him.
It is a conviction held here that the darkest period of American materialism came to its end with the beginning of the war. The generation of literary producers in manifestation at that time was responsible for the bleakest products which America will ever have the shame of showing to future generations.
It was not so devoid of genius as would appear; the first cause was the difficulty in getting the best work "through." This again was not because the public was not ready for the good, but because the public taste was brutalised by men who stood between the public and the producers. These middlemen insisted, by the right of more direct contact, that the public should have what they fancied the public desire to be.
I sat in Union Square recently with a beggar who studied me, because it appeared to be my whim to help him with a coin. Back of his temples was a great story--sumptuous drama and throbbing with the first importance of life. He did not tell me that story, and I could not draw it from him. Rather he told me the story that he fancied I would want. There was a whine in it. He chose to act, and he was not a good actor. His offering hurt, not because he was filthy and a failure, but because he lied to himself and to me, because he did not dare to be himself, though the facts were upon him, eye and brow and mouth. So I did not get his story, but I got a thrilling picture of the recent generation in American letters--I, being the public; the truth of his story representing the producer, and the miserable thing he fancied I was ready for, being the middleman's part.
All workmen of the last generation--all who would listen--were taught to bring forth their products with an intervening lie between the truth and their expression--the age of advertising heavy in all production.
I recall from those days what was to me a significant talk with an American novelist who wanted sales, who was willing to sacrifice all but the core of his character to get sales, and who found himself at that time in a challenging situation. As he expressed it:
"Along about page two hundred in the copy of the novel I am on, the woman's soul wakes up."
"A woman's novel?" I asked.
"Meant to be," said he. "Study of a woman all through. Begins as a little girl--different, you know--sensitive, does a whole lot of thinking that her family doesn't follow. Tries to tell 'em at first, but finds herself in bad. Then keeps quiet for years--putting on power and beauty in the good old way of bumps and misunderstanding. She's pure white fire presently--body and brain and something else asleep. She wants to be a mother, but the ghastly sordidness of the love stories of her sisters to this enactment, frightens her from men and marriage as the world conducts it----"
"I follow you," said I.
"Well, I'm not going to do the novel here for you," he added. "You wouldn't think there was a ray of light in it from this kind of telling. A man who spends five months of his best hours of life in telling a story, can't do it over in ten minutes and drive a machine at the same time----"
"We're getting out of the crowd. What did the girl do?" I asked.
"Well, she wanted a little baby--was ready to die for it, but had her own ideas of what the Father should be. A million women--mostly having been married and failed, have thought the same thing here in America--pricked the unclean sham of the whole business. Moreover, they're the best women we've got. There are----"
He purposely shook the hat from his head--back into the seat--at this point.
"There are some young women coming up into maturity here in America--God bless 'em--who are almost brave enough to set out on the quest for the Father of the baby that haunts them to be born.... That's what she did.
He was a young man doing his own kind of work--doctoring among the poor, let us say, mainly for nothing--killing himself among men and women and babies; living on next to nothing, but having a half-divine kind of madness to lift the world.... She saw him. You can picture that. They were two to make one--and a third. She knew. There was a gold light about his head which she saw--and some of the poverty-folk saw--but which he didn't know the meaning of, and the world missed altogether.
"She went to him. It's cruel to put it in this way.... I'm not saying anything about the writing or about what happened, but the scene as it came to me was the finest thing I ever tried to put down. We always fall down in the handling, you know.... I did it the best I could.... No, I'm not going to tell you what happened. Only this: a little afterward--along about page two hundred of the copy--the woman's soul woke up."
"Why not, in God's name?" I asked.