"Everything. The brain sees but the part. The development of brain will never bring to child or man the conception of the spiritual plan. There is a man to come for every missing part. Each man, as he develops, is more and more a specialist. These missing parts shall be taken down from spirit and put into matter by men whose intrinsic gifts are developed to contact them. Thus have come the great poems and inventions so far, the splendid sacrifices of men, and all renunciation for the healing of the nations.
"I would first find the work for the child. The finer the child the easier this part of the task. Then I would develop the child to turn to a spiritual source for his inspiration--his expectation to a spiritual source for every good and perfect thing. The dream is there; the other half of the circle is to produce the dream in matter.
"Education is thus religion--but not the man-idea of religion. It has nothing to do with creeds or cults, with affirmations or observances. It has to do with establishing connection with the sources of power, and bringing the energy down into the performance of constructive work in matter. Religion isn't a feeling of piety or devoutness; it is action.
Spirituality is intellect inspired.
"The mountain is broad at the base only. There are many paths upward.
These paths are far apart only at the base. On the shoulder of the mountain we hear the voices of those who have taken the other paths.
Still higher, we meet. The Apex is a point; the plan is one.
"I would teach the young mind to find his own voice, his own part, his own message. It is there above him. True training is the refinement, the preparing of a surface fine enough to receive his part. That is the inspiration. The out-breath--the right hand of the process--is action, making a model in matter of the thing received.
"All training that does not encourage the child to look into the Unseen for his power, not only holds, but draws him to the commonness of the herds.
"... Many men to-day can believe in angels who cannot believe in fairies; but the child who sees the changes of light in the lowliest shadows, whose fancy is filled with little figures of the conservers and colourers of nature, shall in good time see the angels--and one of that host shall come forward (which is more important and to the point) bringing a task for the child to do.
"I say to the children here: 'I do not see the things you do, and in that I am your inferior. They shut the doors upon me when I was little, not meaning to, but the world always does that. That fineness of seeing went out from my eyes, but it is so good a thing that I do not want you to lose it. And always I am ready to listen, when you tell me what you have seen.'"
THE END
BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT
MIDSTREAM
... A hint from the first-year's recognition of a book that was made to remain in American literature:
_Boston Transcript_: If it be extravagance, let it be so, to say that Comfort's account of his childhood has seldom been rivaled in literature. It amounts to revelation. Really the only parallels that will suggest themselves in our letters are the great ones that occur in _Huckleberry Finn_.... This man Comfort's gamut is long and he has raced its full length. One wonders whether the interest, the skill, the general worth of it, the things it has to report of all life, as well as the one life, do not entitle _Midstream_ to the very long life that is enjoyed only by the very best of books.
_San Francisco Argonaut_: Read the book. It is autobiography in its perfection. It shows more of the realities of the human being, more of god and devil in conflict, than any book of its kind.
_Springfield Republican_: It is difficult to think of any other young American who has so courageously reversed the process of writing for the "market" and so flatly insisted upon being taken, if at all, on his own terms of life and art. And now comes his frank and amazing revelation, _Midstream_, in which he captures and carries the reader on to a story of regeneration. He has come far; the question is, how much farther will he go?
Mary Fanton Roberts in _The Craftsman_: Beside the stature of this book, the ordinary novel and biography are curiously dwarfed. You read it with a poignant interest and close it with wonder, reverence and gratitude.
There is something strangely touching about words so candid, and a draught of philosophy that has been pressed from such wild and bitter-sweet fruit. The message it contains is one to sink deep, penetrating and enriching whatever receptive soul it touches. This man's words are incandescent. Many of us feel that he is breathing into a language, grown trite from hackneyed usage, the inspiration of a quickened life.
Ida Gilbert Myers in _Washington Star_: Courage backs this revelation.
The gift of self-searching animates it. Honesty sustains it. And Mr.
Comfort's rare power to seize and deliver his vision inspires it. It is a tremendous thing--the greatest thing that this writer has yet done.
George Soule in _The Little Review_: Here is a man's life laid absolutely bare. A direct, big thing, so simple that almost no one has done it before--this Mr. Comfort has dared. People who are made uncomfortable by intimate grasp of anything, to whom reserve is more important than truth--these will not read _Midstream_ through, but others will emerge from the book with a sense of the absolute nobility of Mr. Comfort's frankness.
Edwin Markham in _Hearst's Magazine_: Will Levington Comfort, a novelist of distinction, has given us a book alive with human interest, with passionate sincerity, and with all the power of his despotism over words. He has been a wandering foot--familiar with many strands; he has known shame and sorrow and striving; he has won to serene heights. He tells it all without vaunt, relating his experience to the large meanings of life for all men, to the mystic currents behind life, out of which we come, to whose great deep we return.