{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_20768/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_20768","id":"gutenberg_20768","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20768","summary":null,"tags":["Category: American Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Psychiatry/Psychology","Essays","Speeches, addresses, etc."],"text":"E-text prepared by Al Haines\n\n\n\nMEMORIES AND STUDIES\n\nby\n\nWILLIAM JAMES\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLongmans, Green, and Co.\nFourth Avenue and 30th Street, New York\nLondon, Bombay, and Calcutta\n1911\n\nCopyright, 1911, by Henry James Jr.\nAll Rights Reserved\n\n\n\n\nPREFATORY NOTE\n\nProfessor William James formed the intention\nshortly before his death of republishing a number\nof popular addresses and essays under the title\nwhich this book now bears; but unfortunately he\nfound no opportunity to attend to any detail of the\nbook himself, or to leave definite instructions for\nothers.  I believe, however, that I have departed\nin no substantial degree from my father's idea,\nexcept perhaps by including two or three short\npieces which were first addressed to special\noccasions or audiences and which now seem clearly\nworthy of republication in their original form,\nalthough he might not have been willing to reprint\nthem himself without the recastings to which he was\never most attentive when preparing for new readers.\nEverything in this volume has already appeared in\nprint in magazines or otherwise, and definite\nacknowledgements are hereinafter made in the\nappropriate places.  Comparison with the original texts\nwill disclose slight variations in a few passages, and\nit is therefore proper to explain that in these\npassages the present text follows emendations of the\noriginal which have survived in the author's own\nhandwriting.\n\nHENRY JAMES, JR.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n    I. LOUIS AGASSIZ\n   II. ADDRESS AT THE EMERSON CENTENARY IN CONCORD\n  III. ROBERT GOULD SHAW\n   IV. FRANCIS BOOTT\n    V. THOMAS DAVIDSON: A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE\n   VI. HERBERT SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY\n  VII. FREDERICK MYERS' SERVICES TO PSYCHOLOGY\n VIII. FINAL IMPRESSIONS OF A PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER\n   IX. ON SOME MENTAL EFFECTS OF THE EARTHQUAKE\n    X. THE ENERGIES OF MEN\n   XI. THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR\n  XII. REMARKS AT THE PEACE BANQUET\n XIII. THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED\n  XIV. THE UNIVERSITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL\n       THE PH. D. OCTOPUS\n       THE TRUE HARVARD\n       STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY\n   XV. A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nLOUIS AGASSIZ[1]\n\nIt would be unnatural to have such an assemblage as this meet in the\nMuseum and Faculty Room of this University and yet have no public word\nspoken in honor of a name which must be silently present to the minds\nof all our visitors.\n\nAt some near future day, it is to be hoped some one of you who is well\nacquainted with Agassiz's scientific career will discourse here\nconcerning it,--I could not now, even if I would, speak to you of that\nof which you have far more intimate knowledge than I.  On this social\noccasion it has seemed that what Agassiz stood for in the way of\ncharacter and influence is the more fitting thing to commemorate, and\nto that agreeable task I have been called.  He made an impression that\nwas unrivalled.  He left a sort of popular myth--the Agassiz legend, as\none might say--behind him in the air about us; and life comes kindlier\nto all of us, we get more recognition from the world, because we call\nourselves naturalists,--and that was the class to which he also\nbelonged.\n\nThe secret of such an extraordinarily effective influence lay in the\nequally extraordinary mixture of the animal and social gifts, the\nintellectual powers, and the desires and passions of the man.  From his\nboyhood, he looked on the world as if it and he were made for each\nother, and on the vast diversity of living things as if he were there\nwith authority to take mental possession of them all.  His habit of\ncollecting began in childhood, and during his long life knew no bounds\nsave those that separate the things of Nature from those of human art.\nAlready in his student years, in spite of the most stringent poverty,\nhis whole scheme of existence was that of one predestined to greatness,\nwho takes that fact for granted, and stands forth immediately as a\nscientific leader of men.\n\nHis passion for knowing living things was combined with a rapidity of\nobservation, and a capacity to recognize them again and remember\neverything about them, which all his life it seemed an easy triumph and\ndelight for him to exercise, and which never allowed him to waste a\nmoment in doubts about the commensurability of his powers with his\ntasks.  If ever a person lived by faith, he did.  When a boy of twenty,\nwith an allowance of two hundred and fifty dollars a year, he\nmaintained an artist attached to his employ, a custom which never\nafterwards was departed from,--except when he maintained two or three.\nHe lectured from the very outset to all those who would hear him.  \"I\nfeel within myself the strength of a whole generation,\" he wrote to his\nfather at that time, and launched himself upon the publication of his\ncostly \"Poissons Fossiles\" with no clear vision of the quarter from\nwhence the payment might be expected to come.\n\nAt Neuchatel (where between the ages of twenty-five and thirty he\nenjoyed a stipend that varied from four hundred to six hundred dollars)\nhe organized a regular academy of natural history, with its museum,\nmanaging by one expedient or another to employ artists, secretaries,\nand assistants, and to keep a lithographic and printing establishment\nof his own employed with the work that he put forth.  Fishes, fossil\nand living, echinoderms and glaciers, transfigured themselves under his\nhand, and at thirty he was already at the zenith of his reputation,\nrecognized by all as one of those naturalists in the unlimited sense,\none of those folio copies of mankind, like Linnaeus and Cuvier, who aim\nat nothing less than an acquaintance with the whole of animated Nature.\nHis genius for classifying was simply marvellous; and, as his latest\nbiographer says, nowhere had a single person ever given so decisive an\nimpulse to natural history.\n\nSuch was the human being who on an October morning fifty years ago\ndisembarked at our port, bringing his hungry heart along with him, his\nconfidence in his destiny, and his imagination full of plans.  The only\nparticular resource he was assured of was one course of Lowell\nLectures.  But of one general resource he always was assured, having\nalways counted on it and never found it to fail,--and that was the good\nwill of every fellow-creature in whose presence he could find an\nopportunity to describe his aims.  His belief in these was so intense\nand unqualified that he could not conceive of others not feeling the\nfurtherance of them to be a duty binding also upon them.  _Velle non\ndiscitur_, as Seneca says:--Strength of desire must be born with a man,\nit can't be taught.  And Agassiz came before one with such enthusiasm\nglowing in his countenance,--such a persuasion radiating from his\nperson that his projects were the sole things really fit to interest\nman as man,--that he was absolutely irresistible.  He came, in Byron's\nwords, with victory beaming from his breast, and every one went down\nbefore him, some yielding him money, some time, some specimens, and\nsome labor, but all contributing their applause and their godspeed.\nAnd so, living among us from month to month and from year to year, with\nno relation to prudence except his pertinacious violation of all her\nusual laws, he on the whole achieved the compass of his desires,\nstudied the geology and fauna of a continent, trained a generation of\nzoologists, founded one of the chief museums of the world, gave a new\nimpulse to scientific education in America, and died the idol of the\npublic, as well as of his circle of immediate pupils and friends.\n\nThe secret of it all was, that while his scientific ideals were an\nintegral part of his being, something that he never forgot or laid\naside, so that wherever he went he came forward as \"the Professor,\" and\ntalked \"shop\" to every person, young or old, great or little, learned\nor unlearned, with whom he was thrown, he was at the same time so\ncommanding a presence, so curious and inquiring, so responsive and\nexpansive, and so generous and reckless of himself and of his own, that\nevery one said immediately, \"Here is no musty savant, but a man, a\ngreat man, a man on the heroic scale, not to serve whom is avarice and\nsin.\"  He elevated the popular notion of what a student of Nature could\nbe.  Since Benjamin Franklin, we had never had among us a person of\nmore popularly impressive type.  He did not wait for students to come\nto him; he made inquiry for promising youthful collectors, and when he\nheard of one, he wrote, inviting and urging him to come.  Thus there is\nhardly one now of the American naturalists of my generation whom\nAgassiz did not train.  Nay, more; he said to every one that a year or\ntwo of natural history, studied as he understood it, would give the\nbest training for any kind of mental work.  Sometimes he was amusingly\n_naif_ in this regard, as when he offered to put his whole Museum at\nthe disposition of the Emperor of Brazil if he would but come and labor\nthere.  And I well remember how certain officials of the Brazilian\nempire smiled at the cordiality with which he pressed upon them a\nsimilar invitation.  But it had a great effect.  Natural history must\nindeed be a godlike pursuit, if such a man as this can so adore it,\npeople said; and the very definition and meaning of the word naturalist\nunderwent a favorable alteration in the common mind.\n\nCertain sayings of Agassiz's, as the famous one that he \"had no time\nfor making money,\" and his habit of naming his occupation simply as\nthat of \"teacher,\" have caught the public fancy, and are permanent\nbenefactions.  We all enjoy more consideration for the fact that he\nmanifested himself here thus before us in his day.\n\nHe was a splendid example of the temperament that looks forward and not\nbackward, and never wastes a moment in regrets for the irrevocable.  I\nhad the privilege of admission to his society during the Thayer\nexpedition to Brazil.  I well remember at night, as we all swung in our\nhammocks in the fairy-like moonlight, on the deck of the steamer that\nthrobbed its way up the Amazon between the forests guarding the stream\non either side, how he turned and whispered, \"James, are you awake?\"\nand continued, \"_I_ cannot sleep; I am too happy; I keep thinking of\nthese glorious plans.\"  The plans contemplated following the Amazon to\nits headwaters, and penetrating the Andes in Peru.  And yet, when he\narrived at the Peruvian frontier and learned that that country had\nbroken into revolution, that his letters to officials would be useless,\nand that that part of the project must be given up, although he was\nindeed bitterly chagrined and excited for part of an hour, when the\nhour had passed over it seemed as if he had quite forgotten the\ndisappointment, so enthusiastically was he occupied already with the\nnew scheme substituted by his active mind.\n\nAgassiz's influence on methods of teaching in our community was prompt\nand decisive,--all the more so that it struck people's imagination by\nits very excess.  The good old way of committing printed abstractions\nto memory seems never to have received such a shock as it encountered\nat his hands.  There is probably no public school teacher now in New\nEngland who will not tell you how Agassiz used to lock a student up in\na room full of turtle shells, or lobster shells, or oyster shells,\nwithout a book or word to help him, and not let him out till he had\ndiscovered all the truths which the objects contained.  Some found the\ntruths after weeks and months of lonely sorrow; others never found\nthem.  Those who found them were already made into naturalists\nthereby--the failures were blotted from the book of honor and of life.\n\"Go to Nature; take the facts into your own hands; look, and see for\nyourself!\"--these were the maxims which Agassiz preached wherever he\nwent, and their effect on pedagogy was electric.  The extreme rigor of\nhis devotion to this concrete method of learning was the natural\nconsequence of his own peculiar type of intellect, in which the\ncapacity for abstraction and causal reasoning and tracing chains of\nconsequences from hypotheses was so much less developed than the genius\nfor acquaintance with vast volumes of detail, and for seizing upon\nanalogies and relations of the more proximate and concrete kind.  While\non the Thayer expedition, I remember that I often put questions to him\nabout the facts of our new tropical habitat, but I doubt if he ever\nanswered one of these questions of mine outright.  He always said:\n\"There, you see you have a definite problem; go and look and find the\nanswer for yourself.\"  His severity in this line was a living rebuke to\nall abstractionists and would-be biological philosophers.  More than\nonce have I heard him quote with deep feeling the lines from Faust:\n\n  \"Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie.\n  Und grun des Lebens goldner Baum.\"\n\nThe only man he really loved and had use for was the man who could\nbring him facts.  To see facts, not to argue or _raisonniren_, was what\nlife meant for him; and I think he often positively loathed the\nratiocinating type of mind.  \"Mr. Blank, you are _totally_ uneducated!\"\nI heard him once say to a student who propounded to him some glittering\ntheoretic generality.  And on a similar occasion he gave an admonition\nthat must have sunk deep into the heart of him to whom it was\naddressed.  \"Mr. X, some people perhaps now consider you a bright young\nman; but when you are fifty years old, if they ever speak of you then,\nwhat they will say will be this: 'That X,--oh, yes, I know him; he used\nto be a very bright young man!'\"  Happy is the conceited youth who at\nthe proper moment receives such salutary cold water therapeutics as\nthis from one who, in other respects, is a kind friend.  We cannot all\nescape from being abstractionists.  I myself, for instance, have never\nbeen able to escape; but the hours I spent with Agassiz so taught me\nthe difference between all possible abstractionists and all livers in\nthe light of the world's concrete fulness, that I have never been able\nto forget it.  Both kinds of mind have their place in the infinite\ndesign, but there can be no question as to which kind lies the nearer\nto the divine type of thinking.\n\nAgassiz's view of Nature was saturated with simple religious feeling,\nand for this deep but unconventional religiosity he found at Harvard\nthe most sympathetic possible environment.  In the fifty years that\nhave sped since he arrived here our knowledge of Nature has penetrated\ninto joints and recesses which his vision never pierced.  The causal\nelements and not the totals are what we are now most passionately\nconcerned to understand; and naked and poverty-stricken enough do the\nstripped-out elements and forces occasionally appear to us to be.  But\nthe truth of things is after all their living fulness, and some day,\nfrom a more commanding point of view than was possible to any one in\nAgassiz's generation, our descendants, enriched with the spoils of all\nour analytic investigations, will get round again to that higher and\nsimpler way of looking at Nature.  Meanwhile as we look back upon\nAgassiz, there floats up a breath as of life's morning, that makes the\nwork seem young and fresh once more.  May we all, and especially may\nthose younger members of our association who never knew him, give a\ngrateful thought to his memory as we wander through that Museum which\nhe founded, and through this University whose ideals he did so much to\nelevate and define.\n\n\n\n[1] Words spoken at the reception of the American Society of\nNaturalists by the President and Fellows of Harvard College at\nCambridge, December 30, 1896.  Printed in _Science_, N. S. V. 285.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nADDRESS AT THE EMERSON CENTENARY IN CONCORD[1]\n\nThe pathos of death is this, that when the days of one's life are\nended, those days that were so crowded with business and felt so heavy\nin their passing, what remains of one in memory should usually be so\nslight a thing.  The phantom of an attitude, the echo of a certain mode\nof thought, a few pages of print, some invention, or some victory we\ngained in a brief critical hour, are all that can survive the best of\nus.  It is as if the whole of a man's significance had now shrunk into\nthe phantom of an attitude, into a mere musical note or phrase\nsuggestive of his singularity--happy are those whose singularity gives\na note so clear as to be victorious over the inevitable pity of such a\ndiminution and abridgment.\n\nAn ideal wraith like this, of Emerson's personality, hovers over all\nConcord to-day, taking, in the minds of those of you who were his\nneighbors and intimates a somewhat fuller shape, remaining more\nabstract in the younger generation, but bringing home to all of us the\nnotion of a spirit indescribably precious.  The form that so lately\nmoved upon these streets and country roads, or awaited in these fields\nand woods the beloved Muse's visits, is now dust; but the soul's note,\nthe spiritual voice, rises strong and clear above the uproar of the\ntimes, and seems securely destined to exert an ennobling influence over\nfuture generations.\n\nWhat gave a flavor so matchless to Emerson's individuality was, even\nmore than his rich mental gifts, their singularly harmonious\ncombination.  Rarely has a man so accurately known the limits of his\ngenius or so unfailingly kept within them.  \"Stand by your order,\" he\nused to say to youthful students; and perhaps the paramount impression\none gets of his life is of his loyalty to his own personal type and\nmission.  The type was that of what he liked to call the scholar, the\nperceiver of pure truth; and the mission was that of the reporter in\nworthy form of each perception.  The day is good, he said, in which we\nhave the most perceptions.  There are times when the cawing of a crow,\na weed, a snowflake, or a farmer planting in his field become symbols\nto the intellect of truths equal to those which the most majestic\nphenomena can open.  Let me mind my own charge, then, walk alone,\nconsult the sky, the field and forest, sedulously waiting every morning\nfor the news concerning the structure of the universe which the good\nSpirit will give me.\n\nThis was the first half of Emerson, but only half; for genius, as he\nsaid, is insatiate for expression, and truth has to be clad in the\nright verbal garment.  The form of the garment was so vital with\nEmerson that it is impossible to separate it from the matter.  They\nform a chemical combination--thoughts which would be trivial expressed\notherwise, are important through the nouns and verbs to which he\nmarried them.  The style is the man, it has been said; the man\nEmerson's mission culminated in his style, and if we must define him in\none word, we have to call him Artist.  He was an artist whose medium\nwas verbal and who wrought in spiritual material.\n\nThis duty of spiritual seeing and reporting determined the whole tenor\nof his life.  It was to shield this duty from invasion and distraction\nthat he dwelt in the country, that he consistently declined to entangle\nhimself with associations or to encumber himself with functions which,\nhowever he might believe in them, he felt were duties for other men and\nnot for him.  Even the care of his garden, \"with its stoopings and\nfingerings in a few yards of space,\" he found \"narrowing and\npoisoning,\" and took to long free walks and saunterings instead,\nwithout apology.  \"Causes\" innumerable sought to enlist him as their\n\"worker\"--all got his smile and word of sympathy, but none entrapped\nhim into service.  The struggle against slavery itself, deeply as it\nappealed to him, found him firm: \"God must govern his own world, and\nknows his way out of this pit without my desertion of my post, which\nhas none to guard it but me.  I have quite other slaves to face than\nthose Negroes, to wit, imprisoned thoughts far back in the brain of\nman, and which have no watchman or lover or defender but me.\"  This in\nreply to the possible questions of his own conscience.  To hot-blooded\nmoralists with more objective ideas of duty, such a fidelity to the\nlimits of his genius must often have made him seem provokingly remote\nand unavailable; but we, who can see things in more liberal\nperspective, must unqualifiably approve the results.  The faultless\ntact with which he kept his safe limits while he so dauntlessly\nasserted himself within them, is an example fitted to give heart to\nother theorists and artists the world over.\n\nThe insight and creed from which Emerson's life followed can be best\nsummed up in his own verses:\n\n  \"So nigh is grandeur to our dust,\n  So near is God to man!\"\n\nThrough the individual fact there ever shone for him the effulgence of\nthe Universal Reason.  The great Cosmic Intellect terminates and houses\nitself in mortal men and passing hours.  Each of us is an angle of its\neternal vision, and the only way to be true to our Maker is to be loyal\nto ourselves.  \"O rich and various Man!\" he cries, \"thou palace of\nsight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and the night and\nthe unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain the geometry of the city of God;\nin thy heart the bower of love and the realms of right and wrong.\"\n\nIf the individual open thus directly into the Absolute, it follows that\nthere is something in each and all of us, even the lowliest, that ought\nnot to consent to borrowing traditions and living at second hand.  \"If\nJohn was perfect, why are you and I alive?\" Emerson writes; \"As long as\nany man exists there is some need of him; let him fight for his own.\"\nThis faith that in a life at first hand there is something sacred is\nperhaps the most characteristic note in Emerson's writings.  The\nhottest side of him is this non-conformist persuasion, and if his\ntemper could ever verge on common irascibility, it would be by reason\nof the passionate character of his feelings on this point.  The world\nis still new and untried.  In seeing freshly, and not in hearing of\nwhat others saw, shall a man find what truth is.  \"Each one of us can\nbask in the great morning which rises out of the Eastern Sea, and be\nhimself one of the children of the light.\"  \"Trust thyself, every heart\nvibrates to that iron string.  There is a time in each man's education\nwhen he must arrive at the conviction that imitation is suicide; when\nhe must take himself for better or worse as his portion; and know that\nthough the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn\ncan come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground\nwhich it was given him to till.\"\n\nThe matchless eloquence with which Emerson proclaimed the sovereignty\nof the living individual electrified and emancipated his generation,\nand this bugle-blast will doubtless be regarded by future critics as\nthe soul of his message.  The present man is the aboriginal reality,\nthe Institution is derivative, and the past man is irrelevant and\nobliterate for present issues.  \"If anyone would lay an axe to your\ntree with a text from 1 John, v, 7, or a sentence from Saint Paul, say\nto him,\" Emerson wrote, \"'My tree is Yggdrasil, the tree of life.'  Let\nhim know by your security that your conviction is clear and sufficient,\nand, if he were Paul himself, that you also are here and with your\nCreator.\"  \"Cleave ever to God,\" he insisted, \"against the name of\nGod;\"--and so, in spite of the intensely religious character of his\ntotal thought, when he began his career it seemed to many of his\nbrethren in the clerical profession that he was little more than an\niconoclast and desecrator.\n\nEmerson's belief that the individual must in reason be adequate to the\nvocation for which the Spirit of the world has called him into being,\nis the source of those sublime pages, hearteners and sustainers of our\nyouth, in which he urges his hearers to be incorruptibly true to their\nown private conscience.  Nothing can harm the man who rests in his\nappointed place and character.  Such a man is invulnerable; he balances\nthe universe, balances it as much by keeping small when he is small, as\nby being great and spreading when he is great.  \"I love and honor\nEpaminondas,\" said Emerson, \"but I do not wish to be Epaminondas.  I\nhold it more just to love the world of this hour than the world of his\nhour.  Nor can you, if I am true, excite me to the least uneasiness by\nsaying, 'He acted and thou sittest still.'  I see action to be good\nwhen the need is, and sitting still to be also good.  Epaminondas, if\nhe was the man I take him for, would have sat still with joy and peace,\nif his lot had been mine.  Heaven is large, and affords space for all\nmodes of love and fortitude.\"  \"The fact that I am here certainly shows\nme that the Soul has need of an organ here, and shall I not assume the\npost?\"\n\nThe vanity of all superserviceableness and pretence was never more\nhappily set forth than by Emerson in the many passages in which he\ndevelops this aspect of his philosophy.  Character infallibly proclaims\nitself.  \"Hide your thoughts!--hide the sun and moon.  They publish\nthemselves to the universe.  They will speak through you though you\nwere dumb.  They will flow out of your actions, your manners and your\nface. . . .  Don't say things: What you are stands over you the while\nand thunders so that I cannot say what you say to the contrary. . . .\nWhat a man _is_ engraves itself upon him in letters of light.\nConcealment avails him nothing, boasting nothing.  There is confession\nin the glances of our eyes; in our smiles; in salutations; and the\ngrasp of hands.  His sin bedaubs him, mars all his good impression.\nMen know not why they do not trust him, but they do not trust him.  His\nvice glasses the eye, casts lines of mean expression in the cheek,\npinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast upon the back of the head,\nand writes, O fool! fool! on the forehead of a king.  If you would not\nbe known to do a thing, never do it; a man may play the fool in the\ndrifts of a desert, but every grain of sand shall seem to see.--How can\na man be concealed?  How can he be concealed?\"\n\nOn the other hand, never was a sincere word or a sincere thought\nutterly lost.  \"Never a magnanimity fell to the ground but there is\nsome heart to greet and accept it unexpectedly. . . .  The hero fears\nnot that if he withstood the avowal of a just and brave act, it will go\nunwitnessed and unloved.  One knows it,--himself,--and is pledged by it\nto sweetness of peace and to nobleness of aim, which will prove in the\nend a better proclamation than the relating of the incident.\"\n\nThe same indefeasible right to be exactly what one is, provided one\nonly be authentic, spreads itself, in Emerson's way of thinking, from\npersons to things and to times and places.  No date, no position is\ninsignificant, if the life that fills it out be only genuine:--\n\n\"In solitude, in a remote village, the ardent youth loiters and mourns.\nWith inflamed eye, in this sleeping wilderness, he has read the story\nof the Emperor, Charles the Fifth, until his fancy has brought home to\nthe surrounding woods the faint roar of cannonades in the Milanese, and\nmarches in Germany.  He is curious concerning that man's day.  What\nfilled it?  The crowded orders, the stern decisions, the foreign\ndespatches, the Castilian etiquette?  The soul answers--Behold his day\nhere!  In the sighing of these woods, in the quiet of these gray\nfields, in the cool breeze that sings out of these northern mountains;\nin the workmen, the boys, the maidens you meet,--in the hopes of the\nmorning, the ennui of noon, and sauntering of the afternoon; in the\ndisquieting comparisons; in the regrets at want of vigor; in the great\nidea and the puny execution,--behold Charles the Fifth's day; another,\nyet the same; behold Chatham's, Hampden's, Bayard's, Alfred's,\nScipio's, Pericles's day,--day of all that are born of women.  The\ndifference of circumstance is merely costume.  I am tasting the\nself-same life,--its sweetness, its greatness, its pain, which I so\nadmire in other men.  Do not foolishly ask of the inscrutable,\nobliterated past what it cannot tell,--the details of that nature, of\nthat day, called Byron or Burke;--but ask it of the enveloping\nNow. . . .  Be lord of a day, and you can put up your history books.\"\n\n\"The deep to-day which all men scorn,\" receives thus from Emerson\nsuperb revindication.  \"Other world! there is no other world.\"  All\nGod's life opens into the individual particular, and here and now, or\nnowhere, is reality.  \"The present hour is the decisive hour, and every\nday is doomsday.\"\n\nSuch a conviction that Divinity is everywhere may easily make of one an\noptimist of the sentimental type that refuses to speak ill of anything.\nEmerson's drastic perception of differences kept him at the opposite\npole from this weakness.  After you have seen men a few times, he could\nsay, you find most of them as alike as their barns and pantries, and\nsoon as musty and as dreary.  Never was such a fastidious lover of\nsignificance and distinction, and never an eye so keen for their\ndiscovery.  His optimism had nothing in common with that indiscriminate\nhurrahing for the Universe with which Walt Whitman has made us\nfamiliar.  For Emerson, the individual fact and moment were indeed\nsuffused with absolute radiance, but it was upon a condition that saved\nthe situation--they must be worthy specimens,--sincere, authentic,\narchetypal; they must have made connection with what he calls the Moral\nSentiment, they must in some way act as symbolic mouthpieces of the\nUniverse's meaning.  To know just which thing does act in this way, and\nwhich thing fails to make the true connection, is the secret (somewhat\nincommunicable, it must be confessed) of seership, and doubtless we\nmust not expect of the seer too rigorous a consistency.  Emerson\nhimself was a real seer.  He could perceive the full squalor of the\nindividual fact, but he could also see the transfiguration.  He might\neasily have found himself saying of some present-day agitator against\nour Philippine conquest what he said of this or that reformer of his\nown time.  He might have called him, as a private person, a tedious\nbore and canter.  But he would infallibly have added what he then\nadded: \"It is strange and horrible to say this, for I feel that under\nhim and his partiality and exclusiveness is the earth and the sea, and\nall that in them is, and the axis round which the Universe revolves\npasses through his body where he stands.\"\n\nBe it how it may, then, this is Emerson's revelation:--The point of any\npen can be an epitome of reality; the commonest person's act, if\ngenuinely actuated, can lay hold on eternity.  This vision is the\nhead-spring of all his outpourings; and it is for this truth, given to\nno previous literary artist to express in such penetratingly persuasive\ntones, that posterity will reckon him a prophet, and, perhaps\nneglecting other pages, piously turn to those that convey this message.\nHis life was one long conversation with the invisible divine,\nexpressing itself through individuals and particulars:--\"So nigh is\ngrandeur to our dust, so near is God to man!\"\n\nI spoke of how shrunken the wraith, how thin the echo, of men is after\nthey are departed?  Emerson's wraith comes to me now as if it were but\nthe very voice of this victorious argument.  His words to this effect\nare certain to be quoted and extracted more and more as time goes on,\nand to take their place among the Scriptures of humanity.  \"'Gainst\ndeath and all oblivious enmity, shall you pace forth,\" beloved Master.\nAs long as our English language lasts men's hearts will be cheered and\ntheir souls strengthened and liberated by the noble and musical pages\nwith which you have enriched it.\n\n\n\n[1] An Address delivered at the Centenary of the Birth of Ralph Waldo\nEmerson in Concord, May 25, 1903, and printed in the published\nproceedings of that meeting.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nROBERT GOULD SHAW[1]\n\nYour Excellency, your Honor, Soldiers, and Friends: In these unveiling\nexercises the duty falls to me of expressing in simple words some of\nthe feelings which have actuated the givers of St. Gaudens' noble work\nof bronze, and of briefly recalling the history of Robert Shaw and of\nhis regiment to the memory of this possibly too forgetful generation.\n\nThe men who do brave deeds are usually unconscious of their\npicturesqueness.  For two nights previous to the assault upon Fort\nWagner, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment had been afoot, making\nforced marches in the rain; and on the day of the battle the men had\nhad no food since early morning.  As they lay there in the evening\ntwilight, hungry and wet, against the cold sands of Morris Island, with\nthe sea-fog drifting over them, their eyes fixed on the huge bulk of\nthe fortress looming darkly three-quarters of a mile ahead against the\nsky, and their hearts beating in expectation of the word that was to\nbring them to their feet and launch them on their desperate charge,\nneither officers nor men could have been in any holiday mood of\ncontemplation.  Many and different must have been the thoughts that\ncame and went in them during that hour of bodeful reverie; but however\nfree the flights of fancy of some of them may have been, it is\nimprobable that any one who lay there had so wild and whirling an\nimagination as to foresee in prophetic vision this morning of a future\nMay, when we, the people of a richer and more splendid Boston, with\nmayor and governor, and troops from other States, and every\ncircumstance of ceremony, should meet together to celebrate their\nconduct on that evening, and do their memory this conspicuous honor.\n\nHow, indeed, comes it that out of all the great engagements of the war,\nengagements in many of which the troops of Massachusetts had borne the\nmost distinguished part, this officer, only a young colonel, this\nregiment of black men and its maiden battle,--a battle, moreover, which\nwas lost,--should be picked out for such unusual commemoration?\n\nThe historic significance of an event is measured neither by its\nmaterial magnitude, nor by its immediate success.  Thermopylae was a\ndefeat; but to the Greek imagination, Leonidas and his few Spartans\nstood for the whole worth of Grecian life.  Bunker Hill was a defeat;\nbut for our people, the fight over that breastwork has always seemed to\nshow as well as any victory that our forefathers were men of a temper\nnot to be finally overcome.  And so here.  The war for our Union, with\nall the constitutional questions which it settled, and all the military\nlessons which it gathered in, has throughout its dilatory length but\none meaning in the eye of history.  And nowhere was that meaning better\nsymbolized and embodied than in the constitution of this first Northern\nnegro regiment.\n\nLook at the monument and read the story;--see the mingling of elements\nwhich the sculptor's genius has brought so vividly before the eye.\nThere on foot go the dark outcasts, so true to nature that one can\nalmost hear them breathing as they march.  State after State by its\nlaws had denied them to be human persons.  The Southern leaders in\ncongressional debates, insolent in their security, loved most to\ndesignate them by the contemptuous collective epithet of \"this peculiar\nkind of property.\"  There they march, warm-blooded champions of a\nbetter day for man.  There on horseback, among them, in his very habit\nas he lived, sits the blue-eyed child of fortune, upon whose happy\nyouth every divinity had smiled.  Onward they move together, a single\nresolution kindled in their eyes, and animating their otherwise so\ndifferent frames.  The bronze that makes their memory eternal betrays\nthe very soul and secret of those awful years.\n\nSince the 'thirties the slavery question been the only question, and by\nthe end of 'fifties our land lay sick and shaking with it like a\ntraveller who has thrown himself down at night beside a pestilential\nswamp, and in the morning finds the fever through the marrow of his\nbones.  \"Only muzzle the Abolition fanatics,\" said the South, \"and all\nwill be well again!\"  But the Abolitionists would not be muzzled,--they\nwere the voice of the world's conscience, they were a part of destiny.\nWeak as they were, they drove the South to madness.  \"Every step she\ntakes in her blindness,\" said Wendell Phillips, \"is one more step\ntowards ruin.\"  And when South Carolina took the final step in\nbattering down Fort Sumter, it was the fanatics of slavery themselves\nwho called upon their idolized institution ruin swift and complete.\nWhat law and reason were unable to accomplish, had now to be done by\nthat uncertain and dreadful dispenser of God's judgments, War--War,\nwith its abominably casual, inaccurate methods, destroying good and bad\ntogether, but at last able to hew a way out of intolerable situations,\nwhen through man's delusion of perversity every better way is blocked.\n\nOur great western republic had from its origin been a singular anomaly.\nA land of freedom, boastfully so-called, with human slavery enthroned\nat the heart of it, and at last dictating terms of unconditional\nsurrender to every other organ of its life, what was it but a thing of\nfalsehood and horrible self-contradiction?  For three-quarters of a\ncentury it had nevertheless endured, kept together by policy,\ncompromise, and concession.  But at the last that republic was torn in\ntwo; and truth was to be possible under the flag.  Truth, thank God,\ntruth! even though for the moment it must be truth written in hell-fire.\n\nAnd this, fellow-citizens, is why, after the great generals have had\ntheir monuments, and long after the abstract soldier's-monuments have\nbeen reared on every village green, we have chosen to take Robert Shaw\nand his regiment as the subjects of the first soldier's-monument to be\nraised to a particular set of comparatively undistinguished men.  The\nvery lack of external complication in the history of these soldiers is\nwhat makes them represent with such typical purity the profounder\nmeaning of the Union cause.\n\nOur nation had been founded in what we may call our American religion,\nbaptized and reared in the faith that a man requires no master to take\ncare of him, and that common people can work out their salvation well\nenough together if left free to try.  But the founders had not dared to\ntouch the great intractable exception; and slavery had wrought until at\nlast the only alternative for the nation was to fight or die.  What\nShaw and his comrades stand for and show us is that in such an\nemergency Americans of all complexions and conditions can go forth like\nbrothers, and meet death cheerfully if need be, in order that this\nreligion of our native land shall not become a failure on earth.\n\nWe of this Commonwealth believe in that religion; and it is not at all\nbecause Robert Shaw was an exceptional genius, but simply because he\nwas faithful to it as we all may hope to be faithful in our measure\nwhen the times demand, that we wish his beautiful image to stand here\nfor all time, an inciter to similarly unselfish public deeds.\n\nShaw thought but little of himself, yet he had a personal charm which,\nas we look back on him, makes us repeat: \"None knew thee but to love\nthee, none named thee but to praise.\"  This grace of nature was united\nin him in the happiest way with a filial heart, a cheerful will, and a\njudgment that was true and fair.  And when the war came, and great\nthings were doing of the kind that he could help in, he went as a\nmatter of course to the front.  What country under heaven has not\nthousands of such youths to rejoice in, youths on whom the safety of\nthe human race depends?  Whether or not they leave memorials behind\nthem, whether their names are writ in water or in marble, depends\nmostly on the opportunities which the accidents of history throw into\ntheir path.  Shaw recognized the vital opportunity: he saw that the\ntime had come when the colored people must put the country in their\ndebt.\n\nColonel Lee has just told us something about the obstacles with which\nthis idea had to contend.  For a large party of us this was still\nexclusively a white man's war; and should colored troops be tried and\nnot succeed, confusion would grow worse confounded.  Shaw was a captain\nin the Massachusetts Second, when Governor Andrew invited him to take\nthe lead in the experiment.  He was very modest, and doubted, for a\nmoment, his own capacity for so responsible a post.  We may also\nimagine human motives whispering other doubts.  Shaw loved the Second\nRegiment, illustrious already, and was sure of promotion where he\nstood.  In this new negro-soldier venture, loneliness was certain,\nridicule inevitable, failure possible; and Shaw was only twenty-five;\nand, although he had stood among the bullets at Cedar Mountain and\nAntietam, he had till then been walking socially on the sunny side of\nlife.  But whatever doubts may have beset him, they were over in a day,\nfor he inclined naturally toward difficult resolves.  He accepted the\nproffered command, and from that moment lived but for one object, to\nestablish the honor of the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth.\n\nI have had the privilege of reading his letters to his family from the\nday of April when, as a private in the New York Seventh, he obeyed the\nPresident's first call.  Some day they must be published, for they form\na veritable poem for serenity and simplicity of tone.  He took to camp\nlife as if it were his native element, and (like so many of our young\nsoldiers) he was at first all eagerness to make arms his permanent\nprofession.  Drilling and disciplining; interminable marching and\ncounter-marching, and picket-duty on the Upper Potomac as lieutenant in\nour Second Regiment, to which post he had soon been promoted; pride at\nthe discipline attained by the Second, and horror at the bad discipline\nof other regiments; these are the staple matter of earlier letters, and\nlast for many months.  These, and occasional more recreative incidents,\nvisits to Virginian houses, the reading of books like Napier's\n\"Peninsular War,\" or the \"Idylls of the King,\" Thanksgiving feats, and\nraces among officers, that helped the weary weeks to glide away.  Then\nthe bloodier business opens, and the plot thickens till the end is\nreached.  From first to last there is not a rancorous word against the\nenemy,--often quite the reverse,--and amid all the scenes of hardship,\ndeath, and devastation that his pen soon has to write of, there is\nunfailing cheerfulness and even a sort of innermost peace.\n\nAfter he left it, Robert Shaw's heart still clung to the fortunes of\nthe Second.  Months later when, in South Carolina with the\nFifty-fourth, he writes to his young wife: \"I should have been major of\nthe Second now if I had remained there and lived through the battles.\nAs regards my own pleasure, I had rather have that place than any other\nin the army.  It would have been fine to go home a field officer in\nthat regiment!  Poor fellows, how they have been slaughtered!\"\n\nMeanwhile he had well taught his new command how to do their duty; for\nonly three days after he wrote this he led them up the parapet of Fort\nWagner, where he and nearly half of them were left upon the ground.\n\nRobert Shaw quickly inspired others with his own love of discipline.\nThere was something almost pathetic in the earnestness with which both\nthe officers and men of the Fifty-fourth embraced their mission of\nshowing that a black regiment could excel in every virtue known to man.\nThey had good success, and the Fifty-fourth became a model in all\npossible respects.  Almost the only trace of bitterness in Shaw's whole\ncorrespondence is over an incident in which he thought his men had been\nmorally disgraced.  It had become their duty, immediately after their\narrival at the seat of war, to participate, in obedience to fanatical\norders from the head of the department, in the sack and burning of the\ninoffensive little town of Darien on the Georgia coast.  \"I fear,\" he\nwrites to his wife, \"that such actions will hurt the reputation of\nblack troops and of those connected with them.  For myself I have gone\nthrough the war so far without dishonor, and I do not like to\ndegenerate into a plunderer and a robber,--and the same applies to\nevery officer in my regiment.  After going through the hard campaigning\nand the hard fighting in Virginia, this makes me very much ashamed.\nThere are two courses only for me to pursue: to obey orders and say\nnothing; or to refuse to go upon any more such expeditions, and be put\nunder arrest and probably court-martialled, which is a very serious\nthing.\"  Fortunately for Shaw, the general in command of that\ndepartment was almost immediately relieved.\n\nFour weeks of camp life and discipline on the Sea Islands, and the\nregiment had its baptism of fire.  A small affair, but it proved the\nmen to be staunch.  Shaw again writes to his wife: \"You don't know what\na fortunate day this has been for me and for us all, excepting some\npoor fellows who were killed and wounded.  We have fought at last\nalongside of white troops.  Two hundred of my men on picket this\nmorning were attacked by five regiments of infantry, some cavalry, and\na battery of artillery.  The Tenth Connecticut were on their left, and\nsay they would have had a bad time if the Fifty-fourth men had not\nstood so well.  The whole division was under arms in fifteen minutes,\nand after coming up close in front of us, the enemy, finding us so\nstrong, fell back. . . .  General Terry sent me word he was highly\ngratified with the behavior of our men, and the officers and privates\nof other regiments praise us very much.  All this is very gratifying to\nus personally, and a fine thing for the colored troops.  I know this\nwill give you pleasure for it wipes out the remembrance of the Darien\naffair, which you could not but grieve over, though we were innocent\nparticipators.\"\n\nThe adjutant of the Fifty-fourth, who made report of this skirmish to\nGeneral Terry, well expresses the feelings of loneliness that still\nprevailed in that command:--\n\n\"The general's favorite regiment,\" writes the adjutant,[2] \"the\nTwenty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry, one of the best that had so far\nfaced the rebel foe, largely officered by Boston men, was surrounding\nhis headquarters.  It had been a living breathing suspicion with\nus--perhaps not altogether justly--that all white troops abhorred our\npresence in the army, and that the Twenty-fourth would rather hear of\nus in some remote corner of the Confederacy than tolerate us in advance\nof any battle in which they themselves were to act as reserves or\nlookers-on.  Can you not then readily imagine the pleasure which I felt\nas I alighted from my horse before General Terry and his staff--I was\ngoing to say his unfriendly staff, but of this I am not sure--to report\nto him, with Colonel Shaw's compliments, that we had repulsed the enemy\nwithout the loss of a single inch of ground.  General Terry bade me\nmount again and tell Colonel Shaw that he was proud of the conduct of\nhis men, and that he must still hold the ground against any future\nsortie of the enemy.  You can even now share with me the sensation of\nthat moment of soldierly satisfaction.\"\n\nThe next night but one after this episode was spent by the Fifty-fourth\nin disembarking on Morris Island in the rain, and at noon Colonel Shaw\nwas able to report their arrival to General Strong, to whose brigade he\nwas assigned.  A terrific bombardment was playing on Fort Wagner, then\nthe most formidable earthwork ever built, and the general, knowing\nShaw's desire to place his men beside white troops, said to him:\n\"Colonel, Fort Wagner is to be stormed this evening, and you may lead\nthe column, if you say Yes.  Your men, I know, are worn out, but do as\nyou choose.\"  Shaw's face brightened.  \"Before answering the general,\nhe instantly turned to me,\" writes the adjutant, who reports the\ninterview, \"and said, Tell Colonel Hallowell to bring up the\nFifty-fourth immediately.'\"\n\nThis was done, and just before nightfall the attack was made.  Shaw was\nserious, for he knew the assault was desperate, and had a premonition\nof his end.  Walking up and down in front of the regiment, he briefly\nexhorted them to prove that they were men.  Then he gave the order:\n\"Move in quick time till within a hundred yards, then double quick and\ncharge.  Forward!\" and the Fifty-fourth advanced to the storming, its\ncolonel and colors at its head.\n\nOn over the sand, through a narrow defile which broke up the formation,\ndouble quick over the chevaux de frise, into the ditch and over it, as\nbest they could, and up the rampart with Fort Sumter, which had seen\nthem, playing on them, and Fort Wagner, now one mighty mound of fire,\ntearing out their lives.  Shaw led from first to last.  Gaining\nsuccessfully the parapet, he stood there for a moment with uplifted\nsword, shouting, \"Forward, Fifty-fourth!\" and then fell headlong, with\na bullet through his heart.  The battle raged for nigh two hours.\nRegiment after regiment, following upon the Fifty-fourth, hurled\nthemselves upon its ramparts, but Fort Wagner was nobly defended, and\nfor that night stood safe.  The Fifty-fourth withdrew after two-thirds\nof its officers and five-twelfths or nearly half its men had been shot\ndown or bayoneted within the fortress or before its walls.  It was good\nbehavior for a regiment, no one of whose soldiers had had a musket in\nhis hands more than eighteen weeks, and which had seen the enemy for\nthe first time only two days before.\n\n\"The negroes fought gallantly,\" wrote a Confederate officer, \"and were\nheaded by as brave a colonel as ever lived.\"\n\nAs for the colonel, not a drum was heard nor a funeral note, not a\nsoldier discharged his farewell shot, when the Confederates buried him,\nthe morning after the engagement.  His body, half stripped of its\nclothing, and the corpses of his dauntless negroes were flung into one\ncommon trench together, and the sand was shovelled over them, without a\nstake or stone to signalize the spot.  In death as in life, then, the\nFifty-fourth bore witness to the brotherhood of man.  The lover of\nheroic history could wish for no more fitting sepulchre for Shaw's\nmagnanimous young heart.  There let his body rest, united with the\nforms of his brave nameless comrades.  There let the breezes of the\nAtlantic sigh, and its gales roar their requiem, while this bronze\neffigy and these inscriptions keep their fame alive long after you and\nI and all who meet here are forgotten.\n\nHow soon, indeed, are human things forgotten!  As we meet here this\nmorning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and the\nwaves sparkling and the sea-gulls circling around Fort Wagner's ancient\nsite.  But the great earthworks and their thundering cannon, the\ncommanders and their followers, the wild assault and repulse that for a\nbrief space made night hideous on that far-off evening, have all sunk\ninto the blue gulf of the past, and for the majority of this generation\nare hardly more than an abstract name, a picture, a tale that is told.\nOnly when some yellow-bleached photograph of a soldier of the 'sixties\ncomes into our hands, with that odd and vivid look of individuality due\nto the moment when it was taken, do we realize the concreteness of that\nby-gone history, and feel how interminable to the actors in them were\nthose leaden-footed hours and years.  The photographs themselves\nerelong will fade utterly, and books of history and monuments like this\nalone will tell the tale.  The great war for the Union will be like the\nsiege of Troy; it will have taken its place amongst all other \"old,\nunhappy, far-off things and battles long ago.\"\n\nIn all such events two things must be distinguished--the moral service\nof them from the fortitude which they display.  War has been much\npraised and celebrated among us of late as a school of manly virtue;\nbut it is easy to exaggerate upon this point.  Ages ago, war was the\ngory cradle of mankind, the grim-featured nurse that alone could train\nour savage progenitors into some semblance of social virtue, teach them\nto be faithful one to another, and force them to sink their selfishness\nin wider tribal ends.  War still excels in this prerogative; and\nwhether it be paid in years of service, in treasure, or in life-blood,\nthe war tax is still the only tax that men ungrudgingly will pay.  How\ncould it be otherwise, when the survivors of one successful massacre\nafter another are the beings from whose loins we and all our\ncontemporary races spring?  Man is once for all a fighting animal;\ncenturies of peaceful history could not breed the battle-instinct out\nof us; and our pugnacity is the virtue least in need of reinforcement\nby reflection, least in need of orator's or poet's help.\n\nWhat we really need the poet's and orator's help to keep alive in us is\nnot, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed\nwhen he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment.  It is that more\nlonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in\nthe glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the\nFifty-fourth.  That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it\nin times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of\nnations should most of all be reared, for the survival of the fittest\nhas not bred it into the bone of human beings as it has bred military\nvalor; and of five hundred of us who could storm a battery side by side\nwith others, perhaps not one would be found ready to risk his worldly\nfortunes all alone in resisting an enthroned abuse.  The deadliest\nenemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within\ntheir borders.  And from these internal enemies civilization is always\nin need of being saved.  The nation blest above all nations is she in\nwhom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts\nwithout external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting\nreasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between\nparties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and\npreferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks.  Such\nnations have no need of wars to save them.  Their accounts with\nrighteousness are always even; and God's judgments do not have to\novertake them fitfully in bloody spasms and convulsions of the race.\n\nThe lesson that our war ought most of all to teach us is the lesson\nthat evils must be checked in time, before they grow so great.  The\nAlmighty cannot love such long-postponed accounts, or such tremendous\nsettlements.  And surely He hates all settlements that do such\nquantities of incidental devils' work.  Our present situation, with its\nrancors and delusions, what is it but the direct outcome of the added\npowers of government, the corruptions and inflations of the war?  Every\nwar leaves such miserable legacies, fatal seeds of future war and\nrevolution, unless the civic virtues of the people save the State in\ntime.\n\nRobert Shaw had both kinds of virtue.  As he then led his regiment\nagainst Fort Wagner, so surely would he now be leading us against all\nlesser powers of darkness, had his sweet young life been spared.  You\nthink of many as I speak of one.  For, North and South, how many lives\nas sweet, unmonumented for the most part, commemorated solely in the\nhearts of mourning mothers, widowed brides, or friends did the\ninexorable war mow down!  Instead of the full years of natural service\nfrom so many of her children, our country counts but their poor\nmemories, \"the tender grace of a day that is dead,\" lingering like\nechoes of past music on the vacant air.\n\nBut so and so only was it written that she should grow sound again.\nFrom that fatal earlier unsoundness those lives have brought for North\nand South together permanent release.  The warfare is accomplished; the\niniquity is pardoned.  No future problem can be like that problem.  No\ntask laid on our children can compare in difficulty with the task with\nwhich their fathers had to deal.  Yet as we face the future, tasks\nenough await us.  The republic to which Robert Shaw and a quarter of a\nmillion like him were faithful unto death is no republic that can live\nat ease hereafter on the interest of what they have won.  Democracy is\nstill upon its trial.  The civic genius of our people is its only\nbulwark, and neither laws nor monuments, neither battleships nor public\nlibraries, nor great newspapers nor booming stocks; neither mechanical\ninvention nor political adroitness, nor churches nor universities nor\ncivil service examinations can save us from degeneration if the inner\nmystery be lost.  That mystery, as once the secret and the glory of our\nEnglish-speaking race, consists in nothing but two common habits, two\ninveterate habits carried into public life,--habits so homely that they\nlend themselves to no rhetorical expression, yet habits more precious,\nperhaps, than any that the human race has gained.  They can never be\ntoo often pointed out or praised.  One of them is the habit of trained\nand disciplined good temper towards the opposite party when it fairly\nwins its innings.  It was by breaking away from this habit that the\nSlave States nearly wrecked our Nation.  The other is that of fierce\nand merciless resentment toward every man or set of men who break the\npublic peace.  By holding to this habit the free States saved her life.\n\nO my countrymen, Southern and Northern, brothers hereafter, masters,\nslaves, and enemies no more, let us see to it that both of those\nheirlooms are preserved.  So may our ransomed country, like the city of\nthe promise, lie forever foursquare under Heaven, and the ways of all\nthe nations be lit up by its light.\n\n\n\n[1] Oration at the Exercises in the Boston Music Hall, May 31, 1897,\nupon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument.\n\n[2] G. W. James: \"The Assault upon Fort Wagner,\" in _War Papers read\nbefore the Commandery of the State of Wisconsin, Military Order of the\nLoyal Legion of the United States_.  Milwaukee, 1891.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nFRANCIS BOOTT[1]\n\nHow often does it happen here in New England that we come away from a\nfuneral with a feeling that the service has been insufficient.  If it\nbe purely ritual, the individuality of the departed friend seems to\nplay too small a part in it.  If the minister conducts it in his own\nfashion, it is apt to be too thin and monotonous, and if he were not an\nintimate friend, too remote and official.  We miss direct discourse of\nsimple human affection about the person, which we find so often in\nthose lay speeches at the grave of which in France they set us nowadays\nso many good examples.  In the case of the friend whose memory brings\nus together on the present occasion, it was easy to organize this\nsupplementary service.  Not everyone leaves musical compositions of his\nown to fill the hour with.  And if we may believe that spirits can know\naught of what transpires in the world which they have forsaken, it must\nplease us all to think how dear old Francis Boott's shade must now be\ntouched at seeing in the Chapel of this university to which his\nfeelings clung so loyally, his music and his life at last become the\nsubjects of cordial and admiring recognition and commemorated by so\nmany of his neighbors.  I can imagine nothing at any rate of which the\nforeknowledge could have given him deeper satisfaction.  Shy and\nsensitive, craving praise as every normal human being craves it, yet\ngetting little, he had, I think, a certain consciousness of living in\nthe shadow.  I greatly doubt whether his daydreams ever went so far as\nto let him imagine a service like this.  Such a cordial and spontaneous\noutgoing towards him on our part would surprise as much as it would\ndelight him.\n\nHis life was private in the strongest sense of the term.  His\ncontributions to literature were all anonymous, book-reviews chiefly,\nor letters and paragraphs in the New York Nation on musical or literary\ntopics.  Good as was their quality, and witty as was their form,--his\nonly independent volume was an almost incredibly witty little book of\ncharades in verse--they were too slight in bulk for commemoration; and\nit was only as a musical composer that he touched on any really public\nfunction.  With so many of his compositions sounding in your ears, it\nwould be out of place, even were I qualified, to attempt to\ncharacterize Mr. Boott's musical genius.  Let it speak for itself.  I\nprefer to speak of the man and friend whom we knew and whom so many of\nus loved so dearly.\n\nOne of the usual classifications of men is into those of expansive and\nthose of conservative temper.  The word conservative commonly suggests\na dose of religious and political prejudice, and a fondness for\ntraditional opinions.  Mr. Boott was a liberal in politics and\ntheology; and all his opinions were self-made, and as often as not at\nvariance with every tradition.  Yet in a wider sense he was profoundly\nconservative.\n\nHe respected bounds of ordinance, and emphasized the fact of limits.\nHe knew well his own limits.  The knowledge of them was in fact one of\nthe things he lived by.  To judge of abstract philosophy, of sculpture\nand painting, of certain lines of literary art, he admitted, was not of\nhis competency.  But within the sphere where he thought he had a right\nto judge, he parted his likes from his dislikes and preserved his\npreferences with a pathetic steadfastness.  He was faithful in age to\nthe lights that lit his youth, and obeyed at eve the voice obeyed at\nprime, with a consistency most unusual.  Elsewhere the opinions of\nothers might perplex him, but he laughed and let them live.  Within his\nown appropriated sphere he was too scrupulous a lover of the truth not\nto essay to correct them, when he thought them erroneous.  A certain\nappearance comes in here of a self-contradictory character, for Mr.\nBoott was primarily modest and sensitive, and all his interests and\npre-occupations were with life's refinements and delicacies.  Yet one's\nmind always pictured him as a rugged sort of person, opposing\nsuccessful resistance to all influences that might seek to change his\nhabits either of feeling or of action.  His admirable health, his sober\nlife, his regular walk twice a day, whatever might be the weather, his\ninvariable evenness of mood and opinion, so that, when you once knew\nhis range, he never disappointed you--all this was at variance with\npopular notions of the artistic temperament.  He was indeed, a man of\nreason, no romancer, sentimentalist or dreamer, in spite of the fact\nthat his main interests were with the muses.  He was exact and\naccurate; affectionate, indeed, and sociable, but neither gregarious\nnor demonstrative; and such words as \"honest,\" \"sturdy,\" \"faithful,\"\nare the adjectives first to rise when one thinks of him.  A friend said\nto me soon after his death: \"I seem still to see Mr. Boott, with his\ntwo feet planted on the ground, and his cane in front of him, making of\nhimself a sort of tripod of honesty and veracity.\"\n\nOld age changes men in different ways.  Some it softens; some it\nhardens; some it degenerates; some it alters.  Our old friend Boott was\nidentical in spiritual essence all his life, and the effect of his\ngrowing old was not to alter, but only to make the same man mellower,\nmore tolerant, more lovable.  Sadder he was, I think, for his life had\ngrown pretty lonely; but he was a stoic and he never complained either\nof losses or of years, and that contagious laugh of his at any and\nevery pretext for laughter rang as free and true upon his deathbed as\nat any previous time of his existence.\n\nBorn in 1813, he had lived through three generations, and seen enormous\nsocial and public changes.  When a carpenter has a surface to measure,\nhe slides his rule along it, and over all its peculiarities.  I\nsometimes think of Boott as such a standard rule against which the\nchanging fashions of humanity of the last century might come to\nmeasurement.  A character as healthy and definite as his, of whatsoever\ntype it be, need only remain entirely true to itself for a sufficient\nnumber of years, while the outer conditions change, to grow into\nsomething like a common measure.  Compared with its repose and\npermanent fitness to continue, the changes of the generations seem\nephemeral and accidental.  It remains the standard, the rule, the term\nof comparison.  Mr. Boott's younger friends must often have felt in his\npresence how much more vitally near they were than they had supposed to\nthe old Boston long before the war, to the older Harvard, to the older\nRome and Florence.  To grow old after his manner is of itself to grow\nimportant.\n\nI said that Mr. Boott was not demonstrative or sentimental.\nTender-hearted he was and faithful as few men are, in friendship.  He\nmade new friends, and dear ones, in the very last years of his life,\nand it is good to think of him as having had that consolation.  The\nwill in which he surprised so many persons by remembering them--\"one of\nthe only purely beautiful wills I have ever read,\" said a\nlawyer,--showed how much he cared at heart for many of us to whom he\nhad rarely made express professions of affection.\n\nGood-by, then, old friend.  We shall nevermore meet the upright figure,\nthe blue eye, the hearty laugh, upon these Cambridge streets.  But in\nthat wider world of being of which this little Cambridge world of ours\nforms so infinitesimal a part, we may be sure that all our spirits and\ntheir missions here will continue in some way to be represented, and\nthat ancient human loves will never lose their own.\n\n\n\n[1] An address delivered at the Memorial Service to Francis Boott in\nthe Harvard Chapel, Sunday, May 8, 1904.  Printed in 38 _Harvard\nMonthly_, 125.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nTHOMAS DAVIDSON: A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE.[1]\n\nI wish to pay my tribute to the memory of a Scottish-American friend of\nmine who died five years ago, a man of a character extraordinarily and\nintensely human, in spite of the fact that he was classed by obituary\narticles in England among the twelve most learned men of his time.\n\nIt would do no honor to Thomas Davidson's memory not to be frank about\nhim.  He handled people without gloves, himself, and one has no right\nto retouch his photograph until its features are softened into\ninsipidity.  He had defects and excesses which he wore upon his sleeve,\nso that everyone could see them.  They made him many enemies, and if\none liked quarrelling he was an easy man to quarrel with.  But his\nheart and mind held treasures of the rarest.  He had a genius for\nfriendship.  Money, place, fashion, fame, and other vulgar idols of the\ntribe had no hold on his imagination.  He led his own life absolutely,\nin whatever company he found himself, and the intense individualism\nwhich he taught by word and deed, is the lesson of which our generation\nis perhaps most in need.\n\nAll sorts of contrary adjectives come up as I think of him.  To begin\nwith, there was something physically rustic which suggested to the end\nhis farm-boy origin.  His voice was sweet and its Scottish cadences\nmost musical, and the extraordinary sociability of his nature made\nfriends for him as much among women as among men; he had, moreover, a\nsort of physical dignity; but neither in dress nor in manner did he\never grow quite \"gentlemanly\" or _Salonfaehig_ in the conventional and\nobliterated sense of the terms.  He was too cordial and emphatic for\nthat.  His broad brow, his big chest, his bright blue eyes, his\nvolubility in talk and laughter told a tale of vitality far beyond the\ncommon; but his fine and nervous hands, and the vivacity of all his\nreactions suggested a degree of sensibility that one rarely finds\nconjoined with so robustly animal a frame.  The great peculiarity of\nDavidson did indeed consist in this combination of the acutest\nsensibilities with massive faculties of thought and action, a\ncombination which, when the thought and actions are important, gives to\nthe world its greatest men.\n\nDavidson's native mood was happy.  He took optimistic views of life and\nof his own share in it.  A sort of permanent satisfaction radiated from\nhis face; and this expression of inward glory (which in reality was to\na large extent structural and not \"expressive\" at all) was displeasing\nto many new acquaintances on whom it made an impression of too much\nconceit.  The impression of conceit was not diminished in their eyes by\nthe freedom with which Davidson contradicted, corrected and reprehended\nother people.  A longer acquaintance invariably diminished the\nimpression.  But it must be confessed that T. D. never was exactly\nhumble-minded, and that the solidity of his self-consciousness\nwithstood strains under which that of weaker men would have crumbled.\nThe malady which finally killed him was one of the most exhausting to\nthe nervous tone to which our flesh is subject, and it wore him out\nbefore it ended him.  He told me of the paroxysms of motiveless nervous\ndread which used to beset him in the night-watches.  Yet these never\nsubdued his stalwartness, nor made him a \"sick-soul\" in the theological\nsense of that appelation.  \"God is afraid of me,\" was the phrase by\nwhich he described his well-being to me one morning when his night had\nbeen a good one, and he was feeling so cannibalistic that he thought he\nmight get well.\n\nThere are men whose attitude is always that of seeking for truth, and\nmen who on the contrary always believe that they have the root of it\nalready in them.  Davidson was of the latter class.  Like his\ncountrymen, Carlyle and Ruskin, he felt himself to be in the possession\nof something, whether articulate or as yet articulated by himself, that\nauthorized him (and authorized him with uncommon openness and\nfrequency) to condemn the errors of others.  I think that to the last\nhe never fully extricated this philosophy.  It was a tendency, a faith\nin a direction, which gave him an active persuasion that other\ndirections were false, but of which the central insight never got fully\nformulated, but remained in a state which Frederic Myers would have\ncalled subliminal.  He varied to a certain extent his watchwords and\nhis heroes.  When I first knew him all was Aristotle.  Later all was\nRosmini.  Later still Rosmini seemed forgotten.  He knew so many\nwriters that he grew fond of very various ones and had a strange\ntolerance for systematizers and dogmatizers whom, as the consistent\nindividualist that he was, he should have disliked.  Hegel, it is true,\nhe detested; but he always spoke with reverence of Kant.  Of Mill and\nSpencer he had a low opinion; and when I lent him Paulsen's\nIntroduction to Philosophy (then just out), as an example of a kind of\neclectic thought that seemed to be growing, and with which I largely\nsympathized, he returned it with richer expressions of disdain than\noften fell even from his lips: \"It's the shabbiest, seediest pretence\nat a philosophy I ever dreamed of as possible.  It's like a man dressed\nin a black coat so threadbare as to be all shiny.  The most\npoverty-stricken, out-at-elbows thing I ever read.  A perfect monument\nof seediness and shabbiness,\" etc.\n\nThe truth is that Davidson, brought up on the older classical\ntraditions, never outgrew those habits of judging the world by purely\naesthetic criteria which men fed on the sciences of nature are so\nwilling to abandon.  Even if a philosophy were true, he could easily\nfail to relish it unless it showed a certain formal nobility and\ndogmatic pretension to finality.  But I must not describe him so much\nfrom my own professional point of view--it is as a vessel of life at\nlarge that one ought to keep him in remembrance.\n\nHe came to Boston from St. Louis, where he had been teaching, about the\nyear 1873.  He was ruddy and radiant, and I soon saw much of him,\nthough at first it was without the thoroughness of sympathy which we\nafterwards acquired and which made us overflow, on meeting after long\nabsences, into such laughing greetings as: \"Ha! you old thief!  Ha! you\nold blackguard!\"--pure \"contrast-effects\" of affection and familiarity\npassing beyond their bounds.  At that time I saw most of him at a\nlittle philosophical club which used to meet every fortnight at his\nrooms in Temple Street in Boston.  Of the other members, J. Elliot\nCabot and C. C. Everett, are now dead--I will not name the survivors.\nWe never worked out harmonious conclusions.  Davidson used to crack the\nwhip of Aristotle over us; and I remember that, whatever topic was\nformally appointed for the day, we invariably wound up with a quarrel\nabout Space and Space-perception.  The Club had existed before\nDavidson's advent.  The previous year we had gone over a good part of\nHegel's larger Logic, under the self-constituted leadership of two\nyoung business men from Illinois, who had become enthusiastic Hegelians\nand, knowing almost no German, had actually possessed themselves of a\nmanuscript translation of the entire three volumes of Logic, made by an\nextraordinary Pomeranian immigrant, named Brockmeyer.  These disciples\nwere leaving business for the law and studying at the Harvard\nlaw-school; but they saw the whole universe through Hegelian\nspectacles, and a more admirable _homo unius libri_ than one of them,\nwith his three big folios of Hegelian manuscript, I have never had the\ngood fortune to know.\n\nI forget how Davidson was earning his subsistence at this time.  He did\nsome lecturing and private teaching, but I do not think they were great\nin amount.  In the springs and summers he frequented the coast, and\nindulged in long swimming bouts and salt-water immersions, which seemed\nto agree with him greatly.  His sociability was boundless, and his time\nseemed to belong to anyone who asked for it.\n\nI soon conceived that such a man would be invaluable in Harvard\nUniversity--a kind of Socrates, a devotee of truth and lover of youth,\nready to sit up to any hour, and drink beer and talk with anyone,\nlavish of learning and counsel, a contagious example of how lightly and\nhumanly a burden of erudition might be borne upon a pair of shoulders.\nIn faculty-business he might not run well in harness, but as an\ninspiration and ferment of character, as an example of the ranges of\ncombination of scholarship with manhood that are possible, his\ninfluence on the students would be priceless.\n\nI do not know whether this scheme of mine could under any circumstances\nhave been carried out.  In point of fact it was nipped in the bud by T.\nD. himself.  A natural chair for him would have been Greek philosophy.\nUnfortunately, just at the decisive hour, he offended our Greek\ndepartment by a savage onslaught on its methods, which, without taking\nanyone's counsel, he sent to the _Atlantic Monthly_, whose editor\nprinted it.  This, with his other unconventionalisms, made advocating\nhis cause more difficult, and the university authorities, never, I\nbelieve, seriously thought of an appointment for him.\n\nI believe that in this case, as in one or two others like it, which I\nmight mention, Harvard University lost a great opportunity.\nOrganization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean\nmore in a university, where a few undisciplinables like T. D. may be\ninfinitely more precious than a faculty-full of orderly routinists.  As\nto what Davidson might have become under the conventionalizing\ninfluences of an official position, it would be idle to speculate.\n\nAs things fell out, he became more and more unconventional and even\ndeveloped a sort of antipathy to all regular academic life.  It subdued\nindividuality, he thought, and made for Philistinism.  He earnestly\ndissuaded his young friend Bakewell from accepting a professorship; and\nI well remember one dark night in the Adirondacks, after a good dinner\nat a neighbor's, the eloquence with which, as we trudged down-hill to\nhis own quarters with a lantern, he denounced me for the musty and\nmouldy and generally ignoble academicism of my character.  Never before\nor since, I fancy, has the air of the Adirondack wilderness vibrated\nmore repugnantly to a vocable than it did that night to the word\n\"academicism.\"\n\nYet Davidson himself was always essentially a teacher.  He must give\nforth, inspire, and have the young about him.  After leaving Boston for\nEurope and Africa, founding the Fellowship of the New Life in London\nand New York (the present Fabian Society in England is its offshoot),\nhe hit upon the plan which pleased him best of all when, in 1882 or\nthereabouts, he bought a couple of hundred acres on East Hill, which\ncloses the beautiful Keene Valley in the Adirondacks, on the north, and\nfounded there, at the foot of Hurricane Mountain, his place \"Glenmore\"\nand its \"Summer School of the Culture Sciences.\"  Although the primeval\nforest has departed from its immediate vicinity, the region is still\nsylvan, the air is sweet and strong and almost alpine in quality, and\nthe mountain panorama spread before one is superlative.  Davidson\nshowed a business faculty which I should hardly have expected from him,\nin organizing his settlement.  He built a number of cottages pretty in\ndesign and of the simplest construction, and disposed them well for\neffect.  He turned a couple of farm buildings which were on the grounds\ninto a lecturing place and a refectory; and there, arriving in early\nApril and not leaving till late in November, he spent the happiest part\nof all his later years, surrounded during the summer months by\ncolleagues, friends, and listeners to lectures, and in the spring and\nfall by a few independent women who were his faithful friends, and who\nhad found East Hill a congenial residence.\n\nTwice I went up with T. D. to open the place in April.  I remember\nleaving his fireside one night with three ladies who were also early\ncomers, and finding the thermometer at 8 degrees Fahrenheit and a\ntremendous gale blowing the snow about us.  Davidson loved these\nblustering vicissitudes of climate.  In the early years the brook was\nnever too cold for him to bathe in, and he spent days in rambling over\nthe hills and up the glens and through the forest.\n\nHis own cottage was full of books whose use was free to all who visited\nthe settlement.  It stood high on a hill in a grove of silver-birches\nand looked upon the Western Mountains; and it always seemed to me an\nideal dwelling for such a bachelor-scholar.  Here in May and June he\nbecame almost one with the resurgent vegetation.  Here, in October, he\nwas a witness of the jewelled pageant of the dying foliage, and saw the\nhillsides reeking, as it were, and aflame with ruby and gold and\nemerald and topaz.  One September day in 1900, at the \"Kurhaus\" at\nNauheim, I took up a copy of the Paris _New York Herald_, and read in\ncapitals: \"Death of Professor Thomas Davidson.\"  I had well known how\nill he was, yet such was his vitality that the shock was wholly\nunexpected.  I did not realize till that moment how much that free\ncompanionship with him every spring and autumn, surrounded by that\nbeautiful nature, had signified to me, or how big a piece would be\nsubtracted from my life by its cessation.\n\nDavidson's capacity for imparting information seemed endless.  There\nwere few subjects, especially \"humanistic\" subjects, in which at some\ntime or other he had not taken an interest; and as everything that had\never touched him was instantaneously in reach of his omnipotent memory,\nhe easily became a living dictionary of reference.  As such all his\nfriends were wont to use him.  He was, for example, never at a loss to\nsupply a quotation.  He loved poetry passionately, and the sympathetic\nvoice with which he would recall page after page of it--English,\nFrench, German, or Italian--is a thing always to be remembered.  But\nnotwithstanding the instructive part he played in every conceivable\nconversation, he was never prolix, and he never \"lectured.\"\n\nFrom Davidson I learned what immunities a perfect memory bestows upon\none.  I never could discover when he amassed his learning for he never\nseemed \"occupied.\"  The secret of it was that any odd time would do,\nfor he never had to acquire a thing twice over.  He avoided stated\nhours of work on principle.  Reprehending (mildly) a certain chapter of\nmy own on \"Habit,\" he said that it was a fixed rule with him to form no\nregular habits.  When he found himself in danger of settling into even\na good one, he made a point of interrupting it.  Habits and methods\nmake a prisoner of a man, destroy his readiness, keep him from\nanswering the call of the fresh moment.  Individualist _a outrance_,\nDavidson felt that every hour was an unique entity, to whose claims one\nshould lie open.  Thus he was never abstracted or preoccupied, but\nalways seemed, when with you, as if you were the one person whom it was\nthen right to attend to.\n\nIt was this individualistic religion that made T. D., democrat as he\nnevertheless was, so hostile to all socialisms and administrative\npanaceas.  Life must be flexible.  You ask for a free man, and these\nUtopias give you an \"interchangeable part,\" with a fixed number, in a\nrule-bound organism.  The real thing to aim at is liberation of the\ninner interests.  Give man possession of a _soul_, and he will work out\nhis own happiness under any set of conditions.  Accordingly, when, in\nthe penultimate year of his life, he proposed his night-school to a\nmeeting of young East-Side workingmen in New York, he told them that he\nhad no sympathy whatever with the griefs of \"labor,\" that outward\ncircumstances meant nothing in his eyes; that through their individual\nwills and intellects they could share, just as they were, in the\nhighest spiritual life of humanity, and that he was there to help them\nseverally to that privilege.\n\nThe enthusiasm with which they responded speaks volumes, both for his\ngenius as a teacher and for the sanity of his position.  A small\nposthumous book of articles by Davidson and of letters written from\nGlenmore to his class, just published, with an introduction by his\ndisciple Professor Bakewell,[2] gives a full account of the experiment,\nand ought to stand as a model and inspirer to similar attempts the\nworld over.  Davidson's idea of the universe was that of a republic of\nimmortal spirits, the chief business of whom in their several grades of\nexistence, should be to know and love and help one another.  \"Creeds\nare nothing, life is everything. . . .  You can do far more by\npresenting to the world the example of noble social relations than by\nenumerating any set of principles.  Know all you can, love all you can,\ndo all you can--that is the whole duty of man. . . .  Be friends, in\nthe truest sense, each to the other.  There is nothing in all the world\nlike friendship, when it is deep and real. . . .  The divine . . . is a\nrepublic of self-existent spirits, each seeking the realization of its\nideas through love, through intimacy with all the rest, and finding its\nheaven in such intimacy.\"\n\nWe all say and think that we believe this sort of thing; but Davidson\nbelieved it really and actively, and that made all the difference.\nWhen the young wage-earners whom he addressed found that here was a man\nof measureless learning ready to give his soul to them as if he had\nnothing else to do with it, life's ideal possibilities widened to their\nview.  When he was taken from them, they founded in New York the Thomas\nDavidson Society, for study and neighborhood work, which will probably\nbecome perpetual, and of which his epistles from Glenmore will be the\nrule, and keep the standards set by him from degenerating--unless,\nindeed, the Society should some day grow too rich, of which there is no\ndanger at present, and from which may Heaven long preserve it.  In one\nof his letters to the Class, Davidson sums up the results of his own\nexperience of life in twenty maxims, as follows:\n\n\n1. Rely upon your own energies, and do not wait for, or depend on other\npeople.\n\n2. Cling with all your might to your own highest ideals, and do not be\nled astray by such vulgar aims as wealth, position, popularity.  Be\nyourself.\n\n3. Your worth consists in what you are, and not in what you have.  What\nyou are will show in what you do.\n\n4. Never fret, repine, or envy.  Do not make yourself unhappy by\ncomparing your circumstances with those of more fortunate people; but\nmake the most of the opportunities you have.  Employ profitably every\nmoment.\n\n5. Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books;\nlive with the mighty.  But learn to be happy alone.\n\n6. Do not believe that all greatness and heroism are in the past.\nLearn to discover princes, prophets, heroes, and saints among the\npeople about you.  Be assured they are there.\n\n7. Be on earth what good people hope to be in heaven.\n\n8. Cultivate ideal friendships, and gather into an intimate circle all\nyour acquaintances who are hungering for truth and right.  Remember\nthat heaven itself can be nothing but the intimacy of pure and noble\nsouls.\n\n9. Do not shrink from any useful or kindly act, however hard or\nrepellent it may be.  The worth of acts is measured by the spirit in\nwhich they are performed.\n\n10. If the world despise you because you do not follow its ways, pay no\nheed to it.  But be sure your way is right.\n\n11. If a thousand plans fail, be not disheartened.  As long as your\npurposes are right, you have not failed.\n\n12. Examine yourself every night, and see whether you have progressed\nin knowledge, sympathy, and helpfulness during the day.  Count every\nday a loss in which no progress has been made.\n\n13. Seek enjoyment in energy, not in dalliance.  Our worth is measured\nsolely by what we do.\n\n14. Let not your goodness be professional; let it be the simple,\nnatural outcome of your character.  Therefore cultivate character.\n\n15. If you do wrong, say so, and make what atonement you can.  That is\ntrue nobleness.  Have no moral debts.\n\n16. When in doubt how to act, ask yourself, What does nobility command?\nBe on good terms with yourself.\n\n17. Look for no reward for goodness but goodness itself.  Remember\nheaven and hell are utterly immoral institutions, if they are meant as\nreward and punishment.\n\n18. Give whatever countenance and help you can to every movement and\ninstitution that is working for good.  Be not sectarian.\n\n19. Wear no placards, within or without.  Be human fully.\n\n20. Never be satisfied until you have understood the meaning of the\nworld, and the purpose of our own life, and have reduced your world to\na rational cosmos.\n\n\nOne of the \"placards\" Davidson tried hardest to keep his Society from\nwearing was that of \"Socialism.\"  Yet no one felt more deeply than he\nthe evils of rapacious individual competition.  Spontaneously and\nflexibly organized social settlements or communities, with individual\nleaders as their centres, seem to have been his ideal, each with its\nown religious or ethical elements of discipline.  The present isolation\nof the family is too inhuman.  The ideal type of future life, he\nthought, will be something like the monastery, with the family instead\nof the individual, for its unit.\n\nLeveller upwards of men as Davidson was, upon the intellectual and\nmoral level, he seemed wholly without that sort of religion which makes\nso many of our contemporary anarchists think that they ought to dip, at\nleast, into some manual occupation, in order to share the common burden\nof humanity I never saw T. D. work with his hands in any way.  He\naccepted material services of all kinds without apology, as if he were\na patrician, evidently feeling that if he played his own more\nintellectual part rightly, society could make no further claim upon him.\n\nThis confidence that the life of the spirit is the absolutely highest,\nmade Davidson serene about his outward fortunes.  Pecuniary worry would\nnot tally with his program.  He had a very small provision against a\nrainy day, but he did little to increase it.  He used to write as many\narticles and give as many \"lectures,\" \"talks,\" or \"readings\" every\nwinter as would suffice to pay the year's expenses, and thereafter he\nrefused additional invitations, and repaired to Glenmore as early in\nthe spring as possible.  I could but admire the temper he showed when\nthe principal building there was one night burned to ashes.  There was\nno insurance on it, and it would cost a couple of thousand dollars to\nreplace it.  Excitable as Davidson was about small contrarieties, he\nwatched this fire without a syllable of impatience.  _Plaie d'argent\nn'est pas mortelle_, he seemed to say, and if he felt sharp regrets, he\ndisdained to express them.\n\nNo more did care about his literary reputation trouble him.  In the\nordinary greedy sense, he seemed quite free from ambition.  During his\nlast years he had prepared a large amount of material for that history\nof the interaction of Greek, Christian, Hebrew, and Arabic thought upon\none another before the revival of learning, which was to be his _magnum\nopus_.  It was a territory to which, in its totality, few living minds\nhad access, and in which a certain proprietary feeling was natural.\nKnowing how short his life might be, I once asked him whether he felt\nno concern lest the work already done by him should be frustrate, from\nthe lack of its necessary complement, in case he were suddenly cut off.\nHis answer surprised me by its indifference.  He would work as long as\nhe lived, he said, but not allow himself to worry, and look serenely at\nwhatever might be the outcome.  This seemed to me uncommonly\nhigh-minded.  I think that Davidson's conviction of immortality had\nmuch to do with such a superiority to accidents.  On the surface, and\ntowards small things, he was irritable enough, but the undertone of his\ncharacter was remarkable for equanimity.  He showed it in his final\nillness, of which the misery was really atrocious.  There were no\ngeneral complaints or lamentations about the personal situation or the\narrest to his career.  It was the human lot and he must even bear it;\nso he kept his mind upon objective matters.\n\nBut, as I said at the outset, the paramount thing in Davidson in my\neyes was his capacity for friendship.  His friends were\ninnumerable--boys and girls and old boys and old girls, Papists and\nProtestants, Jews and Gentiles, married and single; and he cared deeply\nfor each one of them, admiring them often too extravagantly.  What term\ncan name those recurrent waves of delighted laughter that expressed his\ngreeting, beginning from the moment he saw you and accompanying his\nwords continuously, as if his pleasure in you were interminable?  His\nhand too, stretched out when yards away, so that a country neighbor\nsaid it reached farther than any hand he ever met with.  The odd thing\nwas that friendship in Davidson seemed so little to interfere with\ncriticism.  Persons with whom intercourse was one long contradiction on\nhis part, and who appeared to annoy him to extermination, he none the\nless loved tenderly, and enjoyed living with them.  \"He's the most\nutterly selfish, illiberal and narrow-hearted human being I ever knew,\"\nI heard him once say of someone, \"and yet he's the dearest, nicest\nfellow living.\"  His enthusiastic belief in any young person who gave a\npromise of genius was touching.  Naturally a man who is willing, as he\nwas, to be a prophet, always finds some women who are willing to be\ndisciples.  I never heard of any sentimental weakness in Davidson in\nthis relation, save possibly in one case.  They harmed themselves at\nthe fire of his soul, and he told them truths without accommodation.\n\"You 're farther off from God than any woman I ever heard of.\"  \"Nay,\nif you believe in a protective tariff, you 're in hell already, though\nyou may not know it.\"  \"You had a fine hysterical time last night,\ndidn't you, when Miss B was brought up from the ravine with her\ndislocated shoulder.\"  To Miss B he said: \"I don't pity you.  It served\nyou right for being so ignorant as to go there at that hour.\"  Seldom,\nstrange to say, did the recipients of these deliverances seem to resent\nthem.\n\nWhat with Davidson's warmth of heart and sociability, I used to wonder\nat his never marrying.  Two years before his death he told me the\nreason--an unhappy youthful love-affair in Scotland.  Twice in later\nlife, he said, temptation had come to him, and he had had to make his\ndecision.  When he had come to the point, he had felt each time that\nthe tie with the dead girl was prohibitive.  \"When two persons have\nknown each other as we did,\" he said, \"neither can ever fully belong to\na stranger.  So it would n't do.\"  \"It would n't do, it would n't do!\"\nhe repeated, as we lay on the hillside, in a tone so musically tender\nthat it chimes in my ear now as I write down his confession.  It can\nsurely be no breach of confidence to publish it--it is too creditable\nto the profundity of Davidson's affections.  As I knew him, he was one\nof the purest of human beings.\n\nIf one asks, now, what the _value_ of Thomas Davidson was, what was the\ngeneral significance of his life, apart from his particular books and\narticles, I have to say that it lay in the example he set to us all of\nhow, even in the midst of this intensely worldly social system of ours,\nin which each human interest is organized so collectively and so\ncommercially, a single man may still be a knight-errant of the\nintellectual life, and preserve full freedom in the midst of\nsociability.  Extreme as was his need of friends, and faithful as he\nwas to them, he yet lived mainly in reliance on his private\ninspiration.  Asking no man's permission, bowing the knee to no tribal\nidol, renouncing the conventional channels of recognition, he showed us\nhow a life devoted to purely intellectual ends could be beautifully\nwholesome outwardly, and overflow with inner contentment.  Fortunately\nthis type of man is recurrent, and from generation to generation,\nliterary history preserves examples.  But it is infrequent enough for\nfew of us to have known more than one example--I count myself happy in\nknowing two and a half!  The memory of Davidson will always strengthen\nmy faith in personal freedom and its spontaneities, and make me less\nunqualifiedly respectful than ever of \"Civilization,\" with its herding\nand branding, licensing and degree-giving, authorizing and appointing,\nand in general regulating and administering by system the lives human\nbeings.  Surely the individual, the person in the singular number, is\nthe more fundamental phenomenon, and the social institution, of\nwhatever grade, is but secondary and ministerial.  Many as are the\ninterests which social systems satisfy, always unsatisfied interests\nremain over, and among them are interests to which system, as such,\ndoes violence whenever it lays its hand upon us.  The best Commonwealth\nwill always be the one that most cherishes the men who represent the\nresidual interests, the one that leaves the largest scope to their\npeculiarities.\n\n\n\n[1] First published in _McClure's Magazine_ for May, 1905.\n\n[2] \"The Education of the Wage-Earners.\"  Boston, Ginn & Company, 1904.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nHERBERT SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY[1]\n\n\"God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.\"  If the\ngreatest of all his wonders be the human individual, the richness with\nwhich the specimens thereof are diversified, the limitless variety of\noutline, from gothic to classic or flowing arabesque, the contradictory\nnature of the filling, composed of little and great, of comic, heroic,\nand pathetic elements blended inextricably, in personalities all of\nwhom can _go_, and go successfully, must surely be reckoned the supreme\nmiracle of creative ingenuity.  Rarely has Nature performed an odder or\nmore Dickens-like feat than when she deliberately designed, or\naccidentally stumbled into, the personality of Herbert Spencer.\nGreatness and smallness surely never lived so closely in one skin\ntogether.\n\nThe opposite verdicts passed upon his work by his contemporaries bear\nwitness to the extraordinary mingling of defects and merits in his\nmental character.  Here are a few, juxtaposed:--\n\n\"A philosophic saw-mill.\"--\"The most capacious and powerful thinker of\nall time.\n\n\"The  Arry' of philosophy.\"--\"Aristotle and his master were not more\nbeyond the pygmies who preceded them than he is beyond Aristotle.\"\n\n\"Herbert Spencer's chromo-philosophy.\"--\"No other man that has walked\nthe earth has so wrought and written himself into the life of the\nworld.\"\n\n\"The touch of his mind takes the living flavor out of everything.\"--\"He\nis as much above and beyond all the other great philosophers who have\never lived as the telegraph is beyond the carrier-pigeon, or the\nrailway beyond the sedan chair.\"\n\n\"He has merely combined facts which we knew before into a huge\nfantastic contradictory system, which hides its nakedness and emptiness\npartly under the veil of an imposing terminology, and partly in the\nprimeval fog.\"--\"His contributions are of a depth, profundity, and\nmagnitude which have no parallel in the history of mind.  Taking but\none--and one only--of his transcendent reaches of thought,--namely,\nthat referring to the positive sense of the Unknown as the basis of\nreligion,--it may unhesitatingly be affirmed that the analysis and\nsynthesis by which he advances to the almost supernal grasp of this\nmighty truth give a sense of power and reach verging on the\npreternatural.\"\n\nCan the two thick volumes of autobiography which Mr. Spencer leaves\nbehind him explain such discrepant appreciations?  Can we find revealed\nin them the higher synthesis which reconciles the contradictions?\nPartly they do explain, I think, and even justify, both kinds of\njudgment upon their author.  But I confess that in the last resort I\nstill feel baffled.  In Spencer, as in every concrete individual, there\nis a uniqueness that defies all formulation.  We can feel the touch of\nit and recognize its taste, so to speak, relishing or disliking, as the\ncase may be, but we can give no ultimate account of it, and we have in\nthe end simply to admire the Creator.\n\nMr. Spencer's task, the unification of all knowledge into an articulate\nsystem, was more ambitious than anything attempted since St. Thomas or\nDescartes.  Most thinkers have confined themselves either to\ngeneralities or to details, but Spencer addressed himself to\neverything.  He dealt in logical, metaphysical, and ethical first\nprinciples, in cosmogony and geology, in physics, and chemistry after a\nfashion, in biology, psychology, sociology, politics, and aesthetics.\nHardly any subject can be named which has not at least been touched on\nin some one of his many volumes.  His erudition was prodigious.  His\ncivic conscience and his social courage both were admirable.  His life\nwas pure.  He was devoted to truth and usefulness, and his character\nwas wholly free from envy and malice (though not from contempt), and\nfrom the perverse egoisms that so often go with greatness.\n\nSurely, any one hearing this veracious enumeration would think that\nSpencer must have been a rich and exuberant human being.  Such wide\ncuriosities must have gone with the widest sympathies, and such a\npowerful harmony of character, whether it were a congenital gift, or\nwere acquired by spiritual wrestling and eating bread with tears, must\nin any case have been a glorious spectacle for the beholder.  Since\nGoethe, no such ideal human being can have been visible, walking our\npoor earth.\n\nYet when we turn to the \"Autobiography,\" the self-confession which we\nfind is this: An old-maidish personage, inhabiting boarding-houses,\nequable and lukewarm in all his tastes and passions, having no\ndesultory curiosity, showing little interest in either books or people.\nA petty fault-finder and stickler for trifles, devoid in youth of any\nwide designs on life, fond only of the more mechanical side of things,\nyet drifting as it were involuntarily into the possession of a\nworld-formula which by dint of his extraordinary pertinacity he\nproceeded to apply to so many special cases that it made him a\nphilosopher in spite of himself.  He appears as modest enough, but with\na curious vanity in some of his deficiencies,--his lack of desultory\ninterests, for example, and his nonconformity to reigning customs.  He\ngives a queer sense of having no emotional perspective, as if small\nthings and large were on the same plane of vision, and equally\ncommanded his attention.  In spite of his professed dislike of\nmonotony, one feels an awfully monotonous quality in him; and in spite\nof the fact that invalidism condemned him to avoid thinking, and to\nsaunter and potter through large parts of every day, one finds no\ntwilight region in his mind, and no capacity for dreaminess or\npassivity.  All parts of it are filled with the same noonday glare,\nlike a dry desert where every grain of sand shows singly, and there are\nno mysteries or shadows.\n\n\"Look on this picture and on that,\" and answer how they can be\ncompatible.\n\nFor one thing, Mr. Spencer certainly writes himself _down_ too much.\nHe complains of a poor memory, of an idle disposition, of a general\ndislike for reading.  Doubtless there have been more gifted men in all\nthese respects.  But when Spencer once buckled to a particular task,\nhis memory, his industry, and his reading went beyond those of the most\ngifted.  He had excessive sensibility to stimulation by a challenge,\nand he had preeminent pertinacity.  When the notion of his philosophic\nsystem once grasped him, it seemed to possess itself of every effective\nfibre of his being.  No faculty in him was left unemployed,--nor, on\nthe other hand, was anything that his philosophy could contain left\nunstated.  Roughly speaking, the task and the man absorbed each other\nwithout residuum.\n\nCompare this type of mind with such an opposite type as Ruskin's, or\neven as J. S. Mill's, or Huxley's, and you realize its peculiarity.\nBehind the work of those others was a background of overflowing mental\ntemptations.  The men loom larger than all their publications, and\nleave an impression of unexpressed potentialities.  Spencer tossed all\nhis inexpressibilities into the Unknowable, and gladly turned his back\non them forever.  His books seem to have expressed all that there was\nto express in his character.\n\nHe is very frank about this himself.  No _Sturm und Drang\nPeriode_, no problematic stage of thought, where the burden of the\nmuch-to-be-straightened exceeds the powers of straightening.\n\nWhen George Eliot uttered surprise at seeing no lines on his forehead,\nhis reply was:--\"I suppose it is because I am never puzzled.\"--\"It has\nnever been my way,\" he continues, \"to set before myself a problem and\npuzzle out an answer.  The conclusions at which I have from time to\ntime arrived, have not been arrived at as solutions of questions\nraised; but have been arrived at unawares--each as the ultimate outcome\nof a body of thought which slowly grew from a germ.  Some direct\nobservation, or some fact met with in reading, would dwell with me;\napparently because I had a sense of its significance. . . .  A week\nafterwards, possibly, the matter would be remembered; and with further\nthought about it, might occur a recognition of some wider application:\nnew instances being aggregated with those already noted.  Again, after\nan interval,\" etc., etc.  \"And thus, little by little, in unobtrusive\nways, without conscious intention or appreciable effort, there would\ngrow up a coherent and organized theory\" (vol. i, page 464).\n\nA sort of mill, this, wound up to grind in a certain way, and\nirresponsive otherwise.\n\n\"To apply day after day merely with the general idea of acquiring\ninformation, or of increasing ability, was not in me.\"  \"Anything like\npassive receptivity is foreign to my nature; and there results an\nunusually small tendency to be affected by others' thoughts.  It seems\nas though the fabric of my conclusions had in all cases to be developed\nfrom within.  Material which could be taken in and organized so as to\nform part of a coherent structure, there was always a readiness to\nreceive.  But ideas and sentiments of alien kinds, or unorganizable\nkinds, were, if not rejected, yet accepted with indifference, and soon\ndropped away.\"  \"It has always been out of the question for me to go on\nreading a book the fundamental principles of which I entirely dissent\nfrom.  I take it for granted that if the fundamental principles are\nwrong the rest cannot be right; and thereupon cease reading--being, I\nsuspect, rather glad of an excuse for doing so.\"  \"Systematic books of\na political or ethical kind, written from points of view quite unlike\nmy own, were either not consulted at all, or else they were glanced at\nand thereafter disregarded\" (vol. i, pages 215, 277, 289, 350).\n\nThere is pride rather than compunction in these confessions.  Spencer's\nmind was so narrowly systematized, that he was at last almost incapable\nof believing in the reality of alien ways of feeling.  The invariable\narrogance of his replies to criticisms shows his absolute\nself-confidence.  Every opinion in the world had to be articulately\nright or articulately wrong,--so proved by some principle or other of\nhis infallible system.\n\nHe confesses freely his own inflexibility and censoriousness.  His\naccount of his father makes one believe in the fatality of heredity.\nBorn of old nonconformist stock, the elder Spencer was a man of\nabsolute punctuality.  Always he would step out of his way to kick a\nstone off the pavement lest somebody should trip over it.  If he saw\nboys quarrelling he stopped to expostulate; and he never could pass a\nman who was ill-treating a horse without trying to make him behave\nbetter.  He would never take off his hat to any one, no matter of what\nrank, nor could he be induced to address any one as \"Esquire\" or as\n\"Reverend.\"  He would never put on any sign of mourning, even for\nfather and mother; and he adhered to one style of coat and hat\nthroughout all changes of fashion.  Improvement was his watchword\nalways and everywhere.  Whatever he wrote had to be endlessly\ncorrected, and his love of detail led all his life to his neglecting\nlarge ends in his care for small ones.  A good heart, but a pedantic\nconscience, and a sort of energetically mechanical intelligence.\n\nOf himself Herbert Spencer says: \"No one will deny that I am much given\nto criticism.  Along with exposition of my own views there has always\ngone a pointing out of defects in those of others.  And if this is a\ntrait in my writing, still more is it a trait in my conversation.  The\ntendency to fault-finding is dominant--disagreeably dominant.  The\nindicating of errors in thought and speech made by those around has all\nthrough life been an incurable habit--a habit for which I have often\nreproached myself, but to no purpose.\"\n\nThe \"Autobiography\" abounds in illustrations of the habit.  For\ninstance:--\n\n\"Of late I have observed sundry cases in which, having found the right,\npeople deliberately desert it for the wrong. . . .  A generation ago\nsalt-cellars were made of convenient shapes--either ellipses or\nelongated parallelograms: the advantage being that the salt-spoon,\nplaced lengthwise, remained in its place.  But for some time past,\nfashion has dictated circular salt-cellars, on the edges of which the\nsalt-spoon will not remain without skilful balancing: it falls on the\ncloth.  In my boyhood a jug was made of a form at once convenient and\ngraceful. . . .  Now, however, the almost universal form of jug in use\nis a frustum of a cone with a miniature spout.  It combines all\npossible defects.  When anything like full, it is impossible to pour\nout a small quantity without part of the liquid trickling down beneath\nthe spout; and a larger quantity cannot be poured out without exceeding\nthe limits of the spout and running over on each side of it.  If the\njug is half empty, the tilting must be continued a long time before any\nliquid comes; and then, when it does come, it comes with a rush;\nbecause its surface has now become so large that a small inclination\ndelivers a great deal.  To all which add that the shape is as ugly a\none as can well be hit upon.  Still more extraordinary is the folly of\na change made in another utensil of daily use\"--and Spencer goes on to\nfind fault with the cylindrical form of candle extinguisher, proving by\na description of its shape that \"it squashes the wick into the melted\ncomposition, the result being that when, next day, the extinguisher is\ntaken off, the wick, imbedded in the solidified composition, cannot be\nlighted without difficulty\" (vol. ii, page 238).\n\nThe remorseless explicitness, the punctuation, everything, make these\nspecimens of public fault-finding with what probably was the equipment\nof Mr. Spencer's latest boarding-house, sound like passages from \"The\nMan versus the State.\"  Another example:--\n\n\"Playing billiards became 'my custom always of the afternoon.'  Those\nwho confess to billiard-playing commonly make some kind of an\nexcuse. . . .  It suffices to me that I like billiards, and the\nattainment of the pleasure given I regard as a sufficient motive.  I\nhave for a long time deliberately set my face against that asceticism\nwhich makes it an offence to do a thing for the pleasure of doing it;\nand have habitually contended that, so long as no injury is inflicted\non others, nor any ulterior injury on self, and so long as the various\nduties of life have been discharged, the pursuit of pleasure for its\nown sake is perfectly legitimate and requires no apology.  The opposite\nview is nothing else than a remote sequence of the old devil worship of\nthe barbarian, who sought to please his god by inflicting pains upon\nhimself, and believed his god would be angry if he made himself happy\"\n(vol. ii, page 263).\n\nThe tone of pedantic rectitude in these passages is characteristic.\nEvery smallest thing is either right or wrong, and if wrong, can be\narticulately proved so by reasoning.  Life grows too dry and literal,\nand loses all aerial perspective at such a rate; and the effect is the\nmore displeasing when the matters in dispute have a rich variety of\naspects, and when the aspect from which Mr. Spencer deduces his\nconclusions is manifestly partial.\n\nFor instance, in his art-criticisms.  Spencer in his youth did much\ndrawing, both mechanical and artistic.  Volume one contains a\nphoto-print of a very creditable bust which he modelled of his uncle.\nHe had a musical ear, and practiced singing.  He paid attention to\nstyle, and was not wholly insensible to poetry.  Yet in all his\ndealings with the art-products of mankind he manifests the same curious\ndryness and mechanical literality of judgment--a dryness increased by\npride in his non-conformity.  He would, for example, rather give a\nlarge sum than read to the end of Homer's Iliad,--the ceaseless\nrepetition of battles, speeches, and epithets like well-greaved Greeks,\nhorse-breaking Trojans; the tedious enumeration of details of dresses,\narms, and chariots; such absurdities as giving the genealogy of a horse\nwhile in the midst of a battle; and the appeals to savage and brutal\npassions, having soon made the poem intolerable to him (vol. i, page\n300).  Turner's paintings he finds untrue, in that the earth-region is\nhabitually as bright in tone as the air-region.  Moreover, Turner\nscatters his detail too evenly.  In Greek statues the hair is falsely\ntreated.  Renaissance painting, even the best, is spoiled by unreal\nillumination, and non-rendering of reflected light in the shadows.\nVenetian gothic sins by meaningless ornamentation.  St. Mark's Church\nmay be precious archaeologically, but is not aesthetically precious.\nOf Wagner's music he admires nothing but the skilful specialization of\nthe instruments in the orchestra.\n\nThe fault-finding in all these cases rests on observation, true as far\nas it goes; but the total absence of genial relations with the entirety\nof the phenomenon discussed, the clutching at some paltry mechanical\naspect of it that lends itself to reasoned proof by _a_ plus _b_, and\nthe practical denial of everything that only appeals to vaguer\nsentiment, show a mind so oddly limited to ratiocinative and explicit\nprocesses, and so wedded to the superficial and flagrantly\n_insufficient_, that one begins to wonder whether in the philosophic\nand scientific spheres the same mind can have wrought out results of\nextraordinary value.\n\nBoth \"yes\" and \"no\" are here the answer.  Every one who writes books or\narticles knows how he must flounder until he hits upon the proper\nopening.  Once the right beginning found, everything follows easily and\nin due order.  If a man, however narrow, strikes even by accident, into\none of these fertile openings, and pertinaciously follows the lead, he\nis almost sure to meet truth on his path.  Some thoughts act almost\nlike mechanical centres of crystallization; facts cluster of themselves\nabout them.  Such a thought was that of the gradual growth of all\nthings, by natural processes, out of natural antecedents.  Until the\nmiddle of the nineteenth century no one had grasped it _wholesale_; and\nthe thinker who did so earliest was bound to make discoveries just in\nproportion to the exclusiveness of his interest in the principle.  He\nwho had the keenest eye for instances and illustrations, and was least\ndivertible by casual side-curiosity, would score the quickest triumph.\n\nTo Spencer is certainly due the immense credit of having been the first\nto see in evolution an absolutely universal principle.  If any one else\nhad grasped its universality, it failed at any rate to grasp him as it\ngrasped Spencer.  For Spencer it instantly became \"the guiding\nconception running through and connecting all the concrete sciences\"\n(vol. ii, page 196).  Here at last was \"an object at once large and\ndistinct enough\" to overcome his \"constitutional idleness.\"  \"With an\nimportant and definite end to achieve, I could work\" (vol. i, page\n215).  He became, in short, the victim of a vivid obsession, and for\nthe first time in his life seems to have grown genuinely ambitious.\nEvery item of his experience, small or great, every idea in his mental\nstorehouse, had now to be considered with reference to its bearing on\nthe new universal principle.  On pages 194-199 of volume two he gives\nan interesting summary of the way in which all his previous and\nsubsequent ideas moved into harmonious cooerdination and subordination,\nwhen once he had this universal key to insight.  Applying it wholesale\nas he did, innumerable truths unobserved till then had to fall into his\ngamebag.  And his peculiar trick, a priggish infirmity in daily\nintercourse, of treating every smallest thing by abstract law, was here\na merit.  Add his sleuth-hound scent for what he was after, and his\nuntiring pertinacity, to his priority in perceiving the one great truth\nand you fully justify the popular estimate of him as one of the world's\ngeniuses, in spite of the fact that the \"temperament\" of genius, so\ncalled, seems to have been so lacking in him.\n\nIn one sense, then, Spencer's personal narrowness and dryness were not\nhindering, but helping conditions of his achievement.  Grant that a\nvast picture _quelconque_ had to be made before the details could be\nmade perfect, and a greater richness and receptivity of mind would have\nresulted in hesitation.  The quality would have been better in spots,\nbut the extensiveness would have suffered.\n\nSpencer is thus the philosopher of vastness.  Misprised by many\nspecialists, who carp at his technical imperfections, he has\nnevertheless enlarged the imagination, and set free the speculative\nmind of countless doctors, engineers, and lawyers, of many physicists\nand chemists, and of thoughtful laymen generally.  He is the\nphilosopher whom those who have no other philosopher can appreciate.\nTo be able to say this of any man is great praise, and gives the \"yes\"\nanswer to my recent question.\n\nCan the \"no\" answer be as unhesitatingly uttered?  I think so, if one\nmakes the qualitative aspect of Spencer's work undo its quantitative\naspect.  The luke-warm equable temperament, the narrowness of sympathy\nand passion, the fondness for mechanical forms of thought, the\nimperfect receptivity and lack of interest in facts as such, dissevered\nfrom their possible connection with a theory; nay, the very vividness\nitself, the keenness of scent and the pertinacity; these all are\nqualities which may easily make for second-rateness, and for\ncontentment with a cheap and loosely woven achievement.  As Mr.\nSpencer's \"First Principles\" is the book which more than any other has\nspread his popular reputation, I had perhaps better explain what I mean\nby criticising some of its peculiarities.\n\nI read this book as a youth when it was still appearing in numbers, and\nwas carried away with enthusiasm by the intellectual perspectives which\nit seemed to open.  When a maturer companion, Mr. Charles S. Peirce,\nattacked it in my presence, I felt spiritually wounded, as by the\ndefacement of a sacred image or picture, though I could not verbally\ndefend it against his criticisms.\n\nLater I have used it often as a text-book with students, and the total\noutcome of my dealings with it is an exceedingly unfavorable verdict.\nApart from the great truth which it enforces, that everything has\nevolved somehow, and apart from the inevitable stimulating effect of\nany such universal picture, I regard its teachings as almost a museum\nof blundering reasoning.  Let me try to indicate briefly my grounds for\nsuch an opinion.\n\nI pass by the section on the Unknowable, because this part of Mr.\nSpencer's philosophy has won fewer friends than any other.  It consists\nchiefly of a rehash of Mansel's rehash of Hamilton's \"Philosophy of the\nConditioned,\" and has hardly raised its head since John Mill so\neffectively demolished it.  If criticism of our human intellectual\nconstitution is needed, it can be got out of Bradley to-day better than\nout of Spencer.  The latter's way of reconciling science and religion\nis, moreover, too absurdly _naif_.  Find, he says, a fundamental\nabstract truth on which they can agree, and that will reconcile them.\nSuch a truth, he thinks, is that _there is a mystery_.  The trouble is\nthat it is over just such common truths that quarrels begin.  Did the\nfact that both believed in the existence of the Pope reconcile Luther\nand Ignatius Loyola?  Did it reconcile the South and the North that\nboth agreed that there were slaves?  Religion claims that the \"mystery\"\nis interpretable by human reason; \"Science,\" speaking through Spencer,\ninsists that it is not.  The admission of the mystery is the very\nsignal for the quarrel.  Moreover, for nine hundred and ninety-nine\nmen out of a thousand the sense of mystery is the sense of\n_more-to-be-known_, not the sense of a More, _not_ to be known.\n\nBut pass the Unknowable by, and turn to Spencer's famous law of\nEvolution.\n\n\"Science\" works with several types of \"law.\"  The most frequent and\nuseful type is that of the \"elementary law,\"--that of the composition\nof forces, that of gravitation, of refraction, and the like.  Such laws\ndeclare no concrete facts to exist, and make no prophecy as to any\nactual future.  They limit themselves to saying that if a certain\ncharacter be found in any fact, another character will co-exist with it\nor follow it.  The usefulness of these laws is proportionate to the\nextent to which the characters they treat of pervade the world, and to\nthe accuracy with which they are definable.\n\nStatistical laws form another type, and positively declare something\nabout the world of actuality.  Although they tell us nothing of the\nelements of things, either abstract or concrete, they affirm that the\nresultant of their actions drifts preponderantly in a particular\ndirection.  Population tends toward cities; the working classes tend to\ngrow discontented; the available energy of the universe is running\ndown--such laws prophesy the real future _en gros_, but they never help\nus to predict any particular detail of it.\n\nSpencer's law of Evolution is of the statistical variety.  It defines\nwhat evolution means, and what dissolution means, and asserts that,\nalthough both processes are always going on together, there is in the\npresent phase of the world a drift in favor of evolution.  In the first\nedition of \"First Principles\" an evolutive change in anything was\ndescribed as the passage of it from a state of indefinite incoherent\nhomogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity.  The existence of a\ndrift in this direction in everything Mr. Spencer proves, both by a\nsurvey of facts, and by deducing it from certain laws of the elementary\ntype, which he severally names \"the instability of the homogeneous,\"\n\"the multiplication of effects,\" \"segregation,\" and \"equilibration.\"\nThe two former insure the heterogeneity, while \"segregation\" brings\nabout the definiteness and coherence, and \"equilibration\" arrests the\nprocess, and determines when dissolutive changes shall begin.\n\nThe whole panorama is resplendent for variety and inclusiveness, and\nhas aroused an admiration for philosophy in minds that never admired\nphilosophy before.  Like Descartes in earlier days, Spencer aims at a\npurely mechanical explanation of Nature.  The knowable universe is\nnothing but matter and motion, and its history is nothing but the\n\"redistribution\" of these entities.  The value of such an explanation\nfor scientific purposes depends altogether on how consistent and exact\nit is.  Every \"thing\" must be interpreted as a \"configuration,\" every\n\"event\" as a change of configuration, every predicate ascribed must be\nof a geometrical sort.  Measured by these requirements of mechanics\nSpencer's attempt has lamentably failed.  His terms are vagueness and\nambiguity incarnate, and he seems incapable of keeping the mechanical\npoint of view in mind for five pages consecutively.\n\n\"Definite,\" for example, is hardly a physical idea at all.  Every\nmotion and every arrangement of matter is definitely what it is,--a fog\nor an irregular scrawl, as much so as a billiard ball or a straight\nline.  Spencer means by definiteness in a thing any character that\nmakes it arrest our attention, and forces us to distinguish it from\nother things.  The word with him has a human, not a physical\nconnotation.  Definite things, in his book, finally appear merely as\n_things that men have made separate names for_, so that there is hardly\na pretence of the mechanical view being kept.  Of course names increase\nas human history proceeds, so \"definiteness\" in things must necessarily\nmore and more evolve.\n\n\"Coherent,\" again.  This has the definite mechanical meaning of\nresisting separation, of sticking together; but Spencer plays fast and\nloose with this meaning.  Coherence with him sometimes means\n_permanence in time_, sometimes such _mutual dependence of parts_ as is\nrealized in a widely scattered system of no fixed material\nconfiguration; a commercial house, for example, with its \"travellers\"\nand ships and cars.\n\nAn honestly mechanical reader soon rubs his eyes with bewilderment at\nthe orgy of ambiguity to which he is introduced.  Every term in\nSpencer's fireworks shimmers through a whole spectrum of meanings in\norder to adapt itself to the successive spheres of evolution to which\nit must apply.  \"Integration,\" for instance.  A definite coherence is\nan Integration; and examples given of integration are the contraction\nof the solar nebula, the formation of the earth's crust, the\ncalcification of cartilage, the shortening of the body of crabs, the\nloss of his tail by man, the mutual dependence of plants and animals,\nthe growth of powerful states, the tendency of human occupations to go\nto distinct localities, the dropping of terminal inflexions in English\ngrammar, the formation of general concepts by the mind, the use of\nmachinery instead of simple tools, the development of \"composition\" in\nthe fine arts, etc., etc.  It is obvious that no one form of the motion\nof matter characterizes all these facts.  The human ones simply embody\nthe more and more successful pursuit of certain ends.\n\nIn the second edition of his book, Mr. Spencer supplemented his first\nformula by a unifying addition, meant to be strictly mechanical.\n\"Evolution,\" he now said, \"is the progressive integration of matter and\ndissipation of motion,\" during which both the matter and the motion\nundergo the previously designated kinds of change.  But this makes the\nformula worse instead of better.  The \"dissipation of motion\" part of\nit is simple vagueness,--for what particular motion is \"dissipated\"\nwhen a man or state grows more highly evolved?  And the integration of\nmatter belongs only to stellar and geologic evolution.  Neither\nheightened specific gravity, nor greater massiveness, which are the\nonly conceivable integrations of matter, is a mark of the more evolved\nvital, mental, or social things.\n\nIt is obvious that the facts of which Spencer here gives so clumsy an\naccount could all have been set down more simply.  First there is\nsolar, and then there is geological evolution, processes accurately\ndescribable as integrations in the mechanical sense, namely, as\ndecrease in bulk, or growth in hardness.  Then Life appears; and after\nthat neither integration of matter nor dissipation of motion play any\npart whatever.  The result of life, however, is to fill the world more\nand more with things displaying _organic unity_.  By this is meant any\narrangement of which one part helps to keep the other parts in\nexistence.  Some organic unities are material,--a sea-urchin, for\nexample, a department store, a civil service, or an ecclesiastical\norganization.  Some are mental, as a \"science,\" a code of laws, or an\neducational programme.  But whether they be material or mental\nproducts, organic unities must _accumulate_; for every old one tends to\nconserve itself, and if successful new ones arise they also \"come to\nstay.\"  The human use of Spencer's adjectives \"integrated,\" \"definite,\"\n\"coherent,\" here no longer shocks one.  We are frankly on teleological\nground, and metaphor and vagueness are permissible.\n\nThis tendency of organic unities to accumulate when once they are\nformed is absolutely all the truth I can distill from Spencer's\nunwieldy account of evolution.  It makes a much less gaudy and\nchromatic picture, but what there is of it is exact.\n\nCountless other criticisms swarm toward my pen, but I have no heart to\nexpress them,--it is too sorry an occupation.  A word about Spencer's\nconception of \"Force,\" however, insists on being added; for although it\nis one of his most essential, it is one of his vaguest ideas.\n\nOver all his special laws of evolution there reigns an absolutely\ngeneral law, that of the \"persistence of force.\"  By this Spencer\nsometimes means the phenomenal law of conservation of energy, sometimes\nthe metaphysical principle that the quantity of existence is\nunalterable, sometimes the logical principle that nothing can happen\nwithout a reason, sometimes the practical postulate that in the absence\nof any assignable difference you must call a thing the same.  This law\nis one vast vagueness, of which I can give no clear account; but of his\nspecial vaguenesses \"mental force\" and \"social force\" are good examples.\n\nThese manifestations of the universal force, he says, are due to vital\nforce, and this latter is due to physical force, both being\nproportionate to the amount of physical force which is \"transformed\"\ninto them.  But what on earth is \"social force\"?  Sometimes he\nidentifies it with \"social activity\" (showing the latter to be\nproportionate to the amount of food eaten), sometimes with the work\ndone by human beings and their steam-engines, and shows it to be due\nultimately to the sun's heat.  It would never occur to a reader of his\npages that a social force proper might be anything that acted as a\nstimulus of social change,--a leader, for example, a discovery, a book,\na new idea, or a national insult; and that the greatest of \"forces\" of\nthis kind need embody no more \"physical force\" than the smallest.  The\nmeasure of greatness here is the effect produced on the environment,\nnot a quantity antecedently absorbed from physical nature.  Mr. Spencer\nhimself is a great social force; but he ate no more than an average\nman, and his body, if cremated, would disengage no more energy.  The\neffects he exerts are of no nature _of releases_,--his words pull\ntriggers in certain kinds of brain.\n\nThe fundamental distinction in mechanics between forces of\npush-and-pull and forces of release is one of which Mr. Spencer, in his\nearlier years, made no use whatever.  Only in his sixth edition did he\nshow that it had seriously arrested his attention.  In biology,\npsychology, and sociology the forces concerned are almost exclusively\nforces of release.  Spencer's account of social forces is neither good\nsociology nor good mechanics.  His feeble grasp of the conception of\nforce vitiates, in fact, all his work.\n\nBut the task of a carper is repugnant.  The \"Essays,\" \"Biology,\"\n\"Psychology,\" \"Sociology,\" and \"Ethics\" are all better than \"First\nPrinciples,\" and contain numerous and admirable bits of penetrating\nwork of detail.  My impression is that, of the systematic treaties, the\n\"Psychology\" will rank as the most original.  Spencer broke new ground\nhere in insisting that, since mind and its environment have evolved\ntogether, they must be studied together.  He gave to the study of mind\nin isolation a definitive quietus, and that certainly is a great thing\nto have achieved.  To be sure he overdid the matter, as usual, and left\nno room for any mental structure at all, except that which passively\nresulted from the storage of impressions received from the outer world\nin the order of their frequency by fathers and transmitted to their\nsons.  The belief that whatever is acquired by sires is inherited by\nsons, and the ignoring of purely inner variations, are weak points; but\nto have brought in the environment as vital was a master stroke.\n\nI may say that Spencer's controversy over use-inheritance with\nWeismann, entered into after he was sixty, seems to me in point of\nquality better than any other part of his work.  It is genuine labor\nover a puzzle, genuine research.\n\nSpencer's \"Ethics\" is a most vital and original piece of\nattitude-taking in the world of ideals.  His politico-ethical activity\nin general breathes the purest English spirit liberty, and his attacks\non over-administration and criticisms on the inferiority of great\ncentralized systems are worthy to be the textbooks of individualists\nthe world over.  I confess that it is with this part of his work, in\nspite of its hardness and inflexibility of tone, that I personally\nsympathize most.\n\nLooking back on Mr. Spencer as a whole, as this admirably truth-telling\n\"Autobiography\" reveals him, he is a figure unique for quaint\nconsistency.  He never varied from that inimitable blend of small and\nvast mindedness, of liberality and crabbedness, which was his personal\nnote, and which defies our formulating power.  If an abstract logical\nconcept could come to life, its life would be like Spencer's,--the same\ndefiniteness of exclusion and inclusion, the same bloodlessness of\ntemperament, the same narrowness of intent and vastness of extent, the\nsame power of applying itself to numberless instances.  But he was no\nabstract idea; he was a man vigorously devoted to truth and justice as\nhe saw them, who had deep insights, and who finished, under terrible\nfrustrations from bad health, a piece of work that taken for all in\nall, is extraordinary.  A human life is greater than all its possible\nappraisers, assessors, and critics.  In comparison with the fact of\nSpencer's actual living, such critical characterization of it as I have\nbeen at all these pains to produce seems a rather unimportant as well\nas a decidedly graceless thing.\n\n\n\n[1] Written upon the publication of Herbert Spencer's \"Autobiography.\"\nPublished in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for July, 1904.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nFREDERIC MYERS' SERVICES TO PSYCHOLOGY[1]\n\nOn this memorial occasion it is from English hearts and tongues\nbelonging, as I never had the privilege of belonging, to the immediate\nenvironment of our lamented President, that discourse of him as a man and\nas a friend must come.  It is for those who participated in the endless\ndrudgery of his labors for our Society to tell of the high powers he\nshowed there; and it is for those who have something of his burning\ninterest in the problem of our human destiny to estimate his success in\nthrowing a little more light into its dark recesses.  To me it has been\ndeemed best to assign a colder task.  Frederic Myers was a psychologist\nwho worked upon lines hardly admitted by the more academic branch of the\nprofession to be legitimate; and as for some years I bore the title of\n\"Professor of Psychology,\" the suggestion has been made (and by me gladly\nwelcomed) that I should spend my portion of this hour in defining the\nexact place and rank which we must accord to him as a cultivator and\npromoter of the science of the Mind.\n\nBrought up entirely upon literature and history, and interested at first\nin poetry and religion chiefly; never by nature a philosopher in the\ntechnical sense of a man forced to pursue consistency among concepts for\nthe mere love of the logical occupation; not crammed with science at\ncollege, or trained to scientific method by any passage through a\nlaboratory, Myers had as it were to recreate his personality before he\nbecame the wary critic of evidence, the skilful handler of hypothesis,\nthe learned neurologist and omnivorous reader of biological and\ncosmological matter, with whom in later years we were acquainted.  The\ntransformation came about because he needed to be all these things in\norder to work successfully at the problem that lay near his heart; and\nthe ardor of his will and the richness of his intellect are proved by the\nsuccess with which he underwent so unusual a transformation.\n\nThe problem, as you know, was that of seeking evidence for human\nimmortality.  His contributions to psychology were incidental to that\nresearch, and would probably never have been made had he not entered on\nit.  But they have a value for Science entirely independent of the light\nthey shed upon that problem; and it is quite apart from it that I shall\nventure to consider them.\n\n\nIf we look at the history of mental science we are immediately struck by\ndiverse tendencies among its several cultivators, the consequence being a\ncertain opposition of schools and some repugnance among their disciples.\nApart from the great contrasts between minds that are teleological or\nbiological and minds that are mechanical, between the animists and the\nassociationists in psychology, there is the entirely different contrast\nbetween what I will call the classic-academic and the romantic type of\nimagination.  The former has a fondness for clean pure lines and noble\nsimplicity in its constructions.  It explains things by as few principles\nas possible and is intolerant of either nondescript facts or clumsy\nformulas.  The facts must lie in a neat assemblage, and the psychologist\nmust be enabled to cover them and \"tuck them in\" as safely under his\nsystem as a mother tucks her babe in under the down coverlet on a winter\nnight.  Until quite recently all psychology, whether animistic or\nassociationistic, was written on classic-academic lines.  The consequence\nwas that the human mind, as it is figured in this literature, was largely\nan abstraction.  Its normal adult traits were recognized.  A sort of\nsun-lit terrace was exhibited on which it took its exercise.  But where\nthat terrace stopped, the mind stopped; and there was nothing farther\nleft to tell of in this kind of philosophy but the brain and the other\nphysical facts of nature on the one hand, and the absolute metaphysical\nground of the universe on the other.\n\nBut of late years the terrace has been overrun by romantic improvers, and\nto pass to their work is like going from classic to gothic architecture,\nwhere few outlines are pure and where uncouth forms lurk in the shadows.\nA mass of mental phenomena are now seen in the shrubbery beyond the\nparapet.  Fantastic, ignoble, hardly human, or frankly non-human are some\nof these new candidates for psychological description.  The menagerie and\nthe madhouse, the nursery, the prison, and the hospital, have been made\nto deliver up their material.  The world of mind is shown as something\ninfinitely more complex than was suspected; and whatever beauties it may\nstill possess, it has lost at any rate the beauty of academic neatness.\n\nBut despite the triumph of romanticism, psychologists as a rule have\nstill some lingering prejudice in favor of the nobler simplicities.\nMoreover, there are social prejudices which scientific men themselves\nobey.  The word \"hypnotism\" has been trailed about in the newspapers so\nthat even we ourselves rather wince at it, and avoid occasions of its\nuse.  \"Mesmerism,\" \"clairvoyance,\" \"medium,\"--_horrescimus\nreferentes_!--and with all these things, infected by their previous\nmystery-mongering discoverers, even our best friends had rather avoid\ncomplicity.  For instance, I invite eight of my scientific colleagues\nseverally to come to my house at their own time, and sit with a medium\nfor whom the evidence already published in our \"Proceedings\" had been\nmost noteworthy.  Although it means at worst the waste of the hour for\neach, five of them decline the adventure.  I then beg the \"Commission\"\nconnected with the chair of a certain learned psychologist in a\nneighboring university to examine the same medium, whom Mr. Hodgson and I\noffer at our own expense to send and leave with them.  They also have to\nbe excused from any such entanglement.  I advise another psychological\nfriend to look into this medium's case, but he replies that it is\nuseless; for if he should get such results as I report, he would (being\nsuggestible) simply believe himself hallucinated.  When I propose as a\nremedy that he should remain in the background and take notes, whilst his\nwife has the sitting, he explains that he can never consent to his wife's\npresence at such performances.  This friend of mine writes _ex cathedra_\non the subject of psychical research, declaring (I need hardly add) that\nthere is nothing in it; the chair of the psychologist with the Commission\nwas founded by a spiritist, partly with a view to investigate mediums;\nand one of the five colleagues who declined my invitation is widely\nquoted as an effective critic of our evidence.  So runs the world away!\nI should not indulge in the personality and triviality of such anecdotes,\nwere it not that they paint the temper of our time, a temper which,\nthanks to Frederic Myers more than to any one, will certainly be\nimpossible after this generation.  Myers was, I think, decidedly\nexclusive and intolerant by nature.  But his keenness for truth carried\nhim into regions where either intellectual or social squeamishness would\nhave been fatal, so he \"mortified\" his _amour propre_, unclubbed himself\ncompletely, and became a model of patience, tact and humility wherever\ninvestigation required it.  Both his example and his body of doctrine\nwill make this temper the only one henceforward scientifically\nrespectable.\n\nIf you ask me how his doctrine has this effect, I answer: By\nco-ordinating!  For Myers' great principle of research was that in order\nto understand any one species of fact we ought to have all the species of\nthe same general class of fact before us.  So he took a lot of scattered\nphenomena, some of them recognized as reputable, others outlawed from\nscience, or treated as isolated curiosities; he made series of them,\nfilled in the transitions by delicate hypotheses or analogies; and bound\nthem together in a system by his bold inclusive conception of the\nSubliminal Self, so that no one can now touch one part of the fabric\nwithout finding the rest entangled with it.  Such vague terms of\napperception as psychologists have hitherto been satisfied with using for\nmost of these phenomena, as \"fraud,\" \"rot,\" \"rubbish,\" will no more be\npossible hereafter than \"dirt\" is possible as a head of classification in\nchemistry, or \"vermin\" in zoology.  Whatever they are, they are things\nwith a right to definite description and to careful observation.\n\nI cannot but account this as a great service rendered to Psychology.  I\nexpect that Myers will ere long distinctly figure in mental science as\nthe radical leader in what I have called the romantic movement.  Through\nhim for the first time, psychologists are in possession of their full\nmaterial, and mental phenomena are set down in an adequate inventory.  To\nbring unlike things thus together by forming series of which the\nintermediary terms connect the extremes, is a procedure much in use by\nscientific men.  It is a first step made towards securing their interest\nin the romantic facts, that Myers should have shown how easily this\nfamiliar method can be applied to their study.\n\nMyers' conception of the extensiveness of the Subliminal Self quite\noverturns the classic notion of what the human mind consists in.  The\nsupraliminal region, as Myers calls it, the classic-academic\nconsciousness, which was once alone considered either by associationists\nor animists, figures in his theory as only a small segment of the psychic\nspectrum.  It is a special phase of mentality, teleologically evolved for\nadaptation to our natural environment, and forms only what he calls a\n\"privileged case\" of personality.  The out-lying Subliminal, according to\nhim, represents more fully our central and abiding being.\n\nI think the words subliminal and supraliminal unfortunate, but they were\nprobably unavoidable.  I think, too, that Myers' belief in the ubiquity\nand great extent of the Subliminal will demand a far larger number of\nfacts than sufficed to persuade him, before the next generation of\npsychologists shall become persuaded.  He regards the Subliminal as the\nenveloping mother-consciousness in each of us, from which the\nconsciousness we wot of is precipitated like a crystal.  But whether this\nview get confirmed or get overthrown by future inquiry, the definite way\nin which Myers has thrown it down is a new and specific challenge to\ninquiry.  For half a century now, psychologists have fully admitted the\nexistence of a subliminal mental region, under the name either of\nunconscious cerebration or of the involuntary life; but they have never\ndefinitely taken up the question of the extent of this region, never\nsought explicitly to map it out.  Myers definitely attacks this problem,\nwhich, after him, it will be impossible to ignore.\n\n_What is the precise constitution of the Subliminal_--such is the problem\nwhich deserves to figure in our Science hereafter as the _problem of\nMyers_; and willy-nilly, inquiry must follow on the path which it has\nopened up.  But Myers has not only propounded the Problem definitely, he\nhas also invented definite methods for its solution.  Posthypnotic\nsuggestion, crystal-gazing, automatic writing and trance-speech, the\nwilling-game, etc., are now, thanks to him, instruments of research,\nreagents like litmus paper or the galvanometer, for revealing what would\notherwise be hidden.  These are so many ways of putting the Subliminal on\ntap.  Of course without the simultaneous work on hypnotism and hysteria\nindependently begun by others, he could not have pushed his own work so\nfar.  But he is so far the only generalizer of the problem and the only\nuser of all the methods; and even though his theory of the extent of the\nSubliminal should have to be subverted in the end, its formulation will,\nI am sure, figure always as a rather momentous event in the history of\nour Science.\n\nAny psychologist who should wish to read Myers out of the profession--and\nthere are probably still some who would be glad to do so to-day--is\ncommitted to a definite alternative.  Either he must say that we knew all\nabout the subliminal region before Myers took it up, or he must say that\nit is certain that states of super-normal cognition form no part of its\ncontent.  The first contention would be too absurd.  The second one\nremains more plausible.  There are many first hand investigators into the\nSubliminal who, not having themselves met with anything super-normal,\nwould probably not hesitate to call all the reports of it erroneous, and\nwho would limit the Subliminal to dissolutive phenomena of consciousness\nexclusively, to lapsed memories, subconscious sensations, impulses and\n_phobias_, and the like.  Messrs. Janet and Binet, for aught I know, may\nhold some such position as this.  Against it Myers' thesis would stand\nsharply out.  Of the Subliminal, he would say, we can give no\nultra-simple account: there are discreet regions in it, levels separated\nby critical points of transition, and no one formula holds true of them\nall.  And any conscientious psychologist ought, it seems to me, to see\nthat, since these multiple modifications of personality are only\nbeginning to be reported and observed with care, it is obvious that a\ndogmatically negative treatment of them must be premature and that the\nproblem of Myers still awaits us as the problem of far the deepest moment\nfor our actual psychology, whether his own tentative solutions of certain\nparts of it be correct or not.\n\nMeanwhile, descending to detail, one cannot help admiring the great\noriginality with which Myers wove such an extraordinarily detached and\ndiscontinuous series of phenomena together.  Unconscious cerebration,\ndreams, hypnotism, hysteria, inspirations of genius, the willing-game,\nplanchette, crystal-gazing, hallucinatory voices, apparitions of the\ndying, medium-trances, demoniacal possession, clairvoyance,\nthought-transference, even ghosts and other facts more doubtful; these\nthings form a chaos at first sight most discouraging.  No wonder that\nscientists can think of no other principle of unity among them than their\ncommon appeal to men's perverse propensity to superstition.  Yet Myers\nhas actually made a system of them, stringing them continuously upon a\nperfectly legitimate objective hypothesis, verified in some cases and\nextended to others by analogy.  Taking the name \"automatism\" from the\nphenomenon of automatic writing--I am not sure that he may not himself\nhave been the first so to baptize this latter phenomenon--he made one\ngreat simplification at a stroke by treating hallucinations and active\nimpulses under a common head, as _sensory_ and _motor automatisms_.\nAutomatism he then conceived broadly as a message of any kind from the\nSubliminal to the Supraliminal.  And he went a step farther in his\nhypothetic interpretation, when he insisted on \"symbolism\" as one of the\nways in which one stratum of our personality will often interpret the\ninfluences of another.  Obsessive thoughts and delusions, as well as\nvoices, visions, and impulses, thus fall subject to one mode of\ntreatment.  To explain them, we must explore the Subliminal; to cure them\nwe must practically influence it.\n\nMyers' work on automatism led to his brilliant conception, in 1891, of\nhysteria.  He defined it, with good reasons given, as \"a disease of the\nhypnotic stratum.\"  Hardly had he done so when the wonderfully ingenious\nobservations of Binet, and especially of Janet in France, gave to this\nview the completest of corroborations.  These observations have been\nextended in Germany, America, and elsewhere; and although Binet and Janet\nworked independently of Myers, and did work far more objective, he\nnevertheless will stand as the original announcer of a theory which, in\nmy opinion, makes an epoch, not only in medical but in psychological\nscience, because it brings in an entirely new conception of our mental\npossibilities.\n\nMyers' manner of apprehending the problem of the Subliminal shows itself\nfruitful in every possible direction.  While official science practically\nrefuses to attend to Subliminal phenomena, the circles which do attend to\nthem treat them with a respect altogether too undiscriminating,--every\nSubliminal deliverance must be an oracle.  The result is that there is no\nbasis of intercourse between those who best know the facts and those who\nare most competent to discuss them.  Myers immediately establishes a\nbasis by his remark that in so far as they have to use the same organism,\nwith its preformed avenues of expression--what may be very different\nstrata of the Subliminal are condemned in advance to manifest themselves\nin similar ways.  This might account for the great generic likeness of so\nmany automatic performances, while their different starting-points behind\nthe threshold might account for certain differences in them.  Some of\nthem, namely, seem to include elements of super-normal knowledge; others\nto show a curious subconscious mania for personation and deception;\nothers again to be mere drivel.  But Myers' conception of various strata\nor levels in the Subliminal sets us to analyzing them all from a new\npoint of view.  The word Subliminal for him denotes only a region, with\npossibly the most heterogeneous contents.  Much of the content is\ncertainly rubbish, matter that Myers calls dissolutive, stuff that dreams\nare made of, fragments of lapsed memory, mechanical effects of habit and\nordinary suggestion; some belongs to a middle region where a strange\nmanufacture of inner romances perpetually goes on; finally, some of the\ncontent appears superiorly and subtly perceptive.  But each has to appeal\nto us by the same channels and to use organs partly trained to their\nperformance by messages from the other levels.  Under these conditions\nwhat could be more natural to expect than a confusion which Myers'\nsuggestion would then have been the first indispensable step towards\nfinally clearing away.\n\nOnce more, then, whatever be the upshot of the patient work required\nhere, Myers' resourceful intellect has certainly done a service to\npsychology.\n\nI said a while ago that his intellect was not by nature philosophic in\nthe narrower sense of being that of a logician.  In the broader sense of\nbeing a man of wide scientific imagination, Myers was most eminently a\nphilosopher.  He has shown this by his unusually daring grasp of the\nprinciple of evolution, and by the wonderful way in which he has worked\nout suggestions of mental evolution by means of biological analogies.\nThese analogies are, if anything, too profuse and dazzling in his pages;\nbut his conception of mental evolution is more radical than anything yet\nconsidered by psychologists as possible.  It is absolutely original; and,\nbeing so radical, it becomes one of those hypotheses which, once\npropounded, can never be forgotten, but sooner or later have to be worked\nout and submitted in every way to criticism and verification.\n\nThe corner-stone of his conception is the fact that consciousness has no\nessential unity.  It aggregates and dissipates, and what we call normal\nconsciousness,--the \"Human Mind\" of classic psychology,--is not even\ntypical, but only one case out of thousands.  Slight organic alterations,\nintoxications, and auto-intoxications, give supraliminal forms completely\ndifferent, and the subliminal region seems to have laws in many respects\npeculiar.  Myers thereupon makes the suggestion that the whole system of\nconsciousness studied by the classic psychology is only an extract from a\nlarger total, being a part told-off, as it were, to do service in the\nadjustments of our physical organism to the world of nature.  This\nextract, aggregated and personified for this particular purpose, has,\nlike all evolving things, a variety of peculiarities.  Having evolved, it\nmay also dissolve, and in dreams, hysteria, and divers forms of\ndegeneration it seems to do so.  This is a retrograde process of\nseparation in a consciousness of which the unity was once effected.  But\nagain the consciousness may follow the opposite course and integrate\nstill farther, or evolve by growing into yet untried directions.  In\nveridical automatisms it actually seems to do so.  It drops some of its\nusual modes of increase, its ordinary use of the senses, for example, and\nlays hold of bits of information which, in ways that we cannot even\nfollow conjecturally, leak into it by way of the Subliminal.  The\nulterior source of a certain part of this information (limited and\nperverted as it always is by the organism's idiosyncrasies in the way of\ntransmission and expression) Myers thought he could reasonably trace to\ndeparted human intelligence, or its existing equivalent.  I pretend to no\nopinion on this point, for I have as yet studied the evidence with so\nlittle critical care that Myers was always surprised at my negligence.  I\ncan therefore speak with detachment from this question and, as a mere\nempirical psychologist, of Myers' general evolutionary conception.  As\nsuch a psychologist I feel sure that the latter is a hypothesis of\nfirst-rate philosophic importance.  It is based, of course, on his\nconviction of the extent of the Subliminal, and will stand or fall as\nthat is verified or not; but whether it stand or fall, it looks to me\nlike one of those sweeping ideas by which the scientific researches of an\nentire generation are often moulded.  It would not be surprising if it\nproved such a leading idea in the investigation of the near future; for\nin one shape or another, the Subliminal has come to stay with us, and the\nonly possible course to take henceforth is radically and thoroughly to\nexplore its significance.\n\n\nLooking back from Frederic Myers' vision of vastness in the field of\npsychological research upon the programme as most academic psychologists\nframe it, one must confess that its limitation at their hands seems not\nonly implausible, but in truth, a little ridiculous.  Even with brutes\nand madmen, even with hysterics and hypnotics admitted as the academic\npsychologists admit them, the official outlines of the subject are far\ntoo neat to stand in the light of analogy with the rest of Nature.  The\nultimates of Nature,--her simple elements, it there be such,--may indeed\ncombine in definite proportions and follow classic laws of architecture;\nbut her proximates, in her phenomena as we immediately experience them,\nNature is everywhere gothic, not classic.  She forms a real jungle, where\nall things are provisional, half-fitted to each other, and untidy.  When\nwe add such a complex kind of subliminal region as Myers believed in to\nthe official region, we restore the analogy; and, though we may be\nmistaken in much detail, in a general way, at least, we become plausible.\nIn comparison with Myers' way of attacking the question of immortality in\nparticular, the official way is certainly so far from the mark as to be\nalmost preposterous.  It assumes that when our ordinary consciousness\ngoes out, the only alternative surviving kind of consciousness that could\nbe possible is abstract mentality, living on spiritual truth, and\ncommunicating ideal wisdom--in short, the whole classic platonizing\nSunday-school conception.  Failing to get that sort of thing when it\nlistens to reports about mediums, it denies that there can be anything.\nMyers approaches the subject with no such _a priori_ requirement.  If he\nfinds any positive indication of \"spirits,\" he records it, whatever it\nmay be, and is willing to fit his conception to the facts, however\ngrotesque the latter may appear, rather than to blot out the facts to\nsuit his conception.  But, as was long ago said by our collaborator, Mr.\nCanning Schiller, in words more effective than any I can write, if any\nconception should be blotted out by serious lovers of Nature, it surely\nought to be classic academic Sunday-school conception.  If anything is\nunlikely in a world like this, it is that the next adjacent thing to the\nmere surface-show of our experience should be the realm of eternal\nessences, of platonic ideas, of crystal battlements, of absolute\nsignificance.  But whether they be animists or associationists, a\nsupposition something like this is still the assumption of our usual\npsychologists.  It comes from their being for the most part philosophers,\nin the technical sense, and from their showing the weakness of that\nprofession for logical abstractions.  Myers was primarily a lover of life\nand not of abstractions.  He loved human life, human persons, and their\npeculiarities.  So he could easily admit the possibility of level beyond\nlevel of perfectly concrete experience, all \"queer and cactus-like\"\nthough it might be, before we touch the absolute, or reach the eternal\nessences.\n\nBehind the minute anatomists and the physiologists, with their metallic\ninstruments, there have always stood the out-door naturalists with their\neyes and love of concrete nature.  The former call the latter\nsuperficial, but there is something wrong about your laboratory-biologist\nwho has no sympathy with living animals.  In psychology there is a\nsimilar distinction.  Some psychologists are fascinated by the varieties\nof mind in living action, others by the dissecting out, whether by\nlogical analysis or by brass instruments, of whatever elementary mental\nprocesses may be there.  Myers must decidedly be placed in the former\nclass, though his powerful use of analogy enabled him also to do work\nafter the fashion of the latter.  He loved human nature as Cuvier and\nAgassiz loved animal nature; in his view, as in their view, the subject\nformed a vast living picture.  Whether his name will have in psychology\nas honorable a place as their names have gained in the sister science,\nwill depend on whether future inquirers shall adopt or reject his\ntheories; and the rapidity with which their decision shapes itself will\ndepend largely on the vigor with which this Society continues its labor\nin his absence.  It is at any rate a possibility, and I am disposed to\nthink it a probability, that Frederic Myers will always be remembered in\npsychology as the pioneer who staked out a vast tract of mental\nwilderness and planted the flag of genuine science upon it.  He was an\nenormous collector.  He introduced for the first time comparison,\nclassification, and serial order into the peculiar kind of fact which he\ncollected.  He was a genius at perceiving analogies; he was fertile in\nhypotheses; and as far as conditions allowed it in this meteoric region,\nhe relied on verification.  Such advantages are of no avail, however, if\none has struck into a false road from the outset.  But should it turn out\nthat Frederic Myers has really hit the right road by his divining\ninstinct, it is certain that, like the names of others who have been\nwise, his name will keep an honorable place in scientific history.\n\n\n\n[1] Written for a meeting of the Society for Psychical Research held\nafter the death of Frederic Myers and first published in the Society's\nProceedings, Part XLII, Page 17 (1901).\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nFINAL IMPRESSIONS OF A PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER[1]\n\nThe late Professor Henry Sidgwick was celebrated for the rare mixture\nof ardor and critical judgment which his character exhibited.  The\nliberal heart which he possessed had to work with an intellect which\nacted destructively on almost every particular object of belief that\nwas offered to its acceptance.  A quarter of a century ago, scandalized\nby the chaotic state of opinion regarding the phenomena now called by\nthe rather ridiculous name of \"psychic\"--phenomena, of which the supply\nreported seems inexhaustible, but which scientifically trained minds\nmostly refuse to look at--he established, along with Professor Barrett,\nFrederic Myers and Edmund Gurney, the Society for Psychical Research.\nThese men hoped that if the material were treated rigorously, and, as\nfar as possible experimentally, objective truth would be elicited, and\nthe subject rescued from sentimentalism on the one side and dogmatizing\nignorance on the other.  Like all founders, Sidgwick hoped for a\ncertain promptitude of result; and I heard him say, the year before his\ndeath, that if anyone had told him at the outset that after twenty\nyears he would be in the same identical state of doubt and balance that\nhe started with, he would have deemed the prophecy incredible.  It\nappeared impossible that that amount of handling evidence should bring\nso little finality of decision.\n\nMy own experience has been similar to Sidgwick's.  For twenty-five\nyears I have been in touch with the literature of psychical research,\nand have had acquaintance with numerous \"researchers.\"  I have also\nspent a good many hours (though far fewer than I ought to have spent)\nin witnessing (or trying to witness) phenomena.  Yet I am theoretically\nno \"further\" than I was at the beginning; and I confess that at times I\nhave been tempted to believe that the Creator has eternally intended\nthis department of nature to remain _baffling_, to prompt our\ncuriosities and hopes and suspicions all in equal measure, so that,\nalthough ghosts and clairvoyances, and raps and messages from spirits,\nare always seeming to exist and can never be fully explained away, they\nalso can never be susceptible of full corroboration.\n\nThe peculiarity of the case is just that there are so many sources of\npossible deception in most of the observations that the whole lot of\nthem _may_ be worthless, and yet that in comparatively few cases can\naught more fatal than this vague general possibility of error be\npleaded against the record.  Science meanwhile needs something more\nthan bare possibilities to build upon; so your genuinely scientific\ninquirer--I don't mean your ignoramus \"scientist\"--has to remain\nunsatisfied.  It is hard to believe, however, that the Creator has\nreally put any big array of phenomena into the world merely to defy and\nmock our scientific tendencies; so my deeper belief is that we\npsychical researchers have been too precipitate with our hopes, and\nthat we must expect to mark progress not by quarter-centuries, but by\nhalf-centuries or whole centuries.\n\nI am strengthened in this belief by my impression that just at this\nmoment a faint but distinct step forward is being taken by competent\nopinion in these matters.  \"Physical phenomena\" (movements of matter\nwithout contact, lights, hands and faces \"materialized,\" etc.) have\nbeen one of the most baffling regions of the general field (or perhaps\none of the least baffling _prima facie_, so certain and great has been\nthe part played by fraud in their production); yet even here the\nbalance of testimony seems slowly to be inclining towards admitting the\nsupernaturalist view.  Eusapia Paladino, the Neapolitan medium, has\nbeen under observation for twenty years or more.  Schiaparelli, the\nastronomer, and Lombroso were the first scientific men to be converted\nby her performances.  Since then innumerable men of scientific standing\nhave seen her, including many \"psychic\" experts.  Every one agrees that\nshe cheats in the most barefaced manner whenever she gets an\nopportunity.  The Cambridge experts, with the Sidgwicks and Richard\nHodgson at their head, rejected her _in toto_ on that account.  Yet her\ncredit has steadily risen, and now her last converts are the eminent\npsychiatrist, Morselli, the eminent physiologist, Botazzi, and our own\npsychical researcher, Carrington, whose book on \"The Physical Phenomena\nof Spiritualism\" (_against_ them rather!) makes his conquest\nstrategically important.  If Mr. Podmore, hitherto the prosecuting\nattorney of the S. P. R., so far as physical phenomena are concerned\nbecomes converted also, we may indeed sit up and look around us.\nGetting a good health bill from \"Science,\" Eusapia will then throw\nretrospective credit on Home and Stainton Moses, Florence Cook (Prof.\nCrookes' medium), and all similar wonder-workers.  The balance of\n_presumptions_ will be changed in favor of genuineness being possible\nat least in all reports of this particularly crass and low type of\nsupernatural phenomena.\n\n\nNot long after Darwin's \"Origin of Species\" appeared I was studying\nwith that excellent anatomist and man, Jeffries Wyman, at Harvard.  He\nwas a convert, yet so far a half-hesitating one, to Darwin's views; but\nI heard him make a remark that applies well to the subject I now write\nabout.  When, he said, a theory gets propounded over and over again,\ncoming up afresh after each time orthodox criticism has buried it, and\neach time seeming solider and harder to abolish, you may be sure that\nthere is truth in it.  Oken and Lamarck and Chambers had been\ntriumphantly despatched and buried, but here was Darwin making the very\nsame heresy seem only more plausible.  How often has \"Science\" killed\noff all spook philosophy, and laid ghosts and raps and \"telepathy\" away\nunderground as so much popular delusion.  Yet never before were these\nthings offered us so voluminously, and never in such authentic-seeming\nshape or with such good credentials.  The tide seems steadily to be\nrising, in spite of all the expedients of scientific orthodoxy.  It is\nhard not to suspect that here may be something different from a mere\nchapter in human gullibility.  It may be a genuine realm of natural\nphenomena.\n\n_Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus_, once a cheat, always a cheat, such\nhas been the motto of the English psychical researchers in dealing with\nmediums.  I am disposed to think that, as a matter of policy, it has\nbeen wise.  Tactically, it is far better to believe much too little\nthan a little too much; and the exceptional credit attaching to the row\nof volumes of the S. P. R.'s Proceedings, is due to the fixed intention\nof the editors to proceed very slowly.  Better a little belief tied\nfast, better a small investment _salted down_, than a mass of\ncomparative insecurity.\n\nBut, however wise as a policy the S. P. R.'s maxim may have been, as a\ntest of truth, I believe it to be almost irrelevant.  In most things\nhuman the accusation of deliberate fraud and falsehood is grossly\nsuperficial.  Man's character is too sophistically mixed for the\nalternative of \"honest or dishonest\" to be a sharp one.  Scientific men\nthemselves will cheat--at public lectures--rather than let experiments\nobey their well-known tendency towards failure.  I have heard of a\nlecturer on physics, who had taken over the apparatus of the previous\nincumbent, consulting him about a certain machine intended to show\nthat, however the peripheral parts of it might be agitated, its centre\nof gravity remained immovable.  \"It _will_ wobble,\" he complained.\n\"Well,\" said the predecessor, apologetically, \"to tell the truth,\nwhenever _I_ used that machine I found it advisable to _drive a nail_\nthrough the centre of gravity.\"  I once saw a distinguished\nphysiologist, now dead, cheat most shamelessly at a public lecture, at\nthe expense of a poor rabbit, and all for the sake of being able to\nmake a cheap joke about its being an \"American rabbit\"--for no other,\nhe said, could survive such a wound as he pretended to have given it.\n\nTo compare small men with great, I have myself cheated shamelessly.  In\nthe early days of the Sanders Theater at Harvard, I once had charge of\na heart on the physiology of which Professor Newell Martin was giving a\npopular lecture.  This heart, which belonged to a turtle, supported an\nindex-straw which threw a moving shadow, greatly enlarged, upon the\nscreen, while the heart pulsated.  When certain nerves were stimulated,\nthe lecturer said, the heart would act in certain ways which he\ndescribed.  But the poor heart was too far gone and, although it\nstopped duly when the nerve of arrest was excited, that was the final\nend of its life's tether.  Presiding over the performance, I was\nterrified at the fiasco, and found myself suddenly acting like one of\nthose military geniuses who on the field of battle convert disaster\ninto victory.  There was no time for deliberation; so, with my\nforefinger under a part of the straw that cast no shadow, I found\nmyself impulsively and automatically imitating the rhythmical movements\nwhich my colleague had prophesied the heart would undergo.  I kept the\nexperiment from failing; and not only saved my colleague (and the\nturtle) from a humiliation that but for my presence of mind would have\nbeen their lot, but I established in the audience the true view of the\nsubject.  The lecturer was stating this; and the misconduct of one\nhalf-dead specimen of heart ought not to destroy the impression of his\nwords.  \"There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood,\" is a maxim\nwhich I have heard ascribed to a former venerated President of Harvard.\nThe heart's failure would have been misunderstood by the audience and\ngiven the lie to the lecturer.  It was hard enough to make them\nunderstand the subject anyhow; so that even now as I write in cool\nblood I am tempted to think that I acted quite correctly.  I was acting\nfor the _larger_ truth, at any rate, however automatically; and my\nsense of this was probably what prevented the more pedantic and literal\npart of my conscience from checking the action of my sympathetic\nfinger.  To this day the memory of that critical emergency has made me\nfeel charitable towards all mediums who make phenomena come in one way\nwhen they won't come easily in another.  On the principles of the S. P.\nR., my conduct on that one occasion ought to discredit everything I\never do, everything, for example, I may write in this article,--a\nmanifestly unjust conclusion.\n\nFraud, conscious or unconscious, seems ubiquitous throughout the range\nof physical phenomena of spiritism, and false pretence, prevarication\nand fishing for clues are ubiquitous in the mental manifestations of\nmediums.  If it be not everywhere fraud simulating reality, one is\ntempted to say, then the reality (if any reality there be) has the bad\nluck of being fated everywhere to simulate fraud.  The suggestion of\nhumbug seldom stops, and mixes itself with the best manifestations.\nMrs. Piper's control, \"Rector,\" is a most impressive personage, who\ndiscerns in an extraordinary degree his sitter's inner needs, and is\ncapable of giving elevated counsel to fastidious and critical minds.\nYet in many respects he is an arrant humbug--such he seems to me at\nleast--pretending to a knowledge and power to which he has no title,\nnonplussed by contradiction, yielding to suggestion, and covering his\ntracks with plausible excuses.  Now the non-\"researching\" mind looks\nupon such phenomena simply according to their face-pretension and never\nthinks of asking what they may signify below the surface.  Since they\nprofess for the most part to be revealers of spirit life, it is either\nas being absolutely that, or as being absolute frauds, that they are\njudged.  The result is an inconceivably shallow state of public opinion\non the subject.  One set of persons, emotionally touched at hearing the\nnames of their loved ones given, and consoled by assurances that they\nare \"happy,\" accept the revelation, and consider spiritualism\n\"beautiful.\"  More hard-headed subjects, disgusted by the revelation's\ncontemptible contents, outraged by the fraud, and prejudiced beforehand\nagainst all \"spirits,\" high or low, avert their minds from what they\ncall such \"rot\" or \"bosh\" entirely.  Thus do two opposite\nsentimentalisms divide opinion between them!  A good expression of the\n\"scientific\" state of mind occurs in Huxley's \"Life and Letters\":\n\n\"I regret,\" he writes, \"that I am unable to accept the invitation of\nthe Committee of the Dialectical Society. . . .  I take no interest in\nthe subject.  The only case of 'Spiritualism' I have ever had the\nopportunity of examining into for myself was as gross an imposture as\never came under my notice.  But supposing these phenomena to be\ngenuine--they do not interest me.  If anybody would endow me with the\nfaculty of listening to the chatter of old women and curates in the\nnearest provincial town, I should decline the privilege, having better\nthings to do.  And if the folk in the spiritual world do not talk more\nwisely and sensibly than their friends report them to do, I put them in\nthe same category.  The only good that I can see in the demonstration\nof the 'Truth of Spiritualism' is to furnish an additional argument\nagainst suicide.  Better live a crossing-sweeper, than die and be made\nto talk twaddle by a 'medium' hired at a guinea a _Seance_.\" [2]\n\nObviously the mind of the excellent Huxley has here but two\nwhole-souled categories namely revelation or imposture, to apperceive\nthe case by.  Sentimental reasons bar revelation out, for the messages,\nhe thinks, are not romantic enough for that; fraud exists anyhow;\ntherefore the whole thing is nothing but imposture.  The odd point is\nthat so few of those who talk in this way realize that they and the\nspiritists are using the same major premise and differing only in the\nminor.  The major premise is: \"Any spirit-revelation must be romantic.\"\nThe minor of the spiritist is: \"This _is_ romantic\"; that of the Huxley\nan is: \"this is dingy twaddle\"--whence their opposite conclusions!\n\nMeanwhile the first thing that anyone learns who attends seriously to\nthese phenomena is that their causation is far too complex for our\nfeelings about what is or is not romantic enough to be spiritual to\nthrow any light upon it.  The causal factors must be carefully\ndistinguished and traced through series, from their simplest to their\nstrongest forms, before we can begin to understand the various\nresultants in which they issue.  Myers and Gurney began this work, the\none by his serial study of the various sorts of \"automatism,\" sensory\nand motor, the other by his experimental proofs that a split-off\nconsciousness may abide after a post-hypnotic suggestion has been\ngiven.  Here we have subjective factors; but are not transsubjective or\nobjective forces also at work?  Veridical messages, apparitions,\nmovements without contact, seem _prima facie_ to be such.  It was a\ngood stroke on Gurney's part to construct a theory of apparitions which\nbrought the subjective and the objective factors into harmonious\nco-operation.  I doubt whether this telepathic theory of Gurney's will\nhold along the whole line of apparitions to which he applied it, but it\nis unquestionable that some theory of that mixed type is required for\nthe explanation of all mediumistic phenomena; and that when all the\npsychological factors and elements involved have been told off--and\nthey are many--the question still forces itself upon us: Are these all,\nor are there indications of any residual forces acting on the subject\nfrom beyond, or of any \"meta-psychic\" faculty (to use Richet's useful\nterm) exerted by him?  This is the problem that requires real\nexpertness, and this is where the simple sentimentalisms of the\nspiritist and scientist leave us in the lurch completely.\n\n\"Psychics\" form indeed a special branch of education, in which experts\nare only gradually becoming developed.  The phenomena are as massive\nand wide-spread as is anything in Nature, and the study of them is as\ntedious, repellent and undignified.  To reject it for its unromantic\ncharacter is like rejecting bacteriology because _penicillium glaucum_\ngrows on horse-dung and _bacterium termo_ lives in putrefaction.\nScientific men have long ago ceased to think of the dignity of the\nmaterials they work in.  When imposture has been checked off as far as\npossible, when chance coincidence has been allowed for, when\nopportunities for normal knowledge on the part of the subject have been\nnoted, and skill in \"fishing\" and following clues unwittingly furnished\nby the voice or face of bystanders have been counted in, those who have\nthe fullest acquaintance with the phenomena admit that in good mediums\n_there is a residuum of knowledge displayed_ that can only be called\nsupernormal: the medium taps some source of information not open to\nordinary people.  Myers used the word \"telepathy\" to indicate that the\nsitter's own thoughts or feelings may be thus directly tapped.  Mrs.\nSidgwick has suggested that if living minds can be thus tapped\ntelepathically, so possibly may the minds of spirits be similarly\ntapped--if spirits there be.  On this view we should have one distinct\ntheory of the performances of a typical test-medium.  They would be all\noriginally due to an odd _tendency to personate_, found in her dream\nlife as it expresses itself in trance.  [Most of us reveal such a\ntendency whenever we handle a \"ouija-board\" or a \"planchet,\" or let\nourselves write automatically with a pencil.]  The result is a\n\"control,\" who purports to be speaking; and all the resources of the\nautomatist, including his or her trance-faculty of telepathy are called\ninto play in building this fictitious personage out plausibly.  On such\na view of the control, the medium's _will to personate_ runs the whole\nshow; and if spirits be involved in it at all, they are passive beings,\nstray bits of whose memory she is able to seize and use for her\npurposes, without the spirit being any more aware of it than the sitter\nis aware of it when his own mind is similarly tapped.\n\nThis is one possible way of interpreting a certain type of psychical\nphenomenon.  It uses psychological as well as \"spiritual\" factors, and\nquite obviously it throws open for us far more questions than it\nanswers, questions about our subconscious constitution and its curious\ntendency to humbug, about the telepathic faculty, and about the\npossibility of an existent spirit-world.\n\nI do not instance this theory to defend it, but simply to show what\ncomplicated hypotheses one is inevitably led to consider, the moment\none looks at the facts in their complexity and turns one's back on the\n_naive_ alternative of \"revelation or imposture,\" which is as far as\neither spiritist thought or ordinary scientist thought goes.  The\nphenomena are endlessly complex in their factors, and they are so\nlittle understood as yet that off-hand judgments, whether of \"spirits\"\nor of \"bosh\" are the one as silly as the other.  When we complicate the\nsubject still farther by considering what connection such things as\nrappings, apparitions, poltergeists, spirit-photographs, and\nmaterializations may have with it, the bosh end of the scale gets\nheavily loaded, it is true, but your genuine inquirer still is loath to\ngive up.  He lets the data collect, and bides his time.  He believes\nthat \"bosh\" is no more an ultimate element in Nature, or a really\nexplanatory category in human life than \"dirt\" is in chemistry.  Every\nkind of \"bosh\" has its own factors and laws; and patient study will\nbring them definitely to light.\n\nThe only way to rescue the \"pure bosh\" view of the matter is one which\nhas sometimes appealed to my own fancy, but which I imagine few readers\nwill seriously adopt.  If, namely, one takes the theory of evolution\nradically, one ought to apply it not only to the rock-strata, the\nanimals and the plants but to the stars, to the chemical elements, and\nto the laws of nature.  There must have been a far-off antiquity, one\nis then tempted to suppose, when things were really chaotic.  Little by\nlittle, out of all the haphazard possibilities of that time, a few\nconnected things and habits arose, and the rudiments of regular\nperformance began.  Every variation in the way of law and order added\nitself to this nucleus, which inevitably grew more considerable as\nhistory went on; while the aberrant and inconstant variations, not\nbeing similarly preserved, disappeared from being, wandered off as\nunrelated vagrants, or else remained so imperfectly connected with the\npart of the world that had grown regular as only to manifest their\nexistence by occasional lawless intrusions, like those which \"psychic\"\nphenomena now make into our scientifically organized world.  On such a\nview, these phenomena ought to remain \"pure bosh\" forever, that is,\nthey ought to be forever intractable to intellectual methods, because\nthey should not yet be organized enough in themselves to follow any\nlaws.  Wisps and shreds of the original chaos, they would be connected\nenough with the cosmos to affect its periphery every now and then, as\nby a momentary whiff or touch or gleam, but not enough ever to be\nfollowed up and hunted down and bagged.  Their relation to the cosmos\nwould be tangential solely.\n\nLooked at dramatically, most occult phenomena make just this sort of\nimpression.  They are inwardly as incoherent as they are outwardly\nwayward and fitful.  If they express anything, it is pure \"bosh,\" pure\ndiscontinuity, accident, and disturbance, with no law apparent but to\ninterrupt, and no purpose but to baffle.  They seem like stray vestiges\nof that primordial irrationality, from which all our rationalities have\nbeen evolved.\n\nTo settle dogmatically into this bosh-view would save labor, but it\nwould go against too many intellectual prepossessions to be adopted\nsave as a last resort of despair.  Your psychical researcher therefore\nbates no jot of hope, and has faith that when we get our data numerous\nenough, some sort of rational treatment of them will succeed.\n\nWhen I hear good people say (as they often say, not without show of\nreason), that dabbling in such phenomena reduces us to a sort of jelly,\ndisintegrates the critical faculties, liquifies the character, and\nmakes of one a _gobe-mouche_ generally, I console myself by thinking of\nmy friends Frederic Myers and Richard Hodgson.  These men lived\nexclusively for psychical research, and it converted both to spiritism.\nHodgson would have been a man among men anywhere; but I doubt whether\nunder any other baptism he would have been that happy, sober and\nrighteous form of energy which his face proclaimed him in his later\nyears, when heart and head alike were wholly satisfied by his\noccupation.  Myers' character also grew stronger in every particular\nfor his devotion to the same inquirings.  Brought up on literature and\nsentiment, something of a courtier, passionate, disdainful, and\nimpatient naturally, he was made over again from the day when he took\nup psychical research seriously.  He became learned in science,\ncircumspect, democratic in sympathy, endlessly patient, and above all,\nhappy.  The fortitude of his last hours touched the heroic, so\ncompletely were the atrocious sufferings of his body cast into\ninsignificance by his interest in the cause he lived for.  When a man's\npursuit gradually makes his face shine and grow handsome, you may be\nsure it is a worthy one.  Both Hodgson and Myers kept growing ever\nhandsomer and stronger-looking.\n\nSuch personal examples will convert no one, and of course they ought\nnot to.  Nor do I seek at all in this article to convert any one to\nbelief that psychical research is an important branch of science.  To\ndo that, I should have to quote evidence; and those for whom the\nvolumes of S. P. R. \"Proceedings\" already published count for nothing\nwould remain in their dogmatic slumber, though one rose from the dead.\nNo, not to convert readers, but simply to _put my own state of mind\nupon record publicly_ is the purpose of my present writing.  Some one\nsaid to me a short time ago that after my twenty-five years of dabbling\nin \"Psychics,\" it would be rather shameful were I unable to state any\ndefinite conclusions whatever as a consequence.  I had to agree; so I\nnow proceed to take up the challenge and express such convictions as\nhave been engendered in me by that length of experience, be the same\ntrue or false ones.  I may be dooming myself to the pit in the eyes of\nbetter-judging posterity; I may be raising myself to honor; I am\nwilling to take the risk, for what I shall write is _my_ truth, as I\nnow see it.\n\n\nI began this article by confessing myself baffled.  I _am_ baffled, as\nto spirit-return, and as to many other special problems.  I am also\nconstantly baffled as to what to think of this or that particular\nstory, for the sources of error in any one observation are seldom fully\nknowable.  But weak sticks make strong faggots; and when the stories\nfall into consistent sorts that point each in a definite direction, one\ngets a sense of being in presence of genuinely natural types of\nphenomena.  As to there being such real natural types of phenomena\nignored by orthodox science, I am not baffled at all, for I am fully\nconvinced of it.  One cannot get demonstrative proof here.  One has to\nfollow one's personal sense, which, of course, is liable to err, of the\ndramatic probabilities of nature.  Our critics here obey their sense of\ndramatic probability as much as we do.  Take \"raps\" for example, and\nthe whole business of objects moving without contact.  \"Nature,\" thinks\nthe scientific man, is not so unutterably silly.  The cabinet, the\ndarkness, the tying, suggest a sort of human rat-hole life exclusively\nand \"swindling\" is for him the dramatically sufficient explanation.  It\nprobably is, in an indefinite majority of instances; yet it is to me\ndramatically improbable that the swindling should not have accreted\nround some originally genuine nucleus.  If we look at human imposture\nas a historic phenomenon, we find it always imitative.  One swindler\nimitates a previous swindler, but the first swindler of that kind\nimitated some one who was honest.  You can no more create an absolutely\nnew trick than you can create a new word without any previous\nbasis.--You don't know how to go about it.  Try, reader, yourself, to\ninvent an unprecedented kind of \"physical phenomenon of spiritualism.\"\nWhen _I_ try, I find myself mentally turning over the regular\nmedium-stock, and thinking how I might improve some item.  This being\nthe dramatically probable human way, I think differently of the whole\ntype, taken collectively, from the way in which I may think of the\nsingle instance.  I find myself believing that there is \"something in\"\nthese never ending reports of physical phenomena, although I have n't\nyet the least positive notion of the something.  It becomes to my mind\nsimply a very worthy problem for investigation.  Either I or the\nscientist is of course a fool, with our opposite views of probability\nhere; and I only wish he might feel the liability, as cordially as I\ndo, to pertain to both of us.\n\nI fear I look on Nature generally with more charitable eyes than his,\nthough perhaps he would pause if he realized as I do, how vast the\nfraudulency is which inconsistency he must attribute to her.  Nature is\nbrutal enough, Heaven knows; but no one yet has held her non-human side\nto be _dishonest_, and even in the human sphere deliberate deceit is\nfar rarer than the \"classic\" intellect, with its few and rigid\ncategories, was ready to acknowledge.  There is a hazy penumbra in us\nall where lying and delusion meet, where passion rules beliefs as well\nas conduct, and where the term \"scoundrel\" does not clear up everything\nto the depths as it did for our forefathers.  The first automatic\nwriting I ever saw was forty years ago.  I unhesitatingly thought of it\nas deceit, although it contained vague elements of supernormal\nknowledge.  Since then I have come to see in automatic writing one\nexample of a department of human activity as vast as it is enigmatic.\nEvery sort of person is liable to it, or to something equivalent to it;\nand whoever encourages it in himself finds himself personating someone\nelse, either signing what he writes by fictitious name, or, spelling\nout, by ouija-board or table-tips, messages from the departed.  Our\nsubconscious region seems, as a rule, to be dominated either by a crazy\n\"will to make-believe,\" or by some curious external force impelling us\nto personation.  The first difference between the psychical researcher\nand the inexpert person is that the former realizes the commonness and\ntypicality of the phenomenon here, while the latter, less informed,\nthinks it so rare as to be unworthy of attention.  _I wish to go on\nrecord for the commonness_.\n\nThe next thing I wish to go on record for is _the presence_, in the\nmidst of all the humbug, _of really supernormal knowledge_.  By this I\nmean knowledge that cannot be traced to the ordinary sources of\ninformation--the senses namely, of the automatist.  In really strong\nmediums this knowledge seems to be abundant, though it is usually\nspotty, capricious and unconnected.  Really strong mediums are\nrarities; but when one starts with them and works downwards into less\nbrilliant regions of the automatic life, one tends to interpret many\nslight but odd coincidences with truth as possibly rudimentary forms of\nthis kind of knowledge.\n\nWhat is one to think of this queer chapter in human nature?  It is odd\nenough on any view.  If all it means is a preposterous and inferior\nmonkey-like tendency to forge messages, systematically embedded in the\nsoul of all of us, it is weird; and weirder still that it should then\nown all this supernormal information.  If on the other hand the\nsupernormal information be the key to the phenomenon, it ought to be\nsuperior; and then how ought we to account for the \"wicked partner,\"\nand for the undeniable mendacity and inferiority of so much of the\nperformance?  We are thrown, for our conclusions, upon our instinctive\nsense of the dramatic probabilities of nature.  My own dramatic sense\ntends instinctively to picture the situation as an interaction between\nslumbering faculties in the automatist's mind and a cosmic environment\nof _other consciousness_ of some sort which is able to work upon them.\nIf there were in the universe a lot of diffuse soul-stuff, unable of\nitself to get into consistent personal form, or to take permanent\npossession of an organism, yet always craving to do so, it might get\nits head into the air, parasitically, so to speak, by profiting by weak\nspots in the armor of human minds, and slipping in and stirring up\nthere the sleeping tendency to personate.  It would induce habits in\nthe subconscious region of the mind it used thus, and would seek above\nall things to prolong its social opportunities by making itself\nagreeable and plausible.  It would drag stray scraps of truth with it\nfrom the wider environment, but would betray its mental inferiority by\nknowing little how to weave them into any important or significant\nstory.  This, I say, is the dramatic view which my mind spontaneously\ntakes, and it has the advantage of falling into line with ancient human\ntraditions.  The views of others are just as dramatic, _for the\nphenomenon is actuated by will of some sort anyhow_, and wills give\nrise to dramas.  The spiritist view, as held by Messrs. Hyslop and\nHodgson, sees a \"will to communicate,\" struggling through inconceivable\nlayers of obstruction in the conditions.  I have heard Hodgson liken\nthe difficulties to those of two persons who on earth should have only\ndead-drunk servants to use as their messengers.  The scientist, for his\npart, sees a \"will to deceive,\" watching its chance in all of us, and\nable (possibly?) to use \"telepathy\" in its service.\n\nWhich kind of will, and how many kinds of will are most inherently\nprobable?  Who can say with certainty?  The only certainty is that the\nphenomena are enormously complex, especially if one includes in them\nsuch intellectual flights of mediumship as Swedenborg's, and if one\ntries in any way to work the physical phenomena in.  That is why I\npersonally am as yet neither a convinced believer in parasitic demons,\nnor a spiritist, nor a scientist, but still remain a psychical\nresearcher waiting for more facts before concluding.\n\nOut of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one\nfixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with\nour lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest.\nThe maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves, and\nConanicut and Newport hear each other's fog-horns.  But the trees also\ncommingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also\nhang together through the ocean's bottom.  Just so there is a continuum\nof cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but\naccidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a\nmother-sea or reservoir.  Our \"normal\" consciousness is circumscribed\nfor adaptation to our external earthly environment, but the fence is\nweak in spots, and fitful influences from beyond leak in, showing the\notherwise unverifiable common connection.  Not only psychic research,\nbut metaphysical philosophy, and speculative biology are led in their\nown ways to look with favor on some such \"panpsychic\" view of the\nuniverse as this.  Assuming this common reservoir of consciousness to\nexist, this bank upon which we all draw, and in which so many of\nearth's memories must in some way be stored, or mediums would not get\nat them as they do, the question is, What is its own structure?  What\nis its inner topography?  This question, first squarely formulated by\nMyers, deserves to be called \"Myers' problem\" by scientific men\nhereafter.  What are the conditions of individuation or insulation in\nthis mother-sea?  To what tracts, to what active systems functioning\nseparately in it, do personalities correspond?  Are individual\n\"spirits\" constituted there?  How numerous, and of how many hierarchic\norders may these then be?  How permanent?  How transient?  And how\nconfluent with one another may they become?\n\nWhat again, are the relations between the cosmic consciousness and\nmatter?  Are there subtler forms of matter which upon occasion may\nenter into functional connection with the individuations in the psychic\nsea, and then, and then only, show themselves?--So that our ordinary\nhuman experience, on its material as well as on its mental side, would\nappear to be only an extract from the larger psycho-physical world?\n\nVast, indeed, and difficult is the inquirer's prospect here, and the\nmost significant data for his purpose will probably be just these dingy\nlittle mediumistic facts which the Huxleyan minds of our time find so\nunworthy of their attention.  But when was not the science of the\nfuture stirred to its conquering activities by the little rebellious\nexceptions to the science of the present?  Hardly, as yet, has the\nsurface of the facts called \"psychic\" begun to be scratched for\nscientific purposes.  It is through following these facts, I am\npersuaded, that the greatest scientific conquests of the coming\ngeneration will be achieved.  _Kuehn ist das Muehen, herrlich der Lohn!_\n\n\n\n[1] Published under the title \"Confidences of a Psychical Researcher\"\nin the _American Magazine_, October, 1909.  For a more complete and\nless popular statement of some theories suggested in this article see\nthe last pages of a \"Report on Mrs. Piper's Hodgson-Control\" in\n_Proceedings of the [Eng.] Society for Psychical Research_, 1909, 470;\nalso printed in _Proc. of Am. Soc. for Psychical Research_ for the same\nyear.\n\n[2] T. H. Huxley, \"Life and Letters,\" I, 240.\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\nON SOME MENTAL EFFECTS OF THE EARTHQUAKE[1]\n\nWhen I departed from Harvard for Stanford University last December,\nalmost the last good-by I got was that of my old Californian friend B:\n\"I hope they'll give you a touch of earthquake while you 're there, so\nthat you may also become acquainted with that Californian institution.\"\n\nAccordingly, when, lying awake at about half past five on the morning\nof April 18 in my little \"flat\" on the campus of Stanford, I felt the\nbed begin to waggle, my first consciousness was one of gleeful\nrecognition of the nature of the movement.  \"By Jove,\" I said to\nmyself, \"here's B'ssold [Transcriber's note: 'B's old'?] earthquake,\nafter all!\"  And then, as it went _crescendo_.  \"And a jolly good one\nit is, too!\" I said.\n\nSitting up involuntarily, and taking a kneeling position, I was thrown\ndown on my face as it went _fortior_ shaking the room exactly as a\nterrier shakes a rat.  Then everything that was on anything else slid\noff to the floor, over went bureau and chiffonier with a crash, as the\n_fortissimo_ was reached; plaster cracked, an awful roaring noise\nseemed to fill the outer air, and in an instant all was still again,\nsave the soft babble of human voices from far and near that soon began\nto make itself heard, as the inhabitants in costumes _negliges_ in\nvarious degrees sought the greater safety of the street and yielded to\nthe passionate desire for sympathetic communication.\n\nThe thing was over, as I understand the Lick Observatory to have\ndeclared, in forty-eight seconds.  To me it felt as if about that\nlength of time, although I have heard others say that it seemed to them\nlonger.  In my case, sensation and emotion were so strong that little\nthought, and no reflection or volition, were possible in the short time\nconsumed by the phenomenon.\n\nThe emotion consisted wholly of glee and admiration; glee at the\nvividness which such an abstract idea or verbal term as \"earthquake\"\ncould put on when translated into sensible reality and verified\nconcretely; and admiration at the way in which the frail little wooden\nhouse could hold itself together in spite of such a shaking.  I felt no\ntrace whatever of fear; it was pure delight and welcome.\n\n\"_Go_ it,\" I almost cried aloud, \"and go it _stronger_!\"\n\nI ran into my wife's room, and found that she, although awakened from\nsound sleep, had felt no fear, either.  Of all the persons whom I later\ninterrogated, very few had felt any fear while the shaking lasted,\nalthough many had had a \"turn,\" as they realized their narrow escapes\nfrom bookcases or bricks from chimney-breasts falling on their beds and\npillows an instant after they had left them.\n\nAs soon as I could think, I discerned retrospectively certain peculiar\nways in which my consciousness had taken in the phenomenon.  These ways\nwere quite spontaneous, and, so to speak, inevitable and irresistible.\n\nFirst, I personified the earthquake as a permanent individual entity.\nIt was _the_ earthquake of my friend B's augury, which had been lying\nlow and holding itself back during all the intervening months, in\norder, on that lustrous April morning, to invade my room, and energize\nthe more intensely and triumphantly.  It came, moreover, directly to\n_me_.  It stole in behind my back, and once inside the room, had me all\nto itself, and could manifest itself convincingly.  Animus and intent\nwere never more present in any human action, nor did any human activity\never more definitely point back to a living agent as its source and\norigin.\n\nAll whom I consulted on the point agreed as to this feature in their\nexperience.  \"It expressed intention,\" \"It was vicious,\" \"It was bent\non destruction,\" \"It wanted to show its power,\" or what not.  To me, it\nwanted simply to manifest the full meaning of its name.  But what was\nthis \"It\"?  To some, apparently, a vague demonic power; to me an\nindividualized being, B's earthquake, namely.\n\nOne informant interpreted it as the end of the world and the beginning\nof the final judgment.  This was a lady in a San Francisco hotel, who\ndid not think of its being an earthquake till after she had got into\nthe street and some one had explained it to her.  She told me that the\ntheological interpretation had kept fear from her mind, and made her\ntake the shaking calmly.  For \"science,\" when the tensions in the\nearth's crust reach the breaking-point, and strata fall into an altered\nequilibrium, earthquake is simply the collective _name_ of all the\ncracks and shakings and disturbances that happen.  They _are_ the\nearthquake.  But for me _the_ earthquake was the _cause_ of the\ndisturbances, and the perception of it as a living agent was\nirresistible.  It had an overpowering dramatic convincingness.\n\nI realize now better than ever how inevitable were men's earlier\nmythologic versions of such catastrophes, and how artificial and\nagainst the grain of our spontaneous perceiving are the later habits\ninto which science educates us.  It was simply impossible for untutored\nmen to take earthquakes into their minds as anything but supernatural\nwarnings or retributions.\n\nA good instance of the way in which the tremendousness of a catastrophe\nmay banish fear was given me by a Stanford student.  He was in the\nfourth story of Encina Hall, an immense stone dormitory building.\nAwakened from sleep, he recognized what the disturbance was, and sprang\nfrom the bed, but was thrown off his feet in a moment, while his books\nand furniture fell round him.  Then with an awful, sinister, grinding\nroar, everything gave way, and with chimneys, floor-beams, walls and\nall, he descended through the three lower stories of the building into\nthe basement.  \"This is my end, this is my death,\" he felt; but all the\nwhile no trace of fear.  The experience was too overwhelming for\nanything but passive surrender to it.  (Certain heavy chimneys had\nfallen in, carrying the whole centre of the building with them.)\n\nArrived at the bottom, he found himself with rafters and _debris_ round\nhim, but not pinned in or crushed.  He saw daylight, and crept toward\nit through the obstacles.  Then, realizing that he was in his\nnightgown, and feeling no pain anywhere, his first thought was to get\nback to his room and find some more presentable clothing.  The\nstairways at Encina Hall are at the ends of the building.  He made his\nway to one of them, and went up the four flights, only to find his room\nno longer extant.  Then he noticed pain in his feet, which had been\ninjured, and came down the stairs with difficulty.  When he talked with\nme ten days later he had been in hospital a week, was very thin and\npale, and went on crutches, and was dressed in borrowed clothing.\n\nSo much for Stanford, where all our experiences seem to have been very\nsimilar.  Nearly all our chimneys went down, some of them\ndisintegrating from top to bottom; parlor floors were covered with\nbricks; plaster strewed the floors; furniture was everywhere upset and\ndislocated; but the wooden dwellings sprang back to their original\nposition, and in house after house not a window stuck or a door scraped\nat top or bottom.  Wood architecture was triumphant!  Everybody was\nexcited, but the excitement at first, at any rate, seemed to be almost\njoyous.  Here at last was a _real_ earthquake after so many years of\nharmless waggle!  Above all, there was an irresistible desire to talk\nabout it, and exchange experiences.\n\nMost people slept outdoors for several subsequent nights, partly to be\nsafer in case of recurrence, but also to work off their emotion, and\nget the full unusualness out of the experience.  The vocal babble of\nearly-waking girls and boys from the gardens of the campus, mingling\nwith the birds' songs and the exquisite weather, was for three or four\ndays delightful sunrise phenomenon.\n\nNow turn to San Francisco, thirty-five miles distant, from which an\nautomobile ere long brought us the dire news of a city in ruins, with\nfires beginning at various points, and the water-supply interrupted.  I\nwas fortunate enough to board the only train of cars--a very small\none--that got up to the city; fortunate enough also to escape in the\nevening by the only train that left it.  This gave me and my valiant\nfeminine escort some four hours of observation.  My business is with\n\"subjective\" phenomena exclusively; so I will say nothing of the\nmaterial ruin that greeted us on every hand--the daily papers and the\nweekly journals have done full justice to that topic.  By midday, when\nwe reached the city, the pall of smoke was vast and the dynamite\ndetonations had begun, but the troops, the police and the firemen\nseemed to have established order, dangerous neighborhoods were roped\noff everywhere and picketed, saloons closed, vehicles impressed, and\nevery one at work who _could_ work.\n\nIt was indeed a strange sight to see an entire population in the\nstreets, busy as ants in an uncovered ant-hill scurrying to save their\neggs and larvae.  Every horse, and everything on wheels in the city,\nfrom hucksters' wagons to automobiles, was being loaded with what\neffects could be scraped together from houses which the advancing\nflames were threatening.  The sidewalks were covered with well-dressed\nmen and women, carrying baskets, bundles, valises, or dragging trunks\nto spots of greater temporary safety, soon to be dragged farther, as\nthe fire kept spreading!\n\nIn the safer quarters, every doorstep was covered with the dwelling's\ntenants, sitting surrounded with their more indispensable chattels, and\nready to flee at a minute's notice.  I think every one must have fasted\non that day, for I saw no one eating.  There was no appearance of\ngeneral dismay, and little of chatter or of inco-ordinated excitement.\n\nEvery one seemed doggedly bent on achieving the job which he had set\nhimself to perform; and the faces, although somewhat tense and set and\ngrave, were inexpressive of emotion.  I noticed only three persons\novercome, two Italian women, very poor, embracing an aged fellow\ncountrywoman, and all weeping.  Physical fatigue and seriousness were\nthe only inner states that one could read on countenances.\n\nWith lights forbidden in the houses, and the streets lighted only by\nthe conflagration, it was apprehended that the criminals of San\nFrancisco would hold high carnival on the ensuing night.  But whether\nthey feared the disciplinary methods of the United States troops, who\nwere visible everywhere, or whether they were themselves solemnized by\nthe immensity of the disaster, they lay low and did not \"manifest,\"\neither then or subsequently.\n\nThe only very discreditable thing to human nature that occurred was\nlater, when hundreds of lazy \"bummers\" found that they could keep\ncamping in the parks, and make alimentary storage-batteries of their\nstomachs, even in some cases getting enough of the free rations in\ntheir huts or tents to last them well into the summer.  This charm of\npauperized vagabondage seems all along to have been Satan's most\nserious bait to human nature.  There was theft from the outset, but\nconfined, I believe, to petty pilfering.\n\nCash in hand was the only money, and millionaires and their families\nwere no better off in this respect than any one.  Whoever got a vehicle\ncould have the use of it; but the richest often went without, and spent\nthe first two nights on rugs on the bare ground, with nothing but what\ntheir own arms had rescued.  Fortunately, those nights were dry and\ncomparatively warm, and Californians are accustomed to camping\nconditions in the summer, so suffering from exposure was less great\nthan it would have been elsewhere.  By the fourth night, which was\nrainy, tents and huts had brought most campers under cover.\n\nI went through the city again eight days later.  The fire was out, and\nabout a quarter of the area stood unconsumed.  Intact skyscrapers\ndominated the smoking level majestically and superbly--they and a few\nwalls that had survived the overthrow.  Thus has the courage of our\narchitects and builders received triumphant vindication!\n\nThe inert elements of the population had mostly got away, and those\nthat remained seemed what Mr. H. G. Wells calls \"efficients.\"  Sheds\nwere already going up as temporary starting-points of business.  Every\none looked cheerful, in spite of the awful discontinuity of past and\nfuture, with every familiar association with material things\ndissevered; and the discipline and order were practically perfect.\n\nAs these notes of mine must be short, I had better turn to my more\ngeneralized reflections.\n\nTwo things in retrospect strike me especially, and are the most\nemphatic of all my impressions.  Both are reassuring as to human nature.\n\nThe first of these was the rapidity of the improvisation of order out\nof chaos.  It is clear that just as in every thousand human beings\nthere will be statistically so many artists, so many athletes, so many\nthinkers, and so many potentially good soldiers, so there will be so\nmany potential organizers in times of emergency.  In point of fact, not\nonly in the great city, but in the outlying towns, these natural\nordermakers, whether amateurs or officials, came to the front\nimmediately.  There seemed to be no possibility which there was not\nsome one there to think of, or which within twenty-four hours was not\nin some way provided for.\n\nA good illustration is this: Mr. Keith is the great landscape-painter\nof the Pacific slope, and his pictures, which are many, are\nartistically and pecuniarily precious.  Two citizens, lovers of his\nwork, early in the day diverted their attention from all other\ninterests, their own private ones included, and made it their duty to\nvisit every place which they knew to contain a Keith painting.  They\ncut them from their frames, rolled them up, and in this way got all the\nmore important ones into a place of safety.\n\nWhen they then sought Mr. Keith, to convey the joyous news to him, they\nfound him still in his studio, which was remote from the fire,\nbeginning a new painting.  Having given up his previous work for lost,\nhe had resolved to lose no time in making what amends he could for the\ndisaster.\n\nThe completeness of organization at Palo Alto, a town of ten thousand\ninhabitants close to Stanford University, was almost comical.  People\nfeared exodus on a large scale of the rowdy elements of San Francisco.\nIn point of tact, very few refugees came to Palo Alto.  But within\ntwenty-four hours, rations, clothing, hospital, quarantine,\ndisinfection, washing, police, military, quarters in camp and in\nhouses, printed information, employment, all were provided for under\nthe care of so many volunteer committees.\n\nMuch of this readiness was American, much of it Californian; but I\nbelieve that every country in a similar crisis would have displayed it\nin a way to astonish the spectators.  Like soldiering, it lies always\nlatent in human nature.\n\nThe second thing that struck me was the universal equanimity.  We soon\ngot letters from the East, ringing with anxiety and pathos; but I now\nknow fully what I have always believed, that the pathetic way of\nfeeling great disasters belongs rather to the point of view of people\nat a distance than to the immediate victims.  I heard not a single\nreally pathetic or sentimental word in California expressed by any one.\n\nThe terms \"awful,\" \"dreadful\" fell often enough from people's lips, but\nalways with a sort of abstract meaning, and with a face that seemed to\nadmire the vastness of the catastrophe as much as it bewailed its\ncuttingness.  When talk was not directly practical, I might almost say\nthat it expressed (at any rate in the nine days I was there) a tendency\nmore toward nervous excitement than toward grief.  The hearts concealed\nprivate bitterness enough, no doubt, but the tongues disdained to dwell\non the misfortunes of self, when almost everybody one spoke to had\nsuffered equally.\n\nSurely the cutting edge of all our usual misfortunes comes from their\ncharacter of loneliness.  We lose our health, our wife or children die,\nour house burns down, or our money is made way with, and the world goes\non rejoicing, leaving us on one side and counting us out from all its\nbusiness.  In California every one, to some degree, was suffering, and\none's private miseries were merged in the vast general sum of privation\nand in the all-absorbing practical problem of general recuperation.\nThe cheerfulness, or, at any rate, the steadfastness of tone, was\nuniversal.  Not a single whine or plaintive word did I hear from the\nhundred losers whom I spoke to.  Instead of that there was a temper of\nhelpfulness beyond the counting.\n\nIt is easy to glorify this as something characteristically American, or\nespecially Californian.  Californian education has, of course, made the\nthought of all possible recuperations easy.  In an exhausted country,\nwith no marginal resources, the outlook on the future would be much\ndarker.  But I like to think that what I write of is a normal and\nuniversal trait of human nature.  In our drawing-rooms and offices we\nwonder how people ever do go through battles, sieges and shipwrecks.\nWe quiver and sicken in imagination, and think those heroes superhuman.\nPhysical pain whether suffered alone or in company, is always more or\nless unnerving and intolerable.  But mental pathos and anguish, I\nfancy, are usually effects of distance.  At the place of action, where\nall are concerned together, healthy animal insensibility and heartiness\ntake their place.  At San Francisco the need will continue to be awful,\nand there will doubtless be a crop of nervous wrecks before the weeks\nand months are over, but meanwhile the commonest men, simply because\nthey _are_ men, will go on, singly and collectively, showing this\nadmirable fortitude of temper.\n\n\n\n[1] At the time of the San Francisco earthquake the author was at\nLeland Stanford University nearby.  He succeeded in getting into San\nFrancisco on the morning of the earthquake, and spent the remainder of\nthe day in the city.  These observations appeared in the _Youth's\nCompanion_ for June 7, 1906.\n\n\n\n\nX\n\nTHE ENERGIES OF MEN[1]\n\nEveryone knows what it is to start a piece of work, either intellectual\nor muscular, feeling stale--or _oold_, as an Adirondack guide once put\nit to me.  And everybody knows what it is to \"warm up\" to his job.  The\nprocess of warming up gets particularly striking in the phenomenon\nknown as \"second wind.\"  On usual occasions we make a practice of\nstopping an occupation as soon as we meet the first effective layer (so\nto call it) of fatigue.  We have then walked, played, or worked\n\"enough,\" so we desist.  That amount of fatigue is an efficacious\nobstruction on this side of which our usual life is cast.  But if an\nunusual necessity forces us to press onward a surprising thing occurs.\nThe fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually\nor suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before.  We have\nevidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the\nfatigue-obstacle usually obeyed.  There may be layer after layer of\nthis experience.  A third and a fourth \"wind\" may supervene.  Mental\nactivity shows the phenomenon as well as physical, and in exceptional\ncases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue-distress,\namounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to\nown,--sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because\nhabitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those\nearly critical points.\n\nFor many years I have mused on the phenomenon of second wind, trying to\nfind a physiological theory.  It is evident that our organism has\nstored-up reserves of energy that are ordinarily not called upon, but\nthat may be called upon: deeper and deeper strata of combustible or\nexplosible material, discontinuously arranged, but ready for use by\nanyone who probes so deep, and repairing themselves by rest as well as\ndo the superficial strata.  Most of us continue living unnecessarily\nnear our surface.  Our energy-budget is like our nutritive budget.\nPhysiologists say that a man is in \"nutritive equilibrium\" when day\nafter day he neither gains nor loses weight.  But the odd thing is that\nthis condition may obtain on astonishingly different amounts of food.\nTake a man in nutritive equilibrium, and systematically increase or\nlessen his rations.  In the first case he will begin to gain weight, in\nthe second case to lose it.  The change will be greatest on the first\nday, less on the second, less still on the third; and so on, till he\nhas gained all that he will gain, or lost all that he will lose, on\nthat altered diet.  He is now in nutritive equilibrium again, but with\na new weight; and this neither lessens nor increases because his\nvarious combustion-processes have adjusted themselves to the changed\ndietary.  He gets rid, in one way or another, of just as much N, C, H,\netc., as he takes in _per diem_.\n\nJust so one can be in what I might call \"efficiency-equilibrium\"\n(neither gaining nor losing power when once the equilibrium is reached)\non astonishingly different quantities of work, no matter in what\ndirection the work may be measured.  It may be physical work,\nintellectual work, moral work, or spiritual work.\n\nOf course there are limits: the trees don't grow into the sky.  But the\nplain fact remains that men the world over possess amounts of resource\nwhich only very exceptional individuals push to their extremes of use.\nBut the very same individual, pushing his energies to their extreme,\nmay in a vast number of cases keep the pace up day after day, and find\nno \"reaction\" of a bad sort, so long as decent hygienic conditions are\npreserved.  His more active rate of energizing does not wreck him; for\nthe organism adapts itself, and as the rate of waste augments, augments\ncorrespondingly the rate of repair.\n\nI say the _rate_ and not the _time_ of repair.  The busiest man needs\nno more hours of rest than the idler.  Some years ago Professor\nPatrick, of the Iowa State University, kept three young men awake for\nfour days and nights.  When his observations on them were finished, the\nsubjects were permitted to sleep themselves out.  All awoke from this\nsleep completely refreshed, but the one who took longest to restore\nhimself from his long vigil only slept one-third more time than was\nregular with him.\n\nIf my reader will put together these two conceptions, first, that few\nmen live at their maximum of energy, and second, that anyone may be in\nvital equilibrium at very different rates of energizing, he will find,\nI think, that a very pretty practical problem of national economy, as\nwell as of individual ethics, opens upon his view.  In rough terms, we\nmay say that a man who energizes below his normal maximum fails by just\nso much to profit by his chance at life; and that a nation filled with\nsuch men is inferior to a nation run at higher pressure.  The problem\nis, then, how can men be trained up to their most useful pitch of\nenergy?  And how can nations make such training most accessible to all\ntheir sons and daughters.  This, after all, is only the general problem\nof education, formulated in slightly different terms.\n\n\"Rough\" terms, I said just now, because the words \"energy\" and\n\"maximum\" may easily suggest only _quantity_ to the reader's mind,\nwhereas in measuring the human energies of which I speak, qualities as\nwell as quantities have to be taken into account.  Everyone feels that\nhis total _power_ rises when he passes to a higher _qualitative_ level\nof life.\n\nWriting is higher than walking, thinking is higher than writing,\ndeciding higher than thinking, deciding \"no\" higher than deciding\n\"yes\"--at least the man who passes from one of these activities to\nanother will usually say that each later one involves a greater element\nof _inner work_ than the earlier ones, even though the total heat given\nout or the foot-pounds expended by the organism, may be less.  Just how\nto conceive this inner work physiologically is as yet impossible, but\npsychologically we all know what the word means.  We need a particular\nspur or effort to start us upon inner work; it tires us to sustain it;\nand when long sustained, we know how easily we lapse.  When I speak of\n\"energizing,\" and its rates and levels and sources, I mean therefore\nour inner as well as our outer work.\n\nLet no one think, then, that our problem of individual and national\neconomy is solely that of the maximum of pounds raisable against\ngravity, the maximum of locomotion, or of agitation of any sort, that\nhuman beings can accomplish.  That might signify little more than\nhurrying and jumping about in inco-ordinated ways; whereas inner work,\nthough it so often reinforces outer work, quite as often means its\narrest.  To relax, to say to ourselves (with the \"new thoughters\")\n\"Peace! be still!\" is sometimes a great achievement of inner work.\nWhen I speak of human energizing in general, the reader must therefore\nunderstand that sum-total of activities, some outer and some inner,\nsome muscular, some emotional, some moral, some spiritual, of whose\nwaxing and waning in himself he is at all times so well aware.  How to\nkeep it at an appreciable maximum?  How not to let the level lapse?\nThat is the great problem.  But the work of men and women is of\ninnumerable kinds, each kind being, as we say, carried on by a\nparticular faculty; so the great problem splits into two sub-problems,\nthus:\n\n(1). What are the limits of human faculty in various directions?\n\n(2). By what diversity of means, in the differing types of human\nbeings, may the faculties be stimulated to their best results?\n\nRead in one way, these two questions sound both trivial and familiar:\nthere is a sense in which we have all asked them ever since we were\nborn.  Yet _as a methodical programme of scientific inquiry_, I doubt\nwhether they have ever been seriously taken up.  If answered fully;\nalmost the whole of mental science and of the science of conduct would\nfind a place under them.  I propose, in what follows, to press them on\nthe reader's attention in an informal way.\n\nThe first point to agree upon in this enterprise is that _as a rule men\nhabitually use only a small part of the powers which they actually\npossess and which they might use under appropriate conditions_.\n\nEvery one is familiar with the phenomenon of feeling more or less alive\non different days.  Every one knows on any given day that there are\nenergies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not\ncall forth, but which he might display if these were greater.  Most of\nus feel as if a sort of cloud weighed upon us, keeping us below our\nhighest notch of clearness in discernment, sureness in reasoning, or\nfirmness in deciding.  Compared with what we ought to be, we are only\nhalf awake.  Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked.  We are\nmaking use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical\nresources.  In some persons this sense of being cut off from their\nrightful resources is extreme, and we then get the formidable\nneurasthenic and psychasthenic conditions with life grown into one\ntissue of impossibilities, that so many medical books describe.\n\nStating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives usually far\nwithin his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he\nhabitually fails to use.  He energizes below his _maximum_, and he\nbehaves below his _optimum_.  In elementary faculty, in co-ordination,\nin power of _inhibition_ and control, in every conceivable way, his\nlife is contracted like the field of vision of an hysteric subject--but\nwith less excuse, for the poor hysteric is diseased, while in the rest\nof us it is only an inveterate _habit_--the habit of inferiority to our\nfull self--that is bad.\n\nAdmit so much, then, and admit also that the charge of being inferior\nto their full self is far truer of some men than of others; then the\npractical question ensues: _to what do the better men owe their escape?\nand, in the fluctuations which all men feel in their own degree of\nenergizing, to what are the improvements due, when they occur_?\n\nIn general terms the answer is plain:\n\nEither some unusual stimulus fills them with emotional excitement, or\nsome unusual idea of necessity induces them to make an extra effort of\nwill.  _Excitements, ideas, and efforts_, in a word, are what carry us\nover the dam.\n\nIn those \"hyperesthetic\" conditions which chronic invalidism so often\nbrings in its train, the dam has changed its normal place.  The\nslightest functional exercise gives a distress which the patient yields\nto and stops.  In such cases of \"habit-neurosis\" a new range of power\noften comes in consequence of the \"bullying-treatment,\" of efforts\nwhich the doctor obliges the patient, much against his will, to make.\nFirst comes the very extremity of distress, then follows unexpected\nrelief.  There seems no doubt that _we are each and all of us to some\nextent victims of habit-neurosis_.  We have to admit the wider\npotential range and the habitually narrow actual use.  We live subject\nto arrest by degrees of fatigue which we have come only from habit to\nobey.  Most of us may learn to push the barrier farther off, and to\nlive in perfect comfort on much higher levels of power.\n\nCountry people and city people, as a class, illustrate this difference.\nThe rapid rate of life, the number of decisions in an hour, the many\nthings to keep account of, in a busy city man's or woman's life, seem\nmonstrous to a country brother.  He does n't see how we live at all.  A\nday in New York or Chicago fills him with terror.  The danger and noise\nmake it appear like a permanent earthquake.  But _settle_ him there,\nand in a year or two he will have caught the pulse-beat.  He will\nvibrate to the city's rhythms; and if he only succeeds in his\navocation, whatever that may be, he will find a joy in all the hurry\nand the tension, he will keep the pace as well as any of us, and get as\nmuch out of himself in any week as he ever did in ten weeks in the\ncountry.\n\nThe stimuli of those who successfully spend and undergo the\ntransformation here, are duty, the example of others, and\ncrowd-pressure and contagion.  The transformation, moreover, is a\nchronic one: the new level of energy becomes permanent.  The duties of\nnew offices of trust are constantly producing this effect on the human\nbeings appointed to them.  The physiologists call a stimulus\n\"dynamogenic\" when it increases the muscular contractions of men to\nwhom it is applied; but appeals can be dynamogenic morally as well as\nmuscularly.  We are witnessing here in America to-day the dynamogenic\neffect of a very exalted political office upon the energies of an\nindividual who had already manifested a healthy amount of energy before\nthe office came.\n\nHumbler examples show perhaps still better what chronic effects duty's\nappeal may produce in chosen individuals.  John Stuart Mill somewhere\nsays that women excel men in the power of keeping up sustained moral\nexcitement.  Every case of illness nursed by wife or mother is a proof\nof this; and where can one find greater examples of sustained endurance\nthan in those thousands of poor homes, where the woman successfully\nholds the family together and keeps it going by taking all the thought\nand doing all the work--nursing, teaching, cooking, washing, sewing,\nscrubbing, saving, helping neighbors, \"choring\" outside--where does\nthe catalogue end?  If she does a bit of scolding now and then who can\nblame her?  But often she does just the reverse; keeping the children\nclean and the man good tempered, and soothing and smoothing the whole\nneighborhood into finer shape.\n\nEighty years ago a certain Montyon left to the Academie Francaise a sum\nof money to be given in small prizes, to the best examples of \"virtue\"\nof the year.  The academy's committees, with great good sense, have\nshown a partiality to virtues simple and chronic, rather than to her\nspasmodic and dramatic flights; and the exemplary housewives reported\non have been wonderful and admirable enough.  In Paul Bourget's report\nfor this year we find numerous cases, of which this is a type; Jeanne\nChaix, eldest of six children; mother insane, father chronically ill.\nJeanne, with no money but her wages at a pasteboard-box factory,\ndirects the household, brings up the children, and successfully\nmaintains the family of eight, which thus subsists, morally as well as\nmaterially, by the sole force of her valiant will.  In some of these\nFrench cases charity to outsiders is added to the inner family burden;\nor helpless relatives, young or old, are adopted, as if the strength\nwere inexhaustible and ample for every appeal.  Details are too long to\nquote here; but human nature, responding to the call of duty, appears\nnowhere sublimer than in the person of these humble heroines of family\nlife.\n\nTurning from more chronic to acuter proofs of human nature's reserves\nof power, we find that the stimuli that carry us over the usually\neffective dam are most often the classic emotional ones, love, anger,\ncrowd-contagion or despair.  Despair lames most people, but it wakes\nothers fully up.  Every siege or shipwreck or polar expedition brings\nout some hero who keeps the whole company in heart.  Last year there\nwas a terrible colliery explosion at Courrieres in France.  Two hundred\ncorpses, if I remember rightly, were exhumed.  After twenty days of\nexcavation, the rescuers heard a voice.  \"_Me voici_,\" said the first\nman unearthed.  He proved to be a collier named Nemy, who had taken\ncommand of thirteen others in the darkness, disciplined them and\ncheered them, and brought them out alive.  Hardly any of them could see\nor speak or walk when brought into the day.  Five days later, a\ndifferent type of vital endurance was unexpectedly unburied in the\nperson of one Berton who, isolated from any but dead companions, had\nbeen able to sleep away most of his time.\n\nA new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far\nstronger creature than was supposed.  Cromwell's and Grant's careers\nare the stock examples of how war will wake a man up.  I owe to\nProfessor C. E. Norton, my colleague, the permission to print part of a\nprivate letter from Colonel Baird-Smith written shortly after the six\nweeks' siege of Delhi, in 1857, for the victorious issue of which that\nexcellent officer was chiefly to be thanked.  He writes as follows:\n\n\". . .  My poor wife had some reason to think that war and disease\nbetween them had left very little of a husband to take under nursing\nwhen she got him again.  An attack of camp-scurvy had filled my mouth\nwith sores, shaken every joint in my body, and covered me all over with\nsores and livid spots, so that I was marvellously unlovely to look\nupon.  A smart knock on the ankle-joint from the splinter of a shell\nthat burst in my face, in itself a mere _bagatelle_ of a wound, had\nbeen of necessity neglected under the pressing and incessant calls upon\nme, and had grown worse and worse till the whole foot below the ankle\nbecame a black mass and seemed to threaten mortification.  I insisted,\nhowever, on being allowed to use it till the place was taken,\nmortification or no; and though the pain was sometimes horrible I\ncarried my point and kept up to the last.  On the day after the assault\nI had an unlucky fall on some bad ground, and it was an open question\nfor a day or two whether I hadn't broken my arm at the elbow.\nFortunately it turned out to be only a severe sprain, but I am still\nconscious of the wrench it gave me.  To crown the whole pleasant\ncatalogue, I was worn to a shadow by a constant diarrhoea, and consumed\nas much opium as would have done credit to my father-in-law [Thomas De\nQuincey].  However, thank God, I have a good share of Tapleyism in me\nand come out strong under difficulties.  I think I may confidently say\nthat no man ever saw me out of heart, or ever heard one croaking word\nfrom me even when our prospects were gloomiest.  We were sadly scourged\nby the cholera, and it was almost appalling to me to find that out of\ntwenty-seven officers present, I could only muster fifteen for the\noperations of the attack.  However, it was done, and after it was done\ncame the collapse.  Don't be horrified when I tell you that for the\nwhole of the actual siege, and in truth for some little time before, I\nalmost lived on brandy.  Appetite for food I had none, but I forced\nmyself to eat just sufficient to sustain life, and I had an incessant\ncraving for brandy as the strongest stimulant I could get.  Strange to\nsay, I was quite unconscious of its affecting me in the slightest\ndegree.  _The excitement of the work was so great that no lesser one\nseemed to have any chance against it, and I certainly never found my\nintellect clearer or my nerves stronger in my life_.  It was only my\nwretched body that was weak, and the moment the real work was done by\nour becoming complete masters of Delhi, I broke down without delay and\ndiscovered that if I wished to live I must continue no longer the\nsystem that had kept me up until the crisis was passed.  With it passed\naway as if in a moment all desire to stimulate, and a perfect loathing\nof my late staff of life took possession of me.\"\n\nSuch experiences show how profound is the alteration in the manner in\nwhich, under excitement, our organism will sometimes perform its\nphysiological work.  The processes of repair become different when the\nreserves have to be used, and for weeks and months the deeper use may\ngo on.\n\nMorbid cases, here as elsewhere, lay the normal machinery bare.  In the\nfirst number of Dr. Morton Prince's _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_,\nDr. Janet has discussed five cases of morbid impulse, with an\nexplanation that is precious for my present point of view.  One is a\ngirl who eats, eats, eats, all day.  Another walks, walks, walks, and\ngets her food from an automobile that escorts her.  Another is a\ndipsomaniac.  A fourth pulls out her hair.  A fifth wounds her flesh\nand burns her skin.  Hitherto such freaks of impulse have received\nGreek names (as bulimia, dromomania, etc.) and been scientifically\ndisposed of as \"episodic syndromata of hereditary degeneration.\"  But\nit turns out that Janet's cases are all what he calls psychasthenics,\nor victims of a chronic sense of weakness, torpor, lethargy, fatigue,\ninsufficiency, impossibility, unreality and powerlessness of will; and\nthat in each and all of them the particular activity pursued,\ndeleterious though it be, has the temporary result of raising the sense\nof vitality and making the patient feel alive again.  These things\nreanimate: they would reanimate us, but it happens that in  each\npatient the particular freak-activity chosen is the only thing that\ndoes reanimate; and therein lies the morbid state.  The way to treat\nsuch persons is to discover to them more usual and useful ways of\nthrowing their stores of vital energy into gear.\n\nColonel Baird-Smith, needing to draw on altogether extraordinary stores\nof energy, found that brandy and opium were ways of throwing them into\ngear.\n\nSuch cases are humanly typical.  We are all to some degree oppressed,\nunfree.  We don't come to our own.  It is there, but we don't get at\nit.  The threshold must be made to shift.  Then many of us find that an\neccentric activity--a \"spree,\" say--relieves.  There is no doubt that\nto some men sprees and excesses of almost any kind are medicinal,\ntemporarily at any rate, in spite of what the moralists and doctors say.\n\nBut when the normal tasks and stimulations of life don't put a man's\ndeeper levels of energy on tap, and he requires distinctly deleterious\nexcitements, his constitution verges on the abnormal.  The normal\nopener of deeper and deeper levels of energy is the will.  The\ndifficulty is to use it, to make the effort which the word volition\nimplies.  But if we do make it (or if a god, though he were only the\ngod Chance, makes it through us), it will act dynamogenically on us for\na month.  It is notorious that a single successful effort of moral\nvolition, such as saying \"no\" to some habitual temptation, or\nperforming some courageous act, will launch a man on a higher level of\nenergy for days and weeks, will give him a new range of power.  \"In the\nact of uncorking the whiskey bottle which I had brought home to get\ndrunk upon,\" said a man to me, \"I suddenly found myself running out\ninto the garden, where I smashed it on the ground.  I felt so happy and\nuplifted after this act, that for two months I was n't tempted to touch\na drop.\"\n\nThe emotions and excitements due to usual situations are the usual\ninciters of the will.  But these act discontinuously; and in the\nintervals the shallower levels of life tend to close in and shut us\noff.  Accordingly the best practical knowers of the human soul have\ninvented the thing known as methodical ascetic discipline to keep the\ndeeper levels constantly in reach.  Beginning with easy tasks, passing\nto harder ones, and exercising day by day, it is, I believe, admitted\nthat disciples of asceticism can reach very high levels of freedom and\npower of will.\n\nIgnatius Loyola's spiritual exercises must have produced this result in\ninnumerable devotees.  But the most venerable ascetic system, and the\none whose results have the most voluminous experimental corroboration\nis undoubtedly the Yoga system in Hindustan.\n\nFrom time immemorial, by Hatha Yoga, Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, or whatever\ncode of practice it might be, Hindu aspirants to perfection have\ntrained themselves, month in and out, for years.  The result claimed,\nand certainly in many cases accorded by impartial judges, is strength\nof character, personal power, unshakability of soul.  In an article in\nthe _Philosophical Review_,[2] from which I am largely copying here, I\nhave quoted at great length the experience with \"Hatha Yoga\" of a very\ngifted European friend of mine who, by persistently carrying out for\nseveral months its methods of fasting from food and sleep, its\nexercises in breathing and thought-concentration, and its fantastic\nposture-gymnastics, seems to have succeeded in waking up deeper and\ndeeper levels of will and moral and intellectual power in himself, and\nto have escaped from a decidedly menacing brain-condition of the\n\"circular\" type, from which he had suffered for years.\n\nJudging by my friend's letters, of which the last I have is written\nfourteen months after the Yoga training began, there can be no doubt of\nhis relative regeneration.  He has undergone material trials with\nindifference, travelled third-class on Mediterranean steamers, and\nfourth-class on African trains, living with the poorest Arabs and\nsharing their unaccustomed food, all with equanimity.  His devotion to\ncertain interests has been put to heavy strain, and nothing is more\nremarkable to me than the changed moral tone with which he reports the\nsituation.  A profound modification has unquestionably occurred in the\nrunning of his mental machinery.  The gearing has changed, and his will\nis available otherwise than it was.\n\nMy friend is a man of very peculiar temperament.  Few of us would have\nhad the will to start upon the Yoga training, which, once started,\nseemed to conjure the further willpower needed out of itself.  And not\nall of those who could launch themselves would have reached the same\nresults.  The Hindus themselves admit that in some men the results\nmay come without call or bell.  My friend writes to me: \"You\nare quite right in thinking that religious crises, love-crises,\nindignation-crises may awaken in a very short time powers similar to\nthose reached by years of patient Yoga-practice.\"\n\nProbably most medical men would treat this individual's case as one of\nwhat it is fashionable now to call by the name of \"self-suggestion,\" or\n\"expectant attention\"--as if those phrases were explanatory, or meant\nmore than the fact that certain men can be influenced, while others\ncannot be influenced, by certain sorts of _ideas_.  This leads me to\nsay a word about ideas considered as dynamogenic agents, or stimuli for\nunlocking what would otherwise be unused reservoirs of individual power.\n\nOne thing that ideas do is to contradict other ideas and keep us from\nbelieving them.  An idea that thus negates a first idea may itself in\nturn be negated by a third idea, and the first idea may thus regain its\nnatural influence over our belief and determine our behavior.  Our\nphilosophic and religious development proceeds thus by credulities,\nnegations, and the negating of negations.\n\nBut whether for arousing or for stopping belief, ideas may fail to be\nefficacious, just as a wire, at one time alive with electricity, may at\nanother time be dead.  Here our insight into causes fails us, and we\ncan only note results in general terms.  In general, whether a given\nidea shall be a live idea depends more on the person into whose mind it\nis injected than on the idea itself.  Which is the suggestive idea for\nthis person, and which for that one?  Mr. Fletcher's disciples\nregenerate themselves by the idea (and the fact) that they are chewing,\nand re-chewing, and super-chewing their food.  Dr. Dewey's pupils\nregenerate themselves by going without their breakfast--a fact, but\nalso an ascetic idea.  Not every one can use _these_ ideas with the\nsame success.\n\nBut apart from such individually varying susceptibilities, there are\ncommon lines along which men simply as men tend to be inflammable by\nideas.  As certain objects naturally awaken love, anger, or cupidity,\nso certain ideas naturally awaken the energies of loyalty, courage,\nendurance, or devotion.  When these ideas are effective in an\nindividual's life, their effect is often very great indeed.  They may\ntransfigure it, unlocking innumerable powers which, but for the idea,\nwould never have come into play.  \"Fatherland,\" \"the Flag,\" \"the\nUnion,\" \"Holy Church,\" \"the Monroe Doctrine,\" \"Truth,\" \"Science,\"\n\"Liberty,\" Garibaldi's phrase, \"Rome or Death,\" etc., are so many\nexamples of energy-releasing ideas.  The social nature of such phrases\nis an essential factor of their dynamic power.  They are forces of\ndetent in situations in which no other force produces equivalent\neffects, and each is a force of detent only in a specific group of men.\n\nThe memory that an oath or vow has been made will nerve one to\nabstinences and efforts otherwise impossible; witness the \"pledge\" in\nthe history of the temperance movement.  A mere promise to his\nsweetheart will clean up a youth's life all over--at any rate for time.\nFor such effects an educated susceptibility is required.  The idea of\none's \"honor,\" for example, unlocks energy only in those of us who have\nhad the education of a \"gentleman,\" so called.\n\nThat delightful being, Prince Pueckler-Muskau, writes to his wife from\nEngland that he has invented \"a sort of artificial resolution\nrespecting things that are difficult of performance.  My device,\" he\ncontinues, \"is this: _I give my word of honor most solemnly to myself_\nto do or to leave undone this or that.  I am of course extremely\ncautious in the use of this expedient, but when once the word is given,\neven though I afterwards think I have been precipitate or mistaken, I\nhold it to be perfectly irrevocable, whatever inconveniences I foresee\nlikely to result.  If I were capable of breaking my word after such\nmature consideration, I should lose all respect for myself,--and what\nman of sense would not prefer death to such an alternative? . . .  When\nthe mysterious formula is pronounced, no alteration in my own view,\nnothing short of physical impossibilities, must, for the welfare of my\nsoul, alter my will. . . .  I find something very satisfactory in the\nthought that man has the power of framing such props and weapons out of\nthe most trivial materials, indeed out of nothing, merely by the force\nof his will, which thereby truly deserves the name of omnipotent.\" [3]\n\n_Conversions_, whether they be political, scientific, philosophic, or\nreligious, form another way in which bound energies are let loose.\nThey unify us, and put a stop to ancient mental interferences.  The\nresult is freedom, and often a great enlargement of power.  A belief\nthat thus settles upon an individual always acts as a challenge to his\nwill.  But, for the particular challenge to operate, he must be the\nright challeng_ee_.  In religious conversions we have so fine an\nadjustment that the idea may be in the mind of the challengee for years\nbefore it exerts effects; and why it should do so then is often so far\nfrom obvious that the event is taken for a miracle of grace, and not a\nnatural occurrence.  Whatever it is, it may be a highwater mark of\nenergy, in which \"noes,\" once impossible, are easy, and in which a new\nrange of \"yeses\" gains the right of way.\n\nWe are just now witnessing a very copious unlocking of energies by\nideas in the persons of those converts to \"New Thought,\" \"Christian\nScience,\" \"Metaphysical Healing,\" or other forms of spiritual\nphilosophy, who are so numerous among us to-day.  The ideas here are\nhealthy-minded and optimistic; and it is quite obvious that a wave of\nreligious activity, analogous in some respects to the spread of early\nChristianity, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism, is passing over our American\nworld.  The common feature of these optimistic faiths is that they all\ntend to the suppression of what Mr. Horace Fletcher calls\n\"fearthought.\"  Fearthought he defines as the \"self-suggestion of\ninferiority\"; so that one may say that these systems all operate by the\nsuggestion of power.  And the power, small or great, comes in various\nshapes to the individual,--power, as he will tell you, not to \"mind\"\nthings that used to vex him, power to concentrate his mind, good cheer,\ngood temper--in short, to put it mildly, a firmer, more elastic moral\ntone.\n\nThe most genuinely saintly person I have ever known is a friend of mine\nnow suffering from cancer of the breast--I hope that she may pardon my\nciting her here as an example of what ideas can do.  Her ideas have\nkept her a practically well woman for months after she should have\ngiven up and gone to bed.  They have annulled all pain and weakness and\ngiven her a cheerful active life, unusually beneficent to others to\nwhom she has afforded help.  Her doctors, acquiescing in results they\ncould not understand, have had the good sense to let her go her own way.\n\nHow far the mind-cure movement is destined to extend its influence, or\nwhat intellectual modifications it may yet undergo, no one can\nforetell.  It is essentially a religious movement, and to academically\nnurtured minds its utterances are tasteless and often grotesque enough.\nIt also incurs the natural enmity of medical politicians, and of the\nwhole trades-union wing of that profession.  But no unprejudiced\nobserver can fail to recognize its importance as a social phenomenon\nto-day, and the higher medical minds are already trying to interpret it\nfairly, and make its power available for their own therapeutic ends.\n\nDr. Thomas Hyslop, of the great West Riding Asylum in England, said\nlast year to the British Medical Association that the best\nsleep-producing agent which his practice had revealed to him, was\n_prayer_.  I say this, he added (I am sorry here that I must quote from\nmemory), purely as a medical man.  The exercise of prayer, in those who\nhabitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most\nadequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the\nnerves.\n\nBut in few of us are functions not tied up by the exercise of other\nfunctions.  Relatively few medical men and scientific men, I fancy, can\npray.  Few can carry on any living commerce with \"God.\"  Yet many of us\nare well aware of how much freer and abler our lives would be, were\nsuch important forms of energizing not sealed up by the critical\natmosphere in which we have been reared.  There are in every one\npotential forms of activity that actually are shunted out from use.\nPart of the imperfect vitality under which we labor can thus be easily\nexplained.  One part of our mind dams up--even _damns_ up!--the other\nparts.\n\nConscience makes cowards of us all.  Social conventions prevent us from\ntelling the truth after the fashion of the heroes and heroines of\nBernard Shaw.  We all know persons who are models of excellence, but\nwho belong to the extreme philistine type of mind.  So deadly is their\nintellectual respectability that we can't converse about certain\nsubjects at all, can't let our minds play over them, can't even mention\nthem in their presence.  I have numbered among my dearest friends\npersons thus inhibited intellectually, with whom I would gladly have\nbeen able to talk freely about certain interests of mine, certain\nauthors, say, as Bernard Shaw, Chesterton, Edward Carpenter, H. G.\nWells, but it would n't do, it made them too uncomfortable, they would\nn't play, I had to be silent.  An intellect thus tied down by\nliterality and decorum makes on one the same sort of an impression that\nan able-bodied man would who should habituate himself to do his work\nwith only one of his fingers, locking up the rest of his organism and\nleaving it unused.\n\nI trust that by this time I have said enough to convince the reader\nboth of the truth and of the importance of my thesis.  The two\nquestions, first, that of the possible extent of our powers; and,\nsecond, that of the various avenues of approach to them, the various\nkeys for unlocking them in diverse individuals, dominate the whole\nproblem of individual and national education.  We need a topography of\nthe limits of human power, similar to the chart which oculists use of\nthe field of human vision.  We need also a study of the various types\nof human being with reference to the different ways in which their\nenergy-reserves may be appealed to and set loose.  Biographies and\nindividual experiences of every kind may be drawn upon for evidence\nhere.[4]\n\n\n\n[1] This was the title originally given to the Presidential Address\ndelivered before the American Philosophical Association at Columbia\nUniversity, December 28, 1906, and published as there delivered in the\n_Philosophical Review_ for January, 1907.  The address was later\npublished, after slight alteration, in the _American Magazine_ for\nOctober, 1907, under the title \"The Powers of Men.\"  The more popular\nform is here reprinted under the title which the author himself\npreferred.\n\n[2] \"The Energies of Men.\"  _Philosophical Review_, vol. xvi, No. 1,\nJanuary, 1907.  [Cf. Note on p. 229.]\n\n[3] \"Tour in England, Ireland, and France,\" Philadelphia, 1833, p. 435.\n\n[4] \"This would be an absolutely concrete study . . .  The limits of\npower must be limits that have been realized in actual persons, and the\nvarious ways of unlocking the reserves of power must have been\nexemplified in individual lives . . .  So here is a program of concrete\nindividual psychology . . .  It is replete with interesting facts, and\npoints to practical issues superior in importance to anything we know.\"\n_From the address as originally delivered before the Philosophical\nAssociation_; See xvi.  _Philosophical Review_, 1, 19.\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\nTHE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR[1]\n\nThe war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping\nparty.  The military feelings are too deeply grounded to abdicate their\nplace among our ideals until better substitutes are offered than the\nglory and shame that come to nations as well as to individuals from the\nups and downs of politics and the vicissitudes of trade.  There is\nsomething highly paradoxical in the modern man's relation to war.  Ask\nall our millions, north and south, whether they would vote now (were\nsuch a thing possible) to have our war for the Union expunged from\nhistory, and the record of a peaceful transition to the present time\nsubstituted for that of its marches and battles, and probably hardly a\nhandful of eccentrics would say yes.  Those ancestors, those efforts,\nthose memories and legends, are the most ideal part of what we now own\ntogether, a sacred spiritual possession worth more than all the blood\npoured out.  Yet ask those same people whether they would be willing in\ncold blood to start another civil war now to gain another similar\npossession, and not one man or women would vote for the proposition.\nIn modern eyes, precious though wars may be, they must not be waged\nsolely for the sake of the ideal harvest.  Only when forced upon one,\nonly when an enemy's injustice leaves us no alternative, is a war now\nthought permissible.\n\nIt was not thus in ancient times.  The earlier men were hunting men,\nand to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the village and\npossess the females, was the most profitable, as well as the most\nexciting, way of living.  Thus were the more martial tribes selected,\nand in chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to\nmingle with the more fundamental appetite for plunder.\n\nModern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to\nplunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the\nlove of glory of his ancestors.  Showing war's irrationality and horror\nis of no effect upon him.  The horrors make the fascination.  War is\nthe _strong_ life; it is life _in extremis_; war-taxes are the only\nones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.\n\nHistory is a bath of blood.  The Iliad is one long recital of how\nDiomedes and Ajax, Sarpedon and Hector _killed_.  No detail of the\nwounds they made is spared us, and the Greek mind fed upon the story.\nGreek history is a panorama of jingoism and imperialism--war for war's\nsake, all the citizens being warriors.  It is horrible reading, because\nof the irrationality of it all--save for the purpose of making\n\"history\"--and the history is that of the utter ruin of a civilization\nin intellectual respects perhaps the highest the earth has ever seen.\n\nThose wars were purely piratical.  Pride, gold, women, slaves,\nexcitement, were their only motives.  In the Peloponnesian war for\nexample, the Athenians ask the inhabitants of Melos (the island where\nthe \"Venus of Milo\" was found), hitherto neutral, to own their\nlordship.  The envoys meet, and hold a debate which Thucydides gives in\nfull, and which, for sweet reasonableness of form, would have satisfied\nMatthew Arnold.  \"The powerful exact what they can,\" said the\nAthenians, \"and the weak grant what they must.\"  When the Meleans say\nthat sooner than be slaves they will appeal to the gods, the Athenians\nreply: \"Of the gods we believe and of men we know that, by a law of\ntheir nature, wherever they can rule they will.  This law was not made\nby us, and we are not the first to have acted upon it; we did but\ninherit it, and we know that you and all mankind, if you were as strong\nas we are, would do as we do.  So much for the gods; we have told you\nwhy we expect to stand as high in their good opinion as you.\"  Well,\nthe Meleans still refused, and their town was taken.  \"The Athenians,\"\nThucydides quietly says, \"thereupon put to death all who were of\nmilitary age and made slaves of the women and children.  They then\ncolonized the island, sending thither five hundred settlers of their\nown.\"\n\nAlexander's career was piracy pure and simple, nothing but an orgy of\npower and plunder, made romantic by the character of the hero.  There\nwas no rational principle in it, and the moment he died his generals\nand governors attacked one another.  The cruelty of those times is\nincredible.  When Rome finally conquered Greece, Paulus Aemilius, was\ntold by the Roman Senate to reward his soldiers for their toil by\n\"giving\" them the old kingdom of Epirus.  They sacked seventy cities\nand carried off a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants as slaves.\nHow many they killed I know not; but in Etolia they killed all the\nsenators, five hundred and fifty in number.  Brutus was \"the noblest\nRoman of them all,\" but to reanimate his soldiers on the eve of\nPhilippi he similarly promises to give them the cities of Sparta and\nThessalonica to ravage, if they win the fight.\n\nSuch was the gory nurse that trained societies to cohesiveness.  We\ninherit the warlike type; and for most of the capacities of heroism\nthat the human race is full of we have to thank this cruel history.\nDead men tell no tales, and if there were any tribes of other type than\nthis they have left no survivors.  Our ancestors have bred pugnacity\ninto our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't breed\nit out of us.  The popular imagination fairly fattens on the thought of\nwars.  Let public opinion once reach a certain fighting pitch, and no\nruler can withstand it.  In the Boer war both governments began with\nbluff but could n't stay there, the military tension was too much for\nthem.  In 1898 our people had read the word \"war\" in letters three\ninches high for three months in every newspaper.  The pliant politician\nMcKinley was swept away by their eagerness, and our squalid war with\nSpain became a necessity.\n\nAt the present day, civilized opinion is a curious mental mixture.  The\nmilitary instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but are confronted\nby reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom.\nInnumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military\nservice.  Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally avowable\nmotives, and pretexts must be found for attributing them solely to the\nenemy.  England and we, our army and navy authorities repeat without\nceasing, arm solely for \"peace,\" Germany and Japan it is who are bent\non loot and glory.  \"Peace\" in military mouths to-day is a synonym for\n\"war expected.\"  The word has become a pure provocative, and no\ngovernment wishing peace sincerely should allow it ever to be printed\nin a newspaper.  Every up-to-date dictionary should say that \"peace\"\nand \"war\" mean the same thing, now _in posse_, now _in actu_.  It may\neven reasonably be said that the intensely sharp competitive\n_preparation_ for war by the nations _is the real war_, permanent,\nunceasing; and that the battles are only a sort of public verification\nof the mastery gained during the \"peace\"-interval.\n\nIt is plain that on this subject civilized man has developed a sort of\ndouble personality.  If we take European nations, no legitimate\ninterest of any one of them would seem to justify the tremendous\ndestructions which a war to compass it would necessarily entail.  It\nwould seem as though common sense and reason ought to find a way to\nreach agreement in every conflict of honest interests.  I myself think\nit our bounden duty to believe in such international rationality as\npossible.  But, as things stand, I see how desperately hard it is to\nbring the peace-party and the war-party together, and I believe that\nthe difficulty is due to certain deficiencies in the program of\npacificism which set the militarist imagination strongly, and to a\ncertain extent justifiably, against it.  In the whole discussion both\nsides are on imaginative and sentimental ground.  It is but one utopia\nagainst another, and everything one says must be abstract and\nhypothetical.  Subject to this criticism and caution, I will try to\ncharacterize in abstract strokes the opposite imaginative forces, and\npoint out what to my own very fallible mind seems the best Utopian\nhypothesis, the most promising line of conciliation.\n\nIn my remarks, pacificist though I am, I will refuse to speak of the\nbestial side of the war-_regime_ (already done justice to by many\nwriters) and consider only the higher aspects of militaristic\nsentiment.  Patriotism no one thinks discreditable; nor does any one\ndeny that war is the romance of history.  But inordinate ambitions are\nthe soul of every patriotism, and the possibility of violent death the\nsoul of all romance.  The militarily patriotic and romantic-minded\neverywhere, and especially the professional military class, refuse to\nadmit for a moment that war may be a transitory phenomenon in social\nevolution.  The notion of a sheep's paradise like that revolts, they\nsay, our higher imagination.  Where then would be the steeps of life?\nIf war had ever stopped, we should have to re-invent it, on this view,\nto redeem life from flat degeneration.\n\nReflective apologists for war at the present day all take it\nreligiously.  It is a sort of sacrament.  Its profits are to the\nvanquished as well as to the victor; and quite apart from any question\nof profit, it is an absolute good, we are told, for it is human nature\nat its highest dynamic.  Its \"horrors\" are a cheap price to pay for\nrescue from the only alternative supposed, of a world of clerks and\nteachers, of co-education and zo-ophily, of \"consumer's leagues\" and\n\"associated charities,\" of industrialism unlimited, and feminism\nunabashed.  No scorn, no hardness, no valor any more!  Fie upon such a\ncattleyard of a planet!\n\nSo far as the central essence of this feeling goes, no healthy minded\nperson, it seems to me, can help to some degree partaking of it.\nMilitarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and human\nlife with no use for hardihood would be contemptible.  Without risks or\nprizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a\ntype of military character which every one feels that the race should\nnever cease to breed, for every one is sensitive to its superiority.\nThe duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping military characters in\nstock--of keeping them, if not for use, then as ends in themselves and\nas pure pieces of perfection,--so that Roosevelt's weaklings and\nmollycoddles may not end by making everything else disappear from the\nface of nature.\n\nThis natural sort of feeling forms, I think, the innermost soul of\narmy-writings.  Without any exception known to me, militarist authors\ntake a highly mystical view of their subject, and regard war as a\nbiological or sociological necessity, uncontrolled by ordinary\npsychological checks and motives.  When the time of development is ripe\nthe war must come, reason or no reason, for the justifications pleaded\nare invariably fictitious.  War is, in short, a permanent human\n_obligation_.  General Homer Lea, in his recent book \"The Valor of\nIgnorance,\" plants himself squarely on this ground.  Readiness for war\nis for him the essence of nationality, and ability in it the supreme\nmeasure of the health of nations.\n\nNations, General Lea says, are never stationary--they must necessarily\nexpand or shrink, according to their vitality or decrepitude.  Japan\nnow is culminating; and by the fatal law in question it is impossible\nthat her statesmen should not long since have entered, with\nextraordinary foresight, upon a vast policy of conquest--the game in\nwhich the first moves were her wars with China and Russia and her\ntreaty with England, and of which the final objective is the capture of\nthe Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, and the whole of our\nCoast west of the Sierra Passes.  This will give Japan what her\nineluctable vocation as a state absolutely forces her to claim, the\npossession of the entire Pacific Ocean; and to oppose these deep\ndesigns we Americans have, according to our author, nothing but our\nconceit, our ignorance, our commercialism, our corruption, and our\nfeminism.  General Lea makes a minute technical comparison of the\nmilitary strength which we at present could oppose to the strength of\nJapan, and concludes that the islands, Alaska, Oregon, and Southern\nCalifornia, would fall almost without resistance, that San Francisco\nmust surrender in a fortnight to a Japanese investment, that in three\nor four months the war would be over, and our republic, unable to\nregain what it had heedlessly neglected to protect sufficiently, would\nthen \"disintegrate,\" until perhaps some Caesar should arise to weld us\nagain into a nation.\n\nA dismal forecast indeed!  Yet not implausible, if the mentality of\nJapan's statesmen be of the Caesarian type of which history shows so\nmany examples, and which is all that General Lea seems able to imagine.\nBut there is no reason to think that women can no longer be the mothers\nof Napoleonic or Alexandrian characters; and if these come in Japan and\nfind their opportunity, just such surprises as \"The Valor of Ignorance\"\npaints may lurk in ambush for us.  Ignorant as we still are of the\ninnermost recesses of Japanese mentality, we may be foolhardy to\ndisregard such possibilities.\n\nOther militarists are more complex and more moral in their\nconsiderations.  The \"Philosophie des Krieges,\" by S. R. Steinmetz is a\ngood example.  War, according to this author, is an ordeal instituted\nby God, who weighs the nations in its balance.  It is the essential\nform of the State, and the only function in which peoples can employ\nall their powers at once and convergently.  No victory is possible save\nas the resultant of a totality of virtues, no defeat for which some\nvice or weakness is not responsible.  Fidelity, cohesiveness, tenacity,\nheroism, conscience, education, inventiveness, economy, wealth,\nphysical health and vigor--there is n't a moral or intellectual point\nof superiority that does n't tell, when God holds his assizes and hurls\nthe peoples upon one another.  _Die Weltgeschichte ist das\nWeltgericht_; and Dr. Steinmetz does not believe that in the long run\nchance and luck play any part in apportioning the issues.\n\nThe virtues that prevail, it must be noted, are virtues anyhow,\nsuperiorities that count in peaceful as well as in military\ncompetition; but the strain on them, being infinitely intenser in the\nlatter case, makes war infinitely more searching as a trial.  No ordeal\nis comparable to its winnowings.  Its dread hammer is the welder of men\ninto cohesive states, and nowhere but in such states can human nature\nadequately develop its capacity.  The only alternative is\n\"degeneration.\"\n\nDr. Steinmetz is a conscientious thinker, and his book, short as it is,\ntakes much into account.  Its upshot can, it seems to me, be summed up\nin Simon Patten's word, that mankind was nursed in pain and fear, and\nthat the transition to a \"pleasure-economy\" may be fatal to a being\nwielding no powers of defence against its disintegrative influences.\nIf we speak of the _fear of emancipation from the fear-regime_, we put\nthe whole situation into a single phrase; fear regarding ourselves now\ntaking the place of the ancient fear of the enemy.\n\nTurn the fear over as I will in my mind, it all seems to lead back to\ntwo unwillingnesses of the imagination, one aesthetic, and the other\nmoral; unwillingness, first to envisage a future in which army-life,\nwith its many elements of charm, shall be forever impossible, and in\nwhich the destinies of peoples shall nevermore be decided, quickly,\nthrillingly, and tragically, by force, but only gradually and insipidly\nby \"evolution\"; and, secondly, unwillingness to see the supreme theatre\nof human strenuousness closed, and the splendid military aptitudes of\nmen doomed to keep always in a state of latency and never show\nthemselves in action.  These insistent unwillingnesses, no less than\nother aesthetic and ethical insistencies, have, it seems to me, to be\nlistened to and respected.  One cannot meet them effectively by mere\ncounter-insistency on war's expensiveness and horror.  The horror makes\nthe thrill; and when the question is of getting the extremest and\nsupremest out of human nature, talk of expense sounds ignominious.  The\nweakness of so much merely negative criticism is evident--pacificism\nmakes no converts from the military party.  The military party denies\nneither the bestiality nor the horror, nor the expense; it only says\nthat these things tell but half the story.  It only says that war is\n_worth_ them; that, taking human nature as a whole, its wars are its\nbest protection against its weaker and more cowardly self, and that\nmankind cannot _afford_ to adopt a peace-economy.\n\nPacificists ought to enter more deeply into the aesthetical and ethical\npoint of view of their opponents.  Do that first in any controversy,\nsays J. J. Chapman, then _move the point_, and your opponent will\nfollow.  So long as anti-militarists propose no substitute for war's\ndisciplinary function, no _moral equivalent_ of war, analogous, as one\nmight say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to\nrealize the full inwardness of the situation.  And as a rule they do\nfail.  The duties, penalties, and sanctions pictured in the Utopias\nthey paint are all too weak and tame to touch the military-minded.\nTolstoi's pacificism is the only exception to this rule, for it is\nprofoundly pessimistic as regards all this world's values, and makes\nthe fear of the Lord furnish the moral spur provided elsewhere by the\nfear of the enemy.  But our socialistic peace-advocates all believe\nabsolutely in this world's values; and instead of the fear of the Lord\nand the fear of the enemy, the only fear they reckon with is the fear\nof poverty if one be lazy.  This weakness pervades all the socialistic\nliterature with which I am acquainted.  Even in Lowes Dickinson's\nexquisite dialogue,[2] high wages and short hours are the only forces\ninvoked for overcoming man's distaste for repulsive kinds of labor.\nMeanwhile men at large still live as they always have lived, under a\npain-and-fear economy--for those of us who live in an ease-economy are\nbut an island in the stormy ocean--and the whole atmosphere of\npresent-day Utopian literature tastes mawkish and dishwatery to people\nwho still keep a sense for life's more bitter flavors.  It suggests, in\ntruth, ubiquitous inferiority.  Inferiority is always with us, and\nmerciless scorn of it is the keynote of the military temper.  \"Dogs,\nwould you live forever?\" shouted Frederick the Great.  \"Yes,\" say our\nUtopians, \"let us live forever, and raise our level gradually.\"  The\nbest thing about our \"inferiors\" to-day is that they are as tough as\nnails, and physically and morally almost as insensitive.  Utopianism\nwould see them soft and squeamish, while militarism would keep their\ncallousness, but transfigure it into a meritorious characteristic,\nneeded by \"the service,\" and redeemed by that from the suspicion of\ninferiority.  All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows\nthat the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them.  If\nproud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion.  No\ncollectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride; but it has to\nbe confessed that the only sentiment which the image of pacific\ncosmopolitan industrialism is capable of arousing in countless worthy\nbreasts is shame at the idea of belonging to _such_ a collectivity.  It\nis obvious that the United States of America as they exist to-day\nimpress a mind like General Lea's as so much human blubber.  Where is\nthe sharpness and precipitousness, the contempt for life, whether one's\nown, or another's?  Where is the savage \"yes\" and \"no,\" the\nunconditional duty?  Where is the conscription?  Where is the\nblood-tax?  Where is anything that one feels honored by belonging to?\n\nHaving said thus much in preparation, I will now confess my own Utopia.\nI devoutly believe in the reign of peace and in the gradual advent of\nsome sort of a socialistic equilibrium.  The fatalistic view of the\nwar-function is to me nonsense, for I know that war-making is due to\ndefinite motives and subject to prudential checks and reasonable\ncriticisms, just like any other form of enterprise.  And when whole\nnations are the armies, and the science of destruction vies in\nintellectual refinement with the sciences of production, I see that war\nbecomes absurd and impossible from its own monstrosity.  Extravagant\nambitions will have to be replaced by reasonable claims, and nations\nmust make common cause against them.  I see no reason why all this\nshould not apply to yellow as well as to white countries, and I look\nforward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as\nbetween civilized peoples.\n\nAll these beliefs of mine put me squarely into the anti-militarist\nparty.  But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be\npermanent on this globe, unless the states pacifically organized\npreserve some of the old elements of army-discipline.  A permanently\nsuccessful peace-economy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy.  In the\nmore or less socialistic future towards which mankind seems drifting we\nmust still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which\nanswer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe.  We\nmust make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which\nthe military mind so faithfully clings.  Martial virtues must be the\nenduring cement; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of\nprivate interest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon\nwhich states are built--unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions\nagainst commonwealths fit only for contempt, and liable to invite\nattack whenever a centre of crystallization for military-minded\nenterprise gets formed anywhere in their neighborhood.\n\nThe war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that the\nmartial virtues, although originally gained by the race through war,\nare absolute and permanent human goods.  Patriotic pride and ambition\nin their military form are, after all, only specifications of a more\ngeneral competitive passion.  They are its first form, but that is no\nreason for supposing them to be its last form.  Men now are proud of\nbelonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down\ntheir persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off\nsubjection.  But who can be sure that _other aspects of one's country_\nmay not, with time and education and suggestion enough, come to be\nregarded with similarly effective feelings of pride and shame?  Why\nshould men not some day feel that it is worth a blood-tax to belong to\na collectivity superior in _any_ ideal respect?  Why should they not\nblush with indignant shame if the community that owns them is vile in\nany way whatsoever?  Individuals, daily more numerous, now feel this\ncivic passion.  It is only a question of blowing on the spark till the\nwhole population gets incandescent, and on the ruins of the old morals\nof military honor, a stable system of morals of civic honor builds\nitself up.  What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the\nindividual as in a vise.  The war-function has grasped us so far; but\nconstructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose\non the individual a hardly lighter burden.\n\nLet me illustrate my idea more concretely.  There is nothing to make\none indignant in the mere fact that life is hard, that men should toil\nand suffer pain.  The planetary conditions once for all are such, and\nwe can stand it.  But that so many men, by mere accidents of birth and\nopportunity, should have a life of _nothing else_ but toil and pain and\nhardness and inferiority imposed upon them, should have no vacation,\nwhile others natively no more deserving never get any taste of this\ncampaigning life at all,--_this_ is capable of arousing indignation in\nreflective minds.  It may end by seeming shameful to all of us that\nsome of us have nothing but campaigning, and others nothing but unmanly\nease.  If now--and this is my idea--there were, instead of military\nconscription a conscription of the whole youthful population to form\nfor a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against\n_Nature_, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other\ngoods to the commonwealth would follow.  The military ideals of\nhardihood and discipline would be wrought into the growing fibre of the\npeople; no one would remain blind as the luxurious classes now are\nblind, to man's relations to the globe he lives on, and to the\npermanently sour and hard foundations of his higher life.  To coal and\niron mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to\ndishwashing, clothes-washing, and window-washing, to road-building and\ntunnel-making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames of\nskyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, according to their\nchoice, to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back\ninto society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas.  They would\nhave paid  their blood-tax, done their own part in the immemorial human\nwarfare against nature; they would tread the earth more proudly, the\nwomen would value them more highly, they would be better fathers and\nteachers of the following generation.\n\nSuch a conscription, with the state of public opinion that would have\nrequired it, and the many moral fruits it would bear, would preserve in\nthe midst of a pacific civilization the manly virtues which the\nmilitary party is so afraid of seeing disappear in peace.  We should\nget toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal\ncruelty as possible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is\ntemporary, and threatens not, as now, to degrade the whole remainder of\none's life.  I spoke of the \"moral equivalent\" of war.  So far, war has\nbeen the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an\nequivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its\nway.  But I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames\nof social man, once developed to a certain intensity, are capable of\norganizing such a moral equivalent as I have sketched, or some other\njust as effective for preserving manliness of type.  It is but a\nquestion of time, of skilful propagandism, and of opinion-making men\nseizing historic opportunities.\n\nThe martial type of character can be bred without war.  Strenuous honor\nand disinterestedness abound elsewhere.  Priests and medical men are in\na fashion educated to it and we should all feel some degree of it\nimperative if we were conscious of our work as an obligatory service to\nthe state.  We should be owned, as soldiers are by the army, and our\npride would rise accordingly.  We could be poor, then, without\nhumiliation, as army officers now are.  The only thing needed\nhenceforward is to inflame the civic temper as past history has\ninflamed the military temper.  H. G. Wells, as usual, sees the centre\nof the situation.  \"In many ways,\" he says, \"military organization is\nthe most peaceful of activities.  When the contemporary man steps from\nthe street, of clamorous insincere advertisement, push, adulteration,\nunderselling and intermittent employment into the barrack-yard, he\nsteps on to a higher social plane, into an atmosphere of service and\ncooperation and of infinitely more honorable emulations.  Here at least\nmen are not flung out of employment to degenerate because there is no\nimmediate work for them to do.  They are fed and drilled and trained\nfor better services.  Here at least a man is supposed to win promotion\nby self-forgetfulness and not by self-seeking.  And beside the feeble\nand irregular endowment of research by commercialism, its little\nshort-sighted snatches at profit by innovation and scientific economy,\nsee how remarkable is the steady and rapid development of method and\nappliances in naval and military affairs!  Nothing is more striking\nthan to compare the progress of civil conveniences which has been left\nalmost entirely to the trader, to the progress in military apparatus\nduring the last few decades.  The house-appliances of to-day for\nexample, are little better than they were fifty years ago.  A house of\nto-day is still almost as ill-ventilated, badly heated by wasteful\nfires, clumsily arranged and furnished as the house of 1858.  Houses a\ncouple of hundred years old are still satisfactory places of residence,\nso little have our standards risen.  But the rifle or battleship of\nfifty years ago was beyond all comparison inferior to those we possess;\nin power, in speed, in convenience alike.  No one has a use now for\nsuch superannuated things.\" [3]\n\nWells adds[4] that he thinks that the conceptions of order and\ndiscipline, the tradition of service and devotion, of physical fitness,\nunstinted exertion, and universal responsibility, which universal\nmilitary duty is now teaching European nations, will remain a permanent\nacquisition, when the last ammunition has been used in the fireworks\nthat celebrate the final peace.  I believe as he does.  It would be\nsimply preposterous if the only force that could work ideals of honor\nand standards of efficiency into English or American natures should be\nthe fear of being killed by the Germans or the Japanese.  Great indeed\nis Fear; but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to\nmake us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher\nranges of men's spiritual energy.  The amount of alteration in public\nopinion which my utopia postulates is vastly less than the difference\nbetween the mentality of those black warriors who pursued Stanley's\nparty on the Congo with their cannibal war-cry of \"Meat!  Meat!\" and\nthat of the \"general-staff\" of any civilized nation.  History has seen\nthe latter interval bridged over: the former one can be bridged over\nmuch more easily.\n\n\n\n[1] Written for and first published by the Association for\nInternational Conciliation (Leaflet No. 27) and also published in\n_McClure's Magazine_, August, 1910, and _The Popular Science Monthly_,\nOctober, 1910.\n\n[2] \"Justice and Liberty,\" N. Y., 1909.\n\n[3] \"First and Last Things,\" 1908, p. 215.\n\n[4] \"First and Last Things,\" 1908, p. 226.\n\n\n\n\nXII\n\nREMARKS AT THE PEACE BANQUET[1]\n\nI am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher\ncan be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.\nIn ancient times philosophers defined man as the rational animal; and\nphilosophers since then have always found much more to say about the\nrational than about the animal part of the definition.  But looked at\ncandidly, reason bears about the same proportion to the rest of human\nnature that we in this hall bear to the rest of America, Europe, Asia,\nAfrica and Polynesia.  Reason is one of the very feeblest of nature's\nforces, if you take it at only one spot and moment.  It is only in the\nvery long run that its effects become perceptible.  Reason assumes to\nsettle things by weighing them against each other without prejudice,\npartiality or excitement; but what affairs in the concrete are settled\nby is, and always will be, just prejudices, partialities, cupidities\nand excitements.  Appealing to reason as we do, we are in a sort of\nforlorn-hope situation, like a small sandbank in the midst of a hungry\nsea ready to wash it out of existence.  But sand-banks grow when the\nconditions favor; and weak as reason is, it has this unique advantage\nover its antagonists that its activity never lets up and that it\npresses always in one direction, while men's prejudices vary, their\npassions ebb and flow, and their excitements are intermittent.  Our\nsand-bank, I absolutely believe, is bound to grow.  Bit by bit it will\nget dyked and breakwatered.  But sitting as we do in this warm room,\nwith music and lights and smiling faces, it is easy to get too sanguine\nabout our task; and since I am called to speak, I feel as if it might\nnot be out of place to say a word about the strength.\n\nOur permanent enemy is the rooted bellicosity of human nature.  Man,\nbiologically considered, and whatever else he may be into the bargain,\nis the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one\nthat preys systematically on his own species.  We are once for all\nadapted to the military status.  A millennium of peace would not breed\nthe fighting disposition out of our bone and marrow, and a function so\ningrained and vital will never consent to die without resistance, and\nwill always find impassioned apologists and idealizers.\n\nNot only men born to be soldiers, but non-combatants by trade and\nnature, historians in their studies, and clergymen in their pulpits,\nhave been war's idealizers.  They have talked of war as of God's court\nof justice.  And, indeed, if we think how many things beside the\nfrontiers of states the wars of history have decided, we must feel some\nrespectful awe, in spite of all the horrors.  Our actual civilization,\ngood and bad alike, has had past wars for its determining condition.\nGreat mindedness among the tribes of men has always meant the will\nto prevail, and all the more, so if prevailing included slaughtering\nand being slaughtered.  Rome, Paris, England, Brandenburg,\nPiedmont,--possibly soon Japan,--along with their arms have their\ntraits of character and habits of thought prevail among their conquered\nneighbors.  The blessings we actually enjoy, such as they are, have\ngrown up in the shadow of the wars of antiquity.  The various ideals\nwere backed by fighting wills, and when neither would give way, the God\nof battles had to be the arbiter.  A shallow view this, truly; for who\ncan say what might have prevailed if man had ever been a reasoning and\nnot a fighting animal?  Like dead men, dead causes tell no tales, and\nthe ideals that went under in the past, along with all the tribes that\nrepresented them, find to-day no recorder, no explainer, no defender.\n\nBut apart from theoretic defenders, and apart from every soldierly\nindividual straining at the leash and clamoring for opportunity, war\nhas an omnipotent support in the form of our imagination.  Man lives\n_by_ habits indeed, but what he lives _for_ is thrills and excitements.\nThe only relief from habit's tediousness is periodical excitement.\nFrom time immemorial wars have been, especially for non-combatants, the\nsupremely thrilling excitement.  Heavy and dragging at its end, at its\noutset every war means an explosion of imaginative energy.  The dams of\nroutine burst, and boundless prospects open.  The remotest spectators\nshare the fascination of that awful struggle now in process on the\nconfines of the world.  There is not a man in this room, I suppose, who\ndoesn't buy both an evening and a morning paper, and first of all\npounce on the war column.\n\nA deadly listlessness would come over most men's imagination of the\nfuture if they could seriously be brought to believe that never again\nin _soecula soeculorum_ would a war trouble human history.  In such a\nstagnant summer afternoon of a world, where would be the zest or\ninterest?\n\nThis is the constitution of human nature which we have to work against.\nThe plain truth is that people _want_ war.  They want it anyhow; for\nitself, and apart from each and every possible consequence.  It is the\nfinal bouquet of life's fireworks.  The born soldiers want it hot and\nactual.  The non-combatants want it in the background, and always as an\nopen possibility, to feed imagination on and keep excitement going.\nIts clerical and historical defenders fool themselves when they talk as\nthey do about it.  What moves them is not the blessings it has won for\nus, but a vague religious exaltation.  War is human nature at its\nuttermost.  We are here to do our uttermost.  It is a sacrament.\nSociety would rot without the mystical blood-payment.\n\nWe do ill, I think, therefore, to talk much of universal peace or of a\ngeneral disarmament.  We must go in for preventive medicine, not for\nradical cure.  We must cheat our foe, circumvent him in detail, not try\nto change his nature.  In one respect war is like love, though in no\nother.  Both leave us intervals of rest; and in the intervals life goes\non perfectly well without them, though the imagination still dallies\nwith their possibility.  Equally insane when once aroused and under\nheadway, whether they shall be aroused or not depends on accidental\ncircumstances.  How are old maids and old bachelors made?  Not by\ndeliberate vows of celibacy, but by sliding on from year to year with\nno sufficient matrimonial provocation.  So of the nations with their\nwars.  Let the general possibility of war be left open, in Heaven's\nname, for the imagination to dally with.  Let the soldiers dream of\nkilling, as the old maids dream of marrying.\n\nBut organize in every conceivable way the practical machinery for\nmaking each successive chance of war abortive.  Put peace men in power;\neducate the editors and statesmen to responsibility.  How beautifully\ndid their trained responsibility in England make the Venezuela incident\nabortive!  Seize every pretext, however small, for arbitration methods,\nand multiply the precedents; foster rival excitements, and invent new\noutlets for heroic energy; and from one generation to another the\nchances are that irritation will grow less acute and states of strain\nless dangerous among the nations.  Armies and navies will continue, of\ncourse, and fire the minds of populations with their potentialities of\ngreatness.  But their officers will find that somehow or other, with no\ndeliberate intention on any one's part, each successive \"incident\" has\nmanaged to evaporate and to lead nowhere, and that the thought of what\nmight have been remains their only consolation.\n\nThe last weak runnings of the war spirit will be \"punitive\nexpeditions.\"  A country that turns its arms only against uncivilized\nfoes is, I think, wrongly taunted as degenerate.  Of course it has\nceased to be heroic in the old grand style.  But I verily believe that\nthis is because it now sees something better.  It has a conscience.  It\nwill still perpetrate peccadillos.  But it is afraid, afraid in the\ngood sense, to engage in absolute crimes against civilization.\n\n\n\n[1] Published in the Official Report of the Universal Peace Congress,\nheld in Boston in 1904, and in the _Atlantic Monthly_, December, 1904.\n\n\n\n\nXIII\n\nTHE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED[1]\n\nOf what use is a college training?  We who have had it seldom hear the\nquestion raised; we might be a little nonplussed to answer it offhand.\nA certain amount of meditation has brought me to this as the pithiest\nreply which I myself can give: The best claim that a college education\ncan possibly make on your respect, the best thing it can aspire to\naccomplish for you, is this: that it should _help you to know a good\nman when you see him_.  This is as true of women's as of men's\ncolleges; but that it is neither a joke nor a one-sided abstraction I\nshall now endeavor to show.\n\nWhat talk do we commonly hear about the contrast between college\neducation and the education which business or technical or professional\nschools confer?  The college education is called higher because it is\nsupposed to be so general and so disinterested.  At the \"schools\" you\nget a relatively narrow practical skill, you are told, whereas the\n\"colleges\" give you the more liberal culture, the broader outlook, the\nhistorical perspective, the philosophic atmosphere, or something which\nphrases of that sort try to express.  You are made into an efficient\ninstrument for doing a definite thing, you hear, at the schools; but,\napart from that, you may remain a crude and smoky kind of petroleum,\nincapable of spreading light.  The universities and colleges, on the\nother hand, although they may leave you less efficient for this or that\npractical task, suffuse your whole mentality with something more\nimportant than skill.  They redeem you, make you well-bred; they make\n\"good company\" of you mentally.  If they find you with a naturally\nboorish or caddish mind, they cannot leave you so, as a technical\nschool may leave you.  This, at least, is pretended; this is what we\nhear among college-trained people when they compare their education\nwith every other sort.  Now, exactly how much does this signify?\n\nIt is certain, to begin with, that the narrowest trade or professional\ntraining does something more for a man than to make a skilful practical\ntool of him--it makes him also a judge of other men's skill.  Whether\nhis trade be pleading at the bar or surgery or plastering or plumbing,\nit develops a critical sense in him for that sort of occupation.  He\nunderstands the difference between second-rate and first-rate work in\nhis whole branch of industry; he gets to know a good job in his own\nline as soon as he sees it; and getting to know this in his own line,\nhe gets a faint sense of what good work may mean anyhow, that may, if\ncircumstances favor, spread into his judgments elsewhere.  Sound work,\nclean work, finished work: feeble work, slack work, sham work--these\nwords express an identical contrast in many different departments of\nactivity.  In so far forth, then, even the humblest manual trade may\nbeget in one a certain small degree of power to judge of good work\ngenerally.\n\nNow, what is supposed to be the line of us who have the higher college\ntraining?  Is there any broader line--since our education claims\nprimarily not to be \"narrow\"--in which we also are made good judges\nbetween what is first-rate and what is second-rate only?  What is\nespecially taught in the colleges has long been known by the name of\nthe \"humanities,\" and these are often identified with Greek and Latin.\nBut it is only as literatures, not as languages, that Greek and Latin\nhave any general humanity-value; so that in a broad sense the\nhumanities mean literature primarily, and in a still broader sense the\nstudy of masterpieces in almost any field of human endeavor.\nLiterature keeps the primacy; for it not only _consists_ of\nmasterpieces, but is largely _about_ masterpieces, being little more\nthan an appreciative chronicle of human master-strokes, so far as it\ntakes the form of criticism and history.  You can give humanistic value\nto almost anything by teaching it historically.  Geology, economics,\nmechanics, are humanities when taught with reference to the successive\nachievements of the geniuses to which these sciences owe their being.\nNot taught thus literature remains grammar, art a catalogue, history a\nlist of dates, and natural science a sheet of formulas and weights and\nmeasures.\n\nThe sifting of human creations!--nothing less than this is what we\nought to mean by the humanities.  Essentially this means biography;\nwhat our colleges should teach is, therefore, biographical history,\nthat not of politics merely, but of anything and everything so far as\nhuman efforts and conquests are factors that have played their part.\nStudying in this way, we learn what types of activity have stood the\ntest of time; we acquire standards of the excellent and durable.  All\nour arts and sciences and institutions are but so many quests of\nperfection on the part of men; and when we see how diverse the types of\nexcellence may be, how various the tests, how flexible the adaptations,\nwe gain a richer sense of what the terms \"better\" and \"worse\" may\nsignify in general.  Our critical sensibilities grow both more acute\nand less fanatical.  We sympathize with men's mistakes even in the act\nof penetrating them; we feel the pathos of lost causes and misguided\nepochs even while we applaud what overcame them.\n\nSuch words are vague and such ideas are inadequate, but their meaning\nis unmistakable.  What the colleges--teaching humanities by examples\nwhich may be special, but which must be typical and pregnant--should at\nleast try to give us, is a general sense of what, under various\ndisguises, _superiority_ has always signified and may still signify.\nThe feeling for a good human job anywhere, the admiration of the really\nadmirable, the disesteem of what is cheap and trashy and\nimpermanent,--this is what we call the critical sense, the sense for\nideal values.  It is the better part of what men know as wisdom.  Some\nof us are wise in this way naturally and by genius; some of us never\nbecome so.  But to have spent one's youth at college, in contact with\nthe choice and rare and precious, and yet still to be a blind prig or\nvulgarian, unable to scent out human excellence or to divine it amid\nits accidents, to know it only when ticketed and labelled and forced on\nus by others, this indeed should be accounted the very calamity and\nshipwreck of a higher education.\n\nThe sense for human superiority ought, then, to be considered our line,\nas boring subways is the engineer's line and the surgeon's is\nappendicitis.  Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish\nfor the better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities, and a\ndisgust for cheap jacks.  We ought to smell, as it were, the difference\nof quality in men and their proposals when we enter the world of\naffairs about us.  Expertness in this might well atone for some of our\nawkwardness at accounts, for some of our ignorance of dynamos.  The\nbest claim we can make for the higher education, the best single phrase\nin which we can tell what it ought to do for us, is, then, exactly what\nI said: it should enable us to _know a good man when we see him_.\n\nThat the phrase is anything but an empty epigram follows from the fact\nthat if you ask in what line it is most important that a democracy like\nours should have its sons and daughters skilful, you see that it is\nthis line more than any other.  \"The people in their wisdom\"--this is\nthe kind of wisdom most needed by the people.  Democracy is on its\ntrial, and no one knows how it will stand the ordeal.  Abounding about\nus are pessimistic prophets.  Fickleness and violence used to be, but\nare no longer, the vices which they charge to democracy.  What its\ncritics now affirm is that its preferences are inveterately for the\ninferior.  So it was in the beginning, they say, and so it will be\nworld without end.  Vulgarity enthroned and institutionalized, elbowing\neverything superior from the highway, this, they tell us, is our\nirremediable destiny; and the picture-papers of the European continent\nare already drawing Uncle Sam with the hog instead of the eagle for his\nheraldic emblem.  The privileged aristocracies of the foretime, with\nall their iniquities, did at least preserve some taste for higher human\nquality, and honor certain forms of refinement by their enduring\ntraditions.  But when democracy is sovereign, its doubters say,\nnobility will form a sort of invisible church, and sincerity and\nrefinement, stripped of honor, precedence, and favor, will have to\nvegetate on sufferance in private corners.  They will have no general\ninfluence.  They will be harmless eccentricities.\n\nNow, who can be absolutely certain that this may not be the career of\ndemocracy?  Nothing future is quite secure; states enough have inwardly\nrotted; and democracy as a whole may undergo self-poisoning.  But, on\nthe other hand, democracy is a kind of religion, and we are bound not\nto admit its failure.  Faiths and Utopias are the noblest exercise of\nhuman reason, and no one with a spark of reason in him will sit down\nfatalistically before the croaker's picture.  The best of us are filled\nwith the contrary vision of a democracy stumbling through every error\ntill its institutions glow with justice and its customs shine with\nbeauty.  Our better men _shall_ show the way and we _shall_ follow\nthem; so we are brought round again to the mission of the higher\neducation in helping us to know the better kind of man whenever we see\nhim.\n\nThe notion that a people can run itself and its affairs anonymously is\nnow well known to be the silliest of absurdities.  Mankind does nothing\nsave through initiatives on the part of inventors, great or small, and\nimitation by the rest of us--these are the sole factors active in human\nprogress.  Individuals of genius show the way, and set the patterns,\nwhich common people then adopt and follow.  _The rivalry of the\npatterns is the history of the world_.  Our democratic problem thus is\nstatable in ultra-simple terms: Who are the kind of men from whom our\nmajorities shall take their cue?  Whom shall they treat as rightful\nleaders?  We and our leaders are the _x_ and the _y_ of the equation\nhere; all other historic circumstances, be they economical, political,\nor intellectual, are only the background of occasion on which the\nliving drama works itself out between us.\n\nIn this very simple way does the value of our educated class define\nitself: we more than others should be able to divine the worthier and\nbetter leaders.  The terms here are monstrously simplified, of course,\nbut such a bird's-eye view lets us immediately take our bearings.  In\nour democracy, where everything else is so shifting, we alumni and\nalumnae of the colleges are the only permanent presence that\ncorresponds to the aristocracy in older countries.  We have continuous\ntraditions, as they have; our motto, too, is _noblesse oblige_; and,\nunlike them, we stand for ideal interests solely, for we have no\ncorporate selfishness and wield no powers of corruption.  We ought to\nhave our own class-consciousness.  \"_Les Intellectuels!_\"  What prouder\nclub-name could there be than this one, used ironically by the party of\n\"redblood,\" the party of every stupid prejudice and passion, during the\nanti-Dreyfus craze, to satirize the men in France who still retained\nsome critical sense and judgment!  Critical sense, it has to be\nconfessed, is not an exciting term, hardly a banner to carry in\nprocessions.  Affections for old habit, currents of self-interest, and\ngales of passion are the forces that keep the human ship moving; and\nthe pressure of the judicious pilot's hand upon the tiller is a\nrelatively insignificant energy.  But the affections, passions, and\ninterests are shifting, successive, and distraught; they blow in\nalternation while the pilot's hand is steadfast.  He knows the compass,\nand, with all the leeways he is obliged to tack toward, he always makes\nsome headway.  A small force, if it never lets up, will accumulate\neffects more considerable than those of much greater forces if these\nwork inconsistently.  The ceaseless whisper of the more permanent\nideals, the steady tug of truth and justice, give them but time, _must_\nwarp the world in their direction.\n\nThis bird's-eye view of the general steering function of the\ncollege-bred amid the driftings of democracy ought to help us to a\nwider vision of what our colleges themselves should aim at.  If we are\nto be the yeast-cake for democracy's dough, if we are to make it rise\nwith culture's preferences, we must see to it that culture spreads\nbroad sails.  We must shake the old double reefs out of the canvas into\nthe wind and sunshine, and let in every modern subject, sure that any\nsubject will prove humanistic, if its setting be kept only wide enough.\n\nStevenson says somewhere to his reader: \"You think you are just making\nthis bargain, but you are really laying down a link in the policy of\nmankind.\"  Well, your technical school should enable you to make your\nbargain splendidly; but your college should show you just the place of\nthat kind of bargain--a pretty poor place, possibly--in the whole\npolicy of mankind.  That is the kind of liberal outlook, of\nperspective, of atmosphere, which should surround every subject as a\ncollege deals with it.\n\nWe of the colleges must eradicate a curious notion which numbers of\ngood people have about such ancient seats of learning as Harvard.  To\nmany ignorant outsiders, the name suggests little more than a kind of\nsterilized conceit and incapacity for being pleased.  In Edith Wyatt's\nexquisite book of Chicago sketches called \"Every One his Own Way\" there\nis a couple who stand for culture in the sense of exclusiveness,\nRichard Elliot and his feminine counterpart--feeble caricatures of\nmankind, unable to know any good thing when they see it, incapable of\nenjoyment unless a printed label gives them leave.  Possibly this type\nof culture may exist near Cambridge and Boston.  There may be specimens\nthere, for priggishness is just like painter's colic or any other\ntrade-disease.  But every good college makes its students immune\nagainst this malady, of which the microbe haunts the neighborhood of\nprinted pages.  It does so by its general tone being too hearty for the\nmicrobe's life.  Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not\nby dislikes and disdains; under all misleading wrappings it pounces\nunerringly upon the human core.  If a college, through the inferior\nhuman influences that have grown regnant there, fails to catch the\nrobuster tone, its failure is colossal, for its social function stops:\ndemocracy gives it a wide berth, turns toward it a deaf ear.\n\n\"Tone,\" to be sure, is a terribly vague word to use, but there is no\nother, and this whole meditation is over questions of tone.  By their\ntone are all things human either lost or saved.  If democracy is to be\nsaved it must catch the higher, healthier tone.  If we are to impress\nit with our preferences, we ourselves must use the proper tone, which\nwe, in turn, must have caught from our own teachers.  It all reverts in\nthe end to the action of innumerable imitative individuals upon each\nother and to the question of whose tone has the highest spreading\npower.  As a class, we college graduates should look to it that _ours_\nhas spreading power.  It ought to have the highest spreading power.\n\nIn our essential function of indicating the better men, we now have\nformidable competitors outside.  _McClure's Magazine_, the _American\nMagazine_, _Collier's Weekly_, and, in its fashion, the _World's Work_,\nconstitute together a real popular university along this very line.  It\nwould be a pity if any future historian were to have to write words\nlike these: \"By the middle of the twentieth century the higher\ninstitutions of learning had lost all influence over public opinion in\nthe United States.  But the mission of raising the tone of democracy,\nwhich they had proved themselves so lamentably unfitted to exert, was\nassumed with rare enthusiasm and prosecuted with extraordinary skill\nand success by a new educational power; and for the clarification of\ntheir human sympathies and elevation of their human preferences, the\npeople at large acquired the habit of resorting exclusively to the\nguidance of certain private literary adventures, commonly designated in\nthe market by the affectionate name of ten-cent magazines.\"\n\nMust not we of the colleges see to it that no historian shall ever say\nanything like this?  Vague as the phrase of knowing a good man when you\nsee him may be, diffuse and indefinite as one must leave its\napplication, is there any other formula that describes so well the\nresult at which our institutions ought to aim?  If they do that, they\ndo the best thing conceivable.  If they fail to do it, they fail in\nvery deed.  It surely is a fine synthetic formula.  If our faculties\nand graduates could once collectively come to realize it as the great\nunderlying purpose toward which they have always been more or less\nobscurely groping, a great clearness would be shed over many of their\nproblems; and, as for their influence in the midst of our social\nsystem, it would embark upon a new career of strength.\n\n\n\n[1] Address delivered at a meeting of the Association of American\nAlumnae at Radcliffe College, November 7, 1907, and first published in\n_McClure's Magazine_ for February, 1908.\n\n\n\n\nXIV\n\nTHE UNIVERSITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL\n\n\nI. THE PH.D. OCTOPUS[1]\n\nSome years ago we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant\nstudent of Philosophy, who, after leaving us and supporting himself by\nliterary labor for three years, received an appointment to teach\nEnglish Literature at a sister-institution of learning.  The governors\nof this institution, however, had no sooner communicated the\nappointment than they made the awful discovery that they had enrolled\nupon their staff a person who was unprovided with the Ph.D. degree.\nThe man in question had been satisfied to work at Philosophy for her\nown sweet (or bitter) sake, and had disdained to consider that an\nacademic bauble should be his reward.\n\nHis appointment had thus been made under a misunderstanding.  He was\nnot the proper man; and there was nothing to do but to inform him of\nthe fact.  It was notified to him by his new President that his\nappointment must be revoked, or that a Harvard doctor's degree must\nforthwith be procured.\n\nAlthough it was already the spring of the year, our Subject, being a\nman of spirit, took up the challenge, turned his back upon literature\n(which in view of his approaching duties might have seemed his more\nurgent concern) and spent the weeks that were left him, in writing a\nmetaphysical thesis and grinding his psychology, logic and history of\nphilosophy up again, so as to pass our formidable ordeals.\n\nWhen the thesis came to be read by our committee, we could not pass it.\nBrilliancy and originality by themselves won't save a thesis for the\ndoctorate; it must also exhibit a heavy technical apparatus of\nlearning; and this our candidate had neglected to bring to bear.  So,\ntelling him that he was temporarily rejected, we advised him to pad out\nthe thesis properly, and return with it next year, at the same time\ninforming his new President that this signified nothing as to his\nmerits, that he was of ultra Ph.D. quality, and one of the strongest\nmen with whom we had ever had to deal.\n\nTo our surprise we were given to understand in reply that the quality\n_per se_ of the man signified nothing in this connection, and that\nthree magical letters were the thing seriously required.  The College\nhad always gloried in a list of faculty members who bore the doctor's\ntitle, and to make a gap in the galaxy, and admit a common fox without\na tail, would be a degradation impossible to be thought of.  We wrote\nagain, pointing out that a Ph.D. in philosophy would prove little\nanyhow as to one's ability to teach literature; we sent separate\nletters in which we outdid each other in eulogy of our candidate's\npowers, for indeed they were great; and at last, _mirabile dictu_, our\neloquence prevailed.  He was allowed to retain his appointment\nprovisionally, on condition that one year later at the farthest his\nmiserably naked name should be prolonged by the sacred appendage the\nlack of which had given so much trouble to all concerned.\n\nAccordingly he came up here the following spring with an adequate\nthesis (known since in print as a most brilliant contribution to\nmetaphysics), passed a first-rate examination, wiped out the stain, and\nbrought his college into proper relations with the world again.\nWhether his teaching, during that first year, of English Literature was\nmade any the better by the impending examination in a different\nsubject, is a question which I will not try to solve.\n\nI have related this incident at such length because it is so\ncharacteristic of American academic conditions at the present day.\nGraduate schools still are something of a novelty, and higher diplomas\nsomething of a rarity.  The latter, therefore, carry a vague sense of\npreciousness and honor, and have a particularly \"up-to-date\"\nappearance, and it is no wonder if smaller institutions, unable to\nattract professors already eminent, and forced usually to recruit their\nfaculties from the relatively young, should hope to compensate for the\nobscurity of the names of their officers of instruction by the\nabundance of decorative titles by which those names are followed on the\npages of the catalogues where they appear.  The dazzled reader of the\nlist, the parent or student, says to himself, \"This must be a terribly\ndistinguished crowd,--their titles shine like the stars in the\nfirmament; Ph.D.'s, S.D.'s, and Litt.D.'s, bespangle the page as if\nthey were sprinkled over it from a pepper caster.\"\n\nHuman nature is once for all so childish that every reality becomes a\nsham somewhere, and in the minds of Presidents and Trustees the Ph.D.\ndegree is in point of fact already looked upon as a mere advertising\nresource, a manner of throwing dust in the Public's eyes.  \"No\ninstructor who is not a Doctor\" has become a maxim in the smaller\ninstitutions which represent demand; and in each of the larger ones\nwhich represent supply, the same belief in decorated scholarship\nexpresses itself in two antagonistic passions, one for multiplying as\nmuch as possible the annual output of doctors, the other for raising\nthe standard of difficulty in passing, so that the Ph.D. of the special\ninstitution shall carry a higher blaze of distinction than it does\nelsewhere.  Thus we at Harvard are proud of the number of candidates\nwhom we reject, and of the inability of men who are not _distingues_ in\nintellect to pass our tests.\n\nAmerica is thus as a nation rapidly drifting towards a state of things\nin which no man of science or letters will be accounted respectable\nunless some kind of badge or diploma is stamped upon him, and in which\nbare personality will be a mark of outcast estate.  It seems to me high\ntime to rouse ourselves to consciousness, and to cast a critical eye\nupon this decidedly grotesque tendency.  Other nations suffer terribly\nfrom the Mandarin disease.  Are we doomed to suffer like the rest?\n\nOur higher degrees were instituted for the laudable purpose of\nstimulating scholarship, especially in the form of \"original research.\"\nExperience has proved that great as the love of truth may be among men,\nit can be made still greater by adventitious rewards.  The winning of a\ndiploma certifying mastery and marking a barrier successfully passed,\nacts as a challenge to the ambitious; and if the diploma will help to\ngain bread-winning positions also, its power as a stimulus to work is\ntremendously increased.  So far, we are on innocent ground; it is well\nfor a country to have research in abundance, and our graduate schools\ndo but apply a normal psychological spur.  But the institutionizing on\na large scale of any natural combination of need and motive always\ntends to run into technicality and to develop a tyrannical Machine with\nunforeseen powers of exclusion and corruption.  Observation of the\nworkings of our Harvard system for twenty years past has brought some\nof these drawbacks home to my consciousness, and I should like to call\nthe attention of my readers to this disadvantageous aspect of the\npicture, and to make a couple of remedial suggestions, if I may.\n\nIn the first place, it would seem that to stimulate study, and to\nincrease the _gelehrtes Publikum_, the class of highly educated men in\nour country, is the only positive good, and consequently the sole\ndirect end at which our graduate schools, with their diploma-giving\npowers, should aim.  If other results have developed they should be\ndeemed secondary incidents, and if not desirable in themselves, they\nshould be carefully guarded against.\n\nTo interfere with the free development of talent, to obstruct the\nnatural play of supply and demand in the teaching profession, to foster\nacademic snobbery by the prestige of certain privileged institutions,\nto transfer accredited value from essential manhood to an outward\nbadge, to blight hopes and promote invidious sentiments, to divert the\nattention of aspiring youth from direct dealings with truth to the\npassing of examinations,--such consequences, if they exist, ought\nsurely to be regarded as drawbacks to the system, and an enlightened\npublic consciousness ought to be keenly alive to the importance of\nreducing their amount.  Candidates themselves do seem to be keenly\nconscious of some of these evils, but outside of their ranks or in the\ngeneral public no such consciousness, so far as I can see, exists; or\nif it does exist, it fails to express itself aloud.  Schools, Colleges,\nand Universities, appear enthusiastic over the entire system, just as\nit stands, and unanimously applaud all its developments.\n\nI beg the reader to consider some of the secondary evils which I have\nenumerated.  First of all, is not our growing tendency to appoint no\ninstructors who are not also doctors an instance of pure sham?  Will\nany one pretend for a moment that the doctor's degree is a guarantee\nthat its possessor will be successful as a teacher?  Notoriously his\nmoral, social and personal characteristics may utterly disqualify him\nfor success in the class-room; and of these characteristics his\ndoctor's examination is unable to take any account whatever.  Certain\nbare human beings will always be better candidates for a given place\nthan all the doctor-applicants on hand; and to exclude the former by a\nrigid rule, and in the end to have to sift the latter by private\ninquiry into their personal peculiarities among those who know them,\njust as if they were not doctors at all, is to stultify one's own\nprocedure.  You may say that at least you guard against ignorance of\nthe subject by considering only the candidates who are doctors; but how\nthen about making doctors in one subject teach a different subject?\nThis happened in the instance by which I introduced this article, and\nit happens daily and hourly in all our colleges?  The truth is that the\nDoctor-Monopoly in teaching, which is becoming so rooted an American\ncustom, can show no serious grounds whatsoever for itself in reason.\nAs it actually prevails and grows in vogue among us, it is due to\nchildish motives exclusively.  In reality it is but a sham, a bauble, a\ndodge, whereby to decorate the catalogues of schools and colleges.\n\nNext, let us turn from the general promotion of a spirit of academic\nsnobbery to the particular damage done to individuals by the system.\n\nThere are plenty of individuals so well endowed by nature that they\npass with ease all the ordeals with which life confronts them.  Such\npersons are born for professional success.  Examinations have no\nterrors for them, and interfere in no way with their spiritual or\nworldly interests.  There are others, not so gifted who nevertheless\nrise to the challenge, get a stimulus from the difficulty, and become\ndoctors, not without some baleful nervous wear and tear and retardation\nof their purely inner life, but on the whole successfully, and with\nadvantage.  These two classes form the natural Ph.D.'s for whom the\ndegree is legitimately instituted.  To be sure, the degree is of no\nconsequence one way or the other for the first sort of man, for in him\nthe personal worth obviously outshines the title.  To the second set of\npersons, however, the doctor ordeal may contribute a touch of energy\nand solidity of scholarship which otherwise they might have lacked, and\nwere our candidates all drawn from these classes, no oppression would\nresult from the institution.\n\nBut there is a third class of persons who are genuinely, and in the\nmost pathetic sense, the institution's victims.  For this type of\ncharacter the academic life may become, after a certain point, a\nvirulent poison.  Men without marked originality or native force, but\nfond of truth and especially of books and study, ambitious of reward\nand recognition, poor often, and needing a degree to get a teaching\nposition, weak in the eyes of their examiners,--among these we find the\nveritable _chair a canon_ of the wars of learning, the unfit in the\nacademic struggle for existence.  There are individuals of this sort\nfor whom to pass one degree after another seems the limit of earthly\naspiration.  Your private advice does not discourage them.  They will\nfail, and go away to recuperate, and then present themselves for\nanother ordeal, and sometimes prolong the process into middle life.  Or\nelse, if they are less heroic morally they will accept the failure as a\nsentence of doom that they are not fit, and are broken-spirited men\nthereafter.\n\nWe of the university faculties are responsible for deliberately\ncreating this new class of American social failures, and heavy is the\nresponsibility.  We advertise our \"schools\" and send out our\ndegree-requirements, knowing well that aspirants of all sorts will be\nattracted, and at the same time we set a standard which intends to pass\nno man who has not native intellectual distinction.  We know that there\nis no test, however absurd, by which, if a title or decoration, a\npublic badge or mark, were to be won by it, some weakly suggestible or\nhauntable persons would not feel challenged, and remain unhappy if they\nwent without it.  We dangle our three magic letters before the eyes of\nthese predestined victims, and they swarm to us like moths to an\nelectric light.  They come at a time when failure can no longer be\nrepaired easily and when the wounds it leaves are permanent; and we say\ndeliberately that mere work faithfully performed, as they perform it,\nwill not by itself save them, they must in addition put in evidence the\none thing they have not got, namely this quality of intellectual\ndistinction.  Occasionally, out of sheer human pity, we ignore our high\nand mighty standard and pass them.  Usually, however, the standard, and\nnot the candidate, commands our fidelity.  The result is caprice,\nmajorities of one on the jury, and on the whole a confession that our\npretensions about the degree cannot be lived up to consistently.  Thus,\npartiality in the favored cases; in the unfavored, blood on our hands;\nand in both a bad conscience,--are the results of our administration.\n\nThe more widespread becomes the popular belief that our diplomas are\nindispensable hall-marks to show the sterling metal of their holders,\nthe more widespread these corruptions will become.  We ought to look to\nthe future carefully, for it takes generations for a national custom,\nonce rooted, to be grown away from.  All the European countries are\nseeking to diminish the check upon individual spontaneity which state\nexaminations with their tyrannous growth have brought in their train.\nWe have had to institute state examinations too; and it will perhaps be\nfortunate if some day hereafter our descendants, comparing machine with\nmachine, do not sigh with regret for old times and American freedom,\nand wish that the _regime_ of the dear old bosses might be reinstalled,\nwith plain human nature, the glad hand and the marble heart, liking and\ndisliking, and man-to-man relations grown possible again.  Meanwhile,\nwhatever evolution our state-examinations are destined to undergo, our\nuniversities at least should never cease to regard themselves as the\njealous custodians of personal and spiritual spontaneity.  They are\nindeed its only organized and recognized custodians in America to-day.\nThey ought to guard against contributing to the increase of officialism\nand snobbery and insincerity as against a pestilence; they ought to\nkeep truth and disinterested labor always in the foreground, treat\ndegrees as secondary incidents, and in season and out of season make it\nplain that what they live for is to help men's souls, and not to\ndecorate their persons with diplomas.\n\nThere seem to be three obvious ways in which the increasing hold of the\nPh.D. Octopus upon American life can be kept in check.\n\nThe first way lies with the universities.  They can lower their\nfantastic standards (which here at Harvard we are so proud of) and give\nthe doctorate as a matter of course, just as they give the bachelor's\ndegree, for a due amount of time spent in patient labor in a special\ndepartment of learning, whether the man be a brilliantly gifted\nindividual or not.  Surely native distinction needs no official stamp,\nand should disdain to ask for one.  On the other hand, faithful labor,\nhowever commonplace, and years devoted to a subject, always deserve to\nbe acknowledged and requited.\n\nThe second way lies with both the universities and colleges.  Let them\ngive up their unspeakably silly ambition to bespangle their lists of\nofficers with these doctorial titles.  Let them look more to substance\nand less to vanity and sham.\n\nThe third way lies with the individual student, and with his personal\nadvisers in the faculties.  Every man of native power, who might take a\nhigher degree, and refuses to do so, because examinations interfere\nwith the free following out of his more immediate intellectual aims,\ndeserves well of his country, and in a rightly organized community,\nwould not be made to suffer for his independence.  With many men the\npassing of these extraneous tests is a very grievous interference\nindeed.  Private letters of recommendation from their instructors,\nwhich in any event are ultimately needful, ought, in these cases,\ncompletely to offset the lack of the breadwinning degree; and\ninstructors ought to be ready to advise students against it upon\noccasion, and to pledge themselves to back them later personally, in\nthe market-struggle which they have to face.\n\nIt is indeed odd to see this love of titles--and such titles--growing\nup in a country or which the recognition of individuality and bare\nmanhood have so long been supposed to be the very soul.  The\nindependence of the State, in which most of our colleges stand,\nrelieves us of those more odious forms of academic politics which\ncontinental European countries present.  Anything like the elaborate\nuniversity machine of France, with its throttling influences upon\nindividuals is unknown here.  The spectacle of the \"Rath\" distinction\nin its innumerable spheres and grades, with which all Germany is\ncrawling to-day, is displeasing to American eyes; and displeasing also\nin some respects is the institution of knighthood in England, which,\naping as it does an aristocratic title, enables one's wife as well as\none's self so easily to dazzle the servants at the house of one's\nfriends.  But are we Americans ourselves destined after all to hunger\nafter similar vanities on an infinitely more contemptible scale?  And\nis individuality with us also going to count for nothing unless stamped\nand licensed and authenticated by some title-giving machine?  Let us\npray that our ancient national genius may long preserve vitality enough\nto guard us from a future so unmanly and so unbeautiful!\n\n\n\n[1] Published in the _Harvard Monthly_, March, 1903.\n\n\n\n\nII. THE TRUE HARVARD[1]\n\nWhen a man gets a decoration from a foreign institution, he may take it\nas an honor.  Coming as mine has come to-day, I prefer to take it for\nthat far more valuable thing, a token of personal good will from\nfriends.  Recognizing the good will and the friendliness, I am going to\nrespond to the chairman's call by speaking exactly as I feel.\n\nI am not an alumnus of the College.  I have not even a degree from the\nScientific School, in which I did some study forty years ago.  I have\nno right to vote for Overseers, and I have never felt until to-day as\nif I were a child of the house of Harvard in the fullest sense.\nHarvard is many things in one--a school, a forcing house for thought,\nand also a social club; and the club aspect is so strong, the family\ntie so close and subtle among our Bachelors of Arts that all of us here\nwho are in my plight, no matter how long we may have lived here, always\nfeel a little like outsiders on Commencement day.  We have no class to\nwalk with, and we often stay away from the procession.  It may be\nfoolish, but it is a fact.  I don't believe that my dear friends\nShaler, Hollis, Lanman, or Royce ever have felt quite as happy or as\nmuch at home as my friend Barrett Wendell feels upon a day like this.\n\nI wish to use my present privilege to say a word for these outsiders\nwith whom I belong.  Many years ago there was one of them from Canada\nhere--a man with a high-pitched voice, who could n't fully agree with\nall the points of my philosophy.  At a lecture one day, when I was in\nthe full flood of my eloquence, his voice rose above mine, exclaiming:\n\"But, doctor, doctor! to be serious for a moment . . . ,\" in so sincere\na tone that the whole room burst out laughing.  I want you now to be\nserious for a moment while I say my little say.  We are glorifying\nourselves to-day, and whenever the name of Harvard is emphatically\nuttered on such days, frantic cheers go up.  There are days for\naffection, when pure sentiment and loyalty come rightly to the fore.\nBut behind our mere animal feeling for old schoolmates and the Yard and\nthe bell, and Memorial and the clubs and the river and the Soldiers'\nField, there must be something deeper and more rational.  There ought\nat any rate to be some possible ground in reason for one's boiling over\nwith joy that one is a son of Harvard, and was not, by some unspeakably\nhorrible accident of birth, predestined to graduate at Yale or at\nCornell.\n\nAny college can foster club loyalty of that sort.  The only rational\nground for pre-eminent admiration of any single college would be its\npre-eminent spiritual tone.  But to be a college man in the mere\nclubhouse sense--I care not of what college--affords no guarantee of\nreal superiority in spiritual tone.\n\nThe old notion that book learning can be a panacea for the vices of\nsociety lies pretty well shattered to-day.  I say this in spite of\ncertain utterances of the President of this University to the teachers\nlast year.  That sanguine-hearted man seemed then to think that if the\nschools would only do their duty better, social vice might cease.  But\nvice will never cease.  Every level of culture breeds its own peculiar\nbrand of it as surely as one soil breeds sugar-cane, and another soil\nbreeds cranberries.  If we were asked that disagreeable question, \"What\nare the bosom-vices of the level of culture which our land and day have\nreached?\" we should be forced, I think, to give the still more\ndisagreeable answer that they are swindling and adroitness, and the\nindulgence of swindling and adroitness, and cant, and sympathy with\ncant--natural fruits of that extraordinary idealization of \"success\" in\nthe mere outward sense of \"getting there,\" and getting there on as big\na scale as we can, which characterizes our present generation.  What\nwas Reason given to man for, some satirist has said, except to enable\nhim to invent reasons for what he wants to do.  We might say the same\nof education.  We see college graduates on every side of every public\nquestion.  Some of Tammany's stanchest supporters are Harvard men.\nHarvard men defend our treatment of our Filipino allies as a\nmasterpiece of policy and morals.  Harvard men, as journalists, pride\nthemselves on producing copy for any side that may enlist them.  There\nis not a public abuse for which some Harvard advocate may not be found.\n\nIn the successful sense, then, in the worldly sense, in the club sense,\nto be a college man, even a Harvard man, affords no sure guarantee for\nanything but a more educated cleverness in the service of popular idols\nand vulgar ends.  Is there no inner Harvard within the outer Harvard\nwhich means definitively more than this--for which the outside men who\ncome here in such numbers, come?  They come from the remotest outskirts\nof our country, without introductions, without school affiliations;\nspecial students, scientific students, graduate students, poor students\nof the College, who make their living as they go.  They seldom or never\ndarken the doors of the Pudding or the Porcellian; they hover in the\nbackground on days when the crimson color is most in evidence, but they\nnevertheless are intoxicated and exultant with the nourishment they\nfind here; and their loyalty is deeper and subtler and more a matter of\nthe inmost soul than the gregarious loyalty of the clubhouse pattern\noften is.\n\nIndeed, there is such an inner spiritual Harvard; and the men I speak\nof, and for whom I speak to-day, are its true missionaries and carry\nits gospel into infidel parts.  When they come to Harvard, it is not\nprimarily because she is a club.  It is because they have heard of her\npersistently atomistic constitution, of her tolerance of exceptionality\nand eccentricity, of her devotion to the principles of individual\nvocation and choice.  It is because you cannot make single one-ideaed\nregiments of her classes.  It is because she cherishes so many vital\nideals, yet makes a scale of value among them; so that even her\napparently incurable second-rateness (or only occasional\nfirst-rateness) in intercollegiate athletics comes from her seeing so\nwell that sport is but sport, that victory over Yale is not the whole\nof the law and the prophets, and that a popgun is not the crack of doom.\n\nThe true Church was always the invisible Church.  The true Harvard is\nthe invisible Harvard in the souls of her more truth-seeking and\nindependent and often very solitary sons.  _Thoughts_ are the precious\nseeds of which our universities should be the botanical gardens.\nBeware when God lets loose a thinker on the world--either Carlyle or\nEmerson said that--for all things then have to rearrange themselves.\nBut the thinkers in their youth are almost always very lonely\ncreatures.  \"Alone the great sun rises and alone spring the great\nstreams.\"  The university most worthy of rational admiration is that\none in which your lonely thinker can feel himself least lonely, most\npositively furthered, and most richly fed.  On an occasion like this it\nwould be poor taste to draw comparisons between the colleges, and in\ntheir mere clubhouse quality they cannot differ widely:--all must be\nworthy of the loyalties and affections they arouse.  But as a nursery\nfor independent and lonely thinkers I do believe that Harvard still is\nin the van.  Here they find the climate so propitious that they can be\nhappy in their very solitude.  The day when Harvard shall stamp a\nsingle hard and fast type of character upon her children, will be that\nof her downfall.  Our undisciplinables are our proudest product.  Let\nus agree together in hoping that the output of them will never cease.\n\n\n\n[1] Speech at the Harvard Commencement Dinner, June 24, 1903, after\nreceiving an LL.D. degree.  Printed in the _Graduates' Magazine_ for\nSeptember, 1903.\n\n\n\n\nIII. STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY[1]\n\nForeigners, commenting on our civilization, have with great unanimity\nremarked the privileged position that institutions of learning occupy\nin America as receivers of benefactions.  Our typical men of wealth, if\nthey do not found a college, will at least single out some college or\nuniversity on which to lavish legacies or gifts.  All the more so,\nperhaps, if they are not college-bred men themselves.  Johns Hopkins\nUniversity, the University of Chicago, Clark University, are splendid\nexamples of this rule.  Steadily, year by year, my own university,\nHarvard, receives from one to two and a half millions.\n\nThere is something almost pathetic in the way in which our successful\nbusiness men seem to idealize the higher learning and to believe in its\nefficacy for salvation.  Never having shared in its blessings, they do\ntheir utmost to make the youth of coming generations more fortunate.\nUsually there is little originality of thought in their generous\nfoundations.  The donors follow the beaten track.  Their good will has\nto be vague, for they lack the inside knowledge.  What they usually\nthink of is a new college like all the older colleges; or they give new\nbuildings to a university or help to make it larger, without any\ndefinite idea as to the improvement of its inner form.  Improvements in\nthe character of our institutions always come from the genius of the\nvarious presidents and faculties.  The donors furnish means of\npropulsion, the experts within the pale lay out the course and steer\nthe vessel.  You all think of the names of Eliot, Gilman, Hall and\nHarper as I utter these words--I mention no name nearer home.\n\nThis is founders' day here at Stanford--the day set apart each year to\nquicken and reanimate in all of us the consciousness of the deeper\nsignificance of this little university to which we permanently or\ntemporarily belong.  I am asked to use my voice to contribute to this\neffect.  How can I do so better than by uttering quite simply and\ndirectly the impressions that I personally receive?  I am one among our\ninnumerable American teachers, reared on the Atlantic coast but\nadmitted for this year to be one of the family at Stanford.  I see\nthings not wholly from without, as the casual visitor does, but partly\nfrom within.  I am probably a typical observer.  As my impressions are,\nso will be the impressions of others.  And those impressions, taken\ntogether, will probably be the verdict of history on the institution\nwhich Leland and Jane Stanford founded.\n\n\"Where there is no vision, the people perish.\"  Mr. and Mrs. Stanford\nevidently had a vision of the most prophetic sort.  They saw the\nopportunity for an absolutely unique creation, they seized upon it with\nthe boldness of great minds; and the passionate energy with which Mrs.\nStanford after her husband's death, drove the original plans through in\nthe face of every dismaying obstacle, forms a chapter in the biography\nof heroism.  Heroic also the loyalty with which in those dark years the\npresident and faculty made the university's cause, their cause, and\nshared the uncertainties and privations.\n\nAnd what is the result to-day?  To-day the key-note is triumphantly\nstruck.  The first step is made beyond recall.  The character of the\nmaterial foundation is assured for all time as something unique and\nunparalleled.  It logically calls for an equally unique and\nunparalleled spiritual superstructure.\n\nCertainly the chief impression which the existing university must make\non every visitor is of something unique and unparalleled.  Its\nattributes are almost too familiar to you to bear recapitulation.  The\nclassic scenery of its site, reminding one of Greece, Greek too in its\natmosphere of opalescent fire, as if the hills that close us in were\nbathed in ether, milk and sunshine; the great city, near enough for\nconvenience, too far ever to become invasive; the climate, so friendly\nto work that every morning wakes one fresh for new amounts of work; the\nnoble architecture, so generously planned that there room and to spare\nfor every requirement; the democracy of the life, no one superfluously\nrich, yet all sharing, so far as their higher needs go, in the common\nendowment--where could a genius devoted to the search for truth, and\nunworldly as most geniuses are, find on the earth's whole round a place\nmore advantageous to come and work in?  _Die Luft der Freiheit weht_!\nAll the traditions are individualistic.  Red tape and organization are\nat their minimum.  Interruptions and perturbing distractions hardly\nexist.  Eastern institutions look all dark and huddled and confused in\ncomparison with this purity and serenity.  Shall it not be auspicious?\nSurely the one destiny to which this happy beginning seems to call\nStanford is that it should become something intense and original, not\nnecessarily in point of wealth or extent, but in point of spiritual\nquality.  The founders have, as I said, triumphantly struck the\nkeynote, and laid the basis: the quality of what they have already\ngiven is unique in character.\n\nIt rests with the officials of the present and future Stanford, it\nrests with the devotion and sympathetic insight of the growing body of\ngraduates, to prolong the vision where the founders' vision terminated,\nand to insure that all the succeeding steps, like the first steps,\nshall single out this university more and more as the university of\nquality peculiarly.\n\nAnd what makes essential quality in a university?  Years ago in New\nEngland it was said that a log by the roadside with a student sitting\non one end of it, and Mark Hopkins sitting on the other end, was a\nuniversity.  It is the quality of its men that makes the quality of a\nuniversity.  You may have your buildings, you may create your\ncommittees and boards and regulations, you may pile up your machinery\nof discipline and perfect your methods of instruction, you may spend\nmoney till no one can approach you; yet you will add nothing but one\nmore trivial specimen to the common herd of American colleges, unless\nyou send into all this organization some breath of life, by inoculating\nit with a few men, at least, who are real geniuses.  And if you once\nhave the geniuses, you can easily dispense with most of the\norganization.  Like a contagious disease, almost, spiritual life passes\nfrom man to man by contact.  Education in the long run is an affair\nthat works itself out between the individual student and his\nopportunities.  Methods of which we talk so much, play but a minor\npart.  Offer the opportunities, leave the student to his natural\nreaction on them, and he will work out his personal destiny, be it a\nhigh one or a low one.  Above all things, offer the opportunity of\nhigher personal contacts.  A university provides these anyhow within\nthe student body, for it attracts the more aspiring of the youth of the\ncountry, and they befriend and elevate one another.  But we are only\nbeginning in this country, with our extraordinary American reliance on\norganization, to see that the alpha and omega in a university is the\ntone of it, and that this tone is set by human personalities\nexclusively.  The world, in fact, is only beginning to see that the\nwealth of a nation consists more than in anything else in the number of\nsuperior men that it harbors.  In the practical realm it has always\nrecognized this, and known that no price is too high to pay for a great\nstatesman or great captain of industry.  But it is equally so in the\nreligious and moral sphere, in the poetic and artistic sphere and in\nthe philosophic and scientific sphere.  Geniuses are ferments; and when\nthey come together as they have done in certain lands at certain times,\nthe whole population seems to share in the higher energy which they\nawaken.  The effects are incalculable and often not easy to trace in\ndetail, but they are pervasive and momentous.  Who can measure the\neffects on the national German soul of the splendid series of German\npoets and German men of learning, most of them academic personages?\n\nFrom the bare economic point of view the importance of geniuses is only\nbeginning to be appreciated.  How can we measure the cash-value to\nFrance of a Pasteur, to England of a Kelvin, to Germany of an Ostwald,\nto us here of a Burbank?  One main care of every country in the future\nought to be to find out who its first-rate thinkers are and to help\nthem.  Cost here becomes something entirely irrelevant, the returns are\nsure to be so incommensurable.  This is what wise men the world over\nare perceiving.  And as the universities are already a sort of agency\nprovidentially provided for the detection and encouragement of mental\nsuperiority, it would seem as if that one among them that followed this\nline most successfully would quickest rise to a position of paramountcy\nand distinction.\n\nWhy should not Stanford immediately adopt this as her vital policy?\nHer position is one of unprecedented freedom.  Not trammelled by the\nservice of the state as other universities on this coast are\ntrammelled, independent of students' fees and consequently of numbers,\nUtopian in the material respects I have enumerated, she only needs a\nboldness like that shown by her founders to become the seat of a\nglowing intellectual life, sure to be admired and envied the world\nover.  Let her claim her place; let her espouse her destiny.  Let her\ncall great investigators from whatever lands they live in, from\nEngland, France, Germany, Japan, as well as from America.  She can do\nthis without presumption, for the advantages of this place for steady\nmental work are so unparalleled.  Let these men, following the happy\ntraditions of the place, make the university.  The original foundation\nhad something eccentric in it; let Stanford not fear to be eccentric to\nthe end, if need be.  Let her not imitate; let her lead, not follow.\nEspecially let her not be bound by vulgar traditions as to the\ncheapness or dearness of professorial service.  The day is certainly\nabout to dawn when some American university will break all precedents\nin the matter of instructors' salaries, and will thereby immediately\ntake the lead, and reach the winning post for quality.  I like to think\nof Stanford being that university.  Geniuses are sensitive plants, in\nsome respects like _prima donnas_.  They have to be treated tenderly.\nThey don't need to live in superfluity; but they need freedom from\nharassing care; they need books and instruments; they are always\noverworking, so they need generous vacations; and above all things they\nneed occasionally to travel far and wide in the interests of their\nsouls' development.  Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing\nof supreme quality is cheap, whatever be the price one has to pay for\nit.\n\nConsidering all the conditions, the quality of Stanford has from the\nfirst been astonishingly good both in the faculty and in the student\nbody.  Can we not, as we sit here to-day, frame a vision of what it may\nbe a century hence, with the honors of the intervening years all rolled\nup in its traditions?  Not vast, but intense; less a place for teaching\nyouths and maidens than for training scholars; devoted to truth;\nradiating influence; setting standards; shedding abroad the fruits of\nlearning; mediating between America and Asia, and helping the more\nintellectual men of both continents to understand each other better.\n\nWhat a history! and how can Stanford ever fail to enter upon it?\n\n\n\n[1] An Address at Stanford University on Founders' Day, 1906.  Printed\nin _Science_, for May 25, 1906.\n\n\n\n\nXV\n\nA PLURALISTIC MYSTIC[1]\n\nNot for the ignoble vulgar do I write this article, but only for those\ndialectic-mystic souls who have an irresistible taste, acquired or\nnative, for higher flights of metaphysics.  I have always held the\nopinion that one of the first duties of a good reader is to summon\nother readers to the enjoyment of any unknown author of rare quality\nwhom he may discover in his explorations.  Now for years my own taste,\nliterary as well as philosophic, has been exquisitely titillated by a\nwriter the name of whom I think must be unknown to the readers of this\narticle; so I no longer continue silent about the merits of Benjamin\nPaul Blood.\n\nMr. Blood inhabits a city otherwise, I imagine, quite unvisited by the\nMuses, the town called Amsterdam, situated on the New York Central\nRailroad.  What his regular or bread-winning occupation may be I know\nnot, but it can't have made him super-wealthy.  He is an author only\nwhen the fit strikes him, and for short spurts at a time; shy,\nmoreover, to the point of publishing his compositions only as private\ntracts, or in letters to such far-from-reverberant organs of publicity\nas the _Gazette_ or the _Recorder_ of his native Amsterdam, or the\n_Utica Herald_ or the _Albany Times_.  Odd places for such subtile\nefforts to appear in, but creditable to American editors in these\ndegenerate days!  Once, indeed, the lamented W. T. Harris of the old\n\"Journal of Speculative Philosophy\" got wind of these epistles, and the\nresult was a revision of some of them for that review (_Philosophic\nReveries_, 1889).  Also a couple of poems were reprinted from their\nleaflets by the editor of _Scribner's Magazine_ (\"The Lion of the\nNile,\" 1888, and| \"Nemesis,\" 1899).  But apart from these three dashes\nbefore the footlights, Mr. Blood has kept behind the curtain all his\ndays.[2]\n\nThe author's maiden adventure was the _Anoesthetic Revelation_, a\npamphlet printed privately at Amsterdam in 1874.  I forget how it fell\ninto my hands, but it fascinated me so \"weirdly\" that I am conscious of\nits having been one of the stepping-stones of my thinking ever since.\nIt gives the essence of Blood's philosophy, and shows most of the\nfeatures of his talent--albeit one finds in it little humor and no\nverse.  It is full of verbal felicity, felicity sometimes of precision,\nsometimes of metaphoric reach; it begins with dialectic reasoning, of\nan extremely Fichtean and Hegelian type, but it ends in a trumpet-blast\nof oracular mysticism, straight from the insight wrought by\nanaesthetics--of all things in the world--and unlike anything one ever\nheard before.  The practically unanimous tradition of \"regular\"\nmysticism has been unquestionably _monistic_; and inasmuch as it is the\ncharacteristic of mystics to speak, not as the scribes, but as men who\nhave \"been there\" and seen with their own eyes, I think that this\nsovereign manner must have made some other pluralistic-minded students\nhesitate, as I confess that it has often given pause to me.  One cannot\ncriticise the vision of a mystic--one can but pass it by, or else\naccept it as having some amount of evidential weight.  I felt unable to\ndo either with a good conscience until I met with Mr. Blood.  His\nmysticism, which may, if one likes, be understood as monistic in this\nearlier utterance, develops in the later ones a sort of \"left-wing\"\nvoice of defiance, and breaks into what to my ear has a radically\npluralistic sound.  I confess that the existence of this novel brand of\nmysticism has made my cowering mood depart.  I feel now as if my own\npluralism were not without the kind of support which mystical\ncorroboration may confer.  Morrison can no longer claim to be the only\nbeneficiary of whatever right mysticism may possess to lend _prestige_.\n\nThis is my philosophic, as distinguished from my literary, interest, in\nintroducing Mr. Blood to this more fashionable audience: his\nphilosophy, however mystical, is in the last resort not dissimilar from\nmy own.  I must treat him by \"extracting\" him, and simplify--certainly\nall too violently--as I extract.  He is not consecutive as a writer,\naphoristic and oracular rather; and being moreover sometimes dialectic,\nsometimes poetic, and sometimes mystic in his manner; sometimes\nmonistic and sometimes pluralistic in his matter, I have to run my own\nrisk in making him orate _pro domo mea_, and I am not quite unprepared\nto hear him say, in case he ever reads these pages, that I have\nentirely missed his point.  No matter; I will proceed.\n\n\nI\n\nI will separate his diverse phases and take him first as a pure\ndialectician.  Dialectic thought of the Hegelian type is a whirlpool\ninto which some persons are sucked out of the stream which the\nstraightforward understanding follows.  Once in the eddy, nothing but\nrotary motion can go on.  All who have been in it know the feel of its\nswirl--they know thenceforward that thinking unreturning on itself is\nbut one part of reason, and that rectilinear mentality, in philosophy\nat any rate, will never do.  Though each one may report in different\nwords of his rotational experience, the experience itself is almost\nchildishly simple, and whosoever has been there instantly recognizes\nother authentic reports.  To have been in that eddy is a freemasonry of\nwhich the common password is a \"fie\" on all the operations of the\nsimple popular understanding.\n\nIn Hegel's mind the vortex was at its liveliest, and any one who has\ndipped into Hegel will recognize Mr. Blood to be of the same tribe.\n\"That Hegel was pervaded by the great truth,\" Blood writes, \"cannot be\ndoubted.  The eyes of philosophy, if not set directly on him, are set\ntowards the region which he occupied.  Though he may not be the final\nphilosopher, yet pull him out, and all the rest will be drawn into his\nvacancy.\"\n\nDrawn into the same whirlpool, Mr. Blood means.  Non-dialectic thought\ntakes facts as singly given, and accounts for one fact by another.  But\nwhen we think of \"_all_ fact,\" we see that nothing of the nature of\nfact can explain it, \"for that were but one more added to the list of\nthings to be accounted for. . . .  The beginning of curiosity, in the\nphilosophic sense,\" Mr. Blood again writes, \"is the stare\n[Transcriber's note: state?] of being at itself, in the wonder why\nanything is at all, and what this being signifies.  Naturally we first\nassume the void, and then wonder how, with no ground and no fertility,\nanything should come into it.\"  We treat it as a positive nihility, \"a\nbarrier from which all our batted balls of being rebound.\"\n\nUpon this idea Mr. Blood passes the usual transcendentalist criticism.\nThere _is_ no such separate opposite to being; yet we never think of\nbeing as such--of pure being as distinguished from specific forms of\nbeing--save as what stands relieved against this imaginary background.\nBeing has no _outline_ but that which non-being makes, and the two\nideas form an inseparable pair.  \"Each limits and defines the other.\nEither would be the other in the same position, for here (where there\nis as yet no question of content, but only of being itself) the\nposition is all and the content is nothing.  Hence arose that paradox:\n'Being is by nothing more real than not-being.'\"\n\n\"Popularly,\" Mr. Blood goes on, \"we think of all that is as having got\nthe better of non-being.  If all were not--_that_, we think, were easy:\nthere were no wonder then, no tax on ingenuity, nothing to be accounted\nfor.  This conclusion is from the thinking which assumes all reality as\nimmediately given assumes knowledge as a simple physical light, rather\nthan as a distinction involving light and darkness equally.  We assume\nthat if the light were to go out, the show would be ended (and so it\nwould); but we forget that if the darkness were to go out, that would\nbe equally calamitous.  It were bad enough if the master had lost his\ncrayon, but the loss of the blackboard would be just as fatal to the\ndemonstration.  Without darkness light would be useless--universal\nlight as blind as universal darkness.  Universal thing and universal\nno-thing were indistinguishable.  Why, then, assume the positive, the\nimmediately affirmative, as alone the ingenious?  Is not the mould as\nshapely as the model?  The original ingenuity does not show in bringing\nlight out of darkness, nor in bringing things out of nothing, but in\nevolving, through the just opposition of light and darkness, this\nwondrous picture, in which the black and white lines have equal\nsignificance--in evolving from life and death at once, the conscious\nspirit. . . .\n\n\"It is our habit to think of life as dear, and of death as cheap\n(though Tithonus found them otherwise), or, continuing the simile of\nthe picture, that paper is cheap while drawing is expensive; but the\nengraver had a different estimation in one sense, for all his labor was\nspent on the white ground, while he left untouched those parts of the\nblock which make the lines in the picture.  If being and non-being are\nboth necessary to the presence of either, neither shall claim priority\nor preference.  Indeed, we may fancy an intelligence which, instead of\nregarding things as simply owning entity, should regard chiefly their\nbackground as affected by the holes which things are making in it.\nEven so, the paper-maker might see your picture as intrusive!\"\n\nThus \"does the negation of being appear as indispensable in the making\nof it.\"  But to anyone who should appeal to particular forms of being\nto refute this paradox, Mr. Blood admits that \"to say that a picture,\nor any other sensuous thing, is the same as the want of it, were to\nutter nonsense indeed: there is a difference equivalent to the whole\nstuff and merit of the picture; but in so far as the picture can be\nthere for thought, as something either asserted or negated, its\npresence or its absence are the same and indifferent.  By _its_ absence\nwe do not mean the absence of anything else, nor absence in general;\nand how, forsooth, does its absence differ from these other absences,\nsave by containing a complete description of the picture?  The hole is\nas round as the plug; and from our thought the 'picture' cannot get\naway.  The negation is specific and descriptive, and what it destroys\nit preserves tor our conception.\"\n\nThe result is that, whether it be taken generally or taken\nspecifically, all that which _either is or is not_ is or is not _by\ndistinction or opposition_.  \"And observe the life, the process,\nthrough which this slippery doubleness endures.  Let us suppose the\npresent tense, that gods and men and angels and devils march all\nabreast in this present instant, and the only real time and date in the\nuniverse is now.  And what _is_ this instant now?  Whatever else, it is\n_process_--becoming and departing; with what between?  Simply division,\ndifference; the present has no breadth for if it had, that which we\nseek would be the middle of that breadth.  There is no precipitate, as\non a stationary platform, of the process of becoming, no residuum of\nthe process of departing, but between the two is a curtain, _the\napparition of difference_, which is all the world.\"\n\nI am using my scissors somewhat at random on my author's paragraphs,\nsince one place is as good as another for entering a ring by, and the\nexpert reader will discern at once the authentic dialectic circling.\nOther paragraphs show Mr. Blood as more Hegelian still, and thoroughly\nidealistic:--\n\n\"Assume that knowing is distinguishing, and that distinction is of\ndifference; if one knows a difference, one knows it as of entities\nwhich afford it, and which also he knows; and he must know the entities\nand the difference apart,--one from the other.  Knowing all this, he\nshould be able to answer the twin question, 'What is the difference\n_between sameness and difference_?'  It is a 'twin' question, because\nthe two terms are equal in the proposition, and each is full of the\nother. . . .\n\n\"Sameness has 'all the difference in the world'--from difference; and\ndifference is an entity as difference--it being identically that.  They\nare alike and different at once, since either is the other when the\nobserver would contrast it with the other; so that the sameness and the\ndifference are 'subjective,' are the property of the observer: his is\nthe 'limit' in their unlimited field. . . .\n\n\"We are thus apprized that distinction involves and carries its own\nidentity; and that ultimate distinction--distinction in the last\nanalysis--is self-distinction, 'self-knowledge,' as we realize it\nconsciously every day.  Knowledge is self-referred: to know is to know\nthat you know, and to be known as well.\n\n\"'Ah! but _both in the same time_?' inquires the logician.  A\nsubject-object knowing itself as a seamless unit, while yet its two\nitems show a real distinction: this passes all understanding.\"\n\nBut the whole of idealism goes to the proof that the two sides _cannot_\nsucceed one another in a time-process.  \"To say you know, and you know\nthat you know, is to add nothing in the last clause; it is as idle as\nto say that you lie, and you know that you lie,\" for if you know it not\nyou lie not.\n\nPhilosophy seeks to grasp totality, \"but the power of grasping or\nconsenting to totality involves the power of thought to make itself its\nown object.  Totality itself may indeed be taken by the _naive_\nintellect as an immediate topic, in the sense of being just an\n_object_, but it cannot be just that; for the knower, as other or\nopposite, would still be within that totality.  The 'universe' by\ndefinition must contain all opposition.  If distinction should vanish,\nwhat would remain?  To what other could it change as a whole?  How can\nthe loss of distinction make a _difference_?  Any loss, at its utmost,\noffers a new status with the old, but obviously it is too late now to\nefface distinction by a _change_.  There is no possible conjecture, but\nsuch as carries with it the subjective that holds it; and when the\nconjecture is of distinction in general, the subjective fills the void\nwith distinction of itself.  The ultimate, ineffaceable distinction is\nself-distinction, self-consciousness. . . .  'Thou art the unanswered\nquestion, couldst see thy proper eye.' . . .  The thought that must be\nis the very thought of our experience; the ultimate opposition, the to\nbe _and_ not to be, is personality, spirit--somewhat that is in knowing\nthat it is, and is nothing else but this knowing in its vast\nrelations.[3]\n\n\"Here lies the bed-rock; here the brain-sweat of twenty-five centuries\ncrystallizes to a jewel five words long: 'The Universe has No\nOpposite.'  For there the wonder of that which is, rests safe in the\nperception that all things _are_ only through the opposition which is\ntheir only fear.\"\n\n\"The inevitable generally,\" in short, is exactly and identically that\nwhich in point of fact is actually here.\n\nThis is the familiar nineteenth-century development of Kant's\nidealistic vision.  To me it sounds monistic enough to charm the monist\nin me unreservedly.  I listen to the felicitously-worded concept-music\ncircling round itself, as on some drowsy summer noon one listens under\nthe pines to the murmuring of leaves and insects, and with as little\nthought of criticism.\n\nBut Mr. Blood strikes a still more vibrant note: \"No more can be than\nrationally is; and this was always true.  There is no reason for what\nis not; but for what there is reason, that is and ever was.  Especially\nis there no becoming of reason, and hence no reason for becoming, to a\nsufficient intelligence.  In the sufficient intelligence all things\nalways are, and are rational.  To say there is something yet to be\nwhich never was, not even in the sufficient intelligence wherein the\nworld is rational and not a blind and orphan waif, is to ignore all\nreason.  Aught that might be assumed as contingently coming to be could\nonly have 'freedom' for its origin; and 'freedom' has not fertility or\ninvention, and is not a reason for any special thing, but the very\nvacuity of a ground for anything in preference to its room.  Neither is\nthere in bare time any principle or originality where anything should\ncome or go. . . .\n\n\"Such idealism enures greatly to the dignity and repose of man.  No\nblind fate, prior to what is, shall necessitate that all first be and\nafterward be known, but knowledge is first, with fate in her own hands.\nWhen we are depressed by the weight and immensity of the immediate, we\nfind in idealism a wondrous consolation.  The alien positive, so vast\nand overwhelming by itself, reduces its pretensions when the whole\nnegative confronts it on our side.[4]  It matters little for its\ngreatness when an equal greatness is opposed.  When one remembers that\nthe balance and motion of the planets are so delicate that the\nmomentary scowl of an eclipse may fill the heavens with tempest, and\neven affect the very bowels of the earth--when we see a balloon, that\ncarries perhaps a thousand pounds, leap up a hundred feet at the\ndischarge of a sheet of note paper--or feel it stand deathly still in a\nhurricane, because it goes with the hurricane, sides with it, and\nignores the rushing world below--we should realize that one tittle of\npure originality would outweigh this crass objective, and turn these\nvast masses into mere breath and tissue-paper show.\" [5]\n\nBut whose is the originality?  There is nothing in what I am treating\nas this phase of our author's thought to separate it from the\nold-fashioned rationalism.  There must be a reason for every fact; and\nso much reason, so fact.  The reason is always the whole foil and\nbackground and negation of the fact, the whole remainder of reality.\n\"A man may feel good only by feeling better. . . .  Pleasure is ever in\nthe company and contrast of pain; for instance, in thirsting and\ndrinking, the pleasure of the one is the exact measure of the pain of\nthe other, and they cease precisely together--otherwise the patient\nwould drink more.  The black and yellow gonfalon of Lucifer is\nindispensable in any spiritual picture.\"  Thus do truth's two\ncomponents seem to balance, vibrating across the centre of\nindifference; \"being and non-being have equal value and cost,\" and\n\"mainly are convertible in their terms.\" [6]\n\nThis sounds radically monistic; and monistic also is the first account\nof the Ether-revelation, in which we read that \"thenceforth each is\nall, in God. . . .  The One remains, the many change and pass; and\nevery one of us is the One that remains.\"\n\n\nII\n\nIt seems to me that any transcendental idealist who reads this article\nought to discern in the fragmentary utterances which I have quoted thus\nfar, the note of what he considers the truer dialectic profundity.  He\nought to extend the glad hand of fellowship to Mr. Blood; and if he\nfinds him afterwards palavering with the enemy, he ought to count him,\nnot as a simple ignoramus or Philistine, but as a renegade and relapse.\nHe cannot possibly be treated as one who sins because he never has\nknown better, or as one who walks in darkness because he is\ncongenitally blind.\n\nWell, Mr. Blood, explain it as one may, does turn towards the darkness\nas if he had never seen the light.  Just listen for a moment to such\nirrationalist deliverances on his part as these:--\n\n\"Reason is neither the first nor the last word in this world.  Reason\nis an equation; it gives but a pound for a pound.  Nature is excess;\nshe is evermore, without cost or explanation.\n\n  'Is heaven so poor that _justice_\n    Metes the bounty of the skies?\n  So poor that every blessing\n    Fills the debit of a cost?\n  That all process is returning?\n    And all gain is of the lost?'\n\nGo back into reason, and you come at last to fact, nothing more--a\ngiven-ness, a something to wonder at and yet admit, like your own will.\nAnd all these tricks for logicizing originality, self-relation,\nabsolute process, subjective contradiction, will wither in the breath\nof the mystical tact; they will swirl down the corridors before the\nbesom of the everlasting Yea.\"\n\nOr again: \"The monistic notion of a oneness, a centred wholeness,\nultimate purpose, or climacteric result of the world, has wholly given\nway.  Thought evolves no longer a centred whole, a One, but rather a\nnumberless many, adjust it how we will.\"\n\nOr still again: \"The pluralists have talked philosophy to a\nstandstill--Nature is contingent, excessive and mystical essentially.\"\n\nHave we here contradiction simply, a man converted from one faith to\nits opposite?  Or is it only dialectic circling, like the opposite\npoints on the rim of a revolving disc, one moving up, one down, but\nreplacing one another endlessly, while the whole disc never moves?  If\nit be this latter--Mr. Blood himself uses the image--the dialectic is\ntoo pure for me to catch: a deeper man must mediate the monistic with\nthe pluralistic Blood.  Let my incapacity be castigated, if my\n\"Subject\" ever reads this article, but let me treat him from now\nonwards as the simply pluralistic mystic which my reading of the rest\nof him suggests.  I confess to some dread of my own fate at his hands.\nIn making so far an ordinary transcendental idealist of him, I have\ntaken liberties, running separate sentences together, inverting their\norder, and even altering single words, for all which I beg pardon; but\nin treating my author from now onwards as a pluralist, interpretation\nis easier, and my hands can be less stained (if they _are_ stained)\nwith exegetic blood.\n\n\nI have spoken of his verbal felicity, and alluded to his poetry.\nBefore passing to his mystic gospel, I will refresh the reader\n(doubtless now fatigued with so much dialectic) by a sample of his\nverse.  \"The Lion of the Nile\" is an allegory of the \"champion spirit\nof the world\" in its various incarnations.\n\nThus it begins:--\n\n  \"Whelped on the desert sands, and desert bred\n  From dugs whose sustenance was blood alone--\n  A life translated out of other lives,\n  I grew the king of beasts; the hurricane\n  Leaned like a feather on my royal fell;\n  I took the Hyrcan tiger by the scruff\n  And tore him piecemeal; my hot bowels laughed\n  And my fangs yearned for prey.  Earth was my lair:\n  I slept on the red desert without fear:\n  I roamed the jungle depths with less design\n  Than e'en to lord their solitude; on crags\n  That cringe from lightning--black and blasted fronts\n  That crouch beneath the wind-bleared stars, I told\n  My heart's fruition to the universe,\n  And all night long, roaring my fierce defy,\n  I thrilled the wilderness with aspen terrors,\n  And challenged death and life. . . .\"\n\n\nAgain:\n\n  \"Naked I stood upon the raked arena\n  Beneath the pennants of Vespasian,\n  While seried thousands gazed--strangers from Caucasus,\n  Men of the Grecian Isles, and Barbary princes,\n  To see me grapple with the counterpart\n  Of that I had been--the raptorial jaws,\n  The arms that wont to crush with strength alone,\n  The eyes that glared vindictive.--Fallen there,\n  Vast wings upheaved me; from the Alpine peaks\n  Whose avalanches swirl the valley mists\n  And whelm the helpless cottage, to the crown\n  Of Chimborazo, on whose changeless jewels\n  The torrid rays recoil, with ne'er a cloud\n  To swathe their blistered steps, I rested not,\n  But preyed on all that ventured from the earth,\n  An outlaw of the heavens.--But evermore\n  Must death release me to the jungle shades;\n  And there like Samson's grew my locks again\n  In the old walks and ways, till scapeless fate\n  Won me as ever to the haunts of men,\n  Luring my lives with battle and with love.\" . . .\n\n\nI quote less than a quarter of the poem, of which the rest is just as\ngood, and I ask: Who of us all handles his English vocabulary better\nthan Mr. Blood?[7]\n\nHis proclamations of the mystic insight have a similar verbal power:--\n\n\"There is an invariable and reliable condition (or uncondition) ensuing\nabout the instant of recall from anaesthetic stupor to 'coming to,' in\nwhich the genius of being is revealed. . . .  No words may express the\nimposing certainty of the patient that he is realizing the primordial\nAdamic surprise of Life.\n\n\"Repetition of the experience finds it ever the same, and as if it\ncould not possibly be otherwise.  The subject resumes his normal\nconsciousness only to partially and fitfully remember its occurrence,\nand to try to formulate its baffling import,--with but this consolatory\nafterthought: that he has known the oldest truth, and that he has done\nwith human theories as to the origin, meaning, or destiny of the race.\nHe is beyond instruction in 'spiritual things.' . . .\n\n\"It is the instant contrast of this 'tasteless water of souls' with\nformal thought as we 'come to,' that leaves in the patient an\nastonishment that the awful mystery of Life is at last but a homely and\na common thing, and that aside from mere formality the majestic and the\nabsurd are of equal dignity.  The astonishment is aggravated as at a\nthing of course, missed by sanity in overstepping, as in too foreign a\nsearch, or with too eager an attention: as in finding one's spectacles\non one's nose, or in making in the dark a step higher than the stair.\nMy first experiences of this revelation had many varieties of emotion;\nbut as a man grows calm and determined by experience in general, so am\nI now not only firm and familiar in this once weird condition, but\ntriumphant, divine.  To minds of sanguine imagination there will be a\nsadness in the tenor of the mystery, as if the key-note of the universe\nwere low; for no poetry, no emotion known to the normal sanity of man,\ncan furnish a hint of its primeval prestige, and its all-but appalling\nsolemnity; but for such as have felt sadly the instability of temporal\nthings there is a comfort of serenity and ancient peace; while for the\nresolved and imperious spirit there are majesty and supremacy\nunspeakable.  Nor can it be long until all who enter the anaesthetic\ncondition (and there are hundreds every secular day) will be taught to\nexpect this revelation, and will date from its experience their\ninitiation into the Secret of Life. . . .\n\n\"This has been my moral sustenance since I have known of it.  In my\nfirst printed mention of it I declared: 'The world is no more the alien\nterror that was taught me.  Spurning the cloud-grimed and still sultry\nbattlements whence so lately Jehovan thunders boomed, my gray gull\nlifts her wing against the night fall, and takes the dim leagues with a\nfearless eye.'  And now, after twenty-seven years of this experience,\nthe wing is grayer, but the eye is fearless still, while I renew and\ndoubly emphasize that declaration.  I know, as having known, the\nmeaning of Existence; the sane centre of the universe--at once the\nwonder and the assurance of the soul.\"\n\n\nAfter this rather literary interlude I return to Blood's philosophy\nagain.  I spoke a while ago of its being an \"irrationalistic\"\nphilosophy in its latest phase.  Behind every \"fact\" rationalism\npostulates its \"reason.\"  Blood parodizes this demand in true\nnominalistic fashion.  \"The goods are not enough, but they must have\nthe invoice with them.  There must be a _name_, something to _read_.  I\nthink of Dickens's horse that always fell down when they took him out\nof the shafts; or of the fellow who felt weak when naked, but strong in\nhis overcoat.\"  No bad mockery, this, surely, of rationalism's habit of\nexplaining things by putting verbal doubles of them beneath them as\ntheir ground!\n\n\"All that philosophy has sought as cause, or reason,\" he says,\n\"pluralism subsumes in the status and the given fact, where it stands\nas plausible as it may ever hope to stand.  There may be disease in the\npresence of a question as well as in the lack of an answer.  We do not\nwonder so strangely at an ingenious and well-set-up effect, for we feel\nsuch in ourselves; but a cause, reaching out beyond the verge [of fact]\nand dangling its legs in nonentity, with the hope of a rational\nfoothold, should realize a strenuous life.  Pluralism believes in truth\nand reason, but only as mystically realized, as lived in experience.\nUp from the breast of a man, up to his tongue and brain, comes a free\nand strong determination, and he cries, originally, and in spite of his\nwhole nature and environment, 'I will.'  This is the Jovian _fiat_, the\npure cause.  This is reason; this or nothing shall explain the world\nfor him.  For how shall he entertain a reason bigger than\nhimself? . . .  Let a man stand fast, then, as an axis of the earth;\nthe obsequious meridians will bow to him, and gracious latitudes will\nmeasure from his feet.\"\n\nThis seems to be Blood's mystical answer to his own monistic statement\nwhich I quoted above, that \"freedom\" has no fertility, and is no reason\nfor any special thing.[8]  \"Philosophy,\" Mr. Blood writes to me in a\nletter, \"is past.  It was the long endeavor to logicize what we can\nonly realize practically or in immediate experience.  I am more and\nmore impressed that Heraclitus insists on the equation of reason and\nunreason, or chance, as well as of being and not-being, etc.  This\nthrows the secret beyond logic, and makes mysticism outclass\nphilosophy.  The insight that mystery,--the Mystery, as such is final,\nis the hymnic word.  If you use reason pragmatically, and deny it\nabsolutely, you can't be beaten; be assured of that.  But the _Fact_\nremains, and of course the Mystery.\" [9]\n\nThe \"Fact,\" as I understand the writer here to mean it, remains in its\nnative disseminated shape.  From every realized amount of fact some\nother fact is _absent_, as being uninvolved.  \"There is nowhere more of\nit consecutively, perhaps, than appears upon this present page.\"  There\nis, indeed, to put it otherwise, no more one all-enveloping fact than\nthere is one all-enveloping spire in an endlessly growing spiral, and\nno more one all-generating fact than there is one central point in\nwhich an endlessly converging spiral ends.  Hegel's \"bad infinite\"\nbelongs to the eddy as well as to the line.  \"Progress?\" writes our\nauthor.  \"And to what?  Time turns a weary and a wistful face; has he\nnot traversed an eternity? and shall another give the secret up?  We\nhave dreamed of a climax and a consummation, a final triumph where a\nworld shall burn _en barbecue_; but there is not, cannot be, a purpose\nof eternity; it shall pay mainly as it goes, or not at all.  The show\nis on; and what a show, if we will but give our attention!  Barbecues,\nbonfires, and banners?  Not twenty worlds a minute would keep up our\nbonfire of the sun; and what banners of our fancy could eclipse the\nmeteor pennants of the pole, or the opaline splendors of the\neverlasting ice? . . .  Doubtless we _are_ ostensibly progressing, but\nthere have been prosperity and highjinks before.  Nineveh and Tyre,\nRome, Spain, and Venice also had their day.  We are going, but it is a\nquestion of our standing the pace.  It would seem that the news must\nbecome less interesting or tremendously more so--'a breath can make us,\nas a breath has made.'\"\n\nElsewhere we read: \"Variety, not uniformity, is more likely to be the\nkey to progress.  The genius of being is whimsical rather than\nconsistent.  Our strata show broken bones of histories all forgotten.\nHow can it be otherwise?  There can be no purpose of eternity.  It is\nprocess all.  The most sublime result, if it appeared as the ultimatum,\nwould go stale in an hour; it could not be endured.\"\n\nOf course from an intellectual point of view this way of thinking must\nbe classed as scepticism.  \"Contingency forbids any inevitable history,\nand conclusions are absurd.  Nothing in Hegel has kept the planet from\nbeing blown to pieces.\"  Obviously the mystical \"security,\" the \"apodal\nsufficiency\" yielded by the anaesthetic revelation, are very different\nmoods of mind from aught that rationalism can claim to father--more\nactive, prouder, more heroic.  From his ether-intoxication Blood may\nfeel towards ordinary rationalists \"as Clive felt towards those\nmillions of Orientals in whom honor had no part.\"  On page 6, above, I\nquoted from his \"Nemesis\"--\"Is heaven so poor that justice,\" etc.  The\nwriter goes on, addressing the goddess of \"compensation\" or rational\nbalance;--\n\n  \"How shalt thou poise the courage\n    That covets all things hard?\n  How pay the love unmeasured\n    That could not brook reward?\n  How prompt self-loyal honor\n    Supreme above desire,\n  That bids the strong die for the weak,\n    The martyrs sing in fire?\n  Why do I droop in bower\n    And sigh in sacred hall?\n  Why stifle under shelter?\n    Yet where, through forest tall,\n  The breath of hungry winter\n    In stinging spray resolves,\n  I sing to the north wind's fury\n    And shout with the coarse-haired wolves?\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\n  What of thy priests' confuting,\n    Of fate and form and law,\n  Of being and essence and counterpoise,\n    Of poles that drive and draw?\n  Ever some compensation,\n    Some pandering purchase still!\n  But the vehm of achieving reason\n    Is the all-patrician Will!\"\n\n\nMr. Blood must manage to re-write the last two lines; but the contrast\nof the two securities, his and the rationalist's, is plain enough.  The\nrationalist sees safe conditions.  But Mr. Blood's revelation, whatever\nthe conditions be, helps him to stand ready for a life among them.  In\nthis, his attitude seems to resemble that of Nietzsche's _amor fati_!\n\"Simply,\" he writes to me, \"_we do not know_.  But when we say we do\nnot know, we are not to say it weakly and meekly, but with confidence\nand content. . . .  Knowledge is and must ever be _secondary_, a\nwitness rather than a principal, or a 'principle'!--in the case.\nTherefore mysticism for me!\"\n\n\"Reason,\" he prints elsewhere, \"is but an item in the duplex potency of\nthe mystery, and behind the proudest consciousness that ever reigned,\nReason and Wonder blushed face to face.  The legend sinks to burlesque\nif in that great argument which antedates man and his mutterings,\nLucifer had not a fighting chance. . . .\n\n\"It is given to the writer and to others for whom he is permitted to\nspeak--and we are grateful that it is the custom of gentlemen to\nbelieve one another--that the highest thought is not a milk-and-water\nequation of so much reason and so much result--'no school sum to be\ncast up.'  We have realized the highest divine thought of itself, and\nthere is in it as much of wonder as of certainty; inevitable, and\nsolitary and safe in one sense, but queer and cactus-like no less in\nanother sense, it appeals unutterably to experience alone.\n\n\"There are sadness and disenchantment for the novice in these\ninferences, as if the keynote of the universe were low, but experience\nwill approve them.  Certainty is the root of despair.  The inevitable\nstales, while doubt and hope are sisters.  Not unfortunately the\nuniverse is wild--game flavored as a hawk's wing.  Nature is miracle\nall.  She knows no laws; the same returns not, save to bring the\ndifferent.  The slow round of the engraver's lathe gains but the\nbreadth of a hair, but the difference is distributed back over the\nwhole curve, never an instant true--ever not quite.\"\n\n\"Ever not quite!\"--this seems to wring the very last panting word out\nof rationalistic philosophy's mouth.  It is fit to be pluralism's\nheraldic device.  There is no complete generalization, no total point\nof view, no all-pervasive unity, but everywhere some residual\nresistance to verbalization, formulation, and discursification, some\ngenius of reality that escapes from the pressure of the logical finger,\nthat says \"hands off,\" and claims its privacy, and means to be left to\nits own life.  In every moment of immediate experience is somewhat\nabsolutely original and novel.  \"We are the first that ever burst into\nthis silent sea.\"  Philosophy must pass from words, that reproduce but\nancient elements, to life itself, that gives the integrally new.  The\n\"inexplicable,\" the \"mystery,\" as what the intellect, with its claim to\nreason out reality, thinks that it is in duty bound to resolve, and the\nresolution of which Blood's revelation would eliminate from the sphere\nof our duties, remains; but it remains as something to be met and dealt\nwith by faculties more akin to our activities and heroisms and\nwillingnesses, than to our logical powers.  This is the anesthetic\ninsight, according to our author.  Let _my_ last word, then, speaking\nin the name of intellectual philosophy, be _his_ word.--\"There is no\nconclusion.  What has concluded, that we might conclude in regard to\nit?  There are no fortunes to be told, and there is no advice to be\ngiven.--Farewell!\"\n\n\n\n[1] Written during the early summer of 1910 and published in the\n_Hibbert Journal_ for July of that year.\n\n[2] \"Yes!  Paul is quite a correspondent!\" said a good citizen of\nAmsterdam, from whom I inquired the way to Mr. Blood's dwelling many\nyears ago, after alighting from the train.  I had sought to identify\nhim by calling him an \"author,\" but his neighbor thought of him only as\na writer of letters to the journals I have named.\n\n[3] \"How shall a man know he is alive--since in thought the knowing\nconstitutes the being alive, without knowing that thought (life) from\nits opposite, and so knowing both, and so far as being is knowing,\nbeing both?  Each defines and relieves the other, each is impossible in\nthought without the other; therefore each has no distinction save as\npresently contrasting with the other, and each by itself is the same,\nand nothing.  Clearly, then, consciousness is neither of one nor of the\nother nor of both, but a knowing subject perceiving them and itself\ntogether and as one. . . .  So, in coming out of the anaesthetic\nexhilaration . . . we want to tell something; but the effort instantly\nproves that something will stay back and do the telling--one must utter\none's own throat, one must eat one's own teeth, to express the being\nthat possesses one.  The result is ludicrous and astounding at\nonce--astounding in the clear perception that this is the ultimate\nmystery of life, and is given you as the old Adamic secret, which you\nthen feel that all intelligence must sometime know or have known; yet\nludicrous in its familiar simplicity, as somewhat that any man should\nalways perceive at his best, if his head were only level, but which in\nour ordinary thinking has grown into a thousand creeds and theories\ndignified as religion and philosophy.\"\n\n[4] Elsewhere Mr. Blood writes of the \"force of the negative\"\nthus:--\"As when a faded lock of woman's hair shall cause a man to cut\nhis throat in a bedroom at five o'clock in the morning; or when Albany\nresounds with legislation, but a little henpecked judge in a dusty\noffice at Herkimer or Johnstown sadly writes across the page the word\n'unconstitutional'--the glory of the Capitol has faded.\"\n\n[5] Elsewhere Blood writes:--\"But what then, in the name of common\nsense, _is_ the external world?  If a dead man could answer he would\nsay Nothing, or as Macbeth said of the air-drawn dagger, 'there is no\nsuch thing.'  But a live man's answer might be in this way: What is the\nmultiplication table when it is not written down?  It is a necessity of\nthought; it was not created, it cannot but be; every intelligence which\ngoes to it, and thinks, must think in that form or think falsely.  So\nthe universe is the static necessity of reason; it is not an object for\nany intelligence to find, but it is half object and half subject; it\nnever cost anything as a whole; it never _was_ made, but always _is_\nmade, in the Logos, or expression of reason--the Word; and slowly but\nsurely it will be understood and uttered in every intelligence, until\nhe is one with God or reason itself.  As a man, for all he knows, or\nhas known, stands at any given instant the realization of only one\nthought, while all the rest of him is invisibly linked to that in the\nnecessary form and concatenation of reason, so the man as a whole of\nexploited thoughts is a moment in the front of the concatenated reason\nof the universal whole; and this whole is personal only as it is\npersonally achieved.  This is the Kingdom that is 'within you, and the\nGod which 'no man hath seen at any time.'\"\n\n[6] There are passages in Blood that sound like a well-known essay by\nEmerson.  For instance:--\"Experience burns into us the fact and the\nnecessity of universal compensation.  The philosopher takes it from\nHeraclitus, in the insight that everything exists through its opposite;\nand the bummer comforts himself for his morning headache as only the\nrough side of a square deal.  We accept readily the doctrine that pain\nand pleasure, evil and good, death and life, chance and reason, are\nnecessary equations--that there must be just as much of each as of its\nother.\n\n\"It grieves us little that this great compensation cannot at every\ninstant balance its beam on every individual centre, and dispense with\nan under dog in every fight; we know that the parts must subserve the\nwhole; we have faith that our time will come; and if it comes not at\nall in this world, our lack is a bid for immortality, and the most\npromising argument for a world hereafter.  'Though He slay me, yet will\nI trust in Him.'\n\n\"This is the faith that baffles all calamity, and ensures genius and\npatience in the world.  Let not the creditor hasten the settlement: let\nnot the injured man hurry toward revenge; there is nothing that draws\nbigger interest than a wrong, and to 'get the best of it' is ever in\nsome sense to get the worst.\"\n\n[7] Or what thinks the reader of the verbiage of these\nverses?--addressed in a mood of human defiance to the cosmic Gods--\n\n  \"Whose lightnings tawny leap from furtive lairs,\n  To helpless murder, while the ships go down\n  Swirled in the crazy stound, and mariners' prayers\n  Go up in noisome bubbles--such to them;--\n  Or when they tramp about the central fires,\n  Bending the strata with aeonian tread\n  Till steeples totter, and all ways are lost,--\n  Deem they of wife or child, or home or friend,\n  Doing these things as the long years lead on\n  Only to other years that mean no more,\n  That cure no ill, nor make for use or proof--\n  Destroying ever, though to rear again.\"\n\n[8] I subjoin a poetic apostrophe of Mr. Blood's to freedom:\n\n          \"Let it ne'er be known.\n  If in some book of the Inevitable,\n  Dog-eared and stale, the future stands engrossed\n  E'en as the past.  There shall be news in heaven,\n  And question in the courts thereof; and chance\n  Shall have its fling, e'en at the [ermined] bench.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\n    Ah, long ago, above the Indian ocean,\n  Where wan stars brood over the dreaming East,\n  I saw, white, liquid, palpitant, the Cross;\n  And faint and far came bells of Calvary\n  As planets passed, singing that they were saved,\n  Saved from themselves: but ever low Orion--\n  For hunter too was I, born of the wild,\n  And the game flavor of the infinite\n  Tainted me to the bone--he waved me on,\n  On to the tangent field beyond all orbs,\n  Where form nor order nor continuance\n  Hath thought nor name; there unity exhales\n  In want of confine, and the protoplasm\n  May beat and beat, in aimless vehemence,\n  Through vagrant spaces, homeless and unknown.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\n    There ends One's empire!--but so ends not all;\n  One knows not all; my griefs at least are mine--\n  By me their measure, and to me their lesson;\n  E'en I am one--(poor deuce to call the Ace!)\n  And to the open bears my gonfalon,\n  Mine aegis, Freedom!--Let me ne'er look back\n  Accusing, for the withered leaves and lives\n  The sated past hath strewn, the shears of fate,\n  But forth to braver days.\n            O, Liberty,\n  Burthen of every sigh!--thou gold of gold,\n  Beauty of the beautiful, strength of the strong!\n  My soul for ever turns agaze for thee.\n  There is no purpose of eternity\n  For faith or patience; but thy buoyant torch\n  Still lighted from the Islands of the Blest,\n  O'erbears all present for potential heavens\n  Which are not--ah, so more than all that are!\n  Whose chance postpones the ennui of the skies!\n  Be thou my genius--be my hope in thee!\n  For this were heaven: to be, and to be free.\"\n\n[9] In another letter Mr. Blood writes:--\"I think we are through with\n'the Whole,' and with '_causa sui_,' and with the 'negative unity'\nwhich assumes to identify each thing as being what it lacks of\neverything else.  You can, of course, build out a chip by modelling the\nsphere it was chipped from;--but if it was n't a sphere?  What a\nweariness it is to look back over the twenty odd volumes of the\n'Journal of Speculative Philosophy' and see Harris's mind wholly filled\nby that one conception of self-determination--everything to be thought\nas 'part of a system'--a 'whole' and '_causa sui_.'--I should like to\nsee such an idea get into the head of Edison or George Westinghouse.\"","title":"Memories and Studies","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":65631}