CHAPTER IX

HOW TO LEARN TO SEE THE SPIRITUAL _NUMEN_ IN OTHERS

We now have to consider how to acquire the faculty of seeing the light that in our fellowmen is often so deeply hidden. We can love only that which is lovable. If we could see holiness, beauty concealed within our fellow-beings, we should be drawn towards them by the most powerful attraction, willingly living in their life, and permitting them to live in ours. We should then love all men, for we should see in all what is unspeakably lovable. But the empirical man stands between us and the spiritual man, and the empirical woman between us and the spiritual woman; and very often the former are most repulsive, even when their ugly traits do not affect us personally, even when as spectators merely we observe how they behave.

Much more is it well-nigh insuperably difficult to worship, in the sense of holding worthy, those whose characteristic traits directly offend us, or are perpetual thorns in our side. We must somehow learn to regard the empirical traits, odious, harmful or merely commonplace and vulgar as they may be, as the mask, the screen interposed between our eyes and the real self of others. We must acquire the faculty of second sight, of seeing the lovable self as the true self. And how without self deception we can possibly succeed in doing so is the question.

In the first place, it is my own craving for resurrection out of that death in life to which I seem doomed that must impel me to penetrate to the essential life in others. My own spiritual nature is in fetters, and to burst the fetters, to escape from the prison, there is but one way. The unique personality, which is the real life in me, I cannot gain, nor even approximate to, unless I search and go on searching for the spiritual _numen_ in others.[67] The force which incites me to penetrate beyond the empirical traits of others, to surmount the walls which surround the shrine in them, is the consciousness that unless I do so I am myself spiritually lost, I remain myself spiritually dead. For it is only face to face with the god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other that the god hidden in me will consent to appear.

The expression “death in life” means living, even living passionately and in a way efficiently, with a sense, nevertheless, underneath of the hollowness, the futility of the objects of pursuit. The death in life is the state of discontent that slowly gathers and augments in a man’s mind as he pursues his customary ends, as he reviews his intellectual achievement, the books he has written, the pictures he has painted, the meager outcome of his schemes of social reform, the uncertain result of his efforts at moral self-development. It is the ensuing distaste for what he has actually accomplished, the disallowance of it as in any way ultimately satisfying. And yet this death in life is itself the well-spring of resurrection, out of which is engendered an irrepressible yearning of the mind to attach itself to something greater than all ephemeral interests, to something that has eternal worth, and is of such a kind as to communicate of its eternal nature to him who touches it. The god in the other, the eternal personality in the inner sanctuary of the other, is that object which must be sought and touched. The cry of my own soul for salvation is the impulse that leads me on to search for that object. Without the previous discontent, I shall not seek; without the appraisement of the temporal ends and interests of man as in the last analysis unsatisfying, I shall not set out on my quest. Enmeshed in the jungle of the empirical world, I shall find no exit. I shall remain the victim of the illusion that the peace I need can be found in the realm of temporal desire. I shall commit what the theologians called Original Sin, that is, the preferring of “the works of the Creator to the Creator himself.”

But there is a second force that must act in conjunction with this keen desire for personal liberation or highest personal self-affirmation. It is the sense of the _dependence of others_ upon what I can do for them. Notoriously it is the dependence of the child that evokes in the parent the noblest qualities of which he is capable, the self-denial, the incessant willingness to labor for the good of the offspring. It is the dependence of the student on the teacher, of the disciple on the master that elicits the latter’s best thought. It is the dependence of the multitude on the religious teacher that puts him on his mettle. But if the dependence of others upon oneself is to produce its appropriate results, that dependence will have to be interpreted in a spiritual sense. We shall have to think of others as dependent on us not only for the necessary empirical services we are bound to render them, but those empirical services themselves will have to be regarded as instruments by means of which we may render them the highest spiritual service.

This leads to a more _rigorous scrutiny of the notion of service_ than has hitherto been customary.

The question we must answer, and it is one that has never been adequately met, is: What is it in the other that we are to serve, what is the true object of our service? Man is worth while on his own account. Now no one can pretend that the welfare of the animal part of man is an object worth while on its own account. To satisfy the hunger or the thirst of another, or to promote his health is to serve his body. But the body is the servant of a master. And I am not bound to serve a servant. If I am to serve the servant at all it must be for the sake of the master. Who then is the master?

The same argument applies also to the intellect. Human science is after all but a narrow littoral along the illimitable continent of nescience. No one who compares the intellectual achievements of mankind with the problems that remain unsolved will pretend that the accomplishments of the intellect are worth while on their own account. The mental no less than the physical part of us has a master. There is an object higher than the acquisition of knowledge to be attained in the course of the mind’s endeavors to acquire knowledge, namely the growth of the scientist towards unique personality, as will be shown in the chapter on the Vocations in the last Book. Analogous considerations apply to art and its achievements.

And if someone should say that neither the satisfaction of the body alone, nor of the intellect, nor of the æsthetic sense, nor of the affections, but of all of them taken together, is to be the object of our service, the answer is that this would be merely serving a whole household of servants, and still not serving the master. This quite aside from the fact that the ideal of happiness as consisting in the harmonious gratification of the various elements enumerated is chimerical. Since some of the most indispensable elements of happiness, such as freedom from disease and from bereavement, are beyond our control. While even the higher faculties are far from harmoniously coöperating, the one-sidedness of human nature being such that a marked development in one direction is actually incompatible with complete development in other directions.

Unless, then, there be some master end in everyone’s life, one paramount to all others, to which all others are subordinate (the subordination and the renunciation involved being themselves means of spiritualizing one’s nature) there is no point to the notion of service. That master end I have defined as the attainment of the conviction of one’s infinite interrelatedness, the consciousness of oneself as a member of the spiritual universe, a ἄπαξ λεγόμενον[68] in the eternal life, a source of energy induplicable in its kind, which radiates out and touches at the center each one of the infinite multitude of spiritual associates, and receives from them the effect of their aboriginally diverse modes of energizing in return.

I have mentioned two motives that impel me to search for the _numen_ in others. The one, the craving for my own liberation from the death in life, my own desperate outreaching toward salvation; the other, the sense of the dependence of others upon me. Yes, but this dependence of theirs I must now interpret as spiritual dependence. I must look for them also beyond the death in life to life itself. I must have the courage and the truthfulness to look upon neighbor, friend, wife, husband, son, daughter _sub specie æternitatis_, that is, as primarily spiritual beings, and estimate any physical, intellectual or emotional help I can give them by the consideration whether it does or does not advance them toward the master end of their being.

Courage of this sort is rare, because precisely the physical, mental and emotional wants of those who depend on us are the most obvious and clamorous. I do not of course mean that we should not attend effectually to their immediate wants. How could we avoid doing so? How could we neglect the health, the education, etc., of our children? What I say is that we should acquire the habit of looking upon the immediate ends as instrumental, and keep in view the supreme end which they in turn are to serve, and that we should beware of what I have called the fallacy of provisionalism—that of supposing that we are at liberty to provide for the lower immediate necessities first, leaving the higher and the highest needs to be attended to later on.

The manner in which parents commonly plan for the future of their sons and daughters is perhaps the fittest illustration of the idea I am here seeking to exclude. During the period of infancy they pilot the child through the dangers that beset its physical existence. Later on, what is called education, the preliminary mental training required to fit the young for the business of life, is felt to be imperative. Then comes the selection of a vocation with a view of assuring the material basis of subsistence. Still later, the advancement of the sons or daughters in their chosen vocations, or their social success occupies perhaps the parent’s mind. Thoughts of a happy marriage flatter the parent’s imagination. If the moral side receives attention, the utmost that as a rule is demanded is that the young person shall not fall below the average moral standard that happens to prevail in the community. And it is in such ways as these that we are apt to respond to the claims of those spiritual beings for whose essential future welfare we are to so large an extent responsible.

To widen this all too narrow conception of our responsibilities, the following reflections may be found useful. A father in the last decade of his life realizes acutely the brevity of his own past existence. The curve of his life is now rapidly descending. Supposing him to be nearing seventy, his adult sons and daughters may by this time have reached the age of thirty or forty. Looking back on the thirty or more years that separate him from them, and remembering how like a dream the intervening years have glided by, it may come home to him with sudden force how soon these, his sons and daughters too, though now in their prime, will reach the point at which he has arrived. The error of parents is to think of their grown sons and daughters only as moving on the upward curve of life. They stop short in imagination there. They look forward to marriage, vocational success and the like, as finalities for those who are still young. We ought to remember that the upward curve in the lives of our children will presently descend just as ours has descended, that the few decades which separate them from old age will pass as quickly for them as they have passed for us,—almost in the twinkling of an eye,—and we ought to ask on their behalf as we must on ours,—What is to be the result of it all? What does it all profit? And it is this thought that will turn our attention for them as for ourselves to the spiritual end which should be dominant at all times,—in the morning, at noon, and in the evening twilight of a human existence.

All that has been said has to do with the arousing in us of the desire to see in others the god, the _numen_, the master end. The wish to escape from our own death in life, the sense of the dependence of others on us as interpreted,—these two are the means of stirring us up to go forth upon the quest, and the seeking is already more than half the journey. Seek, and ye shall find. But what exactly is it that we are to seek? What are we to see in the other?—The spiritual nature. But what is the spiritual nature? I have frequently urged that the lack of a definite description of the spiritual nature is the chief defect in ethics up to the present time. This defect I endeavor to supply. The spiritual nature is the unique nature conceived as interrelated with an infinity of natures unique like itself. The spiritual nature in another is the fair quality distinctive of the other raised toward the Nth degree. We are to paint ideal portraits of our spiritual associates. We are to see them in the light of what is better in them as it would be if it were transfigured into the best. We are to go on as long as we live painting these ideal portraits of them. We are to retouch their portraits constantly. We are not indeed to obtrude or impose upon others these sketches, these mental creations of ours, but to propose them diffidently, reverently, to hold them up as glasses in which our associates may possibly see themselves mirrored. It is for them to accept in whole or in part our rendering of their inner selves or to reject it. But we are not to desist from our labor in creating the ideal portraits, for in this consists the spiritual artistry of human intercourse.

Our friends we are to see in the light of these glorified sketches,—our friends and our enemies too. For only thus can we win them, and be essentially their benefactors. There is no power so irresistible, it has been said, as love. I do not quite accept the word Love. It signifies the feeling that goes with the ideal appreciation of others; and mere feeling supplies no directive rule of conduct. But it is true that the power of ideally appreciating others, of seeing them in the light of their possible best, and the feeling of love consequent on this vision, is the mightiest lever for transforming evil into good, and for sweetening the embittered lives of men. No greater boon can anyone receive from another than to be helped to think well of himself. Flattery is the base counterfeit of appreciation. Spiritual appreciation, appreciation of the inner self despite the mask, is the greatest of gifts, to manifest it is the greatest of arts. In its supreme form it is the art of going down to the lowest of human beings—the man in the ditch, the woman on the street—and making them think well of themselves because of possibilities in their nature they themselves hardly surmise. It is also the art of making the most developed and advanced human beings realize in themselves something still higher and better than they have ever reached. It is this art by which the supreme human benefactors have worked their spiritual miracles, and it is an art which to the extent of our ability we must each acquire and practice, if human society is to be redeemed.

There are specially two points to be remembered: the one, that of seeing the unattained excellence in those who are already in the way of excellence; the other, where there is or seems to be a complete absence of fine qualities or of the promise of development, as in the case of backward children, that we should still not abate one jot of hope or effort, seeking to win even the smallest improvement, in the conviction that the best possible under the circumstances is incalculably worth while. For, compared with the infinite ideal even the achievements of the most advanced and most developed fall infinitely short, and what are they more than the best possible under the circumstances. The best possible under the circumstances represents for us the absolute best.

Now a word in regard to those who resist the better influence which we may seek to exercise over them, for instance, the so-called black sheep in families. Our chief concern should here be to prevent the resistance from infecting ourselves and provoking unethical reactions. Ethics is a system of relations. The ethical point of view consists in seeing the relation between the offending person and ourselves as it ought to be, in seeing with perfect objectivity the kind of conduct ideally required by the relation on both sides, seeing it and thereby assisting the other to see it. But we shall never succeed in doing this until we purge from our thoughts and speech every trace of private irritation. If we can point out to the one who has gone wrong how he has hurt another, and has spiritually hurt himself; if while we do this we see the fineness that is possible to him and make him realize that we see it, we shall not utterly fail. I am aware that other methods should accompany the spiritual appeal. In some cases, a temporary separation is indicated, in other cases, a prolonged change of environment, or the gradual formation of new habits of industry and application, the awakening of interest in some pursuit that leads the mind away from egocentric pre-occupation. Psychology and experience crystallized, into commonsense have valuable counsels to give. But, along with the technical aids, the spiritual influence should never be lost sight of or relegated to the second place.

And finally two ideas should be mentioned which are pertinent to broken relations, as for instance to the unhappy marriage relation and to interrupted friendships: One that the break is never complete. There remain certain threads unsundered, which should be most sedulously preserved intact. They may serve as points of attachment to weave the tie anew. Again, and this is still more important, thought that the break would never have occurred if the relation had been as finely conceived as it ought to have been on my side as well as on the others. Take friendship as an example. A friendship of many years’ standing is suddenly wrecked. Why? What were the terms on which the friendship had been based? What had friendship meant to me?—A certain personal attraction, mutual aid and comfort, taking counsel together, sympathy in joy and sorrow. These are valuable elements of friendship, but they do not even touch the essential point. They do not describe the principal function which a friend has to fulfil. The friend ideally is one who stands alongside another as the spectator of his spiritual development, as one who appraises his friend’s advance toward the master end of life disinterestedly, and yet with deepest personal concern. He is the mirror in which his friend may see the stages of his spiritual progress reflected. Now I have lost my friend. Why have I lost him? Because he was never a true friend to me, and, I must add, because I was never a real friend to him. I have not really lost him, because I never really possessed him. And on making this discovery I shall have a new light shed on what friendship might mean. I may never be so fortunate as to find the actual friend, but I shall know what he ought to be, and what it is in me to be to him. And when I say, “what it is in me to be to him,” I think of resources of my inner being which have never been called out; I think of the worth that belongs to me as a spiritual being capable of giving forth and receiving highest spiritual influence, and I am thereby immeasurably aggrandized in my own esteem, the self in me is lifted nearer as it were to its infinite counterpart in the eternal life. I walk henceforth on a higher level, I dwell amid serener presences. And this aggrandizement of the self, not on the ground of what I am but what I may be, and of others too, not on the ground of what they are, but what they may be, is the compensation derived from the bitter experience of broken relations. And what has been said of friendship by way of example is true of frustration in marriage as well, and of frustrations of every kind.

NOTE TO BOOK III

I may mention a certain test case for trying out the proposed rule, namely, to idealize the fair quality in others, and thereby achieve the concomitant transformation of the self. I mean the case of the victims of a cruel race prejudice, such as is entertained against the colored people of the South by the more brutal whites. I remember a long evening which I once spent in the company of a leader among the colored people, and one of the best men I have ever known. I looked that night deep into a suffering, sensitive human soul, and I tried to put myself in his place. I realized the hardships of his lot, the anguish that I myself should suffer if I were in his position. But would there be the spiritual equivalent? Would the way I had found in trials less poignant be the way of release? To make the situation clear, I selected two points in which the white man, my supposed oppressor, has the advantage, two fair qualities of which he can boast. His family life is purer on the average than that of a large number of the colored people. And he has also learned in the case of white men to distinguish between the criminal and the innocent. He will protect the latter, and give up the former to justice. Now my own people, putting myself in the place of the colored man, are backward in both these respects. In consequence of the long centuries of slavery their family relations are often unstable, while they are apt to shield the colored criminal from the arm of the law. In both respects I want to represent to myself the white man as he ought to act. He ought to help me lift up my race, first, by making their family life purer and more stable. But instead, many of the whites debauch the women of my race, while perhaps respecting those of their own race; moreover, by refusing decent accommodation on railroads they compel educated and refined colored women to travel in cars in which the coarsest men are herded together.

Again, how can I, as a leader among my people, teach them to distinguish between the criminal and the innocent of their race so long as mobs of white men indiscriminately lynch the innocent and the criminal of my race alike on the barest suspicion? Against their actual behavior I set up in my mind a picture of how the superior race, superior in point of civilization, but still morally backward, ought to act. I can but suggest this picture, keep it in view as a constant protest, or still better as an imperative model.

But I can do more. I can turn upon myself, and upon others of my own people who are in advance of the majority of them, and presently I shall be compelled to admit that amongst ourselves something of the same pride of superiority exists, something of the same prejudice against those who are lower in the scale. For there is also a stratification and a hierarchy of higher and lower among the oppressed. And the relatively higher are apt to behave toward the lower in the same fashion as their common oppressors behave toward them all. We find the same tendency among other oppressed races, as for instance in the attitude of certain of the Spanish and the German Jews toward the Polish and the Russian. Purge thyself, therefore, is the incisive monition; purify thine own nature of that pride which hurts so cruelly when it is directed upon thee from without. Let the sin committed against thee be the means of purifying thee from the like sin. This is the spiritual compensation, this the thought that leads to inward peace!

FOOTNOTES:

[67] In a previous chapter I remarked that the cheap estimate of others and of oneself is due to the habit of regarding human beings from the point of view of the use they can be put to, ignoring the wonderful and mysterious energies and potencies which are exhibited day by day in every human being. If the force stored in an infinitesimal particle of radium is calculated to excite admiration, how much more the forces exhibited in man, looking at him merely as the stage on which the spectacle of these forces is displayed. Consider the occurrence of such a thing as thought, the sheer miracle of mentality, the working of the constructive imagination in the artist, etc. If we sufficiently dwell on these inward facts about men, instead of merely emphasizing their external utility to one another, we shall thereby be put in tune, as it were, for the higher spiritual view of man. The difference I have said is like that between understanding the theory of electricity and merely turning on electric power in the workshop or the home. And yet the scientific contemplation of the miracles of human nature as seen from within, while it serves as a propædeutic, cannot actually bring us up to the ethical point of view. For this sort of contemplation reveals only the working of impersonal forces or powers, thought, feeling, impulse in their endless actions and reactions, similar, in so far as they are impersonal, to the forces observed in nature. The ethical point of view alone discloses a centrality, an underivative, irreducible core, a substantive being, personality.

[68] An expression occurring once only.