Part 6

The member of one profession is always flattered by being taken for a skilled practitioner of another. Try it on your minister. Instead of saying, 'That was an excellent sermon of yours this morning,' say, 'As I listened to your cogent argument, I thought what a successful lawyer you would have made.' Then he will say, 'I did think of taking to the law.'

If you had belonged to the court of Frederick the Great, you would have proved a poor courtier indeed if you had praised His Majesty's campaigns. Frederick knew that he was a Prussian general, but he wanted to be a French literary man. If you wished to gain his favor, you should have told him that in your opinion he excelled Voltaire.

We do not like to have too much attention drawn to our present circumstances. They may be well enough in their way, but we can think of something which would be more fitting for us. We have either seen better days or we expect them.

Suppose you had visited Napoleon in Elba and had sought to ingratiate yourself with him.

'Sire,' you would have said, 'this is a beautiful little empire of yours, so snug and cosy and quiet. It is just such a domain as is suited to a man in your condition. The climate is excellent. Everything is peaceful. It must be delightful to rule where everything is arranged for you and the details are taken care of by others. As I came to your dominion I saw a line of British frigates guarding your shores. The evidences of such thoughtfulness are everywhere.'

Your praise of his present condition would not have endeared you to Napoleon. You were addressing him as the Emperor of Elba. In his own eyes he was Emperor, though in Elba.

It is such a misapprehension which irritates any mature human being when his environment is taken as the measure of his personality.

The man with a literal mind moves in a perpetual comedy of errors. It is not a question of two Dromios. There are half a dozen Dromios under one hat.

How casually introductions are made, as if it were the easiest thing in the world to make two human beings acquainted! Your friend says, 'I want you to know Mr. Stifflekin,' and you say that you are happy to know him. But does either of you know the enigma that goes under the name of Stifflekin? You may know what he looks like and where he resides and what he does for a living. But that is all in the present tense. To really know him you must not only know what he is but what he used to be; what he used to think he was; what he used to think he ought to be and might be if he worked hard enough. You must know what he might have been if certain things had happened otherwise, and you must know what might have happened otherwise if he had been otherwise. All these complexities are a part of his own dim apprehension of himself. They are what make him so much more interesting to himself than he is to any one else.

It is this consciousness of the inadequacy of our knowledge which makes us so embarrassed when we offer any service to another. Will he take it in the spirit in which it is given?

That was an awkward moment when Stanley, after all his hardships in his search for Dr. Livingstone, at last found the Doctor by a lake in Central Africa. Stanley held out his hand and said stiffly, 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?' Stanley had heroically plunged through the equatorial forests to find Livingstone and to bring him back to civilization. But Livingstone was not particularly anxious to be found, and had a decided objection to being brought back to civilization. What he wanted was a new adventure. Stanley did not find the real Livingstone till he discovered that the old man was as young at heart as himself. The two men became acquainted only when they began to plan a new expedition to find the source of the Nile.

II

The natural desire of every man to be somebody else explains many of the minor irritations of life. It prevents that perfect organization of society in which every one should know his place and keep it. The desire to be somebody else leads us to practice on work that does not strictly belong to us. We all have aptitudes and talents that overflow the narrow bounds of our trade or profession. Every man feels that he is bigger than his job, and he is all the time doing what theologians call 'works of supererogation.'

The serious-minded housemaid is not content to do what she is told to do. She has an unexpended balance of energy. She wants to be a general household reformer. So she goes to the desk of the titular master of the house and gives it a thorough reformation. She arranges the papers according to her idea of neatness. When the poor gentleman returns and finds his familiar chaos transformed into a hateful order, he becomes a reactionary.

The serious manager of a street railway company is not content with the simple duty of transporting passengers cheaply and comfortably. He wants to exercise the functions of a lecturer in an ethical culture society. While the transported victim is swaying precariously from the end of a strap he reads a notice urging him to practice Christian courtesy and not to push. While the poor wretch pores over this counsel of perfection, he feels like answering as did Junius to the Duke of Grafton, 'My Lord, injuries may be atoned for and forgiven, but insults admit of no compensation.'

A man enters a barber's shop with the simple desire of being shaved. But he meets with the more ambitious desires of the barber. The serious barber is not content with any slight contribution to human welfare. He insists that his client shall be shampooed, manicured, massaged, steamed beneath boiling towels, cooled off by electric fans and, while all this is going on, that he shall have his boots blacked.

Have you never marveled at the patience of people in having so many things done to them that they don't want, just to avoid hurting the feelings of professional people who want to do more than is expected of them? You watch the stoical countenance of the passenger in a Pullman car as he stands up to be brushed. The chances are that he doesn't want to be brushed. He would prefer to leave the dust on his coat rather than to be compelled to swallow it. But he knows what is expected of him. It is a part of the solemn ritual of traveling. It precedes the offering.

The fact that every man desires to be somebody else explains many of the aberrations of artists and literary men. The painters, dramatists, musicians, poets, and novelists are just as human as housemaids and railway managers and porters. They want to do 'all the good they can to all the people they can in all the ways they can.' They get tired of the ways they are used to and like to try new combinations. So they are continually mixing things. The practitioner of one art tries to produce effects that are proper to another art.

A musician wants to be a painter and use his violin as if it were a brush. He would have us see the sunset glories that he is painting for us. A painter wants to be a musician and paint symphonies, and he is grieved because the uninstructed cannot hear his pictures, although the colors do swear at each other. Another painter wants to be an architect and build up his picture as if it were made of cubes of brick. It looks like brick-work, but to the natural eye it doesn't look like a picture. A prose-writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.

You go to the theatre with the simple-minded Shakespearean idea that the play's the thing. But the playwright wants to be a pathologist. So you discover that you have dropped into a grewsome clinic. You sought innocent relaxation, but you are one of the non-elect and have gone to the place prepared for you. You must see the thing through. The fact that you have troubles of your own is not a sufficient claim for exemption.

Or you take up a novel expecting it to be a work of fiction. But the novelist has other views. He wants to be your spiritual adviser. He must do something to your mind, he must rearrange your fundamental ideas, he must massage your soul, and generally brush you off. All this in spite of the fact that you don't want to be brushed off and set to rights. You don't want him to do anything to your mind. It's the only mind you have and you need it in your own business.

III

But if the desire of every man to be somebody else accounts for many whimsicalities of human conduct and for many aberrations in the arts, it cannot be lightly dismissed as belonging only to the realm of comedy. It has its origin in the nature of things. The reason why every man wants to be somebody else is that he can remember the time when he was somebody else. What we call personal identity is a very changeable thing, as all of us realize when we look over old photographs and read old letters.

The oldest man now living is but a few years removed from the undifferentiated germ-plasm, which might have developed into almost anything. In the beginning he was a bundle of possibilities. Every actuality that is developed means a decrease in the rich variety of possibilities. In becoming one thing it becomes impossible to be something else.

The delight in being a boy lies in the fact that the possibilities are still manifold. The boy feels that he can be anything that he desires. He is conscious that he has capacities that would make him a successful banker. On the other hand, there are attractions in a life of adventure in the South Seas. It would be pleasant to lie under a bread-fruit tree and let the fruit drop into his mouth, to the admiration of the gentle savages who would gather about him. Or he might be a saint--not a commonplace modern saint who does chores and attends tiresome committee meetings, but a saint such as one reads about, who gives away his rich robes and his purse of gold to the first beggar he meets, and then goes on his carefree way through the forest to convert interesting robbers. He feels that he might practice that kind of unscientific charity, if his father would furnish him with the money to give away.

But by and by he learns that making a success in the banking business is not consistent with excursions to the South Seas or with the more picturesque and unusual forms of saintliness. If he is to be in a bank he must do as the bankers do.

Parents and teachers conspire together to make a man of him, which means making a particular kind of man of him. All mental processes which are not useful must be suppressed. The sum of their admonitions is that he must pay attention. That is precisely what he is doing. He is paying attention to a variety of things that escape the adult mind. As he wriggles on the bench in the school-room, he pays attention to all that is going on. He attends to what is going on out-of-doors; he sees the weak points of his fellow pupils, against whom he is planning punitive expeditions; and he is delightfully conscious of the idiosyncrasies of the teacher. Moreover, he is a youthful artist and his sketches from life give acute joy to his contemporaries when they are furtively passed around.

But the schoolmaster says sternly, 'My boy, you must learn to pay attention; that is to say, you must not pay attention to so many things, but you must pay attention to one thing, namely, the second declension.'

Now, the second declension is the least interesting thing in the room, but unless he confines his attention to it he will never learn it. Education demands narrowing of attention in the interest of efficiency.

A man may, by dint of application to a particular subject, become a successful merchant or real-estate man or chemist or overseer of the poor. But he cannot be all these things at the same time. He must make his choice. Having in the presence of witnesses taken himself for better or worse, he must, forsaking all others, cleave to that alone. The consequence is that, by the time he is forty, he has become one kind of a man, and is able to do one kind of work. He has acquired a stock of ideas true enough for his purposes, but not so transcendentally true as to interfere with his business. His neighbors know where to find him, and they do not need to take a spiritual elevator. He does business on the ground floor. He has gained in practicality, but has lost in the quality of interestingness.

The old prophet declared that the young men dream dreams and the old men see visions, but he did not say anything about the middle-aged men. _They_ have to look after the business end.

But has the man whose working hours are so full of responsibilities changed so much as he seems to have done? When he is talking shop is he 'all there'? I think not. There are elusive personalities that are in hiding. As the rambling mansions of the old Catholic families had secret panels opening into the 'priest's hole,' to which the family resorted for spiritual comfort, so in the mind of the most successful man there are secret chambers where are hidden his unsuccessful ventures, his romantic ambitions, his unfulfilled promises. All that he dreamed of as possible is somewhere concealed in the man's heart. He would not for the world have the public know how much he cares for the selves that have not had a fair chance to come into the light of day. You do not know a man until you know his lost Atlantis, and his Utopia for which he still hopes to set sail.

When Dogberry asserted that he was 'as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina,' and 'one that hath two gowns and everything handsome about him,' he was pointing out what he deemed to be quite obvious. It was in a more intimate tone that he boasted, 'and a fellow that hath had losses.'

When Julius Caesar rode through the streets of Rome in his chariot, his laurel crown seemed to the populace a symbol of his present greatness. But gossip has it that Caesar at that time desired to be younger than he was, and that before appearing in public he carefully arranged his laurel wreath so as to conceal the fact that he had had losses.

Much that passes for pride in the behavior of the great comes from the fear of the betrayal of emotions that belong to a simpler manner of life. When the sons of Jacob saw the great Egyptian officer to whom they appealed turn away from them, they little knew what was going on. 'And Joseph made haste, for his bowels did yearn upon his brother: and he sought where to weep, and he entered into his chamber, and wept there. And he washed his face, and went out, and refrained himself.' Joseph didn't want to be a great man. He wanted to be human. It was hard to refrain himself.

IV

What of the lost arts of childhood, the lost audacities and ambitions and romantic admirations of adolescence? What becomes of the sympathies which make us feel our kinship to all sorts of people? What becomes of the early curiosity in regard to things which were none of our business? We ask as Saint Paul asked of the Galatians, 'Ye began well; who did hinder you?'

The answer is not wholly to our discredit. We do not develop all parts of our nature because we are not allowed to do so. Walt Whitman might exult over the Spontaneous Me. But nobody is paid for being spontaneous. A spontaneous switchman on the railway would be a menace to the traveling public. We prefer some one less temperamental.

As civilization advances and work becomes more specialized, it becomes impossible for any one to find free and full development for all his natural powers in any recognized occupation. What then becomes of the other selves? The answer must be that playgrounds must be provided for them outside the confines of daily business. As work becomes more engrossing and narrowing, the need is more urgent for recognized and carefully guarded periods of leisure.

The old Hebrew sage declared, 'Wisdom cometh from the opportunity of leisure.' It does not mean that a wise man must belong to what we call the leisure classes. It means that, if one has only a little free time at his disposal, he must use that time for the refreshment of his hidden selves. If he cannot have a sabbath rest of twenty-four hours, he must learn to sanctify little sabbaths, it may be of ten minutes' length. In them he shall do no manner of work. It is not enough that the self that works and receives wages shall be recognized and protected; the world must be made safe for our other selves. Does not the Declaration of Independence say that every man has an inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness?

The old-time minister, after he had exhorted the believers at considerable length, used to turn to a personage who for homiletical purposes was known as the Objector. To him he addressed his most labored arguments. At this point I am conscious of the presence of the Objector.

'All you say,' he remarks, 'in praise of your favorite platitude is true to a fault. But what has all this to do with the War? There is only one thing in these days worth thinking about--at least, it is the only thing we _can_ think about.'

'I agree with you, courteous Objector. No matter where we start, we all come back to this point: Who was to blame for the War, and how is it coming out? Our explanatory idea has a direct bearing on the question before us. The Prussian militarists had a painstaking knowledge of facts, but they had a contempt for human nature. Their tactlessness was almost beyond belief. They treated persons as if they were things. They treated facts with deadly seriousness, but had no regard for feelings. They had spies all over the world to report all that could be seen, but they took no account of what could not be seen. So, while they were dealing scientifically with the obvious facts and forces, all the hidden powers of the human soul were being turned against them. Prussianism insists on highly specialized men who have no sympathies to interfere with their efficiency. Having adopted a standard, all variation must be suppressed. It is against this effort to suppress the human variations that we are fighting. We don't want all men to be reduced to one pattern.'

'But what about the Kaiser? Does your formula explain him? Does he want to be somebody else?'

'I confess, dear Objector, that it is probably a new idea to him; but he may come to it.'

The Temple's Difficult Door

By Robert M. Gay

Do you remember the little old white church which, when we were boys, we attended more or less unwillingly, according to the season, with its stiff-backed pews in which we sat aching, counting the pipes in the organ and the balusters in the altar-rail and the dentils in the moulding of the pulpit? Of course you remember it, and the little old lady who sat in a corner ejaculating her hallelujahs and amens with the regularity of a cuckoo-clock, and the solemn precentor who sawed out the time with his hand, and the preacher who took his texts from the Old Testament and rolled the names of the Ten Tribes and their enemies as a sweet morsel under his tongue. The little old lady, you recollect, was valiant in prayer-meeting. She was not afraid to criticize the minister, or to repeat week by week the story of her conversion in her ninth year. Nor did she fail continually to impress upon us boys--facing us sometimes, with uplifted finger--the immanence of him who goeth to and fro in the earth and rageth like a lion, seeking whom he may devour. Ah, those prayer-meetings! Shall we, shall we ever forget them? Or the references to the sinners who sat on the back row (where we always sat)? Or the wailing hymns, or the dismal testimonies, or the waves of dejection that swept over us during the cataloguing of our omissions and commissions?

And there was always a boy! Do you remember him? A boy of our own age, mind you, a boy who ostentatiously arose and, with the decorum of a deacon, dwelt upon his former iniquities and present beatitude. We expected this of an occasional girl, yet the girls never did it; a mumbled text, a flurried word or two, were the extent of their temerity. As for us, it was not our custom to discuss our souls, even among ourselves. It is said that to forget the existence of a stomach is the best symptom of health in that useful organ, and, if the analogy holds, our souls must have been singularly robust. We were bashful about our virtues and vices; we could not fathom the sentiments of _Take Time to be Holy;_ we were in mortal fear that some day somebody might convict us of sin and hale us forthwith into the fold of the elect. Yet here was a boy who flaunted his goodness in our faces. It was evident that he was not normal, that it lay with us as a duty to puncture the bubble of his presumptuousness.

The time came, you remember, very opportunely. On a memorable evening it was announced that this Infant Samuel, as the little old lady called him, was to recite to the congregation the entire Book of Esther from memory. For us, who found it beyond our power to remember a Golden Text of ten words for ten minutes, such a performance was unbelievable. We put our heads together and evolved a plot, dark, yet charming in its simple effectiveness. We decided to make faces at him.

We were expert in the art of face-making, because we had practiced it for weeks upon our sisters who sang in the choir. They had suffered, but were now immune. The grimaces of a Grimaldi could not have ruffled the calm of their scornful features.

We planted ourselves in the front row, and the boy began his recital. In time his preoccupied and lack-lustre eye wandered in our direction and rested upon us. He started, looked away, stammered, recovered, and went bravely on. But we knew that he would look back. We dared not glance at our neighbors, but had faith that each was doing his duty.

Of course he did look back, but why prolong the mournful tale? It is sufficient to say that Esther and Ahasuerus remained unwedded and Haman unhung; and that our victim retired amid the titterings of the judicious and the commiserations of the pious, while we plumed ourselves upon a difficult task laudably accomplished.

I have indulged in this long reminiscence, which probably can be matched in the experience of most of my masculine readers, because it is provocative of thoughts that deserve to be aired. An essay might be written upon the pathos that lies in the spectacle of a boy who is incited to a public display of his goodness; in the docility which is as clay in the hands of deluded adults. That he suffered there can be no doubt--not one half so much under the ordeal of our contriving, which, I hope, cured him, as under the isolation which his dedication to goodness made inevitable. He was a lonely boy, though he may not have realized that he was. That he could ever understand his fellows, or be understood by them, was impossible. He was the victim of the most perverse fate that can afflict a boy: he had been born in the bosom of a family whose piety contained not a grain of the salt of humor, not a particle of the leaven of imagination, not--But I am forgetting. I wish to ask the reader's consideration, not of the victim, but of the tormentors.

Why is it that boys are suspicious of that approximate moral perfection called goodness? Girls find a deep satisfaction in being good--in being neat, in being clean, in being decorous. If they are not these, we call them tomboys, still casting the onus of sinfulness upon the other sex. When we boys confided our exploit to the little girls, we found that they openly defended the boy, though, it must be admitted, they privately admired us, as is the way of their sex. Our fathers, informed by our sisters, and instigated by our mothers, solemnly reproached us, but with a twinkle that would not be hidden. Manifestly, the trail of the serpent was over them, too. They were sorry that they had not sat in the choir.