Chapter 6

MAN'S WILLINGNESS TO WORK

What a fortunate thing it is that men want to work and like to live! Suppose for a moment that the out-of-work, hungry, unlucky creatures, numbering one hundred thousand in New York City, should suddenly change their character.

It is a harmless supposition, as it implies that a great body of good, though unlucky, men should be suddenly metamorphosed. But suppose, for instance, that one hundred thousand men should have a meeting and say:

"The State provides food, lodging and good care for every thief. It does not provide anything for us. Let us therefore accept the situation like philosophers and become thieves."

Suppose the hundred thousand men thereupon, very quietly, without any show of violence, should each proceed to steal something and then announce the intention to accept the consequence by pleading guilty. It would embarrass the State and the reigning powers, would it not?

What could society do with a hundred thousand self-confessed thieves to take care of? It could not lock them up. It could not let them go. It could not nominally sentence them and have the Governor pardon them, because the hundred thousand would then proceed to steal something else.

What could be done? Nothing. There is no punishment save imprisonment for theft, and the wholesale thieves would ask for and demand imprisonment with the usual rations.

We think society is well balanced and that everything is ingeniously provided for.

So it is; but everything hinges on the extraordinary fact that the hungry, thin, common, shiftless, luckless man at the very bottom is still a MAN. He will not be a thief, and he will die of hunger and cold, as poor fellows do almost every winter day, rather than take the food that society guarantees to the thief.

We attribute much to our own wisdom and the wisdom of our laws. But we owe almost everything to the instinct of self-preservation and to that second, very peculiar, instinct called pride.

THE HUMAN BRAIN BEATS THE COAL MINES

For six million years, during the carboniferous period, the tree ferns dropped their pollen dust to the earth forming coal beds which now cook our dinners and incidentally make J. Pierpont Morgan so prosperous.

A good deal of useless anxiety has been devoted to the questions:

What will the human race do when the coal gives out? Shall we freeze, or begin planting huge forests of wood, or what?

In the first place, coal will not give out for a long, long time.

In the second place, its disappearance will not make the slightest difference, for in the few cubic inches of the human brain nature has stored up treasures greater than all those hidden in the depths of the earth. The creation of the human brain took more years than the creation of the coal fields, but the brain's resources are inexhaustible.

A German workman now comes along who has discovered a chemical substitute for coal, better than coal in many ways, and before this German shall have been dead many years some other will find a further substitute far better and cheaper than his.

There is endless heat power in the action of the tides, in the rush of Niagara, in the winds, and in endless chemical combinations. Heat is motion, and the Universe is motion. Men will soon cease lighting tiny bonfires to obtain crude heat in a crude way. Electricity or the sun's own rays, concentrated for heating purposes, will do the work without any digging in mines by men, or delving in ashes and clinkers by women.

The story of antiquity, more or less fictitious, of the burning of a fleet with the aid of a glass and the sunbeams, will be matter-of-fact reality long before the coal shall have been exhausted.

HOW THE OTHER PLANETS WILL TALK TO US

We talk of civilization as though it necessarily implied improvement.

Civilization means the school and the library, but it also means the prison and the poorhouse.

Two short stories illustrate different views of what we call civilization:

Aristippus was a young Greek gentleman of large means, genuine intellectual power, a sense of humor and a reputation as a philosopher.

He was on his way to Corinth with a young lady named Lais, or possibly he was coming from Corinth with her. Anyhow, he was wrecked on the voyage. If you know anything about the reputation of Lais, you know that the philosopher was badly employed, and that the Greek gods doubtless wrecked his vessel to impress upon his mind the importance of morality.

Thrown ashore on a barren stretch of sand, the philosopher was very sad at first. He observed on the sand the remains of certain geometrical drawings, and instantly exclaimed: "There is help near. Here I see signs of thinking men, of civilization." ----

Voltaire tells of wrecked individuals thrown on a lonely coast, and also much distressed and frightened.

They saw no geometrical tracings in the sand. But on a bleak moor in the twilight they saw the black beams of a gibbet, and below the cross-piece, swinging in the wind, they saw a human skeleton with bony wrists and ankles chained together.

Prayerfully the wanderers dropped on their knees and exclaimed with upturned eyes:

"Thank God, we have got back to civilization." ----

Thus, you see, there are varying signs of civilization. There is a great gulf between the signs perceived by Aristippus--signs of the mental activity which engages in geometrical demonstrations--and Voltaire's sign of civilization--the brutal execution of a brutal criminal. ----

Those accustomed to waste time in speculations that cannot bring a financial return may be interested in the following application of the sign of civilization which Aristippus immediately recognized back in the days of two thousand years ago.

We know that some day the inhabitants on Mars or some other planet will want to talk to us. They have doubtless been studying us and consider us still too barbarous and primitive to be worth talking to.

But when we become semi-civilized, in the cosmic sense of the word, the older and wiser planets will get ready to open communication with us.

How will they go about it? They are perhaps absolutely different from us, in shape, in manner of thought, in every conceivable way, including language, customs, and so on.

BUT GEOMETRICAL, MATHEMATICAL FACTS ARE THE SAME THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE.

Will not the wise Martian who wants to speak to us and decides to flash some message down here on our clouds, or on the surface of the water, utilize the universality of geometrical truths in order to make us understand that thinking beings are trying to talk to us?

The sum of the angles of any triangle is equal to two right angles.

That is true of every triangle, no matter what its shape, no matter whether it be drawn on this earth or on the most distant sun.

Therefore, when the Martian gentleman gets ready to talk to us he need only repeatedly place before us two right angles followed by a triangle, or a triangle followed by two right angles. Instantly, like Aristippus, we can say there is civilization in Mars, or wherever that sign comes from, or at least there is organized thought. The mind that is flashing that sign knows something about geometry.

Of course, we should also recognize "signs of civilization" if the Martians should project upon our atmosphere a skeleton hanging in chains. But it is to be hoped that the Martians have got beyond that particular evidence of civilization.

SHALL WE DO WITHOUT SLEEP SOME DAY?

A half-developed being like man, hanging midway between primitive barbarism and ultimate perfection, should study the insect tribes which appear to have realized the possibilities of development in their line.

The study of the ant and the bee, the spider and the scorpion should fill us with hope. We should say to ourselves:

"If these tiny fragments of life can develop so highly, what may not WE hope for in the way of ultimate possibilities? Our beginning is so much more full of promise than the beginnings of our tiny insect brothers." ----

This writer, taking his own advice, which is most unusual, has been trying to get acquainted with some insects in the hope of cheering himself and getting new ideas.

From the female scorpion we acquire fresh veneration for the possibilities of maternal devotion.

The mother of the Gracchi has been well advertised because she preferred her sons to jewelry. The Russian mother who feeds herself to the wolves, instead of throwing her boy over the back of the sleigh in the usual way, is also highly praised. But their devotion shrinks to nothing when compared with that of any poor mother scorpion of Mexico's sandy tracts.

As soon as her young scorpions arrive, they climb to her back, half a hundred of them or more. She moves about with them, protecting them, avoiding danger, giving them the sunlight. Meanwhile they are feeding on her body. Her movements get gradually slower and slower; finally they cease. The young scorpions depart leaving the mother scorpion simply an empty shell. We should dislike to see any such exhibition of tenderness among human beings, but we can't help admiring the scorpion.

Mr. Scorpion, placed as was Captain Dreyfus, would sting himself to death. They are a determined race. ----

Spiders who construct tiny balloons with little cars all complete are wonderful creatures. They cross chasms in their balloons, throwing out bits of trailing web which seem to act as rudders. In their little way and in a perfectly adequate fashion they have solved aerial navigation, which still puzzles us. We admire spiders and kill only those with yellow stomachs, which are "poison." ----

But up to the present we have found the ant the most interestingly suggestive creature. He has developed and understands stirpiculture--the improvement of the race by careful breeding--which with us is as yet mere theory, and as we look down at the ant, we look up to him because the strangely active creature manages to do without sleep.

We human beings drowse through thirty years of our threescore and ten, but the ant is awake and working all the time.

If the ant has managed to live without sleep, if he has acquired the faculty of lifelong wakefulness, why should we not do as much in time? We take it for granted that sleep is essential, as we take everything else for granted. We used to take it for granted that the earth was flat, but we have stopped that. Sleep was at one time forced upon man and other animals.

The earth in its rollings turned away from the sun once in every twenty-four hours. In the darkness of the beginning man said to himself: "If I go walking around, I shall fall into a hole, so I shall lie down and wait until the sun comes again."

He did as all the animals did before him for millions of years. Since that time, man has conquered darkness. Why should he not ultimately conquer sleep?

We know that thin men, nervous, highly organized, do with far less sleep than others. We know that old age requires less sleep than youth.

Can we not cultivate and develop the characteristics which make sleep less necessary? Higher races of apes have abolished tails.

Can't we abolish sleep? ----

As old age needs less sleep than babyhood, so in our maturity as a human race we shall probably demand less sleep than now in our racial babyhood. Perhaps none at all will be needed.

If that happens our lives will be doubled in value, they will be complete. The hours of sunlight will be devoted to examination and admiration of nature's beauties on this earth.

The hours of darkness, given up to sleep no longer, will be devoted to the study of space, to investigation among other worlds.

That kind of life will be worth while. Bear in mind that we shall only really begin to live on this earth when we shall have settled all the little social and material questions here and shall have begun in earnest the study of the universe in which we are a speck.

The days of the future will be given up to artistic enjoyment of the beautiful. The nights will be devoted to intellectual development and research.

Man will LIVE.

THE THREE BEST THINGS IN THE WORLD

If you had choice of all qualities which man can possess, which three would you declare most important?

This question is submitted as interesting every man. We give our answer; if yours is different, send it here. ----

SELF-CONTROL.

JUSTICE.

IMAGINATION.

Those we think the most important elements in the human character. A man fully and evenly equipped with all three would be greater than any the world has known. ----

SELF-CONTROL you must start with.

It makes life worth while. It frees you from the danger of remorse, the wasted time of self- reproach. It sees opportunities as they come; saves you from damaging temptation. It is as important to a brain as is physical equilibrium to a work of masonry.

A man without self-control, a building out of plumb, cannot endure.

JUSTICE.

It is the foundation of all reputation worth the having. It is to man as necessary as the compass to a ship. It is the compass.

Justice will give reputation for greatness though you create nothing great. It will win affectionate reverence in life and a gratifying gravestone at life's end. ----

IMAGINATION.

Greatest gift to man. It finds him grovelling here a pithecoid littleness.

The rough hair is gone from his body. His thumb has lost its monkey smallness; he walks flat on his feet.

But beyond that he has naught else to thank material nature for.

All the rest comes to him from imagination. Marvellous work she performs. She takes naked man with his low forehead, with his gruntings and whistlings through his teeth, and makes of him what man was meant to be.

Very slowly she works, but ceaselessly. Her task is not nearly ended. At her first glimmerings man's real life begins. He learns from her to add wood to a fire. No monkey ever did it. That stamps him a man.

Soon, with her help, he leaves the earth and travels off ten thousand million miles into space. He counts the suns in the Milky Way; travels in the air, under the water; harnesses lightning, controls nature. By IMAGINATION he is made CAPTAIN of this earthen ship on which he travels through space.

IMAGINATION separates Archimedes, working at his problems in the sunlight, from the vile soldier that slaughtered him.

Shakespeare rattling his ale pot and Johanna, the ape, shaking her bars at the Zoo are alike, save for difference of imagination.

SELF-CONTROL to balance you.

JUSTICE to guide you.

IMAGINATION to lend creative power.

"Equilibrium, Direction, Creation."

The TRINITY ardently to be desired. ----

Long ago Plato announced that apparent differences are deceptive; that all things existing come from one casting--the mind of God--which he names "idea."

Similarly to-day the solemn-thinking German tells you that matter and force are identical, that the interchangeable character of forces--heat light, magnetism, etc.--is part of the a, b, c of proved phenomena.

Haeckel stops digging up old bones and classifying sea microscopic organisms long enough to write "Monism," expressing his belief that God is anything and everything from Orion to a tumble- bug.

It is quite easy to show that the selected three--self-control, justice and imagination--are in reality one. Each exists as part of the others. Each is made up of the other two.

But this column is not devoted to any save simple things.

The question is this, once more:

What are man's three most useful qualities--which three would you possess?

Do not call this question idle or believe that we cannot change ourselves. We CAN.

Napoleon said: "Never believe that a man ever changed his temperament."

But Napoleon often said what was foolish.

It ought to delight you to know that you can change yourself if you want to, as you can change the arrangement of your back parlor.

Try it. It is hard work, but good exercise.

THE VALUE OF SOLITUDE

We inflict a piece of advice upon our readers. It is intended especially for the young, who have still to get their growth, whose characters and possibilities are forming.

GET AWAY FROM THE CROWD WHEN YOU CAN. KEEP YOURSELF TO YOURSELF, IF ONLY FOR A FEW HOURS DAILY. ----

Full individual growth, special development, rounded mental operations--all these demand room, separation from others, solitude, self-examination and the self-reliance which solitude gives.

The finest tree stands off by itself in the open plain. Its branches spread wide. It is a complete tree, better than the cramped tree in the crowded forest.

The animal to be admired is not that which runs in herds, the gentle browsing deer or foolish sheep thinking only as a fraction of the flock, incapable of personal independent direction. It's the lonely prowling lion or the big black leopard with the whole world for his private field that is worth looking at.

The man who grows up in a herd, deer-like, thinking with the herd, acting with the herd, rarely amounts to anything. ----

Do you want to succeed? Grow in solitude, work, develop in solitude, with books and thoughts and nature for friends. Then, if you want the crowd to see how fine you are, come back to it and boss it if it will let you.

Constant craving for indiscriminate company is a sure sign of mental weakness.

Schopenhauer--a sour genius, BUT a genius--speaks contemptuously of the negroes herded in small rooms unable to get "enough of one another's snub-nose company." ----

If you enter a village or small town and want to find the man or youth of ability, do you look for him leaning over the village pool table, sitting on the grocery store boxes, lounging in the smelly tavern with other vacant minds?

Certainly not. You find him at work, and you find him by himself.

Think how public institutions dwarf the brains and souls of unhappy children condemned to live in them. No chance there for individual, separate development. Millions of children have grown up in such places millions of sad nonentities. ----

Here is what Goethe says:

"Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, doch ein Charakter in dem Strome der Welt." (Talent is developed in solitude, character in the rush of the world.)

You wonder why so much ability comes from the country--why a Lincoln comes from the backwoods while you, flourishing in a great city, can barely keep your place as a typewriter.

The countryman has GOT to be by himself much of the time whether he wishes to or not. If he has anything in him it comes out.

Astronomy, man's grandest study, grew up among the shepherds. You of the cities never even see the stars, much less study them.

----

Don't be a sheep or a deer. Don't devote your hours to the company and conversation of those who know as little as you do. Don't think hard only when you are trying to remember a popular song or to decide on the color of your Winter overcoat or necktie.

Remember that you are an individual, not a grain of dust or a blade of grass. Don't be a sheep; be a man. It has taken nature a hundred million years to produce you. Don't make her sorry she took the time.

Get out in the park and walk and think. Get up in your hall bedroom, read, study, write what you think. Talk more to yourself and less to others. Avoid magazines, avoid excessive newspaper reading.

There is not a man of average ability but could make a striking career if he could but WILL to do the best that is in him.

Proofs of growth due to solitude are endless. Milton's greatest work was done when blindness, old age and the death of the Puritan government forced him into completest seclusion. Beethoven did his best work in the solitude of deafness.

Bacon would never have been the great leader of scientific thought had not his trial and disgrace forced him from the company of a grand retinue and stupid court to the solitude of his own brain.

"Multum insola fuit anima mea." (My spirit hath been much alone.) This he said often, and lucky it was for him. Loneliness of spirit made him.

Get a little of it for yourself.

Drop your club, your street corner, your gossipy boarding-house table. Drop your sheep life and try being a man.

It may improve you.

THERE SHOULD BE A MONUMENT TO TIME

Time has no real existence. Yet time is man's most precious possession.

Time is defined as a "succession of events." What we call an hour means certain movements in the machinery of a watch. What we call a day means one revolution of the earth upon its axis, the turning of its surface toward the light of the sun. Time is the most mysterious factor in our lives and thoughts. It never had a beginning, it cannot possibly have an end.

Time only exists for us in the actual moment in which we live. Yet our thoughts are in the time of past and future, and hardly ever on the actual reality of the moment.

With the ceasing of our own consciousness, time ceases, so far as we are concerned. If you go to sleep and sleep soundly, you cannot tell when you awake whether you have slept a minute or an hour. Time stops when YOU cease to observe the succession of events. In dying, we duplicate on a big and prolonged scale our little daily sleeps in life.

If a man were told that after death his soul would not regain consciousness for a thousand millions of years, he would worry, and complain of the "long time." But it would make no difference to him whether the time were a thousand millions of years or forty seconds--time would not exist for him; he would not know the difference.

There is little doubt that to the ephemeridae, creatures that live but for a day, that day must seem as long as our century, for in their life of incessant activity and agitation every second is a long space. And there is no doubt that to the giant turtles of the Galapagos Islands, heavy monsters that live ten centuries or longer, a week is a fraction of time far less important than an hour to us. ----

A mysterious thing is time and its divisions. Man manufactures a watch capable of registering a fraction of a second. And in the force called light we have a power that can go seven times around the world in one second.

We estimate our time by years. It takes one year for our little earth to spin round the sun. And during that year it turns three hundred and sixty-five times on its own axis. While the entire body of our earth flies through space, accompanying the sun on its journey, the northern extremity of our planet has a separate circular motion of its own. This circular motion takes twenty-seven thousand years to complete one circle, and as it moves in this inconceivably slow journey our pole selects for us and points out the various suns which in turn we call the North Star.

We have written thus much to fix the attention of readers on the question of time. Now, how does it affect you? Time represents your only chance, your only wealth, your only possibility for achieving anything.

The man who lasts fifty years lives about four hundred and thirty-eight thousand hours. Sleep takes at least one-third, or one hundred and forty-six thousand hours. The processes of eating, washing, dressing, getting up and going to bed take up at least three hours per day, or fifty-four thousand seven hundred and fifty hours.

In addition to all this TIME cut out of our lives there is the time devoted to amusement, the time devoted to idle dreaming--and yet millions of people are wondering how they can "PASS THE TIME."