Part 13

If William had not conquered England, it is probable that today English speech would have inflexions and grammatical gender. George Moore says that he dislikes English, it is a lean language, the adjective does not agree with the noun--I say, thank Heaven for that! With the exception of pronunciation, the English language is ridiculously simple and easy; any foreigner can learn to write, read and understand English in a short time, and he can learn to speak it with fluent inaccuracy. What a blessed thing for a foreigner who must learn English to know that when he learns the name of a thing that name does not change. A book is always a book, no matter what you do with it. Now, if William had not conquered England, every time you did anything to a book, the accursed word would change. “The book is mine,” but “I take bookum,” “I go away booke,” “I tear a page out bookes,” and so on. Then one would have to discover and remember whether book were masculine, feminine, or neuter, and every time one used an adjective, like “good book,” that miserable adjective would have to agree with the book in gender, case and number. When one sits down to dinner in a German hotel, one must remember that the knife is neuter, the fork is feminine, and the spoon masculine, and then one’s troubles have only begun. Remember what Mark Twain said of German. How simple to have no case-ending, no gender, and almost no grammar! No wonder English is becoming the world-language; it will of course never drive out other languages, but it has already taken the place occupied by Latin in the Middle Ages, and by French in the eighteenth century. A man can go almost anywhere in the world with English; and any foreigner who decides to learn one language besides his own, must choose English. Anyhow they all do.

The only difficulty with our language is its pronunciation. Not only are we the only people in the world who pronounce the vowels a, e, i, as we do, there are so many exceptions that this rule does not always apply. One has to learn the pronunciation of every word. Suppose a foreigner learns _danger_, what will he do with _anger_? And having finally learned both anger and danger, what will he do with _hanger_? I never met but one foreigner who spoke English without a trace of accent; that was the late Professor Beljame, who taught English at the Sorbonne. He told me that he had practiced English every day for forty years, and I afterward discovered that his mother was an Englishwoman. One day I met a Polish gentleman who spoke English fluently, but with much accent; he insisted that he spoke it as well as a native. I left him alone for three hours with this sentence:

“Though the tough cough and hiccough plough me through”; and when I came to hear him read it, I thought he was going to lose his mind.

XLVIII

GOING ABROAD THE FIRST TIME

There is no thrill like the first thrill. When Wilhelm Meister kissed the Countess, Goethe said they tasted “the topmost sparkling foam on the freshly poured cup of love,” and Goethe knew what he was talking about. I shall always be glad that my first trip to Europe had three features--I was young; the steamer was small; we landed at Antwerp.

I was twenty-five and in perfect health; my head was stuffed with literature, descriptions and pictures shrieking for verification; my mates and I rode bicycles across Europe and over the Alps; we lived with impunity in cheap inns and on cheap food; we were soaked to the skin by frequent rains; we were exposed to every inclemency of the air and to innumerable germs in rooms, food and water; we were never sick. We stored away memories which have been paying daily dividends.

It is not well to wait until one is old, for an American is, as a rule, never physically comfortable in Europe. Unless one is reeking with cash one is almost always chilly or damp or hungry or filled with the wrong kind of food. But Europe has all the things an intelligent American wants to see, and it is best to see them when one’s health is rugged enough to rise above inconveniences.

I am glad I went on a small boat, for I asked a traveller who recently returned on an enormous ship if the sea was rough: “I have no idea, I never saw it.” Our little _Waesland_ had only one deck, and that was sometimes awash. It was not a hotel, it was a ship. Finally, instead of landing at Cherbourg at some unearthly hour, being transferred to a squeaky lighter, and then to a train with long hours of travel before one reached the destination, we steamed up the Scheldt past the windmills and stepped off the boat right in the midst of one of the most interesting cities in the world. The transition from America to Europe was as dramatic as it could possibly be, unshaded by tenders and trains. Thus I advise first-timers to sail either to London or to Antwerp; you embark at New York and you disembark at the desired haven.

I love Europe, London, Paris, Munich, Florence, with inexpressible fervour; but I can never recapture the first careless rapture. I remember after that fine first afternoon and evening in Antwerp, when we walked about in ecstasy in the rain, we bicycled to Bonn from Cologne, and that evening before going to bed in the little Rhenish inn, I looked out from my bedroom window on the river and on the roofs of the quaint old town, and I said, “Is it real or is it a dream?”

The next day was a fulfillment; for when my classmate, George Pettee, and I were sophomores, we were sitting in the top gallery of the theatre watching a picture of the Rhineland put on the screen by John L. Stoddard. One of us turned to the other and whispered: “I’ll shake hands with you on standing on that spot within seven years.” The answer was, “You’re on!” We had no money and no prospect of getting any; but in five years, not seven, we stood on that identical spot, and as we leaned our bicycles up against the road wall, we reminded each other of the night in the gallery. It is pleasant to dream; but it is pleasanter to make the dream come true.

The most beautiful country I have ever seen is England. It has not the majesty of Switzerland, but it has everything else. Almost exactly the same size as North Carolina or Michigan, it has an amazing variety of scenery and climate. As one approaches it from the Atlantic, the cliffs of Cornwall look austere and forbidding; but there the roses bloom in January. Stand almost anywhere in Devonshire, and you see the meadows leaning on the sky; they are separated from one another not by stone fences, or by split-rails or barbed wire, but by hedgerows in self-conscious bloom; Salisbury Plain is like Western Nebraska, a far horizon; the misty slopes of the Sussex downs reach dreamily to the sea. Every few miles in England the topography changes; could anything be more different than those different counties?

But we do not go to England for natural scenery, though we might well do so; we go because in England every scene is, in the phrase of Henry James, “peopled with recognitions.” The things that we have seen in imagination we see in reality; there they are! The September afternoon when I bicycled alone to Stoke Poges and saw the churchyard in the twilight exactly as it was in 1750 when Gray described it, I fell on my knees. As we looked from the top of the hill down into Canterbury, the setting sun glorified the Cathedral; as we stood on the most solemn promontory in England, Land’s End, and gazed into the yeasty waves at the foot of the cliff, I remembered Tennyson’s lines:

One showed an iron coast and angry waves. You seemed to hear them climb and fall And roar rock-thwarted under bellowing caves, Beneath the windy wall.

And here one of the Wesley brothers wrote the familiar hymn about the narrow neck of land and the divided seas.

One day, talking with an Englishman on the train, I raved about Warwickshire and about Devon. “Ah,” said he, “if you haven’t seen the valley of the Wye you haven’t seen England.” Accordingly, we went to the little town of Ross in the West; there we hired a rowboat, and two stalwart sons of Britain rowed us many miles down the stream. Occasionally, the river was so shallow they poled us over the pebbly bottom; sometimes it was so narrow we could almost touch the shores; then it would widen out nobly, and we saw the white-faced Hereford cattle feeding in green pastures. “What castle is that?” I asked, pointing to a ruin on a hill. “That is Goodrich Castle, sir.” And that is where Wordsworth met the little girl who knew her departed brother and sister were alive. We moved by Monmouth, sacred to Henry V, the Roosevelt of kings; we came to Tintern Abbey, and you may be sure we stopped there; whatever you see, don’t miss the valley of the Wye.

XLIX

SPIRITUAL HEALING

I believe that the average man or woman today needs one thing more than he needs anything else--spiritual healing. I believe this is truer of the men and women of our age than of those of any preceding epoch--and I believe they need it more than they need material luxuries, increase of mechanical resources, yes, more than they need mental tonics or emotional inspiration.

The people of the United States are suffering from “nerves.” Now the casualties in diseases of the nerves are large, because, as is well known, in cases of nervous prostration everybody dies except the patient. I shall not say that America won the war, but anyhow America was on the winning side. We were triumphantly victorious; we are the only rich and prosperous nation on earth. Americans are the only people in the world who are physically comfortable in bad weather. But although there is a steady increase in physical luxuries, I am not sure of a steady increase in serene happiness, in the calm that comes from mental contentment, in an approach toward universal peace of mind. What shall we say of a prosperous and rich nation whose prosperity and wealth are accompanied by an epidemic of suicide?

We are overwrought, tense, excited; our casual conversations are pimpled with adjectives; our letters are written in italics, and--a sure sign of fever--there has been an increase in cursing and swearing. Many respectable persons show a proficiency in this verbal art that used to be chiefly characteristic of lumberjacks and longshoremen. We become colossally excited about trivial things. Sometimes when I find myself in a state of almost insane irritation over some trifle I seem to hear the quiet voice of Emerson speaking from the grave--Why so hot, little man?

In a charming comedy by Clare Kummer, in which that beautiful and accomplished actress the late Lola Fisher took the leading part, one of her speeches explained that when she was a child her mother told her that whenever she felt herself rising to a boiling point she must stop for a moment and say aloud, “Be calm, Camilla.” That was the name of the play, “Be Calm, Camilla”--and there are many Camillas who need that relaxation.

It is characteristic of the American temperament that it needs mental sedatives more than spurs; and yet thousands of Americans are looking around all the time for something with a “kick” in it. How often we hear in casual conversation the phrase, “I got a fearful kick out of that.” What they need is not a kick, but a poultice; not a prod, but a cool, healing hand.

Although Americans need healing more than the men and women of any other nation, there are times when almost any person would profit by such treatment. The experience of John Stuart Mill is not unusual. He was carefully brought up by his father without religious training. When he was twenty-five years old he fell into a state of profound depression. A cloud of melancholia settled on his mind and heart, so that he not only lost interest in life but felt that the world had no meaning. We know that King Saul was relieved from the evil spirit of nervous melancholy by music; but Mill loved music, and yet in his crisis music failed him. Fortunately, he turned to the poetry of Wordsworth. Now of all the great poets Wordsworth is the best healer, because he drew balm from objects within everybody’s reach. The “Nature” that Wordsworth writes about does not require a long and expensive journey, like going South in winter or travelling to distant mountains. This poet wrote about the simple things in nature--the things that can be seen from the front door or from the back yard.

The novelist George Gissing, who had been chronically tortured by two desperate evils, grinding poverty and ill health, was, owing to a fortunate circumstance, able to live in solitude for a time in the charming county of Devon, in southwest England. The result of his meditations appeared in a book, first published in 1903, called _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_. This is a book of healing, and I recommend it to everybody, for I do not know any one who could not profit by it. As Mill had suffered from intellectual depression and been cured by Wordsworth, so Gissing, who had suffered from poverty and sickness, cured himself by preserving the fruit of his communion with nature:

I had stepped into a new life. Between the man I had been and that which I now became there was a very notable difference. In a single day I had matured astonishingly; which means, no doubt, that I suddenly entered into conscious enjoyment of powers and sensibilities which had been developing unknown to me.

“I had matured astonishingly.” Isn’t that what is really the matter with us, that we haven’t grown up? We are like children crying for the moon, when the riches of the earth are within our reach. Our pursuit of excitement and our resultant sufferings are largely childish. It is unfortunate to suffer from infantile diseases when we are old.

I have been reading a new novel, a book of healing, which most new novels are not. It is curious that so many are eagerly reading new novels and seeing new plays whose only purpose is to stimulate animal instincts which need no stimulation. Or they are reading new novels which distress and torment a mind already tumultuously confused. Be calm, Camilla.

The book I allude to was published in 1927. It is called _Winterwise_ and is written by Zephine Humphrey. It describes a winter spent in a lonely farmhouse in Vermont, a State not yet famous as a winter resort--except for those who think only of winter in connexion with violent athletics. The book is full of deep, tranquil wisdom. It points out sources of abiding happiness--happiness that no disaster can permanently remove.

L

SUPERSTITION

The best definition of superstition that I can remember was made by James Russell Lowell--“Superstition, by which I mean the respecting of that which we are told to respect rather than that which is respectable in itself.” Mental slavery is always degrading; and superstition is a form of slavery, because the mind is subjected to fear. As Notoriety is the bastard sister of Reputation, so Superstition is the bastard sister of Religion. The difference between the two can be easily and simply expressed, but it is literally all the difference in the world. The most elevating influence known to man is Religion; the least elevating is Superstition.

The instinctive pessimism of humanity is shown in many careless phrases such as “It’s too good to be true.” The majority of men and women believe that hopes are illusory, but fears accurately foretell the coming event. Yet any sensible old man or old woman will tell us that nearly all the fears and worries from which they themselves suffered almost daily during a long life really never materialised. They suffered for nothing. We learn little from their experience, but go on our way filled with apprehension and alarm. Shakespeare said the brave man dies only once, but cowards die a thousand times in fearing death. I suppose most of us are cowards. Although we are still in good enough health to carry on, we have already died of cancer, tuberculosis, and many other diseases.

Many social superstitions were cured by that great turning point in history, the French Revolution. The world has never been quite the same since the year 1789. Before that date, people really believed that those who were born in noble and royal families were superior to the common herd; after that date the nobility still believed it, but the common people did not agree. They found they had been respecting that which they had been told to respect, rather than that which is respectable in itself. A Frenchman remarked, “The great appear to us great because we are kneeling--let us rise.” In 1789 everybody stood up.

It is foolish to respect any person or any institution unless it is respectable.

The religion of many unenlightened people seems to be based largely on fear, in which case it is of course not religion at all, but rank superstition. James Whitcomb Riley told me of a remark made by a small boy to his mother at bedtime. He jumped into bed, and to the question of his mother, “What, aren’t you going to say your prayers?” the child answered, “No, I ain’t going to say my prayers tonight, and I ain’t going to say ’em tomorrow night, nor the next night. And then if nothing happens, I ain’t ever going to say ’em again.”

This all-too-typical boy looked upon prayer as a means of warding off danger, and he was sufficiently intelligent and sufficiently brave to risk its omission. But if he had been brought up to believe that prayer is neither a charm against peril nor a method of getting what you want, that prayer was intimate communion with a Divine Friend, he would have looked upon it from a different point of view. George Meredith told his son never to ask any material thing from God, but to pray to Him every day of his life.

Now many men and women have the religious maturity of a small boy, which is infinitely worse than having the religion of a little child. They never pray except when they are in danger, or when they think they are going into danger, or when they have suffered from some calamity. That is like speaking to a friend only when you want to borrow money. The profound wisdom of mysticism consists not in making use of God, but in hoping and believing that God will make some use of us.

The base-born idea that God is against us is accompanied by the idea that He may be placated or humoured. In Richard Halliburton’s exciting account of his adventures in southern countries, he tells us how the pagan priests used to sacrifice thousands of young maidens to their deity. It would seem, looking back on history, that the more abominable the religion, the fewer the atheists. Every sensible person in those countries ought to have been an atheist.

Now although many “enlightened” people today laugh at the terrible fears and even more terrible remedies of those intellectual slaves, they themselves are not very much wiser. It is highly probable that the majority of Americans today would not dare to say “I haven’t had a bad cold this winter” without touching wood. Some of them might grin as they touched it, but they would touch it just the same. Such a gesture is intellectually and morally contemptible.

But many are even poorer in brains. For many would not dare to say that they had not had a cold this winter, with or without wood in reach. They believe that if you express anything pleasant, you will soon “get your come-uppance.” God seems to lie in wait for us, and the moment we seem satisfied or happy or even prominent, He will teach us who is running the show. The best thing therefore is never to appear too happy. For many, who have been foolish enough to say aloud, “I haven’t had a cold this winter,” wake up the next morning snuffling. “Now you see what I’ve got! If I’d only had sense enough to keep my mouth shut, I would have been all right. But of course I had to brag about it!”

The most degrading of all superstitions is the belief that God can be placated, appeased, or diverted, as we humour a refractory boy or a drunken man. This abominable idea sometimes takes an extremely tragic form, as when the Indian mother throws her own baby into the Ganges. “Now, God, you’ve got to be good to me! I’ve given you the best thing I had!”

Sometimes it takes a merely silly form, as when one gives up some pleasant little luxury; not with the great idea of drawing nearer to God by removing an obstacle, but with the absurd idea of bargaining with Him.

LI

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE EARTH

Perhaps nothing nowadays is a more common target for ridicule than the hustler and booster, whether he boosts as an individual or as a member of a service organisation. The man whose motto is “bigger and better business,” a bigger town, with a bigger population and bigger buildings, is laughed at for his enthusiasm and for his perspiring efforts. Much of this laughter is merely the cynical adverse criticism of men who have never done anything themselves, never will do anything, and so pretend to be faintly and superciliously amused by the optimistic exertions of others. We may dismiss these unproductive and complacent occupiers of the seats of the scornful, for they are comparatively few in number and their opinions of no moment. But the rational basis for laughter at the booster is that the hustler and the booster often have a false standard of excellence.

When a noisy man roars in your face that the population of his particular town has doubled in ten years we have a right to enquire, what of it? Is it a cause for rejoicing? When you climb into a trolley car on a rainy day you do not rejoice because the population of the trolley car doubles in three minutes. A mere increase in the number of persons at a given spot does not necessarily mean that collectively or individually they are any better off. What we wish to know is something quite different from the word “more.” Is the community growing in intelligence? Are there better schools, better theatres, better art museums, better churches, better orchestras--are the inhabitants of this locality growing in grace and in the fruits of the spirit?

The last thing I wish to be guilty of is to make cheap remarks against science or scientific men to whom I, in common with others, owe so much; but, strangely enough, some of the professional men of science, who are often the first to laugh at the booster because he applies the quantitative rather than the qualitative standard of measurement, are themselves guilty of the same fault on a larger scale. They do not apply standards of size to a growing business or a growing village; they apply these standards to the universe.

Now, as is well known, the Ptolemaic system of cosmogony stated that the earth was the centre of the universe and that around the earth revolved the sun, the moon and all the innumerable stars. Thus man regarded himself as of high importance because he was the centre of everything.

Along came Copernicus, whose book was published in 1543 but not generally accepted until long after its appearance. Copernicus wrought a far greater miracle than Joshua. The Old Testament hero made the sun stand still only for an afternoon; but in the sixteenth century Copernicus commanded the sun to stand still and (relatively speaking) it has not budged since. Copernicus was a magician.

Many astronomers have recently been fond of reminding us that our sun itself is only a tiny star--one out of many billions--and that our earth is but the tiniest speck. They are fond of drawing diagrams showing the comparative size of our sun and that of other globes in the starry skies, and the earth dwindles to a mere point. “Therefore,” say these scientists, “how unimportant is man and how ridiculous that he should consider either himself or his earthly abode a matter of any importance to God or to space or time or gravitation”; the conclusion following that religion and morals are matters of small consequence and we need not bother our heads about them.