Part 1

Four Minute Essays

By Dr. Frank Crane

Volume X

Wm. H. Wise & Co., Inc. New York Chicago

Copyright Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen By Dr. Frank Crane

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE The Unconquerable 5 Kingdom Come 10 The Humanities Versus the Ideals 14 Precedent 18 There is no Laboring Class 22 The Path to Perfection 26 The Ideal Woman 30 No 34 Time 38 Salesmanship 42 The Inward Song 46 Idleness the Mother of Progress 51 Self-Cure 56 Personal Influence 61 Money-Makers 66 The Supreme Moment 71 Efficiency 76 A Dull Day 79 The Little God of Happy Endings 83 The Art of Happy Memory 88 Subconscious Fears 92 Laying Up 96 Human Flies 101 Keep Fit 106 The Spiritual Steam-Roller 110 Heaven 114 The Best of Life 118 Use and Beauty 122 The Ethics of Controversy 126 Letting Things Alone 131 The Pleasures of Outlawry 135 Justice 138 Index 143

THE UNCONQUERABLE

Reporters in the war-smitten countries of Europe tell us that one effect of the horrors of death, wounds, and heartbreak is that the men are turning back to the churches. Out of the obscene muck of materialistic force is springing a revaluation of the spirit in man.

Man is a curious animal. He seems to give forth his finest product only when crushed. We expect him to “curse God and die,” and suddenly his face lights up with the heavenly vision.

We loathe poverty and fight disease and avoid wounds, tyranny, and oppression. Yet, somehow only when these come, do the rarest flowers appear on the human bush.

I know a young man, twisted, crippled, paralyzed, unable to feed or dress himself, yet who sits daily by his window with a shining face. He is cheerful, helpful, a fountain of joy to all who know him. The boys love to gather in his room at night and play cards and tell stories. One would think he would be a gloom and a burden; he is an uplift. You soon forget his limitations. You soon cease to pity him, for he does not pity himself. He does not drain you; he inspires you.

In how many another family is the sickroom the shrine of the house. How many a stricken invalid woman is the resting-place for her worried husband, the delightful refuge for her children’s cares!

It is not the strong, wealthy, and powerful that always gleam with optimism and radiate hope. Too often the house of luxury is the nest of bitterness, boredom, and snarling. Petulance waits on plenty. Luxury and cruelty are twins. Success brings hardness of heart.

The world could get along without its war lords, millionaires, and big men, with all their effective virility, better than it could do without its blind, deaf, hunchbacked, and bedridden. Some things we get from the first group, but the things we get from the second are more needed for this star-led race.

Little girl, with twisted spine and useless legs, with eyes always bright with golden courage, with heart ever high with undaunted love, we could spare all the proud beauties of the ballroom or the stage better than you.

Their bodies are finer than yours; but then we are not bodies.

What a strange and strangely magnificent creature is man! And how proud his Maker must be of him, for all his faults! You cannot crush him. Put him in prison and in its half-light he writes a “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Strike him blind and he sings a “Paradise Lost.”

When Beethoven died, a post-mortem examination showed that since childhood he had suffered from an incurable disease, aggravated by improper medical treatment and by want of home comfort and proper food. His liver was shrunk to half its proper size. He always had family troubles that annoyed him beyond endurance. His finest works were produced after he was deaf. And this was the majestic soul that was unparalleled master of music, whose art was immeasurable, will be immortal! Yet we have heard fat artists whine because they are mistreated!

What a piece of work is man! Too wonderful, too unconquerable, too divine for this earth! His home must be among the stars!

KINGDOM COME

What do we want? What precisely do we mean by the Millennium, or the Golden Age, or Utopia? What sort of “Kingdom Come” is it we pray for?

Sit down sometime and think it over; try to get rid of the vagueness of the idea, and to determine exactly what conditions would satisfy you and all of us. The effort may not be without good results upon your present notions.

Just as a suggestion let me give one statement of the kind of Millennium that appeals to me.

It is that state of society and that perfection of government in which there shall be secured for every human being Intellectual Liberty, Equality of Opportunity, Justice in all Human Relations, and free Spiritual Fraternity.

This is somewhat like the French motto, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, only the terms are defined a bit, and Justice is added.

First, Intellectual Liberty. The last element of coercion, direct or indirect, must be removed from the processes of the mind. The Ethics of the Intellect must be acknowledged. The mind must work absolutely unbribed by expediency, the opinions of others, fear, or authority. There can be no perfect unity of love and service that does not rest on perfect freedom of thought.

There must be entire Equality of Opportunity. The state ought to see to it that every baby coming into the world has an equal start with every other baby. All inheritance of wealth that interferes with this should be abated. Every child should receive adequate training for the world’s work. There will never be equality of intelligence, of physical force, of genius, nor of any other kind of ability; inequality in these respects adds zest to life. And the advantages of personal ability do not cause injustice; it is custom-buttressed and law-intrenched privilege, unearned and undeserved yet perpetuated, that oppresses the world.

Justice is essential. When that comes, there shall be no more benevolence and charity as we now practise them. The great hunger of mankind is not for kindness and mercy and pity—it is for justice. When we have justice we shall have peace, as it is written: “Righteousness and peace kiss each other.”

Lastly, we shall have free Spiritual Fraternity. The problem of the race is one of fraternizing. We now get together in sects and nations. Religiously and politically we as yet feel but faintly the universal breeze. We do not realize humanity. The human nerve is feeble. Some day the idea of universal brotherhood shall burn in the race with a heat and shine far stronger than the present sectarian, partisan, and patriotic enthusiasms.

I do not think human nature will have to be transformed to get these things. It is a question of vision. We need to see. When once we understand what we want we will organize and get it.

THE HUMANITIES VERSUS THE IDEALS

The humanities are the ordinary universal feelings, such as family affection, aversion to cruelty, love of justice and of liberty.

The ideals are the so-called big enthusiasms, as religion, patriotism, reform, and the like.

The humanities are sometimes called the red passions; the ideals the white passions.

The great institutions of the race have been formed and kept alive by the white passions. These include churches, political parties, nations, and various societies and associations, secret and public.

The progress of mankind has been made through institutions, embodying ideals, which we may call the centrifugal force. The humanities have always pulled against this, and may be termed the centripetal force.

Thus, although great ideals present themselves to men as beneficial, yet in the carrying out of them men often become cruel, unjust, and tyrannical. So the greatest crimes of earth are committed under the influence of movements designed to do the greatest good.

Under the church we have seen persecution, a ruthless disregard of human feeling, families torn asunder, opinion coerced, bodies tortured.

The humanities in time destroyed the baleful power of the religious ideal, its dreams of dominance and its inhuman fanaticism. Plain pity and sympathy battered down the monstrous structure of iron idealism. The horrors of the medieval inquisition and the dark intolerance of puritanism had to yield to the humanities.

Most of the great tragedies have been the crushing out of human and natural feeling by some ideal which, once helpful, has become monstrous. Such were the Greek tragedies, where men were the victims of the gods.

War is the colossal force of an ideal, patriotism, where the check of the humanities has been entirely cut off.

It is supposed to ennoble men and states. It has always been the preferred occupation of the noble class, kings and courtiers, because the contempt of personal feelings and the merciless sacrifice of the humanities have seemed grand and royal.

But by and by war must yield to the eternal humanities. Sheer human sympathies will abolish it.

The humanities are peculiarly of the common people. Therefore they find expression and come into political effect quickly in democracies. In the United States, for instance, the rule of a religious party or the program of patriotic militarism is impossible. We have too much red passion to permit the ascendency of white passions.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” a book of red passion, sympathy for the negro, overthrew the “white” ideals of the slave oligarchy.

The cry of a starving mother, the protest of wronged workmen, can defeat the apparently resistless power of massed capital.

One drop of blood outweighs the most splendid scheme of the theorist.

The history of the world is the unceasing struggle of the humanities against great ideals which, crystallized into institutions, have become inhuman.

PRECEDENT

Precedent is solidified experience. In the realm of ideas it is canned goods.

It is very useful when fresh ideas are not to be had.

There are advantages in doing things just because they always have been done. You know what will happen. When you do new things you do not know what will happen.

Success implies not only sound reasoning, but also the variable factor of how a thing will work, which is found out only by trying it.

Hence, the surest road to success is to use a mixture of precedent and initiative. Just how much of each you will require is a matter for your judgment.

To go entirely by precedent you become a mossback. You are safe, as a setting hen or a hiving bee is safe. Each succeeding generation acts the same way. There is a level of efficiency, but no progress.

Boards, trustees, and institutions lay great stress upon precedent, as they fear responsibility. To do as our predecessors did shifts the burden of blame a bit from our shoulders.

The precedent is the haven of refuge for them that fear to decide.

Courts of law follow precedent, on the general theory that experience is more just than individual decision.

Precedent, however, tends to carry forward the ignorance and injustice of the past.

Mankind is constantly learning, getting new views of truth, seeing new values in social justice. Precedent clogs this advance. It fixes and perpetuates the wrongs of man as much as the rights of man.

Hence, while the many must trust to precedent, a few must always endeavor to break it, to make way for juster conclusions.

Precedent is the root, independent thinking is the branch of the human tree. Our decisions must conform to the sum of human experience, yet there must be also the fresh green leaf of present intelligence.

We cannot cut the root of the tree and expect it to live, neither can we lop off all the leafage of the tree and expect it to live.

The great jurist, such as Marshall, is one who not only knows what the law is, but what the law ought to be. That is, to his knowledge of precedent he adds his vision of right under present conditions.

Precedent is often the inertia of monstrous iniquity. War, for instance, is due to the evil custom of nations who go on in the habit of war-preparedness. The problem of the twentieth century is to batter down this precedent by the blows of reason, to overturn it by an upheaval of humanity.

Evil precedent also lurks in social conditions, in business, and in all relations of human rights. The past constantly operates to enslave the present.

We must correct the errors of our fathers if we would enable our children to correct ours.

Our reverence for the past must be continually qualified by our reverence for the future.

We are on our way to the Golden Age. The momentum of what has been must be supplemented by the steam of original conviction, and guided by the intelligence and courage of the present.

THERE IS NO LABORING CLASS

It cannot too often be stated that the labor problem is not a class affair, but that it concerns the entire human race. There may be a class of aristocrats, of plutocrats, of criminals, of society idlers, or of any such group whose instinct is to withdraw itself from the common mass of humanity. But for laborers this is an impossibility. They remain, and must remain, part and parcel of the whole people. They are the people. There can be no laboring class. It is a contradiction of terms.

Especially is this true in America, where from the President of the country down to the coal-heaver everybody is supposed to work. So strong is this supposition, that the inference is that whoever does not bear some part of the world’s burden is a diseased unit in humanity. The ultimate aim of all normal progress in social justice is to remove these units. All who have wealth in excess of a reasonable accumulation of the products of their own labor, all who live on endowment and inheritance, all who are sycophants, idlers, or holders of sinecures, must some day, when the terms of justice shall have been worked out, be put to work, and those who will not work shall not eat.

Just by what route the millennial state of simple equity shall come we cannot say, but come it surely will, and the profits of individual labor of brawn or brain shall go to the individual, and the profits arising from the state or social combination shall go to the state, to the people as a whole.

One of the most far-reaching acts of 1914 was the statement by the national congress, in its passage of the anti-trust law preventing the use of the Sherman act against trade unions, that “the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.”

The implications of this declaration it will be difficult to see for some time. It seems now to strike a blow at the very centre of the old system of business under which the world has operated for some six thousand years.

It means that humanity does not consist of employers and endowed persons, of nobles, wealthy people, and professional men—doctors, lawyers, priests, and squires; that culture, schools, courts, and senates are not for these only, and that the employed, the clerks, and workmen, who make the money for these upper classes, are not on the same economic level as the spades and pens they handle; but that a man; any man, and his wage are direct concern of government; that the iron law of supply and demand may govern the grinding of flour, but not of human creatures, and that the brute law of competition shall some time, in some way, be changed to the human law of co-operation.

THE PATH TO PERFECTION

The path to perfection, it has been said, leads through a series of disgusts.

The sinner is converted not when he reforms, but when he experiences revulsion.

Dr. Chalmers defined the renovating force as the “expulsive power of a new affection.”

Any form of pleasure carries with it a sickening element after it passes a certain point.

The drunkard is not really cured until the smell of liquor repels him.

The smoker has not broken off his bad habit for good until tobacco nauseates him.

You are never free from a thing as long as you like it.

The woman who claims to have reformed, but who still likes to play with fire, lies; lies to herself probably as much as to you.

Disgust is the shadow cast by love. Where there is no shadow there is no substance.

The worth of a wife’s affection is exactly measured by her horror of disloyalty.

We climb by love; the rungs of the ladder are disgusts.

All adepts in soul matters have recognized the purifying and strengthening quality of renunciation. It is the gist of Buddhism. It is the meat of Christianity. It is the core of all important philosophies.

The wise of this world are they that avoid satiety.

The motto of Socrates was, “Never too much.”

The epicures of pleasure are those who are experts in the art of quitting.

The joys of wine are for those who know how to take a little. Those who drink all they want are wretched.

The “Dial” gives an extract from Bronson Alcott’s “Fruitlands,” which sheds light upon the serious problem of enjoying one’s self.

“On a revision of our proceedings it would seem that if we were in the right course in our particular instance, the greater part of a man’s duty consists in leaving alone much that he is in the habit of doing. It is a fasting from the present activity, rather than an increased indulgence in it, which, with patient watchfulness, tends to newness of life. ‘Shall I sip tea or coffee?’ the inquiry may be. No; abstain from all ardent, as from alcoholic, drinks. ‘Shall I consume pork, beef, or mutton?’ Not if you value health and life. ‘Shall I stimulate with milk?’ No. ‘Shall I warm my bathing-water?’ Not if cheerfulness is valuable. ‘Shall I clothe in many garments?’ Not if purity is aimed at. ‘Shall I prolong my hours, consuming animal oil and losing bright daylight in the morning?’ Not if a clear mind is an object. ‘Shall I teach my children the dogmas inflicted on myself, under the pretense that I am transmitting truth?’ Nay, if you love, intrude not these between them and the spirit of all truth.”

Whether or not we accept the rigor of these conclusions, certain it is that the only way to mount to perfection is by stepping upon our dead selves; the only way to a pleasure that is full of contentment is to have plenty of lively disgusts for pleasures of a lower order.

THE IDEAL WOMAN

The ideal woman is lovable. She may not be beautiful of face, but she has charm.

She is attractive to men, not repellent.

She is the appeal of Nature. She draws men as the sun draws planets.

Her power is deep, cosmic, as strong and as mysterious as gravitation.

She is the embodiment of love, which is the most persistent, evergreen, and irresistible of human motives.

However forceful her individuality she cannot lose her strange drawing power.

She is passionate, but differs from her weakling sisters in that her passion is unswervingly loyal.

All the cumulative morality of centuries of conscience centers in her love.

She clings, not from subservience, but from a loyalty as intense as sex itself.

She is free. No man owns her soul nor body. She gives, as sovereign queens give. She cannot barter as commoner women barter, she cannot obey as slaves obey, she cannot yield as cowards yield.

She is void of egotism; she is full of self-reverence.

She is happy in girlhood, contented in wifehood, glorified in motherhood.

She is proud to be a woman. She does not want to be a man.

She has wisdom. In every crisis her husband is guided by her instinct.

She has character. She secretly moulds the natures of her children. She is the power behind each one of them.

She is the flowering rose-bush in times of pleasure. She is a high tower in times of trouble.

Her eyes are full of understanding. She knows the feeling back of your words.

Her smile is as the reward of heaven. It is worth more than gold.

She is intelligent as no man is intelligent.

She is brave as no man is brave.

Her vision has that clairvoyance that is bestowed upon no man.

She is variable as water; but as the water of the unfailing spring, of the eternal ocean, changing forever, forever fixed.

She is the best inheritance from the world that was. She is the matrix of the world to come.

In proportion as men look up to her they grow unafraid and wise. When they look down on her, as they treat her with contempt or indifference, they become weak and cruel.

She is not the champion of religious doctrine; she is the incarnation of the religious instinct.

She is the ladder by the brook where man dreams; she reaches to heaven; upon the rungs of her soul angels ascend and descend.

NO

No is next to the shortest word in the English language.

It is the concentrated Declaration of Independence of the human soul.

It is the central citadel of character, and can remain impregnable forever.

It is the only path to reformation.

It is the steam-gauge of strength, the barometer of temperament, the electric indicator of moral force.

It is an automatic safety-first device.

It has saved more women than all the knights of chivalry.

It has kept millions or young men from going over the Niagara Falls of drunkenness, profligality, and passion.

It is the updrawn portcullis and barred gate of the castle of self-respect.

It is the dragon that guards beauty’s tower.

It is the high fence that preserves the innocence of the innocent.

It is the thick wall of the home, keeping the father from folly, the mother from indiscretion, the boys from ruin, and the girls from shame.

It is the one word you can always say when you can’t think of anything else.

It is the one answer that needs no explanation.

The mule is the surest footed and most dependable of all domestic animals. No is the mule-power of the soul.

Say it and mean it.

Say it and look your man in the eye.

Say it and don’t hesitate.

A good round No is the most effective of known shells from the human howitzer.

In the great parliament of life the Noes have it.

The value of any Yes you utter is measured by the number of Noes banked behind it.

Live your own life. Make your own resolutions. Mark out your own program. Aim at your own work. Determine your own conduct. And plant all around those an impregnable hedge of Noes, with the jaggedest, sharpest thorns that grow.