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Title: The philosophy of Elbert Hubbard
Author: Elbert Hubbard
Compiler: John T. Hoyle
Release Date: April 17, 2023 [eBook #70579]
Language: English
Produced by: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHILOSOPHY OF ELBERT
HUBBARD ***
AN AMERICAN RELIGION
Work
Play
Breathe
Bathe
Study
Laugh
Live
Love
¶ I believe that no one can harm us but ourselves; that sin
is misdirected energy; that there is no devil but fear; and
that the Universe is planned for good ❦ We know that work is a
blessing, that Winter is as necessary as Summer, that Night is
as useful as Day, that Death is a manifestation of Life, and
just as good. I believe in the Now and Here. I believe in you
and I believe in a power that is in ourselves that makes for
righteousness ❦ ❦ ❦
[Illustration]
THE
PHILOSOPHY
OF
ELBERT HUBBARD
[Illustration]
THE ROYCROFTERS
Copyright, 1916, by
The Roycrofters
¶ Of this edition of _The Philosophy of Elbert Hubbard_ there
have been printed 9983 copies on Roycroft watermarked paper,
made by hand, especially for The Roycrofters, at Fabriano,
Italy, and of the edition signed and numbered, this copy is
Number
[Illustration]
¶ Why not make this a world of friends?
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
The American Philosophy 11
Freedom and Responsibility 25
Corporal Punishment 30
Purpled Ease 39
Consecrated Lives 57
Marriage and Divorce 65
The Taxation of Church Property 79
Free Motherhood 96
Why I Am a Philistine 104
Oral Righteousness 122
The Health Habit 128
The Elks’ Creed 134
Remember the Weekday 143
Reciprocity 148
Vaccination 153
Equal Suffrage 159
Just Boys 163
The Sea 168
Epigrams 171
CREDO
_Elbert Hubbard_
¶ I believe in the Motherhood of God. I believe in the blessed Trinity
of Father, Mother and Child. ¶ I believe that God is here, and that we
are as near Him now as ever we shall be. I do not believe He started
this world a-going and went away and left it to run itself. I believe
that we are all sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall
be. I believe the only way we can reach the Kingdom of Heaven is to have
the Kingdom of Heaven in our hearts. ¶ I believe in freedom—social,
economic, domestic, political, mental, spiritual ❦ I believe in every man
minding his own business. I believe in sunshine, fresh air, friendship,
calm sleep, beautiful thoughts. ¶ I believe in the purifying process of
sorrow, and I believe that death is a manifestation of life. I believe
the Universe is planned for good ❦
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ELBERT HUBBARD
THE RADIANT LIFE
_Elbert Hubbard_
¶ I wish to be simple, honest, natural, frank, clean in mind and clean
in body, unaffected—ready to say “I do not know,” if so it be—to meet
all men on an absolute equality—to face any obstacle and meet every
difficulty unafraid and unabashed ❦ I wish to live without hate, whim,
jealousy, envy or fear. I wish others to live their lives, too—up to
their highest, fullest and best. To that end I pray that I may never
meddle, dictate, interfere, give advice that is not wanted, nor assist
when my services are not needed. If I can help people, I will do it by
giving them a chance to help themselves; and if I can uplift or inspire,
let it be by example, inference and suggestion, rather than by injunction
and dictation. I desire to Radiate Life ❦ ❦ ❦
[Illustration]
The American Philosophy
So this, then, is an essay on the American Philosophy. The American
Philosophy is founded on the Science of Economics. ¶ Just here, in order
that we may speak a common language, a few definitions are in order.
Economics is the Science of the production, distribution and use of
wealth. Science is accurate, organized knowledge founded on fact—or, as
Herbert Spencer expressed it, “Science is the classified knowledge of the
common people.” All that which is simply assumed, believed, conjectured,
taken on dogmatic statement, or mayhap read out of printed books, is
unscientific, no matter how plausible ❦ All practical businessmen are
scientists. ¶ Business is a vocation. Philosophy is—or should be—an
avocation. To make a business of philosophy is to institutionalize and
dilute it, just as to institutionalize love and religion is to degrade
and lose them. Religion is philosophy touched with emotion ❦ Philosophy
is your highest conception of life, its duties and its destiny. A
religious organization is a different thing from religion. A religious
organization is built on a feeling made static, or fear frozen stiff.
It then becomes a superstition, and is employed as a police system, and
is taxed all the traffic will bear. ¶ Science is definite, accurate,
organized knowledge concerning the things that make up our environment.
Modern philosophy is the distilled essence of wisdom that eventually
flows from science. Or, if you please, philosophy is the explanation
of science—a projection from science ❦ Transportation, manufacturing,
distribution, advertising and salesmanship are all variants of
business. Each and all are scientific, that is, capable of analyzation
and demonstration. Weight, size, color, number, qualities and time are
all elements of science. ¶ Theology is antique and obsolete philosophy.
It never is nor ever was scientific, not being derived from knowledge.
Faith is the first item in its formula. Theology comes to us from
dogmatic statements gotten from books or the hearsay words of men long
dead. Theology is voodooism; in matters of importance it is in the same
class as alchemy, astrology, palmistry, mantology and augury ❦ Science
is understood, while theology is believed. Psychology is the science
of human minds and their relationship one to another ❦ Superstition is
scrambled science, or a religious omelet flavored with fear. ¶ Organized
religion being founded on superstition is, perforce, not scientific ❦
And all that is not scientific—that is, truthful—must be bolstered by
force, fear and falsehood. Thus we always find slavery and organized
religion going hand in hand. ¶ Business, to be successful, must be
based on science, for demand and supply are matters of mathematics,
not guesswork. Civilization turns on organization. And organization,
in order to be of any value, must be scientific. ¶ Economics is a new
science. History does not show a single instance of its existence in
the days of Greece and Rome ❦ They had simple mathematics, but not
complex. Fractions, percentages, statistics, averages, were beyond
them. The blueprint, even for humorists, was unguessed ❦ Philosophy was
speculation; business was barter. Since then, up to within a few years
ago, the problem of how man could save his soul has been uppermost.
This world has been neglected in the endeavor to gain another. When the
Science of Economics is finally formulated it will be expressed first
in America ❦ In America all nations meet and blend. Here the factors,
elements and categories of Economics are to be found. Here we have one
language, and no more, and this is necessary for the expression of a
new science ❦ The first endeavor to found Economics as a science was
the work of Adam Smith. ¶ And when Thomas Henry Buckle said that Adam
Smith’s _Wealth of Nations_ had influenced the world for good more than
any other book ever written, save none, he stated truth. ¶ Economics
changes man’s activities. As you change a man’s activities you change
his way of living, and as you change his environment you change his
state of mind. Precept and injunction do not perceptibly affect men; but
food, water, air, clothing, shelter, pictures, books, music, will and
do. Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, all wrote on Economics,
but none was an Economist. Each based his logic largely on presumption,
assumption and hypothesis. If this happens, then that will occur. They
were Political Economists—they pursued Economics as a policy, not as
truth. They loved love, not the lady. They were students of Economics,
and their work was not grounded in Science. Since the days of Smith, Mill
and Marx we have had many students of Economics ❦ But the world has not
yet produced an Economist. To be an Economist, a man must be a Scientist.
He must be both a man of action, and one who knows why he acts. He must
work and he must contemplate his work. He must act and he must think. ¶ A
Scientist is the man who has done the thing—who has seen and knows. Then
from his positive knowledge springs his Philosophy. And the Philosophy
of a businessman, analyzed, explained and formulated, would constitute
a Science of Economics. ¶ The American Philosophy will be formulated
by Scientists—by Businessmen who have succeeded. Thackeray’s lawyer in
the Debtors’ Prison, who was working out a new financial policy for the
Nation, was not a Scientist ❦ His knowledge was academic and his scheme
conjectural. Science was outside of his orbit. He lacked experience. He
had feelings, but not facts ❦ He did not have enough cosmic mortar to
construct an arch. Emotionalism, charity, altruism, optimism, are not
science, and they may be hysteria. ¶ When I speak of success I do not
mean it in the sordid sense. A successful man is one who has tried, not
cried; who has worked, not dodged; who has shouldered responsibility,
not evaded it; who has gotten under the burden, not merely stood off,
looking on, giving advice and philosophizing on the situation. In fact,
the result of a man’s work is not the measure of success. To go down with
the ship in storm and tempest is better than to paddle away to Paradise
in an Orthodox canoe. To have worked is to have succeeded—we leave the
results to time. Life is too short to gather the Harvest—we can only
sow. ¶ Up to the year Eighteen Hundred Seventy-six the business world
was tainted by trickery in trade ❦ The methods of booth and bazaar were
everywhere practised. Business was barter, and he who could cheat and not
get caught was accounted clever. On the customs of the time there was no
copyright. They were a take-over from monarchical days ❦ But a new ethic
has arrived. Within ten years’ time the thought has gone through the
entire business fabric that to cheat and not get caught is really a worse
calamity than to get caught. To be caught means that some one has applied
the brake and you are given pause. Not to get caught means that you are
headed for the precipice on the high clutch and down grade. To cheat
another is to cheat yourself. Theology did not teach us this, for precept
and preaching never touch our lives. We shed them. We are moved in only
one way, and that is by self-interest ❦ Cut off our food-supply and we
are no longer apathetic. And self-interest is a form of selfishness;
it is the desire for life ❦ It is the instinct of self-preservation in
action. It was all a matter of mental growth, evolution. ¶ The discovery
of truth as our most valuable business asset is the one great achievement
of the age in which we live ❦ For truth there is no substitute, and
this discovery was made by businessmen. Honesty as a working policy was
first put forth by Benjamin Franklin; and his remark was regarded as a
mere pleasantry until yesterday. The clergy have not yet adopted it;
the doctors are considering it, and the lawyers haven’t heard of it.
However, all these will finally adopt it, as a last resort, as a means of
self-preservation. ¶ Economics based on falsehood leads to dissolution.
Falsehood is a polite form of conquest. The lie is exploitation. The
preacher has diverted us while the lawyer picked our pocket; the doctor
gives you ether and accomplishes the same result ❦ Egypt, Rome and
Greece lived on their slaves and outlying colonies. ¶ Slave labor is
the most expensive kind. In time the land is exhausted, and the slaves
die. But before this happened to the capitals that were, the aristocrats
who wasted, destroyed and consumed had gotten nervous debility, and
were impotent, also impudent. Then they died and the barbarian overran
the land ❦ A wise Economist—and America has many—could have figured out
exactly how long Babylon and Nineveh would have lasted ❦ None of these
ancient civilizations produced economists. They had soothsayers, priests,
lawyers, poets, artists, clowns, dramatists, orators, rhetoricians,
singers, philosophers. And most of all they had guzzlers and gormands.
But they had no scientists, and their philosophy, being based on augury,
dreams, theology and fear, was futile and fallacious. A philosophy that
is not founded on science is false in theory and base in practise. ¶
Modern business betters human environment. ¶ It means gardens, flowers,
fruits, vegetables; it means quick, safe and cheap transportation of
people, commodities and messages; it means books, maps, furniture,
pictures, playgrounds, pure water, perfect sewerage, fresh air,
sunshine, health, happiness, hope, light and love—because business gives
opportunities for all to work, earn, grow and become. Business consists
in the production, transportation and distribution of the things that are
necessary to human life. Through this exercise of our faculties we educe
the best that is in us; in other words, we get an education. ¶ Inasmuch
as business supplies the necessities of life, it is impossible to have
a highly evolved and noble race except where there is a science of
business. Business is human service. Therefore, business is essentially
a divine calling. ¶ Once men believed religion to be the chief concern
of mortals here below. Other men have thought that killing is the chief
concern of mortals here below. Gladstone once said, “Only two avenues of
honor are open to young men in England—the army and the church.” This
has been the prevailing opinion of the world for nearly two thousand
years, and is the one reason why the Dark Ages were dark. During those
years of night the fighting man was supreme. It was a long panic, and
human evolution was blocked through fear ❦ The race crawled, crept, hid,
dodged, secreted, lied and nearly died. We now say that the Science of
Economics, or Business, is the chief concern of humanity ❦ Business is
intelligent, useful activity. The word “busy-ness” was coined during the
time of Chaucer by certain soldier-aristocrats, men of the leisure class,
who prided themselves upon the fact that they did no useful thing ❦ Men
of power proved their prowess by holding slaves, and these slaves did
all the work. To be idle showed that one was not a slave. But this word
“business,” first flung in contempt, like Puritan, Methodist and Quaker,
has now become a thing of which to be proud. Idleness is the disgrace,
not busy-ness. ¶ The world can be redeemed only through business; for
business means betterment, and no business can now succeed that does not
add to human happiness. ¶ We believe that only the busy person is happy,
and that systematic, daily, useful work is man’s greatest blessing. We
are a nation of workers, builders, inventors, creators, producers. We
are the richest country, per capita, in the world; and our wealth has
come from the farm, the forest, the factory, the mine, the sea. We have
dug, plowed, pumped smelted, refined, transported and manufactured ❦
We did not inherit our wealth, neither have we laid tribute on other
countries, as did those earlier civilizations. Any individual who uses
the word “commercial” as an epithet, who regards business enterprise as
synonymous with graft and greed, who speaks of certain men as “self-made”
and others as “educated,” who gives more attention to war than to peace,
who seeks to destroy rather than to create and build up, is essentially
un-American ❦ The word “education” sometimes stands for idleness, but the
American Philosophy symbols work, effort, industry. It means intelligent,
thoughtful, reasonable and wise busy-ness—helping yourself by helping
others. ¶ The world’s greatest prizes in the future will go to the
businessman. The businessman is our only scientist, and to him we must
look for a Science of Economics that will eradicate poverty, disease,
superstition—all that dissipates and destroys. The day is dawning!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Freedom and Responsibility
I am told that hospitals, jails, almshouses and insane-asylums are for
people who are unable to care for themselves properly. Therefore, they
are sent to these places, where men and women, specially delegated, spend
their lives looking after them. ¶ So it seems that the incompetent,
in addition to not adding to the wealth of the world, actually take
competent people from a world of usefulness to minister to them. After
a few years as a guard, the man is quite as incompetent as are the
prisoners—and more so—because the prisoner works and the guard does
nothing but guard. ¶ And for the man who works there is a chance; but
the man who doesn’t is damned, body and soul. Hospitals, prisons and
poorhouses are places where people live who can’t or won’t work. These
places do not cure our bodily or social ills—they are palliatives, all.
They do not prevent incompetence nor stop the production of the weak and
incompetent. Every year we have to pull down our hospitals and build
greater. Ben Lindsey, Luther Burbank, John Davey, Horace Fletcher, all
men essentially of one type, are working to shut off the regular annual
crop of criminals ❦ Preachers have preached their silly tales of where
we came from and where we are going to, directing the attention of men
from this world to another, and with myth, miracle, mystery—with dead
languages, dead ideas and dead formulas—have scared the world stiff.
That’s why we are sick. ¶ We have bred from the worst in the worst
possible way, under the worst conditions ❦ We have it thundered at us
from a million pulpits that the indissoluble marriage-tie was a sacred
scheme, devised by God Almighty, who also provided that women shall be
incarcerated in a kitchen. The result has been the doormat wife, with
a liar for a husband—for men lie only to inferiors and tyrants—and a
brood of legitimate candidates for hospitals, poorhouses and prisons. ¶
Christianity was absolutely supreme for a thousand years. Did she abolish
poverty, disease and crime? Not exactly—these things increased under
Christian rule. And Religion is not yet willing to step aside and give
Science a chance ❦ Revivalists get a thousand children in a room and
play on their nervous sensibilities in the name of the Gentle Christ,
and then the doctors vaccinate them with pus from diseased animals, and
we wonder why they die or go insane! The Clerics killed Ferrer because
he was working to make men free. ¶ Freedom means responsibility. And
responsibility means the making of decisions. By deciding for ourselves
we grow, and this exercise of the will in deciding what is best to do
and doing it is the only method of attaining growth known in Nature. But
woman’s decisions have been made for her by male man, and so low has she
sunk that millions of women are willing that this should continue. The
passion for freedom is Nature’s cry for growth. ¶ A judge of the Supreme
Court of the State of New York once said to me: “Divorce should be as
free as marriage, and if it were, there would be no more separations than
there are now. We give men and women the right to put their heads into a
noose, but decline to let them pull their heads out. Those whom God hath
joined together no man can put asunder. Also, the word ‘illegitimate’
should be stricken from the judicial record, forever. An act may be
illegitimate, but a child, never.” ¶ “Why don’t you talk like this in
public?” I asked. And the answer was, “If I did, I’d lose my job inside
of twenty-four hours.” “Well,” I said, “I’ll say it for you.” “If you do
and mention my name I’ll—but, say, you will not, you must not quote me.
You can agitate—I can only conform ❦ We are ruled by the archaic. You are
working to make men free, and only a free people can be a healthy, happy,
virtuous, self-reliant and competent people. Keep ’er going, but on your
life, don’t quote me. Here’s two dolodocci to renew my subscription to
_The Fra_.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Corporal Punishment
Children’s diseases are a logical result of children’s beatings ❦ To
shock, pain, grieve, anger or violently suppress a human being is to run
a grave risk of lowering that individual’s physical vitality to a point
where the person is an easy prey for any disease that happens along. That
which interferes with the vital functions, even in a transient way, is
not wise nor good. ¶ Extreme anger is apt to be followed by lassitude
or some marked physical disturbance. In fact, it is well known that
hate secretes a toxin which manifests itself in the breath, and in the
tissues ❦ What we call a disease is a symptom of vitality decreased
to a point where the forces of dissolution are active. A shock which
will blanch the cheek disturbs the circulation, and interferes with the
digestion. ¶ Perhaps the whipping did not mutilate, but it angered and
shocked until a fever followed. Dyspepsia is a matter of the nerves. Much
of our bad theology, if we could trace it, would be found to have its
rise in indigestion. And that it has caused pathological disturbances
of countless varieties, from catarrh to acute mania, is known to every
thinking physician. ¶ And of all causes of sickness, I know of none that
has borne a greater crop of cosmic cockleburs than the old-time plan of
whipping children. When Solomon put forth that unwise saying, “Spare
the rod and spoil the child,” an extent of harm was done the human race
that no pen can compute. That one statement should have convinced every
intelligent person that the Bible was just like every other book—good
and bad in spots. If accepted literally, the Bible is an atrocious
book, false, obscene and misleading, tending to insanity, disease and
death. Fortunately, we are now allowed to take the Bible as the garbled
literature of a barbaric and superstitious past, collected from many
sources, and good and bad, wise and silly, sublime and vicious—all as
the case may be. ¶ That millions of parents have bolstered their brutal
tendency to punish and inflict pain by that remark about sparing the
rod, every one knows. And always the tendency to beat the little thing,
too weak to strike back, was more to ease the feelings of the parent
than to improve and benefit the child. Moreover, it was educating the
child, for the youngster grew up and inflicted upon its own children all
the horror that it had, itself, endured. It was heir to the brutality,
heir to the Bible, heir to the strap, birch, rod, ferrule and hairbrush,
so these were in daily use in all Christian homes. ¶ In my childhood,
I remember a Baptist preacher who lived neighbor to us ❦ This man was
loud, lacrimose, brutal, a devout Christian, and a preacher of power,
snatching many souls from the burning. The way that gospel sharp used
to pass out his tidings of great joy broke in on my childish fancies,
so I became convinced that if God was really just, that pious, bawling
beast who fed fat on our chickens would go to hell, sure. But I kept
my suspicions to myself. This preacher had a strap cut from a side of
sole-leather—a strap three feet long, with tails, with which he used
to beat up one of his nine or ten children every day ❦ From the baby
wearing diapers to a big boy of sixteen, and a girl full-grown, they
all got it. I have heard their cries for mercy ring out on a winter’s
night when they would run out into the yard to escape their pious parent
intent on saving their souls. ¶ Once, one of his daughters, a girl of
fifteen, spent ten cents for a blue ribbon, and appeared in church with
the ribbon in her hair. Her father saw her from his place in the pulpit.
He noted her mark of pride ❦ He denounced her before the congregation,
and expressed a hypocritical, pious pain that his own flesh and blood
should be guilty of such devilish frivolity. Then he ordered her out of
the church. When he got home after the service, he fell upon her with the
strap. It pained him, but he felt it was his duty to correct her. The
mother was a sick and undone little creature, who twice had twins, and
bore at least one baby a year, except the year when her lord and master
crossed the plains and got alkalied. And this woman really believed, too,
that the children should be punished, and so she had a way of reporting
them, thus, “I’ll tell your father on you when he comes home!” She, too,
believed in Solomon, and she believed also in her husband’s religion.
Poor thing, she was too busy bearing babies to really think anything
out for herself ❦ But that Sunday afternoon, when her husband felt it
his duty to whip the daughter, the girl ran to the mother and demanded
protection. The good man was laying on the strap, anywhere, over the
girl’s head, shoulders, her arms and hands, although usually he picked
out some choice portion of anatomy and did an artistic job. ¶ Yet this
time the girl fought back, and she was only a slim slip of a thing. But
now, the womanhood in her was aroused. She felt insulted. She struck,
she bit, she scratched, she screamed. And then she ran to her mother ❦
Something in the little yellow mother was now aroused. Her child was
being abused. Well, what of it! Hadn’t she seen these whippings going on
daily for twenty years? But this was different ❦ The adolescent girl had
only given way to her innocent and natural desire to put forth a little
color and be beautiful. Now it was brute man against woman. The mother
seized the strap. It was jerked through her clenched hands with such
violence that it took the skin with it. The preacher had backed the girl
into a corner, and with one hand clutching her hair was laying on the
strap with the other, in the name of the Lord. The mother was behind.
Suddenly she seized a long-handled skillet that was on the kitchen-stove,
she swung it with both hands, and it landed square on the man’s head ❦
He was dazed, and turned half-around. Then he got another one. He was
getting a kitchen shower. One sharp edge of the skillet skinned one of
his ears and cut it half-off, as Peter touched up the servant of the
High Priest. The blood ran in a stream. The woman seeing the gore, and
amazed at her own temerity, fell in a dead swoon. The girl escaped and
ran over to our house. My father and mother hurried over, and, kid-like,
I followed. We found the preacher on his knees, praying over his wife,
begging God for her recovery ❦ He told us he had stumbled and fallen
against the cook-stove. My father took a stitch in the ecclesiastic
souse, and washed off the blood of the lamb ❦ The woman soon recovered
and was put to bed. The girl took care of herself. She told my mother
the truth of the incident, but was cautioned not to repeat it to others,
and she didn’t. ¶ The next Sunday the holy man preached as usual,
unctuous and oily, smiling and smirking, thundering ponderously betimes,
warning us to flee the wrath to come. ¶ This daughter died at eighteen,
of galloping consumption. One of the boys achieved considerable local
fame as a horse-thief. I believe he was the only one of that big family
who reached maturity, and this was because he had a pachyderm hide and
a heart of gneiss ❦ Several of the children died in babyhood, the rest
ran the gamut of about all the diseases in the books. And finally, the
Lord’s will was done. A long row of little white headstones in the
village graveyard marks where they sleep, freed from the strap, awaiting
a glorious resurrection at the Last Great Day. ¶ What killed them? The
strap, I should say, carried to its logical limit, with a plentiful lack
of love. Spare the rod and save the child, for love is life, and hate is
death. Love is better than a cat-o’-nine-tails, and Solomon, the wisest
man who ever lived, was a lobster—at least part of the time.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Purpled Ease
_No quarter! We want all that you possess. We will be content
with nothing less than all that you possess. We want in our
hands the reins of power and the destiny of mankind. Here are
our hands. They are strong hands. We are going to take your
governments, your palaces, and all your purpled ease away from
you, and in that day you shall work for your bread even as the
peasant in the field or the starved and runty clerk in your
metropolises. Here are our hands. They are strong hands._—_Jack
London._
The above is taken from a postal card sent out by the publishers of
Jack London’s books. Jack is a Marxian Socialist all day long, and he
is much more frank than most of his party. All the other Socialists I
ever met, alternately admit and deny that what they want is a division
of property ❦ Jack London stands by his guns and declares, “We want
all you possess.” And when he says “you” he means the people who own
property. He is talking to the owners and managers of the “tools,” by
which he means the railroads, mills, shops, stores, factories, mines
and steamships. That is to say, Jack is going to take things away from
the present owners and give these things to “we.” Jack assumes that
property in the hands of the Socialist would be much better managed than
it is now in the hands of those who own it. ¶ This threat of Jack’s
would be a tragic thing if Jack and his pals were really going to do
all they say they are. But they are not going to do anything but talk.
That is their “hold.” Folks who can, do; those who can’t, chin. Jack is
a writing tramp who roams the world for thrills and copy. He is kindly,
intelligent, amusing, indolent, and absolutely without the power to
manage anything—even his own tongue. He is a good fellow; and he makes
folks think. In fact, he is the sparker to this paragraph. Jack made me
think, he made me mad, he made me laugh, and he made me write. Personally
I like the rogue—he is most companionable, especially if you have no work
to do. ¶ The tendency of property of every sort is towards depreciation
and dissolution. Only eternal vigilance and tireless industry keep a
manufacturing plant or a farm effective ❦ Jack does not know this. Jack
thinks that to own property is to be immune from work. The truth is,
ownership is a responsibility and a burden. Most of the Socialists I know
do not work—they only talk about work. ¶ What they want is an orthodox
heaven of ease, where the harps are always in tune and the robes are
always laundered. If Jack could take away the property from those who
have it and set them to work like peasants and “runty clerks,” then the
Socialists would live in “purpled ease,” as Jack and many other childish,
silly folks think that rich people do now. ¶ There is an “idle rich”
class, but it is a very small class, and it is not made up of the people
who manage things. It is made up of remittance-men—and some of these are
Socialists, who play at equality, badger the busy, and patronize the
poor. Leave the idle rich to Nemesis. Disease and death are at their
heels. ¶ The men who operate our great enterprises—mills, factories,
elevators, banks and department-stores—know nothing of ease. Their
working-hours are not limited by the whistle ❦ They sweat blood to meet
payrolls and to keep the wheels of trade revolving. Modern business is a
most exacting taskmaster. It says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before
me.” It demands every ounce of energy its devotee has. The thought of a
“good time” is not for the businessman. He works, and works eternally.
He works because he can’t stop ❦ And this is the man the Socialists are
going to send to the fields! Jack London’s view of railroading is only
from the bumpers. His philosophy can not deceive the section-hands, nor
the train-crews, nor the operators, nor the managers. They work, and they
work with care, precision, energy and economy. Each one does the thing
he can do best. That is what we all do. If Jack’s hands were the strong
hands he pretends, they would be grabbing plow-handles or a shovel,
instead of reaching for a hand-me-out ❦ If the hands of Jack and his
friends were strong enough, they would own this property towards which
they now look with lustful eyes. ¶ The world will be redeemed; it is
being redeemed. It is being redeemed not by those who shake the red rag
of wordy warfare, who threaten and demand, but by its entrepreneurs—its
workers, its inventors, its toilers—the men and women who do the duty
that lies nearest them. ¶ The fallacy of the Jack philosophy lies in
the assumption that the industries of the world would be much better
managed by Jack and his kith than by the men who are now at the helm ❦
In other words, Jack’s claim is that Socialists are a peculiar, separate
and distinct class of able, unselfish, competent persons with hands
especially strong, who accidentally are out of the game, but who are
soon to take possession of things and run everything in such a way that
Society will be blessed and benefited as never before. ¶ The fact is,
Socialists are not a separate and distinct class. We are all children of
Adam and Eve, and the differences in us are more apparent than real ❦ We
all have our limitations—read Carlyle! The weaknesses of humanity are
inherent in Socialists—only perhaps in greater degree. Their doctrine
of reaching Utopia through firing the men who now manage things is the
doctrine of despair. Fabian Socialism is something else—it is opportunism
❦ It does what it can, now. It does not wait for a revolution—rather
it believes in evolution ❦ We climb step by step. Fabian Socialism does
not preach class hatred. In fact, it does not recognize that either
the “class” or the “mass” exists. People who belong to one so-called
class today are in another tomorrow. Most of our so-called predatory
rich wiggled up out of the mass—and they may be poor again ❦ Many of
the poor will be rich. Watch the immigrants landing at Ellis Island.
Can you prophesy to what “class” these boys and girls—curious, quaint,
half-frightened—will belong twenty years from now? Many of them will be
contractors, lawyers, bankers, scientists, doctors, teachers—it is all
a matter of individual energy, intelligence and desire, modified by the
antics of the gods of Chance. There is no conspiracy in America to hold
people down and under. Class hatred, represented by Marxian Socialism,
says there is. There is nothing so savage, cruel and blindly unjust
as class hatred. ¶ I’ve been accused of class hatred because I make
statements from time to time that seem to reveal a lack of appreciation
for the three learned professions. Granted that I do, it is not the man
I criticize—it is the office. Doctors, lawyers and preachers are men,
caught in a certain environment, trying to win the world’s plaudits and
plunder in a certain way ❦ I may consider the way a mistaken one, but I
surely do not hate the man. And the fact that I have hundreds of close
friends among the professions proves that I am not entirely misunderstood
in this matter ❦ Doctors are men. Lawyers are men. Preachers are men.
So, also, are judges. Marxian Socialists are men, and all these are very
much like the people with whom they mix and associate ❦ Rogue clients
evolve rogue lawyers to do their work; fool patients evolve fool doctors;
and superstitious, silly people in the pew secrete a pretentious, punk
party in the pulpit. For the man, himself, I have only admiration,
respect and love—and sometimes pity. I may despise his business and some
of his acts, but how can I hate the man, when I realize that his life is
a part of the Great One from which mine is derived? This man may quit
his business and take up something else. ¶ The criminal is not wholly a
criminal—he is only a criminal at times. Some of his impulses are good,
and most of them may be excellent; but one mistaken act will brand him
forever as a criminal in the world’s assize. ¶ Under the same conditions,
if I were of the same quality and temper, I would have done the same
❦ If I criticize lawyers, doctors and preachers, it is simply because
there courses through my veins a quality and kind of corpuscle which
fits me eminently for success either as a lawyer, doctor or preacher.
“A hair, perhaps, divides the false and true,” says old Omar. ¶ Yes,
and I missed becoming a practising physician by a hair. Had I gone into
Medicine I would have had a team of bays, a coon driver, and a whisker
that would have put all the other doctors in my town to the bad. I have
the fingers of a diagnostician, a voice that soothes, a presence that
heals. If you didn’t have it, I could convince both myself and you
that you had. Then I would have cut into your cosmos to find out who
was right—and I would have charged you five hundred dollars for the
operation. If I were wrong in my diagnosis, you would never have known
the difference, for on occasion I can be discreet. ¶ The law is a game
that lures: it isn’t a matter of securing justice—not that. Truth has
a secondary place in the practise of law, and only very ignorant folks
imagine otherwise. The law is a game, and you play to win. The whole
thing is fascinating. It is a clash of wits—mind matching mind. As a
lawyer, I would have quibbled you six nights and days together; and I
would have been a legal lallapaloosa. ¶ Bill Reedy writes, “We are all
touched with the essence of the thing against which we strive.” And Bill
is sometimes right. That is all we can expect, even from the wisest and
best of men, and Bill is both ❦ Yes, I would take kindly to the law, for
guff, bluff and stuff come easily within my grasp. I can cross-buttock
a fact; side-step an equity; befuddle a judge—some judges; kerflumix a
jury; juggle with justice; put reason astride of a barb-wire fence; and
prevent a witness from keeping his oath to tell the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth. And a fat fee would always reanimate
any flagging zeal I might have as to the justice of my client’s cause. ¶
As for the pulpit, I would take it now, were it not so securely fastened
down—hypocrisy, gush, glibness, Chicago Tongue,—yes, let Billy Sunday
look to his laurels! I, too, could tear a passion to tatters and make
the judicious grieve. I could hypnotize myself into a belief that souls
were “lost,” like collar-buttons under a bureau, and I was the one man
to rescue them ❦ Sure! Especially am I qualified for making Pastoral
Calls—or I was once. Also, I have great capacity for chicken-pie,
pretense, cheap social honors, and the applause of the unthinking. As a
Churchman, reversed haberdashery would have done me proud; breeks would
become me, for my shanks have individuality; and a dinky hat would set
off my sky-piece in a way not only to arouse curiosity but mirth. Let
Dean Hart beware—his job is not so secure as he thinks! ¶ Doctor Samuel
Johnson was for a time a member of Parliament in the capacity of cub
reporter. One certain speech he reported, and when the gentleman who had
made the speech read the report he didn’t exactly recognize it. So he
went to Johnson and said, “Look ’ere, young feller, I didn’t say that.”
“Certainly not,” said Johnson, “certainly not; but that is what you
should have said!” ❦ In recounting his reportorial experiences, Johnson
was once asked this question: “What kind of men are there in the House
of Commons?” And Johnson replied, “Take the first fifty men you find
walking up Fleet Street.” Johnson knew that all men, regardless of their
condition in life, are, at heart, very much alike. ¶ And when Fate has
flung a man into a certain situation, the man will, if it is a place
of some honor, give himself all the credit for having attained it. If
it is a position that perhaps carries no honor, the party will always
blame some one else for putting him there. We credit ourselves for our
successes; we blame others for our faults. Also, we justify ourselves in
everything we do ❦ And wise men see plainly that this self-justification
is a part of Nature’s great law of self-preservation. The exaggerated Ego
is a primal necessity. Good men all and everywhere multiply the value
of their work by ten. ¶ Success in life consists in convincing yourself
that you are the whole cheese, and then getting the world to accept your
view. Rostand’s rooster was fully assured in his own mind that the sun
would not come up if he did not crow. The hens being told this by the
rooster cackled it back to him, and it became a crystallized part of the
orthodox Zeitgeist ❦ And it would have so remained for all time, but for
an accident—an accident of love, when a guinea-hen became enamored of the
boss of the barnyard. So Life is a paradox—and love is not only illusion,
but it is also the great enlightener. ¶ Now, I know Jack London; I know
the proletariat; I know the “predatory rich.” And this I know, that so
far as happiness is concerned each and all of them have an equal portion
❦ The struggle in getting out of the mass has given Jack’s predatory
party a certain power, but he has paid for it with his peace of mind, and
has to struggle to hold it. “Purpled ease” is a thing that exists only
in Jack’s mental vacuum ❦ That is where the tramp has the start of the
millionaire. The tramp can dream it; the other fellow has no time even
to think it. ¶ When John Wesley saw the condemned criminal being taken to
Tyburn Tree, he turned to his friend and exclaimed, “But for the grace of
God, there goes John Wesley!” When Walt Whitman looked upon the wounded
and dying soldier, he said, “I am that man!” Emerson wrote in his _Essay
on Justice_, “I have in me the capacity for every crime.” ¶ And here is
what I say to Jack London: If you and your pals were in possession of
the tools of trade, you would commit all the so-called crimes of which
you accuse the industrial leaders, and more. The fact that your heart is
full of hate proves your unfitness to govern. ¶ These men now in power
have climbed step by step to their present position, and at every step
had to prove their worth, before they were allowed to go on. These tools
of which you speak are sharp, and men like you, unskilled in their use,
would cut others with them, and they in turn would take the tools and
cut your head off. ¶ Your hands are not as strong as you imagine. The
strength of the hands of men is not proven by assertion—it is proven by
use. How far can you put the shot? Power unrestrained is always tragic.
The world is held in place by the opposition of forces. The men in
power are ballasted by responsibility, as never before in history. You
have your use as an agitator; so go it, Jack, and say your say. ¶ That
fly on the wheel of the chariot of Achilles said, “Oh, just see what
a dust we do kick up!” ¶ And this remark of the fly has added to the
gaiety of nations. But get enough flies on the chariot of Achilles and
not a wheel revolves. The Egyptians in Moses’ time battled with swarms
of flies, when the flies scored home-runs and base-hits. Self-interest
and the tug of inertia have hypnotized you, Jack, until you, being down
in the gutter—through choice—see only your side. Yet, your barbaric
yawp is being heard, and I am your antipodal organ, passing it along.
¶ Meanwhile you ride on the bumpers provided by the Trusts, and these
bumpers carry you forward to your destination. The pie you eat is made
by the Pie Trust, yet you find it palatable and ask for more. If the Pie
Trust didn’t make good pies and sell them at a fair valuation, housewives
would make their own pies. Or they might find pie-timber too expensive,
and then you would go pieless ❦ The great consolidated industries serve
society, and their very existence turns on their ability to minister and
to help. That which does not serve, dies. If the Trusts overcharge they
invite competition and dissolution. ¶ Success lies in co-operation and
reciprocity, and the hope of the future is in the fact that the world
knows it. We can’t go back to chaos, and start over. We must go on. Light
lies ahead, not behind. We are not going to take off the train-crews,
and put the tramps in possession. There are accidents occasionally now,
but there would be more then. Safety lies in getting rid of the tramps.
One wide-awake, vigilant man at the switch is worth more to society than
all the tramps who ride the brakebeams. Get to work, Jack, and if you
can’t find the job you want, then take the one you can get! To prove
yourself able to rastle a big job, get busy and take care of a little
one. Power does not reveal itself in scolding. And with all your getting,
get busy! ¶ Yours for the Evolution!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Consecrated Lives
Here’s a thought, Dearie, that I give to you because I haven’t a very
firm grasp upon it myself. In order to clarify my mind I explain to you.
And thus, probably, do I give you something which is already yours.
Grateful? Of course you are—there! ¶ The thought is this—but before I
explain it let me tell of what a man saw in a certain cottage in Denmark.
And it was such a little whitewashed cottage, too, with a single,
solitary rosebush clambering over the door! An Artist, his Wife and their
Little Girl lived there. There were four rooms, only, in this cottage—a
kitchen, a bedroom, a workroom and the Other Room ❦ The kitchen was for
cooking, the bedroom for sleeping, the workroom for work, and the Other
Room was where the occupants of the cottage received their few visitors.
When the visitors remained for tea or lunch, the table was spread in the
Other Room, but usually the Artist, his Wife and their Little Girl ate
their meals in the kitchen, or in Summer on the porch at the back of the
house. ¶ Now the Artist painted pictures, and his Wife carved beautiful
shapes in wood; but they didn’t make much money—in fact, no one seemed
to know them at all. They didn’t have funds to accumulate a library, and
perhaps would not if they had. But still they owned all the books written
by Georg Brandes. These books were kept in a curious little case, which
the Artist and his Wife, themselves, had made ❦ And before the case of
books was an ancient Roman lamp, suspended from the ceiling by a chain.
And the lamp was kept always lighted, night and day. Each morning
before they tasted food, the man and his Wife read from Georg Brandes,
and then they silently refilled, trimmed and made the lamp all clean and
tidy ❦ Oho! why, your eyes are filling with tears—how absurd!—and you
want to hear more about the Artist and his Wife and the Little Girl!
But, bless me! that is all I know about them. ¶ However, I do know that
Georg Brandes is one of the Apostles of the Better Day. His message is
a plea for beauty—that is to say, harmony. He would have us live lives
of simplicity, truth, honesty and gentleness ❦ He would have us work for
harmony and love, instead of for place and power. Georg Brandes is an
individualist and a symbolist. He thinks all of our belongings should
mean much to us, and that great care should be exercised in selection. We
need only a few things, but each of these things should suggest utility,
strength, harmony and truth. All of our actions must be suggestive of
peace and right ❦ Not only must we speak truth, but we must live it. Our
lives should be consecrated to the good: lives consecrated to Truth and
Beauty. Consecrated Lives! And so this Artist and his Wife I told you of
were priests of Beauty, and their Little Girl was a neophyte; and the
room where the Roman lamp burned was filled with the holiness of beauty,
and no unkind thought or wrong intent could exist there. Consecrated
Lives! that is the subject. There is a brotherhood of such, and you
can reach out and touch finger-tips with the members the round world
over. ¶ Beauty is an Unseen Reality—an attempt to reveal a spiritual
condition. Members of this Brotherhood of Consecrated Lives do not take
much interest in Political Policies; and all the blatant blowing of
brass horns that are used on ’Change, in pulpits, or by Fourth of July
speakers are to them trivial and childish. They distinguish at once the
note of affectation, hypocrisy and pretense in it all. They know its
shallowness, its selfishness and its extremely transient quality. ¶ Yet
your man of the Consecrated Life may mix with the world, and do the
world’s business, but for him it is not the true world, for hidden away
in his heart he keeps burning a lamp before a shrine dedicated to Love
and Beauty ❦ The Adept only converses at his best with an Adept, and
he does this through self-protection. To hear the world’s coarse laugh
in his Holy of Holies—no! and so around him is a sacred circle, and
within it only the Elect are allowed to enter. To join this brotherhood
of Consecrated Lives requires no particular rites of initiation—no
ceremonial—no recommendations ❦ You belong when you are worthy. But do
not for a moment imagine you have solved the difficulty when you have
once entered. To pride yourself on your entrance is to run the danger of
finding yourself outside the pale with password hopelessly forgotten.
Within the esoteric lines are circles and inner circles, and no man yet
has entered the inmost circle where the Ark of the Covenant is secreted.
All is relative. ¶ But you know you belong to the Brotherhood when
you feel the absolute nothingness of this world of society, churches,
fashion, politics and business; and realize strongly the consciousness of
the Unseen World of Truth, Love and Beauty ❦ The first emotion on coming
into the Brotherhood is one of loneliness and isolation. You pray for
comradeship, and empty arms reach out into the darkness. But gradually
you awaken to the thought that you are one of many who hope and pray
alike; and that slowly this oneness of thought and feeling is making its
impress felt. Then occasionally you meet one of your own. This one may
be socially high or low, rich or poor, young or old, man or woman—but
you recognize each other on sight and hold sweet converse ❦ Then you
part, mayhap, never to meet again, but you are each better, stronger,
nobler for the meeting. ¶ Consecrated Lives! You meet and you part,
but you each feel a firmer impulse to keep the light burning—the altar
light to Truth, Simplicity and Beauty. No other bond is required than
that of devotion to Truth, the passion of listening in the Silence, the
prayer for Wholeness and Harmony, the earnest desire to have your life
reflect the Good. All man-made organization would be fatal to the sweet,
subtle and spiritual qualities of the Brotherhood ❦ For organization
means officers, judicial robes, livery, arbitrary differentiation, and
all the vile and foolish claptrap of place and power. It means the wish
to dictate, select and exclude, and this means jealousy, prejudice and
bitterness—fifteen candidates for a vacant bishopric with heartaches
to match! ❦ No organization ever contained within its ranks the best.
Organization is arbitrary and artificial; it is born of selfishness;
and at the best is a mere matter of expediency. The Brotherhood of
Consecrated Lives admits all who are worthy, and all who are excluded,
exclude themselves. ¶ If your Life is to be a genuine consecration, you
must be free. Only the free man is truthful; only the heart that is free
is pure. How many compose this Brotherhood—who shall say? There are no
braggart statisticians, no paid proselytes with their noisy boastings.
Two constitute a congregation, and where they commune is a temple. Many
belong who do not know it; others there be who think they belong, and are
so sure of it that they do not. ¶ But the Brotherhood is extending its
lines; and what think you the earth will be like when the majority of men
and women in it learn that to be simple and honest and true is the part
of wisdom, and that to work for Love and Beauty is the highest good? ❦
[Illustration]
Marriage and Divorce
My old co-ed college chum, Winifred Black, has recently propounded this
question, “Why are husbands lobsters?” So I’ll explain to Winifred the
cause of this sad state which devolutes a lover into a lobster. It’s like
this: the rule is that the male of the genus homo is never any better
than he has to be. Having said this much, let me further add that this
truth also applies to the female of the genus homo. ¶ A marriage that
is practically indissoluble gives the man security in his position. He
is not obliged to win favors—he merely exercises his rights. As for the
woman, she has him, and when she reminds him of the fact, hell is to
pay. The man who stands on his rights, thinks about his rights, talks
of his rights, belongs to the Lobsteria. He has ceased to be either
loving or lovable. The only right any man should have is the right
to be decent—that is, to be agreeable and useful ❦ One of Nature’s
chief intents in sex is to bring about beauty, grace and harmony. The
flowing mane and proud step of the horse, the flamboyant tail of the
peacock, the song of the bird, the perfume and color of the flowers, are
all sex manifestations, put forth with intent to attract, please and
fascinate. Charm of manner is a sex attribute which has become a habit.
The creative principle in all art is a secondary sex manifestation.
The average married man feels that he is immune from the necessity of
winning, pleasing, charming—he owns property. He’s a Turk! And from
the Turk and the Comet, good Lord, deliver us! ¶ Public Opinion is the
great natural restraining force. We are ruled by Public Opinion, not by
statute law. If statute law expresses the Zeitgeist it is well, but often
law hampers and restrains Public Opinion ❦ Divorce laws are obsolete
in their character, and should die the death. A marriage that can not
be dissolved tends to tyranny. There is a rudimentary something in man
that makes him a tyrant—that divides humanity into master and slave—and
to these barbaric instincts we are heir. The business of civilization
is to make men free. And freedom means responsibility. ¶ The curse of
marriage is that it makes the parties immune from very much of that
gentle consideration which freedom bestows. Freedom in divorce is the one
thing that will transform the marital boor into a gentleman. ¶ Freedom
in divorce is the one thing that will abolish the domestic steam-roller.
Freedom in divorce is the one thing that will correct the propensity to
nag, in both male and female. We gain freedom by giving it. We hold love
by giving it away. To enslave another is to enslave yourself. Constancy,
unswerving and eternal, is only possible where men and women are free.
¶ Marriage was first a property-right. The woman was owned by the man.
She was a chattel. He had the right of taking her life if she attempted
to escape, or was otherwise unruly ❦ Then the priests came in and
declared marriage a sacred rite. They brazenly declared that the marriage
where they did not officiate was no marriage at all—that it was a base
and unholy alliance, and that the children were illegitimate. ¶ The
relationship of man and woman was to them a sin and a shame, but by their
approval it was redeemed and made proper and right. To grant a divorce
was to admit that the rite did not “take.” Hence, divorce was tabu. The
Church isn’t interested in divorce—all the church is fighting for is
to hold its position. Then comes civil marriage, which is a contract
between the man and the woman from which neither party can withdraw
without laying the whole matter before the courts—and the newspapers.
And the sacredness of contract takes the place of the sacredness of the
rite. “I would hold my friend by no stronger tie than the virtue that is
in my soul,” said the gentle Emerson. ¶ Easy divorce would make divorce
unnecessary in a vast number of cases, because it would put men and women
on their good behavior, and thus do away with incompatibility. That which
tends to increase charm of manner can not be bad; that which tends to
conform a lover into a lobster is not wholly good. ¶ All over the United
States there is a general demand for a uniform divorce law. This is right
and well. And the way to bring about this uniformity is to do away with
all divorce laws. ¶ If divorce were free, it would probably be no more
frequent than it is now. Marriage should be difficult, and divorce easy.
As it is now, any preacher will marry anything to anybody for fifty
cents ❦ Nightly, clergymen are aroused from sleep to marry couples out
of the second-story window. Marriages occur in circus-rings, balloons,
show-windows, and yesterday I heard of a wedding in an automobile going
on the high clutch at speed-limit, with Papa’s car opening up the cut-off
close behind in hot pursuit ❦ Bum, lum, de-dum! Marriage is so serious
a matter that it should not be entered upon lightly. The old plan of
publishing the bans was founded on commonsense. The couple about to
embark should be compelled to take a full month to think about it, and
persons absolutely unfit should be debarred. But once entered upon,
just two people know whether the venture is a success—and they are the
man and the woman. In the name of freedom, let the only parties who are
vitally interested decide the issue. ¶ Divorce is a heroic remedy for an
awful condition. It is the culmination of a fearful tragedy ❦ I know of
nothing worse than incompatibility. There is no hell equal to the hell
of having to live with a person who is not your own. Either party who
wants a divorce should have it. And the proof that it is desired should
be reason sufficient for granting it ❦ Make way for liberty! It isn’t the
law that brings a man and a woman together, and no law should be invoked
to hold them together. ¶ The police should keep their heavy hands off.
What can an outside party know of this most subtle and delicate of all
human relations! The love of man for woman and of woman for man is the
most powerful and persistent force in the universe. And man in his greed
has seized upon it and attempted to regulate it from Harrisburg, Hartford
and Helena. Now there are many folks who think it should be looked after
from the District of Columbia. God help us all—just lift off the roofs
and take a look at Social Washington some night at four A. M.! ¶ The
lawyer here steps in and becomes as insistent and as dogmatic as the
priest. Once you could marry only through the ministrations of a priest;
now you can secure a divorce only through the services of a lawyer—often
a dozen are employed, counting both sides. ¶ “Why make life difficult,
complex and heavy?” cries Emerson. And well does he ask the question
❦ This supreme thing in life, our love, can not be regulated by man’s
law ❦ The Supreme Power that made, fashioned and gave it to us provided
for its automatic regulation. ¶ When love, honor and respect die, it is
time in the name of purity to part. No priest can consecrate the holy
relationship of a man and a woman, but God can and does. Love is the
only consecration—and love is enough ❦ To imagine that God should endow
us with this mighty passion, and then leave its regulation to those who
govern us for a consideration, is an insult to the Divine Intelligence
of which we are a part ❦ The mating of a man and a woman is the one
sacred thing in life. And left alone it is lovely and true in all its
attributes. In law, they will tell you that “the plaintiff has all the
rights his contract gives him and no more.” In Nature, a man should have
all the rights which love bestows, and no more. And when I speak of man
I mean woman, too, for there is the male man and the female man ❦ I
believe in equality—the equality of Nature, or, if you please, of God. I
do not believe in the law interposing and giving a man rights and a woman
privileges. Neither do I understand why the money a woman earns should
belong to a man, unless we first grant the righteousness of master and
slave, and frankly admit that the man owning the woman, also owns _per
se_ all that she produces, including her children ❦ God has decided who
the children belong to—they belong to the woman who bore them and whose
body nourished them. But man steps in and makes laws about a mother’s
instincts. ¶ Men and women mate, and being mated cleave together until
death do them part—and longer. They whom God has joined together no man
can put asunder. The mischievous meddling of man leads to a condition
where the parties think they own each other. This is slavery. Many
married men treat any other woman with more respect than they treat their
wives. ¶ The gallantry that holds through gentle treatment and just is
gone when the man thinks he holds a warranty-deed for the property. To be
free you must be on your good behavior. And do not for a moment imagine
that a man would leave his mate if law did not manacle him to her. He is
held by an unseen silken cord as strong as Fate, as constant as Life,
as persistent as Death. “Whither thou goest, I will go: and thy people
shall be my people.” ¶ The divine attraction which brings the right man
and the right woman together must be trusted as strong and sufficient
enough to hold them. When you treat them as rats baited into a trap,
from which escape is impossible, you dissolve the main idea and interpose
the thought of escape. ¶ And this is what makes so many married men and
women stray in their sleep and tread the border-land of folly. I would
hold my mate by the supreme integrity of my love for her, and by no other
bond. And this once fixed in the minds of men and women would make for
constancy. ¶ Nothing is more terrible in life than to break and sunder
human relations ❦ To be true to your own is the natural thing, because
it is the right thing. It is the only policy that pays. Happiness lies
in loyalty. This applies to any field of human endeavor. The race knows
it now for the first time in history. Truth is the new virtue, and Truth
is a virtue because it reduces the perplexities of life and brings
good results. ¶ The love of man for woman and of woman for man, and of
both for their children, is a divine instinct ❦ When you bolster and
brace it by political blacksmiths and shuddering shysters, you doubt
its constancy, and, what is worse, you suggest the doubt to the very
people you seek to fetter ❦ The greatest line ever written by Humboldt
was this: “The Universe is governed by Law.” But he did not refer to the
laws of man ❦ He referred to the laws of Nature, or, if you please, the
laws of God, although Humboldt in his latter years never used the word
“God.” I believe in the blessed trinity of Man, Woman and Child. These
to me express Divinity. Left alone the woman would be the companion,
friend and helpmeet of the man, not his slave, pet, plaything, drudge,
doormat and scullion. ¶ Happiness lies in equality. The effort you put
forth to win the woman, you should be compelled to exercise through life
in order to hold her. And you will hold her by so long as Love kisses
the lips of Death, and the dimpled hands of the babe encircle the neck
of its father ❦ The house of the harlot exists because love is gyved,
fettered, blindfolded and sold in the marketplaces. There is nothing
so pulls on the heartstrings of the normal, healthy man as the love
for wife and child ❦ Always and forever he wears them in his heart of
hearts. To imagine that he would forsake them for the husks of license,
unless looked after by Jaggers and Jaggers, is to doubt the Wisdom of
the Creator. In our hearts Divine Wisdom implanted the seeds of loyalty
and right. These are a part of the great plan of self-preservation. We
do not walk off the cliff, because we realize that to do so would mean
death. ¶ Make men and women free, and they will travel by the Eternal
Guiding Stars. That which makes for self-respect in men and women,
putting each on his good behavior, increasing the sum of good-will and
lessening hate, will have a most potent influence on future generations.
I can not imagine a worse handicap than to be tumbled into life by
incompatible parents and be brought up in an atmosphere of strife. “We
have bred from the worst in the worst possible way, and the result is a
race of scrubs,” says Alfred Russel Wallace. ¶ All that tends to tyranny
in parents manifests itself in slavish traits in the children. Freedom is
a condition of mind, and the best way to secure it is to breed it. So I
say, make marriage difficult by demanding notification and a pause; then
make divorce free on application of either party ❦ Do you remember the
woman who wanted a divorce if she couldn’t get it, and if she could, did
not want it? No one wants a divorce from his own ❦ This would be the one
horrible and appalling thing in life. Let life be automatic. Make room
for the Divine. And in this article I have only stated what all thinking
men and women know and believe, but which they—wisely—decline to say or
even admit. Therefore, I have said it for them. We will now listen to the
Anvil Chorus.
[Illustration]
The Taxation of Church Property
I am in receipt of a very interesting letter from the Reverend A. B.
Taylor, Lakeside, New York, in which he says that he reads _The Fra_ with
much pleasure and profit, and often receives valuable help therefrom
in compiling his sermons. Doctor Taylor is an orthodox Methodist, and
the fact that I am able to express for him, in degree, many of the
things he holds as truth is one of the encouraging signs of the times.
It is frank, friendly and beautiful in Doctor Taylor to write me his
acknowledgments. But after writing the letter he adds a postscript. I
might say that I have a suspicion he wrote the beautiful letter in order
to add the postscript, but I will not. Here is the P.S.: “One thing I do
not like, and can not comprehend, is why you so wrongfully advocate the
taxing of church property.” ¶ Then he encloses a column clipping from
_The Christian Work and Evangelist_, wherein the reasons for exemption
of church property from taxation are fully set forth. Very seldom does
one get the entire argument at first hand, but here it all is, skilfully
presented ❦ I give it in its entirety: “The worst enemy New York has, or
any city has, is the perennial critic who would tax the churches. Some
interesting correspondence has recently been going on in one of the New
York papers over this matter. Some one by the name of Hubbard discovered
that there were several million dollars’ worth of property in churches
which was untaxed. The critic supported his arguments by statements
that the churches are not direct public servants, as are schools and
hospitals; that they exist to teach certain doctrines of their own,
differing among themselves, and which have no direct relation to the
public good—some of the doctrines, indeed, being pernicious, according
to this critic. The short-sightedness of all this is apparent to the
most superficial mind. The policy of taxing the churches would be almost
suicidal to any town or city. The churches save New York fifty times
what the city loses in taxes from them. Here are a few facts which when
perceived stop all such talk at once: The Church is the greatest police
force in the community. The Roman Catholic Church alone—we mention that
Church because it practises the negative doctrine of restraint more
than do the Protestant churches—restrains hundreds of thousands of men
and women from petty crimes that would cost New York more than all her
courts and police and jails and prisons have cost her for years. Take
the churches out of New York for ten years and it would be an unsafe
city to live in, and the expense of administering its criminal courts
and prisons would bankrupt it. As a matter of fact, the teaching of any
particular theological doctrine is the smallest part of any work the
churches do ❦ Go into any church in New York and you will find that fully
three-fourths of all the efforts are being directly expended in making
good citizens. In Sunday school the children are being taught honesty,
purity, brotherhood, ambition and the unselfish life. Fully two-thirds
of the sermons of the average preacher are direct inspirations to the
moral life or instructions in ethics. We venture to say that had our
friend collected fifty of the sermons preached in New York last Sunday
he would have found forty-nine which dealt with practical religious life
to one on the doctrine, say, of the future life. ¶ Of course, there
are millions of people who have found in their experience that the
‘peculiar doctrines,’ as our friends call them, produce the highest type
of citizenship. As a matter of fact, the main efforts of the churches of
New York are put on producing honest and altruistic men ❦ Heaven only
knows what would become of the city if its one thousand four hundred
churches were crippled by great taxes. It is bad enough now. The police
service the churches render New York saves the city millions every year.
The service of furnishing her with honest and unselfish men can not be
put in numbers. There are none large enough.” ¶ It will please be noticed
that the editor of _The Christian Work and Evangelist_ starts his article
by informing us who the worst enemy of New York or any city actually is.
This worst enemy, according to my Christian colleague, is the critic who
would tax the churches. Thus, before he attempts to reply to the critic,
he denounces the critic as not only an enemy of the State, but its
worst enemy. Grafters, thieves, dealers in dope, procurers, sweat-shop
fiends, murderers, all take second place: the worst enemy of a city—any
city—is the man who advocates the taxation of church property. The editor
himself is a Christian, a church-member and a clergyman. Does he stand
as a sample of the head, hand and heart of the modern church-member? ❦ I
think so. He is a man of education, of position, honored and respected
in his denomination. And he tells us that people who disagree with him
in a matter of finance are not only the enemies of the State, but its
worst enemies. “A traitor to God is a traitor to his country.” Thus did
religious fanaticism once link the heretic and the traitor as one ❦ To
disagree with the prevailing religion was to be regarded as the foe of
society. How hard the tyrants die! ¶ Yet many clergymen believe that it
would be better to put church property on an absolute parity with all
other property. In fact, many churches now voluntarily pay taxes. The
great and influential congregation presided over by Rabbi Leonard Levy
of Pittsburgh requested the assessors to tax their synagogue at its cost
valuation of three hundred thousand dollars ❦ In Toronto is a Baptist
church—the Jarvis Street Baptist Church, I believe—that has paid taxes
on its property for more than twenty years, because the congregation
voting on the question decided that an evasion of taxes on the part of a
church because it did “good” was really no better than the exemption of
an individual for the same reason. ¶ The enemy of the State, forsooth,
is the man who asks some one to pay a few paltry dollars for police
and fire protection! ❦ Naturally, one might say the enemy of the State
is the man who refuses to pay his quota of expense for the maintenance
of the Government machinery. ¶ The editor of _The Christian Work and
Evangelist_ is a clergyman ❦ He is paid by the religious denomination
he serves. This denomination has large holdings of real estate, upon
which it pays no taxes. If it paid taxes it would not have so much money
to pay clergymen; therefore, one of its leading clergymen, acting as
spokesman for the rest, defines for us the worst enemy of New York—“or
any city.” Thus we get the quality of logic that rules in our churches.
It would be laughable were it not pitiable in its weakness. The church
isn’t dead—it can still call vile names ❦ How nimbly it yet flings the
theologic stink-pot! The fires of the auto da fe are not extinguished.
They are only banked, banked in the editorial office of _The Christian
Work and Evangelist_. “The worst enemy of New York or any city!” It
is the old, old cry of “Away with him!” ❦ It is the cry of entrenched
tyranny, that he who disagrees with you in religious matters is the
enemy of the State. Socrates spoke disrespectfully of the gods, and for
this they brewed for him the hemlock. The crime of Jesus was that he
undermined the State ❦ Savonarola, Bruno, Latimer, Wyclif, enemies of
society—all! ¶ The editor of _The Christian Work and Evangelist_ thinks
that the State and Religion are one. And he is right. For just as long as
the State grants immunity from taxation to church property, the divorce
is not complete. We haven’t yet caught up with Thomas Jefferson. Well,
you know what the State in the past has done to those who are considered
its enemies? Yes, and that is just what the meek and lowly editor of
_The Christian Work and Evangelist_ would do to you if he had the power.
¶ Carefully read, analyzed and digested, we find that the sole excuses
churches have for not paying taxes are: First, the churches form a police
system which prevents certain people from committing crime. Second, the
churches supply us a great number of honest and unselfish citizens, who
otherwise would be rogues ❦ For these two things they claim a cash
reward from the community. My answer is that both propositions are
assumptions, quite gratuitous, but that, even if they were true, it
would not justify the State in remitting their quota of taxes. ¶ I have
had a large and varied experience with clergymen and church-members,
and that they are better morally and stand higher intellectually are
propositions which they admit, but which no one besides themselves
puts forward. The names of clergymen, Sunday-school teachers and pious
deacons who go wrong would fill a five-foot shelf of books. In fact,
it is an axiom that the bankers’ colony in every penitentiary is made
up mostly of church-members ❦ When the University of Copenhagen says
that church-members are better citizens than non-church-members, I may
believe it. Until then, the verdict must be, “Not Proved”—and especially
so, in view of the fact that when Christianity was absolutely supreme
the headsman worked overtime, and crime, grime, blood, poverty, disease
and woe were the rule, not the exception. The doctrine that some folks
are so much better than others that they deserve eternal bliss is the
most selfish idea ever put forth by mortal man. Folks who think they
are better than others, usually aren’t. That the idea of endless joy
for believers, and endless hell for doubters, is not being preached
now so much as it was a few years ago, is nothing to the credit of
church-members. ¶ All separations of society into sacred and secular,
good and bad, saved and lost, learned and illiterate, rich and poor,
are illusions which mark certain periods in the evolution of society ❦
The offer of endless life and the threat of endless hell are frightful
rudimentary errors of the savage mind, born of fear and frenzy, and then
perpetuated as a police system by a Divine Collection Agency. For not
only does a religion of fear keep people “good,” but it also makes them
pay for being kept good. The offer of immunity from the penalties of sin,
through belief in the blood of Jesus, is merely the immunity that human
sacrifice once provided, slightly refined and modified. The “belief” in
a blood sacrifice has taken the place of the sacrifice itself. ¶ The
orthodox Christian Church still teaches immunity from penalties on the
acceptance of its creed. From exemption from the natural penalty of a
misdeed to exemption from taxation is but a step. The man who can accept
the one takes kindly to the other. “Jesus died and paid it all—yes, all
the debt I owe.” “Saved by the blood of the Lamb.” That is, throw it off
on some one else. Who cares! Any way to go scot-free! And this evasion
of a penalty for wrong committed is called “the glad tidings of great
joy.” To escape the payment of taxes is a variation of the same idea ❦
Many of these “saved” people do not pay their debts until compelled to.
If they work for you they loaf and visit on “company time.” They cheat
you in a hundred ways, and often spend as much time trying to evade the
responsibility of shouldering the burden as, rightly used, would have
carried the message to Garcia. ¶ The entire Christian doctrine of rewards
and punishments, of a vicarious atonement, and the substitution of a pure
and holy man for the culprit, is a vicious and misleading philosophy ❦
That fear in some instances has deterred men from crime, there is no
doubt. But the error of religion as a police system lies in the fact
that it makes superstition perpetual. Untruth that good may follow is
not a nice philosophy. ¶ It will be noted that the learned editor of
_The Christian Work and Evangelist_ pleads, as a reason why churches
should not pay taxes, the assertion that three-fourths of all sermons now
preached deal with present-day problems, and the effort is not merely
to save souls but to make better citizens. This is doubtless true ❦
The church is saving herself from dissolution by becoming secularized.
Gradually the world is being educated into the belief that one world at
a time is enough. Also, a vast number of men and women see the fact that
immunity and exemption are not desirable, that nothing can ever be given
away, and that something for nothing is very dear ❦ To make a man exempt
is to take from him just so much manhood; and to make a church exempt
is to weaken the fabric and place the institution on a mendicant basis
❦ To accept salvation for yourself, with the consciousness that there
is still one soul in hell, would turn your paradise into purgatory, if
your soul were worth a damn. “One man is no man,” said Aristotle four
hundred years before Christ. We are all parts and particles of each
other. ¶ This matter of exemption from taxation of certain edifices
and certain men, transportation at half-rates, and the ten-per-cent
discount to clergymen and teachers, all hinges on a lack of the Ethical
Monistic Concept ❦ It assumes that certain work is sacred and other work
secular; that certain places are holy and others profane. My esteemed
colleague, the editor of _The Christian Work and Evangelist_, admits
that this world is no longer “but a desert drear, heaven is my home.”
He admits that we are here, and that this is our home now, at least.
When he goes a step further and admits that this is God’s world, not
the Devil’s; that every man is doing the best he can with the light and
power he possesses; that all human service is sacred; that there is no
high nor low; that there are no “saved” so long as men are in bonds to
fear, superstition and incompetence; that a smokestack is as sacred as a
steeple—then he will agree with me that churches should pay their just
quota of taxes. Good people no longer ask immunity from payment of bills
because they are “good.” Businessmen are just as “good” as preachers.
Business today is founded on the thought of reciprocity and mutuality ❦
We help ourselves only as we help others. And all transactions in life
should be co-operative and reciprocal. ¶ Granting for argument’s sake
that the Church does do all the good claimed by my Christian brother,
still that is no reason for its exemption. “So far as this Court knows,
all men who live in houses are good men, making the world of men better
by their lives; but this is no reason why their residences should be
exempt from taxation.” So said a wise and learned judge in deciding the
question of taxation of parsonages in Illinois. Here we get the growing
concept of the world of thinking men and women, the concept of Ethical
Monism. All is One, and the sacred is that which serves. Pay the price,
and provided you pay the price, the thing you buy is worth the money.
¶ The churches will never do the good they are capable of doing until
they throw off mendicancy. ¶ And the beggar is a robber who has lost his
nerve, a bandit with a streak of yellow in his ego. The churches must
take their stand, firmly and frankly, as human institutions, asking no
exemption, demanding no immunity. Then they will be free. For her own
good the Church must meet her responsibilities, and not shift her burden
of taxes upon the people who do not believe her creed. If you believe in
a “peculiar” doctrine, that is your affair, and you are the man to pay
for its support. To say that I must pay for the support of your creed or
else be branded as a foe of society is bad logic, worse ethics, and very
indelicate, not to say discourteous ❦ Only that is fair and beautiful
which neither threatens, bribes, evades, demands nor supplicates.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Free Motherhood
The most important question that confronts the future is not New Thought,
the Juvenile Court, the Tariff, the Single Tax, nor Fletcherism. It is
Free Motherhood. The perpetuity of the race depends upon Motherhood. I
trust there will be no argument on that ❦ The quality of our race turns
on the quality of the parents; and especially does the quality of the
child turn on the peace, happiness and well-being of the mother. You
can not make the mother a disgraced and taunted thing and expect the
progeny to prosper. When you strike a mother, you strike the race. There
is no hint in Nature that Motherhood is ever shameful or disgraceful.
Only a social and legal fiction ever makes it so. It is vain to look
to the Church for reform in this direction. In fact, the Church is the
chief sinner. ¶ The necessity for orphan asylums came in with the vows
of celibacy and chastity ❦ Wherever these two things exist—celibacy
and chastity—orphan asylums flourish ❦ Less than five per cent of the
children in orphan asylums are orphans. The rest are waifs and outcasts.
If the State did not make the mother a criminal; if Society did not
look upon her as disgraced; and if the Church did not refer to her as
“ruined,” most of the mothers of these “orphans” would cling to them ❦
For every thousand orphans, nine hundred mothers reach empty arms out
into the darkness. The desire of the mother to protect and care for her
child is the most persistent instinct that is implanted in the human
heart. If there is anything sacred in the world it is mother-love. If
there is anything divine in the universe, it is the love of the mother
for her baby ❦ We give pensions to the men who fought to save the State.
Why not give a pension to every woman who goes down into the valley of
death and kisses the white lips of pain? ❦ Isn’t the mother just as
necessary to the perpetuity of the State as the soldier? I rather think
so. The necessity of the one is absolute, the other is conjectural ❦
Every mother should be recognized by the State “for heroic services.”
If she is not married, her pension should be double that which her
married sister receives. We must conserve mother-love, not dissipate
it. And let us remember this: We can not successfully legislate against
the biologic imperative. To trample mother-love ruthlessly into the
mire of conventionality, and tear the child from the mother’s arms, and
place it in an orphan asylum, is the work of a false and hypocritical
“Christianity.” ¶ Now that the whole world is trying to get back on a
truthful basis as a move in the line of self-preservation, is it not
time that we look this issue squarely in the face and express ourselves
concerning it? Before this babe is born it runs the hazard of murder from
its conception ❦ That it survives reveals its hold on eternal life. When
born, it is greeted with tears, fears, secrecy, untruth, hypocrisy, and
its divine heritage of mother-love is traded for a mess of institutional
potash. That most orphan asylums are now managed by skilled and able
people is only a mitigation of the wrong. A substitute is thus offered
for mother-love—something just as good ❦ But the eternal fact remains:
There is no substitute for mother-love. God is that jealous of it that
He supplies nothing to equal it. ¶ We can never have a noble race of
men until we have a noble race of mothers. And in order to be a noble
woman, this woman must be economically free ❦ Wonderful changes have
come to the world within a few years. For a woman not to wed, no longer
carries a penalty. The term “old maid” has now no terrors. Spinsterhood
is an achievement, not a disgrace. ¶ The unmarried woman between forty
and fifty is probably a self-supporting woman. And this responsibility
makes her the mental superior of her married sister who looks to a
male man for food, clothing and protection from the storm. Yet because
a woman has not seen fit to marry is no reason for assuming that the
cosmic urge is dead. And just remember this, that no woman ever lived
who couldn’t marry some man if she wanted to. She will not marry because
she is not content to accept any old thing. ¶ It is always a question of
what man. And as women more and more are able to care for themselves—and
this is the one sure economic tendency of the times—they will more
and more cease being willing to swear to honor, love and obey one man
for ninety-nine years. Yet the mother instinct will not die on that
account. The race will not perish ❦ The independence of women will make
them better mothers. Their children will be stronger in brain and body,
cleaner, abler, firmer in the ability to discover and decide for the
right. But Free Motherhood must be respected. ¶ The word “illegitimate”
is now pretty nearly banished, since we have discovered that God smiles
upon the freeborn child as upon none other. William the Conqueror,
Theodoric the First, Erasmus, Jean Dunois, Leonardo da Vinci, the Empress
Josephine, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and scores of other
intellectual kings that might be named, have redeemed the “small and
select class” from the unmanicured finger of shame ❦ We no longer look
askance upon the offspring; as for the father we smile away his “past”
as a mere peccadillo, and he becomes a deacon in the church—a pillar of
society. The mother, however, Society still spits upon as one polluted.
¶ This will not always be so. The very fact that I am now writing on
the subject, and that several hundred thousand gentle men and women—the
very intellectual pick of the world—will read my words, argues progress.
Others, too, are writing. The world is changing—all things are being
made new ❦ The crime of orthodoxy is its lack of faith. It believes too
little. What we want is not a belief in one “immaculate conception,” but
a fixed and firm faith in the fact that whenever and wherever a mother
holds in her arms a babe, hugging it to her heart, crooning to it a
lullaby, there is God. ¶ When this time comes the State will provide a
pension for every mother who cares for her babe. ¶ As an economic move,
this will be cheaper than maintaining orphan asylums. The child will be
loved, not institutionalized. It will be a better citizen. But best of
all, we will wipe away the tears of the mother. We will rejoice with
her that a man is born into the world ❦ We will extend gladness and
congratulation, not hypocritical sighs, snarling sneers and sour faces.
¶ Froebel spoke of the “little souls fresh from God” ❦ And so, too, must
we; and when we do we will cease regarding the mother, the vehicle of
transport, as a being to be shunned and maligned ❦ Rather, the miracle of
Motherhood will be reverenced; and this will be a great moral uplift to
all fathers as well as to mothers. Thus will the whole race be purified,
benefited, strengthened and carried forward toward the Divine Ultimate ❦
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Why I Am a Philistine
A long and very carefully written letter from an unknown gentleman who
signs himself “Retired Professor” has recently reached me. ¶ The Great
Obscure favor me quite often with anonymous epistles, but life being
short and the wastebasket wide, I seldom reply. Yet now an exception must
be made, and I answer “Retired Professor” for the sole and simple reason
that he has “retired,” and in retiring has made the world his debtor.
Probably no one act of this man’s entire life has been so potent for
good as this. He has set all Professors without humor a most precious
precedent. ¶ In gratitude, hoping that his example will bear fruit, I
reply. ¶ Did space permit I should be glad to print my correspondent’s
letter entire, but the gist of his scholarly argument is that the Society
of the Philistines is endeavoring to make free-thought universal and
paganism popular. He stoutly avers that the ancient Philistines were
the enemies of Jehovah, that they worshiped strange gods, and that
they were the sworn foes of the Chosen People. ¶ Now this is the sad
part: he proves his case. The gentleman explains that he would not have
seen _The Philistine_ Magazine had not his daughter, “an unmarried
lady of thirty-two,” purchased several copies; but from this on, with
his permission, no more numbers of this “infidelic infernal machine”
shall enter his house ❦ My heart goes out to all unmarried ladies of
thirty-two. Especially so when they have fathers who are irascible;
only one worse fate can befall a woman of thirty-two than to have an
irascible father, and that is to have a lover who is irate. Still I
doubt me not that the daughter of “Retired Professor” will find a way
to read _The Philistine_, for booklets laugh at locksmiths! ¶ Yet,
ignorance prevails, for is not “Retired Professor” living proof? And so
I will say: There lived in the Far East about three thousand years ago
a tribe of people known as Philistines ❦ It is a hotly mooted question
among the theologians whether they were so called because they lived in
Philistia or whether Philistia took its name on account of being peopled
by Philistines. I will not take sides on this issue, but hedge closely
and simply stand firm on the fact that a tribe called the Philistines
existed ❦ Near them lived the Hivites, the Moabites, the Canaanites, the
Hittites, the Jebusites, the Perizzites, the Ammonites and the Gothamites
❦ Now, among these tribes none was so strong, none so intelligent, none
so handsome, none so virtuous as the Philistines. And it came to pass
that the superior quality of moral fiber in the Philistines caused
the entire country to be known as Philistia; it was the general name
given to the whole valley of the Jordan. And the name endures even unto
this day. ¶ Palestine means the land of the Philistines. And it seems
that among them there was a rude sense of right and wrong. For if a man
owned a piece of ground and planted a vine on it, and then watered and
tended the vine, the grapes that grew on this vine were his, and all of
the people agreed to this, and the man and his neighbors knew all this
without a Dispensation ❦ These people planted vineyards, and had gardens,
and fields of wheat and barley. They had barns with threshing-floors;
and they had carts, plows and other implements. They builded houses and
owned their homes; and the men loved their wives and their children; and
the women were the comrades of the men—all taking part in the sports as
well as in the work, for they were a merry, happy people ❦ Now, about
thirteen centuries before the Christian Era, while they were living in
peace and prosperity, there swooped down upon them a horde of escaped
slaves, called Israelites ❦ These slaves had broken away from their
masters in Egypt. The country to which they traveled was only about
three hundred miles from Egypt; but as their average speed was less than
a mile a week, it took them forty years to make the journey. ¶ The man
who led these slaves in their flight was one Moses, who in a righteous
cause had killed a man in Egypt and fled. After many years of exile,
during which time he had been in Philistia and liked it, he returned and
led the exodus. When the Israelites left, they took all the gold and
silver ornaments and utensils they could “borrow,” and melted them up.
And they were not ashamed of this act, for they have written it down
in the third chapter of a book called Exodus. ¶ The ancient Israelites
never had any clear ideas as to the rights of property. When they found
grapes growing on a vine, they helped themselves and swore that the fruit
was theirs by Divine right. In order to impress this ignorant, barbaric
horde with the sense of authority, Moses, who was diplomatic as well
as good, told the people that God directed him and that Deity told him
what to do and say. Moses used to go up on a mountain, clear above the
clouds, beyond where the mists hover, and when he came down the people
asked him what he had been up there for, and he told them he went up
there to see God. ¶ In no other way could Moses control this restless mob
except by saying, God says so and so. And the fact that their leader was
on such good terms with Elohim or Yahveh inflated these people so that
they always spoke of themselves as “the Chosen People of God.” In fact,
they took it all in and were so vain and boastful that Moses was often
ashamed of them ❦ The Jebusites, the Hittites and the Moabites never
referred to the Israelites as the Chosen People of God. No one called
them the Chosen People of God—only they themselves. And I wish to say
right here that the individual who does a great and magnificent work is
on close and friendly terms with God. He is the Son of God, and it is
necessary that he should feel this kinship in order to do his work. From
Moses, the called of God, on up to Socrates, who listened to the Demon,
to George Fox, who harkened to the Voice, to the prophets of our own
time, all lie low in the Lord’s hand and listen closely ere they act. A
man is strong only when he feels that he is backed by a Power, not his
own, that makes for Righteousness. So Moses was not guilty of falsehood;
but the people who took him literally put him in a wrong light. ¶ When
I think of those brave souls, the Saviors of the World, who have sought
to lead men out of the captivity of evil—feeling and knowing that they
were the Sons of God—I stand uncovered ❦ But a mass of people—a crowd, a
mob—that claims to be a “Chosen People” is a sight to make angels weep.
“You can not indict a class,” said Macaulay; corporations have no souls,
and a horde that claims to be inspired is only a howling, cowardly Thing
❦ Great men are ever lonely and live apart, but birds of a feather flock
together because they are afraid to flock alone. They want warmth and
protection—they are afraid. A mob is the quintessence of cowardice—a
dirty, mad, hydra-headed monster, that one good valiant Saint George can
thrust to the heart. When a mob speaks I say, Vox populi, vox devil! ¶
At the time the Israelites tumbled pellmell upon the Philistines, Moses
had long been dead. The mob was without a leader, and quarrel was rife
amid its broken ranks. In a mad rush they stampeded the herds of the
Philistines, scattered their flocks, destroyed their gardens, and as
excuse they shouted, We are the Chosen People of God! And one of their
Poets sang a song, which runs thus: “Moab is my washpot; over Philistia
will I cast my shoe.” This only made the Philistines laugh, and although
the Israelites outnumbered them, they went at it and scattered them.
Finally, after long years of warfare, the fight was called a draw, and
the Jews settled down and following the good example of the Philistines
made themselves homes. ¶ Of course, as sane men and women, we of today
do not suppose that the great Universal Intelligence that holds the
world in the hollow of His hand had much interest in the fight. If this
intelligence were a Being, I can imagine Him looking over the battlement
of Heaven and turning with a weary smile to Gabriel, saying: “Let ’em
fight—what boots it! They will all be dead tomorrow, anyway.” ¶ It is
a noteworthy fact that in the first chapter of the Gospel of Saint
Matthew the Inspired Writer traces the genealogy of Jesus direct to the
Philistines. In the sixth verse we find “David begat Solomon of her who
had been the wife of Uriah.” Back of this is Ruth the Moabitess, who was
the grandmother of David. There is no such thing as tracing a pure Jewish
lineage back to the time of Moses ❦ The Jews went a-courting as soon as
they arrived on the borders of Canaan; and the heathen quite fancied the
Israelitish women from the first. ¶ In the Book of Ruth, first chapter
and fourth verse, I see, “And they took them wives out of the country of
Moab.” The houses of Capulet and Montague have ever intermarried—it seems
a quiet way Nature has of playing a little joke. And after a painstaking
study of the matter I am fully convinced that the many sterling qualities
in the Jew are derived from his Philistine ancestry. No one doubts that
Solomon was the wisest man that ever lived. His mother was a Philistine.
Now, no man is ever greater than his mother, and it is very plain that
the great wisdom of Solomon was derived from this pagan woman whose body
and spirit nourished him, in whose loving arms he was cradled, and whose
intellect first fired his aspiration. ¶ This is all made plainer yet when
we remember that David had many sons by Jewish women, and that all of
these sons were positively no good—and some of them very, very bad ❦ The
facts are found in the Second Book of Samuel—a book, by the way, which
no respectable girl should allow her mother to read. But if any captious
critic arises and denies the Law of Heredity, for argument’s sake I’ll
waive this matter of maternal transmission of excellence and rest my case
as to Solomon’s wisdom on the fact that he married over four hundred
Philistine women ❦ And, as stated by Sir Walter Besant in a recent story,
“a newly married woman always tells her husband everything she knows,” I
feel safe in saying that Solomon’s transcendent wisdom was derived from
Philistinic sources. ¶ Only one incident in the history of this people do
I wish to set straight before the world at this writing—that is the story
of Goliath ❦ According to recently discovered cuneiform inscriptions, it
is found that the giant lived long enough to attend the funeral of David,
so it is hardly likely that David slew him. That David threw pebbles at
the warrior is doubtless true, but the giant of course paid no attention
to the boys that followed him—going along about his business just as any
other dignified giant would have done ❦ But David went home and told
that he had killed the man—and the Israelites wishing to leave a proud
record wrote the tale down as history ❦ We have reason to believe that
this story was interpolated into the Bible during the first of the Third
Century. In David’s case, summer and autumn quite fulfilled the promise
of spring ❦ That eleventh chapter of Second Samuel, showing how he stole
Bathsheba and then killed Uriah, her husband, reveals the quality of
the man. But it was left for his dying act to crown a craven career ❦
With his last lingering breath—with the rattle of death in his throat—he
gasped to his son, referring to a man who had never wronged him, “Let
not his hoar head go down to Sheol in peace!” With the utterance of
these frightful words his soul passed out into the Unknown ❦ In all that
David wrote, not a word can I find that hints at his belief in a future
life—he simply never thought of it—and dying as a dog dies, he gnashed
at Shimei, whose offense was that thirty-five years before he had told
David a little wholesome truth ❦ Shimei was a brave fellow and David
dare not fight him, so he made a truce with him and swore an oath that
he would never molest him, but dying he charged Solomon to search him
out with a sword ❦ This is recorded by the Inspired Writer in the ninth
verse of the second chapter of First Kings. With forty-one distinct
crimes to David’s charge, the killing of nine hundred thousand men and
two hundred thousand women and children, the houghing of thousands of
horses, all of which is set down in infallible Holy Writ, his record is
very bluggy. In fact, his whole life’s pathway is streaked with infamy ❦
David being a literary man of acknowledged merit, I have given him more
attention than I would a plain, every-day king. And I now brand him as an
all-round rogue. I do this calmly, holding myself personally responsible,
and fully prepared to plead justification and prove my case should the
heirs or next-of-kin consider my language libelous. ¶ And while I do not
know anything about it for certain, it is my opinion that at the Last
Great Day the folks who stayed around home and pruned their vines and
tended their flocks and loved their wives and babies will fare a deal
better than those other men who made war on an innocent people and tried
to render them homeless ❦ Of course, I may be wrong about this, but I
can not help having an opinion. Altogether, my sympathies are with the
Philistines—who were so strong in personality that they gave their name
to the Holy Land—Pelishton, Pelesheth, Philistia, Palestina, Palestine.
¶ Long years ago Professor Jowett called attention to the fact that the
word Philistia literally meant Land of Friendship; the term having the
same root as the Greek word _Philos_—Love. Max Muller has said, “The
dwellers in the Valley of the Jordan, in the fifteenth century before
Christ, recognizing the idea of Oneness or Fraternity, gave a name that
signified Love-Land to their country: thus embodying the modern thought
of the Brotherhood of Man.” ❦ In view of these things it was rather a
strange move—a man so scholarly as Matthew Arnold applying the word
“Philistine” as a term of reproach toward those who did not think as
he did! I can see, though, that he shaped his language to fit the ears
of his clientele. He sought to make clever copy—and he did. The opinion
being abroad that the Philistines were the enemies of Light—how very
funny to throw the word like a mud ball at any and all who chanced to
smile at his theories! Having small wit of their own, the scribbling
rabble took it up. ¶ On reading certain books by a Late Critic, who now
wears prison garb and is doing the first honest work that ever his hands
found to do, I see that he is very fond of calling people who are outside
of his particular cult, “Philistines.” But look you! Brave Taurus at the
bullfight is a deal more worthy of respect than the picadores who for a
price harrow him without ruth to his death ❦ And as his virtue surpasses
that of any in the silken, belaced and perfumed throng, who sit safe and
with lily fingers applaud, so do we accept your banderilla, recognizing
from whence it comes, and wear it jauntily as a badge of honor. ¶ As
the Cross for eighteen hundred years has been a sacred emblem, and the
gallows since John Brown glorious; and as the word Quaker, flung in
impudent and impotent wrath, now stands for gentleness, peace and truth,
so has the word Philistine become a synonym for manly independence. ¶ In
Literature he is a Philistine who seeks to express his personality in his
own way ❦ A true Philistine is one who brooks no let or hindrance from
the tipstaffs of letters, who are only intent on crystallizing a life
and language that are as yet very imperfect ❦ These men strive hard to
reduce all life to a geometrical theorem and its manifestations to an
algebraic formula. But Fate is greater than a college professor, and so
far its mysteries, having given the slip to all the creeds, are still
at large. My individual hazard at truth is as legitimate as yours. The
self-appointed beadles of letters demand that we shall neither smile nor
sleep while their Presiding Elders drone, but we plead in the World’s
Assize for the privilege of doing both. So in Art we ask for the widest,
freest and fullest liberty for Individuality—that’s all! ❦
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Oral Righteousness
In days agone, if things tasted good we called them “toothsome.” We
did not work the subject out according to the Herbert Spencer Law of
Synthesis, but we dimly felt that teeth and taste were closely akin.
And therein were we quite correct ❦ The widow who declined to marry the
man, and on being discreetly pressed for a reason, abruptly declared
with a Marie Corelli defiance that it was because he did not have the
Dental-Floss Habit, was right in her instincts. She would rid her of the
reek before she took it on as a life lease. For it is just such little
things that make or mar, when we have sworn to love, honor and humor,
and face the party over the coffee-urn every morning for ninety-nine
years. The gentleman was not personally pleasant, and although he may
have had a college degree, social position and spondulex, yet a breath
that would stop a watch put him to the bad, and rightly so. ¶ To such
a one she could never murmur soft and low the word “Mizpah!” Nor could
he salvo his kismet magnum and get it back again according to the
Aristotelian laws of action and reaction. For gentlemen who are not
toothsome are never socially gladsome. If my years were not as those
of the pterodactyl, and I wanted to win the love of a woman, I would
look well to my molars. ¶ Brain, brawn, and the graceful two-step are
as naught when toothsomeness is actively absent. Shakespeare had these
two things in mind when he referred to a “barber’s breath,” and “the
breath of an unfee’d attorney,” which items do not come to us as the
breath of Spring. Abjure the weed and rice-paper, eliminate the elevated
spheroid, and look you to your teeth, Cecil, to your teeth, I say. And
the rest follows. We all have our opinions in matters of medicine, but
no one knocks on the dentist. Is love then a matter of toothsomeness? ❦
I do not speak by the card, for my knowledge along this line is merely
academic, yet a woman I know says, “Yes.” ¶ But seemingly, decayed teeth
would give Cupid a pain in his wee tummy small. Decayed politics are
bad; decayed literature is worse; and to love a person with decayed
molars would be like loving a mummy with tainted morals. The increase
in divorce, and the much marital woe of which we hear, are doubtless
due to lack of toothsomeness ❦ The parties grin and bear it as long as
they can—some declining to grin—and then strike for freedom, fresh air
and the open road. ¶ Aside from the esthetics of bad teeth, there is
the esoterics, and worse than that, is the hypersthenia which leads to
language non-ethical, offensive, irrelevant and uncalled for. ¶ A very
slight irritation in the teeth throws the soul on the horn of the saddle.
To be sane and serene you have to be sound and salient. We do business on
a mighty small spiritual bank-balance. To carry no reserve is like firing
a boiler in which the gauges show no water. In fact, it means a very
great danger of an explosion—and the grave necessity of being sent to the
hospital and having the stub-end of your self-respect removed. An aching
tooth or a tooth of which you are conscious draws mightily on your mental
reserve. Morphine, or a dab of cotton soaked in chloroform, will help you
forget it, but these things are drafts on the bank of futurity and the
loan must be met with usurious interest. ¶ I once knew a playwright who
started in to write a great historical drama; but he got a toothache,
and decided to make it a farce-comedy; but all he produced was a fizzle
❦ Seldom does a man with the toothache make good; and to have cavities
in your teeth and not know it is worse than to have the toothache, since
pain is Nature’s beneficent warning ❦ So, to have decayed teeth and never
have a toothache would mean lack of sensibility, which is lack of life.
Such a one hasn’t enough nerves to make him irritable, much less to give
him artistic grouch ❦ And grouch is unused or misused energy—and have
I not said that all energy is divine? You write your poem, your essay,
your play—just as you paint your picture, carve your statue, or give your
oration—out of your surplus, and never out of your capital ❦ Should you
begin to draw on your capital you get nerv. pros. or fatty degeneration
of the cerebrum, and are a candidate for Billy Muldoon’s. ¶ Is oratory
a matter of toothsomeness? Most certainly, yes ❦ The greatest orator
that New York ever produced was thrown from his artistic hobbyhorse
once and forever, when his store-teeth, in an impassioned moment, shot
over the footlights and fell with a sickening thud into the orchestra.
“Say, mister, are these your teeth?” asked a man in a front seat, as he
solemnly arose and handed up the grinders. And that broke up the meeting
❦ I once saw a man, singing the part of Tannhauser, do a similar stunt.
And we all declared that he could go down to Venusburg and stay there,
for all of us—he ceased to be interesting. ¶ Get this down as an axiom:
To speak well, or sing well, you must have good teeth ❦ The teeth are
organs of speech—auxiliary organs at least. When your voice whistles
through your teeth, and the tones come wheezy and with a sort of sad
surprise, there are soon bubbles in your think-tank, and you travel home
on your rim. It is then time to sing Tosti’s _Good-by_, and retire from
the stage, thereafter warbling only to the gallery of your psychic self ❦
[Illustration]
The Health Habit
There are three serious objections to my health prescriptions ❦ First,
I make no charge for them. Second, they are written in plain English,
without myth, miracle or mystery, and can be understood even by the
mediocre mind. Third, you have to fill the prescription yourself, and
this costs effort. Sickness is a selfish thing. If you are well you are
expected to work, and give your time and talent to helping other people.
If you are sick you are supposed to be immune from many unpleasant
tasks and duties. Mark Twain said he was never really happy except on
two occasions. One was when he was given that Oxford degree and wore a
marvelous red cloak and a mortar-board hat; and the other was when he
had the measles and expected to die. The joy of holding the center of
the stage and having the whole family in tears, just on his own account,
was worth all the pangs ❦ But, indeed, there were no pangs. Mark was a
humorist, and a humorist is a man who has the sense of values, and to
have the sense of values is wisdom. Mark was a great philosopher as well
as a humorist ❦ Not only did he testify that pangs and pains are the
attributes of life, not death, and that there is no pain in death, but
he also gave testimony that sickness is an acute form of selfishness.
The sick man disarranges the entire scheme of house-keeping wherever he
is, unless he be in a hospital. To have his meals served to him in bed
he regards as natural and right ❦ For once he holds the center of the
stage—all dance attendance. Doctors come, nurses run for this and that,
neighbors call and inquire. He is It. ¶ The paranoiac is a person who
craves attention, and rather than go unnoticed, commits crime. Just
observe how most sick people obtrude their maladies upon their friends,
and then tell me whether sickness is not usually a form of paranoia!
Doctor Johnson said the sick man is a rascal ❦ Not only is the remark
true, but Doctor Johnson might have gone further and stated that a long
period of rascality is required to produce most cases of sickness.
Hate, prejudice, revenge, jealousy, wrath, are all disturbers of the
circulation, and producers of toxins. These toxins poison the entire
system, and continued, may produce rheumatism, dyspepsia, Bright’s
disease, or various other pleasant things for which we look to the doctor
for relief. ¶ Most people go through life on a short allowance of ozone,
and a surfeit of food. We eat too much and breathe too little ❦ Life is
combustion—the digestive tract is a boiler. And as oxygen is necessary
to fire, so it is to life. The value of exercise in the open air lies
in the fact that it is getting a goodly draft of oxygen through your
system, and this forced draft is both eliminating refuse and burning up
slag ❦ These things are all so trite and true that it seems silly to
write this for cultured people, and yet cultured and educated people are
sick quite as much as the other kind. In fact, more so, since necessity
is often removed and the person has the privilege of going to bed in the
morning, getting up when he pleases, eating a multiplicity of dishes that
set up an internecine war, giving the saw-buck absent treatment, and
forcing or bribing other folks to wait on him. ¶ It is a curious comment
on our civilization to find our great sanitariums and health-resorts
full of college graduates. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Vassar
and Wellesley are all represented constantly at Battle Creek, Dansville,
Mount Clemens, Hot Springs, Richfield and Alma ❦ Imagine an LL. D.
being given vicarious exercise by a healthy colored man who can neither
read nor write; a Ph. D. looked after by a saucy slip of a nurse, in
becoming cap and apron, fresh from the farm or paper-box factory; an
M. D. vigorously Muldooned by a man who knows nothing of medicine, but
something of health! ¶ A great surgeon tells me that he has never yet
seen a case of appendicitis where the patient has not been addicted
to the Beecham Habit. That is to say, this disease is the result of
medicine, just as are many others. ¶ So here is the prescription: Get
the Health Habit—by throwing physic to the dogs, because it will not
hurt the dogs, since they know better than to swallow it; drink plenty
of pure water; eat what you like, but do not overeat; have a regular
daily occupation; breathe much and deeply in the open air; have a veranda
bedroom, open if possible on two sides, or at least sleep in a room with
windows run up wide, even if the water-pitcher freezes; think well of
everybody, especially doctors, for good doctors everywhere are practising
a Science of Prevention, and will corroborate these suggestions ❦ They
are doing the best they can, considering the ignorance, superstition and
inertia which they have to combat—often in their own minds, and those of
others.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Elks’ Creed
Here is a story told me the other day by a drummer traveling for the
Solvay Process Company. We were on the New York Central, riding from
Syracuse to Albany ❦ The incident has a fromage flavor that makes it look
like lallapaloosala persiflage. However, it may be true, for no one is
in such danger of the Ananias Club as he who has the courage to give the
plain, unvarnished facts ❦ I am unable to recall his exact words, and
so I use my own language. ¶ So say we, tell we the tale: My friend, the
drummer, took the Owl, a midnight train from Chicago to Des Moines ❦ The
section just across from his berth was occupied by a Vision in Gray.
¶ The chromatic ensemble was that known at Wanamaker’s as “elephant’s
breath.” From the tip of her toe to the proudly defiant Henry of Navarre
ostrich-plume, she was an ecstacy in silvery gray. The Chiaroscuro was
as lissome, billowy, willowy, pearly, evasive and impressionistic as the
fog that hangs low on the October corn, when the rising sun is a great,
round, red ball on the rim of the dreamy and effete East ❦ From Land’s
End to John O’Groat’s the symphony was satisfying and complete. Her hat
was a milliner’s creation; her dress an architect’s dream, devised by
Kirk Cutter in an artistic seizure; her hair was done up as provided by
the Interstate Commerce Commission. Yet the woman was modest, refined,
lady-like. Her high-sign only referred to the duds and haberdashery ❦ She
was neither fly nor flip—merely bouffant, that’s all. She was as tall as
the Solvay Process man, for he had observed it, being from Syracuse.
¶ The Pullman-car conductor came through and took up the tickets. The
Vision in Gray had the whole section—she said so—she needed the upper
berth for her clothes, and cautioned the porter that the space was hers.
“Yassum! Comin’ up!” said George in reassuring tones that cost a quarter.
He had no tissue envelope big enough for the hat, so it was covered with
two copies of the Chicago _News_. ¶ The train started. Soon the curtains
were drawn and the lights turned low; nothing was heard save the rumble
and roar of the onward rush of the train, and the snores of an obese
attorney, traveling for pleasure. Morning came. It often does. It came
dim and foggy. Lights blinked, six o’clock whistles blew, calling workmen
from their beds to toil ❦ The man from Syracuse was awakened by words
of tumult and sounds of entreaty. The porter was swearing an alibi in a
tearful Scipio Africanus voice: “Ah nevah saw dem close, Missus! Ah hope
to die—Fo’ Gawd, I hope to die! I’se a Baptis’ an’ nevah done nothin’ bad
in my life!” And from out the berth filled by the Vision came subdued
feminine threats, which died away in half-sobs of anguish that shook
the soul of the Solvay Process party, strong man though he was. ¶ The
Pullman Conductor came. The train conductor was summoned ❦ The flagman
who guards the rear end forgot his duties, as he stood in the aisle with
his red flag, and attached to it two cartridges and a red light, ready to
fire on a second’s notice of danger. The train conductor was trying to
make a list of the things lost ❦ The upper berth was absolutely empty.
The hat was gone; the dress, a tailor-made fabric, which the unseen said
between sobs was worth two hundred dollars, was swallowed by oblivion.
All the fluffy ruffles had disappeared. “Haven’t you a kimono?” asked
the Pullman Conductor, not so much for information as to reveal his
knowledge of technique. ¶ “I did have, but that has gone too,” was the
anguish-laden response ❦ Alas! All she had was the suit of pajamas
that she wore which clung close in this time of need. Even the gray
chamois-shoes were gone. Two women had left the train at four o’clock in
the morning at the Junction, but they carried nothing save hand-bags.
“They could have put my clothes on over theirs,” murmured the lady from
out the dismal depths of Lower Number Nine ❦ The train-hands retired to
the smoking-room to consult. It was no joke to them—they were all under
suspicion. ¶ Suddenly, the man from Syracuse had an Idea. He had with
him an extra pair of trousers, and of course the regular business-suit
he wore. Hastily he groped beneath his berth for his suitcase. With
trembling hands he pulled forth the pants. He reached over and pushed
them into the berth, saying: “Here, Miss, I am an Elk ❦ Don’t be afraid,
I’m an Elk, and the first prong of my creed is to do good ❦ I am a
respectable married man from Syracuse. I’ll help you out of this fix—put
on these.” And then, his generosity increasing as the Good Samaritan
instincts in his cosmos began to find expression, he handed over his coat
and vest. “Then here is my raincoat, which will come to your feet!” “Oh,
thanks, kind sir,” she said; “but I can not take your clothes—for what
will you do?” The voice was flute-like, and modulated like an aeolian.
“Oh, I don’t need any clothes,” said the liar from Onondaga County;
“besides, I have another suit.” ¶ “But my hat! my hat!” moaned the lady.
“Take this,” said the disciple of Chancellor Day. “Take this. I have my
traveling-cap,” and he pushed the hat into the unseen depths ❦ It was
a big, light-colored Roycroft Stetson. “Do your hair up on top of your
head, and pull the hat well down—it will be all right—don’t cry!” ¶ “But
I have no shoes!” “Wear mine—I have a pair of slippers.” ❦ And he pushed
his shoes through the curtain, and looked the other way. Only the onward
roar of the train was heard as the conductors came back. “You are sure
you had the clothes on when you boarded the train?” asked one conductor
in a voice ill-concealing his resentment. “Never mind—I’ll get along—go
away—I will make my claim on the road direct. Go away, please!” They were
glad enough to get away. ¶ As the gloaming began to gloam, the porter
turned up the lights. Now and then the electric bell buzzed. The obese
party was calling for his shoes. A man had lost an umbrella. He got it.
A lady in an upper berth wanted a stepladder. The porter was working
like mad making up berths so as to brush his passengers and receive the
offertory before they got to Des Moines. A party wearing a long raincoat
and a big, light-colored Roycroft Stetson emerged cautiously from a
berth, and hurried toward the ladies’ dressing-room ❦ “Hi, Kuhnel,
t’other end of the kyar, if you don’ min’, please,” called the porter ❦
The berths were all made up. The porter had brushed everybody except the
party wearing the big Stetson, drawn low, who occupied Number Nine. The
porter had now concluded that the unpleasantness of the early morning was
the result of a hoodoo—the failure to carry his rabbit’s foot. It was all
a bad dream! “Brush!” he said, with a flourish, approaching the party
in the long raincoat. The Stetson shook, and two sad, gray eyes looked
straight at the colored brother ❦ He fled in dismay. George was out a
quarter that he had counted on. The drummer from Syracuse, wearing his
ulster buttoned to the chin, helped the soft-hatted party out of the car,
through the station into the Hotel Savery bus. “I’ll send your clothes
back as soon as I can buy more,” said the lady in her low, musical voice
❦ “Oh, don’t bother!” said Dionysius of Syracuse, blushing brick-dust. ¶
The drummer forgot to give her his address, and to take hers. He felt
sort of guilty, being a respectable married man, and from Syracuse, as
before stated. He did not go to the Hotel Savery, as usual. ¶ He bought a
pair of shoes, a smart Stein-Bloch Company suit, saw his trade, and left
for Omaha on the Two-ten.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Remember the Weekday
Did it ever strike you that it is a most absurd and semi-barbaric thing
to set one day apart as holy? If you are a writer and a beautiful thought
comes to you, you never hesitate to write it down because it is Sunday
❦ If you are a painter, and the picture appears before you, vivid and
clear, you make haste to materialize it before the vision fades. If you
are a musician, you sing a song or play it on the piano, that it may
be etched upon your memory—and for the joy of it. ¶ But if you are a
cabinetmaker you may make a design, but you will have to halt before
you make the table, if the day happens to be the “Lord’s Day”; and if
you are a blacksmith, you will not dare to lift a hammer for fear of
conscience or the police. All of which is an admission that we regard
manual labor as a sort of necessary evil, which must be done only at
certain times and places. ¶ The orthodox reason for abstinence from all
manual labor on Sunday is that “God made the heavens and the earth in
six days and rested the seventh day”; therefore, man, created in the
image of his Maker, should hold this day sacred. How it can be possible
for a supreme, omnipotent and all-powerful being, without “body, parts
or passions,” to become wearied through physical exertion, is a question
that is yet unanswered. ¶ The idea of serving God on Sunday and then
forgetting Him all the rest of the week is a fallacy. Sunday with its
immunity from work was devised for slaves who got out of all the work
they could during the week. No man can violate the Sabbath; he can,
however, violate his own nature, and this he is more apt to do through
enforced idleness than through either work or play. Only running water
is pure; stagnant nature of any sort is dangerous, and a breeding-place
for disease. ¶ Change of occupation is necessary to mental and physical
health. As it is, most people get too much of one kind of work. All the
week they are chained to one task, a repugnant task because the dose is
too big. They have to do this particular job or starve. This is slavery,
quite as much as when man was bought and sold as a chattel. ¶ Will there
not come a time when all men and women will work because it is a blessed
gift—a privilege? Then, if all worked, wasteful consuming as a business
would cease ❦ As it is, there are many people who do not work at all, and
these pride themselves upon it and uphold the Sunday laws. If the idler
would work, no one would be over-worked. If this time ever comes, shall
we not cease to regard it as wicked to work at certain times, just as
much as we should count it absurd to pass a law making it illegal for us
to be happy on Wednesday? Isn’t good work an effort to produce a useful,
necessary or beautiful thing? If so, good work is a prayer, prompted by
a loving heart—a prayer to benefit and bless. If prayer is not a desire,
backed up by a right human effort to bring about its efficacy, then
what is it? ¶ Work is a service performed for ourselves and others. If
I love you I will surely work for you—in this way I reveal my love. And
to manifest my love in this manner is a joy and a gratification to me.
Thus, work is for the worker alone, and labor is its own reward. These
things being so, if it is wrong to work on Sunday, then it is wrong to
love on Sunday; every smile is a sin, every caress is a curse, and all
tenderness a crime. ¶ Must there not come a time when we shall cease to
differentiate and quit calling some work secular and some sacred? Isn’t
it as necessary for me to hoe corn and feed my loved ones (and also the
priest) as for the priest to preach and pray? ¶ Would any priest ever
preach and pray if somebody did not hoe? If life is from God, then all
useful effort is divine; and to work is the highest form of religion ❦
If God made us, surely He is pleased to see that His work is a success.
If we are miserable, willing to liberate life with a bare bodkin, we
certainly do not compliment our Maker in thus proclaiming His work a
failure. But if our lives are full of gladness and we are grateful for
feeling that we are one with Deity—helping God do His work—then, and only
then, do we truly serve Him. ¶ Isn’t it strange that men should have made
laws declaring that it is wicked for us to work?
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Reciprocity
The first requisite in life is that we shall be able to earn a living.
For our own good we must be able to produce as much or more than we
consume, and to make two grins grow where there was only a grouch before.
And we can help ourselves only by helping others. A transaction where
only one side makes money is immoral. ¶ Reciprocity, Co-operation,
Mutuality, are the three big words. To be of genuine advantage, all
human effort must be reciprocal. The worker who works merely with his
own benefit in mind doesn’t get much benefit ❦ Personal good comes
incidentally, and to go after a gain direct is to have it elude you.
The very effort you put forth to secure the thing sets in motion an
opposition that makes it slip away beyond your reach. The man who seizes
culture by the cosmic scruff will never secure her tender confidences.
¶ If you want to study the birds you do not go in wild search for them;
you simply seat yourself on a log in the woods and, lo! soon the branches
are vibrant with song. To clutch for love and demand it makes you both
unlovely and unlovable. If you would have friends, be one. ¶ This
great spiritual law which provides that we lose the thing for which we
selfishly strive has seemingly been overlooked in our universities and
institutions that foster the so-called Higher Culture. Fond parents send
their sons to college for but one reason—not to earn a living, not to
render the world a service, not to perform some necessary task—they send
them to college in order to absorb and appropriate a certain imaginary
good. The idea of reciprocity in a college is a barren ideality. The
“work” is non-productive, futile, fictive, fallacious and imaginary. In
all Nature there is no analogy to this thing of making an animal as big
as his father exempt from securing his own living ❦ The birds in the nest
are fed, and the young are suckled; but a weaning-time that does not
take place until long after adolescence is fraught with danger. The plan
is medieval and dates to a time when conspicuous waste and conspicuous
leisure were the badge of respectability. The college is really a
mendicant institution: its teachers and students belong to the parasitic
class. ¶ The fact that a thing has to be endowed proves there is
something wrong with it. It is not self-sufficient and in itself supplies
no excuse for being. It requires an explanation. No explanation ever
explains the necessity of making one. ¶ Our system of teaching will never
approximate the perfect until we devise an Industrial College where the
students will produce as well as consume. The school then will not be an
imitation of life—it will be life ❦ The fact that many college graduates
are highly successful men does not answer the argument—that very many
college graduates are wholly incompetent is the thing that forms the
damning count. The man who gets his education out of his work, at his
work, is the type that has always ruled and yet rules the world. We are
safe only as we move with Nature; and any system of teaching that seeks
to improve on Nature is founded on fallacy. ¶ There is only one valid
reason for sending a boy to college, and that is, so he can discover for
himself that there is nothing in it. A college degree, as matters now
stand, is like a certificate of character—useful only to those who need
it. However, there must surely come a time when degrees will be given
only to those who can earn a living—and this degree will be signed by the
young man’s employer. ¶ All this for the simple reason that no man is a
safe person whose time is not employed in some useful daily occupation
where others as well as himself are the gainers. Time and energy not
used, or misused, form a dangerous dynamite; while time and human effort
fused with reciprocity produce radium. Can you earn a living? Also, do
you? ❦
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Vaccination
A short time ago I spent a week in Saint Louis ❦ During that week there
were three deaths of children from tetanus (lock-jaw), all the direct
result of vaccination. The Board of Health had been very busy, and all
children that could not show a scar were vaccinated, this without consent
of the parents or of the child. For each vaccination the city paid the
kind doctors delegated to do the work, the sum of fifty cents. That is to
say, these physicians operated on healthy children, introducing a poison
into their systems, thus giving them a disease, in order to prevent them
from having one—all for half a dollar per child ❦ The three children
that died netted the doctors a dollar and a half. ¶ As before stated,
these children died, and scores of others were made seriously ill. How
many were poisoned for life no one knows. Children know all that the
parents know, and the report that vaccination had killed several struck
panic to the hearts of those not yet vaccinated ❦ Many children refused
to go to school for fear of the doctors. And such was the alarm through
non-attendance that the School Board called a meeting and passed a
resolution asking the Board of Health to desist from these fifty-cent
operations until the question of the quality of the virus used could be
passed upon. ¶ Now, there is no such thing as a “pure virus.” Vaccine
virus is a poison in itself. And vaccination, if it “takes,” always
reduces the resiliency or resisting-power of the patient, laying him
open to any germ that may be flying around that way. ¶ The President
of the Board of Health took refuge behind the law, which required him
to vaccinate the school-children ❦ But personally he said he thought
the whole system was founded on a superstition, and on a very barren
assumption. Said the physician: “Many people who are vaccinated never
have smallpox. A few who are vaccinated have smallpox. To assume that
those who are vaccinated would have smallpox if they were not vaccinated
is childish reasoning, fit only for those who are willing to accept a
tainted plea, because they are already convinced ❦ I must admit that
the logic of vaccination is no reason at all, and could only appeal to
prejudiced, ignorant and unthinking people ❦ I wish we were rid of the
whole thing, but I am not strong enough to stem the tide. Doctors get
paid for vaccination, the books and colleges uphold it, and this thing
will go on until the people revolt, which I hope they will do soon.” ¶
Here we get the expression of an honest man—an Allopath physician—caught
in the toils of Custom ❦ Physicians are instructed from books, in
colleges, and by professors who were taught from books in colleges. This
is not knowledge: it is the memorizing of things evolved many years ago
by men who knew much less than we do ❦ Very few physicians know how to
live. Everywhere you find doctors who are soaked in tobacco, booze and
dope, breathing foul air, thinking vile thoughts, resorting to stimulants
as a pick-me-up ❦ These are the men that uphold vaccination—these are
the men who assaulted the school-children of Saint Louis, and forced a
poison into their healthy bodies for fifty cents a body. Oh, the shame
of it! ¶ Immunity from disease comes from fresh air, pure water, clean
surroundings, an active, useful life, and kind thoughts ❦ The fear
wrought in a school by one of these bewhiskered rogues, with his outfit
of scalpels, scarifiers and poison, is a cause of disease in itself.
The plan of vaccinating the mind with the virus of fear is in itself a
crime, and a most common cause of disease. ¶ Doctor J. H. Tilden says
that the fear of disease spread abroad by doctors is the cause of more
deaths than the White Plague ❦ People who live rightly are well. It is
right living and sanitary surroundings that have banished smallpox.
Just good sanitation has banished the “plague,” that mysterious disease
which swept Europe again and again, and which killed one-third of the
inhabitants of London in Sixteen Hundred Sixty-five ❦ I believe, with
Tilden, that the so-called Science of Medicine has been a positive curse
to mankind, just as Christianity has, with its bogus “Plan of Salvation.”
¶ Salvation lies in work, play, study, right living and right thinking,
and not in belief in the death of a good man in Asia two thousand years
ago. As a cure for our physical pains we have looked to a poison doctor,
instead of studying the case ourselves and ascertaining why we suffered
❦ We must learn to rely on ourselves, and not put either our souls or our
bodies in jeopardy by turning them over to a “cure of souls” with collar
buttoned behind, or to a hirsute gent who will give you a disease for
fifty cents, in the interest of happiness, health and long life.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Equal Suffrage
Many good women do not care to vote, and they give this as a reason why
equal suffrage should not be allowed. The logic is so faulty that it
really serves as a reason for the antis. A woman’s reason is often the
work of the genus male ❦ An Englishman, recently arrived in New York
City, stopped at the Hotel Majestic. After two days he notified the
proprietor that no more circulars which came by mail should be sent to
his room. “Because,” said this son of ’Appy Halbion, “I find it a task
too great for my strength to acknowledge receipt of all of them, and
have, therefore, decided not to accept any more.” When asked, “What’s
the matter with the wastebasket?” he carefully examined that useful
article and said that, so far as he could see, it was all right. “Give
decisions, but never reasons,” said the wise old judge to the young
judge ❦ “Your decisions will usually be right, but your reasons seldom.”
Women who do not want to vote should not stand in the way of women who
do. Voting is not compulsory, upon either male or female ❦ Voting is a
privilege. Voting is simply the expression of your political preferences.
Every one should have preferences, because they have opinions. We grow
through the expression of opinions and through making decisions. Voting
is deciding between this candidate and that, this policy or the other ❦
Hence, it tends to definite, logical thinking. One of the old arguments
made against Woman Suffrage was that, if women were allowed to vote, they
would be compelled to do jury duty, because the jurors are selected from
the poll-list. This is one of the piffling reasons—“woman’s reasons.”
Everything in Nature tends to adjust itself ❦ It is quite natural for
women to express themselves. In fact, they always have, if history and
experience are worth anything. But why they should be forbidden this
particular form of political expression, only the male knows, and, in
fact, to use a Hibernicism, he doesn’t. ¶ In the State of Washington, a
woman can accept the subpoena to do jury duty, or she can decline it. The
law, which is only crystallized custom, defers to her wishes ❦ If she
simply tells the deputy sheriff, “Nothing doing!” he marks her name off
the list. She is not obliged to give any reason why she does not wish to
serve as a juror, any more than she is obliged to give a reason why she
does not vote ❦ This seems eminently consistent, right, proper, and well
within human rights. Suffrage simply is a recognition by the State that
woman is a human being. Where women have served on juries, they have
been found to be eminently attentive and anxious to view the question
involved from every standpoint, and to reach a sane and just conclusion.
¶ Judge W. W. Black, of Everett, Washington, has recently said from the
bench: “My experience with the ladies in the jury-box has been that the
trial of the case has been expedited, and the whole proceedings marked
with a dignity and decency which did not before exist ❦ And the verdicts,
for the most part, were well within the legal limits, eminently just and
proper ❦ I do not find that woman’s mental ability to grasp a point in
law is inferior to that of man’s.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Just Boys
Be patient with the boys. You are dealing with soul-stuff. Destiny awaits
just around the corner. Boys evolve into men, and men sometimes change
the boundary-lines of States. They make political parties; they crown
kings, and they put them to flight. They bring contention or they make
peace. They may build or they may destroy. But boys misused, abused,
betrayed, never forget and seldom forgive. It is a terrible thing to
plant the germs of suspicion and hate in the mind of a child ❦ Tyranny
visited on a boy may implant in his heart dragons’ teeth that spring up
and grow into armed men. The breath of hate consumes, and its voice
affrights. Gluttony and greed sometimes leave the boy out of the equation
❦ Gluttony and greed fatten and forsake. They invite and they alienate.
They welcome and they repel. Grasping greed sometimes forgets. It is the
thing that brings mental and moral diseases and disorders of the state
that can not be cured. ¶ Boys can not be deceived. Naturally, they are
truthful. They are elemental. They do not know how they judge or why.
The words of your lips count for little. They know the things that are
hidden in your heart. To arrest boys and fasten upon them the strong
hand of the law is a tragic thing. A slight, a boy will forgive; but
injustice, never. Boys can be led: they can’t be driven. They respond to
love, but tyranny may set their hearts aflame. My heart goes out to the
boys. ¶ In Kansas City I know one newsboy who supports a widowed mother
and several brothers and sisters younger than he. I know two newsboys,
brothers, whose scanty savings are sending an elder sister to the State
Normal School, that she may be fitted to become a teacher. ¶ Thomas A.
Edison was a newsboy. He sold papers on the streets of Detroit, and on
the Grand Trunk trains. While selling papers on the rail-road platform
at Mount Clemens, he saw a little youngster toddle out on the track, in
front of an approaching train. At the risk of his own life, Tom Edison,
the newsboy, grabbed the youngster, sprang upon the footboard of the
engine and saved the life of the baby. For this deed the station-agent
rewarded Edison by teaching him the telegraph-key. We know the rest. ¶
Paginini was a street musician when a boy, playing his violin and holding
up his hat for pennies ❦ Martin Luther was an outcast and a street singer
when a youngster ❦ Occasionally the proud and the strong would push him
out of the way into the gutter. Such treatment made scars on his soul
that time did not efface. It is a terrible thing to kill animation and
joy and enthusiasm in the heart of a child. Boys should be encouraged,
and not ground down to a starvation-point in all of their worthy and
useful little industries. ¶ Give the boys a chance to grow, to enjoy, to
work, to save their pennies and become men ❦ I used to know a newsboy who
cried his wares up and down in front of the hotel where I stopped. The
years went by, as the years do. Twenty-five years passed, and I stood
in a court of appeal to present a motion which was of vital importance
to me. The judge who sat on the bench looked to me strangely familiar.
All at once it came over me with a flash that this judge was once the
newsboy from whom I had bought newspapers in front of the hotel. He now
held for me the ability to wither or to bless, to destroy or to protect.
Fortunately, for me, his heart and brain were right. ¶ Be patient with
the boys. Bad boys are good boys who misdirect their energies. The hope
of the race lies with the boys. In a year or two we will be going to hear
them preach from pulpits; we may go to them to borrow money; they may
operate on us for appendicitis—aye, they may preach our funeral sermons.
Nobody can prophesy the success to which a boy will attain. Difficulty,
trial, hardship, work—these are the things that evolve boys into men.
Boys can be led. They can not be driven. ¶ Be patient with the boys ❦ You
are dealing with soul-stuff. Destiny awaits around the corner.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Sea
The Sea knows all things, for at night when the winds are asleep the
stars confide to him their secrets. In his breast are stored away all
the elements that go to make up the round world. Beneath his depths lie
buried the sunken kingdoms of fable and legend, whose monarchs have
long been lost in oblivion ❦ He appropriates and makes his own all
that is—dissolving the rocks that seek to stop his passage—forming,
transforming, rearranging, never ceasing, tireless. Tireless ever, for
he gets his rest in motion. With acute ear he listens along every coast
and lies in wait for the spirit of the offshore wind ❦ All rivers run to
meet him, carrying tidings from afar, and ever the phosphorescent dust
from other spheres glimmers on his surface. ¶ It is not to be wondered
that men have worshiped the ocean, for in his depths they have seen
mirrored the image of Eternity—of Infinity ❦ Here they have seen the
symbol of God’s great plan of oneness with His creatures, for the sea
is the union of all infinite particles, and it takes the whole to make
the one. ¶ Men have fallen on their faces to worship the sea. Women have
thrown him their children to appease his wrath. Savagely yet tenderly has
he received the priceless treasure and hidden it away where none could
recall ❦ He has heard the dying groans of untold thousands, and drowned
their cries for help with his own ceaseless roar; but still his ear has
not failed to catch the whispers of confession that have come from souls
about to appear before their Maker. And yet how beautiful and kind is
he in his apparent relentless cruelty, for he keeps only the transient
part, and gently separates the immortal and wafts the spirit back to God
who gave it. ¶ And what does the sea do with all these secrets, mysteries
and treasures? Go shrive thyself, and with soul all in tune to the
harmonies of the Universe listen to the waves and they shall tell thee
the secrets of life!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Epigrams
How much finer it is to go out into the woods and lift up your voice in
song, and be a child again, than to fight inclination and waste good
God-given energy endeavoring to be proper!
I am not sure what the unpardonable sin is, but I believe it is a
disposition to evade the payment of small bills ❦
Labor is the only prayer that is ever answered ❦ ❦
If men could only know each other, they would never either idolize or
hate.
I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have
things I am not able to appreciate ❦
Vivisection is blood-lust, screened behind the sacred name of Science ❦
If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is
also true of trouble ❦ ❦
Friends and credit pursue the man who does not need them.
Hell is a separation, and Heaven is only a going home to our friends.
Success is the realization of the estimate which you place upon yourself.
We are all children in the kindergarten of God ❦ ❦
Missionaries are sincere, self-deceived persons suffering from meddler’s
itch.
Give us this day our daily work.
A criminal: One who does by illegal means what all the rest of us do
legally.
How beautiful that most of our troubles never happen!
We are not punished for our sins, but by them ❦ ❦
One great, strong, unselfish soul in every community would actually
redeem the world ❦ ❦
Do not take life too seriously—you will never get out of it alive.
You are what you think, and not what you think you are.
Who is my brother? I’ll tell you—he is the one who recognizes the good in
me.
Do your work with a whole heart and you will succeed—there is so little
competition!
When a woman works, she gets a woman’s wage; but when she sins, she gets
a man’s pay—and then some ❦
Life without absorbing occupation is hell—joy consists in forgetting
life ❦
Respectability is the dickey on the bosom of civilization.
A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman as bad as she dares.
If you want work well done, select a busy man—the other kind has no time.
Mind your own business, and thus give other folks an opportunity to mind
theirs ❦ ❦
The outcome of the battle is of no importance—but, how did you fight? ❦
Do not keep your kindness in water-tight compartments. If it runs over a
bit ’twill do no harm.
Genius is fine, but if it comes to a show-down, gumption is better.
In a world where death is, there is no time for hate.
An ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.
A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the
experience.
If we are ever damned it will not be because we have loved too much, but
because we have loved too little ❦
Man’s greatest blunder has been in trying to make peace with the skies
instead of making peace with his neighbor.
So here, then, endeth that goodly book
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
ELBERT HUBBARD
Being the gospel of the union of head, heart and hand as preached and
lived by that good man and great, who has, and truly, said, “The mintage
of wisdom is to know that rest is rust, and that real life is in love,
laughter and work.”
[Illustration]
Gathered together by John T. Hoyle and made into a book by Charles J.
Rosen and Charles Youngers, craftsmen at the Roycroft Shops, which are in
East Aurora, Erie County, New York State, Month of November, MCMXVI.
¶ I will not pray that each day be a perfect day, but I will
pray to lapse not into indifference. I will not pray that each
time I shall build both strong and true; but imperfect, I will
pray for impulse that I may build anew.
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