Post Impressions Part 8

"I imagined," she said, "that the causes must be other than those you mentioned. But the fact remains that the choice which confronts most of us is between having a little less than we need, or needing a little more than we have. If that is so, it seems to me rather a waste of time to spend--did you say seventy-five years?--in revising the tariff. I prefer my own kind of tariff."

"And the cost of living?" I said.

"My kind of tariff gets much nearer to solving that problem," she said.

"But then, why Mrs. Pankhurst?" I said. "If the making of laws has nothing to do with the comfort of life, why do you want to vote?"

"Because we want to a.s.sert our equality by sharing your illusions.

Besides, we can use the vote to bring about a state of things when voting won't be necessary."

On further thought, Emmeline is not a Protectionist; she is an Anarchist.

XIV

SOMEWHAT CONFUSED

He said:

"Last night my wife took me to a lecture on Eugenics and the Future. The night before, we went to a lecture on the Social Implications of the Tango. I enjoyed them both immensely. Of course, after a long day in the office, I am rather tired in the evening. If I dozed off on either occasion it must have been just for a moment. I followed the arguments perfectly."

"Are you converted?" I said.

He pushed his derby further back on his head.

"Quite. I am not a mule. I know a good argument when I see one. Now, isn't it true, as the speaker contended last night, that the human animal, taking him by and large, is not a beautiful object? When he isn't bow-legged, he is knock-kneed. There are too many men prematurely bald. There are too many women prematurely wrinkled--and fat. We are nothing but a shambling, stoop-shouldered race, in a permanent state of ill-health. In summer we get sun-struck. In winter we get colds in the head. Look at the ancient Greeks. Is there any reason why we cannot produce a race as healthy, as beautiful, as graceful in the free play of muscle and limb? An erect, supple, free-stepping race, breathing deeply of life, looking the world full in the face, daring everything, afraid of nothing. Our bodies are divine, as much so as our souls. To go on being a race of physical degenerates, a snuffling, wheezing, perspiring race that is always running to the doctor, is mortal sin; especially when the remedy is close at hand."

"You mean eugenics?" I said.

"No," he said, "I refer to the tango. The speaker last night--or was it the night before?--was absolutely convincing on the point. I am sure you will agree."

To make sure that I would agree he interrupted me just as I opened my mouth to frame an objection. He continued rapidly:

"Take this matter of old age. There's no reason why people should let themselves grow old, is there now? And a properly const.i.tuted race would see to it that old age was postponed indefinitely. After all, when a man says he is eighty years old or ninety years old, it is only a figure of speech. Look at Napoleon winning the battle of Leipzig when he was seventy-eight years old."

"I never heard that before," I said. "I thought Napoleon lost the battle of Leipzig, and when he died--"

"It may have been Hannibal," he said. "At that point I may possibly have dozed off. But the principle of the thing is the same. Only a race of weaklings will succ.u.mb to the ravages of time without making a fight for it. There is really nothing beautiful in old age. You sit out the long winter nights by the fire. Your eyes are too weak for the fine print in the evening paper, and when you ask your son to tell you about the new Currency Law he grows cross and scolds the baby. When you stop to buy a ticket in the Subway, people grow impatient and murmur something about an old ladies' home. It's all as plain as daylight. There is no reason why people, as soon as they get to be sixty, should reconcile themselves to the idea of debility, warm gruel, and chest protectors, when they might go on being young, alert, graceful, full of the joy of life, if they would only recognise the way of going about it."

"You mean the tango?" I said.

"No," he said. "I was alluding to eugenics."

He spoke with a.s.surance, but from the corner of his eye he threw me a wistful, fugitive glance, as if to make sure from my bearing that this was really what he meant. I did not contradict him. I was thinking of his wife. For the first time in my experience my sympathies were with the tired business man. It is good for the tired business man that his wife shall be alive to the things that count; but two nights in succession is rather hard. His wife, I knew, was alive to every phase of our intense modern existence, and in rapid succession. She did not precisely burn with that hard, gemlike flame which Mr. Pater recommended. Sometimes I thought she burned with a sixty-four-candle power carbon glow. It was a bit trying on the eyes.

"Or take the question of s.e.x," he said. "What is there in s.e.x emotion to be ashamed of? It is the most primordial of feelings. It comes before the law of gravitation, as the speaker showed last night."

"Does it though?" I said.

"Well," he said, "perhaps it was the night before last. Around this universal urge, of which we ought to be proud, as the most powerful force in Evolution (the speaker last night was sure there could be no doubt on the subject), we have built up an elaborate structure of reticence and hypocrisy. All art, all literature, is of significance only as it emphasises s.e.x. If the Bible has impressed itself on the imagination of humanity for two thousand years, it is because it contains the most beautiful love songs in all literature. It is the force which drives the sun in its course, as the Italian poet has said.

It has been the inspiration of all great deeds. If we searched deeply enough, we should find that s.e.x was the inspiration behind the discovery of America, the invention of printing, and the building of the Roman aqueducts. Only the most benighted ignorance will permit our prudish sentiments on the subject to stand in the way of a movement which is sweeping the world like wildfire."

"Referring to eugenics?" I said.

"No," he said, "I mean the tango."

He looked out of the window and pondered.

"Yes," he said, "that was night before last. What the speaker dwelt upon last night was the subject of democracy. At present we know nothing of true democracy, of true equality. Society is divided into cla.s.ses with separate codes of morals and standards of conduct. There are rich and poor; workers and idlers; meat eaters and vegetarians; the old and the young; the literate, the illiterate, and the advocates of simplified spelling. It isn't a world at all; it is chaos. In the end it all resolves itself into this: humanity is divided into the strong and the weak. The surest way to do away with inequality is to produce a race in which every member is strong."

"You mean--" I said.

"Pardon me," he said. "I haven't finished. Let me sum up the speaker's concluding sentence as I recall it. As we look around us to-day there is unmistakably one force which works for the elimination of that inequality which is the source of all our troubles; a force which wipes out all distinction of cla.s.s, of age, and of education, and produces a world in which everybody is engaged in doing the same thing as everybody else."

"Oh, I see," I said. "You are now speaking of the tango."

"Not at all," he said, "I am referring to eugenics. But perhaps you do not agree with me?"

I hesitated. He was watching me eagerly, pushing his derby back until it stood upright on its tail like a trained seal.

"I have done my best to agree with you," I said, "but you have made it rather difficult for me. Nevertheless I do agree with you. What I am thinking of now is something which the speaker last night omitted to mention--or was it the night before last? And it is this. Under the conditions which you describe, how beautifully complex the art of thinking will become. At present we can hardly be said to think at all.

We are cowards. We crawl along from one truth to another. We timidly look back to our premises before jumping at the conclusion. We are horrified by inconsistencies. We are enslaved by facts--facts of nature, facts of human nature, facts of experience. How different it will all be when we can sidestep facts, when we can dip over inconsistencies, when we can hug boldly an apparent contradiction and make it our own; when thinking, in short, will not be a timid regulated process, but a succession of dips, twists, gallops, slides, bends, hurdles, sprints, and pole vaults."

"You are thinking of the tango?" he said.

"No," I replied. "I had eugenics in mind."

XV

HAROLD'S SOUL, II

You, mothers and fathers [said this particular advertising folder which I found in my morning's mail], do you know what goes on in the soul of your child?

I, for one, know very little of what goes on inside of Harold. My information on the subject would hardly furnish material for a single university extension lecture on child psychology. It is an imperfect, unsystematised knowledge based on accidental glimpses into Harold's soul, odd flashes of self-revelation, and occasional questions the boy will put to me. I don't know whether Harold is more reticent than the average boy in the second elementary grade, but in his case it does no good to cross-examine. He grows confused, suspicious, and afraid. He resents the intrusion of my rough fingers into his sensitive world of ideas. So I do not insist on detailed accounts of how the boy pa.s.ses his time in cla.s.s or at play; for what are time and s.p.a.ce and grammatical sequence to the child? I am content to wait, and now and then I make discoveries.

Harold and I were discussing one day the rather important question, raised by himself, from what height a man must fall down in order to be killed. It began, I think, with umbrellas and how they behave in a high wind. From that we pa.s.sed on to parachutes and balloons and the loftier mountain tops. We dwelt for some time upon the difficulties and dangers of mountaineering.

"Once there was a man," said Harold, "who used to drive six mules up a mountain."

"Six mules," I said. "How do you know?"

"A bishop told me," he said.