The Forerunner Part 1

The Forerunner.

by C. P. Gilman.

THEN THIS

The news-stands bloom with magazines, They flame, they blaze indeed; So bright the cover-colors glow, So clear the startling stories show, So vivid their pictorial scenes, That he who runs may read.

Then This: It strives in prose and verse, Thought, fancy, fact and fun, To tell the things we ought to know, To point the way we ought to go, So audibly to bless and curse, That he who reads may run.

A SMALL G.o.d AND A LARGE G.o.dDESS

The ancient iconoclast pursued his idol-smashing with an ax. He did not regard the feelings of the worshippers, and they, with similar indifference to his, promptly destroyed him.

The modern iconoclast, wiser from long experience, practices the kindergarten art of subst.i.tution; enters without noise, and dexterously replaces the old image with a new one.

Often the worshippers do not notice the change. They never spend their time in discriminating study of their idol, being exclusively occupied in worshipping it.

The task herein undertaken is not so easy. We can hardly expect to remove the particular pet deity of millions of people for thousands of years--an especially conspicuous little image at that, differing from other G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses; and subst.i.tute another figure, three times his size, of the opposite s.e.x, and thirty years older--without somebody's noticing it.

Yet this is precisely what is required of us, by the new knowledge of to-day. We are called upon to dislodge what is easily the most popular G.o.d in the calendar, albeit the littlest; that fat fluttering small boy, congenitally blind, with his haphazard archery playthings; that undignified conception, type of folly change and irresponsible mischief, which so amazingly usurps the name and place of love. Never was there a more absurd misrepresentation.

Suppose we worshipped Fire, the great sun for our over-lord, all lesser lights in varying majesty, each hearth-fire as the genius and guardian of the home. So worshipping, suppose we chose, as ever present image of the great idea, to be pictured and sculptured far and wide, to fill all literature, to be accepted even by science as type and symbol of the Fire Divine--a match-box!

So slight, so transient, so comparatively negligible in importance, is the flickering chance-sown spark typified in this pretty chimera of flying immaturity, compared with the majestic quenchless flame of life and love we ought to worship.

We have taken the a.s.sistant for the princ.i.p.al, a tributary for the main stream; we have exalted Eros, the G.o.d of man's desire, and paid no heed to that great G.o.ddess of mother love to whom young Eros is but a running footman.

We are right to worship love, in all its wide, diverging branches; the love that is grat.i.tude, love that is sympathy. love that is admiration, love that is gift and service; even the love that is but hunger--mere desire.

But when we talk of the Life Force, the strong stream of physical immortality, which has replaced form with form and kept the stream unbroken through the ages, we ought to understand whereof we speak.

That force is predominant. Under its ceaseless, upward pressure have all creatures risen from the first beginning. Resistlessly it pushes through the ages; stronger than pain or fear or anger, stronger than selfishness or pride, stronger than death. It rises like a mighty tree, branching and spreading through the changing seasons.

Death gnaws at it in vain. Death destroys the individual, not the race; death plucks the leaves, the tree lives on. That tree is motherhood.

The life process replaces one generation with another, each equal to, yes, if possible, superior to, the last. This mighty process has enlarged and improved throughout the ages, until it has grown from a mere division of the cell--its first step still--to the whole range of education by which the generations are replenished socially as well as physically. From that vague impulse which sets afloat a myriad oyster germs, to the long patience of a brooding bird; from the sun-warmed eggs of a reptile to the nursed and guarded young of the higher mammals; so runs the process and the power through lengthening years of love and service, lives by service, grows with service. The longer the period of infancy, the greater the improvement of species.

The fish or insect, rapidly matured, reaches an early limit. He must be competent to Iive as soon as he begins, and is no more competent at his early ending. The higher life form, less perfect at beginning, spending more time dependent on its mother, receives from her more power. First from her body's shelter, the full, long upbuilding; safety while she is safe; the circling guard of wise, mature, strong life, of conscious care, besides the unconscious bulwark of self-interest. Contrast this with the floating chances of the sp.a.w.n!

Then the rich, sure food of mother-milk, the absolute adaptation, the whole great living creature an alembic to gather from without, and distil to sweet perfection, what the child needs. Contrast this with the chances of new-born fish or fly, or even those of the bird baby, whose mother must search wide for the food she brings. The mammal has it with her.

Then comes the highest stage of all, where the psychic gain of the race is transmitted to the child as well as the physical. This last and n.o.blest step in the life process we call education. education is differentiated motherhood. It is social motherhood. It is the application to the replenishment and development of the race of the same great force of ever-growing life which made the mother's milk.

Here are the three governing laws of life: To Be; To Re-Be; To Be Better. The life force demands Existence. And we strain every nerve to keep ourselves alive. The life force demands Reproduction. And our physical machinery is shifted and rearranged repeatedly, with arrayed impulses to suit--to keep the race alive. Then, most imperative of all, the life force demands Improvement. And all creation groaneth and travaileth in this one vast endeavor. Not merely this thing--permanently; not merely more of this thing--continuously; but better things, ever better and better types, has been the demand of life upon us, and we have fulfilled it.

Under this last and highest law, as the main factor in securing to the race its due improvement, comes that supreme officer of the life process, the Mother. Her functions are complex, subtle, powerful, of measureless value.

Her first duty is to grow n.o.bly for her mighty purpose. Her next is to select, with inexorable high standard, the fit a.s.sistant for her work.

The third--to fitly bear, bring forth, and nurse the child. Following these, last and highest of all, comes our great race-process of social parentage, which transmits to each new generation the gathered knowledge, the acc.u.mulated advantages of the past.

When mother and father labor and save for years to give their children the "advantages" of civilization; when a whole state taxes itself to teach its children; that is the Life Force even more than the direct impulse of personal pa.s.sion. The pressure of progress, the resistless demand of better conditions for our children, is life's largest imperative, the fullest expression of motherhood.

But even if we confine ourselves for the time being to the plane of mere replenishment, to that general law under which animals continue in existence upon earth, even here the brief period of pre-paternal excitement is but a pa.s.sing hour compared to the weeks and months, yes, years, in the higher species, of maternal service, love and care. The human father, too, toils for his family; but the love, the power, the pride of fatherhood are not symbolized by the mischievous b.u.t.terfly baby we have elected to worship.

Cupid has nothing to do with either motherhood or fatherhood in the large human sense. His range is far short of the mark, he suggests nothing of the great work to which he is but the pleasing preliminary.

Even for marriage we must bring in another G.o.d little heard of--Master Hymen. This personage has made but small impression upon literature and art; we have concentrated our interest on the G.o.d of First Sensation, leaving none for ultimate results.

It is as if we were impressed by the intricate and indispensible process of nutrition (upon which, as anyone can see, all life continuously depends) and then had fixed our attention upon the palate, as chief functionary. The palate is useful, even necessary. Without that eager guide and servant we might be indifferent to the duty of eating, or might eat what was useless or injurious, or at best eat mechanically and without pleasure.

In the admirable economy of nature we are led to perform necessary acts by the pleasure which accompanies them; so the "pleasures of the palate"

rightly precede the uses of the stomach; but we should not mistake them for the chief end. In point of fact, this is precisely what we have done. It not an a.n.a.logy, it is a real truth. In nutrition as in reproduction we have been quite taken up with accompaniments and a.s.sistants, and have ignored the real business in hand. That is why the whole world is so unwisely fed. It considers only the taste of things, the pleasure of eating them, and ignores the real necessities of the process.

And why, if this standard of doorstep satisfaction does not really measure values in food, should we continue to set the same standard for the mighty work of love? Love is mighty, but little Master Cupid is not Love. The love that warms and lights and builds the world is Motherlove. It is aided and paralleled by Fatherlove (that new development distinctive of our race, that enn.o.bling of the father by his taking up so large a share of what was once all motherwork).

But why, so recognizing and reverencing this august Power, why should we any longer be content to accept as its symbol this G.o.dlet of transient sensation? No man who has ever loved a woman fully, as only human beings can love, through years of mutual care and labor, through sickness, age, and death, can honestly accept, as type of that long, strong, enduring Love, this small blind fly-by-night.

There is, unquestionably, a stage of feeling which he fitly represents.

There is an inflammable emotionality in youth and its dreary continuance into middle life, when as the farcial old governor in the play exclaims, "Every day is ladies' day to me." Such a state of mind--or body, rather--is common enough, harmless enough, perhaps, for a few light, ineffectual years; but it is a poor compliment to call it Love, to let this state of shuffling indecision, this weather-c.o.c.k period, this blindfold chance-shot game of hit or miss, hold such high place in our hearts.

The explanation of it all is plain. In those slow, ignorant ages when the spark of life was supposed to be transmitted by the male, he naturally was taken to typify the life force. As this force was most imperious in youth, so youth was taken to represent it. And as, even in the eyes of the supposed chief actor, his feelings were changeable and fleeting and his behavior erratic and foolish in the extreme--therefore Cupid!

Therefore, seeing the continuous unreason of the love-driven male, we say, "Love is blind"; seeing his light-mindedness, we say, "Love has wings"; seeing his evident lack of intelligence and purpose, we make him a mere child; seeing the evil results of his wide license, we euphemistically indicate some pain by that bunch of baby arrows.

It is easy to see the origin of this deification of the doorstep. It is not so easy to justify its persistence now that long years of knowledge show us the great Door.

The Door of Life is Motherhood. She is the gate of entrance. Her work is the great work as moulder and builder. She carries in her the Life Power which this absurd infant is supposed to typify; and her love is greater than his, even as a wise, strong mother is greater than a little child.

Consider the imperative law that demands motherhood, that gives motherhood, that holds motherhood to its great continuing task; where short pleasure is followed by long discomfort crowned with pain; where even the rich achievement of new-made life is but the beginning of years of labor and care. Here is the life force. Here is power and pa.s.sion.

Not the irritable, transient impulse, however mighty, but the staying power, the pa.s.sion that endures, the spirit which masters weakness, slays selfishness, holds its ministrant to a lifelong task.

This is not appet.i.te, hunger, desire. Desire may lead to it, and usefully. Desire is the torchbearer, Motherhood is the Way.

Give Baby Love his due. He is not evil; he is good. He is a joy forever. He is vitally necessary in the scheme of things. Happy are they who in the real great work of life can carry with them this angel visitant, fluttering free along their path, now close and sweet, now smiling mischievously at a distance, yet returning ever.

But with all that can be said of him he is out of place as chief deity in this high temple. Let a little shrine be made at the gate outside the door. Let him smile there and take his tribute of red roses. But when we put the shoes from off our feet and enter, we should see before us, tall and grave, glorious in strong beauty, majestic in her amplitude of power, the G.o.ddess Motherhood.

Such love should shine from her deep eyes that children would crowd to that temple and feel at home; learning to understand a little of what had brought them there. Such beauty in this body of great womanhood that men would worship as for long they have worshipped her of Melos. Such high pride that girls, gazing, would feel strong to meet and bear their splendid task. And such power--such living, overmastering power that man, woman and child alike should bow in honor and rise in strength.

Then will Love be truly worshipped.

ARREARS