The Jessica Letters Part 12

DEAR SIR:

I have not wrote you before. This is a beautiful place. I like it, especially the young lady. The old man have been acting wild, like a cop when he can't find out who done it. The difference is that it is the bible in the old man and the devil in the cop. He says you have hoodooed the young lady, and he says let you be enathermered. This is a religious cuss word. The young lady don't cry. She is dead game, and have lost her colour.

So good by,

Yours trewly,

JACK O'MEARA.

P.S.--The young lady have quit the family prayers, but me and the old man have to say ours just the same, only more so.

XLVII

FROM PHILIP'S DIARY

A wise man of the sect of Simon Magus has replied to an a.s.sault of mine on humanitarianism by trying to show that in this one faith of modern days are summed up all the varying ideals of past ages,--renunciation, self-development, religion, chivalry, humanism, pantheistic return to nature, liberty. Ah, my dear sir, I envy you your easy, kindly vision.

Indeed, all these do persist in a dim groping way, empty echoes of great words that have been, bare shadows without substance. What made them something more than graceful acts of materialism was that each and all ended not in themselves or in worldly accommodation, but in some purpose outside of human nature as our humanitarians comprehend that nature.

Renunciation was practised, not that my neighbour might have a morsel more of bread, but that one hungry soul might turn from the desires of the flesh to its own purer longings. Self-development looked to the purging and making perfect of the bodily faculties, that within the chamber of a man's own breast might dwell in sweet serenity the eternal spirit of beauty and joy. Even humanism, which by its name would seem to be brother to its present-day parody, perceived an ideal far above the vicious circle in which humanitarianism gyrates. My dear foe might read Castiglione's book of _The Courtier_ and learn how high the Platonic ideal of the better humanists floated above the charitable mockery of its name to-day. As for religion--go to almost any church in the land and hear what exhortations flow from the pulpit. The intellectual contention of dogmas is forgotten--and better so, possibly. But more than that: for one word on the spirit or on the way and necessity of the soul's individual growth, you will hear a thousand on the means of bettering the condition of the poor; for one word on the personal relation of man to his G.o.d, you will hear a thousand on the duties of man to man. Woe unto you, preachers of a base creed, hypocrites! These things ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone! You have betrayed the faith and forgotten your high charge; you have made of religion a mingling for this world's use of materialism and altruism, while the spirit hungers and is not fed. Like your father of old, that Simon Magus, you have sought to buy the gift of G.o.d with a price; like Judas Iscariot you have betrayed the Lord with a kiss of brotherhood! Now might the Keeper of the Keys cry out to-day with other meaning:

"How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, Enow of such, as for their bellies' sake Creep and intrude and climb into the fold!

Of other care they little reckoning make Than how to scramble at the shearer's feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest.

Blind mouths!"

XLVIII

FROM PHILIP'S DIARY

Reading a foolish book on the Literature of Indiana (!) and find this sentence on the first page: "It is not of so great importance that a few individuals within a State shall, from time to time, show talent or genius, as that the general level of cultivation in the community shall be continually raised." Whereupon the author proceeds to glorify the "general level" through a whole volume. Now the noteworthy thing about this particular sentence is the fact that it was set down as a mere truism needing no proof, and that it was no doubt so accepted by most readers of the book. In reality the sentiment is so far from a truism that it would have excited ridicule in any previous age; it might almost be said to contain the fundamental error which is responsible for the low state of culture in the country. Unfortunately the point cannot be profitably argued out, for it resolves itself at last into a question of taste. There are those who are chiefly interested in the life of the intellect and the imagination. They measure the value of a civilisation by the kind of imaginative and intellectual energy it displays, by its top growth in other words. They crave to see life express itself thus, _sub specie oeernitatis_, and apart from this conversion of human energy and emotion into enduring forms they perceive in the weltering procession of transient human lives no more significance or value than in the endless fluctuation of the waves of the sea. For them, therefore, the creation of one masterpiece of genius has more meaning than the physical or mental welfare of a whole generation; they can, indeed, discern no genuine intellectual welfare of a people except in so far as the people look up reverently to the products of the higher imagination. There are others for whom this life of the imagination has only a lukewarm interest, for the reason that their own faculties are weak and stunted. Naturally they think it a slight matter whether genius appear to create what they and their kind can only dimly enjoy; on the contrary, they hold it of prime importance that material welfare and the form of mental cunning which subdues material forces should be widely diffused among the people.

Now no one would say a word against raising "the general level of cultivation"; the higher it is raised the better. Only the cherishing of this ideal becomes pernicious when it is made more sacred than the appearance of individual genius. Nor is it proper to say that the appearance of genius is itself contingent on the level of cultivation.

There is much confusion of thought here. The influence of the people on literature is invariably attended with danger. It has its element of good, for the people cherish those instinctive pa.s.sions and notions of morality which keep art from falling into artificiality. But refinement, distinction, form, spirituality--all that makes of art a transcript of life _sub specie oeernitatis_--are commonly opposed to the popular interest and are even distrusted by the people. The att.i.tude of the Elizabethan playwrights toward their audiences gives food for reflection on this head. Just so sure as the ideal of general cultivation is made paramount, just so sure will the higher culture become degraded to this consideration, and with its degradation the general cultivation itself will grow base and material.

XLIX

FROM PHILIP'S DIARY

I lead a strange dual existence, the intensity of whose contrast is almost uncanny. After sitting for hours at my desk working on my History of Humanitarianism, I throw myself wearily on the sofa and smoke. And as the grey fumes float above my face, slowly they lay a spell upon me like the waving of mesmeric hands. I lose consciousness of the objects about me, the very walls dissolve away in a mist, and I am lifted as it were on softly beating pinions and borne swift and far like a bird. The sensation is curiously familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, yet it never causes me surprise. Sometimes I am carried out into the wide sky and soar as it seems for hours without ever alighting, until I am brought to myself with a sense of rapid falling. At other times I am borne to the blessed forest where my love walks, and always then the same thing happens. I know not whether it is my spirit or some emanation of my body, but, however it is, I am there always pursuing her as once I did in reality, until at last I lay hold of her and draw her into my arms beneath that ancient oak. I kiss her once and twice and a third time, gazing the while into her startled eyes. Then an inexpressible sweetness takes possession of me, a shudder runs through my veins, and of a sudden all is dark; I am sinking down, down, in unfathomable abysses, until abruptly I awake. No words can convey the mingled reality and remoteness of these sensations. Jessica, Jessica, you have troubled the very sources of my being; you have abandoned me to contend with shadows and the fear of shadows.

L

JACK TO PHILIP

DEAR MR. TOWERS:

You have not wrote to me yet. The weather is fine and things come up here and bloom out doors. But the old gentleman says we are out of the ark of safety. He have made up his mind to be d.a.m.ned any how. He says the Lord have turned his face against us. But I guess really it is the young lady that is showing off. She stands on her hind legs 'most all the time now.

She have back slid out of nearly everything and have quit going to church.

She does the same kind of meanness I do now, and don't care. She is jolly all the time, but she aint really glad none. She have got a familiar spirit in the forest that you can't see with your eyes. But she meets him under a big tree, and sometimes she cries. She don't let me come, but I creep after her and hide, so as to be there if he changes her into something else. The old gentleman have quit his religious cussing now and have took to fussing. But he can do either one according to the bible. He knows all the abusing scripture by heart. But the young lady have hardened her heart. She is dead game, and she aint skert of him, nor of the bible, nor nothing. And she aint sweet to n.o.body now but me. If you answer this, I will show it to her.

Your trew friend,

JACK O'MEARA.

P.S.--She wore your letter all one day inside her things before she give it to the old man.

LI

FROM PHILIP'S DIARY

Humanitarians are divided into two cla.s.ses--those who have no imagination, and those who have a perverted imagination. The first are the sentimentalists; their brains are flaccid, lumpish like dough, and without grip on reality. They are haunted by the vague pathos of humanity, and, being unable to visualise human life as it is actually or ideally, they surrender themselves to indiscriminate pity, doing a little good thereby and a vast deal of harm. The second cla.s.s includes the theoretical socialists and other regenerators of society whose imagination has been perverted by crude vapours and false visions. They are ignorant of the real springs of human action; they have wilfully turned their faces away from the truth as it exists, and their punishment is to dwell in a fantastic dream of their own creating which works a madness in the brain.

They are to-day what the religious fanatics were in the Middle Ages, having merely subst.i.tuted a paradise on this earth for the old paradise in the heavens. They are as cruel and intolerant as the inquisitors, though they mask themselves in formulae of universal brotherhood.

LII

FROM PHILIP'S DIARY

I have been reading too much in this tattered old note-book of O'Meara's.

It is my constant companion these widowed days, and the mystic vapour that exhales from his thought has gone to my head like opium. I must get rid of the obsession by publishing the book as a psychological doc.u.ment or by destroying it once for all. With its quotations and original reflections it alternates from page to page between the sullen despair of a man who has hoped too often in vain and a rare form of inverted exaltation. As with me, it was apparently his custom, when the loneliness of fate oppressed him, to go out and wander up and down Broadway, seeking the regions by night or day where the people thronged most busily and steeping his fancy in the turmoil of its illusion. I can see his ill-clad figure with bowed head moving slowly amid the jostling mult.i.tude, and I smile to think how surprised the brave folk would be, who pa.s.sed him as he shuffled along and who no doubt drew their skirts away lest they should be polluted by rubbing against him, if they could hear some of the meditations in his book and learn the pride of this despised tramp. Many times he repeats the proverb: _Rem carendo non fruendo cognoscimus_--By losing not by enjoying the world we make it ours. Out of the utter ruin and abandonment of his life he seems to have won for himself a spiritual possession akin to that of the saints, only inverted as it were. The impersonal detachment they gained by rising above human affairs, he found by sinking below them. He looked upon the world as one absolutely set apart from it, and through that isolation attained a strange insight into its significance, and even a kind of intoxicating joy. On me in my state of bewildered loneliness his mood exerts an alarming fascination. It is dangerous to surrender one's self too submissively to this perception of universal illusion unless a strong will is present or some master pa.s.sion as a guide; for without these the brain is dizzied, and barely does a man escape the temptation to throw away all effort and sink gradually into the stupor of indifference or something worse. I have felt the madness creep upon me too often of late and I am afraid. Ah, Jessica, in withdrawing the hope of your blessing from me you know not into what perils of blank indifference you have cast my soul. Shall I drift away into the hideous nightmare that pursued O'Meara? I will seal up his book, and make strong my determination to work and in work achieve my own destiny.

LIII

PHILIP TO JACK